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Items tagged with: voiceover
You know, one thing I really do like about Android, Pixel works but IDK about others. When you turn off the stupid, awful, frustrating bullcrap where you have to tell your phone to "stop", shouting over the alarm to be heard... You can then double tap with two fingers, with TalkBack, to immediately stop the alarm. No need to swipe to the stop button and double tap.
Of course, just like a lot of things in Android, the Double Tap with two fingers just sends the "play/pause" signal, so it's not really a Magic Tap that apps can really make do interesting things, like how in DiceWorld on iOS, you can Magic Tap (double tap with two fingers), to roll the dice without needing to find that button each time. Stuff like that, in apps, is really nice.
Another issue with Android is the way apps handle speech; they almost always just send output of ongoing things, like live OCR results and such, to the system TTS engine instead of TalkBack. This is mainly because that's how it's always been done, but now that Braille is an option, I really hope developers start just sending announcements directly to TalkBack. On iOS, for example, I can play DiceWorld completely in Braille because it sends all announcements to VoiceOver, and not the TTS engine. See, Android has been all about speech at all cost, coming from the days of the Eyes-free shell since TalkBack couldn't use the touch screen yet. iOS, I think, has always let apps send content to VoiceOver, so it can read whatever the dev needs it to, and thus also shows up in Braille, can easily be interupted, all that.
Just some early morning thoughts, don't come at me.
#accessibility #blind #android #iOS #TTS #VoiceOver #TalkBack
Here are some initial comments:
Kindle doesn't appear in #VoiceDream as a standard content source. Instead, Amazon's web reader is embedded into the app, and the book text is extracted from the web page to be spoken.
This means that Kindle isn't deeply integrated into the rest of the app, and results in the majority of Voice Dream features being unavailable. You can choose a book and start audio playback, but not access bookmarking, text highlighting, annotations, full-text search, the built-in dictionary, etc. More fundamentally, standard book navigation (e.g. by heading) is not possible either. You can skip by page, and that's all.
I don't know if the features aimed at other audiences, such as finger reading and word highlights, work or not. I would suspect not, given the webview-based architecture, but I haven't been able to verify either way.
Meanwhile:
1. Playing a Kindle book doesn't register it as your "currently reading" item. If you relaunch the app, or close the Kindle viewer, you have to locate the book in Amazon's web interface from scratch.
2. Speaking of Amazon's web interface, selecting a book to read happens entirely within it, bringing all of the accessibility issues along for the ride that you may expect from Amazon in 2024.
3. While Kindle content is playing, the #VoiceOver magic tap gesture causes whatever non-Kindle document you were reading elsewhere in Voice Dream to resume.
4. You can pause the playback of a Kindle book on AirPods. But when you try to resume, you also trigger the previous non-Kindle document.
5. On the two books I've tried, there are large pauses in the speech stream at frequent intervals, lasting almost a second. These don't seem to line up with page changes, and I'm not sure what causes them. Maybe something related to scrolling.
6. I pressed "next page" four or five times in quick succession, to jump past all of the copyright information in a book. Unfortunately, this caused playback to completely stop working, no matter how many times I toggled it.
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.
4. Paperwork: I have many invoices, serial numbers, contracts, acts and many other legal stuff. Everyone does but the problem with me is that I am helping some others with their paperwork. With advanced organization capability of DT I can very easily see which paper belongs to whom and whether I have already filled it, whether its a template that I can reuse over and over to ask my dear government for a piece of bread or whatever else that comes to mind. Another awesome thing is the automatic OCR feature, I have set up a simple smart rule which automatically OCRs every non-textual PDF, and since DT interfaces with Finereader's engine the results is very good, I would dare to say its better than the official Finereader for Mac, but that is subjective, might be inaccurate or accurate only in certain scenarios, be ware.
I have just wrote four things that came to mind otherwise this would become the second Bible, but the tool has endless use cases. Its not cheap and its not for everyone, but if you want to try it it has a very fair trial. If you have any questions, let me know. Let's learn DEVON Think together!
#blind #accessibility #a11y #VoiceOver #Mac #software (2/2)
I wrote an article about how to make hastags accessible. Did some #ScreenReader testing with #JAWS, #NVDA, #VoiceOver and #Narrator, which was fun!
Pretty long one though, contains a bunch of tables for comparison. Enjoy the ride!
https://stevefrenzel.dev/posts/easy-web-accessibility-wins-hashtags/
#accessibility #a11y #html #JavaScript #WebDev #frontend
Easy web accessibility wins: Hashtags
Is there a way to create hashtags that work for everyone? I did some screen reader testing and was surprised by the outcome!Steve Frenzel
I am extremely clumsy when it comes to testing things with #VoiceOver for #accessibility, but I do try. I have a question:
Is it possible to completely skip over a table on a web page? I know VoiceOver has options to navigate it, but is there a way (or best practice I can implement) to just skip right past it?
Context: Planning handling accessibility for Chart.js. Planned MVP is to add an accessible description. Potential enhancement is to embed the data as a table.
Continued…
Thoughts And Tips After My App Was nominated For A Golden Apple Award From AppleVis
Thoughts after a surprise nomination.Me (Chris Wu)
Logic Pro Bite Size for VI's - Loading Third Party Plugins https://youtu.be/nIRyG-puBfs
#LogicPro #Blind #VI #VisuallyImpaired #ScreenReader #VoiceOver
Logic Pro Bite Size for VI's - Loading Third Party Plugins
In this video I will show you how to load a third party plugin in Logic Pro as a blind user.This new mini-series aims to help a blind/visually impaired Voice...YouTube
Logic Pro Bite Size for VI's - Loading Third Party Plugins https://youtu.be/nIRyG-puBfs
#LogicPro #Blind #VI #VisuallyImpaired #ScreenReader #VoiceOver
Logic Pro Bite Size for VI's - Loading Third Party Plugins
In this video I will show you how to load a third party plugin in Logic Pro as a blind user.This new mini-series aims to help a blind/visually impaired Voice...YouTube
Why_Turning_Off_VoiceOver_Cursor_Tracking_can_be_Really_Useful:
@matt I use the Spitfire Audio downloader (for my sins) on Mac and it's 99.5% accessible with VOCR, and 1% accessible with #VoiceOver. the only reason it gets the 1% is because just like when you write your name, date and title at the top of the paper you likely get marked for good spelling, we can see the close button, but nothing else. Haha.
In this instance, you'd best know how to use VOCR before you get into their libraries, without it, you're simply out of luck.
Situations like that, sure. But that's different from an email from a supposed reputable company with important information that absolutely, without question, *needs* to be in a format that is accessible to *all* customers, irrespective of ability or disability.
You don't *need* spitfire, but if a company have suffered some kind of hack, you *do* need to know about it, you know?
Greetings!
Well, after finding out that #WhaleBird
https://github.com/h3poteto/whalebird-desktopis a decent enough accessible MacOS client for use with #Misskey, you'll see me post on here from time to time now as well! Most of the time I'll still be posting on my Mastodon account, though watch this space! Three-Thousand characters is more than i ever would need myself, but I'll take it!
For users of #VoiceOver, the 'J' & 'k' keys currently do not speak under the curssor what the post is, thus nornal VO commands for now are necessary. Definitely a client for #Blind users to check out though!
NB. As noted among the GitHub page, WhaleBird is also available for #Windows and #Linux, though I'll leave those builds to you guys!
GitHub - h3poteto/whalebird-desktop: An Electron based Mastodon, Pleroma, and Misskey client for Windows, Mac, and Linux
An Electron based Mastodon, Pleroma, and Misskey client for Windows, Mac, and Linux - GitHub - h3poteto/whalebird-desktop: An Electron based Mastodon, Pleroma, and Misskey client for Windows, Mac, ...GitHub
OK, this is great. Just found an #iOS equivalent of #MacWhisper and it’s free. Not sure if it always is, but it certainly is right now.
It’s #Accessible and works well with #VoiceOver.
#Aiko by Sindre Sorhus
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Welcome to the ACB Radio Community Podcast, home to content from ACB sponsored community events. Our community is growing and we want everyone to find their place in it.ACB Community
What we need:
1. The NVDA Speech Logger addon available at:
https://github.com/opensourcesys/speechLogger
2. The following iOS shortcut:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/999808bd155e443ca8e6d0c0d58a56ad
How to use:
1. Install both: the addon in your NVDA and the shortcut in your shortcuts respectively.
2. In NVDA's settings head over to the Speech Logger category and set the output path to your Dropbox root (that's what the shortcut assumes you're using, feel free to modify as needed);
3. Start logging the local speech with the assigned gesture (by default NVDA+alt+l);
4. Assuming the shortcut is configured properly (Dropbox authorized and all that jazz), launch it and a viewer will pop up with the fresh version of the log file at the time.
One nuissance I've found with this is that the viewer overlay will not surround the VO gestures so you need to focus it first through exploration before you can start reading the log. Also the gestures for the first and last item on the screen will move you to whatever else should be on your screen right now so you have to explore again to close the viewer. I assume that's a VO bug.
Also bear in mind that, while logging, anything your PC says will ultimately land in a regular text file and nothing apart from your Dropbox account is protecting it. Use with caution.
Feel free to suggest feedback.
#Accessibility #Tip #VoiceOver #NVDA #iPhone #iOS #Windows #Blind
GitHub - opensourcesys/speechLogger: An NVDA add-on to log speech to a file. Includes support for logging remote sessions.
An NVDA add-on to log speech to a file. Includes support for logging remote sessions. - GitHub - opensourcesys/speechLogger: An NVDA add-on to log speech to a file. Includes support for logging rem...GitHub
Hope @Gargron or @zeitschlag can approve and merge them soon. #a11y