NoConfigence2192

@[email protected]

I am a partially sighted blind person. My cane helps me move through and explore the physical world while screen readers and other assistive tech help me do the same with all things cyber. I also tend to have very little confidence that the Powers That Be really know what is best for me.

Good luck

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

NoConfigence2192, (edited )

Correction. They are definitely not clear yet

NoConfigence2192, (edited )

@dhamlinmusic @dhamlinmusic @fastfinge @admin @Altrissa @OldManOnFire @noahcarver @rumster

!lemmy_support appears to be tracking the issue through lemmy.ml/post/1896249

and updating the community at large through a PSA here lemmy.ml/post/1895271

if those threads get too much activity they may switch to new threads or start using another medium so do not count on them remaining up to date until things are fully resolved.

lemmy.blahaj.zone appears to have been affected as well.

Right now working theory is some combination of admin account compromise and code injection through the markdown processor used prior to 18.1 but that could change over time. Looks like we’re on latest so hoping we’re good.

Would continue to avoid lemmy.world and lemmy.blahaj.zone until there is a better understanding of what happened and there is a good consensus all is resolved.

Gotta sleep soon so wishing us all luck

There is a more technical discussion about a related issue that mentions the servers we know about lemmy.sdf.org/post/696053

Now really good night

NoConfigence2192,

As far as I can tell things seem to be back to normal now. Care should still be take so proceed with caution

Question about cause of certain RP symptoms

Wondering if anyone actually knows (that is, not just guessing) why RP causes decreased contrast in one’s remaining central vision. I asked my retina doc and got an obviously BS answer that cones can’t distinguish contrast as well as rods. I am not a fan of doctors who don’t have the phrase “I don’t know” in their...

NoConfigence2192,

Two types of light receptors in retina.

One, called cones, addresses color. Distinguishes gross changes in color across entire visible spectrum. More durable, mostly in macula (central vision), and slow to detect change.

The other, called rods, address intensity (brightness). Distinguishes fine changes in light intensity normally presented in gray scale (shades of black and white). More fragile, mostly in prepheral retina, quickly detects change.

RP and Choroideremia tend to kill off the rods in the peripheral retina first eventually moving on to the cones centered in the macula. Fewer rods mean less ability to discerned between changes in shades of color. For example it may be difficult between ruby red and infra red crayons when right next to each other but much easier when separated by florescent yellow.

Or at least that’s the gist of the what I remember from a conversation with a low vision occupational therapist. Can’t really see enough to test it any more.

High contrast is key for anything you need to see right now.

Be careful trusting what you see. Movement, distance, and definition (shape) perception could be off as well

NoConfigence2192,

Thank you. This will likely prove useful and interesting to some.

Move to town with no O & M training available?

I’ve got RP, but a decent amount of central vision. I can still see cars if I’m looking right at them, people walking right at me, usually find cross I’ve got RP, but a decent amount of central vision. I can still see cars if I’m looking right at them, people walking right at me, find crosswalks, that sort of thing. But...

NoConfigence2192,

Would better walkability and affordability let you save enough money to visit another town that does have O&M specialists available?

This is something I am considering for myself now.

The worst of my vision loss happened at the beginning of the Pandemic when there were no in person services available in the area. At that time my O&M training consisted of 3 hour long phone calls. I had a little remaining vision at the time and no one was really supposed to go anywhere at the time anyway so it was enough. Now that I have almost no useful vision remaining and things have improved enough that they are doing in person training again I have been trying to get in person training. Unfortunately, even though there are specialists within the normal travel distances I live in a notoriously high crime area so no one is willing to come to me.

To get in person O&M training I will have to travel to a neighboring town so I am in the process of saving enough money to spend a few days some where I can get it. Not easy because there is not a lot extra right now.

NoConfigence2192,

Darn! I did it again!

I colored your situation with my own instead getting more information about what you really needed and answering your question. It is a bad habit and I apologize.

NFB had what’s now a booklet that helped me a lot at the time: Cane: Instructions in Cane Travel for Blind People

  • I particularly found section 3 Actually Walking Around pretty useful in the short term but in the end it has all proved useful so the entire thing was a good read

It looks like it could be a useful read for a sighted person trying to spot you as well

There have been a number of things I have listened to and read since that have provided some help as well…but it was harder to remember where I found them. If I hadn’t remembered originally finding the NFB one above on the page for their Free White Cane Program I might not of known where to find that either.

As for my situation, that is good advice that I will be following until I can make my trip and get that in person training. I can do well enough with the day to day now. My end goal, if I can manage to afford it, is to independently travel as much as I can. I never took the time to do that back when I could still see and am regretting it a bit. My O&M skills could use a bit more finesse for unfamiliar areas that I may not have as much time to learn as I would like.

NoConfigence2192,

Yes! That was it. Thank you so much.

Was driving me nuts. Amazing how something little like that can bug you to distraction.

How can transcribers best help you on Lemmy?

Before the whole new transcription effort really starts going, I wanted to get some input from actual Blind and low-vision users to see like…what y’all actually want us to work on. Are there any particular Lemmy-specific accessibility problems we should be aware of? Additionally, for those of us independently transcribing...

NoConfigence2192,

lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/kebtranscriparchive is good for when you want people from outside Lemmy to create accounts on your instance. !kebtranscriparchive might be better for people with existing account to subscribe to your community.

NoConfigence2192,

Was able to get there and subscribe but it was a bit of work to get there…Does not help that I am new enough to Lemmy that I am still figuring out how to do things.

Don’t see any content yet and a no easy way to post there either (no Create a post button yet). However I know a lot of instances are overloaded right now so I understand there could be delay. Will try again after a bit.

NoConfigence2192,

Good vibes are always welcome and send some of mine back at ya.

Cannot speak for the group at large but a nice to have from a personal standpoint would be stickied How Tos hosted in your community for things like alt text that we could use links to refer people to.

Otherwise it is still too early to have a good idea where the needs are. A lot of time still going into figuring out how things work and where things are. Sure I will have more to bring up as I learn more.

Thanks for keeping us in mind and have a great day!

NoConfigence2192,

Have a deal for you @OldManOnFire. If you promise to keep bugging me about the exercise I desperately need I’ll let you pick which topic I get to harass you in in turn.

NoConfigence2192,

You probably can

Do they both have Thunderbolt ports? Windows, Mac, or Linux? Wired or wireless networking?

If they both have thunderbolt 3/4 and you have a cable you can connect both to the cable and use Thunderbolt networking. MSI has a pretty good how to

Otherwise:

  • Transfer over network (buy usb ethernet adapter if necessary $10-15 on amazon)
  • Buy USB transfer cable and use it to transfer
  • Remove HD from old laptop, buy compatible external HD enclosure, put it in external HD enclosure and connect it to new laptop
  • Copy files from old laptop to existing external drive, then connect external drive to new laptop
weirdwriter, (edited ) to main

This OpenTween fork has basic support, and yes, with quote support on the way. This was a extremely accessible mainstream client and now it works on Mastodon https://github.com/upsilon/OpenTween/tree/mastodon @main @fediversereport

NoConfigence2192,

Thank you. Will give it a look over the next several days

NoConfigence2192,

We will see what happens. Reddit is hard to let go especially for people in othe r/Blind community that fills a very real need. Plus they have been making a lot of cosmetic changes that may help appease some people and bring them back into the fold. Between that very real need we were filling and those cosmetic changes some of us are very likely to be drawn back in.

As for me, a short visit there yesterday proved to me that I cannot allow myself to go back. The r/Blind subreddit was what brought me to that site in the first place and was the one community I was a part of there that was largely resistant to the toxicity so prevalent through the rest of the site. Yesterday’s visit was heartbreaking, showing me how much the toxicity of the rest of the site had infiltrated r/Blind…and even so, the urge to dive back in was very strong. I felt like a recovering gambling addict walking into a casino for the first time since giving it up. I just cannot afford to go back to that.

While I hope that we will all continue to be a part of building something new, and hopefully better, we will have to see how may of us resist reddit’s siren call.

The need in the fediverse is at least as strong as the need r/Blind on reddit. I cannot imagine that building up this community will take any less time and effort than building up r/Blind on reddit originally did bit it should prove well worth it in the end.

A note to the admins and mods of rBlind.com and its communities:

Thank you for getting this started and providing a community for those of us with no place at reddit can support one another in our blindness and our visual impairments.

NoConfigence2192,

A hearty hello back to hometown

No real clue about head counts. Am still new enough to the fediverse that I am still working out how to do some things. For example, I can do most of my text formatting using markdown but have yet to figure out how to get mentions like @weirdwriter to work.

I can say it has been quieter than I like over the past few days but am hoping that will turn around over time. Will just keep posting, commenting, and learning how things work in the mean time.

Thank you again and remember to take time out to enjoy the day!

NoConfigence2192,

Some of drama on Reddit will calm down

I hope it does so soon. I wish them the best and hope that they can all get back to doing what they enjoy most.

NoConfigence2192,

good support of the Markdown language means everyone can add alt-text to images

Nice! I want to try an experiment to see how it sounds:

rBlind.com logo

What is above should be the rBlind.com logo. I am curious how different screen readers will pick it up. Below is the markdown I used:

<pre style="background-color:#ffffff;">
<span style="color:#323232;">![rBlind.com logo](<https://rblind.com/pictrs/image/3c46ae70-6ceb-4e6d-bb6e-5822e9426176.png?format=webp&thumbnail=96> "rBlind.com logo")
</span>
NoConfigence2192,

Are you able to have text posts be read out to you and such?

I cannot tell you what they use for administration and moderation but for reading Jerbao has been working great with TalkBack on Android, Chrome has been doing well with JAWS on Windows, and Orca okay with Firefox on Debian…but Orca can often be more of a stretch for a lot of things.

The only thing that would be on my wish list would be better defined key bindings/shortcuts for the web UI…maybe even have the bindings listed in the labels of controls…they are absent for me when using carat browsing on Chrome Canary

NoConfigence2192,

For me it just says “unlabeled”…I’m using Android TalkBack on Thunder

Might just be Thunder. Jerboa seems to read it okay with TalkBack on Android, for me at least, as does Jaws with Chrome on Windows

NoConfigence2192,

Life events kept me almost completely away from the Internet, let alone Read It (intentionally misspelled), for a few months. When I was able to come back (on June 16th) the first place I tried to go was r/Blind only to find it, along with a lot of other subs dark.

A simple search told me what was going on and the spezanotor’s responses over the following days failed to inspire confidence that things would get better (to be fair I rarely have confidence in the Powers That Be, whoever they may be…it is in my name for a reason after all) so my own account went dark and I started looking for alternatives. I was just starting to think I was going to have to build something myself when I found what you all were putting together here (thankfully, because anything I build tends to be utilitarian and ugly).

Your post is exactly why I am here and my Reddit account remains dark.

BTW: Thank you for linking the web archive (wayback machine) snapshot of the original post. With the way Read It has been doing things there’s no telling how long the original will be allowed to remain.

NoConfigence2192,

what were your results?

They have been pretty positive. I will need to practice more to help learn the quirks but am really enjoying it so far. It really helps me that markdown support seems to be the default.

NoConfigence2192,

Cane. Which, now that I think about it, most sighted people I know think is stupid. They all seem to think that there’s tiny portable magic radar, sonar, infrared, VR stuff that’s widely available and actually works.

Over the course of my life I have had the chance to support a lot of tech, including a couple of medical prototypes that were supposed to have that kind of magic. Yet after my vision loss it was what amounted to a long white stick that had the most beneficial affects on my life. Sometimes low tech is the best tech.

NoConfigence2192,

Old conversation but am going to play anyway.

Most used to least used from left to right

  • Canes: 1 rigid, 1 folding
  • Windows, Android, Mac, Linux
  • NVDA/JAWS/Narrator, VoiceOver, Orca, TalkBack
  • Learning read braille on paper and use braille on screen keyboard on Android

When I am working I work with computers of multiple types. If I do not keep in practice with all of them I lose track of the keybard shortcuts and gestures I need to do things with them.

NoConfigence2192,

I talk to machines and computers all the time, and it is nice that they talk to me now.

A friend recently came by while I was using the computer and commented on that:

“I see they have finally started talking back to you.”

Among family and friends I am very well know for talking to computers and machines.

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