jscholes

jscholes, 8 months ago to random

The developer in me hates what #CloudFlare's anti-bot checks are turning the web into. As a blind person, I'm occasionally frustrated at having to obtain an accessibility cookie to bypass the CAPTCHA. My inclusive design/accessibility professional side hates that those cookies have to be obtained in a way that doesn't fully respect privacy.

But simply as a human, what I find most objectional of all is CloudFlare's "Checking if the site connection is secure" messaging. That sounds like a good thing; how nice that this site is looking out for my protection as a humble web user! When in fact, my activity and circumstances are being checked against an arbitrary set of requirements and baseline-level metrics, to determine if I have the right to go where I want to go. It has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with information lockdown.

Of course, CloudFlare's lawyers probably signed off on this copy as being just close enough to the truth. They are checking that the site connection is secure... against bad actors. Which they may very well find to be you if they can't prove your human nature beyond reasonable doubt, so watch out.

jscholes, 2 months ago to random

New software enables #blind people to do a thing they couldn't do before. Here's a link to an inaccessible PDF about it, a research paper, and an image without alt text. Oh, you wanted to use the software? We didn't link to that because this page is designed to inspire sighted people hahaha

jscholes, 6 months ago to random

If your website has a video-based ad after every paragraph, makes my phone uncomfortably warm, and uses 2 percent of its battery for every minute I'm reading an article, your website is irredeemably shit and you should feel bad. Bad that this is seen as necessary, bad that the technology to make it happen is widely available, bad about the level of disrespect for your content and its authors as it floats on a sea of excrement, and most of all bad for the web industry that normalises this malpractice. Happy Wednesday.

jscholes, 1 month ago to accessibility

No matter how long you've worked in #accessibility, there's always an opportunity for a new WTF: "Skip to main content (opens in a new tab)".

jscholes, 7 months ago to DoctorWho

Speaking of #audioDescription... the BBC just dumped 643 episodes of classic #DoctorWho onto #iPlayer. From my spot checks, all of them (or close to it) have both audio description and #SignLanguage if that's your thing. Hopefully #captions too. #accessibility #BSL #closedCaptions #DrWho

jscholes, 11 months ago to accessibility

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague told me they were too young to have used Nuance Talks. Which made me feel both old, and sad that they'd never experienced one of the best #ScreenReaders ever made. #accessibility

jscholes, 1 month ago to accessibility

If you were wondering whether the new #Sonos app is as bad with #VoiceOver as people said, I can confirm that it is.

The first element that receives focus has no #accessible role or name, i.e. VoiceOver doesn't announce anything for it. The screen is split up into sections, like "Recently Played", "Your Services", and "Sonos Favourites", but none of these have headings. And, as previously noted, explore by touch doesn't work; VO seems to just see that blank element I mentioned as being stretched across the entire screen.

As a result of all this, the "Search" button requires 32 swipes from the top of the screen to reach, at least with my setup. If you have more services and/or more favourites, that number of swipes will be higher. #accessibility

jscholes, 8 months ago to accessibility

Once upon a time, there was an email client named #Thunderbird. The makers of this not-great-but-necessary tool had, at some point, added single-key shortcuts to its message list, like K to ignore an entire thread. This didn't match the mnemonic for the same function in the relevant context menu, which was I, but that was okay for consistency in user interfaces was widely believed to be overrated. It was, however, acknowledged that this key was quite easy to press by accident, and hence a useful "Undo" button was added to the resulting alert, allowing the unintentional ignoring of an email thread to be quickly reversed.

One day, a gaggle of bandits rode into the town of Mozilla, proudly baring the banner of The Modern Design League. Over the course of the next few months, they poured scorn on convenience, terrorised the peddlers of good sense, and derided the small, voluntary efforts of the weekly #Accessibility Club, all in the name of better code structure and 21st century relevance.

When these fiends learned of the presence of the button to undo the ignoring of a thread, they were furious. They began a swift, vehement campaign to rework this functionality, maximising the spacing available to the alert text...

... and that, kids, is why you now have to open the "View" menu, drill down into "Threads", check the "Ignored Threads" option, manually locate a response to the thread you ignored by mistake, un-ignore it, and then repeat the first steps of this process to hide ignored threads again.

jscholes, 2 months ago to random

#SpeechHistory for #NVDA has been updated for 2024.1 compatibility, and even includes a new feature!

You can now capture multiple speech history items in realtime, which is useful for e.g. bug reports without copying from the Speech Viewer. Press NVDA+Shift+F11 to start recording, use NVDA as normal, and then press NVDA+Shift+F12 to stop recording. All recorded speech will be copied to the clipboard, with items separated by a line break (\n).

Download: https://github.com/jscholes/nvda-speech-history/releases/download/v2024.1/speechHistory-v2024.1.nvda-addon

jscholes, 8 months ago to windows

Sometimes I decide to blame #Windows for something, only to check and realise that I haven't rebooted for two weeks and hence should give it the benefit of the doubt. Then I remember that #Linux on my #RaspberryPi can go years without restarting and I'm right back to blaiming Windows again. Then I start to think that the #Pi doesn't run a #GUI so that's maybe not a fair comparison and... I should probably just stop thinking and reboot.

jscholes, 4 months ago to random

Today I learned about #trurl, a command-line tool for URL parsing and manipulation from the developer of #curl and #libcurl. Modify or extract URL hostnames, schemes, port numbers, and path and query segments, trim tracking data, encode spaces and other characters, and get everything as either JSON or readable text output. https://github.com/curl/trurl

jscholes, 4 months ago to chrome

It used to be that in #Chrome, I could press Shift+F6 once a download had finished to reach it, and it would never disappear. Then, they switched it out for a dialog that popped up automatically when a download finished, but disappeared after a short number of seconds. Now, the dialog pops up, disappears after a short number of seconds, but tells me it doesn't have focus and that I should press Alt+Shift+A to get there before they hide it again. The endless cycle of shit is astounding.

jscholes, 2 months ago to accessibility

The current owner of #VoiceDreamReader is the Applause group, who offer #accessibility auditing and testing services to many high-profile clients. When Applause are paid to evaluate the accessibility of a product, they are expected to point out some of the exact issues that have been raised in relation to their work on #VoiceDream, such as controls that have no labels or accessible role information, images without alt text, etc.

This hints at a wider problem in the industry, where companies are "cashing in" on the market for accessibility-related services without actually being that invested or incentivised to do good work. Do Applause work with #disabled testers? Was anybody there tasked with testing the application with a #screenReader and other #assistiveTechnology? If not, it raises questions about whether their accessibility services are a force for good, or are actually causing harm.

jscholes, 6 months ago to reviews

#Reviews of open, not-in-ear #earbuds are always so badly done:

"They don't support active noise cancellation!" the reviewer shouts, gesticulating wildly.

No, because there is no seal with your ear canal, rendering such a feature pointless. This is physics, not a poor product choice.

"Okay, but they don't sound as good as my favourite thing that I have to screw deep into my lugholes."

That's just physics again.

"Okay, but these are expensive, so I should recommend an alternative. How about... some other thing that you'll have to dig into your scull."

No.

Some people (myself included) don't like their hearing being completely blocked off, reliance on a transparency mode that is probably terrible, the physical discomfort of something penetrating in towards their eardrum, having to try several sets of first-and-third-party tips, and the endless fiddling to get a good fit. Stop trying to sell #AirPods Pro to those people. However rare a more open design might be, it is a legitimate product category in its own right. Comparing it to something it isn't aiming to be, every single time, is not helpful.

jscholes, 1 month ago to accessibility

Sometimes, you might think that previous #accessibility wisdom has been superseded by new "facts". Maybe someone told you that #screenReaders don't work well with a particular design pattern, but you tested #ScreenReader X and it seemed to work fine. Perhaps you heard that an interactive HTML input doesn't persist with forced colours styling, but you tried a High Contrast mode in Microsoft Edge and it seemed to be there.

There are three considerations usually missing here:

1. How are you defining and evaluating the working state? Do you have a functional, accurate understanding of the #accessTechnology or accessibility feature you are asserting things about?
2. You tested one thing in relation to a statement about multiple things, e.g. a statement is made about screen readers, plural, and you only tested with #VoiceOver (it's always VoiceOver). Beyond posting on the web-a11y Slack, how do you propose testing more broadly, if you plan to at all?
3. Possibly the most critical at all: is this question worth its overheads? If answering it conclusively would require me to test ten screen readers with 45 speech engines, or seven browsers with 52 permutations of CSS properties, maybe following the advice is "cheaper" than determining whether the advice is still completely relevant.

Important disclaimer: this relates specifically to cases where following the advice would not actively make things worse for users.

TL;DR: when you know doing a thing won't make things bad, doing the thing is usually quicker than evaluating whether not doing the thing is also bad.

jscholes, 1 month ago to accessibility

If you're wondering, an appropriate response to someone posting about their #accessibility issues with a product is not to point out that the maker of the product considers it to be #accessible.

jscholes, 2 months ago to iOS

Completely bewildered by the #VoiceDream subscription announcement. The blog post links to #Stripe for making a subscription payment, but that's not how subscriptions to #iOS apps are usually managed. Meanwhile, I can't see anything in the app itself about an account, #AppStore purchases, or subscriptions. If I pay through Stripe today, am I supposed to assume that at some point, the iOS app will be updated to respect that new subscription?

jscholes, 5 days ago to accessibility

#Accessibility tip: if sharing an image of text on social media along with a link to some original source, that link is a lot easier for people to reach if you place it directly in the post instead of the image's alt text.

jscholes, 2 months ago to accessibility

PSA: #accessibility is pronounced with an "ack" at the beginning. There is no such thing as "ass-ess-ability".

jscholes, 1 month ago to random

#VoiceDream apparently now has beta Kindle support in the main app, i.e. a beta version isn't required. There are reports on the mailing list that you need to be a subscriber to see it, that there should be a "Kindle beta" option in the "Settings" menu, and that you can't lock the screen or background the app while reading a Kindle book. I subscribed and updated the app, but it isn't showing up for me, so I don't know any more than that.

jscholes, 2 months ago to random

Quote from Kishin Manglani on the #VoiceDream mailing list:

"Following our recent announcement to transition #VoiceDream to a subscription, we received an overwhelming response from thousands in our community. Your feedback, along with the impactful stories shared about Voice Dream being a pivotal part of your daily lives, has led us to reverse this change.

We will continue to provide access to the app's existing features at no additional cost.

As we continue developing Voice Dream, some new features may be offered as part of a subscription, but the current capabilities will remain free to those who have already purchased Voice Dream.

For those who have already moved to a subscription, it's no longer necessary to continue using the app. You may cancel your subscription, but we welcome you to keep it active to support ongoing development."

/unquote.

Original source (login required): https://groups.io/g/Voice-Dream/message/116

talon, 1 month ago to random

Hey if Sonos can just up and screw their UI then I can just up and decide to never use them for future speakers. Time to check the resale value of this garbage in case they can't fix the UI accessibility like yesterday.