Hey folks, time for the monthly open Q&A. "I'm Perplexed, What's Next"
This meet-up will happen Saturday 24th June, 8PM UK, 3PM Eastern.
This is the session where you can ask Scott and JennyK questions about #REAPER, #OSARA, or pretty much anything around #accessible recording. Newcomers with questions always get top priority, so drop in and tell us about what's tripping you up. We'll spend a couple of hours helping as many as we can.

As long as there is coffee in the JennyK lair and hopefully a shay holding down the fort on YouTube it will be another great Q&A. :D
Read all the details, find tips and tricks to tweak TeamTalk so it behaves, and more at reaperteacher.com
See ya Saturday.

Jen

Hello! I would like to invite everyone to join the #Accessible #Apple community on Discord. This server is dedicated to current and future #blind and/or #VisuallyImpaired users of #iPhone, #Mac, #Apple Watch and other #Apple products who would like to get the most out of their devices. If that's something you are interested in, give us a shot!!
discord.gg/vfKyEBmXNb
Now to some FAQ that I guess will be asked over and over.
Q: There's only one administrator and that's you.
A: Yeah, but there's no point as there's literally noone else there, yet.
Q: Where are the rules?
A: They are not existent yet. Just please be a human.
Q: What's the point if there's AppleVis?
A: AppleVis was, and still is a great resource if it comes to stuff like APp directories, curated list of resources, podcasts ETC, however the forum features are suboptimal, especially for mobile usage. I have spoken to many people who are newcomers to the #Apple ecosystem and using the AppleVis website turned out to be harder than using their shiny new device itself.

Please keep in mind that the server is in a test stage, many things can happen, including channel deletions/additions, moderation appointments or server deletion in case there's no real interest. If you have any suggestions how could I improve it or if you would like to help me moderate, please reach out.
I kindly ask everyone to boost it to gauge interest. #accessibility #a11y #blind

Join the Accessible Apple Discord Server!

Check out the Accessible Apple community on Discord - hang out with 1 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

^Discord

It's that time again. :)

This months #Reaper made easy Meet-up will happen on Saturday 27th May, 8PM UK, 3PM Eastern.
Join us for May's edition of "I'm Perplexed, What's Next", an open Q&A session where you can ask anything about REAPER, OSARA or #accessible recording. Questions big or small are welcome from anyone with any amount of experience. We'll be online for a couple of hours, helping as many people with as much as we can.
Details on this Q&A and other goodies can be found on reaperteacher.com
See you there. :)
Scott and JennyK

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

‎Aiko

‎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.

^{App Store}

OK, this is great. Just found an #iOS equivalent of #MacWhisper and it’s free. Not sure if it always is, but it certainly is right now.
It’s #Accessible and works well with #VoiceOver.

#Aiko by Sindre Sorhus

apps.apple.com/gb/app/aiko/id1…

‎Aiko

‎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.

^{App Store}

February is Free and Open-Source Software month - #FOSSFeb! As the your #FOSS screen reader, we want to encourage everyone to explore the world of free, open-source software - especially #accessible software of course! Here are a couple of links on #FOSSFeb to get you started:

opensource.com/article/17/2/fo…

onyxpoint.com/national-free-an…

codemotion.com/magazine/dev-li…

How are you celebrating #FOSSFeb?

Hello world!

Introducing Semaphore an accessible, simple and fast web client for Mastodon.

Semaphore continues the work of @nolan 's @pinafore, and will prioritise accessibility, continuing Pinafore's track record of integrating improvements from disabled contributors.

Follow this account if you'd like to keep up-to-date with releases and news.

#mastodon #accessible #a11y #client #app #web #semaphore #pinafore

An interesting experiment in turning 💯 data and 📈📊📉 graphs into 🔊 audio.

“… one aim is to make our data journalism more #Accessible for vision-impaired people.”

theguardian.com/news/datablog/…

#DataViz
#Accessibility / #A11Y
#Inclusion

What is the sound of Facebook’s value crashing? Noisycharts turns news into noise

Rising carbon dioxide and the slump in the pound have been frequently graphed. Now we’ve turned the data and graphs into audio

^{Nick Evershed (The Guardian)}

As "#accessible" drag and drop (with accessible in quotes as I haven't personally verified the claims) is added to #React Aria and React Spectrum, I'm happy to see drag-and-drop get some #accessibility love at the framework level. However, I'm not convinced that aiming for parity always creates the most efficient, usable experiences in this area.

For many use cases, there are alternative approaches legitimately better suited to how people actually operate their devices, across various assistive technologies and input methods. For instance, dropdowns with type-ahead, offering more of an opportunity to browse before committing, rather than constantly navigating back and forth across drop zones which could be far apart.

The article highlights challenges in finding a preexisting holistic system, without delving into the possible reasons for that being the case until now. User feedback is also not a panacea; are you asking someone to evaluate whether they can use a thing? Or whether that thing is a good idea, and/or if a better thing could theoretically exist?

react-spectrum.adobe.com/blog/…

#a11y

Taming the dragon: Accessible drag and drop

We are excited to announce the release of drag and drop support in React Aria and React Spectrum! This includes a suite of hooks for implementing drag and drop interactions, with support for both mouse and touch, as well as full parity for keyboard a…

^{Adobe Inc (Adobe)}

There's also a wider question about implementation, because codeberg isn't the only site that needs to implement some form of control mechanism in their sign up to stop them from being overwhelmed by bots signing up.

Our projects are small and often just 1 to a couple of folk. We all have our small fields of expertise and energy levels. How do we help each other to fix this?

How do we ensure that sites are #accessible for everyone? How easy are they to install and support? #a11y