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

In case you haven’t caught up on all the really exciting #accessibility work going into iOS 15, here’s a great summary: https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/05/ios-15-everything-new-accessibility/

Background sounds, per-app accessibility settings, sound actions for switch control and much more!

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

“What about grapes? Are grapes berries?”

“I mean, seems like they are, hold on. Yes, grapes are berries. I’ve also learned that strawberries somehow are not berries.”

“What about apples?”

“Son, I don’t know anymore”

This is your app without VoiceOver support. Don’t be this app! #accessibility

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

- cold foot bath for a couple minutes will keep ur feets chilly for over an hour afterward

- electrolyte drink mix powder > plain water. can be found for cheap at most drugstores

- skincare products that contain peppermint, konjac and/or aloe: put them on the groin, palms, and under the armpits

- coldpacks can go on those places too

- eating popsicles wont really cool you down but if you like them then go for it

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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!

Have you ever wanted to work on #Accessibility? Do you want to join the team that built Back Tap and Sound Recognition and Switch Control? Well, I’m hiring!! https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200256960/accessibility-software-engineer-ios?team=SFTWR and my DMs are open.

Obligatory reminder: This role is in Cupertino, not remote.