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hello everyone. the first version of whatSnap, the WhatsApp client made by @Aman and I is here.
It’s built from the start for screen reader and keyboard users. The interface is Rust with wx dragon.
however, There’s no browser or Node.js like Most other accessible clients which run WhatsApp Web in a hidden browser, which eats RAM and breaks whenever WhatsApp changes its web app.
The installer is about 13 MB, and the app uses well under 100 MB of RAM.
It’s free and open source!
Note: this is a third party client. This meens that firstly, Meta doesn't officially support this, meening that in the rairest of rair cases you mite get banned, though if whatsapp has a problem, at least with a linked device, it just logs you out these days. This app trys to follow all the things official whatsapp does, like it doesn't show spammy signels to meta, nor ddoes it try to give any features that officially would require an hack. still, you have been warned. something has happend recently, which I'm currently investigateing. therefore, download and code links have been removed.
thanks to at @amir and @Jonathan for testing this before the release!
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✋ Have you seen vphone-cli? It’s a comprehensive toolset to download, prepare and run virtual iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, HomePods, and more, using the full OS image, on your Apple Silicon Mac. Not just a simulator but a full virtual machine, with native speed and graphics rendering, and jailbreak-level root access and OS introspection. VMs are exposed to Device Hub and Xcode natively, and you can build, run and debug. It just added support for iPhone Duo.
(Yes really)
Run a virtual iPhone on an Apple Silicon Mac. Contribute to Lakr233/vphone-cli development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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Load the LookInside debug server into the iOS apps you choose on rootless and roothide jailbreaks. - LookInsideApp/LookInside-TweakGitHub
I ported Final Cut Pro to my iPhone Duo VM just to see what would happen. It seems like some parts of the UI already know to adapt for horizontal safe area insets (👀)
I think FCP, now that it has support for compact size classes, is ripe for bringing to iPhone, and seeing it here has convinced me that it’s gotta be on somebody’s roadmap already
HomeView is tvOS 27.2 with a DeviceFamily of 8. This is how the tvOS build of Broadcasts launches natively, unmodified (i.e. not the actual CarPlay SDK developers are given)
AirPlaying video to HomeView in wide and square layouts, with subtitles
(You also get speed and audio track controls)
Ported the SwiftUI watchOS version of Broadcasts to the HomeView as a native app, using Apple’s PebbleUI additions. This probably isn’t too far off what you can do with CarPlay, though I could have chosen to port the iOS version instead to make a much more-complex app (but that’s a lot bigger and would require more changes). HomeView is a real mashup of tvOS, watchOS, and iOS, at every level
OK then how far are we from having “I wanna do annoying feature X in another way I prefer” and putting that in your pocket, on your own hardware that’s cheaper and/or comes in the size and colour you prefer …
Brings my mind back to the old debate of “is Apple a hardware or software company?” (back when tech journalists insisted that Apple decide and declare an identity … all very binary gender vibes!)
So any paradigm shift like this project, just points at the hardware side again. But it’s always leaning back & forth back to software then back to hardware, whenever a good idea calls for it. The flexibility is the strength.
OK just an obvious question: What’s the reason people aren’t walking around with this software, in their pocket, with their hardware of choice?
I mean I think I know the answer but is it only temporarily a useless idea … ?
For those of us who, like me, only have access to Mac OS but want to mess with all the shiny new games that are being released/modded: I've just released Crosstalk, a little hack for Crossover/Wine that pretends to be NVDA just enough to catch speech sent to it via the controller client/RPC/UIA messages and forward it to a synthesizer on Mac OS.
NVDA stand-in for CrossOver/Wine bottles that speaks through macOS voices - guilevi/crosstalkGitHub
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The Platform-agnostic Reader Interface for Speech and Messages: a new universal text-to-speech and screen reader abstraction library - ethindp/prismGitHub
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Did you fix the horrible UI of mumble?
Can I now just click someones name and get a voice call?
Do I still have to fiddle with mumbles microphone sensitivity?
looks really neat. The getting started docs on this are well-written. May give it a spin sometime. github.com/TurnOver-For-Mac/tu…
A screen reader for the Mac that works alongside VoiceOver. Free and open source. - TurnOver-For-Mac/turnoverGitHub
OK, I may be late to the scene, but as a blind Mac user, I am finding the TurnOver screen reader to be a refreshing alternative to VoiceOver. Anyone else try it?
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GrapheneOS TalkBack version 23 released:
github.com/GrapheneOS/TalkBack…
See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release and a link to the full changelog.
Forum discussion thread:
discuss.grapheneos.org/d/43100…
#GrapheneOS #privacy #security
GrapheneOS discussion forumGrapheneOS Discussion Forum
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One issue has been found but turned out to be an upstream Android Launcher bug which we've fixed for the next OS release:
github.com/GrapheneOS/platform…
We're ready to move our new major release of TalkBack to Stable once we get more testing feedback in #testing on Matrix or Discord.
GrapheneOS launcher app. Contribute to GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_Launcher3 development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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Sensitive content
I've been playing with Harmony, a promising ActivityPub-federated Discord-like lately, which is to say, you can start a Discord-server-like on an instance of one of these, as well as join other Discord-server-likes on other instances from your account. Federation of Discord-server-likes between instances happens over ActivityPub, and non-chat updates like regular posts and server announcements federate out to Mastodon and other more traditional servers so you can subscribe to a Discord-server-like's announcements and updates from Mastodon without having to create an account and explicitly join Harmony.
When I say this thing looks like Discord, I mean right down to the accessibility, which shares a lot of characteristics and works mostly well but has a few rough edges. I filed an issue where I did something a little differently than I normally do--I pointed Claude at the accessibility problems I experienced, had it ground my explicitly-stated recommendations in code, had it draft a concise document which I reviewed, and also had it build a GreaseMonkey user script with my recommendations implemented. This let me not only check whether I was full of shit in thinking I knew how to make things work better, but also gave me a working experience I could validate and advocate for.
Anyhow, if you're curious, the issue includes that user script so you can play with it yourself, though the script only works on the flagship instance right now. I'm excited about this because it looks easy to self-host for anyone who can dedicate a Linux VM, and it seems to tick all the right boxes for a project like this (I.e. voice/video are handled via LiveKit when available.) I wish Matrix could have been this, but Harmony could be its replacement for anyone wanting to self-host something like a Discord server that wasn't a closed silo.
Servers, voice, video, threads and bots. Open source, federated over ActivityPub, free in your browser, yours to self-host.Harmony
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@Nolan Darilek It really looks very promising. I have never used discord so most likelly I will wait a bit if more people I know will recognize using this as being a good idea and I'll happily join them. For self-hosting it needs its own dedicated machine so I am not ready for that at the moment.
There is fantastic group of people running free open-source and ethical services helping individuals keeping their data under their own control almost here, in the czech republic. My guess is that they might like this too. @Oscloud mony.lol
I especially like this part… mastodon.rfc1925.org/@ondrej/1…
I can die in peace now, I have interview in The Atlantic ;).Yeah, yeah, the title is exaggerating, but Charlie was great and I really liked the interview.
Direct link: theatlantic.com/technology/202…
cc: @ondrej
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-"But we have a support contract with Red Hat already. We use their Linux."
true story
I have... some disagreements, but I understand where this come from and I think we all benefit anyway from that line.
But... I think this is a line of thinking and modelling that has limits. And they are a bit nasty.
@hysteretic @christopherkunz yes. agpl is the solution, this discussion is always circular and kinda pointless. MIT even started specifically as a way to mislead away from GPL at the time by owning GPL's birthplace and confusing everyone.
there's a reason corporate (e.g. gihub) offers a dropdown with 200 MIT like licenses, and misnames agpl.
@christopherkunz in theory, sure, but the FOSS licenses themselves allow for it.
Some more than others.
Side note: And this ties to vibe coding llms trained on FOSS as well.
We have always had the problem of non-payment in FOSS from companies that depend on their use. It's been on my mind since the 90s and impacted what I worked on.
In a world where wolves find openings, we need better armed sheep. 🤔
Maybe we should coin a new term for this, like we have a term for "technical debt".
In technical debt:
- Companies save money by not investing enough into maintaining their systems.
- The technical debt doesn't show up on a balance sheet, therefore everything looks okay to the management.
- But eventually the debt comes due and you have to upgrade and that costs time/money. The more you "saved", the more you have to pay for the upgrade.
Here the debt is not necessarily technical (you could be running the latest version), but one step further detached:
- Companies "save" money by not supporting the people who maintain their open source components.
- This doesn't show up on a balance sheet, so everything looks okay to the management.
- But eventually the maintainers lose interest or refuse to do free work for big tech companies without payment/support or have other things to do or whatever. And then you have to pay for a solution like
- having someone else (inside your org) maintaining the solution, or
- migrating to a different software
- or you just keep running poorly maintained or unmaintained software, at which time this debt converts into (normal) technical debt.
I don't have a good name for this type of debt, yet. Maybe "indirect technical debt"? "Open Source debt"? "Maintainer drain debt"? Any ideas?
@oots I have been speculating on how to tie technical debt into project costs lately.
The trouble is people who make decisions may only think in the short term. Technical debt sometimes shows up years later, when all the people involved may have switched.
So when everyone is clutching at straws for something to go into production by a certain date to meet a business need, technical debt gets smuggled in.
That impacts the economy in some systems, I am pretty sure. Still gestating it.
@knowprose
I guess part of the problem is that tech debt is hard to measure/quantify. You borrowed one million from the bank? That's a clear number. You made that weird hack during implementation? How much time/cost would it be to fix it? How much time will someone spend debugging something that should be working but doesn't?
Also, of course no project manager has incentives to report any tech debt they have left behind. "We successfully completed this project two month overdue" is just much better for your career than "it's working now (two months after deadline), but we still have a lot of technical debt that we had to take on to deliver it quickly".
@oots yeah.
It's something that I have only really seen as a DoD subcontractor, where charge numbers for specific projects were tracked. But even that information, sometimes a decade later, was not taken seriously by manglement that is in sisyphean churn mode.
It's been weird being a software archeologist at various companies seeing the same things.
The business models are the problem. Short term, cyclic gains over the quarters to keep share prices up is a real incentive for companies
Yes, open source maintainers should absolutely be taken care of, but, respectfully, appealing to the better nature of corporations is misguided.
Corporations destroying open source maintainers is intentional and calculated. Corporations cycle between buying up competition and destroying it, and directly destroying it with a thousand tactics. And they all do this more or less in lockstep with each other. Starving and overworking maintainers then buying them up cheap then dumping them again is calculated and intentional.
The main reason corporations hire top talent isn't to create something but to remove the competition. Humans are viewed exactly the same way that competitive small technology companies are -- something to be neutralized. If customers and IP can be looted at the same time, so much the better, and open source maintainers often can be conned in to giving that up. Then when that person has been completely neutralized, they're released back in to the wild again.
The largest tech companies are good at *business*, not tech. They had tech at one point, but basically lost it, but have evolved in to a kind of billion pound vampire.
We need a new model.
@scrottie this is true.
I was asked at one company over a decade ago to rewrite some FOSS code for a particular use.
This is generally how I knew when vc was involved and a company is being sold: they pad their IP for a better price.
I looked at the code and there was no way to make the code better. None. It was the result of over a decade of code evolution. I said as much. Anything I wrote good enough would be an obvious copy.
I said as much and left the company.
@knowprose @scrottie for a short period of time I worked for a huge, wealthy company where we were told to use open source because it was free. We ran into issues with it that were incredibly easy to fix. I suggested we contribute our fixes and was told we weren’t allowed.
I did not last particularly long there and that job was probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back with regard to my opinion on capitalism.
@shadows @scrottie
1/ Well, I did something similar, though I probably broke a contract here or there by tossing things to other contributors from home.
Because they might be useful. Some were.
A grey area. My bosses knew what I was doing. Legal did not. And there are enough companies in my past that it has no real legal bearing to disclose that.
I did force some issues regarding financially donating toward some FOSS projects, but that was rare because of situationality.
@shadows @scrottie 2/ had i been able to pay my bills independently, or make enough money to tend my parents before they died, I might have gone full FOSS development. But it wasn't just me I had to look out for.
For a time, I envied people who could just do FOSS development. We all want to work on cool new stuff.
But most of my software engineering career was spent decreasing technical debt as a mercenary coder. I could not be perfect, but I could be good.
//
I liked the part about the bus. 🙃
As someone who has dealt with emergency stuff, that's the thread of sanity I cling to in those moments.
Oh. And by the way. Thank you. 🙃
You don't do "open source" to get something from it, you do it to give something to everyone.
The issue doesn't lie in the "open source" itself, it lies with the companies that steal workforces.
Your issue... is capitalism.
Get rid of it and there's no "open source problem" anymore.
Google Play review times keep getting longer and longer. I've been waiting three weeks for Google to release the latest version of #Conversations_im.
It's not a security-critical release, but what if we ever need to publish something urgently?
Luckily, with reproducible builds, you can now seamlessly switch to the F-Droid version. F-Droid will automatically pick the correct version, and you will just be asked to confirm that F-Droid is now responsible for maintaining updates.
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Luckily, with reproducible builds, you can now seamlessly switch to the F-Droid version. F-Droid will automatically pick the correct version, and you will just be asked to confirm that F-Droid is now responsible for maintaining updates.
That is surprising, especially when normally you have to either:
- temporarily patch pm to ignore signature stuff whatsoever with something lucky pather and after changing source, revert the changes (only possible on rooted phones);
- delete PS version and install FD version, which normally means losing all data unless backed up.
An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app's compiled code and resources, allowing Google Play to generate optimized APKs for each device configuration, leading to smaller, more efficient downloads.Android Developers
they simply show what will happen once they fully controle app update like they want.
a preview sort of.
You can release your app yourself instantaneously without anyone's permission to the new Zapstore app store.
Zapstore . dev
Built around the Nostr protocol. It's pretty awesome. I use it to install almost all of my apps.
The Nostr community is building an ecosystem at crazy speed right now.
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"make the interface easier to navigate using assistive technologies." WTF? Did you people sell out to AI?
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@sesivany None publicly availabla as far as I know. And yes, I did google it quite a lot.
TL;DR: You need access to Garmin Connect and Garmin stopped giving out these to the developers (me :) )
Everything you need to know about the new Garmin Connect API from a developer and personal standpoint.Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker)
@sesivany Well, you will still receive solution from version 4.0.0 once it's approved by Google.
Will start working on 4.1? 4.0.1? Doesn't matter 😂 Thanks for the link!
@dode Your model seems to be challenge. Current version in the build might be limited by 1 hour of recording, because your watch has very low available memory.
So, as a software tester, I am very curious what happens, if you do exercise longer than one hour :)
(Should you accept that challenge of course.)
@paveljanicek we have own app to download connect garmin with fitpub ;-D
(I am sorry, I have shared it previously with other account)
The app is amazfish.
Think it might be time to try this:
Technical writing, accessibility, mobile app development, Linux, sysadmin, desktop development, (Python/Swift/rust/C). Experience in team leading, accessibility testing, assistive technology training.
If you are or know someone looking for any of these skills, let me know.
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TalkBack-first Android RSS and podcast client, port of BlindRSS - serrebidev/BlindRSS-AndroidGitHub
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Big announcement, my hacker crew got Linux running on the iPhone 11 ✨ 🐧 🎉
We built a hardware tool we call the PWNie which got us a foothold running code on the A13. After months of grinding we've VERY close to a Linux patch to bring A13 support to mainline Linux!
Massive props to Jose at @SourceParts for months of slogging and grinding on this!
Be sure to follow and subscribe on Patreon as we work on bringing the PWNie to life!
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We need to raise a few thousand dollars to get PWNies to market and finish testing our Linux patches.
As few as 50 patrons will make iPhone 11 Linux a reality.
Please consider supporting the team today! 👇🏿
Get more from Parts Hacker on Patreon. Moving the needle to advance the state of the art of technology. Support Parts Hacker and get exclusive access to their work.Patreon
Now you may have heard others got Linux running on the iPhone 11 BUUUUUT that approach uses iBoot.
The approach developed by Jose @SourceParts however FULLY reverse engineered the A13 boot process to run our own boot loader from start to finish.
We have NO iBoot or any other Apple code in our boot process and because of that we side step possible mitigations(technical and legal) Apple could do to prevent other approaches like this one who rely fully on iBoot.
On october 9, my Zoom F3 field recorder started talking. Since then it learned a lot more things to talk about, and the patcher is finally available for everyone.
#accessibility #a11y #blind #FieldRecording #ZoomF3… (1/6)
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Screens that let you set a value such as the highpass filter, the input/line out delay, the contrast for the lcd, the headphone alert volume–how loud the f3 beeps at you to tell you things in the headphones, the line out level, now speak. And probably stuff I forget to mention given the list is super extensive. In seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, following the F3’s own language setting.
It’s ready for everyone! The no-technical-knowledge-needed way to get it is finally here.
Yes, I didn't want to wait anymore and decided to go ahead with this, even though the questions I asked the cummunity still have time to be answered.
The patcher is a single web page that runs entirely in your browser; nothing gets uploaded: xogium.github.io/talking-f3/
You can even save a local copy of it, so that you have an entirely offline way to run it. (3/6)
How it works: download Zoom’s official F3SYSTEM.BIN 2.20–there's a download link straight on the patcher's web page leading to it, give it either as a zip file or as the binary directly to the patcher, pick your languages, voice, pitch, speed (up to 1000 words per minute thanks to libsonic) and sound quality, then install the result with the F3’s normal SD card update.
It’s safe to try: the boot area is never touched, so you can always go back by reinstalling Zoom’s original file the same way. Every build is checked before you can save it.
My F3 guide for blind users, written back in 2022 and now updated for the talking F3, is here: https://xogium.github.io/talking-f3/Zoom_menu.html… (4/6)
Everything is open source (MIT, the patcher page as a whole GPL because of eSpeak NG): the voice engine, the tools, and docs on how it works and how the firmware was decompiled. For those of you who answered the poll wanting this on other recorders, there’s a step-by-step write-up of the whole method, from reading the firmware to testing in an emulator: github.com/xogium/talking-f3
The reason why I do not wish to take on this work myself for other recorders is that simply put, I don't own the hardware. I couldn’t distribute a firmware patcher for hardware I do not own, with the hope that things would not break, permanently or otherwise.
I'm putting up this work in the hope other people might find it useful. (5/6)
Contribute to xogium/talking-f3 development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Thanks to Jookia for mapping every menu with me back in 2022, to tkna for reviewing the Japanese, to the friends who asked for faster speech, to @FreakyFwoof for helping to improve the patcher and for being the second actual user of a modded firmware, to @lexa_desj for being the third. And of course to Claude, who did most of the code reading with me. Voices by eSpeak NG, compressed with Opus.
Not made or supported by Zoom, just a blind user who wanted its recorder to talk. (6/6)
Here’s a sneak peak of the first build of Parla for Android! Pure #gtk4 running in Android, i’m quite surprised how well it works! Good job #gnome people! I wish to see all the gnome apps ported like this! I will be working more on usability for black rectangles for Parla!
Parla 0.10.0 is out! And now you don’t need to change your system language to change the app’s one! Contributions to get more translations are welcome! #deltachat #chatmailDownload available for Linux, MacOS, Windows (+ experimental native #HaikuOS rewrite)
👉trufae.github.io/parla/Parla — a little app for big conversations
Native GNOME messaging. A light footprint. Encrypted conversations over email. Meet Parla.trufae.github.io
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Native macOS client for NVDA Remote Access: control a Windows PC running NVDA from your Mac, built for VoiceOver users. - math65/nvdaremote-macGitHub
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New post: Outside the Scope of Our Support
Google Disability Support's final answer on the touch exploration bug: broken accessibility features are in scope, but my report wasn't. They sent me to a forum. The issue I filed myself on the public tracker reached an engineer in 102 minutes.
And if a blind user who isn't a developer had reported it? They'd get a cache to clear and a reboot. They should never have to file the bug themselves.
fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/out…
#Accessibility #A11y #Android #TalkBack #ScreenReader #Blind #Google
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Recently I was interviewed by @amadeus about my work on @mixxx, the project in general, and the larger #linuxaudio ecosystem. Enjoy!
linuxaudio.dev/developers-spot…
LAD aims to make Linux more attractive as a platform for computer-based music production.linuxaudio.dev
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I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.
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That's terrible - what an awful thing to have happened to you, and what a stupid set of decisions from Microsoft.
Do you mind if I ask about how your computer decided to delete your local copies? I would like to be able to usefully advise members of my family who use Windows.
I'm mainly interested in how it was deciding to switch files over to being online only - could you tell if it was a disk space issue, or just files over a certain age, or was there no apparent rhyme or reason?
@planettimmy I wish I knew! What I know is:
- Windows OOBE has you sign in with your MS account which signs you into the associated preinstalled services
- The default shortcut location for documents was in OneDrive, not my local folder.
- At some point I did a decleaning of my Windows (probably Tron or the AI debloater tool or something like that) which removed my OneDrive.
- At some point, my files had been set to online only. I do not know why. Maybe it is an MS default, maybe it was StorageSense. I have no recollection.
- Six months (or whenever) later, I get emails from Microsoft, telling me I will lose access to the files in my onedrive storage if I don't sign in. I ignore them, because I never "used" that storage anyway and thought I still had the local copies.
- Some time later I go to one of these files, which is still listed as present on my hard drive, with file properties in tact, only to discover that it no longer opens. I sign into OneDrive and my storage is at 0% (now 95% because the first thing it did was start re-uploading my current documents folder a second time.)
@torf Microsoft deletes inactive accounts after some time (6 months IIRC), while paid accounts are wiped 30 days after you stop paying.
This thing about OneDrive stopping keeping local copies bit one of my clients, too, and she lost a bunch of stuff when her company switched 365 tenants in a really stupid way.
My OneDrive appears to have lost all of my files, including files that have been stored for over 8 years. My OneDrive storage had been over the storage limit for a long time, but I never intentionally deleted these files.learn.microsoft.com
@torf There's a whole thread about it on the MS forums, they're definitely aware and will do nothing, because they are demons in human form learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answ…
Edit: corrected link, the first was a related but actually separate method for Microsoft to delete your shit for no reason.
My OneDrive appears to have lost all of my files, including files that have been stored for over 8 years. My OneDrive storage had been over the storage limit for a long time, but I never intentionally deleted these files.learn.microsoft.com
@jackf723 @librarysquirrel @altlazybear And iCloud / iPhone did this precise thing to me on iOS last year.
I had to go in afterwards and explicitly unset all the "store in iCloud" bullshit because they started doing it without telling me. I lost over two years of symptom logs that I had explicitly stored on my phone when I set them up. But the OS update modified the settings without telling me, and when I disconnected iCloud (under the mistaken impression I wasn't using it), they vanished.
They all suck.
@altlazybear They are not. Mac OS has other problems, but turning this sort of thing on by default is not one of them. It doesn't even force you to use an Apple ID if I am not mistaken, so if you don't use stuff from App Store you can easily set up a computer with an offline account.
For now, at least, that is. Apple is showing an interest in catching up to Microsoft in these matters it seems.
can microsoft be sued for this?
JOINT LAWSUIT JOINT LAWSUIT JOINT LAWSUIT JOINT LAWSUIT JOINT LAWSUIT
sometimes the right answer is just to say "man, that sucks"
Man, that sucks. I'm sorry you're going through this.
Ugh. Horrible.
I thought Office refusing to auto-save (which it's done forever) unless it's saving into a OneDrive folder was bad enough.
This is worse.
I don't have any should-haves, but your story makes me grateful that I never trusted OneDrive.
I knew a guy whose files were spontaneously deleted by OneDrive *while he was a programmer working for Microsoft*.
That sucks majorly, I'm so sorry.
Also I'm surprised to find out accessibility is so lacking on linux. You shouldn't have to rely on microsoft for that.
@penrose Also anyone trying to change things for the better has to deal with ignorant shit like this on the daily dragonscave.space/@Stealthy/11…
I'm going to get straight to the point with this one.
I am in a room named #a11y:gnome.org. It's on Matrix, you can access it yourself, anyone can due to it's public nature.
During the latest conversation, Matthias Clasen is quoted as saying: "one thing to keep in mind is that the w3c stuff is just somebody writing down some made-up rules"This is after a Ubuntu developer requested an improvement to gtk, highlighting some inconsistencies with combo boxes and other things. The conversation is far too long to post here, but you can easily read it yourself.
Regardless of the conversation, or agreements or disagreements, this is an utterly unacceptable thing to say, particularly if this individual is endorsed by Gnome.
It's unacceptable for three important reasons: It completely invalidates the accessibility work that is being conducted to improve the Gnome desktop (discarding the hard work of other devs who contribute their efforts towards these supposedly nonsensical guidelines).It is extremely disrespectful to blind and visually impaired people and others with disabilities who, at the end of the day, just want to use open source software like anyone else. I have definitely witnessed disagreements regarding the w3c and respect that it can't be implemented to the letter. I have never ever before heard anyone dismiss it entirely, as if it were nothing more than a spec of dirt.
Finally, it makes constructive conversation extremely difficult, how is someone supposed to work with a developer on accessibility, when they possess such an unconstructive attitude?
I feel obligated to call this out, even though I do worry that it may cast doubt on other Gnome developers, but no, too much is too much.
I would like to thank those who are striving to make Gnome and it's applications more accessible and those who choose collaboration over ignorance.I'd appreciate if people could make an effort to keep replies constructive, I am doing this as advocacy and challenging what I believe to be a harmful attitude. Linux accessibility won't improve while people like this are in control of it's components.
Edit: I have just determined through research that Matthias is actually a manager of Red Hat's desktop team, making his statement even more damaging.
Edit2:
A second maintainer has doubled down on ignoring the w3c, and when arguments were pitched, both maintainers simply stopped responding to the conversation.
If you know of places or people who can help with advocacy efforts, please do share this post with them.
The advancement of Linux accessibility is dependent on this being resolved.@gnome
@redhat
#redhat
#gnome
#linux
#a11y
#accessibility
this is horrible. It is odd to see people's suggestions as especially they should understand this exact frustration when systems do things behind one's back or even generally when things happen behind your back that you cannot observe but affect you in a bad way.
A reason I feel uncomfortable using a smartphone is because there is a lot happening on such a device, but usually just a single thing is visible and it feels like a lack of insight and thus control.
Without eyesight it would seem extremely hard to reach a level of comfort, trusting computing in general. You are very brave that you reached this point. What happened now is betrayal.
Many people using free software were once betrayed by proprietary software, so I would expect empathy especially from that corner.
All the best wishes!! Everybody deserves computing they have full control over and that will not betray them. And damn that this is not available for all today!
Condolences. I lost two large assignments to an update induced bitlocker error last year, the day before I left the country for a month. Swapping off Microsoft afterwards was a PITA, but I have had zero major issues since - Although my needs are simple and I acknowledge this isn't for everyone.
edit: I have now seen more of the thread. I hope alternatives improve their accessibility soon.
this is nightmarish, I'm so sorry.
I'm also now going to double check what the "Onedrive" default save location is actually doing on my only Win 11 PC, as it's not even got an MS account associated with it, and yet...
I can't imagine a more user hostile and opaque workflow.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive.
Question: Does this "save directly to cloud, do not make local copy" behavior extend to files that are not stored in the OneDrive\Documents folder? Because I don't ever save things in the default location, and I'd be upset if they did that nonsense to files in other directories as well.
Microsoft fucked me out of all my files way back in the late 90's. When you installed Windows 2000, you could use NTFS or FAT. It was your choice. Microsoft never mentioned that the NTFS filesystem at that point was a buggy piece of shit and would easily become corrupted.
Well, whaddya know? The filesystem shit the bed and I lost everything. Tons of my files; art projects, my first programs, things I had written. Irreplaceable stuff, gone forever.
And, sure, I should have backed stuff up. But I was also a teen and didn't really know that stuff yet, nor did I have a lot of cash kicking around for spare drives.
It may be recoverable but why take the risk?
Check that Bitlocker is set how you would want it.
@simonzerafa BitLocker is enabled by default when installing Windows 10 and newer if the computer has a working TPM (this basically means every Windows 11 machine), however it'll remain in suspended state (meaning no key is needed to decrypt) until you log in to a Microsoft account (or AD, but that's not important here). Once you log in to Microsoft account (this applies to free accounts), your recovery key is backed up there and BitLocker is enabled, but thanks to TPM, the drive gets unlocked automatically, so you don't notice anything – until the moment Microsoft's updates break this automatic decryption, and you're welcomed with the recovery key entry at bootup (which only happened twice this year).
On Windows Home this is also the only official way to enable BitLocker, however you can do it manually by using the manage-bde.exe command-line utility (which you can also use to display your recovery key – run manage-bde -protectors -get C: from elevated command prompt to get the recovery key, it's the long number under Password).
The ironic thing is that Microsoft surely still has a copy of everything you've lost. They just won't admit it anymore.
I'm going to help a friend get rid of OneDrive soon, and because of what you said I'm going to be extra careful to make sure that everything is backed up on her system. So at least your misfortune has done someone a little good. If that's any comfort.
Oh, man, I am so sorry.
This is the absolute horror, and I have no words to say other than... I feel your pain.
*offers internet hugs*
I have been fighting to keep my files on my PC every few months because of the stupid updates keep pushing the cloud. I don't want any Microsofts bullshit cloud services to save anything there, yet it keeps flipping that to be the default against my will. Which makes my files turn into a mess, which is a problem.
It is driving me insane, and I haven't even paid the PC fully yet! I only want to save to my memory sticks and PC. OneDrive etc. can go kick rocks all I care. (=_=)
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I'm going to get straight to the point with this one.
I am in a room named #a11y:gnome.org. It's on Matrix, you can access it yourself, anyone can due to it's public nature.
During the latest conversation, Matthias Clasen is quoted as saying: "one thing to keep in mind is that the w3c stuff is just somebody writing down some made-up rules"
This is after a Ubuntu developer requested an improvement to gtk, highlighting some inconsistencies with combo boxes and other things. The conversation is far too long to post here, but you can easily read it yourself.
Regardless of the conversation, or agreements or disagreements, this is an utterly unacceptable thing to say, particularly if this individual is endorsed by Gnome.
It's unacceptable for three important reasons: It completely invalidates the accessibility work that is being conducted to improve the Gnome desktop (discarding the hard work of other devs who contribute their efforts towards these supposedly nonsensical guidelines).
It is extremely disrespectful to blind and visually impaired people and others with disabilities who, at the end of the day, just want to use open source software like anyone else. I have definitely witnessed disagreements regarding the w3c and respect that it can't be implemented to the letter. I have never ever before heard anyone dismiss it entirely, as if it were nothing more than a spec of dirt.
Finally, it makes constructive conversation extremely difficult, how is someone supposed to work with a developer on accessibility, when they possess such an unconstructive attitude?
I feel obligated to call this out, even though I do worry that it may cast doubt on other Gnome developers, but no, too much is too much.
I would like to thank those who are striving to make Gnome and it's applications more accessible and those who choose collaboration over ignorance.
I'd appreciate if people could make an effort to keep replies constructive, I am doing this as advocacy and challenging what I believe to be a harmful attitude. Linux accessibility won't improve while people like this are in control of it's components.
Edit: I have just determined through research that Matthias is actually a manager of Red Hat's desktop team, making his statement even more damaging.
Edit2:
A second maintainer has doubled down on ignoring the w3c, and when arguments were pitched, both maintainers simply stopped responding to the conversation.
If you know of places or people who can help with advocacy efforts, please do share this post with them.
The advancement of Linux accessibility is dependent on this being resolved.
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This also ignores that w3c guidelines have been tested with and by the accessibility community and refined accordingly over time.
If you want to do a11y well, the w3c guidelines are a just starting point: they will get you there for basic UI and you should then layer your own rules on top for special cases and advanced controls. Most importantly, you need to test, test, test with disabled people.
Listen to the earth-shattering sounds of an active volcano erupting.Teetering on the edge of Mount Yasur, I start to question the chain of decision that lead...George Vlad (YouTube)
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For more than a decade, the federal government published Playboy in braille. Congress defunded it. Blind readers sued—and won.Playboy Editorial (Playboy)
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Alright everyone, today’s the day!!!
I’m excited to announce the Flipper Access project, and the first official release of Sonar, my screenreader for Flipper Zero which, as far as I know, makes this device accessible to blind users for the first time ever.
Sonar is built on a customized fork of the Momentum firmware for maximum flexibility. The included install script provides an easy way of copying all that's needed to get this working onto a Flipper, and it is possible to upgrade from the stock firmware to Sonar without any sighted help.
You’ll need a microSD card for the voice pack, a USB cable, and a computer with Python 3.10 or newer.
The install script has been tested extensively on macOS. It should work on Windows and Linux too, but hasn’t been tried there yet, so I’d love to hear how it goes for you. The project readme contains a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to get going, and hopefully it should be a smooth process for all of you wanting to dive in.
Having said that, however, do note that this is highly experimental work and we're at the very beginning of this project. There's hopefully a long and happy road up ahead for Sonar, but there will inevitably be bugs and issues along the way. When that happens, please always feel free to reach out on here, open a GitHub issue, or submit a pull request of your own - I'd truly love to see this become a community effort.
Last but most importantly, have fun! The Flipper Zero is a super nifty, versatile and fun little gadget with lots of tricks up its sleeve, most of which I haven't even had time to explore due to being so focused on getting the screenreader into a shippable state.
If you do decide to pick up one of these now that it can be used accessibly, I'd love to know how you like the experience, any ideas for improvement, cool things you've done with it, and so on.
Sonar is and will always be free. If you’d like to support it, there are links to Patreon and Ko-fi in the readme.
Enjoy!
github.com/robin24/flipper-acc…
#Accessibility #Screenreader #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #IndieDev #FlipperZero
Sonar: a talking Flipper Zero. Momentum firmware with a built-in screen reader for blind users, a recorded voice, install tools and documentation. - robin24/flipper-accessGitHub
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I've put together a simple web page with #mangrovereviews stats for Czechia. It has a leaderboard. @stepan, @bogo, @aikencz, the game is on! 😁
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The first release of My Photo Library Described is out, for Mac and Windows. Open your photo library, arrow through your photos, and hear each one described by the AI built into your computer: Apple Intelligence on the Mac, Windows AI on Copilot+ PCs. Nothing is uploaded. Free and open source.
theideaplace.net/introducing-m…
#Accessibility #ScreenReader #VoiceOver #JAWS #NVDA #AltText #AppleIntelligence #CopilotPlus
Since I started working on my Image Description Toolkit (IDT) back around January of 2025, I’ve had a goal: open my photo library on Windows or the Mac and have descriptions read automaticall…The Idea Place
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My Zoom F3 talks now.
As a blind field recordist, I've modded the F3's firmware so it speaks: every menu item as you scroll, which option is selected, popups like "SD Card Full!", confirmation dialogs, and even the date and time setup. No sighted help needed.
Would you want a step-by-step guide, with no technical knowledge needed, to put this on your own F3?
#Accessibility #Blind #ZoomF3 #FieldRecording
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What it does today, on F3 firmware 2.20:
- Speaks the highlighted menu item as you scroll, and the menu name when you enter or leave one
- Says "selected" on the current value (sample rate, file format, language…)
- Reads popups: SD Card Full!, Low Battery!, No SD Card!…
- Reads Execute/Cancel dialogs: format, delete, exit USB audio, factory reset…
- Talks you through Set Date/Time, even after a flat battery
Recording and monitoring are untouched.
How it works: a small add-on patched into the F3's own firmware file, installed with Zoom's normal SD card updater. No opening the recorder, no special hardware.
If anything goes wrong, hold Play/Pause while powering on and reinstall Zoom's stock firmware.
The plan is a simple patcher: you give it Zoom's official 2.20 file and it adds the voice. Not affiliated with Zoom.
Planned next:
- Voice volume following the volume buttons
- More screens: file list, file info, SD card tests, timecode
- All the F3's languages in one firmware (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese), thanks to a voice bank about 10 times smaller
- The patcher, plus an accessible step-by-step guide
Boosts welcome, especially toward blind F3 owners!
Hi, es gibt ja Projekte für alle möglichen Retro-Chips, die heute nicht mehr erhältlich sind... CPUs, SIDs, PLAs etc.VzEkC e. V.
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Private relay server for NVDA Remote Access. Contribute to thyhellcat/nrps development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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@Chris Eilers The original one is apparently being rewritten in go but yours looks slick and simple to setup. I'll install it on weekend.
Thanks for sharing!
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Find out which program owns a global hotkey on Windows - thyhellcat/hkdetectGitHub
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How to build a custom Debian installer USB that starts an SSH server on boot, so you can install without a monitor or keyboard.Carter Temm
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ssi263-speech 0.8 is out!
The biggest release yet of the emulated SSI-263 (Votrax SC-02) speech chip, running the real units' own firmware.
- One NVDA add-on for every unit: the Braille Lite 2000, the Slovak Braille 'n Speak 2000, the Speak-Out, the Accent SA, the Accent-mini and, new, the Apple II's Mockingboard. It carries over your 0.7 settings and offers to remove the old add-ons.
- The Braille Lite 2000 now speaks 19 languages: 17 new voices, from Arabic and Hungarian to Russian and Turkish, thanks to an anonymous donation of Blazie's language updates. Screen readers switch to them by language.
- The chip sounds closer to the real one: fuller vowels, grittier fricatives, and clean BASIC tones.
- The emulator: every language in its Firmware menu, programs and files loaded straight into flash, Blazie's own firmware update, and a native BT Speak and BT Braille package.
- Android imports every voice at once from an NVDA add-on, and the Apple app is in TestFlight for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Thank you to Astra, the donors, and everyone who tested, reported and listened.
NVDA add-on:
github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speec…
SAPI 5 voices:
github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speec…
Blazie emulator for Windows:
github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speec…
Android app:
github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speec…
testflight.apple.com/join/cJYh…
Please find Linux, SSInger and more on the release page:
github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speec…
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The BrailleDB database brailledb.seeinghands.org/ contains features and specifications of, to our knowledge, every Braille display, notetaker, Braille keyboard, and similar device available for purchase today. We also include many devices which have been announced but can’t be purchased yet and some historical devices that may still appear in the used device market. With BrailleDB, you can find a full list of features for any device, see a side-by-side comparison between any set of devices, and filter devices by the features you are looking for. Because there are a lot of things to consider about any access technology, we also have a full glossary of terms explaining what each feature is and why you might consider them important in making your decision.
Devices can be filtered by many attributes and as few or as many as you desire. Whether you want to see all multiline displays, all 40-cell displays that are available for purchase today with the ability to edit text files, or all displays shorter than 20 centimeters in length that have onboard translation for Spanish and Japanese, BrailleDB can do that.
What’s coming next?
This initial version of the database is only the beginning. We have a few ideas for things to do. The used Braille display market is strong, given the high price of new equipment, so there is a benefit in adding more historical display information here. We already have 12 discontinued devices listed, but there are far more that we should consider adding.
Mostly, though, what’s next is to see what we never thought of. As you use the database, if there’s anything you think would be useful, use the contact link on the top of any page to let us know. The same goes for anything that doesn’t work right or where something could be made easier to use. We know a database can never answer all the questions that come up when choosing between options, but if you have one that would fit, we are going to try to find a way that it can.
Get involved
Would you like to help improve this system with us? We would appreciate anyone interested in joining our team of volunteers. You don’t need any particular skills, just an interest in what we’re doing. If you’re interested in testing new features and letting us know where we’ve gotten it wrong, describing devices as we add them to the database, discussing how to implement new suggested features, or any idea you have for how you could help, we would be delighted to welcome you to the team. If this sounds interesting, fill out this quick volunteer survey, s.seeinghands.org/brailledbvol… and we’ll soon be in touch to discuss what you would like to do.
seeinghands.org/index.php/2026…
#Braille #Blind
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ondrosik
in reply to ondrosik • •