Made another handy #accessibility guide, this time for your science plots!

Our plots can have lots of messages in them, so try and tell the story of the main message. Here's a guideline/template and some tips on how you can describe your plots that works for me.

Hope folks find this useful!

(I am using one of our pulsar observations to demonstrate how I have used this template in the alt-text for this image)

#Science #Astrodon #ScienceCommunication #SciComm

Even though I know #HTML inside out and use it virtually every day, I'm still reading #HTMLForPeople by @bw because it's a prime example of how a good guide should be written.

1. The book is simple and easy to follow, with relevant points explained well enough even for non-coders to understand.
2. Images are clearly described for #blind readers through the use of #AltText.
3. The website is easy to navigate with a #ScreenReader.
4. There are no annoying pop-ups or ads on the website.
5. The book is entirely free of charge.

htmlforpeople.com/

HTML for People

HTML isn't only for people working in the tech field. It's for everyone. Learn how to make a website from scratch in this beginner friendly web book.

^{htmlforpeople.com}

There is a global need for us to stand up for our #RightToRide. Here is a message I just sent to Uber, which explains what we just went through tonight.

I am blind and use a white cane. My wife is also blind and is accompanied by a guide dog.
This evening, we enjoyed dinner with friends, and upon leaving the restaurant, used the Uber app to request a ride home.
The driver pulled up almost immediately, but I still sent a text to him to let him know that my wife and I are blind and that she was traveling with a guide dog. I asked the driver if he could assist us to his vehicle.
One of my friends has some useable vision, and was able to direct us to the vehicle. The driver told my friend that he wasn’t going to take us and that we had to call Uber pet. All of us explained calmly and clearly that guide dogs were not pets, that it was illegal for him to refuse to carry us.
The driver did not believe us. He kept insisting we must use Uber Pet, or Uber Assist. At this point, I explained the process as I understood it. That if he drove away in breach of the law, we would notify Uber. Uber would begin an investigation which would result in the driver being barred from the platform pending that investigation, and possible further training.
At this point, I was videoing the exchange on my phone for evidence, which I may yet still provide to the media. The driver continued to insist that he wasn’t required to transport us. I indicated that since he was breaking the law, we also had the option to call the police.
As I am tired of having my civil rights violated by Uber drivers in this way, I calmly advised the driver that I was going to sit in the vehicle while my friends called the police. I explained that while in it, I would also seek to raise assistance from someone at Uber.
At this point, he said, “OK, I’ll take you”. I didn’t feel particularly safe, but I advised my wife that we were no longer being refused a ride and that she should get into the back of the vehicle with her guide dog.
During the ride home, the driver was courteous and I think curious, but he continued to insist that he wasn’t required to take us, that he was only doing so out of sympathy for us because we are blind. I took the opportunity to educate, to explain how well trained guide dogs are. He asked what functions guide dogs performed and we explained them to him. But he kept insisting that Uber had told him that disabled people with dogs should use Uber Assist or Uber Pet. For the record, we used Uber X because a driver was nearby and it was raining heavily.
To add insult to injury, because of the altercation which took several minutes, we have been charged extra for the ordeal we endured.
Clearly, something is seriously deficient in terms of the way Uber trains and onboards its drivers. Blind people should not be made to feel like they are liars, and have to take action to prevent the vehicle from leaving the scene so the police can get involved, just to get home from a night out.
Drivers must know the law, and Uber must take responsibility for ensuring drivers are aware of the law and comply with it.
This was a deeply distressing, upsetting conclusion to what was a pleasant night. We should be able to enjoy a night out without it ending like this.

Reminder: To celebrate our 100th follower on Mastodon we are slashing our prices in half! 50% off all of our courses, just enter code 100-masto-pals on checkout! This code is Mastodon only. Valid until end of September. a11y-collective.com/courses-ov…

(But I can't keep you from sharing this code with anyone who needs a solid foundation in all things Web Accessibility.)
#a11y
#accessibility

original winamp sourcecode just dropped

github.com/WinampDesktop/winam…

🚨 NEW: Telegram now shares users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to governments when legally required as Bloomberg reports.

What app will you be switching to?

On this day, exactly twenty-three years ago, #curl was shipped bundled with macOS for the first time. It has been included in their install ever since.

That day, Mac OS X 10.1 was released, featuring curl 7.7.2

Ok, I should be sleeping right now, but what's happening is SO FUCKING CRAZY.

Long story short: WPEngine is suing Matt Mullenweg, Automattic and the WordPress foundation for slandering them. In return, Matt is suing them for trademark violation.

But, BUT, WPEngine has fired their first shot. And what a shot it is, friends:

Link to the full letter

Some extracts:

Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X,YouTube, and even on the Wordpress.org site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses

During calls on September 17th and 19th, for instance, Automattic CFO Mark Davies told a WP Engine board member that Automattic would “go to war” if WP Engine did not agree to pay its competitor Automattic a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis. Mr. Davies suggested the payment ostensibly would be for a “license” to use certain trademarks like WordPress, even though WP Engine needs no such license. WP Engine’s uses of those marks to describe its services – as all companies in this space do – are fair uses under settled trademark law and consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines. Automattic’s CFO insisted that WP Engine provide its response to this demand immediately and later, on the day of the keynote, followed up with an email reiterating a claimed need for WP Engine to concede to the demands “before Matt makes his WCUS keynote at 3:45 p.m. PDT today.”

In parallel and throughout September 19 and 20, Mr. Mullenweg embarked on a series of harassing text messages and calls to WP Engine’s board member and also its CEO, threatening that if WP Engine did not agree to pay up prior to the start of Mr. Mullenweg’s livestreamed keynote address at 3:45pm on September 20, he would go “nuclear” on WP Engine, including by smearing its name, disparaging its directors and corporate officers, and banning WP Engine from WordPress community events.

They... they have text message captures. In the pdf. Matt Mullenweg was trying to extort them ... by text messages. They seem to have the entire thing in the writting.

In the final minutes leading up to his keynote address, Mr. Mullenweg sent one last missive: a photo of the WordCamp audience waiting to hear his speech, with the message that he could shift gears and turn his talk into “just a Q&A” if WP Engine agreed to pay up

They finish requesting Automattic to "preserve, and not destroy, any and all documents or information in their possession, custody, or control that may be relevant to any dispute between WP Engine and Automattic". They are going to war, big time.

All this crap is just because they refuse to pay his protection money. And the guy has been stupid enough to put everything in writting.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

They are going to toast him alive

Here is my unofficial guide to the HTML `<audio>` element: heydonworks.com/article/the-au…

I have now covered all the "a" elements. "A!" as Fonzie would say.

What app are you using to stay in touch with friends and family? Feel free to repost it so we can reach bigger audience.

If your app isn't in the pool, just add it as response and other can fav it :)

• iMessage (10%, 116 votes)
• Whatsapp (26%, 300 votes)
• Signal (51%, 589 votes)
• Telegram (9%, 110 votes)
• Facebook Messenger (3%, 38 votes)

A little #PIpeWire tip I learned today. If you want to use OBS Studio with a Google Meet session in Firefox. Start OBS Studio first, if not Firefox will set a format for the camera that OBS Studio do not support and you get a black box in OBS Studio. The other way is fine.

Wim is working on a proper solution, adding video conversion to PipeWire, but for now the ordering do matter.

Here's my new project, a keyboard for one-handed typing. Tens of thousands Ukrainians have injured arms and hands during the war, and my goal is to make an inexpensive keyboard for anyone to assemble at home.

github.com/clackups/qmk_usersp…

#accessibility #onehandtyping #disability #UkraineWar #ukraine #veterans

NVDA 2024.3, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version. Full information & download links available from: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-3/

Highlights:
- Notification of add-on updates
- Unicode normalisation options
- Help Tech Activator Pro braille display support
- Mouse wheel scrolling commands
- Many bug fixes & updates for Windows 11, browsers, LibLouis, eSpeak-NG, Unicode CLDR
#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #A11y

Sensitive content Click to open/close

Great Braille Game! I learned about this game from Holly Anderson of the Maccessibility Podcast.
Brailliance is a Braille version of the popular Wordle game with a little twist.
You are given the total number of dots in the word, and you have to guess what the word is by figuring out the letters in the word with each of your guesses.
For example. The word has a total of 10 dots.
So your first guess is tale, t, a, l, e.
It tells you that 3 of those letters are in the word, and one is not.
t, a, and l, are in the word, and the letter e is not.
Please note: those letters are part of the final word, but they do not have to be in that order.
So lets see, the letters t, a, and l, equal a total of 8 dots, so you only have 2 dots left to make the final word.
And you only have 4 letters left with 2 dots, b, c, i, and k.
So now it is just a process of elimination
For this word, the correct other letter was k. So the final word was talk, t, a, l, k.
The tough part is figuring out words that have a specific number of dots, but this gets easier the more you play.
Plus, to help you out, the total number of dots for each letter can be found on the letters of the on-screen keyboard.
So how good do you know your Braille? Ready to take the challenge?
Just like Wordle, there is a new puzzle every day, as well as some other puzzle packs that you can play on the side if you like.
The game is totally free, and does have a cost to get rid of ads if you want.
I actually find this game more fun and challenging as Wordle! So I highly recommend giving it a try.
Here is the app store link.
apps.apple.com/us/app/braillia…

#Game #Accessible #Wordle #Braille #Maccessibility #Blind
@dhsholly

‎Brailliance - Learn Braille

‎Brailliance is a puzzle game where you guess the word by adding up braille dots. This game has been carefully crafted to be playable by everyone, and it includes multiple accessibility features for people with blindness and other disabilities.

^{App Store}

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to take another stab at implementing #Passbook (#pkpass) support in #Catima.

It's going okay but I'm having trouble hunting down test cases, especially test cases with localized strings.

Do you have any .pkpass file you're willing to share with me? If so, please send them to me and tell me if you're okay with me including them in Catima unit tests. Feel free to censor things before sending (but please tell me what you censored).

Thanks!

Question for those who own the Bible Courier: what TTS engine does it use? I have to admit that I'm intrigued by this device but I haven't yet seen it. Its price of $100 is just high enough that I'm not quite sure I want to order it but I am thinking about it ..

biblecourier.org/

About - BibleCourier Audio Bible for the Blind - (651)-447-2195

BibleCourier is an electronic pocket Bible designed especially for someone who is blind or visually impaired. BibleCourier weighs about 4 ounces including batteries and is about the size of a pocket New Testament (4 by 2 by .75 inches).

^{Lutheran Braille Evangelism}