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Is it possible to have audiodescription on TV if the broadcasting mode is analogue and the ability to employ several language audio tracks does not exist yet? Italy has had the solution, at least a decade ago still, where audiodescription for the movies aired by RAI, the Italian national broadcaster, would have the descriptive track delivered on a designated FM radio frequency. A blind person wishing to watch such a movie would turn on their TV to the right channel and then tune a radio receiver to the right frequency to enjoy both the original movie track and the audiodescription in sync. As it turns out from the paper below, keeping both in sync is difficult.
By the device of anecdotal evidence I know that a similar system existed in Slovenia.
Another thing that was available in Italy, and I haven't heard of it anywhere else before, are accessible audio menus on DVD's.
openstarts.units.it/bitstream/…
#Accessibility #Blind #Audiodescription #Italy #Slovenia #Radio #AdventCalendar


4 years using and championing the #fediverse full time and I've never written a #introductions toot. Well, or I have and can't find it.

I'm a #blind guy from 🇬🇧 with a passion for #technology and #programming, particularly #lowLevel #systemsProgramming in #C, #C++, #Rust, etc.

I've been a huge #freeSoftware / #openSource advocate for the majority of my life. I run #Linux and I love open, #decentralised technologies like #ActivityPub, #Matrix, #bitTorrent etc.

In my view, technology is built to make our lives easier, and in many ways, it isn't these days. It is truly my opinion that the only way #tech can be sustainable is if it's built using #FOSS, and does not give ultimate control to any 1 entity, individual or corporate. If technology is to help the people, it must be built *for* the people.

Currently working on odilia.app, various projects with the rest of the Lower Elements gang at lowerelements.club, and a Computing Science BSC at the #University of #stirling


Today's window comes a little later than usual but as there's still the 4th of December somewhere in the world, I hope it's forgiven.
Inspired by a conversation I had with @adela, I decided to dedicate this one to the central purchase receipts storage system in Slovakia.
The Slovak government runs a central point where all of the receipts issued by merchands and service providers are registered. Upon issuing, a receipt is assigned a unique number in that system which then is printed onto the slip of paper given to the customer. What you can then do is, using a dedicated app for this purpose, load that receipt onto your phone by entering that number or scanning the QR code printed onto your receipt in order to have all the details of your purchase presented on your smartphone. This is a great way for blind individuals to check whether their transaction has been dutyfully conducted or to help in obtaining the necessary data to maintain your spending tracking record, so even though this solution was not conceived with blind people in mind, it is a valuable enhancement towards a more independent life.
technologiebezzraku.sk/2022/07…
#Accessibility #Blind #AdventCalendar #Slovakia #Shopping


To all #blind #ScreenReader users on various platforms who use #Firefox: The project to speed up web page and screen reader interaction, code-named Cache-The-World, is now at a phase where in Nightly 109, it has been enabled for all users. So if you spot anything that is unusual or not working as before, please let the #accessibility team know. Next step is an experiment for 50% roll-out on Windows in the 111 beta.

The page where you can track the progress is here: wiki.mozilla.org/Accessibility…


To mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, today's window opens up to one of my favourite treasure troves of good practices regarding accessibility for the blind - the Czech Republic which I am currently only one hour of a car drive away from.
Did you know that by 2004 Czech Republic was the second European country right behind Sweden with the widest network of audible traffic lights? Not only that but they already started installing tactile floor markings and my favourite invention, the remote controls for the build environment.
The Czech remote control is a tiny box with six buttons that each blind individual can purchase. Using this aid, a blind person navigating through a Czech city can check any public transport schedule available at any stop, confirm the line of the bus or tram that just came, alert the driver to their presence so that they can let them in or out of the vehicle, navigate around the Prague underground, trigger audible traffic lights to be switched on and locate some of the key buildings such as the Blind Union's HQ's.
Although many cities of Europe have meanwhile tried to implement a similar system, the Czech Republic is the only country I know of that offers such a wide range of services in the entire country this way. I was very impressed the first time I tested this and I love coming back to our southern neighbours. Ahoj a zdravim vas s Polska!
Below, an article of the Czech radio broadcaster back from 2004 explaining the accommodations along with audio samples in Real Audio, if you can still play that.
english.radio.cz/czech-blind-u…
#Accessibility #Blind #UrbanEnvironment #BuildEnvironment #CzechRepublic #AdventCalendar


As an extra creative exercise, a question: how would you imagine the services you enjoy every day thanks to the Internet if our ultimate mode of accessing data was audio over the telephone? How would Mastodon sound like? What about internet shopping, spam, viruses, all that lovely stuff? Sound effect examples are welcome as are vague descriptions. #AdventCalendar #Accessibility #Blind #Sound #SoundDesign


When I was 9 or so, I discovered that one of the cineplex complexes in Poland operated a phone line with an IVR system that would let you explore the entire schedule of currently running movies. This was my first means of accessing information independently and on-demand. I was the movies expert in our house at that time and with movies like "Shrek", "Matrix", "Starwars" and "Harry Potter" coming out this was the time to be alive. I dreamt then that we will be able to access all of the info we want through a telephone. Turns out that's what #Switzerland is doing right now.
Voicenet is the service of the Swiss Union of the Blind, where you can call in and receive all the information you need to access culture, shopping, receive advice, benefit from the organization's services etc.
Some things you can find there:
- the current supermarket prospects with all of the weekly discounts and special offers read by volunteers;
- TV and radio schedule, including information on movies with audiodescription aired throughout the week;
- traffic and construction works;
- rail schedules;
- signing up for the Union's events;
- a voice forum where users can ask for advice and exchange information;
All of that provided by volunteers and an editorial team in three languages: German, French and Italian with the ability to navigate through content E.G. jumping from beverages to dairy products with the phone's keypad.
I realize that things like the NFB Newsline exist but it seems that, as Switzerland is a much smaller country, it is easier to offer much more local information.
sbv-bvas.ch/voicenet-2/
#Accessibility #Blind #Phone #languages #Switzerland #German #French #Italian #AdventCalendar


In #Japan, the concept of accessible phones has been known since the early 00's and has its own term, "Raku Raku Phones" and means simplified phones. Those are adapted for the needs of elderly users and those who don't feel as familiar with modern technology so a lot of concepts are, well, simplified. This is especially important given that the 00's saw the emergence of Japanese mobile phones with capacities comparable to today's smartphones. Sending emails, taking photos, mobile payments, music recognition and downloads; even TV watched on a phone were all there by 2005 and formed an important part of how the Japanese society accessed information. This is why the Raku Raku phones manufactured jointly by Fujitsu and NTT Docomo, the leading Japanese mobile carrier, were so important. Fujitsu called to the corporate social responsibility of other companies to follow suit and also formed the basis for accessibility guidelines for I-Mode, the gateway to all of Japan's mobile internet services. Apparently, 80% of Japan's blind population used these phones as they were equipped with a screen reader and allowed accessing I-Mode this way. fujitsu.com/global/documents/a…
#accessibility #blind #Japan #adventcalendar #mobile #phones


#Dev recommendations 6. #RegEx can be a hard topic for every new person starting with #programming. However don’t be scared of them because they are useful and fun! If you struggle to learn #RegularExpressions here are my favorite resources.
1. regex101.com. This website is your all in one toolbox for regular expressions, with tutorials, reference and a very advanced debugger which can visualise the expression’s output. All for free, and with #accessibility for the #blind out of the box.
2. youtube.com/watch?v=r6I-Ahc0HB…
A little course on regular expressions. The teaching is cler and the guy explains everything on the way.
As always, if you have any questions about #RegEx, #csharp #dotnet, #swift or anything else, feel free to ask me!


My husband @mcourcel went out after work for drinks and I had a late meeting, Halfway though my meeting he sent me this video. My #blind husband throwing an axe. #WackyWednesday welcome to my world


I need some help with #nvda & #wikipedia.
I'm assisting a blind student in learning how to navigate the web using a laptop.
NVDA reads out the title first, then properties about the document, then the summary box on the side.
I can't find any way to skip that whole box and move straight to the main content. There is no main content landmark, nor is there a heading, not is it in the Contents section.
Take en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood… as an example. How can I navigate to the first sentence of the main article?
Thanks for any help.
#blind #accessibility


Consider hiring The Social #AudioDescription Collective for your next in-person or digital event. SADC believes in diversity and the human voice. Their AD reflects the multi-cultural and multi-racial world we live in. Many SADC team members are POC, Disabled, visually impaired, women, and or LGBT+. Their credits include movie trailers, music videos, documentary films, + a variety of other content. Learn more and make contact at adcomrade.wordpress.com/ #blind #accessibility


Every year, #MushroomFM, a station run in the main by #blind volunteers, produces a top 100 #holiday #music countdown based on the votes of listeners. We also have a social media #Christmas party in conjunction with the live 10-hour broadcast. This year, for the first time, it’s happening on Mastodon.

This programming is produced by blind people, for the world. Everyone is welcome to vote for their holiday faves, listen in, and join in the social media fun if they want to. Here’s the blog post announcing the 2022 countdown. Looking forward to the votes of our regulars and, maybe, some new Mastodon friends as well. mushroomfm.com/node/3137


Google publishes the source code for their TalkBack screen reader. GrapheneOS maintains a fork of it and includes it in GrapheneOS with the help of a blind GrapheneOS user who works on their own more elaborate fork. Eventually, we'd like to include more or all of their changes.

TalkBack depends on a text-to-speech (TTS) implementation installed/configured/activated. It needs to have Direct Boot support to function before the first unlock of a profile. Google's TTS implementation supports this and can be used on GrapheneOS, but it's not open source.

We requested Direct Boot support from both prominent open source implementations:

RHVoice: github.com/RHVoice/RHVoice/iss…
eSpeak NG: github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng…

eSpeak NG recently added it but it's not yet included in a stable release and their licensing (GPLv3) is too restrictive for us.

RHVoice itself has acceptable licensing for inclusion in GrapheneOS (LGPL v2.1), but has dependencies with restrictive licensing. Both these software projects also have non-free licensing issues for the voices. Neither provides close to a working out-of-the-box experience either.

Google's Speech Services app providing text-to-speech and speech-to-text works perfectly. Their proprietary accessibility services app with extended TalkBack and other services also works fine. However, many of our users don't want to use them and we need something we can bundle.

There aren't currently any usable open source speech-to-text apps. There are experimental open source speech-to-text implementations but they lack Android integration.

We also really need to make a brand new setup wizard with both accessibility and enterprise deployment support.

GrapheneOS still has too little funding and too few developers to take on these projects. These would be standalone projects able to be developed largely independently. There are similar standalone projects which we need to have developed in order to replace some existing apps.

AOSP provides a set of barebones sample apps with outdated user interfaces / features. These are intended to be replaced by OEMs, but we lack the resources of a typical OEM. We replaced AOSP Camera with our own app, but we still need to do the same with Gallery and other apps.

Google has started the process of updating the open source TalkBack, which only happens rarely. We've identified a major issue: a major component has no source code published.

github.com/google/talkback/pul…

Google has been very hostile towards feedback / contributions for TalkBack...

This is one example of something seemingly on the right track significantly regressing. Another example is the takeover of the Seedvault project initially developed for GrapheneOS. It has deviated substantially from the original plans and lacks usability, robustness and security.

In the case of Seedvault, GrapheneOS designed the concept for it and one of our community members created it. It was taken over by a group highly hostile towards us and run into the ground. It doesn't have the intended design/features and lacks usability, security and robustness.

All of these are important standalone app projects for making GrapheneOS highly usable and accessible. What we need is not being developed by others and therefore we need to the resources including funding and developers to make our own implementations meeting our requirements.

#grapheneos #privacy #security #android #mobile #accessibility #texttospeech #speechtotext #talkback #blind #backup


If you're like me, then you were really happy to learn about Mastodon's enthusiastic support for image descriptions, and you were really eager to join in.

Then you went to actually write something and realized you have no idea how to present visual information in a way that is helpful/enjoyable to those who are #VisuallyImpaired or #Blind.

I found this guide really informative: uxdesign.cc/how-to-write-an-im…

Of course, I'd also love to hear any additional tips y'all might have!

#Accessibility


I've launched a #Mastodon instance focused on #AudioDescription. This is a space where professionals and fans can come together to learn, advocate, and work together towards the goal of quality AD in all environs. The server is bare-bones right now, so your patience is requested as we build things out. You can also make an impact by boosting this news across your networks. To join, head over to adforward.org/auth/sign_up
#blind #a11y #LowVision


To all my #blind #Mac #VoiceOver users, I made a demo that I hope some here may find beneficial. Please do share if you feel like it. Why Turning Off VoiceOver Cursor Tracking can be Really Useful:


Great resource! Screen Readers get allot of coverage, but contrast errors are sadly incredibly common and effect hundreds of millions of people with poor eyesight every single day on at least part of almost every app and webpage out there.
#A11Y #accessibility #WebAccess #disability #VisionImpaired #VisuallyImpaired #Blind #WebDev #UXDesign


Just learned about this really cool theme park in Texas specifically designed for kids with disabilities. Apparently this guy was having tons of trouble finding a theme park able to accommodate his daughter Morgan who has multiple disabilities. Eventually, he soled his successful business and spent $50,000,000 to build his own.
It's got 25 different attractions, tons of events, thousands of positive reviews ETC.
morganswonderland.com
#accessibility #A11Y #disability #blind #VisionImpaired #VisuallyImpaired #Deaf #DeafBlind #Autistic #Autism #CerebralPalsy #Wheelchair #WheelchairUser #ThemePark #ThemeParks


Liam Erven is now live for his annual marathon! He'll be playing lots of #audiogames and giving away over $300 worth of prizes. Also, there's the wheel of pain!
Here's the stream link, followed by his marathon info page with the list of games, prize info ETC. You can also tune in via audio via that page or on Quenton C playroom.
Youtube Stream
youtube.com/watch?v=D__KLTJfas…
Info page
lerven.me/marathon22
#AudioGame #blind #LiveStream #Youtube


No es norma pero se va convirtiendo en convención: nuestros fediversantes ciegos no suelen personalizar su avatar, les queda el predeterminado (imagen adjunta).

Tiene lógica y está chido porque nos permite identificar de un vistazo cuando conversamos con quien tiene esa discapacidad.

Les invito a que, si no son ciegos, personalicen su avatar tan pronto como puedan.

#EsViernesDeSeguirA @blindscribe @jaguarunileiro
#FF #FollowFriday

#FediTips #Accesibilidad #Accessibility #Blind #Ceguera


Just learned about GridReader, a free tool for Blind programmers that might make it easier to explore complex nested code. My #Python experience is limited to experimenting with the BBC Microbit, and so far i've just set my screen reader to report indentation level. #Blind coders: how do you handle indentation and navigating complex code bases? Does GridReader seem useful? psu.edu/news/information-scien…


The latest episode of my #Podcast, @MosenAtLarge, has nearly an hour discussing how #Blind people like me use Mastodon and how to get started. I discuss some MastoDos and MastoDon'ts in general and focus on #accessibility on several platforms including the web interface, #Pinafore, and #Metatext. It's in any podcast app. The #audio is at mosenatlarge.pinecast.co/episo…. The #transcript is at mosen.org/malp0206transcript/
Hope blind people find it helpful and sighted people find it interesting.


A small group of #blind people have come together to raise funds, after 11 blind children were killed in a fire at Uganda’s Salama School for the Blind. This is such a terrible tragedy and there is considerable need. Times are tough right now, but if you have a little to spare and would like to, I’m sure they would be grateful if you #donate. gofundme.com/f/eedz7x-help-sal…


In dieser #Anleitung für blinde Menschen nutzen wir für #Android übrigens @AntennaPod

kom-in.de/156/podcasts-via-rss…

#Podcast #RSS #Audio #Player #App #mobile #a11y #accessibility #blind #FOSS #OpenSource #AntennaPod
@jamescridland


When writing articles or documents in general I'd occassionally like to add pictures into the document e.g. a photo or a screenshot. While doing this I am always asking for help from someone else because I'm #blind. Can you give me some recommendations how to make sure the image is right size and it does not overlap the text or the other way round? Either pure HTML, or wordpress or markdown. #a11y #askfedi