Released last Friday, a digital reconstruction of the Titanic chronicles a never-before-seen view of the wreck that is “accurate to the rivet,” a statement says.
Yeah, not only is this bad form it’s also potentially deadly. Lainey does a good job of laying out the history and what went into originally getting these in place. These jerks undermined it all.
On April 12, 2025 the top story on the Palo Alto (California) online news site was "Silicon Valley Crosswalk Buttons Apparently Hacked to Imitate Musk, Zuckerberg Voices" It told the story, covered by other media too, of how someone hacked into audi…
I've been in talks with #TheCrowHillCompany, makers of The Vertical Piano, Vaults (free), String Murmurations and so on. They wanted to find out about people's use of accessible music-making tools such as NKS, so I said I'd forward their email to other VI musicians. Your feedback would really help them, so if you've a mind, please do fill it out.
The Crow Hill Company are readying a re-launch of our entire catalogue. As such as are looking to improve our accessibility across our full instrument and effects range.
We would love to discover more from the community on how they interact with software based instruments and the tools they use to do so.
We have included a short survey link below, and as a token of gratitude have included a £20 (GBP) off coupon code for anyone who takes part in the survey. The coupon has no expiration date and we have plenty of instruments under this limit coming out in the months ahead for you to enjoy.
Thank you for taking the time to help us in our continual endeavour to improve accessibility in music-making.
As a token of our gratitude, we have also included an unrestricted coupon code at the end of this survey.
Thanks
The Crow Hill Team. x
I've not used any of their libraries yet, but I'm guessing by reading through the product pages that they've made their own sampler and each library basically comes as its own plugin? I'm guessing that's not currently accessible outside NKS? Trying to give the best response and would find knowing this helpful :)
@pitermach It's using Juce, but with a lot of unlabelled buttons. They do know about it, as I had a meeting with them this morning and was able to screen-share and let them know that lots of stuff doesn't work. It seems that they're using the Ujam libraries, so it's up to Ujam to modify their code to allow accessibility, but they can pass this feedback to them. Rodes also use the same framework.
If you've got any libraries where the main sample content uses the .blob format, then you've used Ujam's UI's.
@pitermach Oh I did too. I know that NKS isn't for everybody, especially as, if you don't have a compatible keyboard, it's not too useful. Juce really should be primary, with NKS joint, or at least secondary.
@pitermach They have more control over the NKS implementation though, and would have to wait on Ujam for better Juce accessibility, or rewrite from scratch. I doubt that will happen.
@pitermach Yeah I agree with this, although JUCE is the better option in the longrun as more people will be able to use it. I get what you're saying though and it will take some time. On a related note, Spitfire stuff, at least Labs, has great accessibility now without NKS. Really good on them for doing this.
@pitermach Yeah, I think they completely redesigned it a few months back when they introduced Labs Plus, and now it's based on JUCE with web technology under the hood. They've got a really nice new grand piano as well for free.
@ZBennoui @pitermach just told@daygar he might wanna have a go at spitfire labs then. I need to update...haven't used labs in a while. Zach, thanks for the headsup about the free piano.
Oh boo hoo! Someone doesn't like the new alt text warning on Mastodon!
> This warning is extremely annoying, I wish I could get rid of it and be allowed to post images without alt text if I want to without being asked every time like every other website. I know it is not ideal for accessibility, but I'm not going to add alt text because the warning tells me too, I'm too busy already procrastinating my life in other ways.
With #117, Mastodon now allows users to add an alternative text to media in order to improve accessibility for visually impaired people. However, many people, including me, too often forget to do s...
Hello Tutanota, I'm having a problem. Yesterday I was able to access my email without any problems, but today I can't. I need it because it's where all my accounts are. How can I resolve this? I've sent a support email to "hello@tutanota.de." Do you know how long it will take to get a response?
@thisplopezc024 Hi there! Our team will get back to you as soon as they can. In the meanwhile are you able to connect on a different device? eg: the mobile app? please will you also try connecting using a different connection like mobile data.
I tried logging in from another device, but it won't let me. I reset the password, but it still won't work. It tells me the credentials are incorrect. Thank you very much for your time.
of these two choices, "Continue" sounds like the one that would not enable the "feature", but that can't be right because it's the default, why would they do that. Wow. That's ridiculous
@cato my guess is that google knows that people will: - want to close out the dialog - assume that google wouldn't want them to do that - and because of that, assume that google would put it as the secondary, de emphasized button
and so google is playing this ridiculous game of 4d chess to trick people into clicking on the button to be forced to interact with google ai slop
@ReggieHere I mean my main point is just don't use the models if you don't want to do so. Personally I think Gemini is really quite good and can be helpfull if used correctly, but it's ok if you and others don't feel the same.
@ZBennoui That's fair comment, but the OP is highlighting the fact that Google (and others) are deliberately making it difficult to opt out of using these AI models, presumably to drive adoption and encourage engagement for training purposes.
This obvious subterfuge combined with what we already know about echo chambers and social media herding leaves me wondering whether those who refuse to use AI will end up being the last free-thinkers in the West.
🐘🧠 A memory card for VAX systems from DATARAM. That’s probably the best name a memory manufacturer could have (and the company still exists!) - you automatically trust them to handle data properly 😅
Urteil: Hotels müssen Assistenzhunde 🐕🦺 zulassen; 👍 Zutritt zum Restaurant-, Therapie- und Wellnessbereich eines österreichischen Gesundheitshotels in Begleitung eines Assistenzhundes muss erlaubt werden. orf.at/stories/3390659/
NVDA 2025.1 beta 1 is now available for testing! 2025.1 includes NVDA Remote, OneCore & SAPI 4 & 5 improvements, OCR, Microsoft & LibreOffice improvements, Add-on store improvements, Braille updates & new tables plus heaps more! Download from: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1b…
Please note the "What's new" link doesn't currently work, we're fixing it, but in the meantime, run the installer & open what's new from the NVDA menu. #NVDA #NVDAsr #Beta #News #Update #PreRelease #FOSS #FLOSS #OpenSource
Beta1 of NVDA 2025.1 is now available for download and testing. For anyone who is interested in trying out what the next version of NVDA has to offer before it is officially released, we welcome yo…
@Jage Yep - hence the second paragraph in the original message ;) We are getting that fixed, and importantly, yes, we are excited for this release too! A lot of work has gone into it from not only us, but a lot of community members as well and it is great to see it coming to a wider audience finally :)
@Jage Thanks! And yes, when I was writing up In-process the other week there were something like 555 GitHub issues closed by the 2025.1 milestone, and I think we slipped a few more in since then - the next biggest was 2019.3 - when we moved from Python 2-3 which closed something like 50 fewer issues.
@Jage hey, is the bugg with the pitch fixed yet? if pitch is set to 0 capitalized letters are not mentioned when arrowed over. and yep, an issue was posted on github.
In the meantime, the workaround would be to set the pitch to 1.
I'm curious which synthesizer / voice / language you are using that pitch 0 is even comfortable? Most synthesizers are generally designed that pitch 50 (in the middle) suits most people, perhaps with a bit of tweaking one way or the other - but not generally so far as 0 or 11
Steps to reproduce: Switch to eSpeak Enable "Say 'cap' before capitals" Ensure that "capital pitch change percentage" is set to value different than 0 Set pitch to 0 Try to read character by charac...
hi, sorry for my late reply! sinth, espeak-ng naytive via nvda, pitch 0 now set to 1 as you requested, inflection is at 100, this works well for me, having pitch at 0 would be good :) I am guessing that my configuration is not very common?
@mhussain We don't keep specific statistics of how everyone has their options set, and that capital pitch change issue had been reported previously, so evidently you aren't the only one. I don't know how common it is, but it is useful to know how people have things set for questions like this, thank you!
then i've got to wonder why are products like supernova still present? after all we have nvda, jaws I might be able to see, but even that's entering the a.i craze, thankfully, you have not gone down that path. hangon.... please tell me that you're not planning to add a.i to nvda? just errrg...
@mhussain We're certainly keeping an eye on what is happening with AI etc - but we appreciate that our users value accuracy and consistency in information, as well as privacy, so we're not about to dive headfirst down that rabbit hole - BUT we appreciate that AI can bring benefits such as better image description for an unlabeled image, than we can otherwise do, but also to that end - we've had add-ons for over six years which used AI image recognition, so you've definitely got your choice!
@FreakyFwoof @mhussain That's definitely a key point - with any new feature, having the flexibility to use it if you want - or not if that is your preference.
@FreakyFwoof fare doos, I understand, what I mean is if sed features are able to be disabled if not required? sorry if my last message on this topic sounded ranty, bitchy etc. it was not ment as such.
@mhussain @FreakyFwoof Yes being able to disable unneeded features is important, particularly if they are online - so with NVDA Remote, for instance, which used to be an add-on & we are bringing it into NVDA itself now. It is disabled by default
@asael Thank you for your query Zvonimir. We planned for this - and in fact this is how we normally do it - we haven't yet entered the "Translatable string freeze" period - so while we've just about got everything how we think it will be, I anticipate there will be more betas and at the very least, we won't move towards putting out a release candidate before the string freeze ends.
I will make the revision against tehese. While i did the remote for croatian from scratch yesterday, i think polish can be fixed with a minimal effort.
@asael I'll have to find my correspondence in the morning, but wasn't it with you? Or Olga? I think from memory it ended up being trickier than first envisaged
@asael The certification page is up. We're looking into the issue with not being offered a discount. In the meantime, I'm happy to make a coupon for anyone who needs it.
@asael info@ would be easiest BUT good news, Mick had a look at the certification server and has fixed the issue so they should be able to get the certification at the renewal cost now.
@asael You just need to submit it again to the stable channel - not quite as simple as toggling a switch in the existing version, but should be fairly smooth.
@asael Ah looks like I was slow to this one - Sean replied to you on GitHub recently - it looks like you resubmitted the same add-on version to a different channel, whereas you need to releasing a new version.
Hi Quentin! Here we have a problem! This is really a problem, because i was thinking that i can straightforward move the addon from beta channel to stable. The problem is, that i cannot do anything at the moment, because Olga, who has the access to the server infrastructure, wher addon sits, is currently busy. I am now asking for an exception for manual moving of this addon from beta to stable. The justification behind this is that the RHVoice driver version is stable for a very long time ago, and there is no real need to change the version number. There should be a way to remove the beta flag and reclassify addon as stable. Now we will have garbage, and i don't have a justification why I am making an update.
I hope that the addons will get updated soon to support 2025. because right now from 61 addons which I have installed 47 are currently not supporting 2025.1 which sucks big time.
@MarioPercinic The fact that 14 already are only a day after beta 1 came out is the impressive part here. If you can't live without your add-ons then we recommend not updating to the beta (or trying it as a portable copy). We only ask add-on authors to start looking at the changes about now
@MarioPercinic absolutely. And you'll be pleased to know we're working on improvements to the add-on system which will do away with yearly breaking changes like this - not yet, but hopefully we are nearing the end of the breaking changes era :)
that's great to hear. Keep on rocking guys. Btw are there any plans for the future versions to make changes to all of NVDA sounds which could be modernised, because current one are quite hard on the ears especially if you use NVDA for work and during a shift of 8 hours my eardrums are bombarded with them. I reduced the volume of NVDA tones but still.
Hi, OK, here we are again. i have an issue with 25.1 beta 1, but I wouldn't know how to make it explaininable on Git or anything. There's a game I play that has links for various parts of the game. Pressing enter on them opens up a list below the link. NVDA used to leave me exactly where I was, so I could go down the list for what I wanted. 2024.1 still does this, but 2025.1 takes me back to the top of the page instead, thus is much slower. I suspect I actually need the focusable element behavour back but am not sure if that is the issue. The game requires a login so I can't send you a page. I love absolutely everything else in the beta though, really good stuff.
@davetaylor2112 Here is the PR to remove that option with links to the issues: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/… Note: "The behaviour of "Automatically set system focus to focusable elements" is not reliable or well supported. It is known to cause many bugs and unexpected behaviour in browse mode. If it is to be reimplemented, clear user stories, well defined behaviour and a better implementation is required."
I don't have a workaround, but for good use cases, an issue could be considered
Link to issue number:
Closes #16469
Closes #15463
Closes #15780
Summary of the issue:
The behaviour of "Automatically set system focus to focusable elements" is not reliable or well suppo...
Hmm, interesting. Actually, in 2024.1, turning that on made NVDA open the itmes list under the link as soon as I arrowed, whereas turning it off meant I had to press enter to open it, but the focus stayed where it was. In 2025, pressing enter makes the focus go to the top of the page, losing my position, so maybe there's another change somewhere
@davetaylor2112 Could be - Are you trying NVDA 2024.1 (from early in 2024)- the most recent stable version is 2024.4.2. You could also try changing browsers, sometimes that makes a difference
2024.4 had the same behaviour as 2024.1, but I have easier access to the latter I'm using the same browser for both tests, although I am finding that NVDA with Edge seems to be becoming problematic on more and more sites, and similarly with NVDA and Firefox. It's getting to the point where most sites seem to work with one or the other but not both. I doubyt that is NVDAs fault, but it's getting harder and harder
@davetaylor2112 If you can identify anything consistent between sites which is problematic in one browser or another with NVDA, do please file an issue. The web is an ever-complex place so it's good to get on top of these things as much as we can!
lol, I have enough problems just browsing these days, and I end up having to turn most things off, otherwise I drown in groups and lists and god knows what else, especially in emails. I even tried profiles and didn't find that they helped me. I'm getting less able to keep up and be constructive, not more
@davetaylor2112 Configuration Profiles are actually very useful for giving you different settings in different contexts. Here is a blog piece we wrote on using configuration profiles between programs: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-1… You can also set keystrokes to configuration profiles to use, for instance, on different websites within the one browser
In recent editions, we’ve covered some of the new features in NVDA 2021.1. The exciting news this time, is we’re already up to a beta of NVDA 2021.2! NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1 NVDA 2021.2 Beta 1 is …
Let's try them again. Oh, I just found something. The links that are causing me problems are same page links. They are going to the top of the page, not to where the link points on this particular page. They do open items that can only be seen by turning focusable on or by hitting enter on them
I’ve noticed a growing trend to try and make the content from some popups or tooltips directly keyboard accessible on web pages with buttons that reveal the content. This is good but whatR…
The NoMouse Challenge is a global effort to raise awareness about accessible web design. Try using your website without a mouse. Use the keyboard instead. Is it possible to access all features and operate all buttons, sliders, and other controls?
Beta1 of NVDA 2025.1 is now available for download and testing. For anyone who is interested in trying out what the next version of NVDA has to offer before it is officially released, we welcome yo…
There are multiple communication options used by people who are D/deaf or who have hearing loss. And, in the last five years, advances in automatic speech recognition (ASR) have opened further
I mean...we don't know that yet, and also there's like, grapevine and such, but I'm not sure the databases are compatible, so yeah, quite oof that matrix doesn't have a proper migration flow after all this time, perhaps because they don't have activities and such things, or maybe because there is no spec for it yet
For sci-fi fans eager to revisit the interstellar saga of Babylon 5 or discover it for the first time, 2025 offers a wealth of ways to stream the beloved 1990s series. All five seasons of J.
❝ For example, researchers from four universities analyzed short snippets of audio transcribed by Whisper, and found completely fabricated sentences, with some transcripts inventing the races of the people being spoken about, and others even attributing murder to them. In one case a recording that said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella” was transcribed with additions including: “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece.... I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.” In another example, “two other girls and one lady” was transcribed as “two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black.” ❞ dair-community.social/@timnitG…
In this Op-ed for Scientific American, Asmelash Teka & I discuss one of the many reasons the idea of replacing US federal workers with so-called generative AI systems should terrify us.
Hi all. Just released a beta for my weather app. Feel free to try if it interests you. I made it to view NOAA weather discussions on the desktop, but you can get forecast and alerts as well for locations you add. github.com/Orinks/AccessiWeath…
AccessiWeather Beta Release (v0.9.0)
We're excited to announce the beta release of AccessiWeather, an accessible weather application using NOAA data with a focus on screen reader compatibility!
Wha...
Also, their site seems to have an accessibility overlay and it does have hideous labels for its items ("Press Enter for accessibility for blind users who use screen readers"). Not good at all, Lenovo.
I don't think I've ever seen the video for this, although I half wore out a CD of Bloody Kisses and had such a hard on for this song and the self-conscious blasphemy of claiming the role of a sexually attractive Christ that I incorporated its lyrics into one of my first pseudonyms.
Videomaker obviously working on making the most of Peter Steele's impressive physical form by casting him as an incubus/erotic Christ stand-in, although I feel that we could at least have got some lower body shots in there.
This weekend, crosswalk buttons in Silicon Valley were hacked to play a deepfake audio of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg roasting themselves. 'F— I'm so alone,' one of the AI-generated clips of Musk told pedestrians. pcmag.com/news/hacker-hijacks-…
There was an issue with a DDG plug-in, if that is your default search engine, causing an error with the donation page. We've updated the donation page with advice if you want to try either page. Sorry for any issues and we hope this helps!
Can't believe the official AMI BIOS Flash update utility worked to get my MSI BIOS flashed, wow! I really wasn't sure if I had bricked my desktop by applying the .BE0 file of my Motherboard's BIOS, but I wasn't going to futs around with the M-flash tool and get a sighted person to read me the screen and get me in the right menus to update it. The MSI Center app is garbage and crashes when I hit "feature sets for all components", so nope. Command-line to the rescue! If you're blind and have an MSI Mobo, maybe it can help you too. AFUWINGUIx64.EXE is the graphical user-interface version which can be helpful - and of course, it requires an AMI-based BIOS. f.hubspotusercontent10.net/hub…
As I end-of-life my Mastodon sunrise/sunset bot, it seems an appropriate time to vent my complaints about Mastodon as a platform. v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-int…
I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is th…
"Bluesky are exploding in popularity" is a very US-centric perception. Elsewhere it's almost as "dead" as Mastodon. I think it sort of got a critical mass in the US, but everywhere else? In our country of 10 million people it has hundreds/low thousands of users.
@sesivany "Bluesky is exploding in popularity" is a fact, and that the growth is being led by the already-mature US market makes it more impressive, not less. That said, roughly half of Bluesky users are outside the US, with particular popularity in Brazil and Japan. "But it's not popular in *my* neighborhood, and that's what matters!" is the parochial view.
since we're talking facts, look at the activity graphs. In fact it exploded in popularity after the US presidential election. Since then it's been going down in pretty much every activity metric (with an exception of a spike after inauguration): bsky.jazco.dev/stats The fact that the main changes in Bluesky activity follow events in US politics says quite a lot about how US-centric it is.
@sesivany Your "Mastodon is doing just as well as Bluesky, which is losing popularity!" theory is entertaining. Irrelevant to my criticism of Mastodon and facially absurd, but whatevs. Best of luck with it.
@sesivany People wanting nothing to do with twitter anymore (and therefore flocking to alternatives) due to its owner being a key architect of the USA's dismantling of democracy and descent into fascism is not specific to the US. Musk is hated around the globe. Timing coinciding with the US election is only because this is the point where it became unavoidably clear.
@ninjadodo Not US specific, but very much US centric. If it wasn't, you'd see a spike in activity now when the US administration is imposing tariffs on other countries, Musk threatening entire countries that Starlink would be switched off for them. But the trend is rather the opposite. Look, I just wanted to provide a perspective of someone from Europe. That what may feel like booming activity to someone in the US feels fairly dead to someone elsewhere unless they're interested in US events. I'm on Bluesky, it's not just my social graph. I follow a feed that aggregates ALL posts in Czech. And that one can easily follow all posts in a language of 12 million people is quite telling. But apparently I'm in denial and lying to myself, nevermind, I'll show myself out.
Thank you, Harvard University. You have the money to do the right thing. Let’s hope it’ll also help those with less cash.
„No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” said Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, in a statement to the university on Monday.“
Federal officials said Harvard must enact “merit-based reform” in hiring and admissions and report international students who broke rules, among other steps. Harvard called the demands unlawful.
Pitermach
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •Onj 🎶
in reply to Pitermach • • •@pitermach It's using Juce, but with a lot of unlabelled buttons. They do know about it, as I had a meeting with them this morning and was able to screen-share and let them know that lots of stuff doesn't work.
It seems that they're using the Ujam libraries, so it's up to Ujam to modify their code to allow accessibility, but they can pass this feedback to them.
Rodes also use the same framework.
If you've got any libraries where the main sample content uses the .blob format, then you've used Ujam's UI's.
Pitermach
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •Onj 🎶
in reply to Pitermach • • •Onj 🎶
in reply to Pitermach • • •Zach Bennoui
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •Onj 🎶
in reply to Zach Bennoui • • •Zach Bennoui
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •Rebecca Legowski
in reply to Onj 🎶 • • •The last time I used that, I had to get a remote session with them about it.
Zach Bennoui
in reply to Rebecca Legowski • • •Rebecca Legowski
in reply to Zach Bennoui • • •Zach Bennoui
in reply to Rebecca Legowski • • •