blind

What VoiceOver setting changes the, slide to type, feedback, using Apple's keyboard? I changed some settings in iOS 26 to quiet some of the sounds but now I can't remember what I changed to where VoiceOver would stop announcing suggestions, or autocomplete stuff... #Apple #IOS #Blind #Blindness

Reposting this since the groups went down, some Of this is available in #Braille, or in audio, on #BookShare and/ #NLSBard

https://www.goodreads.com/dhamlinmusic

@bookstodon @main @mastoblind #Blind #Reading #VisuallyImpaired

YachtSinkers!, our accessible game about orcas sinking billionaire yachts, is done!

https://peterdrake.itch.io/yachtsinkers

#GameDev #orca #accessibility #a11y #blind #deaf #BlindGamer

Reading by Touch: Scotland’s early tactile reading systems

What came before braille? Scotland played a key role in the early history of reading by touch, opening new possibilities for blind readers in the 19th century. Taylor Hare explores embossed pages, knotted strings & radical alphabets

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/printing-and-publishing/reading-by-touch/

#Scottish #literature #Scotland #BookHistory #blind #19thcentury #braille #printhistory #printing #bookmaking

My GitHub Sponsors profile is finally live! 🎉

I'm Demir, a blind developer from Serbia and a JAWS user for 20 years. I'm building the Ultra Creative Suite: open-source video, audio and photo tools designed to work equally well for blind and sighted users.

Support starts at $3/month: https://github.com/sponsors/demirajvazi10-max

Boosts help just as much! #Accessibility #A11y #Blind #ScreenReader #OpenSource

(Drafted with AI assistance)

I built ClearWave Cast Player — a screen reader–first iOS app. Import podcasts via OPML, stream global radio, play offline MP3s. No subscriptions, no ads. Built by a blind dev, for accessible audio. Try it: https://testflight.apple.com/join/RVpsHcMf
#blind #accessibility #a11y #podcast

I'm looking for recommendations for someone who is #blind (0% vision) and doesn't have a computer (so, using their phone - specifically, an iPhone).

They're looking for a way to publish texts or blog posts. They tried and were very disappointed by substack and tumblr.

And also potentially a Mastodon client.

Is there anything I should or even could recommend them?

RT appreciated!

#accessibility #a11y

Edited to add that they were using an iPhone, since I realized after the fact that this mattered a lot.

PSA to other blind people, rating a Deaf Uber driver 1 star with a safety violation because of a disability clash and because you are totally blind is a very ableist thing to do.

There's texting. There are ASL classes for the blind. I took one years ago at the school for the Deaf and the Blind I attended. I have Deaf friends teach me ASL via touch.

I know ASL is a visual language, but let's not be ableist because we are blind ourselves.

#Ableism #Blind #Blindness

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

Not by me. Meta’s Muse – early impressions from a blindness perspective https://blog.blackspheretech.com/?p=544 #AI #Blind #Blindness

I am forced to use cloud based LLMs through the screen reader vibe coded/agentic coded apps made by blind people because developers have failed me ever since I've been alive—but I don't know why other blind people don't understand that every single time I criticize tech or even the LLM companies directly, I'm not criticizing you for using the LLM willingly. These companies will never know you defend them. These companies don't need you on their defense team. They have venture capital. You do not. The fact I use tools and tech made by blind folks using cloud based LLMs also isn't the gotcha you believe it is. at least I'm willing to acknowledge my imperfections and the fact I live under and inside techno fascism. The religious framing is boring too. It's like someone that keeps doing the same combos in a fighting game. I know what's going to come next. None of that diminishes my critiques of the companies and the LLM makers. Now you know I use your vibe coded/agentic coded software and still hate the LLM companies, how does that sit with your brain? To make the hypocrisy easy for you, here's all the tools I use. https://sightlessscribbles.com/tools/ #AI #NoAI #Blind #Blindness

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

Fucking great. Sigh. For me, Seeing AI by Microsoft is now describing images that I know are human photographed to be AI generated. I wish there AI describing feature acted more like Ira and just describes the picture not tries to interpret if a thing is AI generated or not. #blindness #Blind #AI

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

Can't wait to stream this audio game! https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/JB0500-PPSA37687_00-0612048008794233 #Blind #Gaming #Games

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.

#Accessibility #Blind #film #TV

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

#Android #Accessibility #A11y #ScreenReader #Blind

SARCASM. I absolutely love iOS 27 as a blind VoiceOver user. I get fantastic announcements such as. Unspeakable English text. Unspeakable French text. Unrecognizable Chinese symbol. Unrecognizable Japanese symbol. That annoying voiceover image inspector also hasn't been removed and is constantly in the way when I'm trying to perform an action rather than get details of a described image. You can see this most clearly in the Apple podcast app. Go to an episode and swipe through the rotor actions. That incredibly annoying inspect image action get in the way of performing an action on the episode. I checked in the actions settings in the VoiceOver settings and this cannot be removed to the best of my knowledge. If you know how to remove these annoying attempts at interpretation, let me know how to remove them. #Apple #Disability #Blind

Gosh I can't wait to watch this, and it has a disabled cast! https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/being-heumann/umc.cmc.5gf63v7zj97yiozkpj26lpy55 #Disability #Deaf #Blind

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

Are we becoming too reliant on #AI? Are we using it to allow ourselves to be lazy? I certainly feel that way. I’ve not touched an email client or the settings of my computer in months, having Claude do it all for me. Is that a good thing? By using this enabling technology are we actually losing our core technology skills? Discuss!

#blind #AssistiveTechnology

From Mobile accessible games Facebook group
🎮❤️ I’VE FOUND A GAME THAT I CAN’T SEEM TO PUT DOWN! Common Ground: Audio City has genuinely become one of my favorite gaming experiences. I’m talking about real-life hours invested. I’ll get on at 9 AM and sometimes still be playing at 1 AM the following morning! I’ve met other players, made connections, and even gotten to know the owner and developer personally, KYLAN DELOS ALLINGTON. I’m happy to say we’ve become pretty cool, and I’m grateful to call him a new friend. But here’s what makes this project so special: Kylan is completely blind himself. He’s building an open-world multiplayer experience where blind and sighted players can enjoy the same virtual world together. Something I honestly never thought I’d experience. And what I appreciate most about Kylan is that HE LISTENS. He takes our suggestions seriously, considers our feedback, and actually works on implementing changes based on what the community wants and needs. That means more than I can explain. I also want everyone to understand that Common Ground is CURRENTLY IN BETA AND STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT. It’s not a finished game. There are improvements to come, features to develop, and plenty of room for this project to grow. That’s why community feedback and patience are so important. Now, I hope Kylan doesn’t get mad at me for sharing a couple of things, but the public chat has been replaced with nearby chat, meaning you have to be close to another player to communicate. AND YOU CAN ACTUALLY CALL OTHER PLAYERS USING YOUR IN-GAME PHONE! 😂 I’m keeping the rest of the surprises to myself. You’ll have to discover them! Kylan, seriously, thank you for building something like this, listening to us, implementing our feedback, and giving blind gamers an experience many of us never imagined we’d have. I appreciate your friendship, your dedication, and everything you’re working toward. Keep going, brother! I genuinely believe Common Ground has the potential to become something HUGE for accessible gaming. LET’S GET MORE PEOPLE IN THIS CITY! 🔥 🎮 COMMON GROUND: AUDIO CITY JOIN THE BETA: https://testflight.apple.com/join/jxdBsRC6 #CommonGround #AudioCity #BlindGaming #AccessibleGaming #Blind #Accessibility

For the evening/afternoon crowd, The Hostage Negotiation of the Front-Facing Camera, Sightless Scribbles https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-hostage-negotiation-of-the-front-facing-camera/ #Zoom #Phone #Blind #Blindness #Disability