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#AudioMo 28:

When times were better, my partner and her family used to go to the Bronx zoo almost every weekend. I only did this a few times.

One such time, October 5, 2013, I recorded this from just outside the sea lion pool. ?Captured with a pair of Sound Professionals MS-BMC3 microphones on glasses and an Olympus LS14 recorder. The image is what I would consider quasi-binaural, best heard with headphones.

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I just updated my builds of DECtalk 4.99, and this includes an NVDA addon that is compatible with 2025.1. datajake.braillescreen.net/tts…

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I've just noticed piped.video can still be used for playing videos. It's just that the public instance at piped.video and some other instances require registration.
@Archos and friends, please have you explored ways to eventually host it at @Oscloud ?
I'd host it my-self but I don't have a spare machine at the location with suitable ipv6 range for being somewhat resilient to youtube throttling attempts.

Thanks for considering

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"ai"-generated image captions are fucking shit

masto.ai/@HourlyPornhubbedHeat…

this one hallucinates a cat, says the dog is standing, mistakes the pink blobs for balloons and hallucinates a yellow balloon, makes up trees that aren't there, and doesn't mention the main focus of the comic, which is the two animals flying through the air thanks to the bubble gum bubbles they're making!

but yeah no cool, really really great technology for disabled people: just lie to blind folks about what's in a picture! what could go wrong!

garbage garbage garbage, if you're pushing this shit technology instead of advocating for people to take a minute to write a decent alt text then fuck you

:smh:

This entry was edited (Saturday, June 28, 2025, 11:07 AM)

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in reply to tobi is writing bugs

It's unreliable, but it's better than the alternative which in most cases is nothing. Descriptions of unusual images are iffy, but for example finding out what a screen says, which lights are on on a router, what sort of liquid is in a jar... Lots of blind people are benefiting from this routinely. And there are no good alternatives. There's no reasonable world where we can count on a sighted person being always there to describe anything.
in reply to modulux

I hear what you're saying about VI people using it. There are other options. Like, it's not like we're left without options. For example of a description effort without AI, explain how #Alt4Me works so well on here, as an alternative. Is it just a fluke in your eyes? @modulux @dumpsterqueer
This entry was edited (Saturday, June 28, 2025, 11:51 AM)
in reply to Robert Kingett

Oh, that's definitely viable for images posted on the fedi. But image description of things around us for example is a lot harder. If I need to know what's around me, or what things are on a shelf or such, there's not much way around it. Projects with human volunteers are fine, but, for me at least, I'm pretty inhibited about letting some stranger see my living environment and such.
in reply to modulux

as someone who ran a heathcliff edit account on twitter for years, hand-wrote alt text for four comics posts every day, and convinced several of the other folks in that community to do the same, the alternative is this. it is doing the work, writing the text.

and while i might agree with you that it’s better than nothing on a silly social media post, it’s real bad in my professional life where it just lies about financial numbers in a chart &c.

in reply to bri

Right, where alt text can be provided, a human should provide it. But the world doesn't come with alt text, and can't. There are lots of things that can be done in tech to mitigate it, for example a device might beep in order to give feedback instead of just having lights. But there's tons of visual information in the world that's not really subject to this sort of solution.
in reply to modulux

i get it, i just really worry about the ‘better than nothing’ argument when like… even the op we were talking about… sure it’s low-stakes, but that alt text has zero bearing on the actual image. is having a fundamentally different experience really what we want to be pushing? and again, it trickles down and is getting harder and harder to push back on stuff in my professional life where it’s like… actually important. it worries me.
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Hi, I will be one week in #Prague to learn #CzechLanguage in a language school. Does anybody like to meet and speak with me in Czech, so I can practise? In #Praha or later, when I travel for another week through #CzechRepublic.

I can offer Tandem in German or Farsi.

Please share, if you know peoble in Czech. #FediHelp

#čeština #czech_language #tandem #czech

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Just so you know, #OsmAnd is celebrating its 15th anniversary with 50% off its plans, which you can now pay for directly without paying the 'app tax' to Google or Apple.

I highly recommend OsmAnd — it's a Swiss army knife for maps! Open source. Based on #OpenStreetMap.

osmand.net/blog/15-years

#OSM #map #maps

This entry was edited (Friday, June 27, 2025, 2:03 PM)

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Imagine not having to worry about what OS you use because of accessibility so much that you can literally refuse to run stock Android for privacy reasons. Day in the life of a sighted nerd, a pipedream for blind ones.

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#AudioMo day23:

Did you know that there is hidden morse code all throughout Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' album?

Somehow, probably during the two-track mix-down stage of the album, the CW from a powerful, very low frequency transmitter about 37 miles north of the studio in which this album was recorded found it's way to tape. It's centered at 16 kHz, and so low in the mix that you can't actually hear it... at least, not without some help.

This is a very short, not particularly comprehensive demo using two different methods -- a pair of stock Reaper plugins and an SDR package to mostly isolate this morse transmission, which is heard throughout the entire album.

References:
Hidden Morse Code in Tubular Bells madpsy.uk/link-between-the-sou…

The Hidden Signal Inside A Platinum Selling Album - Tubular Bells youtube.com/watch?v=o3UJAfuvni…

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Buongiorno amici del Fediverso! Hello Fedi friends!

I hope you had a nice weekend.

I'm currently doing the sound mix of the Italian voice-over of my Fedi promo video.

I used to hate listening to recordings of my voice, but after endless hours of rewatching the English version and the French one, I'm now totally ok with that 😅

Routine reminder that on Friday I published the French VO of the Fedi video. It's here: news.elenarossini.com/fedivers…

Italian version coming shortly 🇮🇹

#EleFediVideos

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Are you a GitHub user who would like to support the great work NV Access does?

You can become a GitHub Sponsor!

Today, we'd like to give a shoutout to Nael-Accessvision, one of our GitHub sponsors.

You can sponsor NV Access here: github.com/sponsors/nvaccess

(Or through PayPal or bank transfer via the "Donate" link on our website)

*Donations in Australia are tax deductible*

#FOSS #FLOSS #Accessibility #NonProfit #NotForProfit #GoodCause #Donate #Donation

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in reply to Simon Jaeger

@simon Good question - no, for someone who is already a donor via PayPal etc, there is no real reason to change. It was really just another option and when we first joined GitHub sponsors, I believe they had a promotions where they waived the fees for a year from memory. And, since we use GitHub for our code and issues ete, a lot of people who know and support us do already use that platform. We'll have to share the love around and post about a PayPal donor next time :)
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Check out this wiki radio page. It plays random files from #Wikipedia every time you press the button. monkeon.co.uk/wikiradio/

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Is there any web based chess game that has bots, teaching tools and is fully screen reader accessible; i.e. allows you to move around the board with cursor keys, rather than just speaking notation? Basically WinBoard but web based. #accessibility

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in reply to miki

@miki @vick21 Be curious what you find. The tutorials gave me trouble as well and while there are apps on iOS/Android that sorta kinda work, I've found nothing thus far that works all that well. One might argue that having the spatiality of a touch screen might actually be helpful in "visualizing" the board, but I'm not sure how fiddly that would get
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#AudioMo day 19: Sorry for my absence, we were on vacation but unfortunately didn't get the chance to really record anything to put here. So now I'm pulling things up from the archives. This here is a ringtone I made in 2020 called Unify, inspired by a patch from Soundspot's Union called "Big Pants Lead," which I'm using as the chord patch here. For how simple it is, just the chords, a bass and some drums, all pretty basic, this thing is ridiculously catchy IMO. My mom still uses this as her phone's ringtone to this day.
You can get this ringtone for yourself, in iPhone or Android format, at x0box.xyz/uploads/ringtones
This entry was edited (Thursday, June 19, 2025, 6:02 PM)

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in reply to x0

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#AudioMo day 20: More ringtones! This one was made in March of 2021 and is called On The Move. It was also inspired by a sound, namely the bass patch, which is a modified version of the Phat Funk patch from the Korg Arp Odyssey plug-in. I was playing with it and came up with this bassline. This one has two versions. The original version of it had no arp stabs and no lead. When I was later advised to add those, I made a lite version, which includes the arp stabs but mutes the lead, which you hear first. Then you hear the regular version. Both of these can be found for iOS and Android at x0box.xyz/uploads/ringtones
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Just before the #TactileReading conference, @ChanceyFleet and I took a little stroll through the lively streets of #Amsterdam. I recorded with my Meta glasses while she guided us and captured our commentary, interactions, me almost getting nailed by a bike, and just the overall #Blind travel experience. I cut the whole thing together with Terminal/ffmpeg, added captions, and hosted it. If you have 6 minutes to spare, pop on some headphones and enjoy our adventure! marconius.com/amsterdam/

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in reply to André Polykanine

@menelion I played the clips back in VLC and took note of the times where I wanted to trim the clips, then just used ffmpeg commands in Terminal to output the trimmed sections as their own video files. I write out a list of the order I wanted the clips to be put together, then run another command to turn them all into one final cut based on that text file. I can also add effects, potentially add audio, filters, and more, just need to keep playing with it. works great with TDSR.
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How a humanities background shaped the technical decisions behind the multilingual journey of Raccoon apps. Check out my blog post and stay tuned for updates!

livefasteattrashraccoon.github…

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#meta #ai #whatsapp #deltaChat
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Dangerous #Accessibility Assumptions That Put Everyone at Risk
buttondown.com/access-ability/…
#a11y #productmgmt #webdev #webdesign

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Ooo lookie, accessibility is not planned. Lol. As usual. Cause foss is just a toy that no one actually depends on.

github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral…

#accessibility #foss #RemoteDesktop #Mesh

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in reply to Devin Prater :blind:

That's why I'm so angry with leftist woke people and their "degoogle, stop using this, stop using that, blah blah blah!". If it's not accessible, I don't give a flying F about your values and sweet words. And no, I cannot fix every accessibility bug in every project, it's simply impossible. My compassion to you, Devin.
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#AudioMo Day 16: In December of 2013 I visited #Estonia to go and visit @jakobrosin for the first time.
I decided to record as much of the plane-flight from the baggage hold as I could manage, so I set my Olympus LS-100 going, attached some mics to the suitcase straps internally and sent it on it's way.
Here, we have 9 minutes of what I like to call 'Ethereal Suitcase Music' as it wends it's merry way from baggage check-in to the plane.
Listen for the really strange and as yet unidentified noises the recorder captured at points along it's journey.
If you have any ideas what these might be, I'd be very curious. I've been waiting for over 11 years to find out.

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It’s funny to watch how with time the collection of local LLMs on my computer shrank to two only: Gemma3:27B and nomic-embed-text. Llama3.2 is pretty much gone, both the text and the vision models. :) I might get a better embedding model if one comes along, but for now nomic-embed-text seems to be doing what I need. Rest is cloud-based.

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IOS 26 is going to make it possible to add ringtones using the share sheet. Tech sites are not hyping this up enough because you still have to create the ringtone, but I know lots of us know how to do that already and just need the easy way to add it to our phone without going through iTunes. And now, approximately 14 years after Apple supposedly untethered the iPhone from the computer, we have it. So now if you go to one of those ringtone sites, or someone texts you an audio file, or you’re handy with Hokusai or some other audio editor for the iPhone, you can make your own ringtones without a billion steps. Like everything else Apple has done in recently years, it’s taken so long for such a basic feature to arrive that it’s hard for me to even be excited about it, but I sure won’t miss blundering my way through iMazing.

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Dear Fedi friends,

By now you might have seen the post announcing the release of my promotional video for the Fediverse. But in case you have boosts turned off, here we go: news.elenarossini.com/fedivers…

I posted about it this morning from my #GoToSocial account because I have a 5000 character limit there. And I had so many people to thank for their help. It really takes a village.

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback so far ❤️

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Czech-speaking friends, how legit is supraphonline.cz/ for buying FLAC albums?

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Přátelé, kamarádi i nepřátelé a nekamarádi :)

Pokud tvoříte, nebo chcete tvořit obsah na #VHSky a potřebujete se poradit, nebo nám jen doporučit nějakej kanál, kterej ještě nemirrorujem, tak nám @Archos nahodil #Matrix místnost právě pro tyto případy.

Často se mi stává, že mě kontaktujete DM tady na #Fediverse, tohle bude funkčnější, rychlejší a možná někdo zareaguje rychleji, než já :)

matrix.to/#/#vhsky:mxchat.cz

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in reply to Archos

Což o to, to by asi nebyl problém, jen jsem myslela, že by to mohlo jít přes XMPP abych nemusela mít další apku ale asi to zkusim.
Ja jsem i tak s technickou podporou tady na mastodonu spokojena👍 Víceméně zatím jsem na nic nespěchala.
@schmaker @Kipe
This entry was edited (Wednesday, June 11, 2025, 12:49 PM)
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Accessibility is an area #Mixxx has struggled with for a long time, and as an all-volunteer project we have struggled to recruit devs to address it. If you have a passion for accessibility and are interested in a chance to have a big impact, hit us up.

cdm.link/apple-at-wwdc-on-acce…

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Hey y'all! I put the iPadOS 26 beta on my iPad Pro M4 and must say while many general things feel quite allright, there are definitely some areas that are very beta with regards to VoiceOver. Control Center doesn't talk at all, the multitasking control at the top of apps isn't accessible, in Files, none of the file or folder names read, and so far, I haven't found a way to activate the much talked about menu bar in Mail, Notes or any other app. So yeah, unlike previous years, the beta feels like a beta indeed from the getgo. Has any other VoiceOver user experimented with the beta on iPad and found ways to accomplish accessing the menu bar?

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Hi everyone.

I wanted to share something I just finished making… an arrangement of *Kass’s Theme* from **The Legend of Zelda**! 🎶🪶
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did working on it!

\#LegendOfZelda #ZeldaMusic #KassTheme #VideoGameMusic #VGMArrangement #Nintendo #BlindMusician #MusicArrangement #AccessibilityInMusic #GameMusic #MusicianLife #TheLegendOfZelda #BOTW #TearsOfTheKingdom

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GNOME: goes out of its way to pay for accessibility work that no company wants to pay for, regardless all the billions they make

The Register:

> As we have said before, we suspect this disconnect between younger, keener developers who don't know or care about late 20th century user interface standards or accessibility concerns, but who strongly want to junk what they perceive as legacy baggage, are behind the moves to deprecate and remove X11 – which is very much still going ahead.

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So I should be releasing a comprehensive 2 and a half hour Zoom H2 Essential audio tutorial covering all accessibility options plus everything else with in the next week. From recording to IOS control, it should be all there. It will be on YouTube and also available as zipped mp3s. I will also be including links, resources and articles regarding H2E features. Please cut me some slack since this is my first project of this kind so the editing might be a little rough.

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this week I found out that when you start the Debian Linux instaler with speech, and it detects multiple soundcards, it cycles between them and you can press enter to choose the one that actually works. Most installers just pick a random soundcard and send speech through it. Maybe it picks the internal speakers, maybe it picks the digital output that has nothing hooked up to it. If you can't hear your machine, you'll have no idea the installer started, and good luck switching soundcards after that. As far as I know, the Windows installer certainly doesn't have a soundcard selection for narrator.
This would never be a problem with Debian installations because it will just keep cycling through the soundcards until the speech becomes audible. I know we all love to hate on Linux accessibility, but sometimes the thought that goes into the design of the simplest things is really quite impressive. This is also very on-brand for Linux and I'm definitely here for it.
At the time when this happened, I was on a call with Aira and had forgotten to turn up my speakers, so I know the machine displays a "Press enter to select device 1", "Press enter to select device 2..." prommpt, but I can't 100% confirm that the speech follows along. It seems like a safe assumption though, and at some point I'll do a proper test with multiple outputs and make a recording.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, June 11, 2025, 5:00 PM)

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If you are blind and have multiple computers, and especially if you live on the edge and don't have a monitor hooked up to one of those computers, having a capture card really is a game changer.
I have a cheap one that I need to replace. But even with that cheap one, I was just able to call Aira from my laptop and select the capture card as my video device, rather than my camera.
Then, I hooked the capture card up to a mini PC that needed an OS reinstall, and the Aira agent was able to read the display output in real time.
From that point, it took us about 30 seconds to get into the boot menu of the mini PC and select the USB drive.
Even without account for Aira, having a way to reliably capture the output of a computer is infinitely useful. All you need is an app that can take a picture or video from that device and interpret it as-needed. That could be an OCR reader, an AI describer like Be My Eyes, or a calling app so you can ask a friend to look at it.
It certainly beats needing to position the camera in front of a screen, and in the case of the mini PC, it saves me from having to set up a screen in the first place.

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Station names in Copenhagen are getting interesting.
This entry was edited (Sunday, June 8, 2025, 8:25 AM)

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Fenrir, the screen reader, has some cool new features. It now tries to detect and do progress bar beeping to let you know something is progressing, it has rising tones for numeric progress, e.g. 95% or single pitch tones for non numeric progress, e.g. dd's download progress indicator. It can also automatically resume speech when the prompt returns. So, if you have a long process with a progress indicator, and you want to monitor it but don't want all the chatter, just silence speech until prompt returns with Fenrir+numpad_plus and have beeps for progress with speech returned when the process finishes. Latest tagged version: 2025.06.07.

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in reply to Martin

it kind of depends on your distro. In Arch, for example, install fenrir or fenrir-git from the AUR, so very simple. In Slint, use speakwith fenrir and you will be switched to it. For other distros, I'm not so sure. In all cases, if you have the python dependencies installed, you can just git clone it, cd to fenrir/src and run sudo ./fenrir.
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Our labrador is naturally extremely vocal. So, we've been trying to teach her to speak on command, which she does somewhat intermittently. I managed to catch some of the sounds today on a recording and they're hilarious.

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in reply to 💙

@Winter blue tardis🇧🇬🇭🇺 @Jayson Smith @Nick Giannak III The 25 port requirement is for self hosting #chatmail relay not for using the app. There are apps for other platforms such as deltachat for IOS, deltachat or arcanechat for android.
As for the deltachat-desktop app interface, unfortunatelly it's an electron app. However it's best used with the screen reader switched into focus mode.
I'll try to give you a bit of overview explaining how I am using it.
When I launch deltachat-desktop the focus is placed into a search field. If you alt+tab from its window and return back the focus will move to the chat input area if you have active conversation.
Regardless of which of these is in focus use tab and shift+tab to navigate at this point.
So I'll use the search field as a starting point as if you have no conversations this is the element you will land on after creating or importing your account from the backup.
Tabbing away from the search field you will land on the Scan QR code button. You can activate it to share your code for others to scan or to scan a code from someone else. Also we are all blind here in this conversation so I guess we won't be scanning QR codes, we'll copy and paste invite links that is also supported here. So the QR code dialog has two tabs QR invite code and Scan QR code. These are exposed as buttons to screen readers. If you activate one of these buttons the content in this dialog window changes. If you would like to join the chat you will press Scan QR code here and you will find the Paste button.
I assume QR code or invite links handling is now a bit clearer so I'll continue describing the main window.
When using tab to navigate pressing the tab key while the Scan QR button on the main window is in focus, you will land in the list of conversations. You can use up and down arrow key to navigate, enter key to activate here. Unfortunatelly the items are again exposed as buttons so it might be a bit embarrasing at first.
If you continue navigating with the tab key from the list of conversations you will land on the new conversation button.
If you continue with the tab key you will move from the new conversation button into the active conversation window. The conversation name is presented. Activating the button named after the active conversation will open a dialog window with user profile of your chat partner or profile of a group chat if the active conversation is a group chat indeed. In the profile window you can see last seen info of the chat partner, their signature, their chat handle, a button for sending them a message that is mainly usefull when you are looking at a profile of a group member, and an ability to share the contact with other contacts. There is a profile menu button that displays a context sensitive menu with more actions such as setting your own local display name for the contact.
I'm now done explaining the profile window and imagine we are back in the active conversation view focused on the chat name button.
Using tab key to navigate from here lands on the tabs changing the main conversation content. You can use these to change from conversation to the media.
Then there is a main menu button. In fact it includes conversation specific menu entries such as search in chat, dissapearing messages and others.
Moving forward with the tab key from the main menu button you will land on the message list of the active conversation. Use up and down arrow to navigate here to read the messages. And use applications key or shift+F10 to open a context menu for the selected message. Text messages have no other content but audio messages, messages with reactions or other attachments might have other focusable elements in the tab order. I think this part is pretty self explanatory once you manage to start chatting. One thing other messengers don't have is shared apps. Apps can be posted to the chat and message with the app will have a button to start the app that will then open in a new window. There are various apps made for deltachat and other webxdc capable messengers, such as the shopping list, simple group collaborative editor and similar. I am looking to the future when more screen reader users will adopt this and we can bring some of the fun things we liked to enjoy back in the days on IRC such as playing quiz or card games in the chat. This might be a nice platform for allowing this.
Then there is an attachment button, visually it's to the left of the chat input area, then chat input area it-self, smileys and record voice messages button.
After the record voice message button you will wrap to the top, of the application window landing on the profile chooser. This part needs a bit of a11y love as the profile names are not exposed to screen readers. These have role tab and you can use up and down arrow keys to navigate here. The last item in this list is a create profile button.
Yes, you can have multiple chat profiles if you like. And it's really damn easy to create a new deltachat profile. The most valuable thing on your profile is the list of contacts as you are verified criptographically. Loosing the empty profile is not a problem as you can create a new one whenever you like.
The final destination of this walkthrough through the deltachat-desktop main window is the settings button.

Huh, this turned to be a looong post. I believe it clears a few things up for you.

Thinking more about it perhaps I should report some of the little things such as avoid using button roles for the list items, consider using roving tab index for the tabs so only one of them is focusable at a time to get rid of a bit of confusion to the @Delta Chat github issues.