I already see a few improvements coming, can't say what, but yeah, this will keep evolving the more folks try it and are honest.
We now restored the UK English sound in this pack very close to the sound it had in the original IPA rules, which were much smaller and sparce in comparison, but I understand how we were contaminating phonemes with each other, which was the huge huge downside before I moved things into the frontend.
Honestly, building that frontend was the best decision I made early. AI would have kept on piling in Python code, specific language variables, and stich me a 300 kilobyte Python file by the end. No no. We are not doing that.
It's funny how real work changes you. I used to be a spaghetti-code type guy, all day I'd just throw my code in a single file. Today I shutter at the idea of zero abstraction. If it's not modularized well, it's not worth reading as code, period, unless it's clean small code. Yes I'm that much of a snob. Gosh. AI will happily spaghetti all day, unless you're Google Gemini, which can (sometimes) do better at helping you abstract it, but you are still the architect, if you don't know coding fundementals, it's hard to use AI to code something not considered "AI slop."
Sensitive content
“Europe is a regulatory morass that is built on bureaucracy, and the layering and layering of rules that constrain economic activity.”
Scott Bessant, US Treasury Secretary
To which Europeans say:
Flint, Michigan
East Palestine, Ohio
Uniontown, Alabama
These places are global bywords for the poisoning of people and nature when you have no regulatory oversight of business and you prioritise ‘economic activity’ at all costs over health and safety.
This is disability discrimination. I cannot access Threads without assistive technology, and their systems automatically suspend me for using it.
ADA compliance issue.
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!
@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!
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.
@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!
@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)
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…
How to survive FOSDEM – Marcin Juszkiewicz
FOSDEM is 2 weeks conference in 2 days. Can be tough to survive.marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl
reshared this
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…
🇺🇸 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
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
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? :)
IzzyOnDroid ✅ reshared this.
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.
@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".
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)
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
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.
Droid-ify v0.6.8 Hotfix 
Fixed:
- Apk file integrity check failing
- Download stats data validation
- Performance in apps list
Full changelog available here: github.com/Droid-ify/client/re…
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...v0.6.8GitHub
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.🤖
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.
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)
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.
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…
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.
You know how far-right grifters use the rhetorical technique of naming a real problem and then offering a scam solution?
People are falling for that with Mark Carney's speech
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
Are you or is anyone you know colourblind?
Windows has a feature called colour filters, which may help the colours on your screen appear more distinct
You can turn it on and off with WIN + CTRL + C (if enabled in Settings)
How are blind users supposed to access Threads if screen readers trigger automatic suspensions?
#Accessibility #A11y #Threads #Meta
Bri🥰
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in reply to Ethin Probst • • •miki
in reply to Ethin Probst • • •@x0 @Bri And to make this even more confusing, you're not really using executable code from NVDA, you're just implementing their interface. And the copyright situation of interfaces is even more unclear, especially with all the different countries involved.
The easiest thing to do would probably be to do a git blame on the ACF file and get an explicit okay from everybody involved in its implementation. There can't be that many of these people.
Ethin Probst
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