my dad is blind.

he used to use yahoo! chat and he REALLY enjoyed the voice chat feature. i think it's because it reminded him of party lines from his younger days. anyway he did honestly develop relationships with some of the people on that platform and when yahoo! shut down their chat platform, a diaspora happened. he followed some of them to paltalk.

i doubt most blind people have ever even tried paltalk: 10 years ago they started pushing an interface that seems actively hostile to screenreaders and keyboard navigation. more recently (the last year or maybe two), they totally disabled their "classic" interface and i got to learn just how hostile the new interface is to accessibility software. its actually impossible for him to use his microphone or read the text that appears in the text chat. this puts him in the awkward position of being able to listen to others and type out responses or quips (slowly, but he's getting quicker)

i am quite adept at keyboard based navigation as a

I'm honestly not sure what I'm hoping to do with this post. Maybe just see if others have had similar experiences. I've needed glasses my whole life, ever since I was a little kid, and my terrible eyesight has always been a running gag. I thought it was normal for my eyes to hurt all the time and my sight to get blurry and in general to just have a hard time seeing even with my glasses. Turns out... that's not normal. Yesterday I had a vision test again and my eyes went from a -9 to a -9.5 in 5 months. They're referring me to an optometrist to see why my eyes are getting worse in such a short time. They also used that 20/200 vision test card on me which was a new one. My friends have been encouraging me to use visual aids and such but I get nervous because it doesn't feel like it's bad enough to count. I don't know if I count as visually disabled. Logically I know my eyesight has always affected me; I'm just so used to it at this point. I'm not sure how to feel about any of this.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7716703

Earlier this month I logged on to a Zoom webinar that had chat enabled. The meeting had a large attendance. The chat quickly filled up with dozens of people sharing their city or country, and later commenting on technical problems.

Some screen reader users had a difficult experience due to the heavy use of the chat. Here are three bits of feedback:

What is your opinion on th

An interesting new feature that I've only just noticed has been added to @MonaApp:

Adding an image from your Photos library to which you have already added a Caption (in Photos) automatically adds that caption as your image description/alt-text in Mona.

The video shows this in action (nb the centre bit where I locate the photo has been edited to remove personal content).

Mona #MonaApp #Accessibilty #ImageDescription #AltText #iOS #macOS @main

My apologies for neglecting to post this here earlier.

We are very pleased to announce that version 2023.2 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. We encourage all users to upgrade to this version.

For those on NVDA 2023.2rc1 looking for an update, we'd like to encourage you to stay on that build, and be the first to trial new features! Find out more here: https://nvda.groups.io/g/nvda/message/

NVDA 2023.2 introduces the Add-on Store, new braille features, commands, & display support, new input gestures for OCR & flattened object navigation & much more!

Please visit https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2023-2/ for the full info, & to download the new version! #NVDA #ScreenReader #Accessibility #A11y

This post should take about two minutes for most screenreaders to get through. If you feel like that's too long, you can just skip the post's body and only answer the question in the title. I'm not your mom.

Introductory section

I was recently daydreaming some more about an idea for a single-player first-person shooter game that's been bouncing around in my head for the past three years, and I was struck with the thought that blind and visually impaired folks don't have many accessible games. So I wrote down a few ideas for how this daydream game could be accessible, and then I shared these thoughts on social media... And then somebody replied that "my heart was in a good place" but that it was "impossible" to make blind-accessible first-person shooters in any way that would be "fun" and allow people to "play well".

And it's like... I had tried to do my research on how blind and visually impaired folks already play video games today, what the community wants, and what accessibilit

I started taking a Linux course which recommends creating a virtual machine using Oracle Virtual Box. However this app doesn't seem accessible, either with Jaws or NVDA. Has anyone found a solution? Is VMWare any better?

Hi everyone,

The NVDA 2023.2 Release Candidate is now available. We encourage all users to download this RC and provide feedback. Unless any critical bugs are found, this will be identical to the final 2023.2 release.

Highlights This release introduces the Add-on Store to replace the Add-ons Manager. In the Add-on Store you can browse, search, install and update community add-ons. You can now manually override incompatibility issues with outdated add-ons at your own risk.

There are new braille features, commands, and display support. There are also new input gestures for OCR and flattened object navigation. Navigating and reporting formatting in Microsoft Office is improved.

There are many bug fixes, particularly for braille, Microsoft Office, web browsers and Windows 11.

eSpeak-NG, LibLouis braille translator, and Unicode CLDR have been updated.

Read more and download from: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2023-2rc1/

This is actually surprisingly good. The ophthalmologist goes into some very common and relevant topics, like the difference between an ophthalmologist, optometrist and optician, what “legally blind” means, different causes of blindness…

I can see myself recommending this video for a lot of general questions.

As a blind man, I know I am usually attracted to the sound of a woman's voice. It's usually just the way they say a specific word or syllable, like "uh huh". However I find this almost never happens with people in the "real world". It only happens with voice actors, other performers, and people who are completely unavailable. I know that sighted people are usually attracted to one another by a person's physical appearance, at least initially. For blind people, attraction is based on voice or touch, and touch is a big no-no most of the time. The one time I dated a woman who was blind, we were touching each other toward the end of our first date, which was quite an eye-opener, figuratively speaking. Online dating has become so visual that I've all but abandoned it. I have felt starved for arousal as someone who lives on my own because of this. Have any other blind people found they rarely feel attraction in the real world?

I figured I should share some of my thoughts on this. Think what you will about my perspective or decisions and formulate your own - we should all get to act on our values.

FYI: I’ve got RP, with some very narrow, but still decent, central vision. But I need a white cane to get around safely. I’ve got two questions about people trying to help me get around. I live in the US:

Question one: when someone offers to guide me, I know the normal procedure is to grab one of their elbows. But I really prefer to put my hand on their shoulder, so I usually ask if that’s OK. Is there any advantage to me to using the elbow instead?

Question two: I’ve had several experiences when people don’t offer to help, but just grab me and push or pull. Not sure how to react, since they’re really just trying to help, but I don’t understand why anyone would do that without asking if it’s ok with me first

Hi everyone, In-Process for the 11th August is out, featuring all the news on NVDA 2023.2 Beta 2, tips on reporting errors in NVDA, some thoughts on reporting accessibility issues on other programs, and NV Access get even more social! All in: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/in-process-11th-august-2023/ #NVDA #ScreenReader #A11y #bug

Wordvoyance is finally released worldwide and supports VoiceOver and TalkBack on mobile. It's the world's first scrabble app that blind and sighted people can play together. No ads, and includes single player and multiplayer game modes.

Download for iOS

Download for Android

It's been an honor, and a fun one, to serve this community. Please enjoy!

Pro tip: set your home instance, so links open there directly and you can subscribe from the sidebar. It’s possible to run into errors if the server doesn’t know the other one, but those should be resolved by refreshing.

Hi everyone,

NVDA 2023.2 Beta 2 is now available for testing. Including fixes to the add-on store, translation updates, fixes for EuroBraille displays, Braille, Eloquence, Windows Mail, and more! Read all the updates and download the new beta from: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2023-2beta2/ As always, do please report any issues via GitHub.

https://forum.audiogames.net/post/791060/#p791060

For those who haven't played A Hero's Call, it's an adventure RPG audio game with full voice acting, high quality binaural audio, several hours of gameplay, and dozens of quests. If you haven't gotten to play it before this, now you can!

For those who already have a copy, this new version includes: No waiting for the game to load or needing to log in. Changes to the audio system may make it possible for those who previously got errors when running the game to finally play! Bonus kickstarter backer only items now available for everyone! And all language translations now included in the download.

To transfer your old saves and settings: Go to your old AHC folder, then find the “data for rpg” subfolder. In that you will find the Saved Games and Settings folders. Copy them, then paste into the same spots in your new game’s directory, choosing to replace existing files at the prompt.

Hi, folks:

The data center where the server for rblind.com lives has informed me that they're planning some downtime in order to improve the network infrastructure. The downtime is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 11, between 9 AM and 3 PM eastern, and is expected to last a maximum of two hours. During that time, rblind.com may be unavailable. However, our sister website will remain up, containing information about our Discord, our Reddit, and this Lemmy. Should something go wrong, and the downtime last longer than expected, we will post updates and announcements there.