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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4
    Aug 13, 2026, 4:41 PM

    Like, I don't think we necessarily have to go all the way back to the 2G-era(??) "plain text and menus" model. I actually think it would be quite cool and useful to support things like LaTeX formulas and images, and you can do that even on the lower-power chips these days, in a way too simple to confuse screen readers (although whether they can keep up with audio synthesis is another question - I remember seeing @freya once rail against ESP32s as an accessibility pothole, and I suspected it was a synthesis performance problem but was too intimidated to ask!).

    But like. "Dumb phone made in the last 5 years" is probably a good reference point for an intentionally pruned feature set for basic respectful web browsing. And then other more "behavioral" transformers can vary from simple to advanced to cover a wide range of use cases.

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Replies

  • MaddieM4MaddieM4
    Aug 13, 2026, 4:46 PM

    Also, there's always this divide where devs feel pressure to Add! More! Features! For the users!

    And as a user, but possibly an atypical one, I tend to gravitate towards simplicity and performance.

    So one of the coolest outcomes we might get out of having multiple different viable transformer plugins (at different levels of complexity/feature richness) that can work on the same data schema, is actually getting to see what people prefer when given a genuine choice.

    I suspect the answer is going to be some kind of "simplest thing that gets my needs done, but no simpler." Which varies from person to person of course.

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  • Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 (cringe EU-brained military girl)freya@highenergymagic.net
    Aug 13, 2026, 9:13 PM

    @MaddieM4 the problem with ESP32s is that generally, they don't have enough *structure*. It's not just that they can't run a speech synthesizer, it's that..... a screenreader needs to be a component of an *OS*, that tracks keyboard focus, introspects the accessibility tree, has a whole screenreader keyboard command layer, and that needs to be * *common*. Nuance Talks worked on every Nokia S60 phone because they ran the same OS, with the same UI framework. This is not the case for ESP32 things, they don't have a common OS, and UI systems on those invollve "paint some pixels to a screen. done"

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4
    Aug 13, 2026, 9:25 PM

    @freya that makes total sense. So it's more the cultural problem in the hobbyist scene, which is associating the ESP32 as a symbol of "fuck you I got mine" attitudes towards features, and lack of common infrastructure to make accessibility implicit. That's both more and less dire than I was expecting.

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  • Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 (cringe EU-brained military girl)freya@highenergymagic.net
    Aug 13, 2026, 9:30 PM

    @MaddieM4 precisely. the hobbiest scene is terrified of structure, of engineering, and terrified of.... there seems to be this *fear* of something looking too much like a finished product. everything has to have the debug button and the exposed pins and the 3d printed case, mostly because the hacker *aesthetic* is important to them. This annoys me, greatly, as a UX person, because these people are the same dipshits *upset* that more people aren't using their shit. Well yes, if your device has no localisation/internationalisation, no accessibility, no user friendlyness, and calls itself something like a "terminal" or a "deck" or a "platform", you're selecting for only the same hacker types that made it. I in fact am planning to create a mesh (LoRa) communication device that's modeled on finished products, namely, Nokia S60 phones. the setup wizard will be.... not "what coding rate and spreading factor do you use", but "Hello! What is your language? Where are you located? What city? What time is it? What is your name? Please set a pin. Please wait while your device scans for networks in your area...."

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  • MaddieM4MaddieM4
    Aug 13, 2026, 10:47 PM

    @freya I am really looking forward to seeing that project evolve and succeed. I think it has a lot more to give the world than... well, let's call the decks what they are, the spirit of /r/unixporn as translated into the domain of novelty embedded hardware.

    I don't hate those things for what they are, but they don't really have anywhere to go, and often don't have anything to say. They're just aesthetic revelry. When the party's over, you sweep up the confetti and you put the new toy on the shelf behind your desk chair, and eventually dust it off when you need to box it up for your next out-of-state move. It's a gift to yourself, and only a little gesture at being a gift to anyone else.

    Products that are gifts for the people, are much more like what you're doing.

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