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What are your thoughts on #AI and #accessibility? Do you think AI can actually help developers make more accessible software, or can play more of a role in users' lives? I'm going to take computer vision off the table because that's been talked to death. And yes, i'm using the word AI deliberately even though I understand it's kind of just a buzzword. I just want to see what comes back from this.


Dear #blind friends from #Europe, do you have any experience with those famous Meta smart glasses? Where did you buy them and for how much? Are they able to speak in different languages? Thanks! #accessibility #SmartGlasses


Reminder: To celebrate our 100th follower on Mastodon we are slashing our prices in half! 50% off all of our courses, just enter code 100-masto-pals on checkout! This code is Mastodon only. Valid until end of September. a11y-collective.com/courses-ov…

(But I can't keep you from sharing this code with anyone who needs a solid foundation in all things Web Accessibility.)
#a11y
#accessibility


Seeing with AI | The Prompt with Microsoft's Chief Questions Officer Trevor Noah featuring Saqib Shake youtube.com/watch?v=vCsg-Sbb5v…
#accessibility #ai


Yesterday I discovered that the new Sonos app requires you to physically scroll through every part of the terms screen before you can press the accept button. On iOS, VoiceOver's scrolling method skips through most of it, so you just have to go to the top and manually pass through a bunch of one-finger scrolls. The whole thing is one block of text, so you can't tell how far it's scrolled until you get to the bottom. I have no Sonos products and was just trying to troubleshoot this with a friend, but I am suitably horrified. This is the first thing the app presents after downloading it for the first time, and most VO users wouldn't be able to do it, leaving the rest of the app (and possibly your devices) unusable. I'm not sure what could convince me to buy a Sonos product at this point. I used to just find them too expensive to justify—now I don't think I'd buy them if they were all 75% off. #Accessibility


Woohoo! I got rid of the unlabeled buttons visible in the Photos app by default. To do this, scroll all the way down to the bottom & double tap on the Customize & Reorder button. When on the next screen, double tap on Pinned Collections to deselect it, then double tap the Close button at the top of the screen & those pesky unlabeled buttons go away on the main screen of the Photos app. Hope this helps someone. #A11Y #Accessibility #Accessible #IOS18 #PhotosApp


Here's the disappointingly inaccessible AirPods 4 reset procedure from #Apple:

1. Open the lid of your charging case.
2. Double-tap the front of the case while the status light is on.
3. Double-tap again when the status light flashes white.
4. Double-tap a third time when the status light flashes faster. When the status light flashes amber then flashes white, you can reconnect your AirPods.

#accessibility


From a Mailing List:

As some of you may already know, System76 is working on their new Linux graphical interface, the COSMIC desktop. They have created a form with some questions related to accessibility. If anyone is interested in participating in the survey, please access the address below:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…

#accessibility #Linux #foss #orca #blind


User preferences are increasing importance for user experience
ericwbailey.website/published/…

#a11y #accessibility


The Access Text Network (a US platform where some publishers share accessible PDFs of their books on demand to authorized users) has gradually been coming back online after it collapsed this spring as a result of some kind of disagreement between Georgia Tech and the Association of American Publishers.🤔

My work was only granted access to the new AccessText today, and the collection has to be built back up over time book by book.
accesstext.org/about-us

#accessibility #a11y #BookAccessibility


Sensory disability funny scene. Me blind, a friend who's deaf, and we met a person who could not speak Italian very well who asked information about the vending machine we were all using. We just felt like this 🙈🙉🙊 - not seeing, not hearing, not speaking monkey. Being ironic and making fun of ourselves is the key to overcome obstacles of any kind (and my English helped) #accessibility #LanguageNerd #irony #blind


Our In-Process blog is out! This week, we feature NVDA 2024.3.1, Mykael making it happen in Brazil, RACQ's Road Ahead article, NVDA 2024.4 Beta 4 and Which reference is right for me?

Read it all here: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-2…

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Blog #News #Newsletter #FOSS


Anyone using NVDA, have you found with 2024.4 beta 4, that reviewing Windows Terminal is very sluggish?

#nvda #nvdaSR #screenReader #accessibility #blind


📣 New Webinar Recording + Tech Note Alert!

We just published the webinar recording that walks through learning and using R with screen readers—and it's bilingual (English & Turkish)! with subtitles in English.

📹 Webinar video featuring @lizhare
and Alican Cagri Gokcek: vimeo.com/1008631708

📝 Also, don't miss the detailed technical note on our blog with the resources you need to get started. By Liz: ropensci.org/blog/2024/09/05/s…

#RStats #ScreenReaders #Accessibility


Playing around with the new iOS 18 features and I thought the new command mode of Braille Screen Input will make me the ultimate forms wizard, just opening the BSI, filling one field in, switching to commands and over to the next field. It sort of works with the dots 1 and 4 navigating to the previous and next item but it also goes over every single label, anything that is not a form field etc. Tried the same by setting the rotor to form controls but as soon as an edit field is found the editing commands jump in and I can only navigate by characters, words and lines. What would actually help is a gesture simulating the pressing of tab to jump to the next interactive element. Rant, and voice, over. #Accessibility #Blind #Apple #iOS


The Fedora Linux 41 Beta is here!

As exciting as the new features are, please remember that this is primarily for testing. Help us make this release as smooth as possible by directing your feedback to the Fedora Quality Team (info in the article).

Please also help to circulate this in the accessibility community as we want to catch any bugs related to their needs as soon as possible.

Happy testing!

➡️ fedoramagazine.org/announcing-…

#Fedora #Linux #OpenSource #Accessibility


(on Twitter a blow up like this lead to people promoting their Soundcloud. I’d love you to take a look at my German Podcast/Stream (wwsiv.de/), my website/blog (moritzgiessmann.de/) and maybe you’ll find a cool shirt in my shop (cottonbureau.com/people/mgx)

BTW: #accessibility is for everyone! ✊
moritzgiessmann.de/accessibili…


Yesterday my Dell work machine started to make "boiling-kettle" noises with its coolers instead of shutting down. My wife was almost asleep, and I didn't want to bother her. so I opened #SeeingAI. I was sure I woulnd't manage to locate the screen correctly, I'm pretty bad at it. But I literally only waved the phone in the direction of the laptop, and immediately it said: "Updating your Dell firmware, please don't power down your system". Awesome!
That said, I'm excited about technology progress now.
#Accessibility


We love hearing wonderful success stories from our users. This week, we are very pleased to present to you Mykael, who is busy making it happen in Brazil!

nvaccess.org/post/mykael-makes…

Thanks Mykael! Would you like to share how you are using NVDA with us? We'd love to hear from you! Please do drop us a line at info@nvaccess.org

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Employment #Software #FOSS #Success #GoodNews


I just learned (from Reddit, of all places) that there is a whole website dedicated to accessible builds for Guild Wars 2, created by gamers with accessibility needs.

Sharing for reach:

aw2.help/

#gaming #GuildWars2 #accessibility


‘Case you didn’t notice, you can use your Meta smart glasses to control Blindsquare and even Voice Vista by tapping the trackpad located on the right side. In the latter app you will have to turn on the “navigator” feature, but Blindsquare seems to work by default. Give it a shot!
#accessibility #blind #travel


Per the recommendation of one of the listeners to the podcast where I regularly co-host, I have bought the Anker Prime 27650 mah powerbank. Pretty nifty: it has a Bluetooth LE module and by pairing it with the dedicated app, you can read useful info from it like the current charge percentage, how much time is left until full charge, how much voltage goes on each port etc. As a bonus, it can be triggered to make a sound so that you can find it easier and, by extension, any backpack, bag or other container you left it in. Pretty great for any #Blind person looking for the next useful gadget to add to their tech backpack. #Accessibility #A11y


Stock tickers are a commonly sighted example of something ARIA live regions might be useful for. But has anyone actually ever seen this in the wild? Would #screenReader users actually want a stock ticker to ever be implemented in this way? #accessibility


Do screen readers actually read the plus/minus/tilde symbols when doing content warnings like "PH -"?

Or are screen reader users just rolling the dice every time they open a toot with a PH/MH warning?

#Accessibility


NVDA 2024.4 Beta 4 is now available for download & testing.

Changes introduced in Beta 4:
- Fixed the visual layout of NVDA’s Braille Settings page.
- Fixed an issue causing text not related to shortcut keys to appear in the Commands Quick Reference.
- Updates to translations.

Full information and download at: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-4b…

#NVDA #NVDAsr #FOSS #PreRelease #Software #Beta #ScreenReader #Accessibility


By popular request, #Voiceover no longer reads phone numbers of #WhatsApp group participants who aren’t in your contacts, and just reads the push name. You can still read the phone number on their contact info page, or by swiping up to the “message <phone number>” option in the actions rotor. This should make catching up with your groups much faster and more efficient! Thanks so much for your feedback, please keep sending it.

#accessibility #screenreader


Some time ago we had a discussion here about the best successor to the Soundscape app. Was it Voice Vista that people agreed on or was it another app? Thanks for any hints! #accessibility


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#accessibility


this looks like it might be restricted to the US. Could you/someone confirm? #Accessibility #A11y


Facebook's useless #AI based photo descriptions have made it to Threads; and, because they have, #blind people have to suffer for it. People think that posting photos on Threads without alt text is ok because of the utterly useless auto-generated descriptions. I thought I was rid of it when I abandoned Facebook in 2017. Please ask your friends, followers, and acquaintances to describe #photos on Threads.

#accessibility #a11y


So like I just have to ask. For people that are super critical of AI for accessibility, what do you expect instead? Do you want blind people to have human ... guides or whatever that will narrate the world around you? Do you want humans to describe all your pictures? Videos? Porn? Because that's about the only other option. And you may return with "Well audio description." And I return with "You think people are going to describe every YouTube video out there? Or old TV shows like Dark Shadows?" Because honestly that's what it'd take. If AI were *not* around, if we want *that* kind of access, that's what we'd have to ask, of darn near every sighted human in the world. And I just don't feel comfortable with demanding that of them.

Now, we'll see what Apple does to give us what will hopefully be even better image descriptions. Imagine a 3B model that is made with **high quality** images and description pairs, trained to do nothing but describe images. Apple has done pretty darn good without LLM's so far, so maybe they'll surprise us further. But my goodness, I'd much rather have something that, yes, makes me *feel* included, maybe a tad bit more than it actually *does* include me. And that's for each and every blind person to decide for themselves if they want to use AI for image, and probably soon, video descriptions, and what they're willing to trust with it. But for us to get this much real, human access, I just hope people who are detracting from AI understand that we who use AI are now used to having images described, and well, soon videos. It's just something that I don't think people should just deny quickly.

#AI #accessibility #blind #description #video #llm


Cannot get Face ID to work on this new phone, so, have disabled it. I finally got the thing to accept my face, but, when I try to use it, to unlock the phone, the phone just keeps saying, "try again ". Also, sometimes, those gestures, that replace the home button, don't work. #IOS #accessibility #a11y


The TTRPGs for Accessible Gaming Bundle on Itch is live. This supports a partnership between the DOTS RPG Project and Die Hard Dice to produce commercially avaliable high quality Braille dice for BVI players. DOTS RPG dice are super amazing quality. I was able to beta test their newest design and cannot say enough good things. Find the Bbundle here to support an amazing cause: itch.io/b/2623/ttrpgs-for-acce… #TTRPG #Braille #Blind #Accessibility #A11y #RPG


The release of #GNOME47 is imminent and our #translators have done their usual amazing work! There was a lot of #Accessibility work this cycle and #translations are a big part of that.

With a few days left, this is a great cycle to improve the user experience for non-English #ScreenReader and #Braille users.

l10n.gnome.org/

#a11y #i18n #GNOME #Orca


In just a few minutes, Inclusive Design 24 will be getting underway... 24 hours of #free talks about everything related to inclusive design:
inclusivedesign24.org/2024/

#accessibility #design #code #UX #XR #gaming #disability #a11y #id24


Google has wreaked havoc with TalkBack 15.0. When the Gemini description feature is enabled, you can't have access to offline text extraction. And under this circumstance, if your Internet connection is weak or lost for whatever reason, you won't have access to any sort of image description or text extraction at all. Moreover, even if Gemini description is disabled, labels for unlabeled icons are read with a 2 or 3-second delay whereas they were announced instantly with TalkBack 14.2 and 14.1. And on my S24 Ultra, if I disable Gemini description, local/offline text extraction oftentimes fails. That is, TalkBack reports the recognition accuracy, but doesn't announce or read the extracted text at all. Is Google aware of all of these? I don't know. Who makes these stupid decisions at Google? I don't know. Does beta-testing play a meaningful role in TalkBack development? Not sure.
#Accessibility #Android #Google


#id24 starts in a few hours; are you ready?

Join a global community of accessibility and design experts for 24 hours packed with live talks, advice and strategies.

We're proud to be a Gold supporter of the conference and have several of our team involved including @tink, @IanPouncey, @patrick_h_lauke and @JoeLamyman.

Explore the full line-up: inclusivedesign24.org/2024/sch…

#id24 #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #AccessibilityConference


For now this "#deltachat_web" project is merely meant as proof that the deltachat desktop frontend/UI has no dependency on electron anymore.

With a few nice side-benefits:

It allows us developers to use other browsers dev tools to improve #accessibility for example and to bring back automated ui #testing.

Last but not least this serves as a stepping stone to make a #tauri version of #deltachat_desktop

Stay tuned for the #nlnet funded #delta_tauri project.

nlnet.nl/project/DeltaTauri/