Brian Hartgen

@AccessOn@nfb.social Thank you for the latest ep. I've just finished hearing the parts I wanted to listen to. Blazie Technologies. I think this company is very innovative. They are extremely prolific in their frequency of product updates and they are trying very hard to modernise the traditional Braille notetaker experience. Noone can fault them for that. But they have a real problem it seems to me. They do not seem to be at all interested in what happens outside America. Using Mastodon, I wrote to them at considerable length, setting out why it was important to have a distributor network outside America, including the United Kingdom. As one of a large number of people who is often called upon to recommend products for the Government's Access to Work scheme for employment purposes, we need to get our hands on this product locally. We need to be assured that UK product standards are met. We need to see it at conferences and exhibitions. We need to be assured that maintenance can be carried out in the required country. Did I get a reply to that message? No, I didn't. I do not know the state of play in terms of Canada and Australia for example, but I suspect it may be similar. I fully accept you were just relaying the information given by the Vendor. But it is an important point. Products like the BrailleNote Evolve and the BrailleSense 7 are far from being perfect in terms of functionality. I know that more than anyone. But they do have local support in as many territories as possible. I think it is time Blazie started to develop an international distributor network.

I have to write something serious here while I am still in the mood to do it. There are now very many Vibe Coded apps around. I do not take away the fact that people sometimes find them useful. However, allow me to write about a situation I have just encountered. I am not particularly fond of free apps. I do not need to use any of them. That is for me, and only me, to decide. I think many of them do not take account of Braille, there is far too much information sent to the screen-reader, and in many cases have not been tested with JAWS. If you like me or loathe me for that, I don't mind. But I know a lot of people are gaining pleasure from creating these apps and using them. That is fine. However, I recently read about an app which I thought could be quite good and productive. I installed it. As an experienced keyboard user, even I could not use the keystrokes, and I found that the app was very poor in terms of quality. The documentation for use was simply diabolical. But I proceeded anyway. So I tried to uninstall it. I could not. Upon investigation, I found the uninstaller routine was seriously defective. I've spent the past hour removing folders and registry entries and I'm now happy that the machine is in good condition. Look, I know these apps are looking very attractive, and AI agents are making it easy for people to create them. But to developers: do you not realise that you have a moral responsibility at the very least to be upfront to provide your contact details for support? If you want to offer your app for distribution, that means you have to take on the responsibility of technical support. That means you have to provide your contact details for anyone who requires support. That is fair. In terms of submitting problems, I've seen some developers who are quite public in saying, if you have a problem, file an issue. That is their stock answer. It really is not good enough. If you want to create an app, you should be providing contact information such as an email address. Some developers do not even provide easy ways of even installing their apps. Their documentation is so absolutely appalling that you have no idea how to install the wretched thing. They expect you to grab it from GitHub which many people are not familiar with navigating. Yes, I am really on one tonight, and if you want to challenge me over this, do you know what, I could not give a damn quite honestly. This experience has made me absolutely furious. All I want to get across is this. There are considerable benefits to Vibe Coding. But for users of such apps, for goodness sake proceed with considerable caution. Check that you know who has produced the app, how to obtain it and what to do if things go wrong. If possible, use a portable copy of the app. In conclusion, this situation was entirely my own fault. I should have installed the app on a test machine first.

It's been years since I completed this but I've just done so. It was very easy to do, which you would expect. WebAIM: Screen Reader User Survey #11. https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey11/

@JonathanMosen@caneandable.social Hi Jonathan, I wonder why you didn't get that post? Anyway, glad you got it eventually. The beta testers and I have already discussed an Email client and I have a prototype, but you are right. To get it to where I want it to be will be a large undertaking, and much as I would really like to, I cannot spend each day on Leasey. But I would love to get that project completed. Have a good rest of the weekend.

@JonathanMosen Hi Jonathan Long time no speak. I hope you are keeping well. I wanted to thank you very much indeed for the comments you posted here in respect of Leasey 11.5. You didn't have to do that, and it was incredibly kind of you. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the BrailleNote Evolve had that level of context sensitive help? If Humanware could strive for that it would be great. Now, about other screen-readers. I've just had this discussion with someone else, so first, I am going to quote myself. I wrote: What people need to understand is that what makes the apps as good quality as they are, or I hope they are, is because of the combination of coding with external sources and JAWS scripting. And that is what it is, a combination. Many hours have also been put into the scripting for these apps especially with Braille output. I am having a discussion on Mastodon outside of this thread concerning problems with a standalone app to support various screen-readers, and those problems are occurring precisely because there is no scripting or configuration involved. So thank you for your suggestion, but I will stand by this decision to the grave. I will never compromise on quality. End of quote. I can only do what I am comfortable supporting and what I personally want for my users. I want people to have the features they seem to like and where I hope the quality is as good as I can get it to be. I like very few open source apps. Lots of people love them; that's wonderful and I respect that they do. But I do not. I find there is almost no consideration given to Braille output at all of the kind that you will find in Leasey and there is just so much extra chatter, and I do mean, a lot of extra chatter. If people are content with that, I'm glad that is what they want to use. But I do not want it. As you said, I like tools to be efficient. I would rather pack it all in and stop work tomorrow rather than create products where JAWS is not the framework. People can like me or hate me for that; I don't mind. I've had my fair share of both over the years. That is what I know, and I guess people can choose to purchase the products or not, as the case may be. Fortunately, I'm not quite in that position yet. But I am absolutely passionate about this specific issue. Just to be accurate, radio listening was introduced in Leasey version 1 back in 2014. Podcasts, you are right about that. They were introduced just a few years ago. Anyway, thanks again for your comments and the best of luck with your creations on Suno. Again, we have that in common I think.

@sarahmatthews@tweesecake.social From the description I've got that's a lovely picture.

Star Wars is to be dubbed into Welsh for the first time as the classic film prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2jpy0q7jvo?xtor=AL-71-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_format=link&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_origin=BBCNews&at_link_type=web_link&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_id=D207B842-9011-11F1-8507-968F5B7C1259&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_medium=social&at_bbc_team=editorial