So I'm trying out some Rayband glasses, and I have some questions about the AI for any blind people that use it:

\* Is it best to just say "look and describe" or ask for specific questions? I tried asking about lighting in a room "look and tell me if the lights are on" but it said no when the switch was flipped both ways. Could be AI issues, could be that the controllable light was set too dimly. \* What have y'all found them useful for as far as describing? \* Any specific way to prompt it that you use, like "look and describe" or "look and describe in detail" that you use?

\#RayBand #accessibility #blind @main

Shout out today to one of our illustrious moderators @rumster - who recently acquired NVDA Expert Certification!

I must admit I am not sure of all the other mods so apologies if I've missed anyone else out there :)

NVDA Expert Certification is an online exam you can sit, which tests your knowledge of the NVDA screen reader. The exam is free for anyone to sit, with a cost if you wish to purchase the certification - purchasing gets you a certificate you can print, a badge you can put on your email or other online presence, and a warm, fuzzy feeling from helping us continue to provide NVDA for free to anyone, anywhere in the world!

If interested, find out more at: https://certification.nvaccess.org - and in any case, know that we have a wonderful, knowledgeable and supportive community here, so thank you!

Hello,

I'm trying to help my Dad talk to his brother (my Uncle).

Can you recommend a voice calling app that:

• works on Android and iPhone
• supports Siri "Call [contact] using [voice calling app name]"
• supports VoiceOver two finger double tap Magic tap to answer or end a call
• does not require an actual phone number
• bonus points if it supports video

Long winded background follows...

Uncle lives in UK and can see just fine, but does not like Apple or Facebook so he's got an Android phone. Dad is in Canada and has an iPhone. He's pretty good with Siri and making good progress with VoiceOver. He does not have a phone plan so no phone number.

If my Mum is around my Uncle sets up Zoom calls and they can talk. If my Mum is not around Dad can call Uncle's regular phone number using a VOIP client "Hey Siri, call Uncle using GroundWire." However for some bizarre reason the UK reverted to 1990's phone rates after Brexit so these Canada-UK calls cost $0.4361/min vs the Can-US VOIP rates of 0.01/min. $25/hr feels egregious, although it does work very well.

I thought Signal was the answer, but Dad won't be able to register since he doesn't have a phone number and even then Signal doesn't support Siri.

I looked at Discord but it seemed pretty cluttered and complicated.

Join the Brailliance native app beta!

iOS TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/PSwzeHVM

Android Beta: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.exceptionullgames.brailliance

We are testing app versions of Brailliance, our new game where you count braille dots to guess the word. This version incorporates a ton of your feedback from the web version of the game, all while benefiting from the advantages of being a native app.

To download the beta on iOS TestFlight, download Apple's TestFlight app on the App Store. Once you do, you can follow the link above and TestFlight will allow you to register for early access. Once you do, you can find a download button for Brailliance directly within the TestFlight app.

To download the beta on Android, so long as you have Google Play, follow the link above and tap "Become a Tester." After a moment, you'll see a link to access Brailliance on the Google Play store.

We're particularly interested in the impressions of VoiceOver and TalkBack users on phones and tablets. Brailliance supports a lot of ways to play, from standard web-style navigation to Perkins input via braille displays and the on-screen braille keyboard. The game also supports keyboards on most devices.

HOW TO PLAY:

Type a word to make a guess. The correct word will contain the number of braille dots shown.

As you make guesses, you will be told which letters are in the word and which letters are not. These "green" letters can be anywhere in the word.

Try to guess the word in as few guesses as possible. However, you get unlimited guesses. Also, you can guess any word up to the correct number of dots, but not over it.

Use your math skills to figure out which letters are likely to be in the answer. For instance, if you know all of the correct letters except one, and that you need three more dots to complete the word, that last letter must be a three-dot braille letter.

Which Linux distributions are most accessible? I researched the accessibility of Linux distributions before choosing Ubuntu. My sources included 8 accessible Linux distributions by Opensource.com and 5 Linux distros for visually impaired people by It's FOSS.

I opted for Ubuntu as a solid base distribution with the Gnome desktop environment. I now question this choice, because "Ubuntu Software" does not distinguish which application packages are apt, snap, or flatpak. How do other distributions compare for accessibility?

Some of you might be interested in this Mastodon thread. It’s a bit of bashing PDFs for having poor accessibility, and some guidance on improving PDFs for accessibility.

Some people are saying they prefer MS Word over PDF for accessibility reasons. Of course the elephant in the room is that “accessibility” is an over-loaded word. It usually refers to usability by impaired people, but in the case of being generally usable to all people on a broad range of platforms, MS Word is obviously inaccessible due to being encumbered by proprietary tech by a protectionist corporation.

Good evening, #JAWS users. Have a question. How does one configure #Windows11 such that the list of system tray icons is always fully expanded? Thanks in advance for any help. @freedomscientific #JAWSForWindows #JAWS2024 #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #LowVision #BlindMasto #BlindMastodon #BlindFedi @mastoblind @main

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

I'm an indie web developer that's finishing up an app I've been building over the past three years, a platform to advocate for Medicare For All. One of my top priorities is ensuring the app is accessible to everyone. It gets a perfect score on Google Lighthouse for Accessibility, but accessibility isn't just a checkbox for me; it's a practical representation of my commitment and I want to make sure there are no obstacles to use for the disabled.

I'd love to get feedback on the overall user experience from those who use screen readers or related technology. I do have one known issue to start with. There's a keyboard navigation problem on a particular element that I'm already working on. But in general I took great care building the app at every interactive or visual element with accessibility in mind, and even in choosing my development stack. If you encounter any challenges or have suggestions to make powerback better for the blind community, please let me know.

Thank you for your time and support, Jonathan

[VOICE TO TEXT]: How do you deal with loneliness as a deafblind person? I think this is the biggest problem with deafblindness, this disability is very lonely. You start appreciating every touch because you know that there won't be as many as you need to, to not feel lonely and that touch is the only thing that connects you with people. I live independently in an apartment that is fully adapted to me. I have my sister who lives nearby and comes to visit me every day and I can call her when I need and my friend comes every week. I also have an assistant who comes every two or three days when I need to go do something, like go to the store, bank or gym or just to help me in the apartment, but at the end of the day most of the time there is some loneliness. I somehow learned to live with it, accept it and I try to fill it with different hobbies, but how do you deal with it? [STOP]

A public library’s website has iconified buttons instead of textual buttons; I assume to make it easy for those who don’t speak the local language.

The code snip looks like this:

```

<div>Wifi</div>

<div><p></p> </div> ```

Will that cause problems for blind people considering alt=""?

I don’t have a screen reader or whatever tools blind people use, so I’m somewhat blind in being able to know if the website is reasonably accessible. Lynx shows the button descriptions just fine, so I think if a blind user ran #Lynx with a screen reader the UX would work. But what if a GUI browser is used in order to run JavaScript? I loaded the site in a GUI browser with image loading disabled and the text description (“WiFi” in this case) does not appear unless I hover the mouse over the substitute icon for the missing icon. So the question is: do a screen readers handle that okay?

EDIT: Shit, my HTML code was gutted by #Lemmy even though it was a code block thus making the above code useless (calling that a #LemmyBug). Perhaps it’s not important for answering my question. (bug reported)

hello friends of rblind. I am a sighted person who follows the kbin-core repo. I saw an issue #1143 opened recently regarding the use of alt in markdown. I am having a hard time discerning whether it is a productive request or not.

I understand that rblind is not a free-of-charge accessibility consultation company. But I thought I would point out this issue in case anyone had an interest in contributing to the discussion.

If I am posting in error, please either remove it or notify me so I can remove or edit the post.

Here is the text of the issue:

> > > See this post > > > > Current widespread wisdom is that you should specify alt text with the format ![alt text](url) but this ISN'T behaving as alt text. It's behaving as a label. It needs to be set to the alt text attribute on the image. > > > > True alt text doesn't need to be rendered out. It's a nice feature that apps like pixelfed give you a button to see the alt text, because it can give extra context, but this is a secondary feature. This would be great to add as well, but it's out of scope here. > > > > Labels are meant for things like crediting the photographer. See any well written news articles for examples of this. This one has an image of some sharks as a header. You'll see underneath that it has an explanation and credits NIWA for the image. > > > > There IS a way to specify labels in markdown, and leave the alt text in tact. The correct format is ![alt text](link "label goes here") but this isn't currently recognised by kbin and the label gets completely stripped out. (link) > > > > You can verify this by using something like this plugin. > > > > Notice how all the post images are marked as "Missing alt attribute" > > > > Notice how things like the magazine icon don't render out their alt text "ArtemisAppPlayground Icon" > > > > Further, see codberg's handling of images: > > > > alt text > > > > ![alt text](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/SMPTE_Color_Bars.svg/320px-SMPTE_Color_Bars.svg.png "Label text here") > > > > results in the following html: > <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/SMPTE_Color_Bars.svg/320px-SMPTE_Color_Bars.svg.png" alt="alt text" title="Label text here"> > > > > (codeberg displays labels as tooltips) > > > > I honestly think it's fine to keep using the first [part] as labels, mostly because this syntax is already widely in use, but I think the second (link "this bit") should be set to the image's alt text attribute. > >

An interesting new feature that I've only just noticed has been added to @MonaApp:

Adding an image from your Photos library to which you have already added a Caption (in Photos) automatically adds that caption as your image description/alt-text in Mona.

The video shows this in action (nb the centre bit where I locate the photo has been edited to remove personal content).

\#Mona #MonaApp #Accessibilty #ImageDescription #AltText #iOS #macOS @main

! Today, I took the self-test after finding it on my friend's profile. When I completed the test, I received a score of 65%, which I understand is a high score that indicates I might be suffering from the disorder. Yes, I am addicted to daydreaming and I spend a lot of time doing it, especially when I watch movies or listen to music. During conversations with my friends, I am present physically, but I struggle to pay attention to what they are talking about. Whenever my friends interrupt me, I feel sad and guilty. The self-test indicates that maladaptive daydreaming is not categorized as a separate disorder. However, if it's significantly impacting my social life, what steps should i take?

Wordvoyance is finally released worldwide and supports VoiceOver and TalkBack on mobile. It's the world's first scrabble app that blind and sighted people can play together. No ads, and includes single player and multiplayer game modes.

Download for iOS

Download for Android

It's been an honor, and a fun one, to serve this community. Please enjoy!

Hi, folks:

The data center where the server for rblind.com lives has informed me that they're planning some downtime in order to improve the network infrastructure. The downtime is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 11, between 9 AM and 3 PM eastern, and is expected to last a maximum of two hours. During that time, rblind.com may be unavailable. However, our sister website will remain up, containing information about our Discord, our Reddit, and this Lemmy. Should something go wrong, and the downtime last longer than expected, we will post updates and announcements there.

So playing visual novels written in Ren'Py has become my latest momentary obsession. I figured I'd create a thread to post my thoughts on the few I've played, and see if anyone else has played any good ones. If you have, let me know in the comments! I really want to hear what everyone is enjoying.

How to Play

In theory, you can just press "v" in any Ren'Py visual novel that supports self voicing. However, at least on Windows with NVDA, this isn't the best way. It will use whatever SAPI voice you have set as default in the control panel, and that's probably not what you want. First off, it makes it difficult to focus on the game, because frequently Ren'Py is talking, and your screen reader is also talking at the same time, and the game is playing background music, and some games are parcially voice-acted, and it's just a lot. Secondly, it makes it difficult to review text in detail, for example if you want to know how an unfamiliar character name is spelled, when you want to write about them later. Lastly, Ren'Py won't send text to your Braille display, if you have one.

Thankfully, there's a better way! Instead of speaking itself, you can convince Ren'Py to send all text to the clipboard instead. The best way to set yourself up with NVDA, IMHO, is:

1. Download and install the autoclip addon for NVDA.
2. Start the Ren'Py game you want to play.
3. Press "a".
4. Press "NVDA+R" to OCR the screen.
5. Find the spot where it says "clipboard", and move the mouse there (NVDA+numpad divide), and click on it (numpad divide).
6. Press control+shift+nvda+k. This will cause autoclip to read the text on your clipboard whenever it changes.
7. You should now be able to move through the menus with the arrow keys and make choices with enter, while NVDA reads out everything with your preferred screen reader voice and settings. You'll need to find "return" to get back to the main menu. Now, even if you quit and relaunch the game, the clipboard setting will be saved in that game. If you want to review something more closely (to check spelling for example), the last text you heard will always be on your clipboard. You can just open notepad and paste it in.
8. When you stop playing, you'll want to press control+shift+NVDA+k again to turn off clipboard reading. If you forget, next time you copy something to the clipboard for any reason, NVDA will start reading it.
9. Bonus: if you want to play a game that isn't written in English, you can use the NVDA Translate addon to translate any text NVDA speaks. Install it, and press control+shift+NVDA+t to toggle it on and off.

If you launch a game that you're sure is written in Ren'Py but pressing either a or v don't seem to do anything, it could be that the game was written in an older version of Ren'Py, that didn't offer the self-voicing feature. However, you can take the files from that game, and play it in the newest Ren'Py version, and it will frequently work. There is a video on getting the files from Ren'Py games and loading them into the latest Ren'Py version by @[email protected]; she's specifically talking about playing games built for IOS or Android on a computer, but the process is the same. I know, I know, YouTube tutorials. But she describes what she's doing, and there's no annoying background music.

Games I've Tried

Some of the below contain slight spoilers.

Arcade Spirits

Arcade Spirits is an excellent starting point. Self-voicing is officially supported, pictures and animations generally include descriptive text, and the story is sweet and well written. Even if the subject matter puts you off, give this one a chance; I don't have a lot of familiarity with Arcades going in, but I didn't need any. The game manages to embrace all of your choices, and wrap itself around your playstyle in a way that feels seamless, while not railroading you through the plot. Arcade Spirits likes you and wants you to have a good time, rather than the more adversarial relationship that most computer games have with players. If you've never played a visual novel, this is the one to start with. There are multiple endings, and none of the ones I've managed feel better or worse than any of the others; it's entirely down to personal preference.

Catacomb Prince

Catacomb Prince, on the other hand, isn't quite that style. There are multiple "bad" and/or less than ideal endings, and the game will kill you off quite quickly for making certain choices. I actually struggled to get an ending that I consider "good", but that says more about my lack of judgement than it says about the game itself. But even the "bad" endings are logical, well-written, and interesting. The game is also short (comparatively), so replaying it a few times doesn't feel like a burden, and the game concept never overstays its welcome.

However, while self-voicing is available by default, there are a few accessibility issues you need to be aware of. First off, the main menu doesn't respond to the keyboard. You'll need to OCR the screen and click start that way. Once you've done that, though, everything mostly works as normal, with one exception. Sometimes, when transitioning between scenes (Acts? Chapters? Not sure the official term people use) you'll get a menu with no choices for you to make. You'll just have the standard options, save, load, quit, etc. I suspect this is some kind of full-screen image or picture. If you use numpad divide to make NVDA simulate a mouse click anywhere on the screen, the game will continue as normal, and you won't have missed anything.

Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered

Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered is a game I should probably love. It's a disability centred high school romance game, with excellent portrayals of characters with multiple differing disabilities, and the process of getting to grips with your identity as a person with a disability. And yet...and yet...It didn't work for me. Maybe because I play games as an escape; I know about disability, and I'm just not that interested in exploring it in the visual novel format. Maybe because I didn't particularly like the main character; I was born with my blindness, so I don't have a lot of patients with people grieving their disability diagnosis, though I recognize that's a personal character flaw. Maybe because I didn't really like any of the love interests, and just following my natural inclinations lead to me dying alone, and I wasn't as unhappy with that ending as the game obviously wanted me to be. But these are the reasons I didn't like the game, not reasons it was a bad game. If none of these put you off (or maybe even if they do) give it a chance. You'll find no accessibility issues, thoughtful characterization of disabled students, and disabled romance, something that's all too rare.

Doki Doki Literature Club

Self-voicing is not included in this one by default, and in my personal opinion, it's not worth the trouble of getting it working. If you want to, maybe because this game is so famous you've heard about it and want to know what it is, the best thing to do is to use Doki Doki Mod Docker. Follow the installation instructions, but don't add any mods. Once you launch the game and click I agree using OCR, the self-voicing settings will work.

But everything about this game rubbed me the wrong way. Note that everything to follow could be considered a complete spoiler, even though I'm trying to avoid it. The game makes some pretty strong assumptions about who the player is (a straight dude who wants to date Japanese high school girls). Normally, that would be fine. But this game breaks the fourth wall, making the player "me". As "I" am a middle aged dude, I don't like it. I'm fine with putting myself into the shoes of a player character, but it's less fine when the game then tries to tell me that me and the player character are the same person. Second, the plot seems to be a complete railroad. No matter what you do, horrible things are going to happen. The problem is, the reason they happen is poorly explained and uninteresting. Without spoiling too much, this game explores obsession, computer games, and psychopathy, in ways that are pretty incoherent, and don't help anyone draw any knew conclusions. It feels like miserable horror, for the sake of miserable horror. Maybe if I knew more about how the love interest that's forced on the player became who she is, how she found out what she knows, or how that knowledge lead her to the conclusions she draws, it would be a more interesting game. But we're not given that. The game just wants us to be impressed by how weird and interesting it is, when it does nothing to earn that depth. I'm glad this was the second visual novel I tried, after a wonderful experience with Arcade Spirits. If it was my first, I might well have given up on the format entirely.

As the r/Blind mod team announced on July 1st 2023, Reddit has made it impossible for blind people to moderate on mobile. We're bringing you this post to update the community on the developments since that time.

Reddit's Apps Are Now Less Accessible

As a point of order, r/Blind mods will not be exhaustively auditing Reddit apps or providing Reddit Inc. with unpaid accessibility testing services. We have and will continue to report bugs whenever appropriate, as would be expected from most users. That being said, the updates to Reddit's Android and iOS apps announced in June have significantly degraded the user and moderation experience. There are mounting issues regarding stability and functionality affecting disabled users and the broader Reddit community.

In the specific context of screen reader accessibility, the current app versions have regressed in:

• Control labelling
• Focus order
• Focus control
• Feature discoverability
• Stability
• Efficiency

This situation further cements the mod team's perception that Reddit Inc. is ill-equipped to provide an accessible experience, compatible with the expectations set by the broader social media landscape - at least when Twitter had an accessibility team.

Accessibility Feedback Sessions

On July 19th, Reddit announced "more ways to connect live with" them, including an Accessibility Feedback Group. Several r/Blind mods have filled out the feedback group form and have yer to be contacted, in fact, u/MostlyBlindGamer expressed concern that more direct feedback options were not available.

So How Do We Report Bugs?

Reddit admins have been aware that the Reddit bug report page crashes when using assistive technology, since June 25th 2023. The recommended mitigation has been to mod mail r/ModSupport. In this process, an r/Blind mod has been asked to submit screen recordings through mod mail, which does not support attachments, notwithstanding the futility of this request, since Talkback audio isn't recorded when screen recording on Android. This further shows that Reddit Inc. is not equipped to triage accessibility bugs.

Since then, the user experience has degraded to the point of making communication over mod mail ineffective. On July 19th, u/MostlyBlindGamer explicitly told Reddit admins blind moderators were effectively unable to use mod mail and reiterated the request for contact for email.

Today, twenty-nine days after being made aware of the issues when reporting bugs, as per our continuous request via DM and the latest r/Blind announcement, the [email protected] email address has now been made available, hopefully making it easier to raise these issues. As of this writing, Reddit has not replied to a message sent to this address by a moderator.

A Note On r/blindsurveys

We do what we do, despite adversity, to support our community. A part of that is making r/Blind a place for and by blind and visually impaired people, while still enabling research and awareness from the sighted and academic communities. That has been accomplished by hosting r/blindsurveys. Much to our disappointment, all of our efforts to provide proper moderation and safety for this subreddit have been hamstrung by Reddit's increasing accessibility failures.

We have made the subreddit private, not as a form of protest, but as mere self-preservation. While we acknowledge and appreciate the support of our sighted moderators, r/blindsurveys is not essential to our community and their efforts serve r/blind best. Its loss will be subtle, quiet and perhaps forgotten, but its impact may be greater than some assume.

Effective today, easily searched questions and surveys directed at blind and visually impaired people, are not allowed on this platform.

OK, Is There Any Good News?

Yes! A few buttons are now labeled - hooray! Not enough to make the apps useable, but we like to acknowledge progress.

r/place is not blind, low-vision or even keyboard accessible, however the broader Reddit community is supporting r/Blind in keeping our Snoo on r/place. Because we care about accessibility, we shared that news on an alternative platform that supports alt text for images in posts and comments.

In fact, r/save3rdpartyapps and r/ModCoord have been supporting this community since the start. The r/Blind team would like to thank all of the Redditors who through great deeds or kind words have made us feel seen, heard and welcome.

As u/spez said

> "(...) there is no excuse."

!pixelated r/blind Snoo and text with Reddit app logos below it and parts of fuck spez above it, p.d in a corner

Looks like @[email protected], formerly a transcriber for r/TranscribersOfReddit, is occasionally doing freelance transcriptions on Lemmy in their spare time. This post directly hyperlinks the Lemmy community that Murdo looks to be using to aggregate all their transcriptions via comment permalinks.

Here is a relative macro link: [email protected] . Although I don't think it'll show any posts for RBlind users until someone from this instance first subscribes to Murdo's lemmy.world community, in order for ActivityPup to forward on new posts and comments.

---

Alternatively, folks could also follow Murdo's user comments via mastodon for push notifications, e.g:

• https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/with_replies

To view the context (from mastodon) of the lemmy post that a transcription comments on, you can navigate to the More menu (or dot-dot-dot icon) on the toot view of the lemmy comment, then click Expand this post to view the context as more toots, or Open original page to navigate directly to the lemmy instance hosting the post.