For those of us using screen readers, this is a way bigger deal. Honestly I probably shouldn’t use a bluetooth headset and a bluetooth keyboard for my banking. We focus so much on SSL/HTTPS and wifi security, but I wonder how much effort goes into wireless keyboard security? Not nearly as much, I’d bet.

the fact that credentials go stale immediately upon leaving.

One of our moderators is also having this problem. Unfortunately, I’m not, and no matter what I do, I can’t replicate it. Once I log in, I stay logged in. So as the admin of the server, it’s quite difficult for me to fix. Could you let me know what browser and version of Windows you’re using? I’m not sure that will help, as I’ve tested on both Firefox and Edge on Windows 11, and stayed logged in for days at a time. But the more data the better!

about 9 downarrows to get to the the content.

So once you get to the h1, almost everything up until the content is a link or button. So in NVDA, you can just press n (skip to next block of text) once or twice, and you’ll be there.

The reason we’re still listed as Alpha is because we need someone to retheme Lemmy, and nobody has had the time or money to find and pay someone to do it. If you think screen readers are hard, try using Lemmy with screen magnification. It’s not ideal. We’ll be remaining in alpha until we can find a designer to work on these issues.

However, in the meantime, Thunder on IOS and android is an excellent mobile app for Lemmy. There are also a few desktop apps, but none of them are more accessible than the web interface yet.

Problem was that I usually only discovered the issue when I went to read the book lol

I never did that, my connection was too slow to want to take up someone’s DCC slot for like a day to get an entire movie. Remember all the frustrating idiots who would share .lit files, but forget to remove the DRM from them?

Ah, good to know. Back in my day, when we had to walk a hundred miles to school in the snow, up hill both ways, IRC was the only place to get ebooks. I’m guessing it’s just the old users clinging on now.

Man, I’m getting flashbacks to my days running omenserve on undernet. I had no idea people were still doing this! How does the content compare to places like Anna’s archive these days?

Also the features it ads are really nice. Cross-platform, SSL support, JSON, etc. If I actually had any game ideas, NVGT is what I’d use.

I’ve sold two systems used with no issue. Just factory reset and it’s fine. Yes, I could lock the buyer out. Best thing to do is transfer system ownership to them in person. In a public place of course.

I dunno, the sub I got 9 years ago is still going strong. The play fives they quote unquote bricked still work on the s1, for Spotify connect and Apple Music. The only unusable equipment is some 20 year old zone controllers. Sonos stuff is supported for years longer than literally any other tech brand. And I’m sure I’ll get a pretty decent price when I start selling off my Sonos stuff on Tuesday.

Also, if you don’t feel comfortable building bookworm from source yourself, and you feel like you can trust me, Here’s a build of the latest bookworm code from github for 64-bit Windows: https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/rd388d

If you use Bookworm and use the built-in support for espeak, you can get up to 600 words per minute or so. Dectalk can go well over 900 words per minute. As far as I know, cocoa tops out at around 500 words per minute. So all of the options accept piper should be fine for you.

No, Mistral 7B can’t describe or work with images. Thanks for answering!

It really depends on your use case. If you want something that sounds pretty okay, and is decently fast, Piper fits the bill. However, this is just a command line TTS system; you’ll need to build all the supporting infrastructure if you want it to read audiobooks. https://github.com/rhasspy/piper

An extension for the free and open source NVDA screen reader to use piper lives here: https://github.com/mush42/piper-nvda

If you want something that can run in realtime, though sounds somewhat robotic, you want dectalk. This repo comes with libraries and dlls, as well as several sample applications. Note, however, that the licensing status of this code is…uh…dubious to say the least. Dectalk was abandonware for years, and the developer leaked the sourcecode on a mailing list in the 2000’s. However, ownership of the code was recently re-established, and Dectalk is now a commercial product once again. But the new owners haven’t come after the repo yet: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk

If you want a robotic but realtime voice that’s fully FOSS with known licensing status, you want espeak-ng: https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng

If you want a fully fledged software application to read things to you, but don’t need a screen reader and don’t want to build scripts yourself, you want bookworm: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm

Note, however, that you should build bookworm from source. While the author accepts pull requests, because of his circumstances, he’s no longer able to build new releases: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm/discussions/224

If you are okay with using closed-source freeware, Balabolka is another way to go to get a full text to speech reader: https://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Can Mistral describe images yet? Not sure if it’s multi-modal or not. If it could that would be a super useful feature for those of us over on rblind.com. And/or is the code available somewhere for us to hack in something like openrouter and spin up a copy?

And the vast majority of my addons are already working! Good job making this a much smoother release than it has been in previous years.

Mostly it’s free and the interface is more accessible.

Wow! Is there a decent open source magnifier yet though?

Your best bet is to use an app called UTM to create a windows virtual machine. The vast majority of audio games are windows only sadly.

Some of the universal contractions require more symbols than the American ones do. As well, some contractions were eliminated entirely in UEB because they could cause ambiguity. Others had more strict rules instituted about when and how they could be used, to make those rules easier and avoid having rules with exceptions.

Please note, however, that I am extremely biased. The way I learned Braille (grade 2 American, and all Nemeth for math) when I was seven years old is, obviously, the way God intended Braille to be written, and probably how he wrote the ten commandments on those tablets he gave Moses back in the day. Modern changes to it are obviously abominations, and go against the natural order of things. Lucky for me, all of my devices still let me switch to Grade 2 American Braille anyway, so I can ignore this new fangled universal Braille code the kids want me to learn, and shake my cane angrily at them. Okay, Okay, I’m only 36. But that’s how I feel! LOL. If you want the pro-UEB argument, maybe one of the younger commenters who actually likes it can be provoked into an argument…uh…I mean debate. I think maybe @dhamlinmusic@dragonscave.space uses UEB?

As for signs, I have seen some with grade 2 Braille on them, especially when they have a lot of information to convey, like on a plaque with fire exit/emergency instructions for example, or in some museum exhibits with Braille information. But stuff like “bathroom”, button labels like open/on/off/start/stop, or elevator buttons, or room/class/office numbers, will generally be in grade 1, even when they could save a few symbols by using grade 2.

Okay, get comfortable. This answer is going to take a minute. First, I need to introduce you to the concept of Braille contractions. A Braille contraction is a set of symbols used to represent a longer group of letters, or an abbreviation for a longer word. For example, there are symbols to represent frequently used English letter groupings like “ing”, “ation”, “ed”, “and”, and so on. There are also short forms for frequently used words, like “cd” for could, “l” for like and many more. These contractions were introduced to Braille because of how large Braille is. The idea is to compress writing to take up less space, making books smaller, and reading quicker and easier on the Fingers. However, these contractions are different from one Braille system to another. In Grade 2 literary Braille, some of the contractions could be ambiguous. However, the meaning was always clear to human readers thanks to context. In UEB, the contractions were changed to make sure none are ambiguous and to simplify the rules for there use, so it would be easier for computers to translate between contracted and uncontracted Braille.In the case of signs in public buildings, these are almost always written in what’s called Grade 1 Braille. All that means is Braille that doesn’t use any of these contractions. In fact, in UEB, I believe grade 1 Braille was renamed to be called Uncontracted Braille. This was done because not everyone wants to, or can, memorize the hundreds of Braille contractions; perhaps due to age, cognitive challenges, etc. Now, we get to math! A single Braille character is composed of six dots (I’m not going to get into eight dot computer Braille right now). This means there are only so many symbols to go around. So what Nemeth did is remove all of the Braille contractions, and replace them with math symbols. But the basic numbers from 1 to 9 are nearly identical between the two systems. The symbols that are different are things like brackets. As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that I don’t even know if literary Braille has a plus symbol. When I want that, I type the “number sign”, indicating that I’m switching to Nemeth Braille. After a number sign, all Braille is assumed to be math, until the next space character. I hope that helped, even if it wasn’t a direct answer to your questions!