Big thanks to Ada for translating Post 1 of my blog series “I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back” — titled “Built for Control, but Not for People” — into French.
They’ll be reading it live on the radio today with Irina!

Tune in: p-node.org
Time: 12:12–13:30 CEST

I’m deeply honored this piece resonated enough to be shared like this.
Post 2 and the first interlude are already out — more posts to follow.

Boosts appreciated!

#Linux #FOSS #Accessibility #BlindTech #BlogSeries #OpenSource #PNode #Radio #TechRant #Translation #Français

∏node

∏ node is an hybrid radio/stream platform

^p-node.org

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 6 is now available!

Read the full details and download from: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-1b…

Changes introduced in Beta 6:
- Updates to translations
- Fix for the COM registration fixing tool: don’t run when cancelling with alt+f4
- Minor fix for SAPI 4 voices
- Fix for Braille display detection
- Minor improvements to the user experience of Remote Access

Please continue to test and give feedback via GitHub!

#NVDA #NVDAsr #Beta #PreRelease #News #ScreenReader #Accessibility

Vielen Dank für den ausführlichen Bericht!
Ich bin damit bisher auch sehr zufrieden.
Dein Schwerpunkt liegt auf Sicherheit.

Mir ist auch wichtig, wie es mit der #Barrierefreiheit aussieht.

Zumindest das web #accessibility evaluation tool bewertet meine Seite ganz gut und das sollte grundsätzlich auf alle Publii-Seiten zutreffen, wenn man an die Alt-Texte denkt:
wave.webaim.org/report#/pilger…
#Publii #a11y

I think it's very telling that from all corners of the Fediverse, #FLOSS developers come screaming "I do it for free in my spare time, I can release whatever I want, and you can change it if you don't like it!"

As if that was the point.

I you release it as a broken hobby project, fine. Just don't call it a "fully functional" or "community driven" audio editor / encryption utility / mail server / file explorer / chat client if it's completely unusable to a reasonable part of the audience who just happens to be blind, or otherwise impaired.

#Accessibility #a11y

What do you get when you let (overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male) able-bodied developers build an operating system?

Well, you get an insightful display of structural #ableism.

As a developer, I feel ashamed about this state of affairs, reading the excellent blog series by @fireborn . We can do better, and we deeply need to.

dragonscave.space/@fireborn/11…

#Linux #Accessibility #a11y #FLOSS

aaron

2025-05-10 10:56:42

The state of Linux accessibility in 2025. This started out as a rant but became a series. Please feel free to leave feedback, comments, and subscribe via rss or email for more stuff as I release it. fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-w…

I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 1 – Built for Control, But Not for People — fireborn

^{fireborn.mataroa.blog}

What is my stance on the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses? It's good, helpful, and a more affordable assistive technology device than what's currently available... but it has it's challenges... I have never thought of connecting it to WhatsApp and using ChatGPT with it! Thanks Tim Dixon for sharing lots of insights! ⬇️
timdixon.net/blog/2025/04/blin…

#Accessibility #Meta #A11y

Blind Meta Ray Ban Review 2025 - TIM DIXON

A Blind Meta Ray Ban Review 2025 covering new AI features, WhatsApp bots, and how they support the blind and low vision community.

^{Tim Dixon (TIM DIXON)}

I meant to re-post this for #GAAD!

This article by @dadederk is a great reminder of many truths about doing #accessibility work: focus on systems, not short term goals, be persistent and resilient, and work w/ a network/community however you can!

smashingmagazine.com/2025/04/f…

Fostering An Accessibility Culture — Smashing Magazine

While there’s no definitive playbook for building an accessibility culture, Dani shares lessons from his experience in shaping it through habits rather than mandates.

^{Smashing Magazine}

This Global Accessibility Awareness Day we'd like to shout out to our translators! NVDA has been translated into over 55 languages to provide access to technology for blind and vision impaired people around the world. Recently we spoke with Harun in Türkiye, who shared how access, in his own language, has helped him: nvaccess.org/post/harun-fast-l…

#GAAD #Accessibility #NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Localization #Awareness #Translation

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day we are launching a new settings page that lists all of your media without alt text, so you can easily update any missing alt text in a single, easy to remember place.

You can also enable the Require Media Descriptions setting in Settings -> Media.

#accessibility #gaad

Für die neuen Versionen der @joplinapp@mastodon.social wurde nicht nur die #ScreenReader Kompatibilität für #Desktop und #Mobile verbessert, es gibt auch eine #Accessibility #Hilfe.seite für #Entwickler, die neue Komponenten ergänzen oder alte ändern möchten:

joplinapp.org/help/dev/accessi…
#a11y #Joplin #ToDo #Inklusion #digitaleTeilhabe #GlobalAccessibilityAwarenessDay

Oh, neat. I was wondering how they'd do this.

> The Window Switcher tool makes it easy to switch windows in desktop mode with just a couple keystrokes. To use the Window Switcher, press dots 4-5-8-chord and wait a few moments for the Window Switcher tool to open. Window Switcher presents a list of currently open windows and announces the currently active window Your cursor will be placed on the currently active window. Use dot-4 chord to scroll through the list of windows and press enter (dot 8) or space to select the window you would like to move your focus.

#BTSpeak #accessibility #blind

I can't tell y'all how much I love #Emacs. It was the first interface that really intrigued me. It was the first interface where I felt like there was so much I could learn about. And Emacspeak brought it to life for me. Headings spoken by a deeper voice. Italics spoken by a higher, rather fuzzy voice. Bold spoken by a deep voice, almost like headings. Because headings are bold, and large. A calendar where I could move around the actual calendar, not just a list of events. Want to know what date next Friday is? Find Friday of this week, and simply press Down arrow. Or C-n if you're really into Emacs. And there it is. Oh and Nov-mode (nov.el). I can't say enough about that package. An EPUB reader that doesn't choke on a huge book. And Markdown-mode and Org-mode, and even HTML-mode. With Emacspeak, I could hear the syntax highlighting. That way, I knew if I didn't close a bracket pair, or quotes, not only by the punctuation itself, but how the voice sounds.

And now Emacspeak hasn't been updated in a year. Luckily, I think T.V. Raman has made fixes up to Emacs 30. But beyond that, I don't know. I hope it's not abandoned forever. I maybe could use Emacs through Orca, or BRLTTY, or maybe Speechd-el, if I can figure out how it's supposed to be set up and used well. But it feels like such a pail imitation of Emacspeak. But then, unconfigured Emacs doesn't feel all that special either.

#Emacs #foss #Emacspeak #accessibility #blind #linux

I wasn't going to post anything about #linux #a11y today, but some things keep coming up, and I think it's time I took a break from yelling.

So an interlude, then. Lets look at some of the good that's happening.

As always, feedback is welcome, and subscribe via email or rss for more of what I write.

fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-w…

#linuxAccessibility #blogging #accessibility #linuxDesktop

Matthias posted an update on the current state of Accessibility in GTK and GNOME on the development blog: blog.gtk.org/2025/05/12/an-acc…

#gtk #gnome #accessibility #a11y

Well crap. Tried Slint, but it like, uses Alsa and doesn't have sound drivers for my main sound card, and using a USB sound card, well it broke after I saved Orca settings. Not even a restart fixed it. Meh. Ah well. Linux breaks.

#slint #blind #accessibility #Linux #foss

This is worth adding to your accessibility audit toolkit. I found its reports a lot more granular than the ones generated by other tools.

ibm.com/able/toolkit/

#a11y #accessibility

Huh, if you need good #accessibility (special needs, bad eyes, blindness) you will fail with #Linux.

Linux on Desktop is a hell, even for IT pros.

Woohoo! So far, we have 62 people pledging 269 hours towards improving accessibility in WordPress this Thursday for Global Accessibility Awareness Day! 🙌 Join us in spending a day working on accessibility issues in WordPress core, plugins, or on your own website!

equalizedigital.com/gaad2025/ #WordPress #GAAD #GAAD2025 #accessibility #a11y

Global Accessibility Awareness Day Pledge - May 15, 2025

In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, pledge to improve accessibility in WordPress on May 15th. Find out how to get involved.

^{Equalize Digital}

PSA - Sonos is seeking free labor to improve the accessibility of the app for their commercial products,, both in the form of finding accessibility bugs in a production app, and unpaid UX research opportunities.

From an email they just sent to their beta community:

[...]We are putting together a pool of testers to provide ongoing feedback about the quality and comprehensiveness of accessibility features in the Sonos mobile app. Enrolled participants will be asked to use the app as they normally would, but provide us feedback about opportunities to improve our accessibility features via our beta community platform. At points in the future we may also send structured surveys to get more focused feedback on particular components of the app. These surveys will not
be required, but we will greatly benefit from as many testers taking them as possible. This program will rely on the generally available mobile app and does not require you to download beta software. If you're interested in participating please click the link below. Thanks!

#accessibility #sonos #a11y

I could use some #FediHelp .

As my long-running readers are probably aware, I schedule a _lot_ of posts in advance. I use @bufferapp for this, and I am largely satisfied with this, except for one thing:

They have a fixed character limit of 500 for posts, and thus I cannot make use of the full 10,000 characters of my instance.

This is bad, since most of my scheduled posts are German folk tales exceeding this character limit, and thus I am forced to use screenshots instead of plain texts - which is terrible from an #accessibility point of view (yes, there are readers that can identify the text, but I'd rather use plain text in the first place). So I am looking for alternatives. Here are my requirements:

- It must have a web interface I can use on my desktop PC - I grew up with proper screens and keyboards, and while I _can_ use a smart phone or tablet for complex stuff, I do not find the experience enjoyable.
- It must have a calendar view instead of being a simple, scrollable list - I often schedule posts weeks in advance, and I want to be able to keep track of what is scheduled.
- It must make full use of the character limits of each instance.
- It must allow for scheduling threads - quite a few of the tales I am posting exceed the 10,000 character limit.
- It must work with #Mastodon . While I am aware that other #Fediverse systems (such as #Friendica ) have scheduling options of their own, switching to an entirely different system is a drastic step that I only want to explore when all other options have been exhausted.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

#Poll on #accessibility

Which of the following is more useful / accessible for a downloadable report or long read document?

Feel free to give me reasons. I am especially interested if you have sight issues from the mild to more severe.

• PDF (50%, 2 votes)
• Epub (25%, 1 vote)
• ODT (25%, 1 vote)
• Word (0%, 0 votes)

#Development #Reviews
First impressions of Deque Axe Assistant · What to expect from the AI accessibility chatbot ilo.im/163tch

_____
#AxeAssistant #AI #Chatbot #Accessibility #WCAG #Design #WebDesign #WebDev #Frontend #HTML

I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back
fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-w…

by @fireborn

Read this article! I promise this is not another “I’ve tried Linux but it is too hard” post but a very insightful and well-written piece on accessibility across the Linux landscape.

#accessibility #linux #usability