I hate... like really fucking hate email clients. None of them work the way I'd like. Going against the blind trend, I actually don't mind gmail's web interface, other than that the key board shortcuts make about as much sense as giving a 3yo a bunch of sugar right before taking them to church.
That said, I might have to do something if they don't get their act together with this inbox repeating crap.
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bscross32
@bscross32@tweesecake.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-08-15+glitchI'm a blind guy entering middle age. My interests include gaming, fishing, bowling, sound design, reading, and writing.
105 Followers
93 Following
50 Posts
Joined February 07, 2026
Accessibility, for me, is being appreciative of what's already been done, being grateful to those who worked hard on it, but also pushing for more. I always want more, because whenever I'm stopped by a barrier, I want to find a way around it. Wouldn't you?
Let's imagine a fully able-bodied person wants to take a short walk from their apartment to their favorite cafe. But on this particular day, these invisible walls keep popping up in their path. They can't push past, but they watch as everyone else walks on the same path without issue. At first, wouldn't they be a little scared, sad and confused? Then anger might set in, and at that point, the gears start turning.
Maybe the walls won't pop up if they take another route or maybe if they just cross over to the other side of the street. But all the while, they see people moving right on through the same part of the sidewalk where they can't as if there's nothing to stop them.
Really try to put yourself in that person's shoes. That's what accessibility is, it's tearing down those barriers to give equal access to everyone no matter what their disabilities may be. Doing accessibility work takes drive, patience and perseverance, and most of all, commitment.
On this day, I don't give a damn about market share, bottom dollar, or any other corporate concerns. I'm a user, and there are plenty of products and websites that are inaccessible to me, and companies breaking the law by not fixing them. That's what I care about right now.
Accessibility work is ongoing. It should never be for only one product your team or organization builds. If you take up the mantle, it should be a from now on kind of thing. I'm tired of seeing accessibility related regressions never get fixed.
That is all.
#blind #accessibility #gaad
New version of #Pubsplash released. Firming up some API stuff including ElevenLabs. No more need to fetch voices manually, it's done for you and results are cached and compared against the cache at startup. Put in your keys and hit validate for any that haven't been already saved.
More parameters for API-based tts services have been exposed
Fixed a nasty crash when deleting plugins from running sources
Note: If you ahve Waves plugins, you will currently only see one, this is a known issue and may be addressed in a future version
Each tts engine retains its own settings and they'll be recalled when you switch back to that engine
Optional streaming (on by default) for ElevenLabs V2 to reduce latency
Selecting models now uses a sdropdown list instead of a type in field to make it easier to get what you want
There's an API tab that will help you track your usage per session. Only ElevenLabs allows checking your credit balance, and it's a refresh pres away now
You should no longer have to monitor tts sources to hear their speech.
tts sources set to ElevenLabs now show the name of the voice rather than the voice ID
ElevenLabs speech rate can now be utilized without error
Your Audiopub password will no longer be stored in plain text in the configuration file. The change over should be seamless.
If Audiopub crashes, a crash dump will now be generated and stored in a crashes folder alongside your configuration file. If this happens, file an issue via GitHub and attach your logs and the dump
https://github.com/ironcross32/pubsplash/releases/tag/v0.1.3
0xc0000005, STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION
These are fun...
Replying to
@matt@toot.cafe I've tried off and on over 10 years to learn to code and I just can't. I don't have the aptitude for it. There are blind developers who do, and who have made a career out of it, but I'm not one of them.
If I had the ability to write my own code, I would certainly use LLMs a lot less. I don't like not knowing exactly what the code it spits out does piece by piece. I crave speed and efficiency, and the uncertainty is an issue.
If you own a Lenovo PC, you may have noticed that adjustments to machine-specific functions are spoken via SAPI when Narrator is enabled. This includes things like the camera being on or off, screen brightness, touchpad status, power profile, etc.
Of course, it'd be great if this were screen reader agnostic, but it relies on narrator.exe being running.
This little program will trick the utility into dispatching the messages, because it runs as narrator.exe, even though all it does is creates a system tray icon with a context menu. Run it normally or place it in shell:startup to have it run when the machine boots.
It's worth noting that Narrator won't start with this being active, so you'll need to exit it first if you wanna use Narrator.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ea9onvco20e4jb0u6vy26/narrator.exe?rlkey=3b93hr84q2k9h4il7k1wiknd2&dl=1
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@jscholes@dragonscave.space @matt@toot.cafe First, the prerequisite of doing anything meaningful, I suck at math, and when I say I suck at it, I mean, I don't honestly know how I graduated high school, it's so bad. Second, the learning resources. If I go through some tutorial or other and I understand everything up to a point, but that one thing I don't get, then the rest of it means nothing because it tends to build on top of what came before. This isn't a language specific thing either.
Probably my biggest pet pieve is object oriented programming. I hate it! I get the general concept, but it seems so unnecessary. I feel like I do a better job in programming Applesoft basic than I do any modern language. And I have actually made a utilities disk that never ran on actual hardware, but can run on an emulator.
I tend to want to write everything in one file, even if it spans thousands of lines. In languages like Python, if I make it modular, I tend to hit issues making sure a particular module gets what it needs from another one, or I hit circular import issues I don't know how to sort out.
then there's GitHub. I honestly can't read diffs. I don't know why, but I just can't do it. It's the same thing that makes me unable to deal with streams of numbers. And merge conflicts are even worse. without AI, I could never fix one myself.
So I tried Fast sm rw (stupid ass name) today) both on iPhone and PC. I'm only gonna focus on the PC version though. So, how does this compare to Fedra. Well, TL;DR: I like Fedra more, but Fast SM RW has some features I wish Fedra did. ALT+A to autocomplete users is a biggie. Opening a federated timeline is nice too. Setting what happens when you hit ENTER on a post is pretty cool as well.
The one thing I absolutely do not like though is that it has an invisible interface. I just don't feel this is a healthy way to engage with social media. It puts your timeline right at your fingertips, and the sounds every time a new post comes in just gives me that temptation to check it out. I never did turn on the keystrokes for it. I do appreciate that it's a thing you can not have and that it's not forced down your throat. But here's the thing, I never found a comprehensive list of shortcuts for the main window, and they do exist. The keyboard manager seems to be for driving the invisible interface. That's fine, I'm not asking to customize every single shortcut of the main window, but I'd like to know what they are. There's no help entry in the menu bar, and there's nothing about this in the README on the GH repo. Maybe I missed something, in which case I'm happy to be corrected, but yeah, I found that a bit annoying.
Fast SM has sound pack support, and many of the events have built in sounds. You can go in and configure them, which is nice. Fedra doesn't have any sounds, and to be honest, it's quite refreshing. I'm not someone who needs their computer to bing and bong every time anything happens, in fact, I can't stand that.
To me, Fedra's more classy. It's very fast, I'd say faster than Fast Sm (though I wouldn't call the latter slow by any means). It's just like, here I am, this is what I can do, and it's not trying to draw you in with constant sounds and an invisible interface. It's professional.
Pubsplash can now load VST2 plugins. VST3 will come later. I'm choosing specifically not to handle 32-bit plugins. This is the quickest method of streaming to Audio Pub I know of. The first time you ever use it, you go to File > Configure audio pub, enter your credentials and hit connect. It will connect on startup. There's always a default scene that can't be removed with the bare minimum of your microphone and a tts source for reading chats (both can be removed). So if you hit edit on those and they're using the right stuff, you're good. The workflow to start streaming is:
- Launch the app
- Hit ALT+S
- Enter your stream title, description, and check the box if you want it archived
- Hit OK
That's it. Everything as it should be, you're streaming. If you have to stop, hit ALT+T. That information is kept for you per app session so if you want to start again, ALT+S and it just happens.
I'll use #pubsplash for posts relating to this app.
If you have an air purifier, today might be a good day to use it. Also be glad it's not an air pubifier, because that would just be unpleasant.
Thanks #Suno for making checkboxes appear as buttons to screen readers in your web UI #blind #accessibility #fail #AI
Here's me typing on Mac. Tip tip tip tip chigga tip tip tip chigga chigga tip tip dup tip tada tada tip chigga woop tip tip tip woop tip chigga dup dup dup chigga woop woop woop tip tip tip tidda tidda woop woop woop.
Autocorrect, spelling, all that shiiiiiiiet needs to go, now. And... done.
The older I get, the more my brain resembles an LLM where the context window is rapidly approaching and information needs to be summarized before exceeding it.
Replying to
@prism@infosec.exchange I don't recall which Discord this was on, but someone from Stardew Valley was asking about canes and stuff, basically wanting to bring blind NPCs into the game. I was courteous while trying to figure out why they wanted to go this route rather than making the game playable by the blind (this was before the mod existed), and got a canned response. I was courteous, yes, but my actual reaction was like WTFFFFFFF??? You gotta be shitting me!
Replying to
@lerven@tweesecake.social @Orinks@mastodon.stickbear.me I was about to say you're too old to shake shake shake, things are likely to start falling off.
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@jcsteh @tailscale It's pretty sick. i can use tail drop to transfer files between any of my connected devices. I can access LLMs running locally on my machine which is capable of doing so from my machine which isn't. I can configure a funnel so that anyone can use the LLM that I give the link to.
I'm seeing an ever-increasing number of people investigating AI solutions that operate your computer for you. I must admit that I have great trepidation towards this notion. Of course, I can't look past the obvious benefits of being able to operate inaccessible software.
I tried Guide AI a while back, and it simply didn't meet my needs. I wanted to use it in full screen applications such as games, but you had to type to it, meaning, you had to leave the window. While it did offer a keystroke to jump quickly to its own window, it wasn't a good enough solution in my opinion.
Apart from the typing limitation, I found that it couldn't even perform the most simple tasks reliably. I didn't see value in it, because I kept running into message limitations in the trial. The model would take circuitous routes to do very basic things, such as opening task manager to verify that an app was running. It also launched the Xbox app in a way that left it stuck on the splash screen. Now, I don't have very many complimentary things to say about the Xbox app, but it at least has never done that when I launched it myself.
Naturally, this put me off using the service, and I canceled the trial, knowing that it would likely improve and that I'd be stuck paying more if I ever wanted it. The one good thing it had going for it though, was a kill switch. It narrated every action before attempting to perform it. If it was about to do something you didn't approve of, you could hit that keystroke and the entire task chain would be aborted.
Many of us are using Gemini, Codex, Claude code, and other agents. Those of us who've been doing this long enough will know that while the models can produce excellent results, they can just as quickly go down a path full of strange actions. They will proceed, full steam ahead, with great aplomb, down the wrong path. If left unsupervised, the best case is that you've burnt some tokens and you'll have to burn some more to have it walk back the changes. I don't think I have to enumerate what the worst case scenarios could be.
All this to say that I think I'll keep operating my computer without any assistance from AI tools for the time being. It means I'll miss out on some potential benefits, but I'm all right with that, and feel more secure in knowing that an AI agent isn't about to run amuck on my system. There are those who will read this and not like my position, which is fine. I've seen a lot of people snap to judgement calls and use terms like, "Ai hater", which honestly leads me to wonder if continuous use of LLMs have whittled away at their critical thinking skills.
With technology like this, one should always make an informed decision. Jumping on board with every single development in the field of generative AI is a choice, but it's one fraught with consequences.
Replying to
@LeonianUniverse@leonianplace.masto.host @jonathan859@someplace.social @TheQuinbox@dragonscave.space Go here: https://github.com/trypsynth/fedra/issues
Then hit E until you can't go any farther, up arrow a few times until you hit new issue. Type a title, find the body edit box, type the issue, hit CTRL+ENTER>
Replying to
@ondrosik Hmm, weird. Dunno honestly. Maybe it looks for whatever the translation of narrator would be in your own language? What would happen if you quit out of the executable, renamed it to whatever the Slovak would be, then relaunch. Or better yet, go into task manager with narrator running and check if it's called narrator.exe or not.
New version of #pubsplash with a lot of changes:
https://github.com/ironcross32/pubsplash/releases/tag/v0.1.2
real talk, emotional, ramble, stream of consciousness
Replying to
@LeonianUniverse@leonianplace.masto.host The hell? Are you running from source? I can't even close either of those timelines.
Replying to
@Rich@dragonscave.space They actually make a lot of sense. Now if they could find a reason to ban jayde, the forum would probably become a decent place.
Replying to
Replying to
@LeonianUniverse@leonianplace.masto.host It ain't supposed to let you, if it does, that's a bug.
Replying to
I thought no is supposed to mean no? Maybe I'm wrong though.
I've been told by multiple people many times that spinning a dryer drum by hand is gonna fuck up the belt. I call bullshit. I've been doing it my entire life and it's never once caused a problem. I think it can if you're a dumbass about it and spin it really fast over and over. Indeed, you can actually feel the belt start to slip if you spin it too fast, so then back off a bit.
Why do I do this? Simple. I spin it just enough to where there's a gap in the fins at the bottom, then I sort of funnel all the clothes into a pile and push them from back to front and pull them out. I find it easier to manage that way than if one of the fins is at the bottom which basically splits your clothes into two piles.
I think the people who do this are the same type of people who get in their car when there's a lot of snow on the ground and just fucking gun it thinking they can get unstuck that way. No nuance, no feeling. I feel like I'd have a better chance getting a car out of a snow drift than some people out there.
#blind #appliances #bored #Friday
Replying to
@mrkrabs@someplace.social It's gonna do everything that does but better. It's written in Rust with WxDragon. It currently does stream, receive chats, etc.
Replying to
Actually I'm not, because this thing is mega broken LMAO. Tons of stuff to fix.
Replying to
@mcourcel@allovertheplace.ca @NicksWorld@mastodon.stickbear.me @ZBennoui@dragonscave.space I've wanted to do that too, put a bit on their chair, they sit down, later when they try to get up... nope... LMAO.
Replying to
@Aryan@dragonscave.space Holy shit on a shingle, that would probably take this machine 15-20 seconds
Replying to
I've always wanted to tie someone to a chair or something using their own hair. It'd be really hard to do it without them noticing though.
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@Aryan@dragonscave.space I gambled away my last laptop, I should have just given it to you.
Sometimes, these two commands can alleviate weird network issues on a single Windows machine, especially if the installation is old. The latter needs elevation, so run from an admin prompt:
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset
OK, this thing BSI does where you realize you made a mistake, back up, fix it, but the letter you added is a single letter contraction which will get translated when you hit space even though there are letters before it which makes that rule invalid is pretty fucking stupid. Fix it... like, now.
Replying to
@lerven@tweesecake.social @Orinks@mastodon.stickbear.me There are times when I think about posting something, but then I'm like, "Nah that's too mean", but then I'm like, "But it's funny as hell", and I keep teetering back and forth. This is one of those times.