Anyone know of a good IRC client for the #blind? I wanna use IRC.

Today Austria has become six amateur radio users richer, four of them completely blind. It's just the class 3 national licence for now but it's just the beginning. Now only the paperwork remains and choosing the gear, making the first QSO and... and... and... #HamRadio #AmateurRadio #Amateurfunk #Blind

A question for #blind and #visuallyimpaired people, but sighted people can answer too!
I was on the phone with my aunt today, who's blind, and she heard about the new Meta AI Raybans, theses glasses that can see and talk to you through #MetaAI.
Apparently right now only people in the USA, Canada and UK can directly ask questions to the AI about their direct surroundings. She lives in France.
But someone told her he connected these glasses to the free application Seeing AI, and that works great apparently.
I'd be very interested to know more about it, as I'll visit her soon and we could buy them and set them up together.
Has anyone tried them?
Thanks!
#a11y

There's a growing movement on the #fedi that wants people to switch away from Big (US-based) Tech and towards #FOSS alternatives like #Linux, alternatives to #google, #Microsoft, #dropbox etc.
For #screenReader users, that might not be as simple as all that due to #accessibility reasons. This weekend's IC_Null stream aims to dig into this, but I need your help. What tools, services etc. should I look at from an #accessibility perspective? Anyone here who needs their tools evaluated? Anyone here who's curious about a particular tool or suite of tools? Let me know and I'll add it to the list. Anything goes. #selfHosting #blind #tech #EU

Access Information News for Monday, June 23, 2025 - Volume 1020
https://accessinformationnews.com/ain2025/06232025/

️ The Week's News in Access Information
A Mind Vault Solutions, Ltd. Publication
#news #accessibility #a11y #disability #blind #deaf #deafblind #ain

Access Information News. The world's #1 online resource for current news and trends in access information.

Subscribers: 40,025 ️ subscribers were sent this issue via email.

There’s a great discussion/rant on this week’s Double Tap Exclusive podcast about Sky UK’s failure to provide audio Description on their On Demand programmes. We’ve been waiting for this for years but are still excluded despite paying our full monthly subscriptions.
Well said, Steven & Shaun.
@doubletap
#Media #Sky #AD #AudioDescription #Excluded #Blind

Blind skateboarder Dan Mancina builds world's first adaptive skatepark: "Everyone should have the opportunity to try skating"

Dan Mancina came up with the idea to create an adaptive skatepark after losing his vision. Olympics.com spoke to the Michigan-based skateboarder about the features that make his park accessible to any athlete and his next big goals after skating the Paris 2024 Olympic course as part of a Para skateboarding exhibition.

#GoodNews #Blind #Sports

https://www.olympics.com/en/news/usa-blind-skateboarder-dan-mancina-world-first-adaptive-skatepark-interview

Just before the #TactileReading conference, @ChanceyFleet and I took a little stroll through the lively streets of #Amsterdam. I recorded with my Meta glasses while she guided us and captured our commentary, interactions, me almost getting nailed by a bike, and just the overall #Blind travel experience. I cut the whole thing together with Terminal/ffmpeg, added captions, and hosted it. If you have 6 minutes to spare, pop on some headphones and enjoy our adventure! https://marconius.com/amsterdam/

Boosts appreciated: I'm a #Reaper user, and I think the latest update broke something. Alt + Shift + Left/Right used to move by grid division. In the midi editor, it only moves by beats now, regardless of grid division setting. I heavily depend on the midi editor, so this prevents me from making music entirely. I am using Reaper with #Osara and #NVDA. What's going on here, and how can I fix this? #Blind #Musician #Producer #Music

*Please only add me if you're over twenty-one.
Since the Bio field has such a short character limit, consider this to be my profile/biography.
I don't write about American politics, race, anticapitalism, world affairs (wars, poverty, oppression, etc.), loneliness, bad self-esteem, or anxiety/depression, and will not add those who do so often. I am not a programmer or gamer, I do not use Linux, and I don't care what social network you use.*
Hello. You may have seen me on Friendica.world or blob.cat. Both had accessibility issues, so I am now here, but my other accounts are still open.
Georgiana Brummell is not my legal name, but it is what I use. I chose it in honour of Beau Brummell. I live in New Jersey and am forty-one years old. Some of my interests include studying dandyism, nineteenth-century English grammar, Upper Received Pronunciation, Italian, British history, and the Regency. I like coffee, tea, wine, cooking, classic literature, nature and historical documentaries, old BBC radio shows, gardening, hot weather, and playing cards and dice. I love opera, particularly singers from the 1940's and earlier, with Tito Schipa, Beniamino Gigli, Ferruccio Tagliavini, and Mattia Battistini being my favourite singers. I also enjoy English and Viennese operettas. In classical music, I like Baroque through early Romantic. I prefer antique menswear (usually Edwardian) and accessories. I love wit, wordplay, and dry humour without vulgarity, though I do enjoy adult fun. I am happily childfree and am not religious. I have been totally blind since I was two months old, due to Retinopathy of Prematurity.
I am also single and searching. If you are a single, childfree, intelligent, well-dressed man, over sixty, please write to me. I will accept platonic friends twenty-one and older.
This is my journal. Anyone can read or comment, whether or not he is a member.

http://www.dreamwidth.org

Below are some of my interests. I am also doing this in the hopes of attracting new friends, so my apologies if the tags weren't discussed here.

Something I've thought about today:

Android is kind of less "blind friendly". I use that to mean how well the OS, accessibility frameworks, and screen reader are working together to give an experience that doesn't assume a visual user. A really good showcase for this is scrolling. On iOS, if you swipe, you barely notice that the screen scrolls when you get to the bottom of it. On Android though, you can hear the half second or so it takes to scroll. Also there technically are no screen reader commands to scroll up, down, left, or right. There's just "scroll forward" and "scroll backwards," which means that if you scroll forward in an app with tabs, you might find yourself on the next tab rather than the next list of items.

Now, for those who only use speech, this is usable. But a lot of blind Android users who just explore by touch don't seem to get that "swiping" is all a Braille user can do. Like, the system should not care which way one navigates. And even though on a touch screen, you can scroll in any direction using two fingers, this isn't screen reader specific, so a Braille user cann't do that. But who cares about Braille, it's dead don'cha know? /s

Another thing that really gets on my nerves sometimes is putting in my PIN. I really need to try a password and see if that works better, but the PIN entry field isn't an actual keyboard, it's just an interface that looks like one. So, using a Braille display, I have to navigate one number at a time, and enter them by pressing Enter on the one I want. Sometimes I can press Space with dot 4 to go down a line of numbers, but sometimes that puts me on the bottom row instead of the next row. Of course, on iOS, I can type my passcode as expected.

It's also kind of baffling to me that Gemini on Android doesn't automatically speak or Braille responses whenever I type to it. It could easily send those responses to TalkBack. But, as usual, the hearing, speaking blind are the testers Google has, so of course the feedback is that it works, it's fine, and if there are any descenting voices, they're either drown out or unheard. And this is AI, the current money-maker and time-waster for all these companies. And yet, even in that, they still can't get accessibility right. Just look at it on the web. The thing says Gemini replied, except it hasn't even finished generating the response yet. Imagine if VoiceOver did that in iMessage and the person had just started typing, and VO didn't even say when they actually sent the message? The NFB would have all their resolutions on just that one topic.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of things in Android work well. But there are just these things that remind me that there really needs to be a big shift in Google regarding accessibility, and not just a surface-level cleaning, for Android to really lose that speech-only attitude of workarounds. Also I'm not saying iOS is anywhere near perfect, even for Braille. But when I do use Braille on iOS, I feel a lot closer to a second-class citizen than a third or fourth like on Android.

I released my new game for iOS today. It's called Shift The disks. It's my take on the classic Towers of Hanoi game. Enjoy the game. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shift-the-disks/id6746863384 #blind #puzzle #puzzles #logic #towers_of_hanoi #accessible

From the Orca mailing list:

Hey all.

I plan to make all of Orca's commanded executable over DBus. It's going
to be a ton of work and I'm only getting started. That said, I just
landed what I have so far to Orca's main branch.

For users who said Orca must have a means for apps to tell it what to
say, Orca now has that. To try it -- assuming you have the very latest
Orca from the main branch -- do

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Orca.Service --object-path
/org/gnome/Orca/Service --method org.gnome.Orca.Service.PresentMessage
"Bla bla bla I'm a message"

For those saying Orca's speech should be controllable, by other apps,
see what's available by doing:

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Orca.Service --object-path
/org/gnome/Orca/Service/SpeechAndVerbosityManager --method
org.gnome.Orca.Module.ListCommands

Hopefully one of those commands is what you need. To learn more about
how to use them, here's some documentation:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/orca/-/blob/main/README-REMOTE-CONTROLLER.md

Please play with it and let me know what you think.

This felt too valuable not to share. Braille-labeled maps of washrooms to help people find and use facilities in the washroom. Everyone deserves to get in, do their business, wash their hands, and get out in peace and safety.

This seems valuable for all public spaces.

Last boost, anyone who says that #Braille is dying is dead wrong. Braille is our code, it is the code for us #Blind people and its not dead, I read braille, many people read Braille, and it should continue to be taught and learned by people, it should never be allowed to go away, without it, we can't read, no, I'm not going to budge on this point and anyone who says different simply doesn't understand true literacy.

#DanMancina built a fully adaptive #skatepark near his #Michigan home for individuals who are #blind or #visuallyImpaired, as well as those with limited physical abilities or who use a #wheelchair. So very inspiring!

https://laughingsquid.com/adaptive-skatepark-for-blind-skateboarders/

Really wishing there was a good textbook reading app for someone with both visual and cognitive #disabilities.

I just started a new course at Colorado Christian University, and this week's reading is 7 chapters from a book called Introducing Christian Doctrine—which is pretty heavy stuff. I've been struggling just to get through the first chapter.

I tried reading in Word with JAWS, but quick navigation keys keep getting disabled, and adding comments isn’t very accessible. So I switched to the ePub version in Bookworm, which lets me add bookmarks, named bookmarks, and comments. That’s been a huge help.

For notes, I’m using Joplin, which works well for organizing thoughts in Markdown. And when I hit a sentence I don’t understand—like “propounded dogmatically” (what even is that?)—I just open Copilot in the browser and ask for a plain-language explanation.

It’s not perfect, but it’s working. I just wish there were tools designed with both cognitive load and screen reader accessibility in mind. Reading theology is hard enough without fighting the tech too.

(My degree is in computer science, but theology is part of the core curriculum.)

#disability #multipleDisabilities #Accessibility #JAWS #ScreenReader #CognitiveDisability #ActuallyAutistic #Autism #Blind #Neurodivergent #NeurodivergentBlind #BookwormReader #JoplinNotes #Joplin #Markdown #TheologyStudent #Christian #ChristianUniversity #InclusiveTech #EdTech #AccessibleReading #DisabilityInEducation #StudyTools #ePub #AssistiveTechnology #MastodonEdu

@mastoblind @main @actuallyautistic @neurodivergentblind