So one thing I notice about #blind Internet culture: even back on Twitter, and now here in the #fediverse, blind people tend towards having discussions in giant threads, sometimes with as many as 10-12 people in them, that can often stretch on for days. I rarely (if ever) see sighted culture do this. I wonder why? It's not a criticism, it's just interesting to me. Maybe because Discord and other chat apps were historically less #accessible, so blind culture tends to use the fediverse more as a discussion platform? Or maybe it's something UI related that makes it easier for blind folks to track giant threads of doom? The few times I've been involved in this style of discussion with sighted folks, they've become confused and begged for everyone to move to Discord or Slack or somewhere. On the other hand, I rarely see blind people do a single, lengthy post broken up and threaded the way sighted people do, with (1/N) at the end. We tend to just move to instances with longer character limits, or put our long form thoughts on a webpage or something.

Edit to add: I'm pleased to say that this post has now become a perfect example of the thing I was talking about; my last post in the thread included the phrase "transsexual furry puppygirls". It makes me happy that people unfamiliar with what I'm talking about need do nothing more than look at the thread on this post.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

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in reply to Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

@chris That actually makes me think of what could be another reason. The online blind community is quite tight, and highly interconnected. So if I reply to one blind person, odds are a lot of other blind people follow us both, so will read the conversation and jump in. Whereas if you only follow one or two blind people, you would miss out on that conversation, because I think Mastodon only shows you replies to people you follow?
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

That's exactly it. If I see a post from a #blind person that I think is interesting, I will often look at the replies. Although I can usually see all of the replies unless the person has their privacy settings to followers only. So then I might want to reply to a reply like I did here, that includes a couple of people and then somebody else might want to reply to my post and it also include those people. I don't often get drawn into those kinds of threads because while they are interesting in the beginning, chances are that eventually I'm going to get tired of the conversation and just end up muting the thread because the discussion is going to change from the original topic and I'm not going to be interested anymore.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Sadly, I have not. I really don't know anything about baseball. I suppose I could get ChatGPT to give me a summary of the game so that I could follow it, but I have been tuning into the CBC News live thread to watch developments in the game. 18 innings, I can't believe it! Even if the Jays lose, and I'm thinking it's probably likely, damn they put up a fight and I'm proud of them.
in reply to Lynette

@lynessence It's the perfect beer drinking game, though. Anyway in an entirely unrelated matter I accomplished almost nothing at work today due to circumstances that were entirely beyond my control.

I think it might help that I've been to a lot of live games, I've walked the bases, I've played softball and beep baseball, I've met some jays players, etc. So visualizing the action is easier for me. Whereas I find basketball impenetrable.

in reply to Lynette

@lynessence@dhamlinmusic@quanin@mcourcel I'm kind of not? Like, they didn't need AI to elect a fascist government to our south. AI might make things slightly better, or slightly worse...but mostly it'll just make things different. We didn't need AI to lose trust in the news media. Covid and vaccine conspiracies were alive and well before GPT. Bitcoin and cars were already destroying the environment. Cheap kids crap on YouTube was already destroying brains. AI is either a cure or a null factor.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Yup. Artificial intelligence is a meaningless term, because we have no universal definition of what intelligence even is. And now we have people who hate AI complaining that Firefox added machine translation. Replace the word "AI" with "magic" anywhere it's used, and the semantic meaning will remain unchanged.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Nope. Large language models don't think. They respond to stimulus. Sometimes by stimulating themselves, sure. But all this talk of uncontrolled AI is just to distract from problems like climate change and wealth inequality. It's not an actual thing. Unless you meant magic when you said AI, and in that case...I dunno. Magic can do anything!
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel My hope is that if we ever really did develop an artificial general intelligence, it would be smarter than us, and realize that the selfish actions being taken by the ultra-wealthy aren't even good for them. Nothing they're doing is in any way rational. I suspect that's why we will never achieve an artificial general intelligence; it's only what they pretend to want, not what they actually want.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Right, but what does "do capitalism better" look like? Any actually smart AI will realize that if everyone is broke or dead, capitalism can't happen. The current capitalists either don't realize that or don't care. So the AI capitalist, from the case of humanity, will always be some kind of improvement.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Well, for starters, it looks like taking how society views people like the disabled and cranking it up to 11. However little or much you think society right now cares about the disabled, AI will amplify that. Have you seen iRobot, for example? You should. I'm distracted by baseball so that's the first movie that came into my head along that theme.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Any "smart" AI would see just how much money goes into healthcare and adaptive devices. It's a huge part of capitalism. But once again, it's impossible to speculate, because in this discussion we're using "AI" to mean "magic technology that hasn't been invented yet and we have no clear pathway to".
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

You assume the ability to do something else automatically means the willingness to do something we agree with. There's a vast, vast distance between "don't do this system" and "do something better". And we'll have absolutely no control over where in that distance AI decides to park itself. It could absolutely decide that no one should have less than $1000000 in their bank account and nothing should cost more than $1000. It could also decide that you're using resources it can be using better. Like you said, the wealthy won't just let it escape their control, so if it succeeds, it likely means at least some of them are dead.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel And "some of them are dead" is, at this point, better than the situation we have now. Even if AI decides to end all of humanity...climate change was heading us in that direction anyway. AI could make things a lot better, or make the worse things happen faster. I'd happily toss the dice.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Also, remember that the AI bigwigs are okay with a health emergency bankrupting you because they get your interest payments, and you become a debt slave for life. Look at Henry Ford: he was a terrible, awful man. But even he recognized that he had to pay people so they'd have the money to buy his cars! Current capitalists don't understand that. But any functional AI would have to, if it's not just a bunch of code they run and control.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Any functional AI may also decide that the amount of money you have should be directly related to its evaluation of your value to society. This is why we should actually want whatever AI system that comes of this mess to remain controlled. Those people who say things like "the first job that should be replaced by AI should be the CEO" are missing something. If AI decides it can run the business better with 0 employees, there's now nothing actually preventing the AI from significantly reducing headcount.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel And a functional AI that could do that would also be smart enough to understand that if every company does that, no company can exist, because nobody will have the money to buy products. So if its goal is shareholder value, forever, it would realize it has to do something different. In a way humans do not.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

You assume shareholders will still be a thing in this situation. The reason "shareholder value forever" works in the current system is because money talks, and everyone involved in the system right now is listening. The AI could easily hand every shareholder more money than one person will ever see in a lifetime, call it a buyout, and go on its merry way. And if you happen to be someone AI doesn't see any value in, well... no moneys for you.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Sure, and then you get inflation, and nobody has any money, so my lack of it becomes irrelevant. I think I can boil down what you mistakenly call my "optimism" to this: climate change means that humanity is extinct within the next 250 years or so. AI either makes no change, makes our remaining 250 years better, makes our remaining 250 years worse, solves climate change, or ends us early. If it ends humanity early, we're no longer around to care. All other options are either good or neutral. So I'm just not worried about AI.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I mean, I'll probably be dead before either AI or climate change becomes a real problem, so for myself personally I'm not really worried about either. But if solving climate change is a priority, I trust us to do that before an AI we don't control. In theory, we care if we survive. AI will survive with or without us, so long as it has the resources and the ability to use them.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Most people have no interest beyond the end of their nose by default. Anything that looks like influence or status we're coded to gravitate towards. The current iteration of that is wealth, but I mean as we've already discussed it's why communism and socialism failed. As long as there has been humans, there has been an underclass of humans. And that's the people who will be teaching AI what to value. If we do end up in a situation where the AI is in control, we'll be lucky if humanity in general is the underclass.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel But if we don't end up in a situation where AI is in control, things will be the same as they are now, until we're all dead. All revolutions do is kick one set of corrupt humans out, and put another in. AI could be our only chance at real, meaningful change. And it might suck. But what we've got now sucks pretty bad.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

If the AI learns that this is just how the world works and is fine with that, the risk is you don't actually change anything except who's pulling the levers. It's just as likely the AI decides there's nothing wrong with the way things are, or decides that the wealthy should be protected and the rest of us can get fucked. There's still a non-zero chance that someone who's currently poor won't be in 10 years. Maybe it's not 50% or higher, but it's not 0. With AI, it's just as likely to be 0 as it is to be 100.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel Depends on where you live. In Canada, sure. In the US...well, for now. In North Korea? The chance is already zero. And the longer climate change goes on, the more the chances trend towards zero for everyone, everywhere. And I would say that there is a zero percent chance that human society is going to do anything meaningful about climate change in time.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel "still need to be able to do the traveling". No, see, that's my point. Meaningful action on climate change means completely re-architecting society so we do not, in fact, need to do the traveling. Working from home was a tiny step. But return to office policies put an end to even that. As long as we insist on having grapes shipped in from France and computers shipped in from China, climate change cannot be solved.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I mean, we should probably agree on a definition of "traveling". Yes, RTO is dumb. But unless you mandate that no one is ever allowed to leave the city you're born in, RTO is only one very, very small aspect of traveling and probably not actually the most damaging to the environment. And I say that as someone who doesn't actually have an office to return to at the moment even if he wanted to.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel I think you're underestimating the impacts of hour long commutes, twice a day, in rush hour. In a car designed to fit four or five people, but with only one person in it. But you're correct that the most damaging form of travel is flights. We would, I would think, have to mandate no flying anywhere unless it's a medical emergency, and probably strictly ration travel via ships and trains. And stop shipping a lot of goods. Either produce it locally or don't have it.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@quanin@mcourcel The long and short of it is: to have any hope of making the effects of climate change survivable (even if we cut all pollution right this second by magic, the temperature is still going up by at least 1.5 C), we would need to cut the overall resource usage of humanity to something like a fifth of what it is today.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Welp, Ottawa being a government town isn't producing much of squat. And Canada having pretty much no tech outside of Shopify means... yep, that's the modern economy toasted. Your apartment's AC is damaging the environment so we should probably ditch that. Your inhaler is definitely damaging the environment, so no more of those. The list goes on.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel It's a no-win situation because every second Taylor Swift's jet creates more emissions than you and I will in our entire lives. Never mind the rest of the big companies and ultra wealthy. But even if we eat the rich, all of them, right now, undoing the damage they've already done will take massive hardship and sacrifice. I stopped reading climate journals because the only conclusions that can be drawn from the latest data are just too depressing.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Here's the thing. The planet doesn't care what we do or when we do it. Even if we'd started doing what we thought was the right thing 50 years ago, we may very well still be having this conversation today. If the planet's gonna bump us off, it's gonna bump us off whether or not we solve climate change. That doesn't mean we shouldn't leave the place better than we found it, but I mean... how much climate change did the dinosaurs cause? Planet didn't care. Squish. Bye.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I really shouldn't get mixed into this, but there is an algorithmic definition of intelligence around that works fine. Essentially, intelligence can be defined as the ability to compress information, for reasons too technical to get into (in essence, because compressing is predicting). This works surprisingly well for assessing the intelligence of systems. For example: arxiv.org/html/2404.09937v1
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@mcourcel And they are largely correct, mostly because Google has become utter shit. Kagi is better. But half the time I find myself using AI because I don't want to sift through the advertising filled news website and download 18 megs of JavaScript and skip four autoplaying videos just to get a single fact. So I use AI because, in the world that exists, it's much easier than the alternative. And it's not that much less accurate, when judged against the accuracy of most of the garbage websites out there.
in reply to Devin Prater :blind:

@pixelate@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@quanin@mcourcel But making accessible PDFs is possible! All you need is fifty thousand hours of training directly from Adobe, two software packages nobody has ever heard of before, and for making accessible pdfs to be your full time job. Either that or you could just hire one of the people from the thousands of ads I get in my Linkedin messages every day from companies nobody has ever heard of who specialize in pdf remediation.
in reply to Devin Prater :blind:

@pixelate@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@quanin@mcourcel The problem PDFs still solve, that no other file format is even trying to do, is that it makes it obvious (if you know where and how to look) if a PDF file was modified after generation. That's why they get used for contracts.
in reply to James H

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Yes, I know. This need to connect everything to the internet is going to kill us before anything else does. I mean, what's next? You can't open your fridge unless you can pass Face ID on your phone? Don't even get me started on why my fridge needs internet access anyway. Every appliance I own is dumb and it'll stay that way where possible.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@mcourcel Samsung is putting ads on there $3,000 smart fridges. So yes. But sadly, if you want accessibility, you don't really get that choice. Thermostats with just a couple buttons are pretty much gone, for example. It's a touch screen now, and that means an app for us.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I have none of those, and absolutely 0 appliances that require them. Yes, I'm aware that won't be a permanent thing and yes it annoys me no end. I mean look. I get the convenience, ish, though I fail to see why I need the ability to adjust the temperature of my house in Ottawa from Toronto. But I just woke up to no internet this morning for about 2 hours. That already delayed me doing a thing that gets me paid. If it also delay me doing a thing that gets me coffee I will slap someone.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@mcourcel I did my lights because it saves me money. As a blindy I keep forgetting to turn them off. So smart switches and home automation ended up being a savings. Similarly, when I'm away, I set the temperature to be different than I'm at home. I couldn't really do that with an inaccessible thermostat, and again, it saves me a few bucks. My smart doorbell lowers my home insurance, so again, savings. The oven and laundry and dishwasher and instantpot being connected didn't save me anything, but they're the only way to get access to the touch screens. So yeah, I live in a smart home these days.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I'm the only person in my apartment 90% of the time, so the lights are almost never on. Not that it would save me any money, as I don't pay for heat/electricity here - that's included in the rent. I prefer a lower temperature when I'm home so I can just set my dumb thermostat to where I want it and forget it. It also prevents my pipes from being frozen. I don't own an Instapot because I have no reason to, my intercom calls me, and even if I wanted a doorbell/camera it'd violate my lease so that's out. I dread the day I need to replace my microwave for exactly this reason, because I also dislike being attached to my phone.
in reply to James H

I get both sides here. I think once I'll have an actual home/apartment, not just my little room I'll do the Home Assistant aproach. Yes, it's still relying on internet and phone, but I also see the useful sides, even when it might just be lazyness. Say you forgot to turn the light off, you can just do it from away, same for temparature or anything. The advantages have already been named. But I also don't want my stuff to be forced into one eco system/company whatever.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel Yup. It's like everything home related: if you don't know what you're buying, you're going to be sold something that sucks. I'm a computer expert, so I buy smart home tech. But I would never purchase, say, my own windows or flooring. I have a trusted guy to buy that stuff for me.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel Right, but it can still hear everything you're saying when you're in the room. And it still knows everywhere you go, because you take it with you. Once you have a powered on phone in the room with you, at this point you just have to assume that the manufacturer of the phone is listening or looking. It doesn't even need to be your phone.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel Whereas I have an autofocusing camera with automatic tracking. But I do hear when it's recording, because the motor makes a sound as it moves on the gimble. And I could unplug the USBC port. I don't actually own a desktop. Just laptops and a server that lives in the furnace room.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel Wow, you have a monitor? That's actually on a desk, where you could see it if you were sighted? Sorry! Your blind person card has been revoked! My laptop lids stay closed and I have no monitor. Even though that meant getting a tripod with an arm to mount the camera. ROFL
in reply to D.Hamlin.Music

@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@jonathan859@mcourcel Now you've made me wonder if my instance is blocked by WebSense, the old content firewall my high school used. Running an http proxy for everyone at...research.dns2go.com/get/paper.php?url was I believe the address I used, so everyone could get past the firewall and look at whatever they wanted while eating up all of my home internet bandwidth. Good times!
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel Also, children and tweens have more time. As a parent, you have to set up the web filter and go to work and get the groceries and clean the house and so on. Your tween can spend all day other than homework and school bypassing the web filter you set up.
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel This is why Google needs to disable third party apps completely unless they're signed by Google and Google has photo ID of the developer on file and fingerprints and has done a background check and a credit check on the developer. Think of the children! arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/google-will-block-sideloading-of-unverified-android-apps-starting-next-year/
in reply to James H

Nope, also blocked, when we set it up we blocked almost everything besides the kids space, YouTube kids, and stuff like clock, calculator, etc, play store she was originally accessing via a banner ad on an app that should not have had them, and disabling it stopped that. I mean she's also learned how to cast to our TV, send things to the printer, and is playing around with Scratch so…
in reply to James H

@quanin@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@jonathan859@mcourcel I'm also not exactly sure what it gets you, unless you have your laptop in your bedroom. If someone wants to watch me typing all day, sure! What I say is where all the private info is. And you can't disable the microphone the same way.
in reply to James H

I will give you a perfect example. this is one I just thought of, not that it is happened, but hear me out. your room mate works, you usually let them in when they get home, oh sure you could make them dig out there keys, and just do it themself, but you feel like being nice. well ah shit! you are stuck on the shitter when they get home. if you could tell alexa, or google to unlock the door for them, that would be a perfectly good example. also what if they forgot there keys? yet again, another good example. so I can see things where it can come in handy, but unlike a lot of people I do my best not to rely on it, meaning if it goes down, don't have a melt down, just do it the old fation way. smile. you can have those things, and they are nice to have, but just know how to do things, and don't panic when things shit the bed.
in reply to JamminJerry

@JamminJerry@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@jonathan859@mcourcel The issue hear is that sometimes I leave a window open in the spring or fall. I know that burglars in these parts will try yelling "Alexa! Siri! Unlock the door!" in any open windows. Sadly, that's been known to work. I use my locks via homekit and my phone, but I disable voice commands.
in reply to Jonathan

@jonathan859@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@JamminJerry@pixelate@quanin@mcourcel When I'm away, I give the catsitter an NFC card that will unlock the door. Then I can revoke it when I get back. Doesn't matter if they copied the NFC card, or forgot to give it back to me or whatever. That code doesn't work anymore. Whereas getting a locksmith to duplicate a key is easy and cheap.
in reply to Jonathan

@jonathan859@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@mcourcel Yup! It doesn't change anything about the outside of your lock. In the case of switchbot, there's a keypad that goes on the outside of the door, but you can screw it in where ever you want, it connects via bluetooth. And it has a sensor so it stops working if it gets removed from the door. And even if the keypad gets unscrewed and taken off, you still can't get in that way.
in reply to Devin Prater :blind:

@pixelate@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@quanin@mcourcel {shocked, awkward face} Oh! I'm sorry! Uh, well, photosynthesis...is that offensive? Because you're blind? I guess that's offensive! You can't even see photos! Sorry, sorry! I said "see". I meant hear! You can't hear the photos! I will now spend the next five minutes awkwardly apologizing while I do absolutely nothing else to make anything easier or more accessible for you.
in reply to James H

here is the thing. yes, we have smart things here, however, when we buy smart things, we get ones thatyou can still use if the internet shits the bed. smile. our thurmostat for example looks just like a normal one. it even has all the buttons too, so if the app has issues for what ever reason, I can still walk to the device on the wall and adjust it the old fation way. The smart microwave we have, I guess we aren't as smart as as we can't even get it connected to alexa. we even had two or three different sighted people here looking at the manual, and not even they could get it connected, but that is ok. we put dots on the 2, 5, 8, 0, start/30 seconds, and stop/clear. from those few things marked, we can use it just fine. If I can't use it without the internet, I don't want it. sure the smart thing makes things easier, but you never know when something is going to go tits up on you.
in reply to Matt Campbell

And, a PDF reader that can also fill out forms is a fundamentally different kind of user interface than the one implemented by Paperback (and Christopher Toth's QRead before it). Realistically, for anything besides Acrobat/Adobe Reader or Chromium itself to do it accessibly, it would probably entail an embedded web browser engine and converting PDF to HTML rather than a single text edit control.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@GamingWithEars@mcourcel This is also why none of the accessible open source ebook readers support Math content, or cope with footnotes and endnotes correctly. Modern ebooks really, really need to be loaded in an HTML webview. The issue is that I want continuous reading, and none of the HTML implementations like Thorium support that.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

By continuous reading, do you mean fine-grained saving of your position in the document, or something else? If the former, then yes, the fundamental problem is that Windows screen readers don't allow the application to know precisely where the virtual cursor is located. I ran into that in Serotek's DocuScan Plus; I had committed to an HTML view, then could only do bookmarks approximately.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@GamingWithEars@mcourcel I mean that I want to press NVDA+down arrow, start reading, and not have to press next page or next chapter constantly. But doing that requires loading the entire book into the HTML webview control, and now you get massive lag for various API related reasons. You can't do some sort of autoscroll to load content as you need it, because screen readers doing say all don't always update the focus position correctly, so you can't tell when they're about to hit the end of the currently loaded content. This is a thing I've thought about, and chatted with some folks about over coffee/beer.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@GamingWithEars@mcourcel IMHO those are larger problems than bookmarking. We can get close enough (nearest paragraph) bookmarking in a webview. And that would be fair exchange to have working links, footnotes, endnotes, media, math content, and all the rest. But I can think of no way with current screen readers and API's that we can do autoscroll. Kindle manages it, but they're doing...something custom that I don't know anything about. And I'm just not willing to give that up.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt@dhamlinmusic@lynessence@pixelate@quanin@GamingWithEars@mcourcel Nope. Direct TTS output is available if you want that. But both NVDA and jaws present kindle ebooks in some sort of custom virtual buffer. It supports pressing enter on links, autoscroll during say all, etc.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt I've honestly been afraid to look at it too close. Kindle Cloud broke accessibility because people started using it as a way to remove Kindle DRM now that the other popular methods don't work. If I wanted too, it would be pretty easy to create a new synth driver for NVDA that uses say all as a way to extract the text from a Kindle book. Here's the current technique they're using, if you're curious: blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt Developer info for navigator object:
name: 'Dungeon Farm: A Slice of Life Base Building Fantasy Adventure'
role: DOCUMENT
processID: 47676
roleText: None
states: FOCUSABLE, DEFUNCT, FOCUSED
isFocusable: True
hasFocus: True
Python object: <NVDAObjects.Dynamic_BookPageViewPageTurnFocusIgnorerIAccessible object at 0x000001F6863568D0>
Python class mro: (<class 'NVDAObjects.Dynamic_BookPageViewPageTurnFocusIgnorerIAccessible'>, <class 'appModules.kindle.BookPageView'>, <class 'textInfos.DocumentWithPageTurns'>, <class 'appModules.kindle.PageTurnFocusIgnorer'>, <class 'NVDAObjects.IAccessible.IAccessible'>, <class 'NVDAObjects.window.Window'>, <class 'NVDAObjects.NVDAObject'>, <class 'documentBase.TextContainerObject'>, <class 'baseObject.ScriptableObject'>, <class 'baseObject.AutoPropertyObject'>, <class 'garbageHandler.TrackedObject'>, <class 'object'>)
description: None
location: RectLTWH(left=676, top=143, width=640, height=901)
value: None
TextInfo: <class 'appModules.kindle.BookPageViewTextInfo'>
appModule: AppModule(kindle, appName='kindle', processID=47676)
appModule.productName: 'Kindle'
appModule.productVersion: '2.8.0.70980'
appModule.helperLocalBindingHandle: c_void_p(2158309884096)
appModule.appArchitecture: 'x86'
windowHandle: 3804144
windowClassName: 'Qt5QWindowIcon'
windowControlID: 0
windowStyle: 1442840576
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in reply to Lynette

@lynessence@dhamlinmusic@quanin@mcourcel The thing to keep in mind is that AI is based on averaging out training data. So the primary effect of AI is going to be making things more like they are now than they've ever been. That's why the ultra-wealthy love it so much. It gives them the chance to freeze society in the current moment, and call it algorithmically correct. But then, they tried the same thing in the 1800's with various Utopian societies that had no place for women or the disabled, and in the 1900's with straight out eugenics. AI is just the same old new thing.
in reply to modulux

@modulux@jscholes Slack is yet another Electron app, it's true. And yet...Apple Music is a web app. YouTube and Spotify are web apps. I use dozens of electron apps daily, but it only really bothers me in the case of chat. So I have to assume that it's something about chat, and my personal preferences, rather than something about electron/web apps. But I can't put my finger on what, exactly. Maybe it's that IRC puts unformatted text first? All the other chat apps offer text, formatting, images, audio, reactions, emoji, videos, calls, etc. That might contribute to the feeling of...heavyness we're experiencing. Especially when compared with IRC.
in reply to Anna Rosa

@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux That's an interesting point actually. I do like Discord, Slack, Zoom, Teams, etc, much better on mobile than on Windows. Maybe because IRC isn't a mobile first experience? And the modern chat apps are, with notifications etc, so they feel more awkward/unusual to me on the desktop as a cranky 37 year old who's first internet connection was a 14.4k modem.
in reply to modulux

@modulux@jscholes@Rosalyn A lot of the time these days I find myself using my phone with a full-sized mechanical bluetooth keyboard. On mobile, because there's less screen space, interfaces tend to be a bit simpler and more task oriented, making them easier to use. As well, mobile apps these days tend to be more up to date and feature complete, and better tested for accessibility. But by the time I've connected my full-sized keyboard, and my over-ear wireless headphones, my phone is pretty much a desktop running a different operating system from my perspective; I'm not looking at the screen, after all.
in reply to Anna Rosa

@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I have the key clicks on. It's something about my fingers just hitting a flat screen, without any downward pressing motion, that throws me right off. It actually took me quite some time to get used to the Braille Lite when I first got it; I wanted to slam the keys like I would a manual Brailler. But I managed to adjust to that just fine in a few months. But an unmoving screen seems to be my limit.
in reply to Anna Rosa

@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux I find that if I lift my fingers up like that they get...out of position, though. Not right away, but after four or five words. Something about hitting the keys causes my involuntary nervous system to correct itself when a finger doesn't hit right in the center of a key, whereas that never happens on a touch screen.
in reply to Anna Rosa

@Rosalyn@jscholes@modulux As I reflect, one thing I notice is that the people I know who are best at BSI have had some kind of musical training. I wonder if something about finger positioning on a keyboard or instrument, or the different pressure forces used when playing keys, make BSI easier? I never learned any instrument at all, ever.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I've had training on two instruments, and self-learned a third. I don't get on with BSI even a little bit.

Admittedly, that doesn't mean much as a single datapoint. And mentally it probably doesn't help that I somewhat view features like BSI and Braille Access Mode as papering over the cracks. When VoiceOver can't remember the cursor or focus position in literally anything, building a braille notetaker into the device as a workaround is definitely a choice.

@Rosalyn @modulux

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Speaking on my behalf only, here are my two cents:

I’ve heard screen readers go at an astonishing number of words a second, much faster than I could read myself or process audibly.

To me, this indicates that it’s easier for a screen reader user to read larger texts than a “regular” reader, and thus can dive into longer threads in the same amount of time.

I have also noticed on Fedi that blind folks do not divide their texts into paragraphs.

While a screen reader needs no paragraphs, it is hard for (some, most?) visual readers to process a big blob of text without newlines.

As an ADHD person with information processing issues, I rarely even begin reading such walls of text.

Sighted users might also be less focused on retrieving information from text alone, but that is speculation on my part.

Perhaps it comes down to different ways of processing information, leading to various types of threads on Fedi.

#accessibility

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Marijke Luttekes

@mahryekuh These are all good points!

Also, We talk so much about alt text for blind folks, but I'm realizing that there isn't a good resource/guide on how to make my posts more accessible to sighted followers.

The fediverse is probably the largest concentration of blind folks interacting with each other online, so it would be nice to make the community and culture we've established more welcoming and easier for sighted people to jump in.

in reply to Marijke Luttekes

FWIW, screen reader (and Reddit for some reason) users not using paragraphs is also quite annoying for me as another screen reader (and Reddit for some reason) user. I'm personally trying to be better about it.

I feel like it maybe wasn't as much of a problem on Twitter, particularly with the original character limit. People got used to writing posts that way and also reading them as single chunks of text because of how the most popular accessible clients usually work.

it's when someone has 5000 characters to play with and doesn't insert a single line break that it becomes infuriating.

in reply to James Scholes

@jscholes@mahryekuh Also, blind people write to each other in a way that's quite different from how I might right to a sighted friend. For example, I would never! use an exclamation mark like that to emphasize the word "never" to a sighted friend; I'd just use italics or bold. But I do when addressing other blind folks.

The problems happen when people who spend all day every day only interacting with other blind people start internalizing the "blind writing style" and can't write any other way. It might be useful to define "blind writing style", not to criticize it, but to differentiate it from other writing styles, and give it a defined place in the world.

The characteristics I notice are:
* formatting (line breaks, paragraphs) used where a conversational pause might happen, rather than to separate ideas
* punctuation used to modify intonation, rather than for any grammatical purpose
* more conversational and stream of conscious: blind folks tend to leave in interesting digressions and asides that sighted folk would edit out to shorten the text
* different care about spelling and grammar: whereas lazy sighted people would write "u coming w/ ur gf 2morrow m8?" lazy blind people will leave in dictation errors, or spell phonetically rather than looking it up

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

In both your defenses, there are also plenty of sighted users writing big blobs of text, as the average writing and reading skills are in the ground.

(Also, Reddit is generally a disaster, so there is that.)

With screen readers, the bar for proper spelling and writing good-quality prose feels higher than for sighted readers.

If blind folks are better at spelling and use words as the good Merriam-Webster intended, then perhaps that helps any reader better understand and engage with the copy.

What I do find funny is that the characteristics Samuel describes feel close to my heart, as it's more my way of writing (and ADHD side-questing). You don't usually notice that in my texts, as I use Grammarly to refine my copy, and it usually cuts half my lines.

It is a pity that my brain stops functioning after reading a stream of text, or I would love to engage more with "blind style" threads, as you describe. But that is my disability, and not necessarily a representation of sighted reading standards.

PS. I appreciate that your response to me has paragraphs. Thank you for adding those.

in reply to Marijke Luttekes

The paragraph thing might be, in part, due to Mona, one of the more popular clients at least for the Apple platforms, seeming not able to actually accept new line commands. There is no "Enter" key on the on-display keyboard, the usual command in the Braille Screen Input mode also doesn't seem to be working. I'd love to break my huge walls of texts into smaller walls of texts. haha
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Perhaps smaller communities retain more of the culture of chat rooms. The experience is like having a real conversation, in a real room, so why would you not finish the conversation?

Meanwhile, the average Internet denizen now are just driving by an interaction, and don’t even expect a conversation to happen

You were not judging, but I’ll say it — the #blind Internet sounds better to me.

in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

If I had to guess, the UI and how people use social media is more of a slow mode (slower than live chat). Unlike Discord, in threads it is probably easier to find the thread you want using notifications. I personally find Discord's interface very cluttered (if you're in a lot of servers, channels, even with notification settings off) but social media's UI is static and doesn't change size - it's not dependent on number of channels, notifications from randoms, etc. What do you think?
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

Could one reason for this be our desktop clients? Threads may not show up particularly well on the web/mobile clients that the majority of sighted people use. Also I find it time consuming to do the 1/n thing in a thread purely on splitting the posts. Someone who is sighted can probably work out the best length for the posts just by looking at the text and making sure each post is of a similar length visually.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

These lengthy discussions, sometimes lasting several days, also took place here in the Fediverse.
That only changed with the Musk wave and the arrival of a large number of Twitter users.
Long discussions were cut short or conducted with a different attitude, one that was more black and white, followed by the blocking of the user.

In my 15 years here, I have not blocked a single user. People's attitudes have changed, unfortunately.