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Items tagged with: accessibility


I asked ChatGPT to write a song from a techbro's perspective, about accessibility. You'll love the result 😆 #accessibility #ChatGPT


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


Hey @yatil - I came across your #accessibility in the #fediverse post: yatil.net/blog/accessibility-i…

I'm currently working on a #chess game that can be played over Mastodon, and I'm keen for it to be as good an experience as it can be for everyone. I've done some research, have a prototype, and now I feel like I can start talking to users...

Would you be willing to offer your thoughts, and could you recommend a few people I could email or chat to?


My boyfriend (@crispy) says that he wishes there's a way to use Mastodon when he can't type much because of #OCD. He says that's why he prefers Twitter Spaces, because he can use his voice.

Perhaps #Mastodon would do well to add a voice post option?

He doesn't like dictation because it's slow and doesn't work properly. The built-in dictation at least.

Related GitHub Issue: github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…

#accessibility #TypingImpaired


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!


Heads up for fans of the #Metatext #Mastodon app

- its lead developer @metabolist has stopped updating it, for health reasons.

:blobcatohno: :ohno:

If someone else would like to help out, please email them at info@metabolist.org

:mastodon_oops:
mastodon.social/@metabolist/10…

Web: metabolist.org/

:ablobcatheart:

#feditips #opensource #accessibility


Please consider completing the 2022 Accessibility Skills Gap Survey (by Dec 16) teachaccess.org/accessibility-… To "accurately reflect the #accessibility skills that currently exist within the workforce." from TeachAccess & PEATWorks #a11y


I've collected some #Mastodon 🦣 #instances to help with the #TwitterMigration focused in #inclusion, #accesibility and #minorities. They look like safe spaces for most of us. I'd appreciate the boost and new recommendations to add to the list:

🔗🇬🇧 ableism.rip/about - space to fight ableism
🔗🇬🇧 disabled.social/about - for disabled people
🔗🇬🇧 neurodifferent.me/about - neurodiversity and neurominorities
🔗🇬🇧 iaccessibility.social/about - interest in assistive technology
🔗🇬🇧 blacktwitter.io/about - history and voices for black people
🔗🇬🇧 lgbt.io/about - for LGBT+ and allies
🔗🇬🇧 queer.party/about - queer-oriented instance
🔗🇬🇧 tech.lgbt/about - for tech workers, academics, students, and others interested in tech who are LGBTQIA+ or Allies

Please boost to reach more people!


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


So, it's the server (instance) that converts it? Do you know if that's the same on all masto instances, or is it a setting the admin can change?

Letter case makes a HUGE difference to hashtags for screen readers, people with dyslexia, the visually impaired, etc. That is the reason I'm asking.
#accessibility


@changeling @blindscribe

Hey, I read fedi.tips/mastodon-and-fediver… as I was looking for someone to write to about the fact that hashtags on Mastodon default to *remove* camel case if you select the drop-down reference when typing a hashtag.

New here and wondering if I can lend my voice to a related discussion or reach out to someone to promote camel case hashtags as a default.

#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


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


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


Sheri Byrne-Haber presents How (and why) to 'shift-left' your accessibility testing youtube.com/watch?v=UmPBLoJI3j…

#accessibility #ShiftLeft


I like the early #accessibility tips from fedi.tips/mastodon-and-fediver… especially the bits at the end where admins can add CSS to help support their authors to create better content.

I wonder if there are more tools to help authors create more accessible content. #ATAG 2.0 is really powerful, yet old school social media hasn't adopted it.


I always find videos about #accessibility super interesting. Here are two videos from ProRail showing how one can use Dutch railway stations when blind or visually impaired:

In Dutch: yewtu.be/watch?v=aZYx_q5bIsk
In English: yewtu.be/watch?v=X54WMxb2Wgw

Accessibility is really important and needs to be given more attention.


An article on how to write an effective #AltText #ImageDescription for #accessibility...

MAIN POINTS:

• describe the image only, not the photographer credits or keywords
• write a description appropriate to the context (ex., a post about photography vs. a celebrity)
• make it as concise as possible, except if you are transcribing text in an image
• no need to start with "An image of..." as the screen reader says that by default
• end with a period to provide a pause

axesslab.com/alt-texts


I'm not blind or have impaired vision, so take this with a grain of salt (feel free to correct me), but people who put nondescript one sentence alt texts are almost worse than those who put no alt text.

At least if I'm about to boost a picture without, glitch-soc will warn me about it. If a picture has an alt text like "screenshot of my tweet", that's less than useless but it will slip through the alt text detector.

Write good alt text ffs. Describe the picture. Not a title or a TLDR, a proper description. If it's text, copy the text into the image description. If it's selfies, don't write "a selfie of me", describe your selfies. Describe film scenes, descripe paintings, descripe charts and infographics. You have, on this instance at least, 1500 characters to describe your pictures. Do it.

And if 1500 isn't enough, you can add a second picture to keep describing it.

#feditips #accessibility #alttext


Keyboard Testing: The A11y Enhancement to Your Definition of Done: dev.to/steady5063/keyboard-tes… by Mark Steadman #accessibility #keyboard #dod #prodmgmt


Like this idea of Quality Gates - smashingmagazine.com/2022/11/a…

#Web #accessibility #AutomatedTesting


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 almost wish I had found Mastodon before I did, because I feel what I'm about to share would've done well there, but heck, I'm gonna try this anyway. Folks, this is a petition we've had going for a couple weeks now asking Blizzard to bring native blind accessibility support into Hearthstone since our accessibility mod is being sunsetted. Now here's the thing, we've technically gotten their attention. We've technically won. They've announced they will be attempting to do so. However I believe continuing to boost this petition is still important, because it signifies how important others think accessibility is. Hearthstone Access, the accessibility mod that allowed us to play Hearthstone, helped us to fall in love with a game, adn we don't want to lose it forever. So, just to boost the signal... Could you please sign? chng.it/NwgBxyMyhp #Hearthstone #Accessibility #HearthstoneAccess #Petition


Just published an article on #GovLoop on some work we are doing to promote #accessibility in #VeteransAffairs for the #USAGov

govloop.com/community/blog/sup….


First ask yourself, "Why are we hiding content?" Check out this great article, Inclusively Hidden, by @scottohara scottohara.me/blog/2017/04/14/… #webdev #webdesign #uiDesign #a11y #accessibility


Why are people joining issue or specific Mastodon servers? I'm interested in many issues, and am curious about ones tied to #OpenSource #Sustainability & #Accessibility, but unsure how or why people choose.

Are certain instances going to be seen as being more legitimate? How will sustainability be managed as numbers grow? What happens if I move & that instance shuts down?

Some info here:
blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/…


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


🤔 Wondering what #ARIA attributes can be used on #HTML elements?
Wonder no more:
ARIA in HTML
w3.org/TR/html-aria/
#webdevelopment #accessibility #W3C


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


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


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


I have thus far failed to figure out how to get this one tagged for #accessibility

github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…


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.


I think #Tusky is better in terms of #Accessibility, #Fedilab is better when looking at !friendica support.


If you are interested in improving the #accessibility of Mastodon, take a look at the issue queue github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…+

If there are issues you've found that aren't there, are they part of the instance of Mastodon that you are using, or part of the core open source project? Custom themes can get in the way.

Posting #a11y bugs is important in moving ahead any open source project.