Can Model Context Protocol (MCP) have accessibility benefits for humans with disabilities, beyond just enabling AI? I built a tool we can use to find out!
stuff.interfree.ca/2026/10/21/mcp-accessibility.html
Halloween Sale has started, with one brand new game!
Behind Closed Doors is a card audiogame that I came up with last week Sunday.
Right now, it is being bundled with two other games until November 4th.
Haunted Party: $6.99 ($3.49).
Kaskade: $7.99 ($3.99).
Behind Closed Doors: $6.25 ($3.12).
total: $21.23.
Sale Price: $10.60.
Get it here:
https://itch.io/s/207635/haunted-bundle
ssi263-speech 0.8.5 is out, and it's a great one!
A new voice: GW Micro's Sounding Board, running its own DOS drivers.
The Blazie emulator now runs the Braille 'n Speak 640, with the first Polish Braille 'n Speak firmware we've found, plus the double-speed upgrade, one-handed mode and Restart the unit. Android gets its own Blazie Engineering unit screen, and Export to WAV.
The big one for everyday use: Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Russian, Korean and the other Braille Lite languages that never signal they're done no longer pause a full second after everything they say. Lists and dialogs feel snappy now, in NVDA, TalkBack and VoiceOver alike. In NVDA, Slovak is now simply a language of the Braille Lite 2000.
The Accent's volume wobble is (mostly) gone too, and the chip's pitch glides follow a law measured on a real SSI-263.
Thank you to everyone who helped: Leo, for two pull requests bringing the Blazie emulator to more BT Speak and BT Braille units, and for the idea of one-handed mode; spacepup, for the SSInger glide reports; grnowak, for his Braille 'n Speak 640's firmware and the board photos behind it; Jake, for the click report; Astra, for reviewing every change; and every tester and listener who sent reports and lent their ears.
NVDA add-on: https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.5/ssi263-speech-0.8.5.nvda-addon
SAPI installer: https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.5/ssi263-sapi-0.8.5-setup.exe
Android APK: https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.5/ssi263-speech-0.8.5.apk
TestFlight (iPhone, iPad, Mac): https://testflight.apple.com/join/cJYhuDUf
Linux, the emulators and everything else: https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/tag/v0.8.5
After many, many many weeks REMSound for Mac is now available. @ednun_p doesn't have a Mac so I worked on it and compiled it.
Have tried to stay fairly faithful to windows but of course some things will differ.
Testing required for a full understanding.
https://github.com/OnjLouis/RemSound-Mac/releases/latest
I like em all but the Victorian English option will absolutely have their head spinning. 😁
#tRumpanzees
Ever been curious to hear what volcanic irruptions actually sound like? Here's a video, also from the YouTube channel of field recordist George Vlad, that details exactly this. I found this last night while I was browsing his work and...wow. Yeah, I would definitely not want to get too close to this, awesome as it sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09c2t_ZHoJw
I wrote about Playboy in braille for Playboy in print https://www.playboy.com/read/the-fight-to-keep-playboy-in-braille
Alright everyone, today’s the day!!!
I’m excited to announce the Flipper Access project, and the first official release of Sonar, my screenreader for Flipper Zero which, as far as I know, makes this device accessible to blind users for the first time ever.
Sonar is built on a customized fork of the Momentum firmware for maximum flexibility. The included install script provides an easy way of copying all that's needed to get this working onto a Flipper, and it is possible to upgrade from the stock firmware to Sonar without any sighted help.
You’ll need a microSD card for the voice pack, a USB cable, and a computer with Python 3.10 or newer.
The install script has been tested extensively on macOS. It should work on Windows and Linux too, but hasn’t been tried there yet, so I’d love to hear how it goes for you. The project readme contains a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to get going, and hopefully it should be a smooth process for all of you wanting to dive in.
Having said that, however, do note that this is highly experimental work and we're at the very beginning of this project. There's hopefully a long and happy road up ahead for Sonar, but there will inevitably be bugs and issues along the way. When that happens, please always feel free to reach out on here, open a GitHub issue, or submit a pull request of your own - I'd truly love to see this become a community effort.
Last but most importantly, have fun! The Flipper Zero is a super nifty, versatile and fun little gadget with lots of tricks up its sleeve, most of which I haven't even had time to explore due to being so focused on getting the screenreader into a shippable state.
If you do decide to pick up one of these now that it can be used accessibly, I'd love to know how you like the experience, any ideas for improvement, cool things you've done with it, and so on.
Sonar is and will always be free. If you’d like to support it, there are links to Patreon and Ko-fi in the readme.
Enjoy!
https://github.com/robin24/flipper-access
#Accessibility #Screenreader #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #IndieDev #FlipperZero
Days after six years of accessibility work finally landed in core, Matt Mullenweg ordered it reverted, and Andrea Fercia's WordPress.org account was briefly banned.
I got the ROM from the ACC RC-85 repeater controller and extracted it's audio to individual wave files at 48 kHz to preserve aliasing like you would get from the hardware, then imported all those files from Finder on my Mac into Reaper. It ... didn't quite put them in any kind of reasonable order, mostly. The result is somewhat amusing, at least to me.
Lol, does anyone remember this?
For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt? We find ourselves at a loss when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt!" Well, thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can now respond in an intellectual way.
Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt.
Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married Miss O. Needeep They had one son, Jack.
... In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deap Schitt and Dip Schitt.
Against her parents' objections, Deap Schitt married her cousin Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. After being married 15 years, Jack and Noe Schitt divorced.
Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and, because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was then known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.
Meanwhile, Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt, and they produced a son with a rather nervous disposition named Chick N. Schitt.
Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt, were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony.
The wedding announcement in the newspaper announced the Schitt-Happens nuptials.
The Schitt-Happens children were Dawg, Byrd, and Hoarse. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride, Pisa Schitt.
Now when someone says, "You don't know Jack Schitt," you can correct them.
Here's an audio demo of my accessibility mod(mod? Script?) for PlaySkool Store running on Windows 98 Second Edition. The game kinda drowns out JAWS a bit and the startup is a little chatty (I'll fix that) so apologies in advance. https://rmbl.io/r/GhFPSzapPEDkhCwxknV7u
Landlord on the phone: just go on in and take whatever you want, feed on whoever you like
Vampire: trying but I can't get in
Landlord: what, but I invited you in
Vampire: yes but I can't come in, you're sure this is your home? Other people seem to live here
Landlord: yes I own it!
Vampire: you own it, but do you live in it?
Landlord: what does that matter? It's mine
Vampire: it's your *property*, it's not your *home*
Landlord: it's mine! who cares if I live in it?!
Vampire: magic law, why do you want me in anyway
Landlord: the tenants are late on rent, I figure this was a cheaper way to get rid of them...
Vampire: yeah this isn't going to work
Landlord: but don't you need to feed?
Vampire: don't worry, I figured out an alternative, thanks for inviting me in
Good old Amazon AI-summarised user reviews:
"Customers find the product works perfectly every time and produces great results. However, the product's durability is concerning as it has exploded multiple times, and customers describe it as absolute rubbish."
Fantastic. 🦬
Deadline extended: EU Commission seeks feedback on #EUKidsAct until 3 December 2026:
→ https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/19418-Child-online-safety-keeping-digital-spaces-accountable-and-trustworthy-EU-Kids-Act-_en
#HaveYourSay
There are already 2327 comments.
Still not discussed enough: „ #AgeVerification in the #Fediverse: How the KIDS Act challenges #Mastodon “ Can/will #Activitypub , apps and instances adapt?
→ https://www.heise.de/en/background/Age-verification-in-the-Fediverse-How-the-KIDS-Act-challenges-Mastodon-11474306.html
Actually I won’t hold my tongue. Elon Musk single handedly killed my company’s most popular and lucrative app overnight without warning. His actions crippled us to the point where we’re still struggling to survive today. As long as he owns Twitter I won’t be back on X.
I don’t care which Apple execs or anyone else who’s on there. I don’t care there are 10x more “people” there than on the Fediverse. Even if it becomes socially acceptable to support Musk’s X I sure won’t.
ssi263-speech 0.8 is out!
The biggest release yet of the emulated SSI-263 (Votrax SC-02) speech chip, running the real units' own firmware.
- One NVDA add-on for every unit: the Braille Lite 2000, the Slovak Braille 'n Speak 2000, the Speak-Out, the Accent SA, the Accent-mini and, new, the Apple II's Mockingboard. It carries over your 0.7 settings and offers to remove the old add-ons.
- The Braille Lite 2000 now speaks 19 languages: 17 new voices, from Arabic and Hungarian to Russian and Turkish, thanks to an anonymous donation of Blazie's language updates. Screen readers switch to them by language.
- The chip sounds closer to the real one: fuller vowels, grittier fricatives, and clean BASIC tones.
- The emulator: every language in its Firmware menu, programs and files loaded straight into flash, Blazie's own firmware update, and a native BT Speak and BT Braille package.
- Android imports every voice at once from an NVDA add-on, and the Apple app is in TestFlight for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Thank you to Astra, the donors, and everyone who tested, reported and listened.
NVDA add-on:
https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.0/ssi263-speech-0.8.0.nvda-addon
SAPI 5 voices:
https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.0/ssi263-sapi-0.8.0-setup.exe
Blazie emulator for Windows:
https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.0/blazie-emu-0.8.0-windows.zip
Android app:
https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/download/v0.8.0/ssi263-speech-0.8.0.apk
https://testflight.apple.com/join/cJYhuDUf
Please find Linux, SSInger and more on the release page:
https://github.com/tgeczy/ssi263-speech/releases/tag/v0.8.0
“The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place.” is probably the single most breathtakingly tone deaf and wildly inaccurate line I have read in tech journalism in literally decades.
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As this bot is using the RSS feed of https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/ it will stop on the same date.
The open internet is dying, bit by bit and it makes me sad. Anyway, thank you for being with us all these years and take care.
https://www.how2shout.com/news/reddit-rss-public-api-shutdown-dates.html