Superfreq @Superfreq@dragonscave.space

Google is about to do the whole crippling accessibility services thing again on the play store. Actual accessibility apps like screen readers are fine, but they're going out of the way to mention things like automation and password mgr's is not. https://www.xda-developers.com/google-trying-limit-apps-accessibility-service/

I mean, so many blind people own iPhones. How many don't know about the Braille Screen Input feature? How many who used to could see don't know about the handwriting feature? How many don't know about the "Magic Tap"? All because Apple just doesn't give them any information. So every time I go to a presentation style meeting on Assistive Technology, all people really want to hear about is the iPhone? And I used to think it was dumb, like "I mean gosh don't y'all know enough about the iPhone?" But now I see why; it's because they don't. And they've been left in the dark about it so long that even *after* they've learned what they need, they think "What else is hidden from me? What else did Apple not tell me?" And that's a shame.

And, while I know some of it is users not feeling comfortable venturing outside of what they know, and digging into VoiceOver settings, or reading the iPhone user guide, it's also on Apple to at *least* get people started. After all, how would they browse the web to Apple's accessibility site without knowing how to use Safari? How would they read the iPhone user guide without knowing how to navigate to the Books app, open it, search for the book, get the book, open the book, and read the book?

Daily reminder that for many blind people, #Apple is the most useful and productive mobile operating system. It's not that Android is hard to use, but when text selection, especially on the web and in email, is from hard to impossible, and when one cannot spell check what they've written, and typing is either a minor annoyance (braille (input not registering sometimes) onscreen keyboard (very slow usually) external keyboard (yet another device to manage)), you begin to understand why people who don't enjoy customization, or getting the "most" out of a device choose iOS, especially for accessibility, and the AI of image recognition and such. And FOSS phones, like the PinePhone, won't be accessible until Orca/ATSPI can communicate with touch screens, and that won't happen without developers.

So, when you get that urge to say "I told you so you Apple sheeple, you should have been using FOSS!" Try to remember that some people don't have much of a choice.

#a11y #FOSS #PinePhone

So Microsoft Teams, the app, used to have this issue where arrowing through the message list with a screen reader would interupt the message it's currently reading with the word "Menu", effectively making reading messages impossible. You used to be able to get around this by just using the web version of Teams, but you guessed it, it now too does this. I just wanna cry.

computer-generated "recipes" that I made as an example in the workshop I'm teaching. the instructions are composed of random transitive verbs plus random direct objects from Bob Brown's _The Complete Book of Cheese_ https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14293

machine learning is amazing because you take a bunch of data you don't have permission to use and a few million matrix multiplications later you can generate the wrong answer to any question

People today have access to more cool ranch flavour in one chip than a medieval peasant could dream of having in a lifetime

Today I learnt that apparently the kids on Tiktok have decided that “😂” is aggressively uncool, and that CNN thinks this is newsworthy: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/tech/emoji-most-popular-study/index.html

I have decided that I need to start using U+1F574, LEVITATING BUSINESS MAN, to indicate amusement.

🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴🕴

I don't know who at Google or other companies contributing code to chromium thought it would be worth doing this, but being 100% serious here I thank you. Making this accessible is as much part of making the whole app accessible as any other part. ☺️

You know that Dino you can play in Chromium browsers if your internet is dying? Someone on the audio games forum discovered it's blind accessible now. If you go to chrome://dino and focus the "application" with your screen reader you'll get beeps to tell you when to jump.

Oh, looks like MacOS does have an accessibility switch. In ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.Accessibility.plist:

AccessibilityEnabled = :true;

The big difference in this versus Linux is that this is set automatically. In fact, the Plist file is just a pretty-printed representation of something in binary form. With Linux, it's pretty much manual, and you have to enable GTK accessibility, QT accessibility, and Electron and Chromium-based apps accessibility. That's a lot to remember, especially for newbies.

#a11y #accessibility #MacOS #Linux

This is a kindly reminder from your data to do backups. At best, follow the 3-2-1 rule with at least:
3 backups on
2 devices and
1 offsite

Please think about all the photos, videos, art, letters, poems, etc. you have created during the years and imagine those are gone forever.

So please, do backups and test them. Make a restore of files and see if those are still accessible and valid. Can you still open them? Do you have the software to do so?

#Backup #SaveYourData

Well that's a surprisingly good feature from twitter!

Also, it's not enough that Gnome is trash, or KDE is slowly trying, or the command line is mainly for developers. When a user installs Linux and needs assistive technology, like Orca, they can't just enable it and go on their way. They have to check a box in settings to "enable" assistive technologies. That's a huge barrier, and shouldn't exist. But it does. Another roadblock. Why do these exist in a supposed welcoming community? Why do these exist if Linux is open to all? Why? If FOSS is communal, why are blind people, due to the huge barrier of entry, shut out of the FOSS OS? These are hard questions we should be working through. Why does the GUI require assistive technology support to be enabled in order for Orca to work with many apps? Why can't it be enabled by default? Does it slow stuff down? If so, why? And should we have to live with a slower OS because we're blind?

So now, blind users who cannot upgrade to Windows 11 will probably either stick with Windows 10 indefinitely, save up for a Mac since that'll at least be supported for 7 or so years lol, or buy a new PC for Windows 11. Meanwhile, that laptop from 2015 or so just sits there or gets thrown away or sold. Too bad, right? A perfectly good computer. Ah well. I'll just have to wait until current developers are in their 60's or so, when they start having to lean a little too close to the monitor to see the code, for accessibility in Linux to actually be taken seriously. Because otherwise, they just don't care. And time after time, (Windows XP to Vista to 7 to 8 to 10 to 11), they've had chances to grab a very loyal and somewhat technically-minded user base that could have turned into great coders.

considering that the height of my phone's intelligence is assuming that most text messages I get can be replied to with "sounds good," I feel like we sorta jumped the gun and attached the prefix 'smart' to consumer electronics way too early.

U.S. Healthcare Is So Trash This Game’s Localization Needed Changing

The American healthcare system is so uniquely terrible among developed countries that a localization team translating a recent indie game had to completely replace a line about crowdfunding an emergency medical procedure because it wouldn’t make sense to players outside of the United States.

https://kotaku.com/u-s-healthcare-is-so-trash-this-game-s-localization-ne-1847169929

I used to just recycle, but since learning how few plastics actually get recycled, I've reduced my single-use plastic consumption by:

🐋 Switching to shampoo and conditioner bars instead of bottled, and from shower gel to bar soap (like we all used as kids)

🐟 Using glass containers and a set of stretchy silicone covers that fit over my bowls for leftovers instead of plastic wrap in the kitchen

🌱 Using reusable silicone bags instead of disposable plastic ones

🐢 Bringing my own stainless steel bottle or cup if I'm getting a drink outside of my home

🦀 Carrying a set of bamboo utensils for takeout (and choosing places with compostable takeout containers)

🌊 Using stainless steel straws or no straw instead of plastic

🐚 Buying produce without wrapping (farmer's markets are great in summer) & bringing my own containers for spices in bulk

I'd like to give a 👎 to Whole Foods, which sells in bulk but makes you use their plastic bag or container. Guess where I don't buy in bulk!