CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@pitermach @Bri @seedy60 @pixelate I think Fedora has a blind maintainer somewhere in the mix, and Elementary doesn't but has some good people who genuinely want to hear feedback

@pitermach @Bri @seedy60 @pixelate Lol that "button button" page was also the accessibility options page, which made it even more amusingly terrible that was the ubuntu installer at the time though, i've seen ones that are better

Oh hey, I was in a podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsST89meulk

Fun #language deep dive.

The Dutch word "aardig" conventionally means "friendly" or "kind". However, if we look at this through cognates, it could be translated as "earthy".
Aard-, that first syllable, can mean earth, but also one's nature, and in some words, one's orientation, which synonymizes with being grounded, as in an electrical system.
Aard can also mean "descent", which is where we get even deeper into the weeds. For one, this is likely where our friend "aardig" came from; aardig = of high/noble descent became friendly/kind.
In the word "eigenaardig", which now means "odd" or "strange", we see influences of this meaning as well, meaning as much as "having a character of one's own", which is amusing if we compare it to similar words in other languages, most notably "idiot" which comes from ancient Greek "idiotes", which means "private person".

Moral of the story: Being your own person and going against what is expected of you has been made to feel bad. Do it anyway!

It's such an interesting phenomenon to me to see learners, of any discipline, gatekeep that knowledge, or diminish somebody else's pursuits in acquiring said knowledge if they somehow didn't put in the same amount of effort/money/pain and suffering.

There's this course called Piano in 21 days that promises learners to get them playing, teach them some cords and focus on practical over theory, and if you do a bit of googling you find so many snooty "proper(tm)" piano players that deride people spending their time and money on this even though they clearly state it helped them reach their goals of just playing some piano and singing along.
The course never promises to turn you into a Bach player, and yet, that's what these people compare it to only to tear it down based on that criterion. 1/2

@NatalyaD Again, 100% agree. If AI is being used for something, it should always be clearly marked, and if other people or other people's work are being acted on by AI (yes, I realize the slippery slope in that phrasing) should always be consentual if possible,

@NatalyaD 100% agree. There is unfortunately always people who stop at their own convenience and forget there's other people in the world, which could almost be called ironic given that's exactly why accessibility issues tend to crop up to begin with

@skyfaller I wouldn't say so, but I think for a lot of people this becomes exceedingly gnarly. Ethics, particularly ethics that don't touch the person in question, are often dismissed in the moment. This is definitely not a good thing, and is actually at the foundation of why so many accessibility issues exist and persist, but I think being in that position makes it extraordinarily difficult to see it from that position.
For the average person, they've been wronged, they can set it straight, and are told off for doing so. I don't really think there is a right position in this situation; many would rather not kill the planet over an accessibility barrier but then, they're really being made to feel like they don't exactly have another choice. I'll freely admit I use AI when I'm left with no other option simply because, well ... I have no other option, and that's not a standpoint to be proud of, more a really sad state of affairs

@skyfaller Essentially, from that viewpoint, the fact you have the choice to not use XYZ is a privilege the person you're debating against does not have, which transcends LLM use and goes into things like boycotting stores, switching away from big tech, and all sorts of other adjacent topics

@skyfaller ok, but do you at least see how ridiculously unfair that is for the common layperson?
For years, decades maybe even, a system has been denied to you. You may even have been fired because of it. Now, there's this unethical system you can use to make the system work for you. Getting this to work might mean you're able to stop being unemployed, it gives you back the independence you feel you were robbed from by people not caring about your situation, it empowers you to give a cheery "alright then here you go" when you, a non-coder, are told to contribute code to said system because nobody else can be fucked to do so. And then, when you finally do, you get told that "nope, sorry, only valid when you yourself wrote it by hand".

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm embodying a standpoint that many in the communities I have access to are currently living. From this angle, you could argue that calling LLMs unethical is incredibly ableist

@skyfaller I don't necessarily agree. This seems to be more insidious. e.g., not writing alt texts because it trains LLMs, not allowing accessibility contributions, no matter the quality, in open-source codebases because an LLM touched them which is particularly funny because a lot of people ASKING for accessibility generally get sent off with a "just send a PR lol" more often than not. There's quite a number of moving parts here

@dhamlinmusic at least 20

Using any kind of #AI is unethical. Denying huge groups of people the use of applications, operating systems, websites, physical venues and events is, however, perfectly fine, because #accessibility is hard, doesn't make money, or doesn't feel fun/sexy/productive.. Having those people, sick of said being excluded, figure out AI workarounds because humans have failed them for decades is, again, unethical and how dare they for considering such a thing.

I'll see myself out

@guilevi @menelion Here's a take: Precisely because open-source is open-source, using LLMs we now have the tools to actually make these work for us given we have the code. I started a Patreon for essentially half this reason; Opendeck was the first win there but I have many plans: Seqlog, ANki, Plane, Obsidian (althoughthat one is closed source)...
fixes might not land in main because maintainers don't want them to, but at least an accessible version will exist at that point

During this year's "Games for blind gamers" jam on #itchIO, a #game was submitted that tried to accurately portray a #blind protagonist. This game was developed by a developer who is not blind, but believed to have done adequate research into this. Some people did not agree and came down on them rather hard, but I saw an opportunity.
In this video I break down what was represented well, what wasn't, and we get into some really interesting #blindness and #disability topics along the way. Hopefully it might teach a thing or two https://youtu.be/qE81d4Pcw9E

#disability #disabilities #blindness #representation #indieGames #gaming #youtube #selfPromo

@menelion @Pool Last time I used it is a few years ago and then, it wasn't great, but not awful either. I myself prefer Joplin. But good call, I might add Obsidian as a project for Patreon as I don't think the maintainers are super enthusiastic about fixing it themselves without significant PRs

Given this is now released, I'm happy to report that the third-party control client for the Elgato Streamdeck, called OpenDeck, is now a lot more accessible for #screenReader and keyboard-only users.
These devices have always had a huge #accessibility barrier in that the only way to assign an action to a key was through a drag-and-drop interface. Elgato has been notified about this, but proved ... let's say ... less than ehtusiastic to fix it. So, I did.

While I can't claim 100% accessibility, primarily because that isn't a thing, I can say I made sure everything I could find was labeled, and that there's now a keyboard-only way of associating buttons, knobs, and touch controls with actions, something the official client does not, and probably will not, support.

I'll be making a video on the ViewpointUnseen youtube channel with all the details soon.

GitHub - nekename/OpenDeck: Linux software for the Stream Deck with support for original Elgato Stream Deck plugins

Linux software for the Stream Deck with support for original Elgato Stream Deck plugins - nekename/OpenDeck

GitHub (github.com)

RE: https://mastodon.nl/@NunlRSS/116341492165056981

En maar zeuren dat het zo slecht gaat en men niet genoeg verdient ... SMH

@mistersql 1. Depends on why/how often.
2. Generally I would avoid those, yes. Proficient screen reader users wil have ways to skip over them relatively simply, but not everyone has the tricks of the trade to do that which would mean every = is read out loud. Not a great experience. Dashes (-) tend to work a little better for this because a lot of screen reader punctuation schemes tend to not speak those by default, but it depends on a number of factors.
3. I'd say that is more subjective. For me personally I wouldn't really care either way, again because most screen readers don't read those by default. But if your tool is used in the context where a user has more punctuation enabled to follow code better those would add a lot of extra verbiage (left brace one right brace, left brace two right brace, left brace three right brace etc.)

@esoteric_programmer yep, I did hear that tabbing onto a thing caused it to crash, so that might be what you're seeing as well. ANd yes, still a lot of unlabeled controls, I'm working on it