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World's first stereo recording from 1934. youtube.com/watch?v=e0qzIZaiPF…


Hey fellow #BlindMastodon users! I'm looking for recommendations on two types of writing tools for Windows:

1. Accessible text expanders
2. Word prediction software

I use both #JAWS and #NVDA screen readers. I tried Espanso (an open-source text expander), but it didn't work well with NVDA. I also tested Lightkey for word prediction, but it didn't seem accessible.

As an #ActuallyAutistic person, word prediction would really help with my autism-related communication challenges.

Have you found any text expanders or word prediction tools that work well with screen readers? What has your experience been like? I'd love to hear your recommendations and thoughts!

#Accessibility #AssistiveTechnology #TextExpander #WordPrediction #ScreenReader #Windows #AutismAccommodations #autism #blind @mastoblind @main

in reply to Lanie Carmelo

@hartgenconsult I think I encountered this behavior once or twice but it was a while ago and I'm now not able to reproduce this. What version of Leasey are you using?
For kicks, have you tried clearing the clipboard by pressing the Leasey key followed by the letter Z? Admittedly, you should not need to do this every time you want to expand an abbreviation but I'm just curious as to whether that might fix things going forward.
Please note that I'm just a Leasey user and am not intending to represent Hartgen Consultancy.


How to keep employees with disabilities from leaving your agency federalnewsnetwork.com/workfor…




Meta AI Silently Releases NotebookLlama: An Open Version of Google’s NotebookLM marktechpost.com/2024/10/27/me…


How to Install and Use uv: A Python Installer and Resolver linuxtoday.com/blog/how-to-ins…


Have people found that things have improved regarding the Facebook #accessibility bug that meant you couldn’t read back what you’d typed when composing a post?
Any other pain points around Facebook you would like addressed?
in reply to Jonathan Mosen

The main reason I stopped using Facebook is because it's too verbose. Every time I swipe to a new post in the iOS app at least, I hear the person's name, followed by "Profile image", followed by the message, which may or may not contain an image description, etc. It all became too much for me, and I temporarily deactivated my account.
in reply to Kelly Sapergia

@kjsapergia Thanks Kelly, I have this one on my list to discuss with them. I agree with you, the verbosity is not optimal.


Dinosaurs Thrived After Ice, Not Fire, Says A New Study Of Ancient Volcanism eurasiareview.com/29102024-din…


The show has been picked up by Netflix for a new season, and will be available on Netflix void in Canada.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)


In seinem 1927 (!) erschienenen Buch beklagt sich Kurt Floericke, wie furchtbar die Tierwelt in den letzten 40 Jahren "verarmt und verödet" ist. Die Schuld dafür weist er hauptsächlich dem "Siegeszug von Industrie und Technik" zu.

Surprise…

Das eBook dazu kommt die Tage mit der nächsten Runde bei ebooks.qumran.org/ an. Der Titel: "Aussterbende Tiere"…

#naturschutz #literatur

in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

Bei so viel Interesse (Likes & Boosts) möchte ich Euch natürlich nicht zu lange auf die Folter spannen – das genannte #eBook steht jetzt bereit, wurde gerade mit 23 weiteren bei ebooks.qumran.org/ hochgeladen.

Viel Spaß beim Lesen!

#eBooks #libre #gratis



It has come to my attention that there are some folks in the vintage Macintosh community engaging in racist comments.

This behavior is intolerable. If you're one of those people: let yourself out right now, or we'll do it for you.



Raspberry Pi OS Now Enables Wayland by Default on All Raspberry Pi Models linuxtoday.com/blog/raspberry-…


CAQ tables bill to limit international students at Québec universities.

FYI: Specific universities are being targeted.

SPOILER ALERT: THERE WILL BE EVEN LESS DOCTORS IN THIS PROVINCE.

cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/qu… #CAQASTROPHE #polQC #QCpoli #assnat #racist #xenophobic #hate #fear #division




Are you a software developer, and, if so, without looking it up, do you know what the THERAC-25 is?

  • I know what it is; I'm a programmer (37%, 9 votes)
  • I don't know what it is; I'm a programmer (54%, 13 votes)
  • I know what it is; I'm not a programmer (4%, 1 vote)
  • I don't know what it is; I'm not a programmer (4%, 1 vote)
24 voters. Poll end: 2 days ago

modulux reshared this.

in reply to Glyph

I knew that it was often referenced when talking about buggy software, and I vaguely remembered something about radiation, but without looking it up, I couldn't say exactly what it was. So I voted no, then went to read about it on Wikipedia.


I updated a Linux distribution to a beta release recently, resulting in some empty directories being left in the file system. Unfortunately, as I found out, Erlang (used by Pleroma) was searching in the empty directories for various modules, and failing to find them, leading to fatal runtime errors.
The solution: "find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -delete", to remove all of the empty directories one level below the current directory.
Having solved the problem myself, I then queried GPT-4, as I was interested to know whether it could give a correct solution. Indeed it could, although the GPT-4 solution was unnecessarily more complex than mine, with an -exec option used to run rmdir on each directory. I did specify that I was using Linux, so GNU extensions to the find command would have been allowed in the answer.
#CommandLine #Linux


Exploring the Foundations of Linux: A Look at Major Distributions and Their Base Systems lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_l…


Federal government going ahead with high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto

cbc.ca/news/politics/high-spee…

Another High Speed rail report.

I'll believe it when it actually is in service. But at that pace I'll be dead.

in reply to Hubert Figuière

"A source close to the file said the bidding consortia warned Ottawa that ridership would be lower with a high-frequency train than with a high-speed one, since customers are looking for the shortest possible trip."

So they paid somebody to tell them that? Maybe I should become Govt Consultant and make the big bucks here. I could have told them.



One thing I do think the US does a lot better than the UK in terms of elections is having a couple months window to flee the country following an election. In the UK if Trump won he'd be in office within like 24 hours of the election and I'd be so fucked
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Marcus Hutchins

The other really wild thing about UK elections is while they're on a fixed term similar to how US elections are, the government can vote to hold an election basically whenever, at which point you have ~25 days until the election and ~26 until the new government takes over. During Brexit they called like 3 elections in 4 years and by the end of it everyone was so sick of democracy there was a proposed legislation to just have no more elections until a fixed date 💀
This entry was edited (3 days ago)


Just had yet another enfuriating experience trying and failing to take a selfie for a live verification with the increase of services either requiring or highly preferring this, I'm growing increasingly concerned. I know for most blind folks these present a challenge, and coupling that with those of us with fake eyes who they may not recognize and I fear this is a far bigger access concern than any folks are realizing.
ame thing.

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oni si všimli že som online, a potrebujú ma v aliancii 😳
in reply to DonBahno

Age of Empires Mobile.. jako ja v tej tímovej hre až tak dobrý nie som 😬

edit: ale tvárim sa tak

This entry was edited (3 days ago)


I like it when a progress bar just zooms by. It makes NVDA sound funny.
in reply to Scary Martin

I like those sounds too. I always thought it'd be neat if #JFW did that too.
#JFW
in reply to Robin Frost

I never understood why JAWS never implemented audible progress bar indicators. NVDA and Window-Eyes included them and I've always liked that capability.
With JAWS, you do have two options.
First, Doug Lee has a free set of scripts to do this called JGauge.
dlee.org/jgauge/
Also, Leasey from Hartgen Consultancy has a similar capability.
www.leaseycentral.com
In my opinion, JGauge's sounds are a bit closer to what you might be used to with NVDA. Of course, Leasey offers way more features and so is definitely worth paying for.
in reply to David Goldfield

@robini71 @DavidGoldfield I have demoed leasey. I’m out of demonstration sessions now and have been since before I blew up windows over the summer, but I love the thing and I’m getting it just as soon as I can. Obviously I have to get Jaws first, but you get the point.
in reply to David Goldfield

@DavidGoldfield @robini71 I didn't know about J-GFauge. I like those audible progress bar notes that you get with NVDA and you got with Window-eyes. I felt that Leasey's weren't quite the same.



I’m curious, how is your company preparing for the European Accessibility Act? Does it have an accessibility team? Planning to hire SMEs? Upskill and train their teams? Hope to be wrong, but don’t see much activity in the industry. Guessing there’s lots of waiting to see how/if will be enforced. That’d be absolutely the wrong approach. You can’t just become compliant, you’ll need to stay that way! It will require cross-company cultural changes. Not something done in a rush before the deadline.

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Since we have a bunch of Apple Intelligence features launching today, and I've had a little bit of time to test them on macOS, I thought I'd grade them based on my experiences so far.

There are three separate downloadable models at work here, one for Apple Intelligence, one for Xcode, and one for Photos’ Clean Up.

Mail Summaries: A
Notification Summaries: B
Photos Clean Up: B
Writing Tools: C-
Safari Summarization: C-
Smart Reply: D
Xcode Autocomplete: D-
'New' Siri: F

in reply to Steve Troughton-Smith

I really feel Apple made a mistake giving Siri the new animations in this release. Aside from being able to stumble over your words when talking to Siri, there is nothing new here. It’s the same old (terrible) Siri as before with a UI makeover (its 5th in 13 years). But the new animations leave the user with the impression that Siri is now powered by Apple Intelligence when it’s most definitely still not.


Even if you're disillusioned with electoral politics, I implore all people in the US eligible to vote: please vote. You may think things can't get worse if Trump wins again, but they absolutely can - for everyone in the world.

Chris 🌱 reshared this.

in reply to Chris 🌱

keep in mind that down ballot races matter. Senate, Representative, Governor, state legislatures, and referendums.
in reply to Chris 🌱

Importantly, Georgia became a swing state last cycle *because* people voted. The votes *do* matter.


Via journalist Bill Grueskin:

Unfathomable: Washpost has lost 200,000 subscribers since Bezos pulled the #Harris endorsement. That's 8% of its base in a few days.

Keep in mind its net gain for most of 2024 was only 4,000 (not a typo) subscribers.



Why do people keep pointing out that Jeff Bezos has Fuck You money? My good people, ten million dollars is Fuck You money.

Two hundred billion dollars is Fuck The Entire World Until The Heat Death of the Universe money.



I have the oldest GitHub account in this entire keynote lol


Le rapport sur papier glacé.

Ottawa ira de l’avant avec un train à grande vitesse entre Québec et Toronto

ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2…

I will believe it when it actually is there.



Also, in case anyone is counting, Starlink is now 63% of all active satellites.

2 out of ever 3 satellites up there now are owned by that awful billionaire. He effectively controls Low Earth Orbit. That should terrify everyone.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)

reshared this

in reply to Prof. Sam Lawler

...just in case anyone needs more to be terrified of. Sorry.

You know what you can do? Not buy Starlink internet. (And if Starlink is your only option, write to them as a customer and tell them that you are concerned about their safety practices on the ground and in orbit, and they need to make fewer satellites with longer functional lifetimes)



Tohle se fakt povedlo. Doporučuji. seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/porady-…


@wagtail is the best CMS in terms of features and accessibility.
I can't recommend it highly enough! It’s a powerful CMS that boasts impressive features, used by organizations like Google and NASA. Plus, the community is incredibly friendly and welcoming.
Accessibility is a top priority for Wagtail. With clear accessibility goals, dedicated accessibility team and a built-in accessibility checker, Wagtail is designed to make content accessible at scale.
wagtail.org/accessibility/

reshared this



Apple still stick the mouse charging port underneath.

And you wonder why they abandoned the car idea. They couldn't figure out how to make this work.

#AppleIntelligence



I am so tired after the Swift 6 workshop I attended today. however the amount of new knowwledge I gained today is unbelievable. My eyes have been opened to many new topics as well. I am so happy to be there.


Can you believe that a GitHub issue I opened six years ago in the depths of “the long dark tea-time of the soul” has had such a cascading impact?
It has ultimately led to the formation of a dedicated accessibility team for @django
This is a moment that truly highlights the power of open source and everything it represents.
I'm so grateful for this community 💙
@thibaudcolas
fosstodon.org/@thibaudcolas/11…


For me personally – this was a definite inflection point in my career, as I started investing way more into accessibility expertise. For Wagtail, we followed this with a project for a large govt agency to do even more testing and improvements of the CMS admin. Then got our accessibility team started. Then the accessibility team for @django. An #ATAG audit for Wagtail. Yearly reporting on our accessibility. There’s a long way to go but the journey’s been great already 🌈



Rclone is one of those programs that, especially as a Windows user, I wonder how I ever did without. For the local or SFTP sync jobs yes Linux people will be laughing at me because they have rsync and I don't, still not aware of native rsync for Windows, options are cygwin and WSL unless I missed something, but the remote features? The ability to mount a *http index* as a file system, traverse it, and run diff-based syncing against it to update a local mirror? That is just so cool! And yes we get to mount file systems like that too, WinFSP is apparently a fuse reimplementation for Windows, so something that supports fuse can be compiled to support it too.

Khronos reshared this.

in reply to x0

I'm an OSX and very occasionally Linux person, and I definitely concur. At my previous job, it literally saved me days of needless file pushing.


Proud to be a part of driving positive change in the accessibility for @wagtail!
Huge thanks to @thibaudcolas and the team for your unwavering commitment and sense of responsibility. It makes all the difference.
🙌 #AccessibilityMatters
fosstodon.org/@thibaudcolas/11…


After 6 years – we finally got to close our longest-running #accessibility ticket in Wagtail, github.com/wagtail/wagtail/iss…. Thank you @mush42 for reporting this initially. We benefitted immensely from your accessibility expertise and first-hand experience with a screen reader ❤️

This was the ticket I created our "accessibility" ticket triage label for. 38 of those still opened, 165 closed. Kick-ass!


in reply to Musharraf

That is amazing, Musharraf! The accessibility teams cannot do good work without the input of disabled users. You being a programmer is even better because you know how code works.

We sadly have a long way to go in Django core as well, but I hope you can enjoy our platforms for a long time, and that your experience improves.

in reply to Marijke Luttekes

@mahryekuh I'm sure we'll eventually get there.
Once processes are put in place, it is a matter of time.