André Polykanine

> I WAS USING THE COMPUTER AT THE SPEED OF SPEECH, NOT AT THE SPEED OF MY DISABILITY.

oh, man.. It amazes me how many people don't have vision (not literally). Even StarTrek in 70 already was onto something. "Computer, do X". And we finally almost there! You finally can have computer w/out keyboard, just tell it in plain human language what you want it to do. And then we have many haters, who so afraid to lose their only thing they can do in life, I mean boring job that you easily can replace by automation

AI *is* the new wheel.. new steam engine.. embrace for earth shaking changes. New power tool is already useful for helping people to see and describe, to translate!! I admit, sometimes it does not perfect job, but now you can communicate to people in many, many languages w/out even learning or booking a real human translator, just use this amazing thing

Sad part is competition between all countries, because we still fighting for shitty reasons. Imagine if all this effort went into one single development for humanity

@Robinzz3

Happy Back To Hogwarts Day!

This is where it all began…

https://stories.jkrowling.com/j-k-rowling-celebrates-back-to-hogwarts-with-the-story-that-started-it-all/

HAVE I BROKEN YOU? 💎

Something happened this morning that completely blew me away.

I’m disabled; typing is difficult. For years, the keyboard has determined how quickly I can participate online. I generally avoided social media because typing was so laboriously slow. It was simply easier not to participate.

Then something changed.

ChatGPT suddenly appeared in a whole new arrangement. The blue orb was now bouncing just above the text input field at the bottom of the screen, and I could also see the actual typed words GPT and I were speaking as we spoke them.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening and, thinking out loud, I actually said, “Have I broken you?”

I hadn’t, apparently.

Then GPT calmly explained the new interface to me as though it were a perfectly ordinary change. But for me, it was anything but. I was talking by voice and reading the conversation as streaming text, without typing anything.

Then the penny dropped.

I WAS USING THE COMPUTER AT THE SPEED OF SPEECH,
NOT AT THE SPEED OF MY DISABILITY.

That is an accessibility story worth talking about. For decades, humans have had to adapt to computers: keyboards, mice, menus and software. Now the computer is beginning to adapt to us.

For millions and millions of people with disabilities all around the world, AI isn’t just a clever chatbot or productivity tool. It can mean participating freely online without the machinery getting in the way.

Accessibility shouldn’t be a footnote in the AI story. It should be one of the headlines.

@3goodthings
@DigitalCoup
@meditation
@economics_that_works
@disability
@pwd
@joinin

#Accessibility #Disability #AssistiveTechnology #VoiceTechnology #AI #people #humanRights #leadership #OpenAI

@radio1975 Yummy! We had fish with cauliflower.

#Microsoft keeps breaking #Accessibility in #windowsForms. Many of you can notice that their menus are not native menus anymore, but I was today years old when I noticed that their list view is also something else. With NVDA it reads as "table" (which it should not), and only the first column is read. I checked, it ships in SIC! and nobody told me (probably because nobody knew there are other columns). I'm crafting a solution right now, but it's a crutch of course. I don't want to go away from WinForms because other #CSharp solutions are even worse accessibility-wise. It seems, the only viable way to cook apps is wxDragon now, but it's Rust which… is syntactically very specific, at least for me. Sigh. #Blind

A recent Microsoft update is changing how accessibility support is enabled for applications that use certain Microsoft web technologies. As a result, JAWS may not receive the information it needs from these applications, causing some features to provide no speech or braille. We are working directly with Microsoft to investigate the issue and determine the appropriate fix.

Please read this article for more information: https://training.vispero.com/temporary-issue-affecting-some-jaws-and-fusion-features/

RE: https://mastodon.social/@quillforall/117214604717278623

We need to report it ASAP. thanks for warning.

Followup: seems like this may be resolved, I guess the reviewer thought I didn't understand what I was doing at all, which was not the case. I'm just so exhausted by it all sometimes. Either deal with the inconveniences of an inaccessible world, or learn every skill and every technology so you can just magically fix it with your own brain. Gods forbid you guide an LLM with your lived, learned experience and then judge its outputs as best you can. What am I supposed to do otherwise? Just live under a rock and take what the world gives me? Make a bunch of blindness-specific things because the world leaves us behind? I don't see a workable way forward unless the world as a whole cares more across the board, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. I literally spent a few hours on Monday fixing a bunch of accessibility issues in another app I want to use, and that could easily become a full-time job if I let it, which I obviously can't.

@JessDail I have the same problem with #Keepassium and #OneDrive. Will try to ask more, or maybe to ask AI, because the guy who recommmended Keepassium to me, says it's okay for him.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tunmi13/117213872902145069

I adore such bugs! If it's a bug.

Hello friends! Γεια σας! 😊 I'm from Hungary. I've been learning Greek for three and a half months. I really love the Greek language, culture, and music, and honestly, everything related to Greece. I first wanted to start learning Greek when I was about 13, but then a lot of things held me back, including the people around me telling me that it was useless. 😑 It is not, of course! But now, 11 years later, I finally decided to go for it. I found a wonderful teacher, Vasilis, and we've been learning with great enthusiasm ever since. However, I'd also like to practice what I'm learning. Is there anyone Greek here who would like to practice with me? In return, I can offer my help with Hungarian, since it's my native language. 😊 I don't know if such a thing exists here on Mastodon, but well, it worths a try.
#greek #languages #languageexchange #greece #culture #learning

@s_arnier @matthieu Ooh, Thursday Next ! Est-ce que ces livres ont été traduits en français ? Parce que y a plein de jeux de mots en anglais, et j'ai lu des traductions en russe (bien faits, je dois avouer). J'ai cherché en ebook ou audio (je suis non-voyant, donc pas de version papier pour moi) mais je n'ai presque rien trouvé.

Found this somewhere. It's cool! Interesting to hear how this thing evolved over time. Evolution of Samsung Tune (2006 - 2024) | Over the Horizon Ringtone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJW0XHo4J3Y

@FreakyFwoof, you've probably seen this. Or maybe it's garbage, idk? Look cool, anyway.

@Tamasg @alexchapman @luiscarlosgonzalez @FreakyFwoof @pitermach Tamas, where did you buy V1 Cerence?

@alexchapman @Tamasg @luiscarlosgonzalez @FreakyFwoof @pitermach Thank you Alex, this is hugely appreciated!

@Tamasg @luiscarlosgonzalez @FreakyFwoof @alexchapman @pitermach Those people are… okay, I'll probably keep silence because now I kind of speaking for my company, and I don't want to make any judgements.

@luiscarlosgonzalez @Tamasg @FreakyFwoof @alexchapman @pitermach It's definitely something illegal. We didn't sent a public beta yet. And yes, it does require a runtime because starting from version 2, we don't ship NVDA addon as a separate package, it's included in the all-in-one solution for NVDA, JAWS, and SAPI5.

what is all the klango hype? I tried and it seems to be the most unintuitive and clunky application I have used with baked in accessibility.