Devin Prater @devinprater@blind.lol
Accessibility drives me. (Wow that felt weird to write) blogger, gamer (sometimes), reader, and always coming up with stupid jokes and wordplay. I had to leave my old account because storage got full and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Ah well.
Joined Nov 2022
Devin Prater
boosted
A #feature #idea for #Mastodon just popped into my head and I wanted to run it past more experienced users and developers before considering an Issue on Github: guest posts on local instances where an user of one instance could drop an occasional guest toot onto another instance's local timeline. In my head it makes sense as in the real world you're fine to visit other people's homes and even stay with them, provided you abide by their house rules. Methods of keeping things clean could include: manual approval, a list of authorized users or instances and inclusion of a codeword hashtag which is unique to each instance that confirms the acceptance of the rules under which a guest posting can occur. Any flaws in my plan?
Devin Prater
boosted
So now some Android users are going to the cell carriers about all this. It's really sad, and there is blame to share among all companies, especially Nuance and the split off TTS company who could have open sourced Eloquence 10 years ago. But Apple now has the voice, no matter how bad it sounds and how unconfigurable it is. Android won't for much longer at all, and new users can't buy it. I'm sure there are cracks though.
Meanwhile, CodeFactory could be sitting there supporting Eloquence for new Android versions, maybe with the awesome dictionary files to improve pronounciations, and future-proofing it for 64-bit and Android 14. But nope. If Voxin on Linux can do this, and Apple can do it, I'm sure CodeFactory can. The Apple a11y team isn't *that* big.
Granted, this is new, but they leaned their argument that Google couldn't possible get a license for Eloquence on Android, because Apple had to get it because they're the supposedly only people that can make voices for iOS. Granted, both companies could have had Eloquence, the new Vocalizer voices, and so on for years, and I'm sure Apple pushed all that through because Ukrainian voices, but the point is, they have the voices. Google doesn't.
I've not listened to have much in the last year or so, but tech reviewers should be diving deep into all available operating systems, to better understand what is possible, and push companies to actually compete. Like the blind android users, they didn't know about iOS 16 allowing people to make new voices for iPhones.
I've been thinking about tech commentators like Rene Richy, (spelling) who, memorably for me, said that Dolby Atmos couldn't be put on iPhones, when it's been on Android phones for a few years at that point. He like does this "you poor viewers just don't know about tech" laugh, and says it's not possible. And then on the iPhone 11, boom, spatial audio.
Devin Prater
boosted
@freakyfwoof Love that I currently have 3 twitters, 4 mastodons, Telegram and a couple other odds and ends, one of my home buffers having upwards of 700K items in, and not using more than 200 megs of RAM and the app is just as responsive as if I had no items at all. @joshms has done a great job with memory/resource management 😁
My goodness! Does no podcastplayer on iOS support chapters?
Devin Prater
boosted
Hey amateur radio operators out there looking for some help. If life will stop throwing me into a tailspin, ha, doubt that I'm trying to get more involved. Can someone point me into documentation to read to set up an Openspot 3 and a clear node? Both those things will be set up with the Radioddity GD-77. Also trying to figure out repeater phone if someone can help there. I don't think I have it set up right. 73 WE8MAY
Devin Prater
boosted
I can’t believe I am actually following people who are into photography. They add such vivid image descriptions to their pictures, I’m really enjoying visualising the images.
I’ve seen more image descriptions on here than I ever did on Twitter. Let’s hope the new arrivals adopt the habit as well. It makes Mastodon such an enjoyable forum for browsing. Thank you all for those descriptions.
Wonder if Hammerspoon can pipe VoiceOver speech through, say, that translation thing Apple has now? That'd be cool, and I think offline. Unless Translate isn't on the Mac yet.
Devin Prater
boosted
Strong language, rant, anger.
@Kaliah Okay so, as a braille user, I will say that Braille is very useful. Not knowing it is a thing nobody should allow their kids. But forcing it on people is a no no for me. that's unacceptable.
So for the Mac users, do y'all have an accessible way to read Kindle books on the Mac? An Intel Mac?
Devin Prater
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I really wish that the output device selection on Mac OS 13 was a menu instead of a table. If there's a device that's not working, how do you go past it with VoiceOver?
Devin Prater
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so, i’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions or have dealt with this. so i’m an iphone user and it seems like some of the bugs with the system get worse and worse, like i don’t get sounds for my notifications for texts most times, sometimes i get sounds when something happens on here, i’ve restarted my phone, did the network settings thing, and i’m just getting fed up with not having sounds go off when they should, because at this point, what’s the point of turning notifications on when you first download an app?
Devin Prater
boosted
Social Audio Description just took on a Black writer and a Black narrator, so, if you need audio description, work with them so they can give the new folk some work! Samples here https://adcomrade.wordpress.com/samples/ #Movie #Movies #TV #film #Films #Filmmaking
Devin Prater
boosted
Education, rant.
@TheQuinbox As long as schools aren't judged on their performance, nothing is going to change. Teachers, principals and the people in charge of curriculums don't get richer by teaching kids useful stuff, so they don't teach kids useful stuff. This is why over regulated sectors are so bad.
Devin Prater
boosted
Strong language, rant, anger.
Asked around about this from a former special needs teacher and some curent ones.
Got the same reply, and this may just be one school in the UK, but at least in this instance, I was highly pissed off to find out that the old ways of teaching/thinking are still very much alive and deserveto die in a fire. I was told, to my face, by n NTA, that oh we don't let the blind students use the school supplied tablets, because we aren't trained to use them and anyway what blind student would want to use them.
These are, by the way, tablets that are hooked into the school network, that are essentially a replacement for textbooks and pens and paper or laptops, and are a part of the school day. I knew the tablet model and found where it had a screen reader and headphone jack.
The teacher's response was oh, but how do I know the student's not listen to music or cheating in a test. FMFL. FFS, the world's going digital. Take your motherfucking god damned ancient thinking and shove it. This is 2022, not 1922!
I'm all for blind students using what works for them and the school. FUck being forced to use technology that someone,somewhere, in the school mandates just because they are blind. The tablets in this case, they have AT tech, they have headphone jacks so it's not like the tablet speaking is disturbing other students. I'd argue a note taker or brailler is a shitload more disturbing to students trying to fucking concentrate than a tablet you just tap on or type on or upload stuff to the school network and rive from...>.<
When will people fucking learn? Apparently, never, at least in my neice's high school...I know for a fact they've had blind students before, I know for a fact, because 20 years ago I ws sharing taxis with the students from that school, that they got on just fine with the tech they had. But nooooo, the thinking is stuck in the late 90s!
Hmm, when I search for someone on mastodon.social to follow them, I get "Error during search: Request failed: 500". This is in Pinafore.
Accessibility drives me. (Wow that felt weird to write) blogger, gamer (sometimes), reader, and always coming up with stupid jokes and wordplay. I had to leave my old account because storage got full and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Ah well.
Joined Nov 2022
