Design for 3D Printing, An Excellent Article It's wonderful when people take the time to share the expertise they've developed. Even more so when the resulting article is filled with FreeCAD screenshots.
Fabulous FreeCAD user Rahix has put together this impressive long read (80 mins) over on their blog. It's a collection of knowledge relating to various areas of 3D printing and it's an amazing read! Thanks @rahixblog.freecad.org/2025/05/08/de… #Tutorials
It's wonderful when people take the time to share the expertise they've developed. Even more so when the resulting article is filled with FreeCAD screenshots. Fabulous FreeCAD user Rahix has put to…
"Milestone for digital sovereignty": 20 years of the Open Document Format (ODF)
The Document Foundation celebrates the 20th anniversary of adoption of ODF as an OASIS standard. This promotes global digital independence and interoperability.
Because of security vulnerabilities: LibreOffice advises against OpenOffice
The developers of LibreOffice advise against its competitor OpenOffice. The Apache software contains security vulnerabilities and is not being further developed
V Albertu někdo u otevírací doby blbě spároval datum a poplet den a měsíc. Jsem zvědavý jestli v červnu bude všechno šestého. Ale den týdnu odpovídá danému dnu.
Dnes spouštím projekt Anti-řetězák, který vybírá nejnebezpečnější internetové fámy (cca 1 týdně) a uvádí je na pravou míru tím, že pošle email přímo do schránky.
Anti-řetězák je určený pro lidi, kteří se podvodnou scénou nechtějí zabývat víc, než musí — ale zároveň chtějí mít základní přehled, co koluje českými e-mailovými schránkami. Už jen proto, aby uměli reagovat, když se k nim nějaká dezinformace dostane off-line.
I'm physically located in #Mexico, and just tuned into an Irish #radio station only to be presented with this quite chilling message in Spanish warning off illegal immigrants.
Of note is that despite the announcement beginning with "I'm Kristi Noem," I'm pretty sure this is not the voice of the Secretary of Homeland Security. I'm not even sure if Kristi Noem speaks Spanish, let alone with the polish of a professional voiceover artist. The first three letters in the name of the referenced CBP Home mobile application are also spoken in English.
Additionally, this station doesn't usually run ads before their stream starts, but clearly the streaming provider has been convinced to run this anyway.
@BorrisInABox Also, I think the way she pronounced Trump was a bit too native speaker like. It is also possible the voice was AI-generated Too young for Christine though! Bad take? But then who would know? .
My blindness review of the 3G Cardio treadmill I've been using for the last few months is now a Github Gist. It will eventually move to a real blog, but I'm not sure when that will happen. For now, you can find it here: gist.github.com/mehgcap/fc1f06…
Can AI write good image descriptions that actually make sense in context? Principal Accessibility Consultant @craigabbott put generative AI to the test in our latest blog post.
In 2025, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek are being used for everything. Writing emails. Generating code. Even applying for jobs.
Join Matt Ater and Jennison Asuncion as they recognize Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of JAWS on May 14 at 4 PM ET.
I recently rewrote my program for keeping soundcards awake on windows in pure C, using no CRT. It now weighs in at 5.5 KB, with a wave resource embedded inside of it, built with Pelles C V13 RC3. github.com/trypsynth/SleepSoun…
Hi good hacker! 😊 I wonder, have you ever looked at Zig? To me it seems a pleasant languagr, quite easy to work with, unlike C or C with pluses. What are your thoughts?
@menelion Zig seems like a really interesting language. Their entire language reference came as a giant HTML file with the installation, so that's a huge plus. I want to learn more about it, but I just have nothing to use it for. When I write C or C++ these days its for calling the Windows API, and I'm not sure how zig does with that.
Discover BT Speak, the world's first pocket computer for the Blind. Read, write, learn, play, listen, and connect online! Explore BT Speak's new applications and join our community. Blazie Technologies.
Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesKiss My Apocalypse · Liang Lawrence · Luke Adams · Pura BlissKiss My Apocalypse℗ 2024 The Other Songs RecordsRe...
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) has set a deadline of 2030 for audiovisual media services to ensure their backlog video content is compliant. This
Samsung plans to launch the Galaxy S25 Edge at a May 12 virtual event at 8pm ET, and reservations for the super-slim device are now open with a $50 credit (Ben Schoon/9to5Google)
I need to scan a hand-signed document to email somebody using Windows 11. Is Windows FAX and Scan still the go-to app for this kind of thing? If not, what are people using?
…Unless you want to fail all the WCAGs, create litigation risk, close off opportunities in Europe, engage in reputational harm, and oh yeah, throw up barriers to your customers and users.
You don't really need to watch this to know how it works out but it is remarkably fun to see a 98yo WW2 veteran drive a tank over a Tesla - "we crushed fascism once and we'll do it again!"
"Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is using his immense power to support the far-right in Europe, and his money comes from Tesla carsWell I’ve got thi...
According to NVAccess, there are over 2,000 #NVDA open issues and if seeing one fixed is "particularly important" to me, they would "encourage hiring someone to work on it."
So how about it, #blind programmers? Your serious quotes for fixing this bug on a freelance basis:
When a control on a web page is given an accessible name via aria-label or aria-labelledby, and NVDA's focus mode is active, the text of the control's name cannot be spoken or spelled with the "rep...
I probably tried to rephrase some super snarky message about AI image descriptions and chatbots and magnification and NVDA remote which are all on the roadmap and apparently more important than fixing this bug and others, some of which have been open for 10 years (!) which affect real users right now like 5 times but I am slipping further into sadness so I think I'll stop trying now and utter a sigh of defeat for what could have been instead.
The pipeline seems to be: say something on social media, get told to open an issue, follow up on issue years later, get told in clipped tones to arrange a fix for it yourself (that they'll need to review) because there are too many open issues.
(Edited to remove previous comment about secure add-ons that was probably a bit much.)
@talon I'd point out that there are a huge number of users complaining (quite aggressively) about the current add-on ecosystem because of compatibility breaks. That's been a major point of contention for years now. The new ecosystem is designed to fix that, plus make corporate folks happy who apparently have significant security concerns. There are times when you can't win either way.
@x0 We're working on building a more encompassing, secure add-on API add-ons can use which will have security benefits but more importantly for many people, will seperate add-ons from the yearly .1 add-on breaking changes. We'll keep sharing news on it as we have developments to share :)
@jcsteh @talon Yes and I'm glad the add-on thing is getting attention. I know it discourages people from developing them and is one of the reasons why people are going back to stolen Eloquence again with the only legal option being SAPI 5. That's just one example.
@Jage If the secure add-on ecosystem results in a paid, legal Eloquence that actually works, and isn't developed by the morally bankrupt crooks at a company beginning with C, I'm all for it. @jcsteh @talon
@Jage @jcsteh @talon the new add-on API is a different issue to Eloquence - Code Factory decided to abandon their users with no notice or explanation - as I gather they did on Android at the same time, so I don't know that it was even anything to do with us per-se. Worth mentioning that Tiflotecnia are offering a discount on their newest offering to those who had either older versions or the Code Factory Eloquence / Vocalizer license. See tiflotecnia.com/ for more details
@NVAccess Sure. But back in the day, I remember NV Access trying to make a deal with whoever owned Eloquence at the time, only to be hamstrung by infeasible requirements. I don't know if those had anything to do with security, whether the new secure add-on ecosystem would resolve them, whether any of those things still apply given new ownership, or even if NV Access will ever try such a thing again. @Jage @jcsteh @talon
@Jage @jcsteh @talon I don't know what the reasons were either, I don't think there have ever been any legitimate concerns from anyone around the security of NVDA overall. And of course, we're always available to talk if Code Factory, or anyone is interested.
@NVAccess @Jage @talon I don't think it would have made any difference. Nuance (and I suspect their descendant Cerence) are just incredibly difficult to work with.
@NVAccess @Jage @jcsteh @talon The one thing I'll add to this is that Tiflotecnia doesn't offer Eloquence, as far as I'm aware, but only Vocalizer. However, even though Code Factory discontinued their NVDA add-on, they still offer Eloquence for Windows, which works with NVDA.
@DavidGoldfield @NVAccess @Jage @jcsteh @talon Yeah but Code Factory's version of Eloquence is horribleh and their licensing is so poor and so likely to just completely fail. If you ask me, Code Factory should be banned
@davetaylor2112 @NVAccess @Jage @jcsteh @talon I personally haven't had a problem with activating or maintaining their license and to say they should be banned? That's a bit strong.
@DavidGoldfield @NVAccess @Jage @jcsteh @talon Well, if you ever have to reset computers without realising and remembering to clear the license in advance, you're screwed
@jcsteh I don't have the energy to discuss this. I just want my issue fixed, and continue to love the project despite most interactions with project staff being unproductive or needlessly antagonistic these days.
They say I should pay someone to fix it. So let's see if someone wants to be paid to fix it. @talon
When a control on a web page is given an accessible name via aria-label or aria-labelledby, and NVDA's focus mode is active, the text of the control's name cannot be spoken or spelled with the "rep...
@talon If you're up for it, I'd be interested to get your perspectives on the NVDA bugs (beyond the one referenced in this thread) that have been open for a while which you think impact users on a regular basis with high impact, papercuts included. To be clear, I don't make decisions concerning NVDA these days, but I think one way of trying to deal with some of these is to build a reasonably sized project out of high impact bugs/papercuts. That's easier to schedule, prioritise and potentially fund.
@jcsteh @talon I didn't really follow the original thread, but personally I'm still having major lock-ups when trying to use Microsoft Excel. I admittedly need to put in a bit of time to see what is crashing in case it is on my end, but it definitely slows me down.
The problem is I'm pretty sure this is Microsoft's fault; I experience excel freezes with Narrator pretty frequently, ttoo. The only place they don't happen is jaws, so they're obviously doing something custom to work around it that they're not going to share with the rest of us.
@Jage @tjolsen @talon @fastfinge MS Office is one of the few areas of NVDA in which I've always had practically 0 expertise, largely because I refuse to touch Office or any of the code that supports it, haha. I wonder whether this is a UIA vs non UIA thing though. I don't know where NVDA and JAWS are at with regard to when (and how much) they use UIA for Office vs the old object model approach.
And yet, at least in my experience, NVDA is the screen reader with the fewest number of these sorts of bugs. Apple isn't interested in fixing anything; they have fifty new features to ad to voiceover. Jaws needs to add AI everywhere to justify making the software a yearly subscription, and have started regularly just listing bug fixes as new features to justify a new major version. Narrator gets one or two new features a year, and maybe a bug fixed every once in a while. And if NVDA doesn't add stuff like this, people will complain that they're falling behind. Honestly I hope they can add extra optional AI features like translation, image description, cloud preferences syncing, etc, as a subscription feature, to make NV Access a bit of money. The NVDA Spanish guys are doing it right with a paid subscription to access their LibreTranslate. The model also seems to work for ZDSR and jieshuo: offer a free screen reader, with subscription AI addons. In all of these cases, the payment and licensing infrastructure is awful. But NV Access could get this right, and hopefully unlock a funding model that isn't just begging for donations.
Wish I could pay someone easily to have some of my own long-standing issues fixed. At any event, I was a bit taken aback to see that "go hire someone" message on Github.
@fireborn @amir nope, most certainly not, and even I know that, with my *really* limited python experience, and that code may have been from another issue linked to the original posters issue, or something else entirely, but no PR was ever linked to the original posters issue indicating a fix so it remained open even after the fix was implimented. SO the take away. do better at triaging issues, guys not in this thread who I won't mention so they don't bite my head off.
@j9t If this was commercial software, we would need to prioritise issues just like we do now. What we do approach differently to a lot of other projects is we don't just close issues because we won't get to them in the next six months - THAT alone is why we have so many open issues. No-one is saying James' issue isn't valid or important. Sean's comment (on the issue) was not that we don't want to fix it, but that outsourcing it is one potential way to have it fixed sooner.
I think I understand you wrt to hiring someone as a general option to fix an issue—but if I may, that is so unlikely to be realistic for almost anyone, mentioning it is then only helpful in theory and therefore comes off different from how it seems to be intended.
@j9t Thanks Jens, I appreciate that. We don't expect it as an option for most users (including James). We work hard to accurate triage issues, & prioritise staff time to those which affect the largest number of users in the most severe manner. While this may mean that annoying issues may persist for longer than desired, it is also important to mention that some 40% of NVDA code contributions come from the community, and the community is welcome to prioritise any issues they wish to work on.
@j9t And in fairness, we DO endeavour to be communicative & engage in discussion (as I am now). Can you say every software company does? (And no, I'm not doing this instead of fixing this issue.... Perhaps doing this instead of updating the Excel training material, but it's important, so here I am).
Yes, donations are very much appreciated - and for those who can benefit from it, the training & support in the shop: nvaccess.org/shop
@amir @munchkinbear @fireborn Nowhere in that issue is there an accusation that the issue wasn't filed properly? There is some confusion (between contributors) as to whether it is a Microsoft bug and the general consensus is that it was AND they've fixed the worse part of it. No intrinsic NV Access issue, just that we, like ANY project, open-source or not - needs clear information to resolve issues :)
@NVAccess @munchkinbear @fireborn Perhaps we're looking at different issues then 😄 @josephsl, not an NVAccess member I admit though a well-known figure, makes such an assumption in the comments.
@amir @munchkinbear @fireborn Joseph did comment that it was important to actually specify the version of NVDA (or any program) you are using, yes - a very valid criticism - although even then, no-one said they wouldn't investigate this issue etc. And I acknowledge that you did specify specific versions in your comments.
@munchkinbear @fireborn This is an intrinsic NVAccess issue or, to be fair, this is something which tends to affect open-source projects. Of course, commercial products have long-standing issues of their own, but, for instance, simply check the responses posted to a very irksome and serious NVDA bug affecting Start menu's search feature in newer Win 11 24H2 updates. JAWS was updated few months ago to fix it, whereas people on Github are suggesting that: A: Microsoft should fix it. B: There's not enough info to catch the bug, and that people don't understand how to file bugs. github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issue…
Steps to reproduce: Use NVDA to go to the start menu, try searching for something, and make sure you are on Windows 11, 24H2, and have the latest updates installed. Actual behavior: NVDA usually wo...
Libya’s Government of National Unity said on Wednesday it rejected the use of Libyan territory as a destination for deporting migrants without its knowledge or consent. It also said there was no coordination with the United States regarding the transfer of migrants. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army, which controls eastern Libya, also rejected the idea, saying in a statement that taking in migrants deported from the U.S. “violates the sovereignty of the homeland.”
In other words there is a non-zero (and actually quite high) likelyhood that, were a plane loaded with illegal US migrants to be flown over Libyan teretory, it would not be allowed to land. By which I mean, they would shoot it down with surface-to-air missiles.
In a move to enhance customer convenience, Walmart has launched a new add-on service that allows customers to have their newly purchased TVs professionally mounted on their walls for just $79.
Handwritten documents have always been a challenge for computers to interpret accurately. While Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has made significant
Available in Braille From the NLS BARD Collection: Getting Started Guide and Users' Guide for the NLS Digital Advanced Player 2 (DA2) groups.io/g/tech-vi/message/92…
The recording of our May 2025 webinar is now live on our Web site. We provided demos of some of the new features available in the May 2025 BT Speak update. blazietech.com/
Discover BT Speak, the world's first pocket computer for the Blind. Read, write, learn, play, listen, and connect online! Explore BT Speak's new applications and join our community. Blazie Technologies.
There's a fork of the Nuked SC-55 emulator that includes a command line utility to render MIDIs to Wavs. github.com/jcmoyer/Nuked-SC55 Anyway, I just had it render a MIDI of Rush E, and it did what I'd call a decent job. Even with sixteen! emulators, some notes got cut, but what do you expect with a MIDI like this! Sorry about the volume changes in the attached audio, I used a dynamic audio normalizer since this song really needs one! @MutedTrampet @datajake1999 @arfy @FreakyFwoof @cordova5029
So-called music, probably displeasing to most folks
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Hey, you want some algorithmically-generated music? I've got your algorithmically-generated music right here! It was created using a Python script, and that script's output is a MIDI file. What? You say you don't like it? Too bad, since it's a MIDI file, it is still technically music. It matters not that most people will probably find it highly objectionable. Anyway, this was rendered with the Nuked SC55 emulator fork I wrote about earlier. @MutedTrampet @datajake1999 @arfy @FreakyFwoof @cordova5029
Continuing my thread of strange, avant garde music, I'm tagging everyone who commented on my last post of a randomly-generated MIDI. I have to make a slight digression here, but you'll understand why I'm posting this when you read my next post on this topic. Maybe @matt will even find this interesting! Attached is the audio output of an Apple II program from 1978. It's written in 6502 machine language, and it plays three Bach fugues. Only, somewhere along the line, the data for part of the third fugue got messed up. It's still there, just somehow corrupted, as you can hear. @MutedTrampet @datajake1999 @arfy @FreakyFwoof @cordova5029 @mcourcel @BorrisInABox @KaraLG84 @spacepup @reillypascal @rooktallon
So how does this relate to MIDI music? I wrote a Python script which takes any file and turns it into a MIDI. Since bytes can be from 0 through 255 and MIDI notes only go up to 127, it subtracts 128 from bytes greater than 127. Anyway I ran the binary of this Bach fugues music program through my script, and the MIDI output is actually interesting. First you hear the machine code responsible for playing the music. For coding nerds out there, the program is designed to load and run at the memory address $0800 hex, and expects the music data to start at $0900. The code goes up through $08A5, so there's some unused bytes from $08A6 through $08FF, and you can actually hear when these occur. Then the music data starts at $0900, three bytes for each note. What's even more interesting is that you can tell based on the produced MIDI notes when the data corruption occurs near the end, and in my opinion that portion is the most musical segment of the whole thing. So here goes! @matt @MutedTrampet @datajake1999 @arfy @FreakyFwoof @cordova5029 @mcourcel @BorrisInABox @KaraLG84 @spacepup @reillypascal @rooktallon
Here's yet another in my sort of series involving data sonification, etc. Years ago I wrote an Applesoft BASIC program which takes the values 0 through 255, and pokes sixty-four of each value (each possible byte) into memory. When the result of this program is written out to cassette, it produces an interesting sort of melody, since the way Apple II's store data on cassettes involves 1 bits being twice as long as 0 bits. @matt @MutedTrampet @datajake1999 @arfy @FreakyFwoof @cordova5029 @mcourcel @BorrisInABox @KaraLG84 @spacepup @reillypascal @rooktallon
victor tsaran
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