Matt Mullenweg Orders Accessibility Revert, Tells Core Committer to “Contribute Your Talents to Another Project” https://www.therepository.email/matt-mullenweg-orders-accessibility-revert-tells-core-committer-to-contribute-your-talents-to-another-project #Wordpress #Accessibility
accessibility
There are a few reviews of the MNT Pocket Reform online. This is mine, from someone who can't see the keys.
I love this little machine and use it almost constantly. Getting there took custom keyboard firmware, a talking OLED menu, a fight with the audio stack and a C header file I still open to find my own keys.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-mnt-pocket-reform-is-the-computer-i-actually-own/
#MNTReform #PocketReform #OpenHardware #Linux #Orca #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Blind
When I see Blind folks saying they rely on LLMs to describe things, it makes me feel shame. When I see sighted people lecturing Blind people for using LLMs, it makes me furious.
There is an extremely low tech solution to the need Blind people have to have things in images or what is right in front of them described, and that is a bunch of sighted people who give a shit and can spare 60 seconds to describe the image or scene. 1/3 #accessibility #Ally
Edited 45d ago
MY NEXT PERIPHERAL
HAS LEGS 💎
I’ve been looking at one of the new AI-powered exoskeletons, and I realised something. For me, the interesting part isn’t really the exoskeleton.
IT'S THE AI.
I have left-side hemiplegic weakness after a major stroke. When I walk, one side of my body is doing something quite different from the other. I use a lightweight carbon fibre stick. Conscious balance matters and can be exhausting. So fatigue matters. The terrain also matters: flat concrete, slightly downhill, is perfect.
So why should an intelligent system simply sit in my computer talking to me? Why shouldn’t it come walking with me in a more practical way?
The AI would already know how I normally move. It would notice when my left leg is tiring or dragging and compensate by adjusting powered assistance, while keeping an eye on my balance, helping with navigation, and calling for help if something went seriously wrong.
MY EXOSKELETON WOULD JUST BE ANOTHER PERIPHERAL.
Like my headphones. Like a monitor or a camera. The intelligence should be the same intelligence I already talk to every day. That is what I mean when I talk about the "Star Trek Computer." #STC
I do not want another separate gadget that has “AI” just printed on the box as a sales gimmick.
One intelligence that knows me, my differences, and how I live could move with me through the day, every day, in the physical world. For a person with a disability, that could be the difference between AI being interesting and AI actually giving them new independence.
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @disability @pwd @joinin
#STC #Accessibility #DisabilityTech #AssistiveTechnology #AI #StarTrek #Exoskeleton #PWD #AIExoskeleton
Edited 40d ago
Stop trying to upgrade disabled people's body when the problem is your design!
@WeirdWriter argues that the tech industry needs to stop trying to sell useless expensive gadgets no disabled person wants, or can afford, and start fixing actual accessibility barriers, like bad code, and poorly designed infrastructures.
https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/disability-dongle/
This looks like a damning admission from Google: https://googlechromelabs.github.io/webmcp-tools/demos/explainer/#compare
The problem: In the example, “Agent must scrape”, the aria-label doesn’t match the actual details (says May, calendar shows September). Much of the problem seems to be the broken aria attribute.
Their solution: invent a new standard and provide another version of the content, just for AI agents, rather than just fix the bug to remove the barrier to the disabled users.
#accessibility #ableism
Edited 46d ago
*sigh* every #Accessibility Zoom meeting I have today can be a one line email, one I have already sent, but the client still wishes to have me do a completely pointless review since they can't edit the code in the theme anyway. I replied, "pick a more accessible theme. Here's a link. Here's another link. Here's another link. Here's a resource. Here's a final link if you don't like those other themes." Them. "But can you still review our website on Zoom even though we can't edit the code?"
It's almost comical how clients pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to repeatedly say, “pick a more accessible theme. Hire a web developer focused on accessibility.” Then give about 30 recommendations in a follow up email. Speaking of, if anybody wants to work out a referral system, inbox me. I get thousands of these kinds of clients a year. You'd be dealing with, frankly, incredibly stupid small business types that use CMSs and where the annoying marketing manager can't stay out of web development, but you'd be getting paid a lot between all the clients! https://sightlessscribbles.com/contact/ #Accessibility #WebDev #GetFediHired
Let's answer accessibility pushbacks with data and strategic thinking!
I'm happy to let you all know that the replay of my A11YTalks "How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility" is now available. If you could not attend, here is the chance to check it at your own pace.
#Accessibility
https://a11ytalks.com/posts/2026-oct
SADC Teams Up with Easterseal’s Disability Film Challenge https://socialaudiodescription.com/2026/05/13/sadc-teams-up-with-easterseals-disability-film-challenge/ #AudioDescription #Accessibility
SADC's recent project, SADC Teams Up with Easterseal’s Disability Film Challenge https://socialaudiodescription.com/2026/05/13/sadc-teams-up-with-easterseals-disability-film-challenge/ #AudioDescription #Accessibility
SADC Added SADC Teams Up with Easterseal’s Disability Film Challenge to their portfolio, https://socialaudiodescription.com/2026/05/13/sadc-teams-up-with-easterseals-disability-film-challenge/ #AudioDescription #Accessibility
New episode of The Tony Gebhard Show! Is AI good or bad for blind creators? The answer isn’t black and white. @FreakyFwoof joins me to talk vibe coding, AI slop, ethics, prompting, and what happens if the tools get switched off. Neither of us can code, and both of us are shipping real software. This one’s for the believers and the skeptics.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3fdbieQPSJAYqwRF27qz0A
#Accessibility #Blind #AI #VibeCoding #NVDA #Podcast
Wrote to Ko-fi about many accessibility improvements they could make, like labeling buttons and edit fields so one can have an easier time donating to folks, and they replied with, Thank you! We are a very small team and don't have a lot of development resources but we care very deeply about the accessibility of our services. We have taken your feedback into consideration and it's on the roadmap. I've heard that kind of reply so many times I think it's a template at this point but if anyone else wants to, ahem, also say how important accessibility is, https://ko-fi.com/ #Accessibility #A11y
Edited 115d ago
Multiple links below.
I'm tired, and I don’t want to do free accessibility consulting for this website owner, so I'll outline only one way this won’t work for screen reader users out of many.
Aside from the fact an LLM made the website, and the font as well, the reason it doesn’t work for screen reader users because, even on that demo page, a timer has to be activated. A button must be pushed. A timer activates, and a screen reader user must find the fixed bit of text again. The website makes it sound as if it should be just automatically accessible/visible to the screen reader, and that fails.
Aside from the screen reader issues, that's not the only one, but I don’t want to do free accessibility consulting for this website, some of the other issues include but are not limited to…
It doesn’t prevent scraping.
It doesn’t prevent taking a snapshot and then doing OCR on that screenshot.
It breaks custom fonts anybody has disabled or enabled.
It breaks copy and paste.
It breaks for people without JavaScript enabled.
It breaks for anybody using a good ad blocker.
It prevents search from working on the website.
And many, many, more things that are in my replies.
If you want to learn about me and my screen reader, my FAQ page is below the website I'm talking about.
If you use this font to protect your text from AI, it also blocks *me, a human* because I use a screen reader. I did try the demo. If you want me to remove your RSS feed, this is the best font to prevent blind people from reading your blog/words. That timer is an inaccessible solution and that isn't it's only screen reader failure. https://shieldfont.org/#hero
My FAQ page https://sightlessscribbles.com/faq/
Edited 99d ago
Has anyone else noticed that as of the latest update, the Youtube app on iOS is seriously broken in terms of #Voiceover accessibility? You can't efficiently flick through the feed anymore. Each video has like 6 or 7 stops. Explore by touch is also broken. i've already reached out to Google Accessibility, and I recommend anyone else who is concerned do the same. #a11y #youtube #accessibility
It's finally here: Paperback 1.0! My fast, fully accessible ebook and document reader is now out on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with iOS following the second Apple decides to actually look at it. The changelog is once again way too big for any post, so here are the highlights:
New platform: Linux! As an AppImage or a tarball, with desktop integration so documents open straight from your file manager.
New formats:
- Comic book archives (.cbz).
- M4B and MP3 audiobooks, split into their chapters.
- Man pages, both man and BSD mdoc, gzipped or not.
- reStructuredText.
- Windows Write (.wri) files. Thanks, Mastodon.
- WinHelp (.hlp) files. Yes, really.
- Word 6 and Word 95 documents.
Big new stuff:
- OCR for scanned PDFs, using the engine built into Windows and macOS. Press Enter on a scanned page, or batch OCR a whole range of pages with Ctrl+Shift+O.
- MathML in EPUB and HTML is now rendered as AsciiMath via MathCAT. Jump between formulas with M and Shift+M, and open the original MathML in a formula view with enter or space.
- Find All, listing every matching line so you can jump right to the one you want.
- Tables, Lists, and Pages views in the elements dialog.
- Mark a spot with Alt+F9 and copy everything from there to where you are with Alt+F10, no more shift-arrowing through 40 pages.
- Audio book playback speed, from half speed to 3x.
- Any document can now be opened in the web view.
- Headings are drawn at a size matching their level.
- Relative Go To: +n and -n in Go to Line, Page, and Percent.
- Heading navigation from the table of contents for EPUB, MOBI, and CHM books with no headings of their own.
- A Ukrainian translation.
Plus a mountain of fixes, especially to PDF (I still hate PDF), MOBI/AZW3 books, which are now much faster and no longer cut off at 20 MB, FictionBook, and large books in general.
And of course, the mobile apps. They open every format the desktop does, with seamless read aloud using your choice of voice, background audio book playback, navigation by headings, pages, links, tables and more, a sleep timer, export, and keyboard shortcuts that match the desktop. They're $19.99, once, per platform, and buying them is what pays for the work on Paperback. The desktop versions stay free.
Desktop downloads: https://paperback.dev/downloads
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.paperback.android
Full changelog: https://paperback.dev/readme.html
Huge thanks to everyone who tested, filed bugs, translated, and put up with me during this development cycle. Enjoy! #Paperback #accessibility #blind
Edited 38d ago
MakerTube is now also providing English captions for all non-English videos. This is in addition to the already existing transcription of the video audio. The idea is to make it more inclusive and make the content available to a broader audience.
PeerSeek is now reflecting this and showing available subtitles in the search results.
https://peerseek.video/
Not all videos have picked this up yet. Old videos are currently backfilled with translations.
Edited 40d ago
Never thought I’d have this happen, but a sighted person texted me to ask,
Hey Robbie, I’d figured I’d ask you! I watch Netflix shows with audio description all the time when I'm running or driving but the video eats up my battery, so I want to have only audio. I tried to go to Audible to look for movies and TV shows with audio description but they don't have any. Can I buy some? I’d pay for this long before I pay Netflix for another year! If you know where I can buy movies and TV shows with audio description, let me know before next week because I have a long car trip.
I wish there was a way to have TIDAL not stream any songs that didn't have lyrics along with them.
No disrespect to artists, I want to hear your stuff! I'm just deaf and want to understand your songwriting too. #accessibility #music
I am seeking an e-mail client with the following features. I was happily using Thunderbird 78 and 102, but the former keeps quitting unexpectedly in Windows 10, 11, and even 7, where it never did before! 102 is tolerable, but anything after that is a mess.
1. Must work with NVDA screen reader. I've tried several supposedly simple programs, but they were all inaccessible.
2. Must have standard menus, accessible via the alt and arrow keys as well as hotkeys for sending, replying, forwarding, etc. I want something with a clean interface as well, not cluttered like Thunderbird 115 and later.
3. Must work with Windows 7. It is my preferred operating system and I will not waste time arguing about it.
4. Must be able to read and reply to messages without downloading them. Thunderbird has this feature. Essentially, the work is done on the server via the client.
5. Must be able to search the bodies of e-mails. For some reason, Thunderbird 115 and probably higher appears to lack this important feature.
6. Must work with GMail, preferably natively, but app passwords are also fine. This is the main reason I am even using a client. Yahoo has a wonderful Basic HTML version, but Gmail does not.
7. I don't need other features aside from the normal functions of an e-mail client i.e. send, receive, allow for multiple accounts with separate inboxes, spell-checking (optional), signature (optional), and sound alerts (optional but preferred). I don't use other services that I need to connect with my e-mail client i.e. cloud, calendar, contacts, meeting platforms, etc. I also neither need nor want ai features in such a program.
#accessibility #blind #email #e-mail #GMail #NVDA #programming #technology #Windows7
Accessible Android Emulator 0.5.0 is out.
New speech bridge: the device's screen reader output goes to the host's text-to-speech. VoiceOver's voice and rate on the Mac, NVDA or SAPI on Windows, or the phone's text-to-speech in AAE Remote.
Also new: microphone input, Display and Language, network and battery conditions, fingerprint, GPX routes, screen recording, hardware settings, and device export and import.
https://github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-emulator/releases/tag/v0.5.0
I needed a timer installed to control my resistive electric hot water system. Standard switchboard timers aren't accessible to me, and even though it's very unlikely that I'll ever reconfigure the timer or need to boost the hot water system outside the time window, I figured I may as well spend a few dollars more and have them install a Shelly Pro2. I got it all set up, only to discover that the one control in the web interface that wasn't accessible was... the on/off button for the power output! Whatever, I can hack around that with Greasemonkey or use the open, documented API. But oh look, the firmware is outdated; I should probably update it. And lo and behold, the button is now properly accessible! It's a tiny thing, but sometimes, it feels nice to be able to celebrate #accessibility successes instead of failures. So thanks Shelly.
Windows testers wanted: an early alpha of AAE, the Accessible Android Emulator, is ready to try on Windows.
AAE lets blind people create, run and test Android virtual devices without sighted help. Every device has a screen reader from its first boot, takes your keyboard, and plays its audio through your computer.
This is a very early build. It hasn't been run by anyone but me yet, things will break, and parts of the Mac app are still missing.
What's there:
- Setting up Google's emulator and tools for you, no Android Studio needed
- Creating, starting, stopping, copying and wiping devices, with Backtalk or your own screen reader
- Device mode: your whole keyboard goes to Android, Alt Tab and the Windows key included, while NVDA and JAWS keep their own keys. Control Windows Escape brings it back
- Gesture mode: screen reader gestures from the keyboard
- Installing apps, the clipboard both ways, screenshots, the device's volume
- AAE's messages spoken through NVDA, JAWS or Narrator
- Updates itself, so you'll be offered the next stable release
Not there yet: the accessibility inspector, speech log, device log, shell, apps and accessibility services windows, snapshots, battery and location. The aae command line, installed alongside the app, does all of these meanwhile. Open a command prompt in AAE's folder and run aae help.
You need Windows 10 or 11 on an Intel or AMD processor (not ARM), with Windows Hypervisor Platform turned on in Windows features. AAE isn't signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you: choose More info, then Run anyway.
Download the installer:
https://github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-emulator/releases/download/dev/AAE-dev-windows-x64-setup.exe
Release notes and the Mac build:
https://github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-emulator/releases/tag/dev
If something goes wrong, Help, Save Diagnostic Report makes a text file you can read before sending. Tell me which screen reader you use, and whether AAE's messages were spoken. Replies here or GitHub issues are both fine.
#Android #Accessibility #A11y #ScreenReader #NVDA #JAWS #Blind #Windows
Seeing others outside the Disability and #Accessibility spaces share this, where this Tech Bro here realizes that if you have an accessible website, their toys can read it better. However, this is not a justification for you to make your site *less* accessible. Honestly? Theives are gonna snatch your work no matter what you do, so might as well make it easier for humans to read. The bubble will pop and they will all go to virtual augmented quantom computing or something. The point is, to form community now and leave them to have nothing after the bubble pops. https://michaelandersentech.substack.com/p/why-i-now-see-accessibility-as-a
Edited 2d ago