I've often tried to make that sort of argument, good a11y means good modular code, and it means good capacity to automate. It's something devs should like.
I've been an email hosting customer with #MythicBeasts (@beasts) for just under a day and a half, and I'm honestly very impressed. I opted for their email only plan since I already have webspace somewhere else. The main website and control pannel UI are very accessible to #blind #ScreenReader users like myself, with sections clearly structured with headings, pretty much no unlabelled links, buttons or other elements, and no annoying ads, pop-ups or anything else that could hijack a screen reader or lag a browser to pieces. I contacted them about an issue I'm having yesterday and the initial reply, *human* reply that is, took just over 10 minutes. The issue is still ongoing as of now, but I'm confident that it will be fixed soon; I did contact them at the backside of the working day after all. Not bad at all for the monthly price of just under a fiver! Also, bonus points for being a 2000s ISP, having started in the year 2000.
I don't really know, I don't have any red flags, I suppose. I use gandi for my hosting and their mail box pricing has shot up, so I may well move. pity there's no way of moving host like you'd just send a text for a PAC on your mobile
Last week, I started an Ableton Move track. Today, I finally finished it.
This is a thing I call "Fly on the Wall." Basically, I just wanted an excuse to use one of the Sliced Loops presets, which are in the latest Move beta, along with one of the new autofilters in combination with a second filter and LFO to make one of the included single-sample E-piano patches sound less boring.
I just automated the amount that the LFO affected the autofilter, which in that instance was a high pass with a sine wave LFO that essentially created a non-linear panning effect.
FYI for TeamTalk server administrators who run Debian on an X86_64 machine, and may be considering upgrading to Debian 13: The ubuntu24-x86_64 package runs on Debian 13. You'll need the ubuntu22-x86_64 package for Debian 12. And BearWare, just because your opinion is that Ubuntu is the only version of Linux in existence, allow me to correct you to say that Debian was and is first. Adendum: Someone pointed out that if you're using TeamTalk client in a Linux GUI, the Ubuntu24 version has accessibility problems, and the Ubuntu22 version will still run on Debian 13.
@fireborn Interesting. I was only evaluating it from the CLI server perspective, but I also did not try the Ubutnu22 package on Debian 13. Thanks for the info.
- Knock-knock. - Who's there? - Dozen. - Dozen who? - Dozen anyone want to let me in?
Celebrating a dozen of #Fractal versions with knocking support! Get Fractal 12, the new version of your favourite #Matrix client for #GNOME from #Flathub now!
Knock, knock, knock… on wood rooms, baby 🎵 Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh 🎶 That’s right, Fractal 12 adds support for knocking, among other things. Read all about the improvements since 11.
I can now turn what began as a quick project made in a providential three weeks of free time into an app that can...actually do basic things like add contacts 😅
More importantly, it'll make the open and standardised messaging protocol available to a mobile platform where few large players have dared to tread 👟
Among currently available ARM64 single-board computers, which one has the simplest and most fully open boot process? The Raspberry Pi family has boot handled by the VideoCore, a whole other processor running its own RTOS during and after boot. Other ARM64 boards, like the Rockchip RK3566-based Quartz64 that I own, have a Rockchip version of ARM Trusted Firmware (which IIUC runs continuously at a higher privilege level) as a blob. Is there any ARM64 board that avoids both of these?
(Their website is a database about single-board computers, although from a quick check I couldn't find specifics on open boot processes hackerboards.com/ )
I'm a month late but: Rockchip RK3399 (e.g. Pine64 ROCKPro64) has zero blobs. As in, both DDR init and ATF are open (former in mainline u-boot, latter in mainline ATF).
RK3588 (e.g. Radxa ROCK 5B+) has open mainline ATF, but closed DDR init (runs once at boot) at the moment.
K3576 (e.g. Radxa ROCK 4D) also has open mainline ATF, but closed DDR init.
RK3566 *does* have something in ATF but I've heard it has problems. Closed DDR init as well though.
Gonna meet up with friends to celebrate, do some on-the-ground surveying, probably also walk around with a 360° cam to get imagery for @panoramax. And fly a drone, to get some nice aerial imagery while we're at it! 🗺️ 📷
Had a blast at our little #OpenStreetMap birthday celebration. 🍰 🧉
It ended up being too windy to fly drones for long. Instead we recorded street-level images for #panoramax and GPS tracks, in addition to doing a lot of live surveying – using a huge range of tools that allow contributing to OSM!
It’s release day for Debian 13 “trixie”! Across the world, the release, publicity, images, and FTP teams are making their final preparations for the new stable release. #debian #debian13 #trixie #ReleasingDebianTrixie
It seems repositories are really ready for trixie, also important (for me), Docker repository for trixie is also available: # apt update Holen:1 deb.debian.org/debian trixie InRelease [171 kB] Holen:2 security.debian.org/debian-sec… trixie-security InRelease [43,4 kB] Holen:3 download.docker.com/linux/debi… trixie InRelease [32,9 kB] ... Statusinformationen werden eingelesen… Fertig Aktualisierung für 323 Pakete verfügbar. Führen Sie »apt list --upgradable« aus, um sie anzuzeigen.
upgrading my first machine to Trixie. Following the instructions below I've uninstalled all packages from non-Debian sources (in that machine that's #Incus - it will be re-installed from Trixie sources).
Genuine question. What would I gain and what would I lose if I switched from Ubuntu? Any resources on that? Getting a bit fed up with how corporate Canonical is.
As it is the start of the month I would like to invite my fellow #Blind, #DeafBlind, and #VisuallyImpaired people, along with their family, and friends, to #OurBlind. OurBlind comprises the #Discord, #Lemmy, and #Reddit communities operated by the staff of the r/Blind subreddit, as well as those who have joined since the creation of the Discord in 2022, and Lemmy in 2023. We have members from all over the world, and of all ages, hearing and vision levels, and are a welcoming and safe space for Our #LGBTQIA and #neurodiverse friends. Our general community guidelines, and the links to reach our platforms can be found on our website.
Welcome to OurBlind Join Us Reddit Discord Lemmy Who We Are OurBlind is a community of blind and visually impaired people, their family and friends, and allies, from around the world.
I want to defend Wayland here and explain a crucial piece that I think people are missing...
The splitting of protocols in Wayland and compositor reimplementation were to allow for new form factors. It had to sacrifice the guarantee of all desktop app functionality being present to achieve that.
The idea (as I see it) was never to have 500 desktop compositors all trying to reimplement the same thing with slight differences. Iinstead, it was for 500 different interfaces for different platforms that are compatible with the same apps (e.g. desktop, laptop, phone, car screens, AR/VR, watch). Different form factors have totally different ways of dealing with interface, but share enough common features where it makes sense to have 1 base protocol and many other ones for device/form specific features.
Problem is, while in 2008-2016 we had a ton of new experimental UIs coming out on a semi-regular basis (that was the peak of the whole convergent phone/tablet craze, smartwatches started, fancy car UI, touch tables, early AR/VR) things have quieted down. The purpose of Wayland's insane modularity hasn't been visible to most people given it's almost always complained about in a desktop contest vs X11. But X11 was literally only designed for a desktop form factor and has been refined for that 1 purpose for decades!
As an example of different form factors, Wayland lets IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) systems work way better than Xorg could have. Desktop window layouting on that platform would inherently produce massive amounts of unnecessary complexity, and the ability to direct scanout saves on power/expensive compute. Automotive Grade Linux and COVESA maintain reference interfaces for cars so companies can iterate a ton faster. Wayland gives the app compatibility and they can make the system UI work with more flexibility and ease than an X11 window manager.
Take Linux Mobile too, the compositor can reliably enforce window layout and boundaries and composition. While this could technically be done with an X window manager and compositor, doing it with Wayland guarantees reliability as the app simply doesn't have a choice or room for error. Some things like drag and drop of toolbars doesn't make much sense on mobile given how small the screens are.
There's some interfaces where X11 is basically impossible to use. In AR/VR (where i am making a Wayland compositor) the concept of a screen simply does not exist. How is an app supposed to position itself when the very concept of 3D is not part of the protocol? In Wayland I don't have to implement the protocols that don''t work (e.g. layer shell) and therefore any apps that don't need it will be compatible..
Wayland has allowed for insane levels of flexibility, things that no other display server architecture can do reasonably. Total flexibility between app and screen, direct scanout without hacks, AR/VR support, etc.
Here's some fun and useful stuff that's been done with Wayland, stuff that X11 could never reasonably do:
Multiple user collaboration on touch tables with arbitrary rotation: youtu.be/8xtjJTJAQsY
AR/VR apps running in windows and volumes at the same time, all interactable back in 2014 (eat your heart out magic leap and apple): github.com/evil0sheep/motorcar
Presentation slides that were themselves a Wayland compositor written in Qt and QML so therefore allowed fully interactive live demos in an integrated form factor with a very popular and easy to code UI framework: youtu.be/mIg1P3i2ZfI
Cosmic panels are actually Wayland compositors, meaning widgets can draw literally anything from any toolkit in any language.
Now, could Wayland devs maybe have distributed features across protocols better? Worked with app toolkit devs to ensure the protocols they made actually fit what the apps and compositors needed? Stopped bikeshedding (though imo many cases of "bikeshedding" are simply accounting for other form factors)? Absolutely!
My point here is simple: there was a reason for making it this modular, for not having a standard implementation. It wasn't just devs trying to impose some ideology, it wasn't some corporate takeover. It's good reasons that people using X11 on their desktop/laptop don't encounter. If we made something that wasn't universal, most apps wouldn't be compatible with it and therefore everything but the desktop form factor would lack apps.
@jcsteh oh yeah, that would be the most logical. Think I'll accept it. Hahahaha. It's a bit odd as it opens the full-screen individual mixer and not just the "sndvol" panel with volume alone, but it's way more convenient than hunting it down in settings for per-app audio routing, so I suspect I'll be using it a lot along with VAC.
@mcourcel @DavidGoldfield @rlegowski1 lol I think that's why this is misleading slightly for volume - it's the more advanced per-app volume mixer that lets you choose where something outputs to without fancy cables, not just the standard master or per-app volume control only.
Kopia is a Cross-platform open source backup tool for Windows, macOS & Linux with fast, incremental backups, client-side end-to-end encryption, compression and data deduplication. CLI and GUI included for backups and restore.
Cross-platform backup tool for Windows, macOS & Linux with fast, incremental backups, client-side end-to-end encryption, compression and data deduplication. CLI and GUI included. - kopia/kopia
well well. Thanks to the Botspot-VM project, for Pi5, I was able to get Windows installed, NVDA started, and now Mist World is running on a little Pi5 overclocked to 2.8 gHZ. github.com/Botspot/bvm Wow. Truly the most versatile device, I could run Linux and Windows in one go, then swap the SD for the Android OS build if I wanted to and add a USB touchscreen. Wow. Amazing. I do think the BTSpeak should have waited for the CM (compute module) 5. It's so so much faster, Pi4 I wouldn't even thinking of Running Windows 11 on with a fraction of the speed it has.
see, if I were Orbit i'd be all over this as an idea. the Orbit Window. In fact, I'd wrip out the guts of whatever they're selling to compete with the mantis and stick a pi5 in. Neat!
@BorrisInABox oh yeah, not surprised there. I guess there's a bigger casing for larger batteries, could be a justifiable argument in some way. The BT Speak didn't have the best battery life, so yeah, a CM5 in that body would tank it, although I wouldn't mind a thicker-cased form that used more battery cells, got a half pound heavier and a little wider but kept a more performant pi either.
This is excellent. If I may ask, is it noticeably slow? Also, I assume you're using an SSD. If so, what adapter are you using, is it USB or some sort of hat?
@techsinger nah, just the built-in SD card. took about 2.5 hours to install Windows this way. not great. 120 MB/S writes at most. Windows itself is kinda like, running on an Intel Celeron. You don't get right away speech fragments when holding down the tab key in the taskbar area for example, but you do get fairly good tabbing in dialogs or other UI elements, and something like device manager can load in 3-5 seconds, so I'm happy with it. :D
First, may I say your examples are a work of art? Seriously, thanks, I understand what it's like in ways nobody else has explained for any other product. One more thing, though. Have you tried it as an NVDARemote client and, if so, is the speed a problem there? I'm sort of hoping it isn't, but would value your experience.
@techsinger yeah, to me remoting in was faster than using RDP directly (Botspot sets up an autoUnattended.xml file, configures it to host RDP on port 3389 for you.) Before getting NVDA I was using it, but ditched it soon after as the sound-send made it less worthwhile even over local network.
@matt it's about 3 times faster - Geekbench 6 scores for pi4 averaged around 500-600, while Pi5 can get 2100-3000 multicore score (if you push the clock to 3 gHZ, which is doable with a good enough air cooler and aluminum case.) Baffled me why BTSpeak wasn't built with better heat management, Pi5 when idling on Windows desktop reaches about 56-61C, and that's with a fan blowing on it, without one the thing would surely throddle and hit the 85C quick.
@sclower LOL true, great power comes with great responsibility! :D I personally don't mind that it needs a 27W USB brick to work. If I could time travel back to 2018, the Pi5 would be considered a flagship CPU. The Pi4, more like something from 2014-2015-ish. It just doesn't work well for things like running Android, Linux desktop (Mate) is usable sure but rendering a link-rich site like a news one with scrolling ads makes Pi4 really show the weak multicore compared to Pi5.
Mist World, huh? I played that thing a long time ago, but it was so P2W that I just pulled out. Has the game gotten better, or is this just one of those "I don't care what it is, this is more of a benchmark than a gaming session" things? In which case, yeah, I've done that before, and trust me, you do not want to run anything more complicated than a single-player BGT/NVGT game on a netbook.
@HunterXWorld haha I think worse! Considering they're now are launching a second server just to pull more cash out of people. Ha. Considering the game uses almost 1 GB of ram, does horrible garbage collecting as it's based on Java8 and is always doing a lot of small RAM reads and writes, the Pi can handle it really well. Audiogames have usually stayed on the lower-side of CPU usage, might be their big advantage here - only about 19-25% CPU is used even on the Pi, something that might be 0-3% on a regular desktop-class one.
@HunterXWorld I wish that more audio games had been developed cross-platform from the start. So many classics would run fine even on a Pi4-based BT Speak, if only you didn't need to have Windows running underneath.
yo, I cannot get Espeakup nor speechd-up to work on Pi5 reliably, kind of a sad day. Tried to set alsa to use my USB alsa card2 2, but no luck either. I even did running Pulse as a system service, no luck there either. Ugh. Linux, you foil me again. ChatGPT is claiming: "On modern Pi OS, the boot console is driven by the VC4 DRM‑framebuffer (fb0) rather than the old text VT. With the move to full KMS in Bullseye (Debian 11, October 30, 2021) and the removal of both legacy and fake-KMS stacks in Bookworm (Debian 12, mid‑2023), the screen is driven through the DRM/KMS pipeline—bypassing fbcon and leaving espeakup without any text to speak. " Of course, this turned out to be false, and I got it working. Using Libao to route Also to Pulse, and ensuring the module loads early was key. "printf 'speakup\nspeakup_soft\n' | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/speakup.conf" sudo update-initramfs -u # if you use an initramfs This forces the kernel to register /dev/softsynth at boot, ahead of any daemons Also edit or create /etc/libao.conf, adding "default_driver=pulse to it. By default, espeakup uses ALSA directly. To switch it to libao, add the --use-libao flag in its systemd unit " [Service]ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/espeakup --use-libao --default-voice=en-us+f2" - do a sudo systemctl daemon-reload after and you're good! I tried both speechd-up and BrLTTY with the Speech-D module - felt simpler, but neither would speak through Pulse, despite Orca working per-user, so there's that.
@xogium yeah, what's so odd is LightDM / Orca and speech dispatcher all work great through Pulse, the audio device switching module even works. Through Alsa it can if I force the device to #2 manually, but for sure baffled as regular speech-dispatcher is all good.
@xogium weird! it's just frozen with that one, blank output with nothin'. Systemctl can start it without any log errors. /dev/softsynth is there, owned by root, so clearly it's not a kernel compile thing, just so odd.
@xogium yay, it works! Since Espeak was giving me Alsa errors, I had to discard any input, avoid undefined capture slave, Plug wrapper around USB card 2 for playback, Route the global default through asymdefault, and Ensure mixer controls target card 2. Then it had speech. I suspect my actual issue was using pulse as a system service, thinking I could just bridge Alsa to Pulse and get the automatic soundcard switching, but guess not. But at least, it works on the USB card! :D
@xogium ahahaha, it's going to get even more fun when we throw pipewire into the mix, now some will only speak legacy Alsa, some Pulse, at least the Jack would be shared as common I think between pipewire / Pulse interfaces so perhaps it won't break Pulse apps as bad, but the low-level Alsa will still be there for legacy for quite awhile. Pulse's socket-based approach is a bit of its downfall too, since sockets can't be shared and Pulse takes device exclusivity. Haven't messed around with Pipewire to see if that bit has improved.
Something to always be aware of: Many wheelchair users can stand and move around for brief periods of time. Not all wheelchair users are paralysed. Reasons for wheelchair use are numerous and varied.
Some wheelchair users choose not to stand in public because chances are they will be chastised and harassed if they do. With more awareness and understanding this risk can hopefully diminish over time.
For example, if a wheelchair user is able to retrieve their own wheelchair from the boot/trunk of their car, this does not mean they are ”faking”, and accusing them of this is ableist in itself.
”Ambulatory wheelchair user” is something you can search for to learn more, as many are sharing their experiences online, like Lauren:
Any self hostable Google Docs/office alternatives that are actually accessible with screen readers cross platform? Just tried CryptPad, OnlyOffice, and honestly was a little underwhelmed. OnlyOffice had a test instance where I tried to edit a text doc and couldn't read the stuff I was typing. Cryptpad had much of the same issues if I went with document or sheets mode, probably because those are also onlyoffice. It had another rich text editor which was a bit better, but I didn't realize this until later, and honestly I feel like the default editing mode should really just work. Most people won't choose the last option in the new document list, and having to choose a non standard document format to get accessibility isn't really accessibility, or is that too controversial? OnlyOffice says it should be accessible. What's going on here? Like is this a user error?
That is a genuine question. If it is actually accessible and I'm using it wrong, I would love to know how to fix this. I want to add software like this to the homelab and setting up onlyoffice/cryptpad seems like quite some time investment so I'd like to know this before I commit. There's stuff like etherpad but I'm less interested in the realtime collab stuff and more in the doc management and writing stuff. And at that point I might as well use the editors that come with nextCloud instead. I figured there's a more friendly option than that though.
I was looking into this a while back as well. I also found Docs, an EU alternative to Notion, this being a thing that is going to be used in gouvernment scenarios made me hope it'll be accessible but I didn't yet find the time to test it as it also involves setting up things like Keycloak and more for registration. There is a demo available, but that seems to change rather frequently as well these days.
@ToniBarth yeah that's already more involved than i'd really like. NextCloud was already somewhat painful for something I'll mostly use behind tailscale anyway, although there it makes sense I suppose since I do want to be able to share stuff so it needs to be somewhat internet facing. That's less the case with this. Maybe a wiki of some sort would work as well for me, but then we start getting into the teritory of too much overhead when trying to write something new.
@ToniBarth my current setup is just nextcloud with folders and markdown. It works, and I don't have a real issue with it, but sometimes I do want something a little more fully featured.
@ToniBarth How do you expose NextCloud to the public, is there some Tailscale/Headscale feature doing that? Sorry for the rather non productive contribution to that discussion but I follow it interested.
@ToniBarth I wonder if there are limitations with the web platform that make it impossible to have accessible rich text editing. Google Docs implemented accessibility by pushing announcements to be spoken via a live region.
@neurrone @ToniBarth I quite like the one that the markdown editor in NextCloud uses. I'm not sure which one that is but it uses content editable I think? It works pretty well. But yeah there are definitely limitations here. I'm not really looking for a perfect solution, I just figured there's the possibility for something more intricate than a wysiwyg kind of markdown editor. Although I'll definitely keep using it if I can't find anything.
seeing that you’re using Nextcloud, have you tried the Collectives app for your text needs? It’s pretty much still Markdown files in folders, but a bit more integrated/focused than using the standard files browser to navigate through them apps.nextcloud.com/apps/collec…
as for a full web-based office solution with documents/spreadsheets/presentations I unfortunately don’t really know if there’s one supporting screen readers well… it’s such a shame that this is usually thought of as a nice-to-have rather than a must-need :/
@nilsding I'll give this a shot! I'm just confused because OnlyOffice does say that it *should* be accessible? But it doesn't seem to be. So... why? lol
@MostlyBlindGamer I have and use NextCloud. I love it. But the web interface only comes with some fairly rudimentary text editors and OnlyOffice, but OnlyOffice was a lot of additional setup steps that I didn't want to do because the few times I tried it it didn't seem accessible so I didn't think it was worth the hastle. It had some weird accessibility settings that I was supposed to enable in some random XML's somewhere, but I tried that without much success.
@MostlyBlindGamer ultimately I am not unhappy just editing markdown through NextCloud, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask if there's something more out there.
There is also the possibility to have Collabora Online (CODE) with Nextcloud, which is a branded LibreOffice Online in place of OnlyOffice. Maybe it's better ?
The Nextcloud app may be configured to use a demo server, which is not fine for privacy, but allows you to test easily : apps.nextcloud.com/apps/richdo…
If you don't want or can install an hosted CODE instance, there is an alternative app with a bultin CODE server that should not be complicated to install : apps.nextcloud.com/apps/richdo… (I only use the dedicated version, I don't know if there is limitations)
I know that Joplin has been doing an accessibility push as of late but I don't know if there's a way to make that work for collaboration per se, it's really a PKM first, I think. SHould work cross-platform and I suppose you could stick it in a git repo somewhere maybe?
@zersiax hmm. My thought was that Joplin is more for notes? I think they do have apps, but I was thinking of web editing as well and syncing should ideally kinda work. Otherwise the NextCloud+markdown setup does work.
Please let us know if you find anything. I've done a bit of digging myself and wasn't successful. Had similar results with onlyoffice--keep meaning to set up Collabora's online nextcloud integration too but haven't gotten to that yet. Have you tried it? I haven't partially because I'm pretty sure it'll be a dud too but figure it couldn't hurt to ask.
that's exactly the reason why I'm constantly arguing with those open-source fanatics who say "Stop using Microsoft and Google! Now!! (lots of exclamation marks)". Sorry, no.
"App not available A testing version of this app hasn't been published yet or isn't available for this account.
If you've been invited to become a tester, make sure you're signed in to the account that was invited to the testing program. If you've been invited to a Google Group as part of the program, make sure you've joined the Group."
Looks like the Orbit Player uses a Mediatech MT6765 cpu. It is totally possible to: 1. Install apps 2. Enable TalkBack. 3. Use a keyboard with the device through ScreenCopy. All thanks to a wide-open ADB shell.
@JamminJerry Lol, the thing is even rooted via Magisk. The shell, Lotus, has superuser permissions, and is the default launcher on the system. The actual ui buttons in the app are, wouldn't you know it, unlabeled. One of them launches Android system settings. The other does who the hell knows what. Opening the podbay doors? Lol!
now that is just way way too funny! I assume you actually did all of this? meaning installed talkback and such? lol. how much ram is in the thing, and how much storage?
@JamminJerry It appears it can run 32 bit apps, found on this data sheet, so you know what might just be a go! "Supported Instruction Set(s): ARMv8 (A32, A64)" phonedb.net/index.php?m=proces…
@jpellis2008 @JamminJerry ahahaha wow this is quite funny. Reminds me of a very cheapo Chinese tablet I picked up together with @Lprazdnik ($35) running Android 4.2. Kid you not the entire thing was plastic, including touch screen (still capacitive too!) It took like 45 seconds to open dice world, but wouldn't you know it, the entire thing had ADB enabled when I got it so getting Talkback and apps on it was at least a breeze. Gotta give budget things that. However, A $599 device, by any means, is not budget, so I'm honestly kind of shocked. But also not. This is Orbit, afterall. The company known for developing such unreliable displays that at least 3-4 friends I know have had problems with them and needed to RMA for new units. Sorry not sorry for saying that but they gotta get their act together LOL
@Tamasg @jpellis2008 @Lprazdnik wait wait wait! this device is pretty much 600 bucks, plus tax? holy hell! without modifying this thing, I wonder what it can do and how responsive it is? can it do as much as say the victor reader stream 3 which is cheaper than this is? at least it isn't almost 700 like the sense player. smile.
The Orbit Speak is equipped with features of a modern braille notetaker with a braille keyboard and synthesized speech output in a compact, pocket-sized device.
The Orbit Media Player is a versatile, user-friendly device designed to enhance accessibility for blind and visually impaired individuals. It features a compact, lightweight design with tactile buttons for easy navigation.
The Orbit Media Player is a versatile, user-friendly device designed to enhance accessibility for blind and visually impaired individuals. It features a compact, lightweight design with tactile buttons for easy navigation.
@jpellis2008 @JamminJerry @Lprazdnik ah yeah, ok. the player. I wonder how this differs from the Speak? Interesting. That's a lot cheaper, but still not $35! :D I'd be curious to know, beyond probably lacking some of the note-taking and Wi-FI features maybe? hmm.
@Tamasg @jpellis2008 @JamminJerry Meh I honestly have given up on Android-based assistive tech, especially from this particular company. I'm not sure why I am the only one making noise about this (or so it seems) but the Orbit speak doesn't even do some of the things it should, based on the product description on their site. Wouldn't be surprised if the player is missing features, too. Besides, Android AT products will generally be a few versions behind, will miss out on security patches, and most of the time contain cheap components for a very high price. No thanks. I got a sense player a while back, played with it for a bit and now it's collecting dust somewhere in a drawer.
@jpellis2008 @Tamasg @Lprazdnik ok, 300 is a lot easier to handle I guess, but my other questions still stand. I wonder what it is like responsiveness wize. will it puke if you were to threw a folder of say 1836 mp3 files at it, and ask it to play that folder in a randum mode. how long would it take to load that folder. smile. I ask these questions because I have had both a sense player, and a victory reader stream 3, and didn't like either one for different reasons.
@JamminJerry @jpellis2008 @Lprazdnik yeah, looking at the description, this one competes a lot more with the Victor stream itself. That CPU may not be the worse. I guess you also don't get anything fancy like a perkinns input, just a simpler design for nav. Still cool though, for now that stands as the cheapest Android-based blindness product, it does win that award, I suppose. :D
@Tamasg @jpellis2008 @Lprazdnik can you record with it, and if you can, I wonder what they would sound like? as you can tell I have lots of questions. smile.
@Tamasg @JamminJerry @jpellis2008 @Lprazdnik An amusing collection of demo files are mentioned here in the media player portion of the demo, supplied with the player they apparently were.
There's a CPU I'm way too familiar with thanks to Smoorez on YouTube, it's all over cheep chinese clones of iPhones and such. Guess they went for it because it was cheep to purchase and the performance is probably enough for a book reading device. But now you got me curious, I remember seeing from one demo you could select Google as an alternative text to speech, would the software pick up on other engines you install? Like the one you're probably thinking of but also on a more local note RHVoice.
I'm prototyping a device for reading books with a doubletalk synthesizer. I'm planning on going full single-board microcontroller, with a play time of about 26 hours, a standby time of weeks and practically instant booting. how does the Orbit stand up to that? I've not seen one yet.
So here's an #accessible#wrestling game I found. It's text based, with audio. It's not for me; you need to know stuff about franchise's and division's and moves and belts and things. But if you're a #blind person who enjoys wrestling, this might be for you: Step into the ring and take control! Welcome to GRUNT - The Wrestling Game, the ultimate text-based wrestling simulation where you are the booker, the promoter, and the wrestling god of your very own universe! Tired of wrestling games that limit your imagination? GRUNT WRESTLING hands you the keys to the entire promotion. From creating a rookie in a local gym to running a multi-division global powerhouse, every choice is yours. Witness epic five-star matches, shocking betrayals, and the crowning of new legends—all brought to life through a detailed, moment-to-moment simulation engine. This isn't just a game; it's a sandbox for your wrestling stories. Build your dream roster, book the matches, and watch the chaos unfold! nmercer1111.itch.io/grunt-the-wrestling-game
Ooooooh! From Winaero: Microsoft introduces a new Shared Audio feature in the latest Windows 11 Insider builds on the Beta and Dev channels. It allows users to play audio output via multiple devices simultaneously. It is possible to use it with two sets of headphones, or with speakers and headphones at the same time, and so on. The option is available in the Quick Settings panel, featuring a newly added "Shared audio" button next to the existing "Project" option.
When you click on it, it opens a list of all connected audio devices. The user needs to place a check mark next to the desired devices and click the "Share" button. So that the sound starts playing simultaneously on all selected devices.
The Shared audio feature is a work in progress, and is not mentioned in the changelog. It is yet to be officially announced by Microsoft. It is currently unknown whether the feature will support Bluetooth devices.
Its new video time again folks. Did you know that with REAPER version 7.42 a new scrubbing mode got introduced? No? My newest video tells you all the differences between the three available REAPER scrubbing modes, how they can be used and what neat little keystrokes we now got on the OSARA keymap to make our lifes so much easier. Plus, I give you a demo on how I use them when editing VoiceOvers. Enjoy. youtube.com/watch?v=a0HbxFOm9K…
Everyone knows the tape scrub mode in REAPER, as this is the default setting when turning on REAPER for the first time. You might have already heard of the l...
To all Bookworm users out there: where are Bookworm books stored? With QRead, I get QRD files that I can easily move between machines for work. But I can't find where Bookworm stores books or the notes I create. Any help would be appreciated. Please boost!
@mush42 Thanks. My major Bookworm issue is that it doesn't use a single file per book. So moving data among several computers, which is typically required for many projects, is very cumbersome. It's very easy with QRead and the Kurzweil 1000, but overly difficult with Bookworm.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Users often need to read the same books across multiple machines, at home and at work. With other apps like QRead or Kurzweil 1000, we...
Amount of hours spent to keep a default #chatmail onboarding relay with 500k active addresses running: near zero.
Glancing at stats sometimes: two million messages per day. CPU and IO load at 20% max. 500gb raid1 ssd meandering around 60 percent full. There is room for various optimizations but no big need currently.
end-to-end encryption with metadata minimization is best if servers are boring. No clustering or enterprise license needed, no "SRE team" either.
A Windows sysadmin tool that more people should know about is the Magic Number Database at magnumdb.com
This database is great for pasting weird Windows hexadecimal errors into and finding out what they might mean.
Example from today, I got 0x80d02002 during a Windows update. Magnumdb tells me that this result corresponds to DO_E_DOWNLOAD_NO_PROGRESS, so now I know it's probably because an update server isn't responding.
📣 Public Service Announcement to all our Spanish(-speaking) users 🇪🇸
Episodes from Radio Nacional de España cannot be downloaded. RNE decided to block our app specifically.
Journalist @james contacted the Director Radio of RTVE to ask for clarifications. In response, they have said they will 'review our case'. We are yet to receive a reply to the email we sent last week. Keep an eye out for updates on our social media.
that's a shame. Swedish radio has also been pushed into restricting some of their (amazing, btw) podcast offering to their own app. luckily someone put up a mirror sr-restored.se/ @james
@bano Not that we're aware of. If you do notice something like that happening, please announce it on the forum, so everyone in our community can help out and investigate. @sitnik_ru
I'm struggling with an #Android #widget issue, and I was wondering if anyone had any clue.
Basically: I have a widget with a grid of items. I want the items in the grid to stick to a certain aspect ratio, regardless of the widget width. The height should dynamically adjust so it always stays that aspect ratio. Normally I would use a ConstraintLayout, but that doesn't seem supported on widgets and I cannot find any good alternative.
I ended up settling on just hardcoding an exact size for each grid entry in "dp", then scaling it up until it "felt right" and going with that. It should work. I'm still annoyed Android widgets are so limiting but well, this will be good enough to ship I think.
Interesting #GUADEC talk by Lukáš about the screen reader infrastructure. Turns out, the org.fd.a11y interface (that I'm playing around with in niri) is very recent, first appeared in GNOME 48. No wonder I couldn't find many docs or examples for that
Thank you for writing up these specs! I noticed that Arch Linux has consistently improved its documentation and infrastructure over the past years, and it's great to see this improve even further!
Recall is a feature that takes screenshots of your activity throughout the day. And yes, we have a few privacy concerns about that. So we’ve added a way to block it completely.
In case anyone finds this useful, I added a "ReaKontrol: Reconnect" action to #ReaKontrol which allows you to reconnect to your Kontrol keyboard if it isn't connected when you first start #REAPER or it gets disconnected while REAPER is running. Otherwise, you have to restart REAPER, which is deeply irritating. reakontrol.jantrid.net/
With the current news of possibly dozens of AUR packages hosting a dangerous form of malware, we should probably once again, for yet more reasons, reconsider why so many people point newcomers to Arch-based distributions.
The amount of "just do this random AUR bro" is insane.
Adobe is now processing all your PDFs in the cloud, by default. The setting to “Enable generative AI features in Acrobat” was on, and I didn’t know it until I opened a document and Adobe asked me if I wanted a document summary. It’s annoying to have to click “No,” so I opened settings to disable the prompt.
THE PROBLEM I sign Non-Disclosure Agreements for many of my clients. Adobe is a potential leak of protected information. I don’t know what Adobe does with this information. I don’t know what they store, or for how long. I don’t know what country (or countries) the data is stored in. I don’t know what LLMs are trained with this data. And I don’t need to know. What I need to know is that they won’t use default opt-in as a legal excuse to wiretap my information.
I recommend that you check your Adobe settings on all devices, for all Adobe accounts.
Ever since I switched to #GNU #Linux in my private life, using #Windows at work gives me near-daily headaches. I have full admin rights, yet I constantly fight the system: forced updates, inconsistent behavior, sluggish UI, weird errors buried in the registry.
I used to think this was just how #computers worked. But after experiencing the #freedom and clarity of #FOSS, Windows feels more like an obstacle than a tool.
@esoteric_programmer Having come from a Linux background, I was rather surprised to discover upon using a Windows machine seriously for the first time that some of the error messages were displayed as 32-bit hex error codes. Searching the Web for help often leads to interminable forum threads in which people who don’t know what’s causing the error try to help others who don’t know either. Diagnosing such errors would be a good task for a specialized LLM.
Me and @alexchapman have just been screwing around with this thing called Omni Describer, a Windows program that uses AI to make audio descriptions out of videos. It uses Google Gemini for the actual describing part, and it can either use OpenAI or SAPI 5 for TTS. It has some issues, like the TTS interrupting itself during descriptions, but other than that, it's pretty cool. forum.audiogames.net/topic/568…
modulux
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