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Items tagged with: Blind


As the transformative membership and advocacy organization of #blind people across the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, we prioritize #accessibility, inclusion, and the preferences of blind people as we adapt our social media strategy. Our move away from Twitter and toward Mastodon reflects these commitments. Read our press release: nfb.org/about-us/press-room/na…


Greetings!

Well, after finding out that #WhaleBird
github.com/h3poteto/whalebird-…is a decent enough accessible MacOS client for use with #Misskey, you'll see me post on here from time to time now as well! Most of the time I'll still be posting on my Mastodon account, though watch this space! Three-Thousand characters is more than i ever would need myself, but I'll take it!

For users of #VoiceOver, the 'J' & 'k' keys currently do not speak under the curssor what the post is, thus nornal VO commands for now are necessary. Definitely a client for #Blind users to check out though!

NB. As noted among the GitHub page, WhaleBird is also available for #Windows and #Linux, though I'll leave those builds to you guys!


This is a brilliant release from the National Federation of the Blind about why they are scaling back #Twitter and how they have embraced the #Fediverse by coming to #Mastodon.
They truly understand the benefits and the culture here which promotes the engagement of #blind people. nfb.org/about-us/press-room/na…
@nationsblind #feditips



Aiko iOS app, totally free, Hi quality transcription, all performed on your device for privacy. This app was mentioned in the latest AppleVis Newsletter, so it is totally accessible. Just know that the app is kind of large, it is 2 GB in size. Probably because it does everything on the device, and all of the languages it supports.

Description from the app store followed by the link.
High-quality on-device transcription. Easily convert speech to text from meetings, lectures, and more.
The transcription is powered by OpenAI's Whisper running locally on your device. The audio never leaves your device. You can export the transcription as subtitles too. Aiko favors accuracy over speed.
Supports 100 different languages.
The app was made possible thanks to Whisper by OpenAI and whisper.cpp by Georgi Gerganov.
■ FAQ ‣ Can I edit the text in the app? I don't plan to support any editing. Export the transcription and edit it in a proper text editor.
‣ Why is the app so large? The app delivers the highest quality transcription on the market for 100 different languages. Rather than asking why it's so large, the real question is how is it so small.
‣ Why is the transcription so slow? The favors accuracy over speed. However, performance is expected to improve in the coming months.
‣ Can I delete some of the languages to save space? This is unfortunately not possible. The model has all the languages stored together in a way that makes it impossible to remove just some languages. More FAQs on the website.
■ Technical details The app uses the Whisper medium or small model depending on available memory.
■ Support You can contact me through the feedback button in the app or at sindresorhus@gmail.com

apps.apple.com/us/app/aiko/id1…

#Aiko #iOS #Quality #Transcription #Free #Blind #Accessible


Just dropped on the App Store: #RHVoice for #iOS. For now only #Macedonian and #Albanian languages are supported but it's worth bookmarking/installing this now to follow updates. Again, new linguistic communities have been included to the #Apple ecosystem with high-quality, free-of-charge voices. apps.apple.com/pl/app/rhvoice/… #Accessibility #Blind #SpeechSynthesis #TextToSpeech #Languages


Greetings!

I would like to sincerely thank @genewitch , for opening up a ticket for making the #Misskey web interface more accessible to all #Blind & #VisuallyImpaird users.
Comment among the #GitHub thread if anyone has ideas/thoughts, and spread the word!

github.com/misskey-dev/misskey…


iOS Shortcuts. Darcy Burnard, from the Maccessibility podcast, did a 10 part series on understanding and using shortcuts. If you are interested in iOS shortcuts, I would highly recommend checking out this series! You can find it on the ACB Community podcast. You can either join the podcast through your favorite podcast app, or go to the website link at the end. Now there is many different things posted to this podcast feed. But just do a search for Understanding Shorcuts, and this will filter them out. The series ran from January 23rd to April 10th. Thanks to Darcy for putting in the time and doing this series! I personally listen to them through my podcast app, but here is the website link if you want it. acb-community.pinecast.co. #iOS #Shortcuts #Tip #UnderstandingShortcuts #Blind #Voiceover @DHSDarcy


Greetings!

If ya so desire, you can now follow me among the #misskey side of the #fediverse by visiting

fediverse.projectftm.com/@quee…

For mobile clients that maybe friendly to the #Blind, check out #MilkTea for Android:
play.google.com/store/apps/det…
Milktea - Misskey App - Apps on Google Play
, and #Misscat for IOS
apps.apple.com/app/id150505999…


Many apps are inaccessible for blind/VI people. Developers usually have to implement #Accessibility features from scratch for each platform they develop on, which can scare them away. The good folks over @accesskit are trying to change that with their #Foss project, #AccessKit. Their goal is to create a cross-platform solution for accessibility that only has to be implemented once. I'm posting this to spread the word. Let's help them reach their goals! accesskit.dev/ #Blind #A11Y


Thanks to everyone who has boosted my open letter calling on entities that engage with the #blind community to come to Mastodon.
At the time of writing this post, we have around 330 signatures. That’s far fewer than those who have kindly boosted the petition here and just a tiny fraction of the blind community who has made the move to Mastodon.
If you’re concerned about missing out on engagement with organisations of the blind, some assistive tech companies, companies with #accessibility accounts and more, please add your name to the letter. It is going to have more impact the more signatures it gets.
Want to do more? Contact an organisation you want to see here, respectfully asking why they’ve not made it here yet and pointing out the benefits.
Also on the #LivingBlindfully podcast, we’ll have a section mentioning those entities that have responded to the call and made the move here.
Thank you.
bit.ly/BlindMastodon






it's odilia, the odilia screenreader! finally, the long awaited by some, version 0.1.0 is out, it has been for afew hours now, but as they say, the news are only old if you heard them at least once, so for most people they should be fresh. If you want to check it out, feel free to do so, dropping bug reports as you find them, never hesitate to pop things in that issue tracker, or come talk to us in our matrix space, #odilia:stealthy.club, or irc, #odilia:libera.chat, #odilia-oftopic:libera.chat and #odilia-dev:libera.chat
the releace announcement can be found at odilia.app/news/release_0-1-0/
finally, we're here! A big thank you to the community who waited patiently for this release, as well as everyone who contributed, in one way or another, to the project's growth, we're here, we hear you, and we'll never forget our community! let's show the world it can indeed be done, make linux great again!
#accessibility #screenreader #screenreaders #blind #linux #odilia


Many folks seemed to like my demonstration of the mod for the #gothic #game by #piranchaBytes that allows #blind players to play! So now we have a little follow-up, maybe not something as exciting as the previous time, but no less important. The Smart Map feature allows the blind player to observe the 3D game surrounding in a 2D environment. Since the world of Gothic is pretty complicated with all kinds of polygons living inside it, we needed to make the map a bit simpler but no less functional. And so the Smart Map feature was born; it cuts the world to little squares, 500 X 500 in size, which can be navigated by the player allowing them to see what is going on in nearby sectors. Since Gothic uses the so called Waynet which is used for NPCs to know where we're going, we have a seemingly free pathfinding as well which, thanks to the limitations of #ZenGin is not as simple as I initially thought. Spread the word about YAGA! Thanks the great modders who contributedt his feature. #gaming #accessibility #a11y #gothic #rpg



Staying still in the land of open source projects, this slipped yesterday through my Reddit reading:
FeedGears is a web-based, self-hostable RSS client with particular attention to accessibility. According to the dev, it was tested against the WCAG 2.1 guidelines on the AA level, has integrated shortcuts, consistent keyboard navigation and automatic announcements for system events. It's pretty new so a lot of features might be missing but that's for the contact mechanisms and the feedback. :)
I haven't tested this myself yet but the landing page looks definitely alright.
feedgears.com/
#Accessibility #OpenSource #RSS #Blind #ScreenReaders



Nice nice. Even though I don't listen to any form of radio now a days except to get traffic updates, I want the #blind to have options.


Browsing Github last night, I came across two interesting, potentially accessible open source projects related to radio.
1. Salamandra Radio - an automation software for station in its early development. Screen reader specific fixes have been mentioned in the release notes and so were hotkeys, although these do not seem to be documented anywhere; the app starts in Portuguese by default but a change to English is possible in the settings; also buttons in the toolbar do not seem to be labelled but upon focusing them, a tooltip is read out so we can go by those to tell what the buttons are doing.
github.com/ocarolino/salamandr…
2. Axios - a simple radio player supporting the Radio Browser API. It is accessible in a similar way as Salamandra, allows for searching the directory, playing whatever is found, and controlling the volume.
github.com/z1lvis/Axios
Feel free to explore, hack, spread the word or do whatever else you usually do in such cases.
#Accessibility #Blind #ScreenReaders #Radio #OpenSource




Inspired by the creative use of some nifty JAWS scripting and the power of iOS shortcuts as demonstrated by @IllegallyBlind, I have decided to try my hand at creating something similar for NVDA and I think I've succeeded. Note that I'm fairly new at this and by no means a coder so this is the simplest of simple, in fact, I'm still quite amazed that it works, actually.
What we need:
1. The NVDA Speech Logger addon available at:
github.com/opensourcesys/speec…
2. The following iOS shortcut:
icloud.com/shortcuts/999808bd1…
How to use:
1. Install both: the addon in your NVDA and the shortcut in your shortcuts respectively.
2. In NVDA's settings head over to the Speech Logger category and set the output path to your Dropbox root (that's what the shortcut assumes you're using, feel free to modify as needed);
3. Start logging the local speech with the assigned gesture (by default NVDA+alt+l);
4. Assuming the shortcut is configured properly (Dropbox authorized and all that jazz), launch it and a viewer will pop up with the fresh version of the log file at the time.
One nuissance I've found with this is that the viewer overlay will not surround the VO gestures so you need to focus it first through exploration before you can start reading the log. Also the gestures for the first and last item on the screen will move you to whatever else should be on your screen right now so you have to explore again to close the viewer. I assume that's a VO bug.
Also bear in mind that, while logging, anything your PC says will ultimately land in a regular text file and nothing apart from your Dropbox account is protecting it. Use with caution.
Feel free to suggest feedback.
#Accessibility #Tip #VoiceOver #NVDA #iPhone #iOS #Windows #Blind



Any of you #blind #linux nerds know what kind of Vudu I have to do to get #Java #accessibility to work on #ArchLinux? Currently using #openjdk 19 but can switch to whatever JDK, as long as I end up with an accessible GUI.


If you're using OSM, either as a blind individual profiting from the available mapping data with one of the navigation apps or as a an OSM contributor, this OSM wiki article could be interesting as it explains how to map the world with blind users in mind. It explains specialty tags, some of which I had no idea existed, suggests tools for data entry and introduces the Blind OSM project. #OSM #GPS #Navigation #Mapping #Accessibility #Blind OSM for the blind – OpenStreetMap Wiki wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OS…


The #scrcpy utility is super useful. It is open source and available for free.
Connect your phone to your PC with USB or Wi-Fi:
✅ mirror the phone's screen to your PC
✅ use Windows Magnifier to zoom in on the phone
✅ copy paste text in both directions
✅ use the PC keyboard and mouse with your phone
✅ record the phone's screen while mirroring

Download `scrcpy` from...

github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy

#blind #lowvision #visuallyimpared #andoird #a11y


So interesting how this happens. We have a #blind character in this game, a blind accessibility consultant was consulted to get the #representation right .... but the blind can't play the game they're supposedly properly represented in because it's not #accessible to them. Curious how that meeting went :)
From birdsite:
It is done. Here is my post on Hogwarts Legacy. For those interested, please read. This is the best I can offer everyone. Thank you again all. brandoncole.net/?p=547


These magnetic USB C adapters are truly fantastic! Recommended for anyone blind or visually impaired.
Available from Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress.

✅ Makes fitting a USB cable easy - the magnet pulls the cable into place.
✅ Saves wear and tear on the USB C port.
✅ Can be used with chargers, wired earbuds and data sync cables.
✅ Acts as a quick release if the cable gets yanked.
✅ They work well with phones, laptops, and tablets.

amazon.com/Magnetic-Adapter-Co…

#blind #lowvision #visuallyimpaired #a11y



Currently pouring over a sample exam sheet set for Finnish highschool students in German as foreign language in 2020 to assess the accessibility of the exam solution. It's got everything an accessible test needs: a table of contents, a good heading structure, native HTML 5 media player with almost perfect accessibility, native controls such as radio buttons and edit fields to give the answers.
The students were to pass the test by connecting their computers with an Ethernet cable to the examination machine running a special OS, presumably a fork of Debian. The test was taken by tunneling into the examination machine through the web browser and handling the exam in an accessible HTML from there.
Sadly, the audio recordings for the listening part do not seem to be available. Pity, as they reference Whatsapp voice messages. Would be fun to check for their authenticity based on the sound quality.
On that note: Do language exams in your countries reference modern communication methods or is it still a telephone? When I took my final in German, "Social media: pros and cons" was just a subject of the mini essay I had to put together as part of the writing assignment.
web.archive.org/web/2020012122…
#Accessibility #Blind #Finland #Education #Languages #German


Don't ever #donate to CNIB's guide dog program, or to CNIB ever, for that matter. What a fraud, but for those of us who are blind, yes I said blind and not non-sighted or whatever garbage language they are using, this is nothing new. #blind #charity #guideDog cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewa…


@BlindGordon this is funny coming from the verge. Their website and blog posts are awful about adding alt text for their images. Irony aside, it’s nice to see a main stream publication encouraging people to write image descriptions for the blind. #Blind #Social #ImageDescription


My feature article on "Visualization for the Blind" was just published in the new Jan/Feb 2023 issue of @ACM Interactions. This is a high-level overview of making #visualizations #accessible for #blind individuals, sprinkled with my own personal experiences from beginning in the #a11y space. I even squeezed two Latin quotes in! And thanks to my close collaborator Jonathan Lazar for his mentorship. DOI: 10.1145/3571737 Read the fulltext here (no paywall): interactions.acm.org/archive/v…