This is the line I see over and over again:
“While technology offers promising alternatives, it's essential to recognize the unique benefits that guide dogs provide beyond navigation, such as companionship and emotional support.”
If this is true, if these benefits are so unique, why do only 2% of blind and visually impaired people in the UK currently use a guide dog?
#Accessibility #AI #Blind #Disability #GDBA #Glide #Glidance #RNIB
Fascinating discussion, as always.
I was a guide dog user for a decade or so. he was useful when my daughter was young. At first I carried her around because she was too young to walk, then too small to walk far. So in that regard, he took my concentration off the route somewhat and let me chat to her and be more of a passive part of the navigation process.
I learned to use a white cane and am incredibly confident, but the tactile awareness of your surroundings are far more limited with a cane, of course. I certainly feel that walking around in any sort of busier environment with my daughter aboard was easier, less stressful and more natural with the dog to keep us on the path and stop for problems.
After his death, naturally the number 1 question was whether I'd be getting another one.
We now live in a small village. there's a church and a post office, a social club and a few public houses. the nearest city or town is 10 to 12 minutes away by car or a little longer by bus. Getting to and from any of these local things is more than doable with a cane, and even if I were in the office more than a few times a month, it seemed to me that having a dog just to get me there and back was counterproductive. he'd have about 20 minutes of work a day. The free running, grooming, finding him a sitter for any holidays and general maintenance required for that level of practical intervention wasn't worth it, in my judgment. Sure, he'd been a part of the family for a long time and we would never have gotten rid of him, but to establish a whole new dog in very different circumstances wasn't part of the agenda. First and foremost to me a guide dog is a navigational aid, and you only get that in the right situation. For me, that's not here and now.
websites in 2024:
1) decline all cookies
2) decline notifications
3) disable JavaScript to bypass paywall
4) no videos, images and popups work now
5) finding the page completely useless and irrelevant
6) returning to play Doom 3
this could enable kids eat proper before exam time.
#showerthoughts
QA/Dev Report: October 2024 - LibreOffice QA Blog
General Activities LibreOffice 24.2.7 was released on October 31 Olivier Hallot (TDF) continued with a massive Help bookmark cleanup effort and improved the help for BASIC’s Option Explicit statement Pierre F.x1sc0 (LibreOffice QA Blog)
Por cosas que he leído por aquí.
Primeramente recordar que la comunicación se realiza a través de herramientas convencionales. No existe una forma objetiva de comunicarse, pero tampoco cada cual puede inventarse la suya, porque está forma debe ser compartida, por lo menos entre el emisor y el receptor, y habitualmente compartida por una comunidad extensa. La convención en la comunicación exige que la forma de hacerla sea conocida y aceptada por la comunidad. En resumen, nadie individual, ni un grupo, por grande que sea, puede *exigir* una modificación de esa forma de transmisión. Y menos para adecuarla a su ideología.
La ideología política, que es también ideología social en tanto que la política es la forma en que regulamos las relaciones de los individuos en una sociedad, tampoco es objetiva. Dentro de unos ciertos límites que marca la propia función de la política: procurar una convivencia social estable (no he dicho justa, sino estable), no existe una política objetiva ni subjetiva. Como con la comunicación, nadie puede imponer individualmente a los demás su ideología (necesitará al menos de votantes o de militares que compartan su ideología), pero tampoco existe una forma objetiva determinable por métodos científicos de determinar una "ideología cierta".
Dónde quiero llegar? Pues a algo que ya he dicho muchas veces, que los humanos tenemos demasiada tirada a exigir que los demás hagan las cosas a nuestro modo, porque siempre estamos convencidos de que nuestra ideología no es como la de los demás, sino que la nuestra es la correcta o la mejor. Y señores, hay una palabra para cuando alguien intenta imponer su ideología a los demás, y está palabra es "totalitarismo" y esto vale para los que quieren obligar a los demás a cambiar en cualquier aspecto que no sea objetivo.
Por indagar un poco:
1. Que se entiende por exigir? Cual es la diferencia con persuadir?
2. Por qué "menos para adecuarla a su ideología"? Por qué la consideración ideológica es merecedora de menor respeto que cualquier otra, por ejemplo, estética?
3. Que significa imponer? Como se distingue de persuadir, convencer, impulsar?
4. Cual es el riesgo de esos mecanismos de "imposición"? En que medida se puede o debe equiparar la actuación política en si misma que requiere de la coordinación y el establecimiento de pautas de comportamiento con el totalitarismo? Es toda acción colectiva totalitaria, y si no, por qué se trae la palabra a colación?
I have now written to both Sky News and an MP about the widespread lies spread by news media and government about the events of #amsterdam
Lies? Yes - the evidence is there for us to see, if we look.
1. youtube.com/watch?v=clHlvgOPrW…
2. youtube.com/watch?v=pTFovHpft5…
Why should we be bothered? -- Because if we don't resist where do you think this will end?
Racist Israeli Football Thugs RAMPAGE In Amsterdam - And Media LIES
You are being lied to.Please like, subscribe, comment, share - and help us take on the media lies here: https://www.patreon.com/owenjones84YouTube
Games for Blind Gamers 4
A game jam from 2025-02-01 to 2025-03-10 hosted by NightBlade. Welcome, Blind and Sighted Game Developers! Welcome to the fourth annual Games for Blind Gamers jam! The goal of this jam is to build awareness of bli...itch.io
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AppleInsider (@appleinsider@mastodon.social)
Amazon drops early Black Friday deals on Apple's new M4 MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iMac -- and even the M2 MacBook Air 16GB https://appleinsider.Mastodon
Anyway, happy to see any improvement bit coming along our way!
Zugängliche Audio-Hardware
Zugängliche Audiohardware Du kennst sicher die Sorgen, sich ein neues technisches Gerät anschaffen zu wollen, aber im Voraus nicht zu wissen, ob du es überhaupt benutzen können wirst. Im Zeitalter derToni Barth
NVDA 2024.4.1 has been released! This is a patch release to fix a bug when saving speech symbol dictionaries. Pressing the Close button in the Symbol Pronunciation dialog will now save the symbols dictionary and close the dialog.
Full info and download at: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-4-…
#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #NewVersion #News #Update
NVDA 2024.4.1 Released
NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2024.4.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version. Highl…NV Access
Kelly Sapergia reshared this.
NVDA 2024.4.1 Released
NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2024.4.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version. Highl…NV Access
there is not one good billionaire.
none.
billionaires are the enemy.
make that the beginning of your daily affirmations.
thewrap.com/mark-cuban-deletes…
Mark Cuban Deletes His Pro-Kamala Harris Tweets - TheWrap
Mark Cuban was challenged by Libs of TiikTok for deleting his pro-Kamala Harris tweets after the election.TheWrap
“They say if you play that Microsoft CD backward you hear satanic messages. But that’s nothing, if you play it forward it installs Windows.”
Aaaanyways: jak správně čistit dětem zuby víme? Do kolika? A čím? A proč jsou mléčné zuby důležité? A proč NENÍ Okay nechávat v puse zub s kazem? Plak detektory znáte?
Nebo stále převládá mantra "staré školy", že jsou to zuby na zkoušku a vrtat netřeba?
Popravdě v případě dětí mě ta pro zubaře (i rodiče) pohodlná dogmata, která pak rozdělují "starou" a "novou" školu, deptaji ještě víc.
Žádný problém vztahující se ke zdraví nikdy nevidím jednoduše...
I just discovered that BritBox has 26 - yes 26 seasons of Doctor Who going back to when it first aired in 1963. There are 695 episodes. That is about 300 hours.
I have never watched the series.
This might be just what I need to get through the next couple of years.
Those 26 seasons (First Doctor thru Seventh Doctor) are also on Tubi for free.
I’m shocked by how misinformed the men in my life are on abortion bans. Most of them support a woman’s right to choose - but they don’t understand that the bans put lives at risk. One said to me “I’m sure they don’t impact women who WANT to start a family”.
They do - and here’s why:
Abortion bans put lives at risk. When you criminalize abortion - you’re practically criminalizing pregnancy. It sounds harsh - but women have been arrested for having miscarriages. Doctors face jail time for intervening to save a woman’s life if she’s having pregnancy complications.
When a woman is having an early miscarriage - you can’t tell whether it happened naturally or was induced. The police should not be involved in making that call. Yet if they have ANY reason to suspect you wanted to end that pregnancy? You could be arrested.
Have an ectopic? An abruption? A fetus with lethal anomalies? Doctors are going to hesitate before intervening even IF your life is at risk. They have to consult the legal department, they have to fear for their licence and the possibility of jail time.
Pregnancy is NOT a health neutral state. Anything you can be at risk for - you’re higher risk for in pregnancy. When things go sideways - it can happen incredibly quickly. Waiting to intervene can and does cost the life of the mother AND the baby.
Doctors are also fleeing states with abortion bans - leaving women in those states with even less access to qualified care. They don’t want to practice somewhere that the government is going to dictate what happens to their patient. They don’t want to worry about criminal charges.
All of this adds up to bad news for women - many of who WANT children but will choose not to become pregnant in the face of these archaic and dangerous laws. It’s not “your body my choice”. It’s “my body my choice”. Until people realize that - we continue to be in danger.
#abortion #prochoice #abortionishealthcare #womenshealth #mybodymychoice #reproductivehealth
> XMPP: the forgotten gem of Instant Messaging
For the five thousandth time, NO, it is not. It sucks. The XEPs suck. The clients almost all universally suck except like *one* client on Android. The server hosting story is an overcomplicated mess.
GRETCHEN, STOP TRYING TO MAKE XMPP HAPPEN
don’t forget the crypto!
On second thought, do forget it. Forget all about it.
GitHub - theodorblackbird/lina-speech: Official implementation of the TTS model Lina-Speech
Official implementation of the TTS model Lina-Speech - theodorblackbird/lina-speechGitHub
Used it in another project and it delivers great performance and it can be easily fine tuned on new data in few hours.
It uses Vocos as a decoder, so it is also very fast in decoding tokens back to audio.
The gall on these people.
Leveraging the power of the state to benefit crony capitalists and protect their private interests, in detriment of their competitors and the public at large, is one of the main features of Fascism, by the way.
Also, if they decide to act on this, the joke is on them, it's so incredibly stupid. Reconstruction contracts are usually absurdly lucrative [Halliburton in Iraq, Marshall Plan in Europe]. I suspect Vance will get quite a few phone calls from American corporations begging him not to say stupid shit like this. German companies will not only ramp up their production to meet demand (especially military industries) and extend their area of influence, a few German capitalists will become very wealthy because Vance decided to be a Putin puppet and wank on Peter Thiel's agenda (yes, this is Peter Thiel's game pulling the strings, Elon is a low-IQ, socially challenged buffoon who got lucky and hired good engineers who save his business every day, despite him).
independent.co.uk/news/world/a…
JD Vance says US could drop support for NATO if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms
Republican vice presidential nominee says ‘Germans and other nations’ – not Russia – would ‘have to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction’Gustaf Kilander (The Independent)
Where do folks go to get DRM-free epub books when they're trying to avoid Amazon and Barnes & Noble?
I use bookshop.org and thriftbooks.com for my hard copies of things, but I LOVE my eBooks too.
Right now the only advantage to Amazon is that I can legally break the DRM, so the book is truly mine once I purchase it (I won't buy eBooks I can't unlock). But I'd really like to find alternate sources of DRM-free books. Ideas?
It all started on November 11, 1996:
everything.curl.dev/project/st…
#curl
How it started - everything curl
everything there is to know about curl, libcurl and the cURL projecteverything.curl.dev
daniel:// stenberg:// reshared this.
The October 2024 report from the Reproducible Builds project has just been published.
This month includes an Android toolchain bug I reported to Google having been fixed: "Number of cores affected Android compiler output".
And of course "@IzzyOnDroid passed 25% reproducible apps" 
screenshotted curl credits
If you have more or better screenshots, please share! This shot is taken from the ending sequence of the PC version of the game Grand Theft Auto V. 44 minutes in! See the youtube version. Sky HD is a satellite TV box. This is a Philips TV.daniel.haxx.se
Integration of sandboxed-api for #libcurl?
github.com/curl/curl/discussio…
Integration of sandboxed-api · curl curl · Discussion #15539
The sandboxed-api project provides libraries the means to implement a separate api that allows to execute library functions in a separate process which can be effectively restricted using seccomp a...GitHub
Tim Dixon
in reply to David Goldfield • • •