Probably will not be around much this weekend. Got a lot going on with work and family stuff. Check back in with you all around Tuesday.

[Forum Topic] From FruitPot to FruitPot Adventures – A new free and accessible adventure game! https://www.applevis.com/forum/developer-announcements/fruitpot-fruitpot-adventures-new-free-accessible-adventure-game?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Morning friends.

Great news, Tina Christians' Christmas album, Raise a Glass, will be released a week today and has just now been uploaded to the distribution service.

If any internet stations wish to receive a couple of tracks for airplay, please drop me a private message, and we will sort you out.

Accessible electronic braille dictionary: here's a message I posted to a list I am on. Perhaps those with braille displays may find it helpful. I know this is a public domain dictionary that people can edit, but hey, it's a possibility. See the following message: Hi, all. I have been looking for an accessible dictionary that I can load onto my Braille display, including the Monarch and Brailliant BI X models. I was checking out the offerings on SeeingHands.org website. Wiktionary is there in various versions, file sizes and Braille tables. I know anyone can edit the dictionary, but hey, it's a great source! I found the 10 MB files in grade 2 UEB took roughly about a minute or so to open on my Monarch. However, the 2MB files took about 10 seconds to open. Each file's name has the beginning and ending word for that dictionary file. There are 91 or so files. If you'd like other formats like ePub, BRL, etc., they are available. Here's the link to the Wiktionary Concise and its options. Thanks to Seeing Hands for making this available!
Https://projects.seeinghands.org/dictionary/en/en-wiktionary_concise

Now I am not normally big into Autobiographies or true factual stuff, but I must say I am enjoying The music of Silence by Andrea Bocelli it's good

For those who are into 3d printing, this guy made an accessible slicer interface that works with Creality print, Orka slicer, prusa slicer, and Bambu studeo. It's designed for blind folks to be able to slice prints independently. https://github.com/Accessible3D-Edis/AccessSlice #3dprinting

First 12-ish hours with the iPhone duo:
1. It has some very strange, seemingly mandatory noise reduction on microphones when recording in stereo. Haven't found out a way to turn it off yet.
2. A current iOs bug prevents Braille Screen input to flip to landscape orientation with the port being on the left when the device is open.
3. Having come from the Pro Max line of devices, I am not at all bothered by the weight.
4. Explore by touch, which is my primary way of using the phone on the big screen is gorgeous.
5. Most apps look fine with Voiceover. Some old apps such as dystopia are squished in the middle of the screen.
will thread my random ob servations here as I go.

If you use Clipman for iOS I'd appreciate a rating. Not a review, not a donation, just a quick press of the star thing if you're so inclined. It does help to show it to more people, then fewer people would email themselves one-line messages they need to shuttle from one place to another, you know?

so #Earshot 1.2.5 just released in the App Store! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/earshot-podcasts/id6770760602 or search in your app store if out of the US!

2 and a half years in, and I still love AI for simply asking a question or creating a prompt, having an interactive experience, voice or text, and getting voice or text back. How AI reaches into GUIs for me and helps me out. How I create useful tools for myself.

These days I'm deep, deep in Claude world! I've built a local second brain with it: a register of nearly 2,000 facts about my life, a voice profile checked against emails I've actually sent, and separate chats that each know their own part of my life. Under that there's over 40 scripts, 10 custom skills, and 15 hooks I call gates, which check Claude's work before it reaches me. One stops it stating a fact about me it hasn't looked up, one stops visual instructions like "cook until golden brown", one catches disability used as a metaphor, and one stops it telling me it can't do something before it's actually tried. So I'm not explaining myself over and over.

Every morning at half eight a brief lands in my inbox, written for my screen reader: my calendar for today and tomorrow, anything due or overdue, replies I've been waiting on by email or LinkedIn, new invitations and messages, job leads twice a week, and a heads-up if anything in my setup has broken. I've also a live guide to my Canadian PR application, where every fact carries where it came from and the date it was checked, and it gets updated after every session.

Just this past while it's built me a plugin that makes Discord usable with VoiceOver after four years of me struggling with it, pulled a QR code out of a screenshot when my laptop screen was broken, built Windows 11 onto a 2012 MacBook Pro over the network, put Linux on an old HP laptop without a USB stick so I can reach it from anywhere over Tailscale with Orca talking, and read my dog's vet report to me in full the morning it arrived. It turned a Kindle book I'd bought, with no audiobook out there, into one, chapter by chapter, in a voice I picked myself. And it rebuilt the official CPACC Body of Knowledge ePub so its 94 bold lines became 277 proper headings I can move through.

Can I do it without AI? Mostly, until I come across an A11Y barrier that, no matter what OS or screen reader I use, I can't get past. I could jump through the hundreds of hoops like I've done when working in IT, under pressure, under the gun of discrimination, and feeling not always like a colleague but a pain in the arse disabled person. But now, with sore fingers, Long Covid brain fog and being totally Blind, I don't have to.

No doubt there's ethical and moral issues with AI to be worked on. But there's always been issues with every new tech, and these are just different ones. Fast evolving, yup, but there's always bloody something, ya know?

#Accessibility #Blind #AI

TIL that Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who, once bribed a stagehand to fill his bass drum with gunpowder before a show. He then proceeded to detonate it on stage during the show's finale, scorching Pete Townshend's hair and embedding a piece of shattered cymbal in his own arm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Moon#Destroying_instruments_and_other_stunts
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1xoz4w7/til_that_keith_moon_the_drummer_of_the_who_once/

I have gotten BARD audiobooks to play on my Mac. There is no BARD client for macOS, and the BARD app in the App Store is not marked as macOS compatible, so normally it shouldn't work. However, I used ipatool to download the BARD Mobile IPA from the App Store, then I used the UnfairPlay IPA decryption tool on it, specifically its convert-ipa-macos command which marks iOS apps as compatible with macOS while retaining the encryption and code-signing. This let the IPA install when I opened it, and after that I could open the BARD Mobile app from Applications or from Spotlight, and I could log in and download and play books. I didn't even have to disable SIP or patch the app or anything like that, and apparently the device ID it sends to NLS (which is based on different hardware and OS information) was accepted, even though its a Mac and not an iPhone or iPad. I could have ran BARD Express in Parallels or BARD Mobile in AAE instead, but I like being able to use the play/pause button on my keyboard to control playback no matter what I am doing, and this is lighter than having to have a full VM or emulator running just to play BARD books.

I (with the help of a friend) managed to convince another friend to try switching from #Codex to #Claude. And it's not the first time when I hear it's a huge boost, quite another experience. Try Claude, if you haven't yet: pay $20 for a month or drop me a DM, I'll share my subscription (there is an official way of sharing a week of subscription, nothing fishy or illegal). Codex is a good thing for code reviews, finding hard-to-pinpoint bugs, race conditions, such things. But for solving complex tasks… you'll see the difference straight away, and when you start using skills, it's yet another mega boost. #AI #AIAssistedCoding

The fascinating world of Japanese train melodies: https://youtu.be/-KxQIEhsFQk?is=PUE68ZBoRVuHSY9Z

I made CallKeeper, a little Windows app for saving, finding, and opening Zoom and Microsoft Teams links. I built it with screen reader and keyboard users in mind, and it can import a whole list of meetings from a CSV file.

This is my first crack at making a Windows program, so go easy on me! I’d love to hear what you think.

https://github.com/TarHeelBel/tarheelbel.GitHub.io/releases/download/v1.0.0/CallKeeper_1.0.0_Windows.zip

#Accessibility #ScreenReader #Windows

Well, Logic 13 came out today and to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. The new browser is well designed and easy to use, but other than that the GUI is still a buggy mess with VoiceOver, possibly even worse than before.

Twice now I've been unable to go through the menu bar, randomly had an issue where none of my key commands were getting through to the UI, and I couldn't even quit Logic, automation is still very difficult, flex time and pitch are inaccessible, Sampler, Quick Sampler, and Alchemy are all inaccessible to create your own sounds from scratch, I could go on. It seems like I'm not the only one feeling frustrated, even cited users are complaining about how the UI looks, and when compared to other DAWs, Apple just seems out of touch with what musicians actually need. Goes without saying but I'll be sticking with Ableton / Reaper. Apple, do better.

JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion 2027 are now available. Highlights include the new Vispero Companion in JAWS, part of the Early Adopter Program and available in the US only, JAWS support for MuseScore, and Photo Tracking in ZoomText and Fusion, which moves the magnified view from one object in an image to the next.

Learn more and download JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion 2027: https://training.vispero.com/download-jaws-zoomtext-and-fusion-2027/

#JAWS #ZoomText #Fusion

I ordered coffee the other day, and the barrista asked for my name.

I said, " Some people call me the space cowboy.

Some people call me the gangster of love. "

And went and sat down.

A few seconds later.

"Coffee for Maurice."

QuickMail 0.8.68 is out. This build has a fix for message list focus issues. Focus should not move when mail is processed.

https://github.com/kellylford/QuickMail/releases/tag/v0.8.68

TIL that Scatman John rose to global fame at age 53 with his massive hit single “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop). He had a severe, lifelong stutter that caused deep childhood trauma and social isolation. He wrote the song to inspire and encourage children who suffer from a stutter like he did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatman_(Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)
#til #todayilearned
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1xoiurx/til_that_scatman_john_rose_to_global_fame_at_age/