RE: https://mastodon.social/@kellylford/117412472047202694
I was sick this past week. I think it started out as a head cold and turned into a sinus infection. While I was lying around and not feeling like doing anything, I remembered this set of gaems. I played Hearts, Spades and Yueker. It's a wonderful little app, and I highly recommend it for someone looking for some card games you can play by yourself, and you're looking for some time to kill.
I ordered some bendable moss poles today. It's mostly to get my arrowhead plant under control, but I'm also going to see what I can do with my pothos.
@tayarndt One thing I'd like to see at some point is how to get around on the system, e.g. when to use the dock, the desktop, Finder, Mission Control and so on.
RE: https://techopolis.social/@tayarndt/116777569716209983
I got a MacBook Neo at the beginning of April, and I just bought this book. I've already learned a lot in the first chapter, and I highly recommend it.
Is there any phrase scarier to a blind person than "The new and improved app is finally here."
Don’t understand how Pro Lifers can also be pro capital punishment.
Justice Department to allow firing squads for executions in move to ramp up capital punishment https://www.npr.org/2026/04/24/nx-s1-5798990/doj-firing-squads-executions-trump-capital-punishment
I also blaim the Biden and Obama administrations for dragging their feet as well.
Trump administration delays rule aimed at improving disability access in schools https://www.npr.org/2026/04/22/nx-s1-5791680/doj-disability-web-access-delay-schools
I used the Jimmy John's app on my iPhone today to order myself a sandwich at lunch time. I'm really impressed how accessible this app is. It's a little unintuitive at times, but my sighted wife says the same thing. After an order or two more, I'll be able to just fly through it.
I was getting frustrated that I could never get the volume loud enough on my iPhone when I was listening to anything, BARD, SiriusXM, Spotify, ... I also kept getting these messages that my volume had been too high over the last seven days, and I was in danger of damaging my hearing. This didn't make any sense to me since I couldn't get the volume high enough.
Well, I was poking around different settings under sounds and VoiceOver, and I found out that my audio ducking was set to always. Once I changed it back to "when speaking" everything was fine!
Now that it looks like we're done with the freezing weather here in central Texas, I moved my plants back outside. This includes my lemon tree which always gets some yellow leaves whenever I move it inside. It's supposed to rain a bit tomorrow, so it'll be very happy now!
Sometimes I come up with the most obvious ideas! I just used JAWS Picture Smart to read a dialog where JAWS wouldn't read anything but the buttons. After using Picture Smart I knew I wanted to click the "Maybe later" button. Now it seems so obvious, and I'm kicking myself for not having thought about this months if not years ago!
#FreedomScientific #JobAccessWithSpeech #accessibility #a11y
Not long ago, and Microsoft Office upgrade broke screen reader's ability to read tags in One Note. For example, if I insert a to do tag with control+1, JAWS doesn't indicate the tag is there at all. This means I can't see if the to do tag is checked or not. I also can't use other tags like "important". This is one of the main reasons I use One Note, and if this doesn't get fixed, I'll need to look for another note taking solution.
#accessibility #a11y #OneNote #MicrosoftOneNote #MicrosoftOffice #microsoft365
I've been using the new Microsoft Outlook for a while, and although it was usable and had some nice features, it was never quite as accessible as I was hearing it was from other blind users. I went back and reviewed chapter 4 of David Kingsbury's book, Windows Screenreader Primer from the Carroll Center for the Blind, and changing the following setting made all of the difference! 😎
In the view group, I went into the Reading pane menu and checked the Popout only item.
I just realized that Mona 7 (Mona) is a fork of Mona 6 (Mona Classic) and not an upgrade. Looks like the main difference is the business model. The feature set seems pretty similar now but future development will be going into Mona 7. Do I have that right?
I'm thinking I'll sick with Mona Classic for now, since I did make a one time payment for it and switch to Mona 7 once the new enhancements start showing up. I do want to support the developer for placing such an emphasis on accessibility and VoiceOver support.
My son got me the video game The Vail for Christmas. It's designed for both the sighted and the blind, and therefore, it's completely accessible. It has an interesting story, great acting and a positive portrayal of blindness. I'm really enjoying it even though I'm not much into gaming.
The Vale: Shadow of the Crown
https://falling-squirrel.itch.io/the-vale
I can never remember the braille symbol for the hash tag, but Perplexity just came to the rescue. I find I'm using AI more and more lately.
#accessibility #a11y #braille
So the airlines want to ask the Whitehouse to roll back regulations requiring the airlines to accommodate disabled travelers. I don't think this has to do with dismantling DEIA programs, I think it's more about just not caring about anyone but able bodied people. #accessibility https://overcast.fm/+AA9T3n-hKI4
As the Trump Whitehouse is having the DOJ drop civil
rights cases against those who discriminate against the trans community, how long before DOJ stops enforcing other civil rights laws like the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act. If anyone doesn't have civil rights then none of us do. #CivilRights #Accessibility https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298679/eeoc-gender-discrimination-case-trump-order
At work and at home, when I want to include a date in a file name, like when I have to send in a status report every week, I always use the format YYYYMMDD. That's four Y's for the year, two M's for the month and two D's for the day, like 20250218. This means the files are always sorted from oldest to newest. Sometimes it's hard to pick out those numbers as my screen reader is reading the file names though.
Well the other day I started adding some characters to separate the year, month and day, like the dash or the slash. They weren't satisfactory though. I then realized that I'm doing this for myself, and I don't care how it's going to look to a sighted user. After I realized this, I quickly settled on using commas! So for example, the status report I compiled today has 2025,02,18 in the name of the file. The comma causes the screen reader to pause a beat between each set of numbers. I'm very pleased with myself! 😎