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Do you have questions about our products or an idea you’d like to share? Join us on Zoom Thursday, 11/21 at 8 PM ET for FSOpenLine! #FreedomScientificTraining
blog.freedomscientific.com/fso…


Apple releases beta 3 for visionOS 2.2 and tvOS 18.2 9to5mac.com/2024/11/18/apple-r…


why are date pickers on so many websites so fucking aweful? Legitimately I've struggled to book so many things because I cannot choose the dates on which they are to happen in an accessible manner. Today has been a day with so many vague accessibility failures in it. I'm exhausted.
This entry was edited (3 hours ago)

Tamas G reshared this.

in reply to Matthew J

I want to say blame React. I think there are some popular date picking elements for react with terrible a11y and devs choose them without knowing.
in reply to Matthew J

I know the feeling, every day, yay for work. But honestly, the state of accessibility is staggeringly bad. But i do hope it improves, otherwise we screwed. I wanted to book a flight, and I couldn't. Not through the phone, and I am not a fan of using the computer so much. I just wanna do it like my sighted friends. And I am going to whine about it.


with the holiday season coming up for many of us, a modest suggestion:

if your holiday traditions are bringing misery instead of joy, get new ones.

in reply to Rick Scott 🏳️‍⚧️

if the holiday traditions feel like onerous obligations; if you face them with dread instead of anticipation; if they remind you of traumatic occasions instead of joyous ones, then they are no longer fit for purpose.

you can change them, put them on hold, or jettison them altogether. ❤️



Is anyone here moving over to BlueSky? This is tough—I now need to manage this account, my Twitter, and BlueSky as well. Why can't there just be one app for all of us? Darn you, Elon.
in reply to Aaron Espinoza

I don't blame Elon Musk for the amount of social media platforms that are currently available. It is in our nature to always want to build a better and newer product to compete with what's already out there. This is what has happened before Musk purchased X and it is what will happen when he's no longer involved.


Here's an interesting article about how someone did not find solace in Buddhism. Feel free to express your opinion in a reply. slate.com/culture/2003/02/why-…

I personally think that there are some common misconceptions that might have influenced the author's views, e.g. the way he understands the definition of attachment, enlightenment, views on reality, but it's always so interesting to see differing opinions.

in reply to Erion

Ah well, seems like the author is trying to stop searching for religion, but instead he's found another one: Naturalism.
in reply to Day Garwood

I just had the same thought, didn't want to influence anyone's reading though.

I think he is looking for something that science can prove to be right, the same way it proved that humans technically have two brains which the Chinese knew for thousands of years through martial arts, the Tao, etc. Also categorising Buddhism as a religion while it's really not.



Matching dinosaur footprints in Cameroon and Brazil record a time when Africa and South America were still connected & herds could wander between them.

I'm not saying the very same dinosaur was stomping around in both Cameroon and Brazil...but it's possible.

nytimes.com/2024/08/28/science…

#science #history #nature #dinosaurs



Vor Kurzem wurde von einem US-amerikanischen FediVerse-Account eine interessante Analyse der #Bluesky #Finanzierung veröffentlicht. Ich finde sie grad nicht...

#FolowerPower #SocialMedia



What are the different types of disability? Do you know the difference between a situational and a temporary disability?

Most people recognise certain disabilities but don't realise that not all disabilities are constant or permanent.

Accessibility Specialist Demelza Feltham explores different types, how they might affect people, and gives a huge range of examples that almost everyone can relate to.

tetralogical.com/blog/2024/11/…



BREAKING NEWS 🚨

The underwater fiber-optic communication cable C-Lion-1, the only one connecting Finland with Central Europe, has been cut!

It is 1,200 kilometers long and runs close to the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream.

The cable is torn. The cause is unknown. An investigation is currently underway.
#AureFreePress #News #press #headline #Ukraine #Russia #Putin #EU #NATO #Zelensky #war #Breaking #BreakingNews



Huge congratulations to @hartgenconsult for a decade of creating amazing products & tutorials. My favorite thing I've purchased from you is #Leasey, which I use many times daily & have 0 idea what I would do without it. Keep up your incredible work! :) tweesecake.social/@DavidGoldfi…

in reply to Jessica Dail

I agree. I've purchased several applications and training courses from Hartgen Consultancy and all of them are of the highest quality. For me, Leasey will always be my favorite application from them. It adds a ton of helpful productivity features to JAWS and Fusion. www.hartgen.org



Last week’s story about a moth infestation in a £32.5m Notting Hill house made me think of an old Barry Cryer joke, says Patrick Kidd in The Times. A husband arrives home early to find his wife in bed and a naked man in the bathroom clapping his hands. “I’m from the council, your wife reported moths,” explains the man in the bathroom. “You’re naked!” says the husband, whereupon the lover stops clapping, looks down in surprise and says: “The bastards...”


Blanár s Lavrovom
Blaha s Medvedevom
Fico v Ruskej televízii

dobré



Tired of Outlook's tracking and ads? 🫣 Here's how you can delete your Outlook account safely in a few steps 👉 tuta.com/blog/how-to-delete-ou…
in reply to Tuta

fun fact: you can export your data but into a proprietary format that I guess only Microsofts products understand
in reply to Tuta

Also encrypted secure GDPR compliant file storage when?


Este é o tipo de coisa em que eu penso quando se fala em distopia.
A IA é cada vez mais uma ferramenta de usurpação, contrafação, fraude, mentira e manipulação.
E poluição ambiental também. Quase me esquecia.

independent.co.uk/arts-enterta…






With our #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc efforts we put all intelligence on the end devices, and architecutally separate it from a transport layer that routes safely and fast but knows nothing.

There are a dozen or more #chatmail servers across many jurisdictions, all safely interopable with each other and classic servers.

Turned out we can dumb down email servers by relying on cryptography instead of IP reputation and ai/spam filtering. And have 200ms delivery times. We are not done :)



Muy defensores de lo público cuando el funcionario eres tú, pero asisa que no te la toquen eeeeeeeeh





El mundo es un lugar interesante. Hoy charlando en el IRC sobre los censos, surge la cuestión de por qué en Europa no se recogen datos étnicos. Yo sabía que el artículo 9 del RGPD prohíbe el tratamiento de datos sobre categorías especiales como el origen étnico sin consentimiento explícito. Lo que no sabía y lo acabo de ver, es que el artículo 9 de nuestra LO 3/2018 va más allá y prohíbe el tratamiento de estos datos incluso con la base legitimadora del consentimiento. Sólo se pueden tratar por obligaciones de legislación de empleo y seguridad social, protección de intereses vitales cuando el inteeresado no pueda consentir, fundaciones, partidos políticos o asociaciones con fines filosóficos, políticos, religiosos o sindicales, datos personales notoriamente publicados por el interesado, acciones legales, interés público superior, medicina preventiva u ocupacional, aptitud laboral o diagnóstico, interés público por salud pública, archivos de interés público, investigación científica o histórica o estadística conforme a la normativa de la Unión o los estados miembros y respetando la protección de datos y la salvaguarda del interesado.


Whoops! school accidentally leaked names of kids who opted out of sex education

Names had been redacted from a PDF, but included in HTML version. 🤦‍♂️ This kind of screw-up happens far too often.

nj.com/education/2024/11/nj-sc…



We've also made the move to the Fediverse (as an experiment, for now)! We are the Faculty of #Philosophy at the University of #Groningen - widely regarded as one of the best places to study philosophy in Europe! We are looking forward to making new connections! #introduction
This entry was edited (8 hours ago)



A collaborator found out that the US State Dept is seeking public input on whether "satellite signature reduction" should be subject to ITAR regs.

Translation: should satellite operators who make their satellites fainter (in order to not destroy the night sky quite as much) be allowed to talk about how they did it?

So some of my collaborators and I put together a quick and easy template for you to email the US State Dept and tell them this shouldn't be secret info:

kesslerrebellion.com/take-acti…

This entry was edited (8 hours ago)


New review feat. THE Sapna Cheryan (essentially if you want to understand STEM gender equity gaps this is the scientist to read) free to access until Dec 2

"Global patterns of gender disparities in STEM and explanations for their persistence"

nature.com/articles/s44159-024…



Why people are not replicating the screen reader experience of native elements in their uselessly custom JS widgets is beyond me. ANyway, just spotted this lovely chatty fake <select> box in the wild. "option <Option_name> focused, 1 of 12. 12 results available. Use Up and Down to choose options, press Enter to select the currently focused option, press Escape to exit the menu, press Tab to select the option and exit the menu." Obviously all of this gets announced for every press in the list of options.
in reply to Jakob Rosin

I’ve seen this a few times, pretty sure it must be some very popular widget a lot of sites use. Gets even better when it’s implemented incorrectly and the accessibility just says “object object is selected” so you have no idea what you’re doing.
in reply to Pitermach

@pitermach Yep, looks like it came from some library to me as well. Its an estonian site, and all the announcement stuff is obviously not translated.
in reply to Pitermach

Oh, and all of this is going through a live region so if you’re using braille or try to have NVDA/VO/Whatever speak where the focus is it won’t work either.
in reply to Pitermach

@pitermach Oh, good old React-select. That component has caused trouble for literally hundreds if not thousands of users over the years and should be banned from any and all new projects.


New app added to the Accessible Android apps directory: MyTherapy Pill Reminder accessible with minor issues accessibleandroid.com/app/myth… #Android #App


From facebook. Of course you can lose real friendships. Of course you can. Of course you can lose people who really love you. Of course you can lose people who are committed to you. It’s flippant to think you can’t. You treat them like they don’t matter? You can lose them. You consistently put unnecessary strain and strife on the relationship? You can lose them. You don’t show up for them over and over and over again? You can lose them. You prove that you can’t be trusted? You can lose them? Don’t reciprocate over a long period of time? You can lose them. I’m quite frankly over this cultural concept that everything is everyone else’s fault and this refusal to ever look in the mirror and think about how our actions may have lead to their reactions because I want us to grow. I want us to learn and become better humans in general and we will never do that as long as we are blaming everything on everyone else.
So yes, I hope people are loyal to you. I hope they stick around. I hope they forgive and understand when you’ve made a mistake or acted out of character and I hope they talk through it with you.
But I also hope we all realize that of course you can lose real friendships if you aren’t careful with their hearts.
They’re people with needs and wants too. They’re people with very real feelings and their time and energy is precious too.


Following up on my last post: While "Dining in the Dark" uses blindfolds to simulate blindness—a deeply problematic practice—Netflix’s *Love Is Blind* raises a different but related issue: the casual use of "blindness" as a metaphor.

The title refers to the idea that love can transcend physical appearance, but it uses blindness to symbolize ignorance or a lack of perception. This isn’t new—our language is full of metaphors like "turning a blind eye" or "blind ambition" that associate blindness with negative traits like ignorance or inability.

As a blind person, I see how language shapes perceptions. These metaphors may seem harmless, but they perpetuate outdated, ableist notions of blindness as a deficiency. They turn our lived experiences into rhetorical devices, erasing the richness of blind culture and reducing us to symbols of "lack."

No, *Love Is Blind* isn’t offensive in the same way as "Dining in the Dark," which makes a spectacle of our lives. But the metaphorical use of blindness shows how ingrained ableism is in language and culture. Casual metaphors matter—they reinforce unconscious biases that we must challenge.

Blindness isn’t a symbol. It’s a lived reality, full of challenges, skills, and a vibrant community. Let’s think more critically about how we use disability in language and storytelling.

💬 What do you think?

#Disability #Ableism #Blind #LanguageMatters #Inclusion

in reply to Charlotte Joanne

This comes up a lot.
My concern about inclusive language is that one day, we'll go so far that we can't understand each other.

For me, far too many people treat me like blindness is more of a problem than it is. The person I have been dining with has been asked for my meal choices on far too many occasions to count. Nonetheless, if we stop using the word blind in a metaphorical context, this doesn't change their actions. In fact I could make an excellent case to argue that it distances them even more from the idea of blindness, a widening I already struggle with when in some parts of the world, someone can both be legally blind and drive a vehicle. I already feel that the term blind is appropriated by those who have corrective vision. To want the word even less in use seems ridiculous.

I am happy that my love is blind. I love my life partner without considering her visual appearance overmuch, and love being blind encapsulates that perfectly.
I love things being blindingly-obvious. people have blind spots in their vision, and I see no harm in transfering that concept to an emotional one (there are people with whom i cannot discuss certain topics because they have a blind spot about it in an emotive context).
mobile phone companies are being advised to avoid the term blackspot for an area of poor signal coverage because it is offensive. Man hours are no longer applicable to people because they disinclude women. Processes at work have to be unalived because terminated sounds harsh.

Language is an ever-evolving system of expression. I worry that being militant about a word like blind will, if we are not careful, see us using so many tortuous tautologies that we are divorced from richness in language full-stop.

in reply to Sean Randall

@cachondo Put blind spots means a spot where you can’t see it doesn’t mean being blind means or less of anything than if you were not blind does it?
in reply to Sean Randall

@cachondo It is perfectly acceptable to turn a blind eye to something Nelson did it! Or maybe he didn’t but everybody thinks he did.🤷‍♀️
in reply to The Blind AI

@Lottie@caneandable.social there you go, another good example. A blind eye is a fantastic teaching tool.
Tell a child that you'll turn a blind eye to their unflattering drawing of their dad one day, they'll understand that an adult with real blind eyes can't see. Boom. Life lesson.


Nutzt StreetComplete. Die App ist gut. Warum, hab ich hier beschrieben: openstreetmap.org/user/Inklusi…


The song “Breathe Out” from my self produced album “Echoes of Tomorrow” will be released on all streaming platforms on November 20th. distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ales…

#music #rock #90sMusic



Слазил в сорсы #mastodon .
Удивился.
Товарищи, кто в #js #javascript и #ruby рубит, возможно, вы меня просветите.
Отсутствие комментариев в коде и жопное именование переменных/флагов - это нормально для этих языков?
in reply to Aliaksandr, the last Dzik

Соглашусь, но в защиту могу сказать, что его, как я понимаю, пилил один чувак долго, причём, если не ошибаюсь, откуда-то из наших краёв. А культура называть переменные, как по мне, приходит только с опытом командной работы.
in reply to André Polykanine

@menelion , похоже на то. Причём, после интенсивного применения черенка от лопаты сокомандниками.
Мне попадались пару раз проекты по геймерской части от, без преувеличения, гениев JS'а.
Но они были одиночками.
И код у них - даже не смотря на потуги выставить проекты на опенсорс - был просто буэээээээээээээээ...
Это при том, что JS сам по себе особо не располагает к адекватному дебагу на ходу, особенно в гоняемых через Electron проектах. И, казалось бы, уж комментами то можно было присыпать...


Some folks who are interested in being more prepared for disaster or emergency situations are interested in using HAM/amateur radio as a communication tool you can use when cell & internet networks are down.

I did some research on getting licensed (in the US) & learning to operate HAM radios this summer and finally got the notes I sent as an email to some local friends typed up for easier reference on my blog.

cassey.dev/ham-radio/

#YearOfTheBlog #preparedness #hamradio



Cosas que no se deben extinguir: los murciélagos, los pangolines, los capibaras...

Cosas que se deben extinguir: MUFACE.



Man it's sad to see how many things on Steam are clickables and how there are like no headings. I figured it out in several minutes as an AT Instructor and advanced screen reader user. I know I'm preaching to the choir when I post this kind of thing, but literally it'd be so fuckin' easy. The least they can do is aria role = button or something. I guess they're another vendor I refuse to buy from knowing that none of my money goes toward giving a shit about accessibility.