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Items tagged with: accessibility
Speech to Text on Linux?!?!
I just found "Speech Note" when searching the Software app.
Installed it via flatpak.
flathub.org/apps/net.mkiol.Spe…
Used the "English (Vosk Large)" and "English (Vosk Small)" language model with very decent results. There are loads of models to choose from.
All processed locally. No network needed!
This is great!
#accessibility #SpeechToText #Linux #debian #flatpak #flathub #SpeechNote
Most of the #Chrome #accessibility issues in my previous post are caused by Microsoft's UI Automation (UIA) API. If you want an #NVDA add-on to completely disable UIA in Chrome windows, here you go:
The twelfth edition of @inclusivedesign24 #id24 is just over 2 days away.
Free, online, no registration, no product pitches. Just show up (on time or not).
Countdown timer is on the schedule:
inclusivedesign24.org/2024/sch…
YouTube playlist waiting for you:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn7…
An important nuance I haven't seen so far though is that even within a marginalized group, opinions can vary wildly about to what degree something is considered "a problem". The fact #twitch tried to get rid of "blind playthrough" in 2020 because it was considered ablist language is a great example of this: nobody in my circle thought this was problematic, we all had a good laugh and basically said they probably had bigger problems to worry about.
Now however, only a few years later, I see more and more sentiments shifting where that is concerned, asking writers not to use blind as synonymous for ignorant, stupid or incompetent. Same with terms like crippling debt. And as opposed to the Twitch example, this time it's actually #PWD who are making these points.
The question now becomes: Did times change, and did people get more offended by this / more hurt by this? Or is this simply yet another example of people finally coming forward about something that's irked them for decades?
I myself know where I stand on this, but I'd be a hypocrite if I decided to, in this case, decide everybody thinks as I do, where I normally always preach caution about homogenizing #accessibility.
This post doesn't really go anywhere, I just thought it was an interesting bit of contemplating :))
From a selfish #accessibility viewpoint, things I would like to stop existing:
Discord.
PDFs.
statista.com
Powerpoint/Impress.
What are your "my life would be better if abled users didn't inexplicably choose X" preferences?
Boosts welcome, replies more so.
#tech #technology #Linux #accessibility @mastoblind @main
Okay, so I just have to rant about something that I think is going to hold the Linux Desktop back a bit, especially for blind users. That is config files. Specifically, editing some file that's got no kind of linter, or checker, to make sure that whatever the user put in it works and doesn't leave one without speech.
So, this is specifically about the Speech dispatcher, which is a package in Linux a bit like Microsoft's SAPI. Of course, there's that new one, Spiel, that's being worked on, but I've not tried it yet. So, you can run spd-conf to set up a config file, but a lot of folks tell me that, in order to increase the default speech rate for stuff like games that use speech-dispatcher, web apps that speak through speech-dispatcher, self-voicing apps, I'd have to edit the config file.
Now, that's not awful for me, I can do it. But there really, really needs to be a GUI for it. And if you ask *me* why I don't make it myself, I'll tell you that if it's so easy, you should have made it with the snap of *your* tallented fingers, instead of spending all that time being a reply-guy. Windows has a speech properties dialog. Mac has Spoken Content in System Settings. Linux should have something similar. And, if it turns out that there is and I just don't have the proper package installed, I'll gladly change my tune to "distros should have this installed by default."
I've also seen this in Emacs packages like Ellama, where you have to set up Emacs Lisp calls to the right function with the right parameters inside your usepackage block, and it's hard for me to figure out how to add the openAI-compatible service that I have to Ellama. And AI hasn't helped yet.
So, having things being customizable is amazing. It really is. There are so many keyboard configuration settings, for example, that I think blind people are going to love playing with. But goodness, there needs to be something to change your system TTS stuff, and hopefully one day we can have a command to turn on and off the screen, like the iOS screen curtain so we can maintain privacy.
#Linux #accessibility #blind #LinuxDesktop #foss #tts
Only now learning about Susan Banks, a prominent #accessibility advocate who "regularly interacted with [large game development studios], pushing for better options and designs", "helped to revolutionize games journalism", and even had an award named after her.
Apparently, she never actually existed.
ign.com/articles/a-prominent-a…
#news
A much more detailed post about TalkBack's new Image description feature using #AI #Gemini
Okay just, like right off the cuff here. But why does Vispero, a company making blindness software/hardware want videos for there Big Thing thing? Why not just text? Emails? Like, what? Why? Meh, whatever. I'll submit mine I guess. I'm sure some of you know what I'm gonna suggest. Feel free to submit your own ideas, goodness knows we need more grand ideas for screen readers.
#accessibility #blind #Braille #JAWS #FreedomScientific #ScreenReader
Join the State of the Browser #SOTB 2024 conference on Saturday, 14 September, at the Barbican Centre in London.
This one-day, single-track conference, organized by the London Web Standards, covers the modern web, accessibility, web standards, and more.
TetraLogical's director, @SteveFaulkner, will be speaking on "No Industry for Old Men," reflecting on key developments in the web accessibility space over the years.
Because I can’t be arsed to re-up my Dragon license, kudos to @siblingpastry for the most recent test of voice control support for wrapped labels:
tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be…
The Promise and Pitfalls of Web Accessibility Overlays for Blind and Low Vision Users
#accessibility #overlays #research
research paper (PDF)
researchgate.net/profile/Garre…
Oh, thank goodness not having a fully functional screen reader isn’t a blocker for Fedora 41. We wouldn’t want them to miss their 10th anniversary of shipping an operating system without a fully functional screen reader, after all.
ar.al/2024/06/23/fedora-has-be…
#Fedora #RedHat #IBM #a11y #accessibility #screenReader #orca #linux #openSource #FOSS #ableism masto.ai/@phoronix/11307885166…
I wrote a @TPGi blog post last year on 20 #DigitalAccessibility books. Since then, quite a few more have been published, so I've blogged about 19 more.
So, I'm genuinely curious. NVDA now has the ability to show text formatting in Braille. I don't mean through dot 7 and 8, or HTML-looking tags--although it can do those too now--but through the UEB, or whatever table you use, formatting symbols created for that Braille code. It also can now show paragraphs, either using spaces, or a Pilcro sign.
So, can JAWS do either of these? I'm seriously wondering, because people are *always* saying that JAWS' Braille support is the best in the industry. And I just want to make sure I'm using it the best I can. I also have Leasey, so if Leasey has features to help with that, @hartgenconsult I know there's the BrailleEase thing that I've not taken a look at yet. There's a ton of things I need to learn about Leasey.
For now, I know that iOS can show Braille formatting in the Books and Notes app, and the Mac can show it... in Safari as well I think. Linux... Well, Linux can't, besides the dot 7 and 8 stuff.
Braille formatting has really come far from the post I did like years ago, and I'm super happy about that. Hopefully it keeps going, especially in the age of multi-line displays.
There are two basic approaches to making novel/custom widgets accessible to assistive tech, and one of them is usually wrong:
1. accesibly describe the mechanics and visual presentation;
2. accesibly convey the functional interactions and purpose.
If you find yourself thinking "I need an aria-live region to explain this" then the chances are -- you don't -- you need to conceptually shift from 1 to 2. Live regions are the last resort.
Sharing videos of Paralympic athletes are great, but please don't forget them after the event; next time you visit a coffee shop, use a public transport or public restroom think about whether that Paralympic athlete would be able to access it and take necessary action to make it accessible; even just telling the owner/authority to make it accessible will be of great help.
#Vmware #Broadcom #Accessibility #Apache #NVDA
I think that sums up FB’s attitude towards accessibility quite neatly, and they are far from alone in this.
#SocialMedia #Accessibility
Facebook says its new app icon was just a glitch after all 9to5mac.com/2024/08/30/faceboo…
Check Out my Latest Guide I wrote for @iaccessibility on Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses!
Discover how these smart glasses are redefining accessibility for blind and visually impaired users with AI-powered features.
iaccessibility.net/ray-ban-met…
#Accessibility #RayBanMeta #SmartGlasses #AssistiveTechnology #VisuallyImpaired #Innovation #TechForGood #Inclusion #WearableTech
Anyone running macOS 15 and want to test to see if this `aria-activedescendant` bug is really fixed?
bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?i…
It’s not that I don’t trust Apple folks, it’s just that I have learned never to take the “Fixed!” assertion at face value.
#a11y #accessibility #Safari #ARIA
It took over a year since I wrote this warning, but I finally found a case in the wild!
Well, *I* didn’t, but someone on the A11y Slack had an issue and I was able to identify it by description alone.
“Brief Note on Popovers with Dialogs”
adrianroselli.com/2023/05/brie…
Well done, me!
[ wrenches arm reaching for his own back]
Here's my new project, a keyboard for one-handed typing. Tens of thousands Ukrainians have injured arms and hands during the war, and my goal is to make an inexpensive keyboard for anyone to assemble at home.
github.com/clackups/qmk_usersp…
#accessibility #onehandtyping #disability #UkraineWar #ukraine #veterans
I forget what the Drama™ was that caused me to stop using Bartender on #macOS, but I've been happily using Ice as a replacement github.com/jordanbaird/Ice
Today I just got Software Update message for the latest version, and it warms my heart because it adds #accessibility support
Whenever you see a good app adding or improving accessibility support, please share the news. We need to normalize adding accessibility to all apps.
#accessibility question: how well does thorn (þ) work with screen readers?
I want to start using it on my blog, but I also don't want to give screen readers a stroke
I finally got around to linking @lloydi’s post “Context is king: long live the king!” from my own (which he references). Anyway, his post:
tpgi.com/context-is-king-long-…
He also covers a couple variations where you can stack techniques for… an effect.
And he has a mini-tool (buried in a disclosure widget at the end) in there to generate the HTML/CSS for each scenario if you provide it the words.
Very detail. Much comprehensive.
Context is king: long live the king! - TPGi
Want to provide extra context in accessible names for buttons, links and other controls while retaining design integrity? Ian Lloyd shares some techniques.Ian Lloyd (TPGi)
#PROTip:
If you use BeMyEyes on Windows, it helps to change the default keyboard commands to ctrl+alt+f1 through f4 for the four main functions.
a listen at
aftersight.org/audio-publicati….
Call 303-786-7777 ex 2, 5, 14. #TechPodcast #AssistiveTech #Accessibility
Unmute Presents Podcast - Aftersight
Listen to audio podcasts online for free. Content is intended for blind, visually impaired, and print disabled audiences.Aftersight
For those who use IBM TTS on Linux. Get the IBMTTS dictionaries, copy them to /var/opt/IBM/ibmtts/dict, change files like this, from Enu-main.dic to main.dct. And then it should work. Do change the rest of those files too. Root and abbreviantion. Oh yeah enu-abbr.dic should be abbreviation.dct. So: abbreviation.dct main.dct root.dct.
#linux #foss #accessibility #IBMTTS #blind
When we get such answers, sometimes it's just so frustrating that I understand even less this thing about disability pride and such things. You cannot live your life, you cannot find a job, you have to fight, fight, fight, always fight.
WCAG’s A and AA distinction is mostly academic · Eric Eggert
On Mastodon, Steve Faulkner shared a link to a GitHub discussion around the A, AA, and AAA levels of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility …Eric Eggert
When meta glasses work to read something, they work very very well. But, when they fail, they fail spectacularly. For some reason, I could not get them to read me something that was right in front of me, the same exact thing I'd done before with other documents I had sitting before me. And other appps did much better.
It's a reminder that this device hasn't been enhanced for blind people's specific needs. It's a device/platform that happens to have features that help.
Marcus Herrmann shares how you can apply the 80/20 rule to accessibility, and make progress.
#DigitalAccessibility #Accessibility #A11y
80 / 20 accessibility
Many people are confronted with the …marcus.io · Blog of web developer and accessibility consultant Marcus Herrmann