I don't know how much of the speech generation is 16 bit versus the UI and other executive function. I've seen demo apps for softvoice that won't run because they're 16 bit and some that will, for instance. SO by that logic the speech synthesizer itself works across 16 and 32 bit platforms, just not its interface, if you see what I mean
All the energy used, all the carbon emitted, all the e-waste created and still every chatbot has the "anything this thing says might be false, you still need to check" label all over it. I cannot believe the resources we are spending on this bullshit instead of doing literally anything else. mastodon.social/@dw_innovation…
Generative AI not only consumes a lot of energy, it's also likely to produce a lot of electronic trash.
According to researchers, the total amount of global e-waste could grow by the alarming factor of 1.000 in only 5 years.
ICYMI: a few weeks ago, I put together a comprehensive guide for #blind #RetroTech people on getting a fully working Windows 3.1 installation fired up, screen reader and all. fuge.seediffusion.cc/emu-guide…
@cachondo The first version of Windows to really lean into Theming including sound schemes was 95, specifically with the Microsoft Plus! pack which was sold separately, though the base installation did include a few sound schemes on its own like Utopia, Musika, Jungle and Robots. Windows 98 had its own version of plus, which included a unique set of themes different from the 95 ones, but the base installation also included the sound schemes I listed above.
@pitermach I think I was still using a hardware speech synthesizer with 95. I don't actually recall having speakers on my desktop, and of course the PC speaker did its beeps without them anyway. Amazing to think that the entire audio side of things was just missing in my experience.
Anyone have suggestions on where to try to promote the Games for Blind gamers gam jam? We got 110 sign ups last year, and hoping to get more sign ups this year!
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...
I remember David Graeber's insight into #voting being a big 'Aha' moment for me:
"Majoritarian democracy was, in its origins, essentially a military institution. . . .
"It is of obvious relevance that Ancient Greece was one of the most competitive societies known to history. It was a society that tended to make everything into a public contest . . . So it might not seem entirely surprising that they made political decision-making into a public contest as well. Even more crucial though was the fact that decisions were made by a populace in arms. . . . [I]f a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. . . . [E]ven if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest." #history #politics #democracy
📣 Do-It-Blind (DIB) online Besprechung am Montag, 11. November, um 19:00 Uhr. Du bist eingeladen! bbb.metalab.at/rooms/joh-szv-o… Wöchentlich am Montag um 19:00 besprechen wir neue Formen der digitalen und inklusiven Zusammenarbeit. Mach mit! 🛠️ #make #blind #inklusion
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We're celebrating the anniversary of Sesame Street, which is as much an institution to Americans as Doctor Who is to the British, and guess what? The two series are linked in ways we – or their creators – never realized.
Breaking News: New BlindShell Classic 3 has been launched. Full details with the team from BlindShell on today's #DoubleTap. Read more here: blindshell.com/?gad_source=1&g…
Did you catch up on our last In-Process blog at the end of October? If you haven't yet read it (or even if you have) you'll be pleased to know I've now FIXED the table of contents links so you can easily get to: - the 2024.4 release info - Info about add-ons - Emphasising stability - Benefits for users and developers in our add-on approach - And all about reporting font attributes
It’s that spooky time of year for all those who celebrate Halloween. And it’s also Diwali for our Indian friends. Whether you participate in either of these or not, there is something we defi…
And as previously posted today, updated since that post, NVDA 2024.4.1 is now out, which includes everything from NVDA 2024.4, as well as one key bug fix. More on that update here: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-4-…
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…
For those on the Beta / RC branch, we have also pushed a Release Candidate build of 2024.4.1 for you - note this is identical to the 2024.4.1 from yesterday, but will keep you on that path so you'll be the first to get NVDA 2025.1 Beta 1 when it comes out in time.
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 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…
I have always been totally blind, but Visuals, have always interested me. I signed up for a class at work a month ago to better understand visual graphs and charts from an annalyst prospective, as …
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.
Making blind accessible video games has been truly life changing, and it all started with making a game for a blind accessible game jam. I learned so much about accessibility, met wonderful people, was exposed to video games made in new and wonderful ways, and felt inspired in new ways to be creative. So that's why I help a yearly jam all about blind accessibility in video games, and I genuinely hope anyone reading this considers joining. itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-ga… #indiedev #Blind #gaming
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...
I followed this post to amazon.com an discovered that the website now offers new keyboard shortcuts, like option+shift+o for Orders, option+shift+c for cart, and others. Wow, that’s a welcome change. #accessibilitymastodon.social/@appleinsider/…
@technocounselor I’ve been seeing those links at the top of the Amazon website for a while now, and haven’t gotten around to looking at them. Thanks for the prompt to do so.
@Thumper1964 @technocounselor I don’t go to Amazon’s website unless I really have to, but this time I did, I was rather surprised. It’s a sacred cow for Amazon, so no wonder the accessibility improvements have been so slow and rather sporadic. Anyway, happy to see any improvement bit coming along our way!
Falls du dich schon einmal gefragt hast, welches bestimmte Aufnahmegerät, Audio Interface, Mikrofon, paar Kopfhörer oder Keyboard du benutzen sollst, und du zudem Sorgen hattest, das du ein teures Produkt eventuell nicht vollumfänglich nutzen können wirst, weil dir deine Sehbehinderung im Weg steht, dann ist eventuell meine Webseite etwas für dich. Dort gibt es eine Liste aller von mir handgeprüften Produkte, mit Begründung für die Empfehlung. toni-barth.online/de/gear/
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 der
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.
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…
Hi. What about us who are on the beta and RC channel? Perhaps it would be good if there was 2024.4.1 RC1 release before the official release so we would have the fix as well. Unless if there is a new upcoming beta soon so we will have the fix anyway.
@nikosdemetriou Our apologies, we realised that after pushing out the release. We are looking at whether we can make 2024.4.1 cound for both channels (which might mean having to download 2025.1 Beta 1 manually like it used to be). In any case, you CAN download the release from: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-4-…
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…
A good billionaire would use $999,000,000 of every billion to make life better for those who have little or nothing. If you can’t live on a million dollars how do you expect people to live on $10,000?
Jedno malý-velký wtf po ránu 😂🙈. 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.
To jednoduchý. Když rodiče nechtějí dětem čistit/dočišťovat zuby, tak si své svědomí uklidní podáváním takového přípravku. Nic víc bych v tom nehledal.
@brabitom no naopak jsou i tací rodiče, kteří čistí kartáčkem, jednosvazkovým, mezizubní, dočišťují, chodí na DH a pak v rámci dobrého svědomí navíc ditku podávají orální probiotika a narazí na tenhle shit.
Ano, pravda i tato situace může nastat. No, není nic snazšího, než se na DH nejprve zeptat. 🙂 Ale chápu, když to prodávají v lékárně, nemůže to být špatné ....
@brabitom a pak se nám ten problém zase komplikuje - ne každá DH je taková šťoura a zkrátka neví, doporučí, neptá se, nezjišťuje, neověřuje a BUM 😁 Žádný problém vztahující se ke zdraví nikdy nevidím jednoduše...
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.
@luiscarlosgonzalez I could be wrong, but Sonata utilizes ONX format, and except Piper, pretty much all the TTS models utilizing machine learning (at least the ones I know) don't support it. Also if you're hoping to use with NVDA, they are too slow for real time anyways.
@luiscarlosgonzalez Sonata defines the interface and text-front-end for neural TTS models. For Piper, yes we use ONNX. but I have models running locally that are implemented directly in native code, or using a native framework such as Candle.
@luiscarlosgonzalez LLM based TTS models, such as the one above, natively supports streaming. Use this with quantization, and you'll never know what you'll get.
Yep it is impressive indeed. 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.
Martin Hoffmann
in reply to Ondřej Caletka • • •