I am constantly amazed at all the ways we continue to allow religious institutions to directly impact the function of our democracy despite the Establishment Clause essentially telling us to maybe not:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/churches-polling-places-ada-inaccessible-disability-voting-rights/

via:
https://researchbuzz.masto.host/@researchbuzz/112325960514198137

#accessibility #democracy

Churches don't have to be accessible. That's a voting rights problem.

In 2024, millions of people will vote at religious sites. What if you're disabled?

^{Mother Jones}

Content warning: slightly disturbing blurry images in a captcha Click to open/close

Welcome to our famously inclusive CAPTCHA! Please click on all objects that induce the most nausea in several of our users but none of our robots.

(yes this is a real screenshot of hCaptcha. I think that since squids and lobsters are both found at markets, the CAPTCHA generated a cursed squid-lobster).

Explanation: harder CAPTCHAs like these require users to focus on each image and think a little more than others. Focusing on a blurry image with contents that are hard to identify is a nausea trigger for a lot of people. #Accessibility

Welcome to our newest GNOME Foundation member @eeejay 🎉

Eitan has been involved in Linux/GNOME accessibility for 20 years and is on the Mozilla accessibility team.

In the past he created Accerciser, and contributed to Orca as well as Telepathy.

Eitan makes Spiel; a speech framework for the freedesktop.

https://project-spiel.org/

I heard you might be able to catch him at GUADEC in Denver this year.

#GNOME #Linux #Mozilla #accessibility

On Tech Talk this week, I had a great conversation with Troy Otilio from @AiraVI about their new Access AI feature, which has recently been released as a beta in the Aira Explorer app. We spoke about where this feature came from, the impact the use of AI has on privacy, and so much more about AI and Aira in general. Have a listen here or wherever you get your podcasts

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rnib-tech-talk/id1151878596?i=1000652615215

@rnib #aira #AccessAI #AI #chatGPT #gemini #blind #accessibility #podcast

‎RNIB Tech Talk: Tech Talk 508: Access AI, WelcoMe In Currys, RNIB Gamer Survey on Apple Podcasts

‎Show RNIB Tech Talk, Ep Tech Talk 508: Access AI, WelcoMe In Currys, RNIB Gamer Survey - 16 Apr 2024

^{Apple Podcasts}

Just checked and yes, the screen reader is still broken in Fedora 40. (Cannot be controlled; keyboard shortcuts/modifier key doesn’t work.)

So this is yet another release where the screen reader is broken by default.

It’s amazing to me that this is not a showstopper.

#accessibility #a11y #fedora40 #fedora #linux

Slides from my Notes on synthetic speech talk at #GAconf today:
https://decks.tink.uk/2024.html

And the original blog post from 2021:
https://tink.uk/notes-on-synthetic-speech/

#accessibility #a11y #gaming

Starting with version 3.1.12, #pandoc-generated #EPUBs conform to the EU Accessibility Act. https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-a11y-eaa-mapping/

Relevant metadata fields are listed in the "EPUB metadata" section of the manual: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL#epub-metadata.

#accessibility #A11y

A little accessible and inclusive content creation hot tip:

Instead of just linking directly to xkcd, consider linking to the relevant entry on https://explainxkcd.com instead (or as well as linking to xkcd).

There, each xkcd comic has a full, descriptive transcript, and the hover text is printed as plain text, making the comic much more accessible for your blind (or otherwise screenreader-using) followers and for mobile users alike.

Plus, the joke explanations are helpful!

#accessibility

Remember these guys? They were the ones who, when approached, said #accessibility wasn’t a high priority on their road map. So, bye bye. Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/19/post-news-the-a16z-funded-twitter-alternative-is-shutting-down/

Orca the Linux screen reader now has a website!

https://orca.gnome.org/

Thanks to @snwh

And thank you Joannie, @igalia and the community for all the ongoing work and support.

#Linux #GNOME #freedesktop #a11y #accessibility

Here's a neat exploration of the curb cut effect for accessibility in @gnome - using accessibility tools to aid in testing automation! Has pros and cons identified in the article, but interesting nonetheless.

➡️ https://fedoramagazine.org/automation-through-accessibility/

#Fedora #Gnome #accessibility #a11y #Linux #OpenSource

Automation through Accessibility - Fedora Magazine

Using Accessibility as an automation testing tool. Learn about DesktopQE's automation stack to test Desktop Applications.

^{Michal Odehnal (Fedora Project)}

👉🏼 Building a culture of accessibility

“Accessibility isn't solely important in the final product; it's crucial at every step of the process. Adopting accessible practices from the outset unlocks your team's full potential.”

https://tetralogical.com/blog/2024/04/19/building-a-culture-of-accessibility/

#accessibility #culture

Building a culture of accessibility - TetraLogical

^TetraLogical

Sometimes, you might think that previous #accessibility wisdom has been superseded by new "facts". Maybe someone told you that #screenReaders don't work well with a particular design pattern, but you tested #ScreenReader X and it seemed to work fine. Perhaps you heard that an interactive HTML input doesn't persist with forced colours styling, but you tried a High Contrast mode in Microsoft Edge and it seemed to be there.

There are three considerations usually missing here:

1. How are you defining and evaluating the working state? Do you have a functional, accurate understanding of the #accessTechnology or accessibility feature you are asserting things about?
2. You tested one thing in relation to a statement about multiple things, e.g. a statement is made about screen readers, plural, and you only tested with #VoiceOver (it's always VoiceOver). Beyond posting on the web-a11y Slack, how do you propose testing more broadly, if you plan to at all?
3. Possibly the most critical at all: is this question worth its overheads? If answering it conclusively would require me to test ten screen readers with 45 speech engines, or seven browsers with 52 permutations of CSS properties, maybe following the advice is "cheaper" than determining whether the advice is still completely relevant.

Important disclaimer: this relates specifically to cases where following the advice would not actively make things worse for users.

TL;DR: when you know doing a thing won't make things bad, doing the thing is usually quicker than evaluating whether not doing the thing is also bad.

‘When security and accessibility clash: why are banking applications so inaccessible?’
https://www.nicchan.me/blog/when-security-and-accessibility-clash/

I once did a presentation for a bank client explaining all the ways preventing paste disables users.

The response: “But we have to, for security.” No ability to justify beyond that, no consideration of user impact, no offer of supporting data.

Security theater is often used to abrogate #accessibility requirements. #a11y

Or maybe Matt Mullenweg, head of the multi-billion dollar WordPress corporate entity, could honor his prior commitments to #accessibility and sponsor this.

It should be embarrassing to him and his company that he doesn’t. That this event has to even *ask* for free labor.

@yatil

YOWZA
Form Extractor Prototype

“This tool extracts the structure from an image of a form.”

https://github.com/timpaul/form-extractor-prototype?tab=readme-ov-file#form-extractor-prototype

#ai #LLM #UX #accessibility

GitHub - timpaul/form-extractor-prototype

Contribute to timpaul/form-extractor-prototype development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

Microsoft announced their latest round of FOSS fund recipients. We're thrilled to share that @NVAccess are among this quarter's recipients. From: https://github.com/microsoft/foss-fund

"A project of the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office, the FOSS Fund provides up to $10,000 USD in sponsorships to open source projects as selected by Microsoft employees."

Congratulations also to The GNU Compiler Collection, Urllib3, CLAP & MSW.

#OpenSource, #FOSS #Free #Software #NVDA #ScreenReader #Accessibility #A11y

“Socks, lies, and accessibility”
https://janmaarten.com/gaad-2023/

Where @janmaarten shows that just a couple days after #accessiBe’s CEO promised to stop being such a lying liarface it went and used sock puppet Twitter accounts to promote its #overlay.

As I keep saying, past behavior is a predictor of future behavior (side-eyes #AudioEye, #UserWay, #FACILiti).

#a11y #accessibility

Socks, lies, and accessibility

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is around the corner. Looking back at last year, I found some troubling things people in this field should be aware of. Because they're likely to be repeated.

^{Jan Maarten (Jan Maarten – Inclusive designer, privacy advocate, writer)}

Everette Bacon, Aira’s Vice President of Blindness Initiatives, was featured on the most recent episode of Talking Technology sharing Aira’s history, functionality, and future developments including the new Access AI feature and recent Eclipse event coverage.

#AccessForAll #OnYourTerms #AssistiveTechnology #Accessibility

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQ8YJA1Zbc&t=1s

Talking Technology with V I Labs Episode 54 – Aira, Voice Dream, and a Solar Eclipse

On the show this week we catch up with Everette Bacon, Vice President of Blindness Initiatives at Aira Technologies to find out about the inspiration behind ...

^YouTube

...and here we go: #id24 will return this year on 12 September 2024.

The call for presentations is now open https://inclusivedesign24.org/2024/

#a11y #accessibility #inclusiveDesign

Inclusive Design 24 (#id24)

A free 24-hour online community event on accessibility and inclusion

^{Inclusive Design 24 (#id24)}

How do screen readers read abbreviations like ppl?

#accessibility #a11y

What if Mastodon had a way to save the ALT text you entered each time you used a new image. So if you used the same image later, it would some how know what you used the last time and give you the option to automatically use that instead of having to type something each and every time.

Seems to me there would be some way to be able to do this easily and to save all of us time from having to type the same thing for ALT text on a regular basis.

#Idea #Thoughts #AltText #Accessibility

Hm. I wonder if I can get any fediverse admins onboard to disable all images on their instance on the World Sight Day in October, so that only alt text shows up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sight_Day

#accessibility #a11y #ImageDescription #AltText #FediAdmins #MastoAdmins

Content warning: Food, accessibility Click to open/close

Department of Justice just formally set WCAG Version 2.1, Level AA as the technical standard for government sites. https://www.ada.gov/notices/2024/03/08/web-rule/

#accessibility #a11y

Honk honk! Make way for Lottie, the potentially self-driving marvel of the future! We've seen cars go from four wheels and a honk, to smart machines that know how to navigate the autobahn without a coffee break. Meanwhile, I'm over here, tapping away with my trusty ‘stick' or relying on an adorable canine companion who, bless, hasn't the slightest clue about Google Maps.

1. A Tale of Two Navigators:
• The Traditionalists: Here's to the good old cane and the furry, four-legged GPS units. They don't come with Bluetooth, but they have heart.
• The Techies: Self-driving cars are now the talk of the town, boasting their shiny sensors and making parallel parking look like a piece of cake.
2. Tech Envy: Where's My Update?:
• The world is obsessed with updates, from software to wardrobe choices. But when it comes to personal mobility tech for the visually impaired, we're still waiting for the 'Version 2.0' that lets me walk around without the need for eyeballs!
3. Promise Not to Run Over Your Toes!:
• I assure you, the day I become self-driving Lottie, I'll navigate with the grace of a ballerina – toes will be safe, and so will the neighbourhood cats.
4. The Fantasy of Autonomy:
• Imagine a world where I could waltz down to the local café, guided by nothing but my own savvy suit or smart shoes. I could order a latte without playing a game of human pinball!
5. The Humble Requests to Tech Wizards:
• Dear Tech Wizards, it's 2024! Can we get a wearable that’s a bit more "Iron Man" and a little less "Iron Age"?

While I wait for the tech gurus to catch up, I'll keep tootling along with my 'stick' and might even recruit a furry friend. But let it be known that 'Self-driving Lottie' is ready for an upgrade. I'm all set for the day when I can zoom past you, fully automated and with a built-in espresso machine, perhaps? Until then, I'll rely on my wits, my companions, and the kind people who don't mind a tap on the ankle from my cane, the precursor to my self-driving debut. Keep your sensors peeled for me!
And remember, dear readers, whether you're a tech tycoon or just someone who loves a good toot, keep dreaming of that hands-free future. It's bound to come, and when it does, I'll be first in line — no driving test required! #Accessibility #AI #AIsoftheBlind #Blind

Our new Chief Technology Officer, Gerald Hartig, is being interviewed on Vision Australia Radio tonight at 8:10pm AEST (About 1hr 15mins after I post this). You can tune in online at: http://player.listenlive.co/65731/

#NVDA #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Interview #News #A11y

Vision Australia Radio Adelaide

Accessible news, information and entertainment. Vision Australia Radio offers a range of interesting and informative programs that feature readings from the latest newspapers, magazines and books.

^{Vision Australia Radio Adelaide}