Boundary Road by Ami Rao is going straight on my TBR list - a book set on a London bus, with all the possible drama that will likely involve and the glimpses of life outside the window - looks like it’ll be a Kindle read for me as it’s from a very small publisher called Everything with Words #bookstodon#blind#publishing@bookstodon https://www.everythingwithwords.com/books/boundary-road/
@sarahmatthews@bookstodon Did you ever read 253, a novel by Geoff Matthews, which, IIRC, started as a blog, telling the stories of all the passengers on a Tube train? One of the entries was for a pigeon that had jumped on the train, I seem to remember.
On the latest #ios with #voiceover how do you tell if your in private browsing mode with #safari? Apparently the address bar is a different color, but voiceover gives no indication of that. #blind@main
@CiaraNi@disability Yes, that’s why I always pass on my hardcopy Braille books- there’s just no room to store them all! Those numbers seem high to me actually as the last book I had that was nearly 600 pages long was in 9 volumes, she must be reading uncontracted Braille which would be a lot longer. This year I’ve been reading much more electronic Braille using what I call my ‘Braille kindle’, which has one line of Braille that refreshes when you press a button, as it’s so portable though I love the feel of hardcopy more
@sarahmatthews@disability I teach braille to adults but I'm not a TVI, per se. I bet our agency would love to have one of these sets. Is this available from just the UK, or can I order, living in the US?
This is a weird request, but I figure the worst I can get for it is silence. I'm totally #blind and have very bad hearing. To set up a device through its inaccessible software, I'm in need of a sighted person for about an hour and a half to two hours who can access a computer remotely, speaks and reads English, and can describe images and graphs. The person needs to be quite patient with follow-up questions, needs to be willing to repeat if needed, as well as be able to click on items and describe what happens on the screen. The person needs to be fairly detail oriented because some of the images appear to have arrows and other ways to expand them, according to the manual. Though I'm happy to be reasonable, I have no clue how much to offer as payment, this is my first request of this kind. I'm posting it because I know we have some blind people here who may be able to point me towards someone who has done this before and may be willing to do it for such a short period. Boosts welcome, indeed, they're appreciated. #hearingimpaired#software#A11Y#accessibility#remote
Honestly, next blind convention season, I want to see Apple and Google accessibility engineers get on stage and do a battle of the screen readers. Note that this is not a truth claim and any of the text below could be false, change, not work, or not even exist.
Audience member: Show us how you check your email!
Apple: Okay, on the home screen, opens mail with Siri, open a message, read it with a swipe down with two fingers, and closes mail.
Google: Easy! Open Gmail with Google Assistant, opens a message, reads it with a double tap and hold with two fingers, and closes Gmail.
Audience member: Navigate a thread of emails!
Apple: On the home screen, Turns the rotor to Braille Screen input, types "mail" and swipes right with two fingers to open Mail. Then, finds a conversation, opens it and turns the rotor to "messages" and swipes down through the thread.
Google: From the home screen, swipes down with two fingers to show a search box, double taps to begin editing, uses TalkBack Braille keyboard to type and open Gmail with a two finger swipe up, opens a conversation, and double taps on a message header to collapse a message to show the next one. And the next one.
Audience: Show us how the new NLS EReader works on the phone.
Apple (probably after a few point updates to iOS 17): Puts EReader in Braille Display mode, chooses to add a device, goes to Settings > Bluetooth on iPhone and double taps the EReader's Bluetooth name. Then has to work around some new bug in Braille support.
Google: Puts the EReader in USB Braille Display mode, finds a USB C to USB C cable, plugs the 2 devices in, and things work. A bit sluggishly, but they work.
Audience: Show us how we can learn what's new in the screen reader.
Apple: Opens Safari and goes to apple.com/accessibility, and has VoiceOver read the whole page.
Google: Opens TalkBack settings, double taps on "new features in TalkBack," and lets it read actually useful info.
So today when I get home, I'm gonna try resetting my Samsung phone, and seeing if that fixes the Google Assistant issue. Better than spending another $500 or so on another phone right now. Y'all why do I do this to myself. iOS works okay, and yet, here I am even messing with Android. Like maybe I'm a masochist or something? Same thing with Mac and Linux, although with WSL and Homebrew I don't feel the call of the foss as much anymore. Gosh I wish I could be one of the normal blind people that are just happy with their iPhones and don't even think a thought about Android. Sometimes.
So for blind Windows users, what mail client do you use? I'm kinda getting tired of Gmail, having to hear lots of stuff before each message, and having to turn on browse mode and arrow through all that to get to the message, all that. And Thunderbird is messy in 115. I might have to just get used to Outlook.
Anyone out there know of a list of accessible games for #android? I'm #blind and would like some entertainment in my life. I'll even be fine with having to install the apk's myself.
@rooktallon I can't remember many of them, but you might want to join the blind android users telegram group if you use telegram, I am sure people on that list could give you a list of some games to get you started. also you could mention @accessibleandroid here on mastodon, and ask them for a list of accessible games. they are the ones that run the telegram group I was telling you about.
It's 2027. LLM's are built into Systems on Chips. Everyone sees their own personalized worlds. Their computers show things in a way the user likes. Or the manufactorers like. Or the ad agencies like. Who knows. Apple helps us all write calm, understandable texts, posts, and books. Google shows us, in AR, "only what we need to see." A map on our walk we take to decompress. No, there are no homeless people in the street. Just follow the lines on the map. Yeah, like that. Hear that soft music. Your own personalized playlist, all made by AI. You like Mooncake right? Well, here's something that sounds like them. A little. But it's 24/7. More, more, more.
Some people make mistakes in their work to show that they're human. That wrong note? That's a mark of humanity. That misspelled word? They're one of us. That blotch of ink? A soul made that. Perfection is of the machines. To err is human.
The blind can see now. But at what cost? The machines know us all now. They see our faces. They see them, pick out details from what they see and what they know. Then they feed that to blind people, who eagerly gulp it down like a dry sponge. But the AI doesn't mention how fake the smile is, on the person who sees the camera that sees them. Wave for the camera, for the machine. But for the blind person, who only wants to have what sighted people were born with? Well.
Our computers then correct all that input. That misspelling? Surely the human didn't mean to do that. The blotch of ink is gone. All distilled into blandness. People begin writing on paper again. Blind people get what the AI gives, just as before. People are angry that their analog becomes digital again. Cycles and cycles. Dim and light. Gifts and hooks. Humanity and the seeking and the taking.
I’m loving all the posts for #AltTextCoverDay today so join in if you can!
Here’s a beautiful book I bought earlier this year on a trip to Oxford. We visited the historic Blackwell’s bookshop which is enormous as I wanted to go to the rare books section at the top of the shop to see if they had any first editions of my favourite author, Barbara Pym. She studied at Oxford University and many of her books, which were published in the mid 20th century, are set in the city. I was surprised to find they only had one, Crampton Hodnet, and that it was no more expensive than a standard hardback book. I’m #blind so my husband described the cover and read the blurb for me and even though I’ll only ever read this book in Braille or audio now I had to buy it!
This novel was one she wrote just before WW2 but it was not published in her lifetime. She had a difficult #publishing journey after initial success in the 1950s and was eventually shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Quartet in Autumn in 1977. After her death in 1980 Macmillan finally published this one in 1985.
I’ve read all her books and a recent biography of her, so I love that I get to own this piece of her publishing history which is something she never got to enjoy. #bookstodon@bookstodon
@sarahmatthews@bookstodon Barbara Pym was probably my mother's favourite author, she had all, or at least most of her books. I think she read them at least once a year, as evidenced by the beaten up loose-leaf paperbacks on her shelf, they were probably something of a comfort read for her.
I think A Quartet in Autumn was her favourite.
I'm not blind and just want to know so I don't do the sort of stuff that may make it difficult for screen reader. So it just made me wonder what are best way to make any of the post/images more accessible for screen readers which I imagine blind users commonly use?
I have tried to add alt-texts to most my images but I wasn't sure if there's more stuff I could do and also unlearn to make it easy on you
Casing of multi-word tags: Always write the first letter of each word on a hashtag containing several word uppercase. This way screen readers and TTS software can interpret and read them as separated words. Otherwise it would read them as one nonsensical word
Avoid fancy/special fonts: Screen readers/TTS software can't read them as letters.
I don't think it's going to be a problem here, but wordle is a nightmare for Screen readers/TTS software as they can't detect the words and only describe the squares one by one. It's better to screenshot it and add an explanation of the results in alt text.