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This is Theodosii Spassov, probably one of my top 3 Bulgarian kaval players, with slow melody. It's a great demo of what the Bulgarian kaval can do; big range, kaba, vocal drone/harmonisation, sound effects, various levels of breathiness, ornaments like hlopki, mordents, vibrato. Particularly notable in this one is circular breathing, both for the 2nd kaval drone, which is quite common, but also in the main melody. Virtuosic stuff!
#Music #Ethnomusicology #WorldMusic
youtube.com/watch?v=yyEGr717-R…

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hay humans, boosts appreciated. I'm trying to find out who in the US plays the blind sport Showdown. I know that several states have tables, and that there are players who have done it recently. Trying to figure out whose connected to that scene, where they get their tables and if we can establish some international cooperation. Shout me if anyone knows anything.

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Dearest fediverse, can you please teach me how to count to twelve in your own language? For instance, here’s Dutch:

Dutch: een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, elf, twaalf

(I already know how to count in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish, I think)

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Seen many blind people advocating for Audible's AI narration instead of having narrators they don't like record the audiobook and its takes like this that make me super ashamed of some in my own community. I can't even think of what to call these people.

The reasoning is that an AI voice won't be busy or expensive so we can get more audiobooks and just... I strongly suspect these are Blind people that hate audiobooks and want them gone or otherwise reduced in pop culture. I can't understand the logic otherwise.

#AI #Audible

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in reply to Robert Kingett

Yeah this is a dumb take. I go to Audible or other places like that to get books read by humans. If I want AI, I can just get a book from Bookshare and load it up in Eleven Labs reader or use one of the many TTS APIs from Google or Microsoft to make my own audio book. That not only gives you more choice in terms of voices but also doesn't fool people who may not be able to detect AI generated audio into thinking they're listening to a real human voice actor.
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Hi everyone. Please share this far and wide.
An Open Letter to OpenAI and Jony Ive: Building an Accessible Future Together
By Mike Calvo, CEO and Co-founder, Pneuma Solutions
Dear Sam Altman and Jony Ive:
As a community of passionate consumers and advocates, we are excited about the merger between OpenAI and io, Jony Ive’s visionary company. This collaboration holds real promise for groundbreaking innovation. We want to make sure that the future you're building includes the millions of people with disabilities who can benefit from it.
Jony, your legacy at Apple transformed how accessibility was viewed in technology. From VoiceOver to your commitment to inclusive design, you helped raise the bar for what accessibility should look like. Sam, OpenAI’s work with platforms like Be My Eyes has already proven how AI can enhance lives. Your combined track records show that accessibility can be a foundation, not just a feature.
But we’ve also seen what happens when companies overlook that foundation. The Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 launched with high expectations, yet they failed to meaningfully include our community. These products were missed opportunities. They serve as reminders of why it’s so important to involve disabled users from day one.
Our community is not a small corner of the market. We are early adopters, loyal customers, and passionate users of technology that works for us. If you truly want to innovate, then bring us in early. We urge you to connect with organizations that represent a wide range of disabilities and to invite community members to participate as beta testers and advisors.
Because nothing about us should be decided without us.
This is a chance to create something truly inclusive, to honor the accessibility legacy you’ve already helped shape, and to build a future where everyone benefits. We’re here. We’re ready to collaborate. Let’s make sure this next chapter of innovation includes all of us.
Sincerely,
Mike Calvo
CEO and Co-founder
Pneuma Solutions

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Tak jsme se ženou nechali od @sesivany navézt do editace @osmcz přes StreetComplete a řešíme takové ontologické dilema: Je klasická pražská mozaika ze své podstaty spíše dlažbou nrbo dlažební kostkou?

Já to chápal užitně, že je narozdíl od kočičích hlav ok pro vozík, podpatky nebo skateboard, tudíž dlažba.

Teď jsem si ale všiml, že jiní to karegorizují jako kostky a jakože musím uznat, že se skládá z kostek...

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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in reply to FifiSch

některé tagy nemají jasně vymezené hranice, což bývá předmětem dlouhých diskusí na fóru. Člověk by se tak neměl trápit tím, že stejnou věc někdo jiný označuje jinak, pokud se jedná o podobné materiály.
Dlažební kostky (sett) mají být nahrubo opracované přírodní kameny do podoby kostky, mezery mezi nimi jsou zpravidla větší. Dlažba (paving stones) může být jak z přírodního, tak umělého materiálu, má dokonalejší tvar a je zpravidla vydlážděná s menšími mezerami.
To, co je na fotce, jsou za mě dlažební kostky, ale ani s dlažbou člověk velkou chybu neudělá.
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While at #SightCity yesterday, I was introduced to a line of Braille displays called b.note by Eurobraille. Intriguingly, they are powered by a Raspberry Pi, using Debian Linux as their OS. Apparently there's a developer mode, which allows users to connect to it via ssh, and even extend functionality using Python scripts. I'm already in the market for a new display and now very strongly considering getting one of these, especially since I quite liked the keyboard and Braille modules as well.

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in reply to Alex Hall

@alexhall But yes, this display does use the more traditional piezoelectric Braille cells. I was personally happy about that, as they do feel very similar to the Handy Tech Active Star which I'm currently using, and which is also sadly in the process of slowly falling apart. To be fair though, I have been using this display for around 10 years, which means it has actually outlived all the other tech on my desk right now.
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Ukraine is home to the world’s longest musical instrument - the trembita, a traditional wooden alpine horn that can reach up to 8 meters (26 feet) in length. Used primarily by the Hutsuls of the Carpathian Mountains, the trembita is crafted from hollowed spruce or pine, split and rejoined, then wrapped in birch bark. Despite its massive size, the instrument is lightweight and portable, designed to carry sound across great distances in mountainous terrain.
The trembita has been used for centuries, primarily not as a musical instrument in the conventional sense, but as a tool of communication. In the remote highlands, where settlements were scattered and roads were scarce, the trembita served as a kind of natural radio. It announced births, deaths, funerals, seasonal migrations, the return of shepherds, or emergencies like wolf sightings or raids. Each call followed a specific pattern, immediately recognizable to those familiar with its codes.
Mentions of similar long alpine horns exist as far back as the medieval period. In the 16th and 17th centuries, records from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth note the use of long horns in the Carpathians, likely early references to the trembita. The instrument also appears in traditional Ukrainian folklore, poetry, and Hutsul legends, often associated with nature, spiritual rituals, and transitions between life and death. In some traditions, it was said that the trembita's sound could guide a soul to the afterlife.
The trembita was also used in religious and seasonal rituals - especially around Christmas and Easter - often in combination with carols or ceremonial processions. In some areas, trembitas would announce the arrival of guests or the start of a festival. During the Soviet era, the trembita was repurposed as a folkloric showpiece in state-sanctioned performances, which helped preserve it, even if its original role diminished.
Yet, it was not forgotten and remains widely used today, despite the attempts by the Soviet Union to gradually suppress Ukrainian culture, language, and anything related to its rich and noble history.

#Ukraine #UkraineFacts #DidYouKnow

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I literally just made a bootable live cd for nixos to boot into a browser on a whim for a test. I had 0 knowledge of this 10 minutes ago and 5 of those minutes was writing the iso to the usb stick. Nix surprises me again. And you can make any type of image you want... digitalocean, ec2, hyperv, vmware, etc. Its nuts:
github.com/nix-community/nixos…

#nixos

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🚨 *Attention!* We were made aware of a fake “KeePassXC Password Manager Pro” repository on GitHub that links to unverified external binary downloads.
- There is NO Pro version of KeePassXC!
- You get all the “Pro” features with the regular version.
Please download KeePassXC only from trusted distribution channels linked on keepassxc.org/ !

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Once upon a time, a blonde became so sick of hearing blonde jokes that she had her hair cut and dyed brown. A few days later, as she was out driving around
the countryside, she stopped her car to let a flock of sheep pass.

Admiring the cute wooly creatures, she said to the shepherd, "If I can guess how many sheep you have, can I take one?"

The shepherd, always the gentleman, said, "Sure!" The blonde thought for a moment and, for no discernible reason, said, "352."

This being the correct number, the shepherd was, understandably, totally amazed, and exclaimed, "You're right! O.K., I'll keep to my end of the deal. Take
your pick of my flock."

The blonde carefully considered the entire flock and finally picked the one that was by far cuter and more playful than any of the others.

When she was done, the shepherd turned to her and said, "O.K., now I have a proposition for you. If I can guess your true hair color, can I have my dog
back?"

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I've started editing my way through a small collection of short stories formerly published in the New European Magazine between 1822 and 1823. Here's the first of eventually six stories: 'The Funeral' by Thomas Richards.

bydbach.hcommons.org/wandering…

#Wales #Literature #RomanticFiction #DigitalEdition #OpenAccess

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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“Out of 949 visual media attached in your 673 public posts with visual media, 935 have alt text. That's about 99%. You're doing a great job!”

I’ll take it! Through it is tempting to go back and fix those outliers…

Check your account here: stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/1…

#AltText

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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#Catima 2.35.0 is out!

This release lets you further tweak the barcode size in the fullscreen view and slightly improves barcode finding reliability when scanning or loading a barcode from an image or PDF file. It also fixes a crash when trying to load a pkpass file without a barcode in it.

Coming soon to an app store near you :)

github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Andro…

#Android #OpenSource #IzzyOnDroid #FDroid #GooglePlay #GitHub

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A bit under a year ago, my friend Michael Sheppard and I released our first album. I'm super excited to present our second album, Toward Hope.
Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/0xBJ5vL…
Apple Music: music.apple.com/au/album/towar…
YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK…

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I just published my new instrumental called "Sea Time, the Sound Waves of Marbella" (for now on Youtube only).
Hope you like it! youtu.be/sxgSjdoMvbQ
#music #acoustic #instumental

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Also totally forgot to talk about this yesterday.
As a part of global accessibility awareness day, we put out a new update for the Be My Eyes app for Windows that is completely rebuild from the ground up. Along with giving us a better base to build amazing new features for desktop in the near future, this new app also fixes a lot of the accessibility issues that people have reported over the last 1.5 or so years.
In addition Chat History is now also available on Desktop, so you can start a conversation from mobile and continue it on desktop (and vice versa).

#a11y #bemyeyes #gaad #globalaccessibilityawarenessday
#blind #bme #tech
#disability #assistivetech

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Geeky stuff aside, let's enjoy the hottest friday party ever. @Marek Macko is on air again with his awesome show called #playgroundLive. #dance, #trance, a bit of #hardStyle, #eurodance, #90s and other party genres in an incredible live mix performance lasting a few hours spiced up with some random chat messages of fellow listeners and friends.
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My band The Velvet just released out newest single called When the smoke clears, TAke a listen here: youtube.com/watch?v=tILuLXqlXO… #metal #guitar #hammond #hardrock

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Gerade auf Droidblind gepostet: Das ist neu in TalkBack 16.0 droidblind.de/blog/talkback16

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I love #joplin so much. I find myself using it to publish long documents that I want others to read that are well formatted, but in plain HTML so can't be edited, and live on my server. Better than a PDF by far, and markdown makes including tables and other complicated layout easy. The only improvement I'd love is the ability to see how many visits a published note got. I don't need browser and IP and location and all that stuff. Just a number, so I can know if a link I shared with a single person was viewed by them.

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in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I've tried Obsidian, Silverbullet and Trilium Next, all of which had very significant accessibility issues I discovered within the first minute that made them not viable.

#Joplin was such a delight in comparison. There are minor bugs I've noticed, but nothing that prevents me from being productive. Thanks (@joplinapp for the amazing work.

The main thing I'm trying to figure out is setting up a build pipeline to export my public notes to .md and publishing it as a static site.

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Dear #Letsencrypt, you helped secure millions and millions of servers, not just web servers. But your announcement at letsencrypt.org/2025/05/14/end… about ending Ending TLS Client Authentication Certificate Support in 2026 because Google changes their requirements would result in your certificates becoming a possible risk for ensuring SMTP traffic. Please think again. Please.

1/5

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*How secure is UnifiedPush?*

It’s a legitimate question that comes up from time to time. While the question is fairly short, the answer requires a few details. Behind the question of security, it’s also often about privacy.

unifiedpush.org/news/20250513_…

#UnifiedPush #PushNotifications #Android #FCM #Privacy

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If you’re like me and enjoy watching streams or listening to multiple audio sources, check out my newly updated @pipewire based script! It makes muting or unmuting sound from different sources really easy.

Find it here:
github.com/zikusooka/toggle-pw…
Context: joseph.zikusooka.com/?p=2637

#ZikTIPs #Linux #PipeWire #Multimedia

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Just ported Quake III Arena to webxdc.
That is, you send a file to a chat with your buddies, and frag right then and there.

github.com/WofWca/quake3.xdc

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Blind software developers on fedi, I have a question!

Have you used GDB? and if so, do you still use it? I'd love to hear experiences from blind users because I can't tell how good or bad our interface is for users.

For more context, GDB is the main debugger (that I know of, at least) for C, C++, Rust, Ada and Fortran. If you used a debugger for a program in one of those, you probably used GDB with maybe some interface on top.

Because GDB is all text based, I'd think it could reasonably well suited for blind users, but I'm sure being accessible isn't as easy as "the text is there" so I'd love to hear the experience of blind users!

I tried searching online but couldn't find any experiences from GDB users specifically (only general tool advice from coding with eyes closed), so direct experience would be appreciated!

Boosts are welcome!

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Today is Global #accessibility awareness day and I think I speak for a lot of people in the community when I say I'm tired. Particularly over the last few months, the overall climate towards accessibility and #diversity hasn't been super welcoming and while I have a good support network that can remind me that I am, in fact, human and worth existing, many do not. If you receive a request to make something #accessible, from anyone, keep in mind that may very well be the 5th, 10th or even 100th attempt this person has made today at screaming into the void hoping to be seen as a person rather than a potential drain on resources. Rather tna big companies showing off #AI gizmos that mean we've offloaded a problem we didn't want to deal with onto a fallible set of algorithms, maybe #gaad should be about being aware of how ridiculous it is that accessibility professionals and consumers need to fight to even be seen as human these days, because make no mistake, we do.

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in reply to Florian

Agreed with this. I really wasn't that impressed with Google's announcements this time around, not doing much to move the needle. Apple, on the other hand, actually had stuff that would likely be useful to more people, and while they have their problems, I think in general they have a better understanding of the challenges disabled people face on a daily basis, rather than trying to make everything about AI solving issues most of us didn't really have in the first place.
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Today in the iOS app store in the Today tab, I encounter a heading with the title
Accessibility Awareness, the Best Accessible Apps and Games, Curated by App Store Editors

I swipe right and what do I then encounter?
Six separate buttons, all labeled "App Suggestion" with no accessible titles.
So, VoiceOver users just hear "app suggestion, button", "app suggestion, button", "app suggestion, button" ...
I have reported this to Apple Accessibility.
Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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Google is fighting Nextcloud by harming our Android app. Nextcloud now has less functionality than Google Drive. This is clear anti competitive behavior. theregister.com/2025/05/13/nex… nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-a…

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I am just testing @Jami with a #screenreader on both linux desktop and android for #accessibility.
Initial setup is accessible on both the platforms.
Listing conversations I can't really say as I only have single contact.
Audio calling is working fine. I am impressed that the call setup took just a moment. On android controls like microphone toggle, speaker / earpiece toggle and hangup button are working fine.
I am unable to find out in call controls with the keyboard on linux.
On both desktop and android I can write messages.
On android I can read messages, find and execute additional actions in the popup menu.
On the desktop I can't read incoming and outgoing messages with a screen reader. I haven't discovered on how to copy them.

In conclusion comparing this to the tox chat the Jami is more accessible with a screen reader. Perhaps I will be able to figure out how to handle the calls with a keyboard shortcuts however the fact message text is not readable with a screen reader on desktop linux and perhaps other platforms sounds dissapointing. The idea and decentralized nature of this communication app sounds really amazing.

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in reply to Peter Vágner

Exploring @Jami further I think I can post a few more observations.
The desktop app uses QT6 for the UI. Apart of some ounlabelled buttons such as Accept / Reject incoming call and some tab controls on the main window most of the UI elements are clearly labelled and accessible from the keyboard.
The desktop app has a keyboard shortcuts button on the main screen which opens a tabbed dialog with accessible lists of keyboard shortcuts. I haven't yet discovered if these can be tweaked but the default ones are working well for me. For calls it's ctrl+y for accepting and ctrl+d for rejecting / hanging up. Letter m alone can be used for muting / unmuting the microphone.
I need to find out if there is a way to create global shortcuts or do some actions using commandline switches. If either of this turned out to be possible it would perfectly integrate with the desktop.
Sending and receiving files is something I'm going to try next.
@Jami
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#Development #Reviews
First impressions of Deque Axe Assistant · What to expect from the AI accessibility chatbot ilo.im/163tch

_____
#AxeAssistant #AI #Chatbot #Accessibility #WCAG #Design #WebDesign #WebDev #Frontend #HTML

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If you’re a developer writing a GTK app and you want it to be accessible, you might want to check out the following links:

developer.gnome.org/documentat…

docs.gtk.org/gtk4/section-acce…

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in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

@Emmanuele Bassi @modulux @Claire @Danielle Foré I'm wondering are there known windows builds of some very accessible GTK apps such as fractal, shortwave, gnome podcasts, eartag, amberol or some others that we might enjoy trying out with a screen reader on windows?
I'll be definatelly looking into it soon enough. I'm excited about it so it's why I am also posting here.
in reply to Peter Vágner

@pvagner @modulux @clairie I am not aware of any binary builds for Windows; I personally have a full life already, and I don't particularly plan on wasting it on the foibles of Windows.

As far as I know, the accesskit backend was tested with a custom gnome-text-editor build, but that was last year. If people want to pick this up, I'd recommend starting with a small hello world to ensure that building all dependencies actually works.

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This is not only a well written song with a great message, but the production is really nice. Gabrielle Aplin - So Far So Good youtube.com/watch?v=-jipxnd4h2…
This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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