‘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}

Director @tink is quoted in the Financial Times this week discussing the increasing presence of AI in the world of digital accessibility.

https://www.ft.com/content/3c877c55-b698-43da-a222-8ae183f53078

#FinancialTimes #AI #Accessibility

Lots of things happening in the AI/LLM space that could have implications for #accessibility

Ferret-UI from Apple:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05719

ScreenAI from Google
https://research.google/blog/screenai-a-visual-language-model-for-ui-and-visually-situated-language-understanding/

#a11y #ai #LLM

Ferret-UI: Grounded Mobile UI Understanding with Multimodal LLMs

Recent advancements in multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have been noteworthy, yet, these general-domain MLLMs often fall short in their ability to comprehend and interact effectively with user interface (UI) screens.

^arXiv.org

Speaking of #overlays, there is yet another one: #WebAbility

I have already made a PR to add it to the Overlay Fact Sheet:
https://github.com/karlgroves/overlayfactsheet/pull/1189

As with other overlays, it makes WCAG/ADA promises, fails to fix stuff, replicates platform features (poorly) in CSS, and introduces WCAG violations just by adding it to a site.

Cool business model.

#accessibility #a11y

Adding WebAbility as an overlay by aardrian · Pull Request #1189 · karlgroves/overlayfactsheet

From Introducing WebAbility.io: Ultimate Web Accessibility Widget for ADA & WCAG Compliance, a press release from Techyweb Solutions INC.: WebAbility.io offers easy, comprehensive solutions for we...

^GitHub

Must be the wrong article 🤔

Have you tested the #Fedora distribution with the #GNOME desktop environment? They work hard to make it fully accessible.

I admit that the default synthesized voices are particularly awful, but they can easily be changed with Pied.

https://pied.mikeasoft.com

#accessibility #a11y

Content warning: Accessibility question, audio conferencing Click to open/close

Jupyter notebooks in 2024 is still not accessible.

In his #PyCascades talk, Venkatesh Potluri (who is blind) noted that popular Python libraries like matplotlib etc still can't embed alt text.

He made a patch for it, but the notebooks still don't pick up alt text.

#accessibility #Python #jupyter

"Blind internet users struggle with error-prone AI aids", reports an article in the Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/3c877c55-b698-43da-a222-8ae183f53078

#FT has a paywall but three articles can be accessed for free if you register.

TLDR is that AI #accessibility widgets over promise and under deliver. Repeatedly.

#AI #GenerativeAI #a11y

New #Android version of #KDEConnect coming soon, with #Accessibility improvements thanks to a review performed by the HAN University of Applied Sciences!

Looks like they have some free resources available for developers to up their #a11y game:

https://ngi.aimsites.nl/resources/

I wonder how accessible all those closed-source KDE Connect knock-offs are 🤔

Accessibility Resources

Let's make the Next Generation Internet: Accessible, Inclusive and Future Proof

^{NGI Zero}

Trying to figure out how to put this into bug report language. So, on the Mac, I use the Mail app for doing email. I get lots of email, from mailing lists and Github repos. So, when I use my arrow keys, I hear a lot of info. For example,

3 message conversation collapsed unread Jen-Chieh Shen [open-webui/open-webui] refac: Dockerfile (PR #1165) 4:07 AM Ready to be merged? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: <open-webui/open-webui/pull/1165/c2040704935@github.com> Inbox - Google

So yeah, that’s a lot of words. I just want to hear the subject of the messages when I arrow down. So, before, I could just interact with the message in the message list, then VOICEOVER-Right arrow until I hear the subject, then arrow down, delete, whatever I needed to do. But now, it just goes back to reading the whole row of information when I arrow down again.

Does anyone else use Mail like this?

#accessibility #apple #VoBugs #blind

As a legally blind person touchscreens or touch buttons on every device are the bane of my existence.

The iPhone is very accessible, Android phones are reasonably accessible to the blind. But hardly anyone makes the touch screen on an appliance screen reader accessible.(apart from very expensive products made especially for the blind).

Why does the espresso machine at work need touch sensitive buttons? I've learned that I need the second button from the top. But since I can't touch the top of the machine to feel where the buttons are without instantly activating any other button on the way I find it very difficult to make a cup of coffee .

Touch screens are worse. and when some company does make them accessible for legal reasons (ATMs for example), they do such a shitty job you may as well ask for sighted assistance anyway.

#accessibility #blind

#AudioEye has a blog post where its CAO talks about “trust, transparency, collaboration, and innovation.”

Which is code for rebranding its #overlay product without issuing refunds for its prior guarantees.

Anyway, I offer my thoughts in a bit more detail as a comment on the post that got me sued:
https://adrianroselli.com/2023/02/audioeye-will-get-you-sued.html#comment-285608

#accessibility #a11y

#AudioEye Will Get You Sued

Disclaimer: This post and the headline is my opinion. I provide verifiable facts throughout to inform that opinion. I am also not a lawyer, and this post does not constitute legal advice. The content reflects my genuinely held beliefs and opinions.

^{Adrian Roselli}

This piece is worth reading if you’re in tech criticism or infosec/cybersecurity and are being asked for commentary on IoT and smart home devices.

People aren’t foolish for using IoT or for wanting things to be easier in their homes. This tech makes positive and meaningful change for people of all kinds of abilities. It’s valid to worry about the privacy or security issues that IoT is riddled with, but don’t draw a direct line from there to blaming the user - some people have no alternatives that don’t involve giving up independent access to their own homes and lives. Everyone deserves to live in ways that fit their needs.

Instead, join the push to hold manufacturers and providers to account for poor security and privacy practices. Advocate for better, more respectful and accessible default configurations. Help people understand how to anticipate and mitigate the worst of these issues when they’re setting things up, and give them power and agency over their home systems.

We all deserve to have tech that works for us, in all the ways that matters.

#accessibility
#a11y #infosec
#cybersecurity
#iot #smarthome

https://www.theverge.com/24080201/smart-home-accessibility-apple-nest-alexa

How smart home technology made my home more accessible

Using one’s phone or voice to flip a light switch may be convenient since you don’t need to get up. For the author and other disabled people, this makes it accessible.

^{Steven Aquino (The Verge)}

I just updated my screen reader, #NVDA, to version 2024.1.

A few notes of interest:

All add-ons I consider essential work. Remote isn't updated yet but TeleNVDA is.
Unspoken, which I maintain, hasn't been updated but can be force enabled and works. Some time this week I'll issue a new release.
Of the non-essential add-ons that I'd like to have but haven't tried forcing, I'd highlight Instant Translate and Calibre.

I've also made a donation. I encourage others to contribute to NVDA, with code, translations, time or money, if their situation permits. NVDA doesn't update itself. It's not only my favourite screen reader, but it's essential to keep our needs in focus, maintain our independence, and avoid monopoly.

Thanks to NV Access for another release.

#NVDASR #a11y #accessibility