JAWS for Windows is greedy.
The last time I went looking at the home annual license, it was $95/year in the US and Canada. For everything you get, that's a pretty compelling price. Most Americans can probably afford $95/year for a screen reader.
Now, it's $674/year. That's seven times more expensive for new customers, and an awful lot of money to charge individuals for a license that specifically cannot be used professionally.
The one-time payment is $1548, which includes two additional yearly upgrades. I don't know how much upgrades cost after the SMA is over, but I'm sure it isn't $674 for every major version. So the yearly subscription isn't just hilariously expensive now; it's a waste of money. It effectively has no logical reason for existing, and if one of you unfortunate souls actually wants to pay for JAWS after this, you'd be better off paying the full price and then upgrading when possible. I can't begin to understand how anyone justified such a massive price increase.
EDIT: I was quickly informed there is still a home annual license available for $104.50. However, it's not advertised and you have to call them in order to find out it exists. This is basically what Aira did a couple of years ago, but worse. This post is not misinformation; it's accurate information based on what they list on their site. They didn't want businesses buying home licenses, so instead of dealing with the problem, they passed it onto their users. store.freedomscientific.com/pr…
This entry was edited (7 months ago)

If you think slop bug reports are bad now, just wait until this moves from public preview into full release github.blog/changelog/2025-05-…

Major projects are going to need to completely move their issue tracking off of Github or up there moderation as at least at this stage there doesn't appear to be a way to block the use of this feature github.com/orgs/community/disc…

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
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mastodon - Link to source

Brodie Robertson

There was a case a few years back where some major Youtube channel was showing how Github worked and used I think it was the Node repo in there example so that repo got flooded with PRs, I could easily see the same happen again let alone someone doing so to ruin a project.
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Allow us to block Copilot-generated issues (and PRs) from our own repositories on #github

github.com/orgs/community/disc…

Hubert Figuière reshared this.

Monal 6.4.11 (Build 1040, PR #1416) released.

To see the complete list of bugfixes and improvements, check our releases page: github.com/monal-im/Monal/rele…

#Monal #ios #macos #xmpp #im #chat #messaging

Pressing control+c on the wrong keyboard, in the wrong terminal window, connected to the wrong server: the ultimate sign it's time for bed. Just as soon as I do a bit of troubleshooting; I seem to have broken "sudo shutdown -h now" on this Debian machine. It says:
"sudo: The term 'sudo' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again."

I wonder how I managed to break sudo?

If you contribute in some way to GNOME, are you already a GNOME Foundation member? If not, you should apply ASAP: foundation.gnome.org/membershi…

Once you do (or if you’re already a member), don’t forget to VOTE in the upcoming Foundation elections!

The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors is elected by Foundation members. If you want to influence how the Foundation is run, one of the most effective things you can do is to become a member and vote.

#GNOME #Linux #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS

in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

Food, egg fried rice

Sensitive content

Discovery: The "copilot" bot user that Microsoft will soon be flooding your github repos with garbage content from is implemented in some sort of special way that exempts it from the "block" feature you would normally be able to block other users/bots with

github.com/orgs/community/disc…

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NONPROFIT KILLER BILL UPDATE: It's complicated, but so far the chaos is working in our favor + pressure from YOU is making a difference.

#nonprofitkillerbill
#freespeech #fascism #news
aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/5/…

in reply to Fight for the Future

We killed this bill in the Fall, but because authoritarian's love using censorship to silence opposition, it's likely gonna keep rearing it's head. That's why we need to keep making it as toxic as possible for lawmakers who support any bill like it:
fightforthefuture.org/actions/…

Newswire: Tek Talk of 5/19/25 at 8pm Eastern welcomes David Kingsbury, an Assistive Technology Instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind, to discuss his new book the Fourth Edition of The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics an groups.io/g/tech-vi/message/93…

“Out of 949 visual media attached in your 673 public posts with visual media, 935 have alt text. That's about 99%. You're doing a great job!”

I’ll take it! Through it is tempting to go back and fix those outliers…

Check your account here: stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/1…

#AltText

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

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I've started editing my way through a small collection of short stories formerly published in the New European Magazine between 1822 and 1823. Here's the first of eventually six stories: 'The Funeral' by Thomas Richards.

bydbach.hcommons.org/wandering…

#Wales #Literature #RomanticFiction #DigitalEdition #OpenAccess

This entry was edited (7 months ago)

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If you want to implement and test it you’re welcome to make a PR. The old excuses still work the best. 🙄 So tired of developers who release their products to everyone but only build for themselves and still expect headpats and attaboy’s. We see all of you.


RE: akkomane.social/objects/f82059…

This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

akkoma - Link to source

Drew Mochak

@fireborn For sure. I am ride-or-die Android, in large part due to its freedom, but often we do not acknowledge how often this just means you are “free” to get it wrong. Like there are four different ways to label an input field, that is too many. Corporations are not “free” to ignore applicable laws which “free”/opensource developers flaunt all the time, gleefully in some cases. And it’s worth pointing out that this pressure often leads to a better outcome for disabled people than the opensource model of resolving everything through the free market of pull requests. It’s a huge topic.
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

D.Hamlin.Music

@fireborn i think that at least in part this is also due to the still heavily push position that blind people should use iOS and are wrong for not doing so, I have gotten this from individuals, blind services, and organizations like the NFB, even being outright told that I was essentially being blind wrong for asking about android in NFB meetings/groups.

For a very brief time in late 2024, I resurrected Zello purely because my Unihertz phone had a push-to-talk button. I then lost that phone and mostly forgot about the channel. However, I do have other phones from Unihertz and I'm now running Zello on one of them. I wonder if Android phones will ever be cheap enough for me to just buy a whole pack of them and hand them out at a convention the way I handed out walkie-talkies at the last few NFB nationals. Anyway, if you're bored, here's the channel: zello.me/k/iMdPr
This entry was edited (7 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Simon Jaeger

@fireborn I have the Tank Mini and the Jelly Max. I also have a Jelly 2E I got from a Canadian for very cheap, but haven't set it up beyond determining that it works and isn't totally unusable with Talkback. Looks like a slightly thinner Jelly Star. Zello is running on the Jelly Max but TBH, I have no idea what to use it for now that I have a OnePlus. The Tank Mini has replaced my Star as the media device since it has a massive battery, 32-bit app support, and a headphone jack.
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Simon Jaeger

@fireborn I have a pair of pants with zipper pockets. One of them casually unzipped itself and the Star fell out. I never found it. For whatever reason even though I noticed it was gone almost right away, I wasn't able to ping it. It was last seen at my apartment, which suggests it wasn't getting a data connection. I've concluded it's gone forever. No one at my building, the taxi company, or the ferry has reportedly seen it, and those are the only places I went.

Thousands of #AntiIsraeli protesters have taken to the streets in Switzerland to protest against #Israel’s #Eurovision Song Contest participant Yuval Raphael being allowed to compete

She survived the Nova Music Festival Massacre by playing dead for hours beneath a pile of corpses

🚀 We just demoed InnoSearch AI at AT Demo Days!

One of our co-founders, Bryan Vuong, shared how we’re transforming the digital experience for blind and low vision users.

At InnoSearch AI, we’ve built an accessible digital platform that simplifies online shopping, flight booking, and more—designed to be clutter-free and fully screen reader-friendly.

📺 Check out Bryan’s full demo here: youtube.com/watch?v=AM2rtkErTM…

Explore more: innosearch.ai/

Microsoft Build 2025 brought bold updates in AI agents, secure development, and developer tooling across Windows, Azure, and GitHub.
I put together a detailed overview for those who missed the keynotes and announcements.
Read here: taylorarndt.substack.com/p/mic…
@microsoft@mastodon.social #Build2025 #AI #Microsoft #Windows #Azure #OpenAgenticWeb #DeveloperTools

#BuyEurope and Made in China - how do they go together?

You can find the answer in our new blog post:
shift.eco/en/german-smartphone…

At a time when national interests often take precedence over common solutions and dialog is replaced by power games, many of us feel a strong need:
➡️ For stability.
➡️ For reliability.
➡️ For responsibility - also regionally.

#shift #shifthappens #shiftphone #EUTech #BuyFromEU #EuropeanAlternatives #BuyEuropean #SupportEurope #unplugTrump

zbus recently passed 20 million unique downloads on crates.io. 🎉 With downloads peaking consistently on weekdays (reaching to 70K on some days) and dropping drastically on the weekends, it's very obvious that most of this use is commercial.

So if you or your company relies on zbus, please consider sponsoring my work. 🙏 Resharing of this message would also help.

github.com/sponsors/zeenix

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