I've been working on @kde@floss.social accessibility for a year.
And I'm up for a few more, as I slowly but surely make it easier to see my own PC :)
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Ritchie
@acidiclight@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06I am a blind game developer, a11y advocate, and an Accessibility Engineer working with KDE e.V. on Plasma/KDE accessibility.
Views are my own, not that of organizations I work with.
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Joined October 02, 2023
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Vaxry once told me, in private, around a year or two ago, that I should not be writing software if my vision impairment prevents me from being unable to understand his code.
This comment was uncalled for, since my eyes were not the reason his code was hard to understand.
Looking for an artist/graphic designer to design a new logo+wordmark for my custom in-development FOSS game engine, Inertia. Willing to pay. It just doesn't have any kind of logo yet, and kinda needs one.
Replying to
if it were a free and open source tool, I wouldn't care because I could just use a different tool or compile the crap out.
but no
I pay for this editor
I pay for it so I can use it commercially, to make money
you don't get to just fuck with my user preferences like that.
Gonna say something controversial.
LLMs, if they *work well*, are great accessibility tools. They can pick useful information out of giant diagnostic logs I have trouble reading.
Lots of people use LLMs to write code for them. Sometimes, the code generated is either poor quality or doesn't work. In fact, I'd argue that's the case most of the time.
But if you physically cannot read or write code, despite having the skill to do so, then what are your options?
I may have uh just reflexively muttered "zoom zoom" just after starting a kwin build while rebasing the zoom effect...
who the fuck drove RAM prices up so high that 64 GB of non-RGB RAM costs more than my monthly rent?
for fuck sake you god damned AI companies, I know it's you, I'm now pissed at you, and I don't want to spend 2 months of my salary on a home lab.
Replying to
I'm sure that if I were to convey them well, people would understand that - for example - a dialog box popping up without making a noise is genuinely disruptive to me.
But you'd need to experience computers through my body to really get it. And I find it hard to help people imagine things through my lens without sounding like an angry old man ranting about how computers used to be.
Replying to
I suppose there are two things I'm trying to say in this thread.
Thing 1 is:
I feel like my needs aren't always worth others' time which makes me sometimes question whether they are valid or worth my own stress. But they are, because I'm blind, and they're needs.
Thing 2 is:
I wish I could fix the problems that I see. I wish others saw them how I do.
Replying to
Screen readers on Linux historically haven't met the needs of the people who need them, which is its own problem. I'd like to solve it, but not for myself.
Even the perfect screen reader is the wrong tool for my vision impairment. It is a tool I can use when I have no other choice, but I don't want it to be my only choice or to be told it should be my go-to.
Replying to
I used to have better eyesight when I was a kid. I could read. I could write. I could at one point see the board in front of class. The issue is I *no longer can*. This upsets me.
But I want to be able to use my eyes.
I know I *can* use my eyes is everything is set up right.
I don't want to feel like my eyes are useless, and therefore that I need to use my ears instead.
Replying to
The problem I run into a lot when talking about my own accessibility needs, and in deed when developing the software that accomodates them, is... I do not want to use a screen reader, at all, ever.
Replying to
@YaLTeR@mastodon.online everyone knows you can't have the bar without importing that D(esktop)
Replying to
@TheEvilSkeleton@social.treehouse.systems ummmmmmmmmmmmm
what's a pigeon spike and why does it sound like a gruesome murder weapon