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glitchsoc - Link to source
I absolutely hate touch screens! I love my current phone, a Pixel 9A. It has good battery, good speakers, a flat back, etc. But I am so fucking inefficient on a touch screen, no matter if its iOS or android. Want me to google something? Okay, let me look around for the web browser, double tap on it, explore by touch until I find the address bar which might or might not have been moved or altered in a recent app update, double tap there, type way slower than on a physical keyboard, hit search, switch my rotor/reading control to headings, and very slowly start reading through results. Touch screens are remarklably efficient for people with functioning eyeballs, and I've seen people who can text on a phone almost as fast as I can type on a computer. But for me, a metal slab with a glass screen and way more computing power than I would've ever thought possible, no matter how fucking cool it is that we can drop that in our pockets like its nothing, will never ever be as efficient as win+r, browsername, enter, start typing, enter, press h, boom first result. This is not helped by the mainstream screen readers on both mobile operating systems having agrivating bugs. On Android scrolling locks up your screen reader while it refreshes the screen, because we're apparently still living in 2005, and VO has just started getting worse and worse with every iteration. I see the downsides to this approach, but I'm really starting to think the best solution for mobile devices for blind people is custom hardware/software. There are plenty of examples of getting this wrong, but I think that's mostly due to people not eating their own dog food as opposed to it being an impossible task. Paperback for Android has shown me that you can make as polished of Android software as you want, but there are still no physical buttons on the front of your phone. For a truly efficient reading and usability experience, I'd personally want both blind-centric software and hardware with physical buttons. That's not at all realistic, though. Welcome to being blind in a world made for sighted people.
This entry was edited (yesterday, 10:39 PM)

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in reply to Quin

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Peter Vágner

@Quin I know there are endless debates on blindness specific apps / devices and I was one of those who used to criticize them all.

In recent two years I have slowly managed to adopt a blindness specific app for android that I find game changing.
It's called corvus, it can be tested and bought at corvuskit.com/en .
It's being developed by a non-profit here in slovakia, so it's primary localization is slovak, but english, czech, german, polish and italian localizations are also included. There is even a way to build your own machine generated localization to your language with an ability to correct it and make available to other users.

It has two modes of operation. The primary environment is self-voicing one featuring touch screen controls that are optimized for performing by blind people. There is no need to touch directly, the interface is similar to old nokia phones but instead of buttons we have set of well defined gestures such as flicks, taps, taps combined with volume button presses and similar.

In this environment there are over 50 apps we are calling modules such as calls, messages, call log, profiles, email client, file manager, notes app, text reader, music player, podcasts player / rss reader, internet radio catalog powered by radio-browser.info, language translator, weather forecasts, cash reader, clocks and calendars that integrates with all your device calendars, light detector, flash light, camera based magnifier, OCR, calculator, voice recorder, openstreetmap powered GPS app, some little games and more.

It features multiple keyboards such as qwerty keyboard that can be used with lift to type, braille keyboard powered by recent version of liblouis (contracted braille not yet supported), classic 3X4 alpha numeric keyboard you may know from nokia phones and others. System's default dictation can be started quickly including custom punctuation handling.

It can be used with a lot of braille displays those supporting HID standard directly, other models through brltty.

It's very quick to operate and bridges the gap between blindness specific and main stream quite well as you can get it installed on all the modern android phones.

It has embedded instance of eSpeak TTS easily available to rescue when the android TTS stops working for some reason.

It's an app that is in development more than 10 years already.

I know it can still be improved even further, it has made some compromises and for those of us who have invested a bit of time and learning curve it really became an indispensable every day tool.

The user guide is available in english so if you don't know it already, feel free to look at it.

Ah yes, it's not open-source but despite possibly having great powers it does not yet do evil user tracking.

@Quin
in reply to Quin

mastodon - Link to source

Nova🐧✨

been thinking about how to do good navigation in XR where you have more intangibility than a touchscreen, given I'm making a display server... so far I've landed on making interactable things have their own aura audibly and tactile wise, and my friends have made a really clever controller that lets you read braille with 1 mechanism but you can move it along the lines and it travels under your fingers as if on a page, so using that or TTS for reading labels + proprioception and spatial audio should make the interface usable... thoughts?
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i made a new game called js crossword where you have to solve it by literally writing javascript code that eval()'s into the correct values!

check it out if you're into ctfs or wanna challenge your javascript skills

lyra.horse/fun/jscrossword/ ❤

JS Crossword

a crossword where the clue = eval(answer)
lyra.horse

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glitchsoc - Link to source

PolyWolf

this is really cool!! couple thoughts:

  1. The clues don't seem to be in the normal crossword order, which is very confusing when cross-referencing with the list. I have not solved all the way so maybe this means something, but a first guess of "clues to solve first" is very wrong. Re-numbering them might be nice if there is no meaning.
  2. The current indicator for "which way will the next character input" is a little jank when there is no clue in the currently selected direction; only the pale-yellow off-axis one shows up and there is no main-axis highlight. I can see an argument for keeping it this way, or always doing a bright yellow main-axis highlight, using the highlights in the clue box to know what's actually under consideration.
  3. On Safari, the prefilled characters are "gray on light grey" (low contrast) while on Firefox they are "black on grey" (higher contrast). Not sure if this is intentional but mostly a nit

overall i am finding challenging but doable, working from filled-in definitely helps thanks

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mastodon - Link to source

Small happy work update: As of last week, I have been appointed to the European Commission’s expert group on the European Accessibility Act, and am happy to represent the European Blind Union there.

This is the group where Member States, disability organisations, industry and the commission discuss how the European Accessibility Act should actually work in practice.
I’m glad to join with the hope of less abstract compliance talk, more practical accessibility that people can actually use. So any systemic issues regarding the European Accessibility act, shoot them at me. #Accessibility #a11y @EUCommission

#a11y #Accessibility @European Commission
This entry was edited (today, 7:01 AM)

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iceshrimp.net - Link to source
Longshot: does anyone have the old sounds from the Accessible Chat application programmed by Robert Bets in VB6 for Windows 98/ME/XP? I'm doing work on Adispeak again, and I'd love to use his join/part/private message sounds. Unfortunately his website and all of his games are gone. Not even mentioned on Google! Boosts welcome. #blind#a11y#accessibility#screenreader
#a11y #Accessibility #blind #screenreader

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

I have found out recently that it's possible to add call recording to modern android versions by using shizuku with some 3rd party apps. The one I like the most is Call recorder by skvalex from callrecorder.skvalex.com/get . Tested on android 16.

However this is not yet tested, I'm also thinking it might be doable to repackage the OTA image by adding BCR (basic call recorder) as a system app using github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroo…

This sounds kind of scary as I don't want to break security of my @GrapheneOS install. But I'd enjoy having BCR as a system app.

GitHub - chenxiaolong/avbroot: Tool for manipulating and re-signing Android A/B OTAs

Tool for manipulating and re-signing Android A/B OTAs - chenxiaolong/avbroot
GitHub
@GrapheneOS
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Well, let's hope I did everything right... github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/… and github.com/nvaccess/nvda/pull/…

LiveText: announce large bursts via a pumped generator by ethindp · Pull Request #20177 · nvaccess/nvda

Link to issue number: Fixes #6291. Partially addresses #15786, #15850, #11002, and #14189. All of these describe the same general class of "NVDA stops responding during console flood" pro...
GitHub

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Regarding development tools and data, it's interesting to me that some of us have spent years with certain things being inaccessible or difficult for us to access; e.g. charts, cluttered reports with weird and wonderfully inaccessible web interfaces, other complex visual representations of important data. But now, all of a sudden, people are making APIs and tools (often command line tools) to retrieve that data with the primary goal of making it more digestible by LLMs, yet those tools even by themselves just make the information so much more accessible. I feel kinda conflicted about this. On one hand, it's great that it's more accessible to me now. On the other hand, it's weird to feel that our struggles never really mattered enough for anyone to solve them, but now that we have LLMs, we suddenly have this urgent need to make information more easily accessible and digestible and folks are willing to put work into that.
in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

Before COVID, many employers treated remote work as unreasonable or impractical, especially when disabled employees requested it as an accommodation. Then COVID proved that remote work was possible across many jobs. Now, as workplaces push people back into offices, it is becoming harder again for disabled workers to access the same accommodation despite the evidence.
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Since my last $DAYJOB was canceled 12/2025, I'm working full-time at IzzyOnDroid – without any pay. Living on prior savings, I'm now slowly running out of funds. So if you like our service & support, and want it to stay at the current level (and above): any help is appreciated! This can be donations (see: android.izzysoft.de/help?topic… – everyone $/€ 1 per month, and I'm covered) – or part-time remote freelance jobs (apart from my IoD experience, I'm an Oracle DBA).

:boost_love: #FollowerPower

#followerpower

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mastodon - Link to source

Izzy

As I was asked for "order of preference":

* OpenCollective for maximum transparency also on expenses
* SEPA for ease of access (and no fees, so the full amount reaches us)
* Liberapay (3rd only as withdrawal requires Paypal or Stripe, which most of us refuse to use)
* Anything else if none of those 3 are fitting you

But also consider your preferences. We can SHIFT (oops) things where needed 😉

And thanks to all who already chipped in, or plan to 😍 🤗

in reply to Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

mastodon - Link to source

Izzy

@mro You can "rewind" such surprises easily within the first 6 weeks (tell the bank to reject that and get your money back). Works reliably, to my experience. But I can only speak for Germany here, and even there I haven't "tested" this will each and every bank, of course.

To be on the safe side: ask your bank how it handles it. But I'm pretty sure it does it as described. The one drawing the money must also prove you permitted them to, btw, and otherwise runs into trouble when found out.

@Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻
in reply to Izzy

mastodon - Link to source

François 🇺🇦

why don't you put a WERO QR code on the website ?
* no fee for anybody
* instant transfert
* no infrastructure needed
WERO is available in France, Germany and Belgium at the moment, and as of september in Luxembourg and Austria.
As of 2027 The Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Portugal will have migrated their own system (iDEAL, Bizum, MBWAY, etc) to be compatible with WERO. Soon all EU.

Check it out. It's the simplest way to transfer money.

wero-wallet.eu/

Wero - European payment solution

Experience fast and secure digital payments with Wero’s wallet, enabling you to send and receive money between bank accounts in under 10 seconds.
Wero
in reply to François 🇺🇦

mastodon - Link to source

Izzy

@FrankauLux And how do you use WERO without Google or Apple? It requires a proprietary app on your mobile device – and you only can get this app in the two major proprietary stores, via their proprietary app, unfortunately.

So much about the "sovereign" EU alternative to PayPal & Co. Unfortunately, not sovereign…

@François 🇺🇦
in reply to Izzy

mastodon - Link to source

François 🇺🇦

You can use wero either with the wero app or with your bank application.
I agree that this is not ideal at the moment, but considering the speed at which wera is changing, I'm not sure the situation will be the same.
It is sovereign in the sense that the money no longer transit via the US but uses the SEPA backbone.
I thought this was about giving people a simple way to fund you, didn't realize it was about sovereignty.

Feel free not to use it, I'm not getting any cut.

in reply to François 🇺🇦

mastodon - Link to source

Izzy

@FrankauLux The bank apps you get where? 🙈 And apologies if it came over wrongly. No offense meant, I was only explaining its difficulties. But yes, I will check with our bank how it looks on the "receiving end". After all, we are not telling YOU what to use. If you are fine with it: no complaints! But we need to see if we can, technically, accept it. If we can, why not? So: thanks for the suggestion!
@François 🇺🇦
in reply to François 🇺🇦

mastodon - Link to source

Izzy

@FrankauLux As promised, I've checked with our bank. WERO is not _yet_ available there (we will be informed as soon as it is, they're currently working on the integration). To my knowledge, for _receiving_ money, we won't need any app (that's only needed if you want to _pay_ with WERO) – the service person on the phone confirmed that. No ETA yet, though…

So thanks again for the suggestion! We'll definitely check that as soon as our bank has it available.

@François 🇺🇦
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mastodon - Link to source

I just learned of the passing of Aaron Kaminski, a former colleague from the GW Micro days and one of the developers of the Window-Eyes screen reader. A brilliant, but humble man. Rest in peace, friend.

odonnellfhome.com/obituaries/a…

Aaron T Kaminski - View Obituary & Service Information

Share Memories and Support the Family.
Aaron T Kaminski (Aaron T Kaminski Obituary)

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mastodon - Link to source
It never occured to me to press keys on my MIDI keyboard while the “Shortcut help“ in OSARA (Reaper) is turned on. What a nice surprise!
This entry was edited (Saturday, May 16, 2026, 5:13 AM)

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

@Paweł Masarczyk and friends from @metalab have their stand at #Agora 2026 in #Brno czech republic today. I've been notified to that by @ondrosik and recorded the presentation.

Huge thanks guys for everything you are doing for us.

s.ondrosik.sk/f/91bd70f6f36e4b…

Agora 2026 - Pawel Masarczyk - Hackerspaces - inkluzivní laboratoře inovativních přístupných technologií.mp3

Sdílet odkaz pro Agora 2026 - Pawel Masarczyk - Hackerspaces - inkluzivní laboratoře inovativních přístupných technologií.mp3.
Seafile
#brno #agora @metalab @Paweł Masarczyk @ondrosik

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mastodon - Link to source
Well, surprising absolutely no one. Horizon 6 did absolutely nothing for accessibility (for the totally blind) aside from port 5's features over. We're expected tu autodrive, but the map once again isn't narrated, leaving players who don't mind autodrive screwed as you can't rely on Anna 100 percent of the time. I picture having the same exact navigation experiences like in 5. Anna leading you back to the same shit if you're nearby, among other bullshit. I now have OCR available to me this time with a PC that can run the game, but that's not the point here. I've got friends being optimistic like "maybe they'll optimize it in a patch". They never did it in 5, I doubt they wil for 6 either. I guess my little rallying cry is useless anyway, industry accessibility and jobs in general seem to be dwindling by the year. Source: youtube.com/watch?v=rO2TA6XtCu…

Forza Horizon 6 Is Almost the Most Accessible Racing Game (Almost.)

Forza Horizon 6 brings some awesome accessibility upgrades—especially high contrast mode—and it’s a clear step up from Horizon 5. But without blind drive ass...
Steve Saylor (YouTube)

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mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

@zersiax @pitermach Not to get on a high horse here (too late) but this is why I always stream with no monitor. I have one and I have vision that I can use that helps me play the game, but not everyone does. If I claim something is blind playable, that means it is playable *without vision.* It's a totally different set of considerations from what you'd call legally blind, which he's certainly entitled to call himself for marketting purposes.
@Pitermach @Florian
in reply to Josh

glitchsoc - Link to source

Jay Pellis

That is why I better grab mortal kombat 1, the last of us 1 and 2, and forza motorsport before before they disappear or something crazy happens. After many years, I finally have a framework 13 AMD 370 that can play them. I don't want to buy a ps5 controller just for the last of games but it looks like I have to if I want the full haptics experience.
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glitchsoc - Link to source

Just discovered:
There is a native linux #Immich client:
flathub.org/en/apps/dev.nicx.m…

It's primary feature is photo upload, but it has also a library viewer. Sadly the library view layout is not ready for phones. Still a little missing piece to get closer to Linux phone future.

Install Mimick on Linux | Flathub

Back up and browse your photos
Flathub
#immich

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glitchsoc - Link to source
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Dnes od 22:30 budu hostkou pořadu Noční Mikrofórum na ČRo Dvojce. Tak můžete ladit. 😊 #budeintimco
#budeintimco

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mastodon - Link to source

So I’ve just had a quick play with this and yes, it works. Essentially BitLocker has a backdoor. github.com/Nightmare-Eclipse/Y…

Mitigation = BitLocker PIN and BIOS password lock.

GitHub - Nightmare-Eclipse/YellowKey: YellowKey Bitlocker Bypass Vulnerability

YellowKey Bitlocker Bypass Vulnerability. Contribute to Nightmare-Eclipse/YellowKey development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub

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mastodon - Link to source
QuickMail, A keyboard-first WPF desktop email client for Windows. Multi-account IMAP/SMTP with a unified inbox, conversation threading, and an HTML reading pane.
By @kellylford
github.com/kellylford/QuickMai…
#accessibility #blind

GitHub - kellylford/QuickMail: A screen reader friendly email client for IMAP servers.

A screen reader friendly email client for IMAP servers. - kellylford/QuickMail
GitHub
#Accessibility #blind
This entry was edited (Wednesday, May 13, 2026, 10:39 AM)

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mastodon - Link to source
Remember. No ARIA is better than bad ARIA. Role is a promise. If you use aria-haspopup for a menu button, also need to implement keyboard navigation left / right arrow, down / up arrow, space bar and enter key to activate and focus management. But if you use it for a navigation menu, an aria-expanded is sufficient with correct list nesting levels.
w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/m…
#a11y #web #accessibility

Menu Button Pattern

Accessibility resources free online from the international standards organization: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI))
#a11y #Accessibility #web
This entry was edited (Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 7:54 AM)

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mastodon - Link to source
Do any English-speaking blind people use the RHVoice TTS engine? I vaguely remember hearing bad things about it, or at least that it wasn't that great. But it's one of the few mature open-source TTS engines, and it's not eSpeak, so I guess some might prefer it for that reason alone.

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gotosocial - Link to source
For anyone using Fenrir, if you're on the version that introduced the -x flag, I just pushed a fix for a bug that was causing vim to crash everything. I went ahead and merged this to master, although there is a rewrite of tab completion code in there as well. This was serious enough where I figured it needed to be in the master branch. If you pull this change and tab completion is worse than usual about reading, I am working on it. Also, if you are using the -x code to run Fenrir in something like xterm, please do not use the fenrir+control+s shortcut to save your changes to Fenrir. I need to work on a separate save system for when Fenrir runs as a user and not as root. If you do save, your screen and keyboard drivers may be over written and this could cause Fenrir to lock up your computer on reboot. I just had to rescue mine because of this little mistake lol. Since most people are likely using the tagged version, I don't think this stuff will affect very many people, but it's important enough I figured I better mention it in case someone is testing all the new stuff.

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mastodon - Link to source
I've been a little quiet about this for the last week or two but I'm currently in a place where I'm relatively certain I can actually pull it off.
Last year, the #Ableton Live 12 software became ... pretty accessible. First-party #accessibility, particularly in a tool like this, is practically unheard of, so that made a bunch of Waves. (pun somewhat intended).
One of the big gaps that existed, and still exists, is working with so-called Max4Live devices, as well as VST plugins that have a large amount of parameters. Ableton doesn't currently expose these properly to screen readers, and hasn't for over a year now. I'm sure they'll get around to it one day, but I think I can get there faster.
One of my current Patreon projects is a tool I'm calling Enableton, which fixes both of these issues as well as I can fix them.
If this'd be of use to you, have a look over at patreon.com/zersiax at this and other projects I'm working on :)

Patreon

Patreon is empowering a new generation of creators. Support and engage with artists and creators as they live out their passions!
Patreon
#Accessibility #ableton

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mastodon - Link to source

This.

I grew up on forums like XDA developers and started posting there when I was like 11. It taught me English, taught me what software freedom is, got me to write my first few lines of code, share software with friends and like-minded people online, and made me who I am today.

We must fight to keep the communities that made us who we are. There is still a way forward.

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glitchsoc - Link to source
I've spent the past two months or so building out and perfecting a small web-based incremental game, inspired by the old mobile game Crafting Kingdom, but more accessible and modern. It's under a hundred KB of JavaScript, but includes a fully complete game including 7 buildings and almost 100 quests. Please feel free to give any feedback, it took me a lot of balancing and tweaking to get it to this point and it's very possible and even quite likely there's still weird/broken stuff. To play, go to trypsynth.github.io/crafter

Crafter

trypsynth.github.io
This entry was edited (Saturday, May 9, 2026, 8:56 PM)
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glitchsoc - Link to source
Guided Frame in the camera app of modern Pixel phones is genuinly a life changer for using my phone camera as a blind person. I've used it to take good pictures of my cats to send to the family group chat, used it to open a QR code to activate my new credit card, and at least a couple more examples that are escaping my early Saturday morning brain. There's also a feature where you can swipe down with two fingers to get a scene description. Have yet to test scene descriptions offline, but guided frame at least seems to be all on-device.

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mastodon - Link to source
Meet Rabbit, the REAPER Accessibility Bootstrap & Bundle Installation Tool, your one and only tool to keep REAPER and all its extensions up to date.
Rabbit does make sure to update REAPER, OSARA, SWS, ReaPack, ReaKontrol, JAWS Scripts and FFMpeg on Windows and Mac, no matter if ARM or x64. It comes as a single executable that you can run and forget whenever you want. For nerds it also contains a CLI application that can be used to automate mass installations etc.
github.com/Timtam/rabbit/relea…

Release v0.1.0 · Timtam/rabbit

Initial public release. RABBIT is a REAPER accessibility bootstrap and bundle installer with a screen-reader-friendly GUI wizard and a matching CLI, packaged as a single self-contained executable p...
GitHub
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pleroma - Link to source

While You Were Using SyncThing, I Studied the Blade. :ninja: 🥷

and I saved a bunch of RAM in the process

blog.feld.me/posts/2026/05/uni…

Unison In Anger

I use the Keepass family of software for my password management and on my iPhone I can use the wonderful KeePassium which supports syncing the password database over WebDAV for self-hosting your
Makefile.feld

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in reply to feld

pleroma - Link to source

Shin'ya I.Y. Minazuki (水無月 八雲 イズル しんや)

as far as hilarious exercises on making file transfers work at all in my case, for a time I had this god awful thing in Java

that said, おつかれさま

GitHub - tfg13/LanXchange: Configuration-free, cross-platform file transfers for your local network

Configuration-free, cross-platform file transfers for your local network - tfg13/LanXchange
GitHub
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We’ve been busy building and releasing but it’s high time to share some major news: @sovtechfund is investing nearly €500K into #chatmail

This 18-month commitment supports chatmail maintainers keeping the core infrastructure secure and evolving, on top of which several apps are built (but not STF funded):

#DeltaChat
@arcanechat
@deltatouch
Parla on Gnome

A huge thank you to the Sovereign Tech Fund for investing in open, secure and decentralized communication!

sovereign.tech/tech/chatmail

chatmail | Sovereign Tech Agency

Sovereign Tech Agency
#deltachat #chatmail @Sovereign Tech Agency @DeltaTouch
This entry was edited (Saturday, May 2, 2026, 1:51 PM)

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mastodon - Link to source

forgetpassword

link to the thread

Sensitive content

@nanas
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mastodon - Link to source

Mastodon.Radio is a Mastodon server for radio enthusiasts including the Amateur (Ham) Radio community, anyone interested in Shortwave Listening (SWL), etc. Come join us and talk radio, technology, and more!

:Fediverse: mastodon.radio

You can find out more at mastodon.radio/about or contact the admin account at @M0YNG

#FeaturedServer #Radio #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #Shortwave #SWL #Mastodon #Fediverse #FreeFediverse

Mastodon.Radio

Mastodon.Radio is a space for the Amateur (Ham) Radio community, anyone interested in Shortwave Listening (SWL), etc. Come join us and talk radio, technology, and more!
Mastodon hosted on mastodon.radio
#fediverse #Mastodon #radio #hamradio #amateurradio #freefediverse #featuredserver #swl #shortwave @Christopher M0YNG

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A thread elsewhere on here got me reflecting on the fact that this year, I will have been online for 40 years.
My first device was a 300/1200 baud modem, complete with the need to learn the Hayes command set.
Connecting successfully to my first bulletin board system, the NZ Micro BBS run by Selwyn Arrow, felt like my computer had just broken free and was making its way in the big wide world. It took a while for me to get there, because I dialed the number repeatedly, only to find it busy. Finally, I got through, I heard the ringing sound, then the two modems negotiating the connection, and then wow! I actually got intelligible speech from my Artic 263-based speech synthesizer, and a log-in prompt from the Fido BBS software.
It was one of those moments where I knew I’d just done something life-changing.
It was generally a very collegial atmosphere back then of enthusiasts who wouldn’t hesitate to help one another out, and a lot of those early friendships moved to the “real world”.
Of course, me being me, it wasn’t long before I had to try starting one of these bulletin board things myself. People were so helpful in terms of assisting me to figure it out because I had no clue what I was doing.
I thought that since no one called us at home after 9:30 PM, I’d just use the family phone line, I was living at home with Mum and Dad, still in high school. So I set up the BBS to operate from 9:30 PM to 6 AM. That was a big mistake, because people would use their terminal software to cycle through the bulletin boards in their directory, and those directories typically didn’t have a field for the times the board was available. So we started getting calls at all hours of the day from modems.
Lesson learned, I got my own phone line pretty quick.
When someone explained to me how to use a service called PACNet to connect to CompuServe in the USA, I almost bankrupted myself as a penniless student and my girlfriend nearly gave up on me. Thankfully she didn’t, or my kids wouldn’t be here now. That was the first time I had been able to read an article from a newspaper independently, and I dreamed of a time when newspapers would be more abundant and affordable this way.
And, even more important, at just the right time, it connected me with the National Federation of the Blind, gave me hope, and established friendships I still value.
That early era was experimental, very basic and plenty of fun. We have come such an incredibly long way and it’s been a privilege to have participated in it all. And if you’ve been reading my gibberish for the full 40 years, well, you deserve a cookie, as in, a real actual delicious carbful cookie. Thank you.

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glitchsoc - Link to source

Jayson Smith

I first went online in I think it was the Spring of 1990 or so when we got our first modem. We had an Apple IIgs at the time, and we were running ProTerm by MicroTalk (Larry Skutchan's software company). The first BBS I joined was one run by our local public library using the Fido BBS software. I soon found other BBS's, but never tried running my own. Of course my dad joined GEnie and CompuServe.
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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source
Michaela dlha, Slovak accessibility consultant, created a nice project - Github release search. You just put the name of the project and it shows you latest release files. Now available in english too: technologiebezzraku.sk/github-… @Paweł Masarczyk @Peter Vágner
@Peter Vágner @Paweł Masarczyk
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glitchsoc - Link to source

Now that Piper TTS has made it to iOS and is relatively stable on newer devices, I'd like to create a Community hub of sorts, where people can upload voices they've created for it. To go along with this, I'd like to release some kind of training utility to make the process a little less scary for people who don't code regularly. Is this something you would be interested in?

My goal with this is to release more high-quality voices than what's currently available, many of the issues people see with Piper simply come down to the data used for training not being up to a professional standard. Honestly I think the main issue will be data collection, I have absolutely no interest in scraping from the web or using unlicensed data to train like many of these other open source TTS projects.

#TTS #OpenSource #Piper #MachineLearning

#opensource #machinelearning #tts #piper

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Dockerized TopSpeed server stuff.

github.com/sweetdaddyrizz/dock…

GitHub - SweetDaddyRizz/dockerspeed: Containerized TopSpeed.Server publisher for GHCR

Containerized TopSpeed.Server publisher for GHCR. Contribute to SweetDaddyRizz/dockerspeed development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub

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gotosocial - Link to source
Ladies and gentlemen... After a long long time, and a hell of a lot of effort, Fenrir almost has a working X driver. Most things are working, and now it's just the finishing touches on keyboard handling to get everything working right. This means you can have a terminal with actual Fenrir bindings, not pty bindings, and it works just fine. This may mean just dedicating a workspace to a terminal and switching to it instead of going in and out of the console. There will be a new release as soon as I can verify this is stable and add in all the edge cases I have forgotten about along the way.

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mastodon - Link to source
Accessibility essentials every front-end developer should know
martijnhols.nl/blog/accessibil…
#webdevelopment #webdev #a11y

Accessibility essentials every front-end developer should know by Martijn Hols

Essential accessibility practices for front-end developers, including semantic HTML, alt texts, ARIA, and keyboard navigation tips to build inclusive components.
Martijn Hols
#a11y #webdev #webdevelopment

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Just a quick word for people updating to NVDA 2026.1 and who use mine and @KaraLG84's sounds:
If you want to have your sounds back *before* you reboot into the new copy of NVDA, make sure you've got a backup of the waves2 folder to-hand, as you'll need to paste it into Program Files\nvda just before the restart.
If you don't, running nsounds.bat won't work.
Unlike prior installs of 2025.x which kept the waves2 build in the folder, 2026.1 creates the folder fresh in the new location.
Easy thing to fix, but something I just noticed.
@Kara Goldfinch

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“Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking. The file is named weights.bin. It lives in OptGuideOnDeviceModel. It is the weights for Gemini Nano, #Google's on-device #LLM. #Chrome did not ask. Chrome does not surface it. If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it.”

#privacy #sustainability #consent #values

thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome…

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it.
Alexander Hanff (That Privacy Guy!)
#google #privacy #sustainability #chrome #consent #llm #values

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