mastodon - Link to source
This is a test of using Fast-SM with our J-Say technology. This application is quite timely, because I would like to demonstrate to somebody how we can use the programme with bluesky. He has always wanted to use Bluesky and now he has an ideal opportunity of doing so. Dragon is working exceptionally well in this application, and I can easily correct errors such as the name of the social media network that I have just described. It treated the name of the social network as two separate words with no capital letter, so I had to put that right. There was absolutely no problem in doing so and there is no deterioration in terms of responsiveness on the computer while we are using Fast-SM with Dragon and JAWS. I am even able to proof read the post that I have just dictated with no difficulty. All good stuff!

mastodon - Link to source

#blind #accessibility

I'm writing a technical blog post and want to use a UML sequence diagram to explain something.

Only trouble is, I have no idea how to make such a diagram accessible to a screen reader.

I know I could just write up alt-text to describe it, but at that point I feel like I should just use the text _instead_ of the diagram.

Maybe that's the answer, but I'm hoping there's a way to get a screen reader to communicate the diagram in some way?

Any ideas appreciated!

#Accessibility #blind
in reply to André Polykanine

mastodon - Link to source

ragman

@menelion PlantUML looks neat!

I'm currently using js-sequence-diagrams[1], which looks like it has similar syntax as PlantUML.

Putting the code/text representation of the diagram feels like it'd be helpful for a small diagram, but maybe too much to keep in ones head for a larger one?

Better than nothing I reckon though!

1) bramp.github.io/js-sequence-di…

js-sequence-diagrams by bramp

bramp.github.io
@André Polykanine
in reply to ragman

mastodon - Link to source

André Polykanine

First of all, let me tell you something: we appreciate every move like this. You know, every blind person struggles. They may tell you it's fine, we're good, someone will even say "I'm proud to be blind" (sic!), but… we struggle. And if a person comes and tells like: "I'm posting a diagram, I want it to be seen by my blind readers" — woosh, like a wave of warm air in a cold winter street.
Why am I saying this? Because it's not even better than nothing, it's quite enough for a technically or scientifically inclined person to decipher what you're saying. I'm not proficient in this at all (JS-Sequence-Diagrams looks also good, also there's Mermaid supported by GitHub, I think) but if I need or want it, I'll read the docs and cope with it. Or… drop you a message and ask for help 😊
Anyway, thank you so much. It's really heartwarming.
in reply to André Polykanine

mastodon - Link to source

ragman

@menelion Aww thank you André. ❤️ I'm touched, and not really sure how to respond!

I guess I'll just say that I want to live in the world where we all look out for each other's needs, and where we can ask each other for accommodations or help when we need to. Where we all get those warm breezes when we're cold :)

Anyway, thank you again for the kind words!

@André Polykanine
in reply to André Polykanine

mastodon - Link to source

ragman

@menelion On the PlantUML front, I found this paper describing how it was used in a computer science class to help a blind student learn the content:

dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/354…

Some points I found interesting:

* the textual representation of the diagram was enough for, at least this one person, to be able to follow along in the course

(1/2)

@André Polykanine

mastodon - Link to source

I updated my "How to survive FOSDEM" article.

@fosdem organizers updated map so I updated it as well. The change was simple: there is no ATM at ULB (for quite a while).

So I added an info about it. And some minor edit.

marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2019…

#FOSDEM #FOSDEM26


How to survive FOSDEM – Marcin Juszkiewicz

FOSDEM is 2 weeks conference in 2 days. Can be tough to survive.
marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl
#fosdem #fosdem26 @FOSDEM

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
SpeechPlayer update: Huge one.
This update removes all the "frame:" settings from the voice dialog. If you liked them, toggle " exposeExtraParams = False
" to true in the driver's file. These are fun settings to play with and make it squeak in weird ways, but also, it's 47 sliders, and this way we only add the 16 for language settings.
- new: settings no longer say "langpack:" but have human understandable names. This should make it easier to know what does what.
- New: Croatian language. If Croatian sounds off, please suggest fixes to HR.YAML
- new: Engine setting, segmentBoundarySkipVowelToLiquid That new setting only affects the boundary gap we insert when stitching two separate chunks (two separate “say” calls / queue items).
- new setting: semivowelOffglideScale. Useful where you want the glide to join better with the vowel in your language, test with different values (default is 1.) Added in language editor only.
- Fixed: The driver works on NVDA 2026.1 again, fixed to set argtypes and restype right after initialization for Espeak phonemizer.
- Language updates to Portuguese (thanks @clv1), Polish (thank you @patricus). English glides should be less noticeable and more smooth.
eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
@Cleverson @patricus
in reply to Spacedog

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@spacepup lol I always tell people to experiment, if you can send me your packs folder so I can also hear it and judge how it sounds better, well, even nicer. LOL. That's why I made this pack system, it makes it very easy to zip up the packs folder and just send it as a small file, or just like some people here have, tell me what value they changed to what and how it made it sound for them, then I usually will fold it into the main pack if it's really a nicer sound. That's what I'd really like from this, a community-driven sound. But it'll take time, which is why I built the phoneme editor. Speaking of which, I have to update it with the new values we added to the engine, gosh. Ah well, not hard.
@Spacedog
in reply to Spacedog

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@spacepup oh gosh I know, especially in a formant synth, I think we do have a good sound for it now in foreign languages but it'll get better. Once someone mentioned it was sounding more like a Z though that could actually clue me in on which way to tune it to make it slightly rolled. I definitely know ESpeak didn't get that one right until like the mid-2000s or later.
@Spacedog

mastodon - Link to source

🇺🇸 We were asked for this in the past, and now it was done: our Liberapay account has been revived, find it at liberapay.com/IzzyOnDroid/

As @Liberapay has no option to upload a project avatar (or I haven't found it), and we're not using any of the hard-coded services, I hope you forgive us keeping my personal one in there for now. Should a change become possible, we'll of course update accordingly!


IzzyOnDroid's profile - Liberapay

The IzzyOnDroid team maintains the repository for F/LOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Android apps launched by Izzy in 2015/2016, which has since become quite well-known …
Liberapay
@Liberapay

mastodon - Link to source

Kuuntelen tosi vähän musiikkia paristakin syystä, mutta joskus lenkillä Vorssan Suvi-iltaan kasattu soittolista auttaa ryytyneenä jaksamaan. Listalla on 99 % uudempaa tradia ja bluegrassia eli lajeja, joita kestän ylipäätään kuunnella, mutta seassa on jokunen nostalgianumero ja raitoja, joiden bpm sopii omaan kadenssiin erityisen hyvin.

Tänään tipahti peräkkäin Les Misin Do You Hear the People Sing ja perään Elina Salo alkoi vetää Kolmea iloista rosvoa :’-D

#luontoliikunta

#luontoliikunta
in reply to J 🏳️‍🌈 no se yks Viitanen

mastodon - Link to source

J 🏳️‍🌈 no se yks Viitanen

Lapseton kuuntelee todellakin kotimaista lastenmusiikkia, koska täällä tehdään järkyttävän hyvää lastenmusiikkia. Vaikka joku Freija, Mutaveijarit, Mimmien fantastisen kaoottinen sovitus vanhasta Hirsilaulusta tai Lastenmusiikkiorkesteri Ammuun kaunis versio Kimalaisten kehtolaulusta, jota en saa kuunnella liian usein, koska jokin Mannerin tekstin tässä versiossa ravistelee aivan liikaa mun olematonta sieluani.

mastodon - Link to source

RE: mastodon.social/@droidify/1159…

Very excited to see #Droidify implement the #IzzyOnDroid download statistics!

This means 2 out of the top 3 #FDroid clients now show download statistics for apps downloaded from IzzyOnDroid. Hopefully this convinces more repositories to adopt this!

The part I love most is the different directions Droidify and Neo Store took it. Droid-ify went for simple, just showing the total amount of downloads, while Neo Store went for detailed graph.

What's your preference? Simplicity or detail? :)

Droid-ify

2026-01-21 16:02:31

mastodon - Link to source

Droid-ify v0.6.8 Hotfix :psyduck:

Fixed:
- Apk file integrity check failing
- Download stats data validation
- Performance in apps list

Full changelog available here: github.com/Droid-ify/client/re…

#droidify



Release Release v0.6.8 Hotfix · Droid-ify/client

Fixed: Apk file integrity check failing Download stats data validation Performance in apps list Full Changelog: v0.6.7...v0.6.8
GitHub

#fdroid #Droidify #izzyondroid

IzzyOnDroid ✅ reshared this.

in reply to Sylvia

mastodon - Link to source

Sylvia

So I don't really see the issue to be honest. The only possible risk is if you disable Android's signature verification with XPosed modules (which would be a horrible idea) and happen to get the one signature that somehow would match in MD5. But both IzzyOnDroid and F-Droid already use an allowlist of signatures per app, so this would already be blocked serverside there.

Lacking index-v2 is not a security risk at all but would be nice for faster update checks.

This entry was edited (12 hours ago)
in reply to Sylvia

mastodon - Link to source

Sylvia

@TheJnx Obtainium on the other hand is often used to get APKs directly from developers with no malware scan or anything. So if a dev gets their system infected by malware and because of that uploads a build with malware, you will just instantly get that and infect your device, there is no party in between to scan or rebuild the app from source.

Personally, I find "dev gets their system infected by malware" a much more likely scenario, which is why I don't understand Obtainium as "more secure".

@Jenny
in reply to Sylvia

mastodon - Link to source

Sylvia

@TheJnx Of course SHA would be better, so nice to see LooKeR will fix that: mastodon.social/@Iamlooker/115… :)

LooKeR (@Iamlooker@mastodon.social)

@TheJnx@bonito.cafe @SylvieLorxu@chaos.social Well yes I agree that Droid-ify does not have Index V2 or diffing but I don't see how thats a security issue. And the 3 point of it "uses a outdated signature algorithm".
LooKeR (Mastodon)
@Jenny
in reply to Sylvia

mastodon - Link to source

Jenny

for that reason I will continue to say that either Github or Codeberg, any other source, as such is for more experienced people, Obtainium is obviously safe (as far as it goes), allows more than 10 sources from which to download apps, but of course, it all depends on using reliable sources, review the code, use an antivirus (although I doubt the quality of these), that the repository has been reported in that case, etc.

I must admit that I have not stopped using Izzyondroid, only for one app (since the versions there seem to me more stable) but of course, Izzyondroid seems to me that unlike F-Droid allows a wider catalog of apps, but of course, for everything I use Obtainium itself because it allows me to save all those apps and apks that could be scattered on my device

mastodon - Link to source

State of Accessibility on Linux, 2026:

Users: Wayland broke accessibility.

Wayland: Not our problem, talk to the compositor.

KDE & Gnome: Expose what we need for accessibility, plz?

Wayland: Security risk. No.

Factorio dev: This compromise?

Wayland: Ok, fine...

Also Wayland: Actually, no.

User: *researches how to grow new eyeballs* It'll be solved faster.

#linux #accessibility #wayland

#Accessibility #linux #Wayland

mastodon - Link to source

Droid-ify v0.6.8 Hotfix :psyduck:

Fixed:
- Apk file integrity check failing
- Download stats data validation
- Performance in apps list

Full changelog available here: github.com/Droid-ify/client/re…

#droidify


Release Release v0.6.8 Hotfix · Droid-ify/client

Fixed: Apk file integrity check failing Download stats data validation Performance in apps list Full Changelog: v0.6.7...v0.6.8
GitHub
#Droidify

mastodon - Link to source
Face the facts:
AI is here to stay. Don't like it? You anti? Sorry but, bye Felicia. This stuff's existed for years now, it just wasn't so exposed. And it isn't going to receed. It'll continue to build. Your anti-barriers shall crumble. Your computer will be artifcialified, and if you don't like it, might as well use ancient ones. Even those processors! Wonder why prices are rocketing up? AI. Run as much as you like. But it'll catch up. It's everywhere. It's been everywhere. That won’t change.🤖
in reply to Ethin Probst

mastodon - Link to source

tunmi13

@draeand Most of that was me screwing around, but from a serious perspective... yes. We don't know what's truly going to happen. There are theories, hypotheses, conspiracies, that sort. What we do know however, is that it is altering the balance. What was once locked in a box has been unleashed, and is flying high in the sky. The more serious part of my ridiculous post is that we're nearing that boundary where AI is sort of the new norm, and only so much can be done to suppress it.
@Ethin Probst

gotosocial - Link to source

I really love this one bug where Firefox dev tools' right-click Inspect Element button works reliably for a bit, then inexplicably stops and pulls up the browser console instead, meaning the item doesn't actually inspect the element. It pulls up the browser console input area instead, which is of course what I wanted to do in the first place when trying to inspect an element.

Related, I like this other bug where tabbing from the browser console switches focus between the text input and console messages, but shift-tab lives in its own world with its own unique list of elements, navigating instead through the console messages area and what looks to be a long list of CSS selectors and styles. I tried using this to reach the element inspector but can't do that either.

Becoming less and less apologetic about my AI use by the day. Want me to not use the water-and-power-guzzling mechanoid? Don't make it so difficult to use every basic tool that I have to ask another tool to use it for me.

mastodon - Link to source

Trump threat leads Greenland to release ‘crisis’ guidelines

ctvnews.ca/world/article/green…

We need the same here. If the Hummers roll in.


Greenland releases ‘crisis’ guidelines as Trump threat looms

Greenland’s government unveiled a new brochure on Wednesday offering advice to the population in the event of a “crisis” in the territory, which U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to seize from ally Denmark.
AFP Staff (CTVNews)

mastodon - Link to source

During the early pandemic, everyone was using online tools for lessons, work, & events. As soon as hegemons wanted not just "essential workers" but everyone back at the grindstone, the accessibility that online can offer was yanked back from disabled ppl.

We warned at the time that the lesson to take from how "horrible" people thought online schooling was was to *improve* it. That the years of ableist underinvestment in creative accessible online tools & training for presenters/teachers was largely to blame. Abled ppl ignored this or wrote op-eds saying online was inherently bad.

Just this week alone, we've heard how schools in Minnesota are trying to instruct students online and doctors are doing telemedicine because of ICE kidnappers. A rail crash in Catalunya resulted in a university cancelling exams because students can't commute to school.

Even if you're naïve enough to assume there will only be one pandemic, there are other reasons for accessibility.

#Ableism #Accessibility #EmergencyPreparedness

#Accessibility #ableism #emergencypreparedness

mastodon - Link to source

Reading about #Nvidia CEO crying about people not liking #AI, though it was a good time to recover this historic piece of art from the Copyright wars of the start of the century. Cc'ing @pluralistic

Original at flickr.com/photos/akma/9208227…

A Copyleft logo with wings. Above it, yellow font over red background, a sentence that says: your failed business model is not my problem

Business Model

Paul Beard heard Meg’s request (and my echo) and leapt into action. . . . .
Flickr
#AI #nvidia @Cory Doctorow
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

In episode 1 million and 1 of Google breaking accessibility, someone decided to slap aria hidden on basically the entire page on google drive public link pages, but here's the weird thing, only in Firefox. I don't know if chromium and Safari browsers just have a workaround just for this kind of developer/AI stupidity and bypass it and firefox doesn’t, or if something in google's code only breaks this on firefox.

Either way recovering out of this is fun. I have to use AXSHammer to kill all aria hidden. But, this doesn't always work. If I get lucky and the right thing gets focused Shift+F10 will give me the firefox context menu and I can do it. If not, well, just gotta keep refreshing the page until it does because due to the whole invisible to the screen reader problem NVDA/VoiceOver won't let me bring the mouse to anywhere useful to pop up the menu.

in reply to Sarah dreams of beans

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah dreams of beans

If the most inspiring parts of Carney's speech are "facing reality" and "strength through cooperation" I have such good news! Neoliberals like him always co-opt their inspiring rhetoric from *actual* liberatory movements, and you could be getting your inspo straight from the source. See if land back, mutual aid, prison abolition, anti-fascism, community self-defense, labour solidarity, or privacy rights movements get you anywhere
in reply to Sarah dreams of beans

mastodon - Link to source

Sarah dreams of beans

If the parts of Carney's speech that inspire you are about building up national power at the expense of ethics and ideals, maybe spend some time reflecting on whether building homegrown corporate fascism would actually do anything to resist the American regime or whether that would be complying in advance and land us in the exact same place

mastodon - Link to source

After a good 30 minutes, I've gotten Emacspeak working rather well with mastodon.el. Goodness all those Emoji. For now, n and p read next/prev post well, and t lets you know you're doing new toot. And that's all the making stuff I can do right now.

Dropbox link: dropbox.com/scl/fi/zz4632vjlau…

#Emacs #foss #emacspeak #accessibility #blind

#Accessibility #foss #emacs #blind #emacspeak

mastodon - Link to source
Looks like @Tutanota wins in the screen reader accessibility department. Both the iOS app and the web version appear to be quite accessible with screen readers. Tested using both VoiceOver and Chromevox… I had no issues navigating the interface with either screen reader. #A11Y #Accessibility #Blind #ScreenReader #Email #Calendar #Contacts
#a11y #Accessibility #email #blind #screenreader #contacts #calendar @Tuta

mastodon - Link to source

Have you ever helped people use their computers by talking to them over the phone, without seeing their screen? It can be frustrating if they tell you mostly irrelevant details that bury the important stuff.

This is the major problem with image description by AI. AI has no idea why the image was posted, so it gives irrelevant details.

Human-written image descriptions are much better at communicating an image's purpose.

More accessibility tips: fedi.tips/how-do-i-make-posts-…

#FediTips #Accessibility


How do I make my posts more accessible to blind, deaf and deafblind people on Mastodon and the Fediverse? How do I add alt texts? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tips
#Accessibility #FediTips

mastodon - Link to source

I live in a small town in Sweden. This morning I went out to my car (realising that I'd once again forgotten to lock the front door last night), drove along empty, wide roads to the nearest largeish town and parked in the brand new multistorey carpark by the railway station, where the first two hours' parking is free and the remainder of the time is very cheap.

I got out of the car without checking my surroundings, and as I leaned back in to get my bag out, I thought "In large parts of the world, I'd be asking to get mugged, or worse".

Then I walked along the clean, well-kept streets to the hospital, where I waited for less than 2 minutes for my mammography, which was completely free of charge.

This is Sweden. This is Europe. Why the FUCK are we trying to emulate, listening to, investing in or in any way having anything whatsoever to do with the utter insanity coming out of the USA?

And I don't just mean under the current, obviously barking, incumbent. I mean ever? They don't do things like we do. They don't believe in the same things that we do. This really is an us and a them situation, and we've been kidding ourselves for the last 80 years that they're like us.

mastodon - Link to source

GenAI, The Snake Eating Its Own Tail: How tools like ChatGPT and Claude are destroying the ecosystems they rely on, and what to do about it ybrikman.com/blog/2026/01/21/g…

Great blog post. This one explained how Google, OpenAI and other AI companies killed the open web, which was once made of independent forums, news sites, wikis, blogs, high quality journalism websites, books, and fan fiction or art.


GenAI, The Snake Eating Its Own Tail: How tools like ChatGPT and Claude are destroying the ecosystems they rely on, and what to do about it

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have two superpowers. The first superpower is a boon: they can dramatically increase ...
Yevgeniy Brikman

mastodon - Link to source

Hey #believeinfilm friends,

Eastman Kodak Company has just announced that it will be distributing Tri-X and Ektar!

That's great news for folks who know about Alaris and its diminishing role as a 3rd party distributor, but does that really mean cheaper film?

My findings suggest no. This is not making film cheaper right now. It's making it more expensive.

The breakdown: analog.cafe/comments/2p2r

#filmphotography #analogphotography #photography

new kodak films

Eastman Kodak Company begins self-distributing Tri-X and Ektar; I hope that doesn’t mean pricier film!

Last year, we learned that the Kodak factory shifted its film distribution from outsourcing to Kodak Alaris to doing it in-house. Today, the company announced two new films that will be sold under a new packaging.
www.analog.cafe
#photography #filmphotography #believeinfilm #analogphotography

akkoma - Link to source

neat piece of invisible infrastructure: the Rust portable-atomic crate

your platform doesn’t support a particular type of atomic natively? not a problem, this crate gives you an implementation anyway

how? well there’s a global lock, you see. or, rather, 67 global locks, and which one gets used depends on the address of the atomic mod 67.

but, that’s kinda inefficient, so you wouldn’t want to use it unless it’s your only choice, right?

so they have a bunch of platform specific implementations, such as “let’s detect at runtime if cmpxchg16b is supported” or “this is a microcontroller so if we read it within one instruction we’re fine, and otherwise just disable the interrupts”

and as a result you can just use it and not really think about it, because in 99% of cases it’s gonna do the same thing as what you’d end up with if you bothered to optimize it manually

the ratio of elaborate internals to unassuming API surface is so great here you could easily blink and miss the fact that someone is pulling off heroic feats to make this happen

in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 Technically yes.
1.
Long:
ː (U+02D0)
→ you already support this
Example: iː, aː
2.
Half-long:
ˑ (U+02D1)
Example: eˑ
3.
Extra-short:
̆ (U+0306, combining breve)
Example: ă
So technically, ̆ is the “shorten” mark. eSpeak does not emit ̆
Most IPA transcriptions omit it entirely. Linguists usually encode “shortness” as:the absence of ː, or via phoneme choice (e.g. /ɪ/ vs /iː/)
@Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

It’s interesting to me that Trump has so quickly backed off on the threat of using force in Greenland. Someone talked him off the ledge. Maybe the massing European troops raised the stakes enough for his advisors to hesitate. Maybe the generals said they would not attack a NATO member nation (a clearly illegal order). Maybe he never had military support at all, and was talking out of his ass all along. Who knows? The point is, they called his bluff, and he folded like wet napkin. I think people need to learn from this. Calling Trump’s bluffs works, especially when you team up with other communities to call his bluff together.

#kakistocracy #greenland #davos

reuters.com/business/davos/det…

#greenland #kakistocracy #davos
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
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