Simon Jaeger

thirty-something/male/Canada. I'm likely to post about tech, books, accessibility, blindness, and general life updates.
I work in accessibility, read a lot, collect weird tech, and selfhost things (including this instance).

I accept others as long as they accept others.
Feel free to say hi.

Public Key

npub1ezwmkgpt0tlgn2kgz385gph3qfrqcc7z02qgg5xkkcg0dtg2cmfstqwagq

NIP-05 Address

simon@procrastodon-net.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsv38dmyq4h4l5f4typgn6yqmcsy3svv0p84qyy2rttvy8k459vd5cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q7hpqyj

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

Author Public Key

npub1ezwmkgpt0tlgn2kgz385gph3qfrqcc7z02qgg5xkkcg0dtg2cmfstqwagq

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Last Notes

2026-10-22 23:45:42 UTC

I don't think anyone on Mastodon needs to hear the obvious criticism of this "Accessible Hygiene Helper" app (which I'm certain is 100% private and totally not streaming your camera feed to a server somewhere). But my favourite part about the AppleVis post is this line:
> I noticed that for visually impaired individuals, independently confirming personal cleanliness after using the restroom can be a frustrating and undignified challenge.
And in a reply to a comment rightfully asking how on earth they came to this conclusion, the developer says:
> Why did I build this? Because behind closed doors, many blind individuals face the hidden anxiety of not knowing if they are clean, and asking a family member for help feels undignified.
"Many blind people", you say? Where are these people? Can the real blind testers please stand up? (After they're done wiping, of course.) Because it seems like you saw one of the many repeat posts of this question on AskReddit, and instead of reading the comments or spending a moment to use your brain, you told Claude to materialize the answer in the form of a $4.99/month website. And now you're deep in sunk cost land and every time someone posts another criticism along the lines of "No-one asked for this", you tell yourself "Surely the next comment will be a thank you? Surely someone will sign up soon? Then I can afford my own toilet paper!"
Anyway, this is a weird timeline. I'd like to switch back to one of the ones where this app doesn't exist.

2026-09-07 14:57:36 UTC

What are people using on mobile for easy notetaking?
On iOS, I use Drafts because it opens to a text field and doesn't make you think about where you want to put the note before you write it. Its interface feels like it would be a bit overwhelming for the average person though.
I also still don't have anything that syncs between multiple operating systems. Long ago I used an app called Droptext which presented a list of text files in my Dropbox, and that was about as close to sync as I've ever gotten.

2026-08-27 20:47:42 UTC

Spent about an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't log into Windows over SSH using an authorized key. I got to the point of manually running the server and watching the debug output, and still got nothing useful. Supposedly Windows was looking at my authorized_keys file, concluding that my key wasn't in it, and failing.
The problem? I used a Powershell command to grab the public key off my webserver, and that command re-wrote the file as UTF-16, which OpenSSH doesn't like.
Conclusion: When the problem isn't DNS, the problem is Powershell.

2026-08-23 21:23:33 UTC

There's a cafe just down the street that serves all your favourite dishes and every hot and cold drink you could imagine. Every day, you walk in and they give you your usual order. By the end of the first month you know all of their names and they all know yours. You're there so often that they give you an account you can deposit into, so you don't have to keep paying for your second and third drinks. The table in the corner by the wall outlet is basically yours.
And then you spend a weekend in the next city over, and while you're there, you get a haircut.
When Tony doesn't recognize you Monday morning, you assume he's joking and laugh it off. "Yeah, those sandwiches are making me put on some pounds. I had to lose a pound of hair to keep up. Can I have my usual? I should have $30 in my account here."
But Tony still doesn't recognize you. Even when you give your name. Even when you recite your regular order. "Look, dude. If this is some attempt to keep my money--"
"No, no, of course not!" says Tony. "We just want to make sure someone else isn't trying to order a drink under our favourite customer's name."
"So you think someone with my exact face decided to put on my clothes, come into your cafe, and pretend to be me so he could get a five-dollar latte?"
"Well, it's theoretically possible, isn't it?"
"Okay. Sure. Thanks for keeping my coffee secure. Now how do I prove I'm me?"
"Well, can you give me your customer ID?"
"No? What's that?"
"It's written on every receipt we give you."
"You mean the receipts you offer me and then throw away when I say 'no, thanks'?"
"Yes, those ones. Do you have your customer ID?"
"Right. You're being very difficult here, Tony. Tell me what I can do."
"We can mail you a new customer ID. Do you still live at 1927 Newcastle Road in Seattle?"
"No. Obviously no. We are in Portland. And how did you even know I lived there?"
"Not important. What's the name of your oldest cousin?"
"Patricia. But how did you--"
"Great, you're in. Do you want your usual again? How was your weekend?"
"It was ... Fine, I suppose. And yes please."
You turn to sit at your usual table, but find that someone else is already there, so instead you collapse into the closest chair you can find and manage to log into work only two minutes late.
At 10:30, you're finally hungry for more than a tiny croissant, so you call out to Tony: "Hey, could I get a sandwich?"
He looks up from his phone and gives you an odd stare. "I think I know who you are, but you're sitting somewhere unusual. Can I just get your customer ID from you?"
"I still don't have it. Just like I didn't have it two hours ago. I don't mean to be rude, but is something wrong with you?"
"No, I'm perfectly fine, thanks for asking. But since you just used a security question two hours ago, I'm going to need you to sort through this box of coffee cups and give me all the medium ones that don't have a lid."
"Okay, this is insane. Can I just pay for my coffee with my credit card?"
"Not while your name is flagged as possible fraud."
Slowly, methodically, you pack your bag and walk out, never to return.
#MicroFiction

2026-06-17 19:46:12 UTC

My new router is tri-band, and I kind of want to stop using separate wi-fi network names for each band and unify them all under one name. Does anyone know if this still breaks modern voice assistants or any other devices? I think my original reason for separating the 2.4 and 5 GHZ bands was either the echo dot or the Google Home refusing to find the 2.4g network when both were named the same thing. I found out later that I could have disabled the 5g network entirely, connected the Googlezons, and then re-enabled it, but by that time I had already separated them. I'd prefer to have them all under a single SSID, even if that means reconfiguring a bunch of devices, but not if it's still a headache.

2026-06-07 23:18:18 UTC

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@nprofile…lter I honestly had no idea they made routers. I know people really like their Disk Station software though. Good to know the UI is nice and accessible.

2026-06-07 19:36:04 UTC

This week is network upgrade week for me.
I got the GL.Inet GL-BE9300 router, which replaces my old Asus router. I'm going from dual-band wi-fi 6 and gigabit ethernet to tri-band wi-fi 7 and 2.5gb ethernet.
I'm also replacing a ridiculous number of long CAT5E cables with flat CAT6 cables of varrying lengths, getting new switches, and finally running a long one into my bedroom. I'm basically going to be dismantling my entire tangled mess of a network and replacing everything in it.
I learned about these GL routers because they're quite well-known in the travel router space. They run custom firmware based on OpenWRT, and include Tailscale out of the box. Their web interface has some accessibility issues, but it's far better than the mess of clickable divs you get on an Asus router.
I considered doing the cool thing and using my own hardware and a router OS, but this router retails for just over $200 USD with a dual-band variant that's $50 cheaper, and it just feels like one project too many.

2026-06-06 12:45:06 UTC

I'm coming to the conclusion that an invisible social media interface is not just bad for my productivity, it's bad for my social media engagement.
The invisible interfaces stay off the screen and use complex keystrokes to navigate a virtual UI, speaking posts and other announcements through the screen reader. This means I can access my entire Mastodon feed from anywhere on my system. I can be in the window for a Teams meeting, a Word document, or a web browser and still navigate my timeline in the background.
This felt convenient because I was always a little bit engaged. But it also meant I was also a little bit disengaged. I didn't have to put any thought into it, so engagement felt reflexive rather than intentional. I had to hold down three modifier keys the whole time I was navigating timelines, so it also felt temporary. After I got tired of holding those down, I was done looking through my timeline, and because I didn't put much thought into it, this happened quickly. Every interaction was a short, spontaneous burst without real focus behind it.
My ordinary, visible UI is there when I want it, and not when I don't. That sounds obvious, but I can already notice a difference: I go long stretches of time without opening the window, and when I reflexively hit the four-key shortcuts to read the invisible interface that isn't running anymore, I usually pause for half a second and then keep working on what I was doing, because I had no good reason for engaging in the first place.
Whereas when I do choose to pull up my visible interface, I spend way more time on it. I actually read through large chunks of the home buffer and become much more curious about the posts I see here. Fedra has a thoughtful UI with tons of single-key shortcuts to skip around my feed, and I feel more efficient in the visible UI than I did in any invisible one.
Also, now I have dozens of global keyboard shortcuts freed up, so if I did ever want to make an invisible interface to accomplish something more system-wide, I could reuse those.
Anyway, this might just be me and my brain, but it felt relevant with all the fediverse apps people are developing these days.

2026-06-06 02:34:31 UTC

I'm concerned about this new Talk Forward screen reader for Android. It is a closed-source fork of an open-source screenreader, and rather than being on the play store, it collects your email for unspecified purposes as a requirement for downloading it. I have no idea whether it's actually an upgrade to Talkback, but these specific things don't feel like steps forward to me.

2026-04-23 18:20:55 UTC

I really should have asked this long ago but ... for those who don't want to deal with the bloatedness of Microsoft Word on Windows, what are you using for an accessible spell checker? I'm half-tempted to just use the terminal for this.

2026-04-13 03:05:52 UTC

I went to renew my Costco membership today.
First link on the homepage is "renew your membership now". That's convenient. I guess people go there to do that a lot. I like that UI design.
The page asks me to log in. My Bitwarden vault already has a password for Costco, so I autofill it. Before I can even hit "submit", it says "Your password is incorrect" and steals keyboard focus to do so.
I tried to log in anyway, and sure enough, it was wrong. I have no idea why.
So I hit the "forgot tpassword" button even though it is literally impossible for my web vault to have "forgotten" my password. I accidentally type in my email to a text field that already got prefilled with my email but didn't highlight it by default.
I get a verification code buried in at least three nested tables. I curse NVDA once again for not resolving the almost-decade-old issue that would allow me to sanely create a Thunderbird config profile to turn off all the excess announcements. But at least the email didn't arrive 11 minutes later with a 10 minute expiration. It's the small things.
Since apparently my vault doesn't have the correct password, I just autofilled the "set new password" screen. And then the site told me my password was too long. It was 20 characters; their limit is apparently 16.
One of their tips for making it stronger was "use a longer password", so that's pretty confusing. Maybe they just tell everyone that. "You used a 350 character password and the limit is 16. Try making it longer!".
So I did what any reasonable person would do, and chopped off the last four characters of the password and pressed "Update". And that's when the website told me the form couldn't be submitted because it was "missing the login name."
There is no text field for entering the login name.
All I could do was go back to the login page, make sure the 16-character version of my password didn't work already, and hit the "forgot" button again.
This time, and every other subsequent time, when I entered the verification code from my email, the site loaded a blank page.
I give up. The entire web can just fuck right off for the rest of the night.

2026-04-11 21:42:15 UTC

Been looking around for soundfonts lately, since the Ableton Move with Schwung can load them. I found a massive collection of 500 soundfonts on archive.org that totals around 37 GB. There's probably a lot of junk in here, but it's going to be fun to look through.
Here's a torrent from archive.org: https://archive.org/download/500-soundfonts-full-gm-sets/500-soundfonts-full-gm-sets_archive.torrent

2026-04-08 21:21:17 UTC

Microsoft is making major updates to MIDI in Windows, including building their own loopback port solution. I definitely didn't have that on my bingo card this week. https://github.com/microsoft/MIDI/releases

2026-03-05 04:25:13 UTC

I called Aira to get the information on a new credit card transcribed. I have the option of receiving a chat message (which only lasts the duration of the call) or receiving an email, which would probably be fine because we're both on Google Workspace, but ... yeah, no.
I thought the chat message would be easy. I should know by now that nothing is ever easy. The chat interface has no copy function for messages. Nothing in the edit rotor or the actions rotor, no long-press menu. I just can't copy a message to the clipboard. So I used VoiceOver's "Copy Last Spoken Phrase" function and just cleaned up the output.
As I was rating the app, I realized that the rating selectors had changed to a five-star system, and no matter what I select as a rating, the label for the adjuster is always "Five star rating". So VoiceOver will say something like "Five star rating. 2 of 5 stars, adjustable."
I have genuinely never been so baffled and discouraged by a companies refusal to maintain the most low-hanging of low-hanging fruit in the accessibility of an app whose entire purpose is to serve blind users. We see examples of indie developers adding robust accessibility to their apps just because they want to, and yet this company that profits off blind users is somehow unable to do the same.
If we had another app that offered the same functionality as Aira, we would be using it. Aira is making money because they're the only option, not because they're the best option. They have the freedom to choose whether to make a janky mess of an app or put the work into making something that is actually pleasant to use. Their current priorities speak volumes.

2026-02-14 01:22:47 UTC

Are any other iPhone users finding that face ID is particularly bad all of a sudden?
Mine fails more often now, and sometimes it only takes one failure before the passcode prompt comes up.
Sometimes I get a success sound as though the phone recognized my face, but the passcode prompt still comes up.
I know not everyone has a high success rate with face ID for various reasons, but it was pretty good for me until only a couple of weeks ago.

2025-11-28 05:26:46 UTC

I hate feeling like I know how websites work just enough to comprehend how terrible some of them are.
My Rogers internet plan renewed recently, and with it came free access to streaming services. Rogers has been badgering me to activate them, and ideally I would like to do so.
However, every time I log in, I get a "Sorry, something went wrong. Try again or get support here." message.
I hate these messages, first of all. I understand most people won't know what an error message actually means, and it's hard to produce useful ones. Believe me, I get it.
But "Sorry, something went wrong" is a cop out and makes *everything* worse. I can't tell support I got a "something went wrong" error and expect them to know how to fix it. I know exactly what they're going to say. "Try clearing your cookies. Try turning it off and on again. Try connecting to a different network." Or my favourite: "Try refreshing your device." ...
I don't see any refresh buttons. Maybe if I pull my phone toward me so hard that it smacks me in the forehead, it will refresh itself?
Maybe it's hard enough to produce a useful error message--and train customer service on it--that they just decide it's not worth the bother ... even though the error *could* be my ad blocker's fault or my tracker blocker's fault, or maybe it's because GitHub is down and I'm trying to retrieve a JS library from there. (That actually did happen to me the other week.)
Fine. Give me an error ID. It doesn't even need to be a number; it can be words. Surely you can come up with a word bank of 1,000 words anyone can spell which sound and look nothing alike? Now you've got a billion error identifiers with just three words. So let me call support and reference error number "big-stupid-headache".
But wait. Let's go way back to the part where I actually try to get support. When I click that "Get help" link, I'm brought to the generic help page. This is basically the laziest possible implementation. I was at the login page, so why not bring me right to "login issues"?
Actually, I was on the error page that the Rogers website generated. Why am I the one trying to figure out which help category is both relevant to the issue and likely to get me an actual human? Why can't Rogers look at the e-mail address I *just* entered into the website, look at the approximate error, and give me a "Send report" button that actually pings someone to follow up with me? I am the one paying Rogers for service and Rogers is not only failing to provide part of it, but also making me crawl through the help system to convince it that I actually do need outside intervention for something that isn't my fault?
But I know why. It's all part of the same pattern, isn't it? Every time I call, I hear "Did you know you can do all this cool shit with the My Rogers app?" Every time I get a discount alert, I see "Get free activation when you set up service online."
Rogers wants to do everything within their power to make it difficult for me to talk to a person. Even when the site is broken. Even when I can't actually get what I'm paying for. Maybe the answer to "Oops, something went wrong" is actually "Wait, something was already wrong."
Anyway, I'm tired of thinking about this now, so I guess tomorrow I have to spend my time on hold with Rogers, or use their chat system and hope I don't forget to check the window for new messages for longer than 90 seconds.
If anyone ever hears me talk about how annoying it is to set up my own hosted services instead of relying on someone else's, just assume that relying on someone else's is somehow even more annoying. Because usually it is. I booted a Linux server from a live CD, used OCR to get networking working, and sent a full backup of the server to another server, then rebuilt the original server, sent the backup *back* to it, restored it, fixed a bunch of file permissions that broke because I was an idiot, and now the fact you can see this post proves that my server is working. I can't do any of that with Rogers. I just have to sit there and hope the person I'm talking to knows which buttons to press. And with Rogers ... they don't.

2025-10-28 22:19:17 UTC

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@nprofile…lvdf @nprofile…6ljh I have a theory: If it's uncommon, people's brains short-circuit. If it's too common, people don't think about it at all, so they mess it up. If it's one of those names you only run across occasionally, people get it right because they're thinking about it, but it's low-effort.
That's all I've got. I mean, of course people manage to get mine wrong sometimes, but it's rare for some reason.
On the other hand, everyone tries to spell my last name with A-R at the end, not E-R. The other day I had to spell it six or seven times.

2025-10-28 22:13:45 UTC

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@nprofile…6ljh You have A LOT of possible nicknames, which can be a good or a bad thing, I guess. Would you change yours if you could avoid the paperwork headache, or is Kate/Katie a good enough compromise?

2025-10-28 21:50:08 UTC

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@nprofile…6ljh I actually do. It's common enough that people generally know how to spell and pronounce it. Uncommon enough that I'm often the only one in the room. People don't unintentionally shorten it because there are no well-established nicknames for it. The thought of changing it has never crossed my mind. Thanks mom.

2025-10-24 17:50:06 UTC

I wonder if anyone has ever considered creating a browser extension or an NVDA addon to jump to the next form field on a webpage that is marked as containing an invalid entry.
I just spent way too long trying to submit a medical intake form and finally realized that the "Allergies" text field was required, and I had to manually type "None" into it.
Am I missing some obvious method for doing this? I know I coudl probably type some code into the console and figure this out, but for general use it seems like this should really be possible.

2025-10-15 06:44:50 UTC

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@nprofile…zddp I'm not sure I know anyone who uses Linux for serious audio production, blind or not. So while I would like to have equal access, I don't feel like this is necessarily a simple accessibility problem. Windows as an OS is fine. All the crap Microsoft shovels on top of it is the problem. If you rip all of that out, Windows 11 is actually impressively fast on slow hardware. I have the cheapest $100 mini PC I could find, and until I start opening browser tabs or electron apps, it's very usable. So, instead of putting a bunch of effort into maintaining an Arch install or something, I just put that effort into optimizing Windows. Do "i like the direction Microsoft is going? Certainly not. But the things that made Windows worth using 20 years ago haven't really changed.

2025-10-09 01:41:17 UTC

Zoom just continues to impress in the worst way with their desktop screen reader #accessibility.
Here's the label for a button at the top of the calendar view on Windows. no, this is not copied speech. This is the actual label of an actual button. There is no ARIA on that button except for the label. Are you sitting down?
Okay, here goes:
"Select Calendar Date, Combo box, Today, Oct 8 collapsed, October 8, 2025".
Again. That is the *label* of a button according to NVDA. I copied that text directly off the page.
So, given that we've just been told this is a collapsed combo box, and Zoom considered this information so important that they put it in the label when they couldn't figure out how to use ARIA or semantic HTML correctly, which of the following statements do you think are true?
A. If I press the arrow keys in focus mode, the date will adjust.
B. If I press alt+down arrow, the combo box should open so I can pick a date without refreshing the page.
C. None of the above.
Yeah, it's C. This isn't a combo box at all. It's a button which pops up a standard calendar view. No combo boxes in there either, and the buttons use the words "Selected" or "Not selected" at the *end* of their labels, and the escape key won't close it.
What kind of person calls something a combo box when it doesn't have one single bit of resemblance to a combo box? The same kind of person that can figure out how to put an ARIA label on a button but can't figure out how to use roles, states, and expanded properties, I suppose?
Congratulations, Zoom. you make over a billion dollars per quarter and managed to hire a web accessibility guy who did everythin wrong and nothing right.

2025-10-02 00:14:10 UTC

Has anyone noticed that Zoom for Windows uses text fields which are technically inaccessible? They work around this by giving screen reader alerts whenever I use the arrow keys, select text, or delete characters.
Naturally, they don't just pass through the punctuation symbol to the screen reader, because they can't predict which punctuation will get spoken by the screen reader otherwise. So the names of symbols probably won't match the ones in a screen reader. It seems to be based partially on the JAWS symbol dictionary.
On a Braille display, the control is borderline unusable, because there's no cursor representation and any navigation or deletion will replace the entire text field with the announcement. If you type the word "potatos" and then discover there is only one potato, pressing the backspace will replace everything on your Braille display with a line that says "s deleted".
And to top things off, the announcer seems to completely ignore emoji characters and they don't seem to show up in the weird limited object navigation either, so there's no way to confirm you've typed them.
I wonder what kind of absurd design choice or company culture problem led to this need to completely reinvent the wheel for a text field of all things. I know QT had cursor tracking issues in text fields, but I thought that was fixed long ago.

2025-06-09 03:14:39 UTC

If you are blind and have multiple computers, and especially if you live on the edge and don't have a monitor hooked up to one of those computers, having a capture card really is a game changer.
I have a cheap one that I need to replace. But even with that cheap one, I was just able to call Aira from my laptop and select the capture card as my video device, rather than my camera.
Then, I hooked the capture card up to a mini PC that needed an OS reinstall, and the Aira agent was able to read the display output in real time.
From that point, it took us about 30 seconds to get into the boot menu of the mini PC and select the USB drive.
Even without account for Aira, having a way to reliably capture the output of a computer is infinitely useful. All you need is an app that can take a picture or video from that device and interpret it as-needed. That could be an OCR reader, an AI describer like Be My Eyes, or a calling app so you can ask a friend to look at it.
It certainly beats needing to position the camera in front of a screen, and in the case of the mini PC, it saves me from having to set up a screen in the first place.

2025-05-29 00:08:58 UTC

I just found a setting in my iPhone's *Security and Privacy* settings, and I cannot believe I didn't know about it but I'm genuinely impressed, and have turned it on now. I'm going to just paste the paragraph from settings:
*App Privacy Report* shows how often apps use the permission you’ve granted to access your data, like your location or microphone. It also includes a breakdown of each app’s network activity, website network activity, and the most frequently contacted domains.

2025-05-20 03:00:37 UTC

JAWS for Windows is greedy.
The last time I went looking at the home annual license, it was $95/year in the US and Canada. For everything you get, that's a pretty compelling price. Most Americans can probably afford $95/year for a screen reader.
Now, it's $674/year. That's seven times more expensive for new customers, and an awful lot of money to charge individuals for a license that specifically cannot be used professionally.
The one-time payment is $1548, which includes two additional yearly upgrades. I don't know how much upgrades cost after the SMA is over, but I'm sure it isn't $674 for every major version. So the yearly subscription isn't just hilariously expensive now; it's a waste of money. It effectively has no logical reason for existing, and if one of you unfortunate souls actually wants to pay for JAWS after this, you'd be better off paying the full price and then upgrading when possible. I can't begin to understand how anyone justified such a massive price increase.
EDIT: I was quickly informed there is still a home annual license available for $104.50. However, it's not advertised and you have to call them in order to find out it exists. This is basically what Aira did a couple of years ago, but worse. This post is not misinformation; it's accurate information based on what they list on their site. They didn't want businesses buying home licenses, so instead of dealing with the problem, they passed it onto their users. https://store.freedomscientific.com/products/jaws-home-annual-license

2025-05-10 20:29:25 UTC

These days when I set up a computer and want to create a local user account, I just invoke that screen from the command prompt. You can do this with an internet connection, but it needs to be one of the first things you do.
1. In the Windows first-run setup (after it has been installed), press shift f10 to open command prompt.
2. Type this: start ms-cxh:localonly
This should pull up the old "Who's going to use this PC?" screen. Seems to work in Windows 11 24H2. When you get done answering security questions, the computer (or at least the out-of-box experience) will restart.
I also use this cmd trick to launch a portable copy of NVDA sometimes.
A lesser-known shortcut in Windows setup is ctrl-shift-f3. This puts you into audit mode, where you're logged into the desktop of the administrator account even though you haven't completed Windows setup yet. A dialog will automatically start, giving options to restart into the out-of-box experience or restart normally. In this mode, you can install drivers and make any other changes that need to be made before the setup process completes.
Example: When giving someone a Surface tablet with an attached Bluetooth keyboard cover, you might want to go into audit mode so you can pair the keyboard, but still retain the setup process for the recipient.
You can, of course, also use this trick to completely bypass Windows setup in order to reinstall Windows on a brand new system.

2025-03-31 10:23:03 UTC

Me: *posts on Facebook about all the ways I can tell when someone’s post is AI-generated, including the liberal use of em dashes*
Commenter: haha, sometimes I just write like AI, so I feel called out! I don’t use those weird dashes though.
Me: Actually, you seem to use a lot of them! Perhaps you have a well-trained animal who knows exactly when to nose the hyphen key twice in a row?
Commenter: Well, I didn’t say I never used AI, did I?
Moral of the story: Change your punctuation settings. It does wonders for spotting AI content. Or don’t, and remain blissfully ignorant. I can’t decide whether I wish I’d done that or not.

2025-01-28 02:54:21 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 I'd say go into ctrl+nvda+v, shift+tab past the OK button, and you'll land on the modes selector. uncheck "Off" and "Beeps", so your only modes are "On" and "On-demand". Now if you press nvda+s, you'll change speech so it responds to keyboard commands like nvda+t and nvda+f12, but doesn't randomly talk unless you specifically request information.

2025-01-28 02:40:24 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 Hmm. That makes me wonder if some other window is popping up just long enough to affect NVDA's focus. Do you ever read books or long webpages on the computer, and does it happen there too?

2025-01-28 02:38:17 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 Does this only happen in a particular app or a particular type of control? I don't usually have this problem. I also usually turn speech off when i'm not using it. You can remove the speech modes you don't use now, so it's just an on/off toggle instead of cycling through all the modes.

2025-01-27 22:37:11 UTC

You're a taxi driver. You're sent to pick up someone named Simon. You drive up and there's a person with a cane standing on the curb, apparently doing nothing and facing toward the parking lot. Do you:
1. Call out to the person.
2. Honk at the person.
3. Sit in your car doing nothing until a random stranger comes up to the blind person and tells him there's a taxi 3 car-lengths away, sitting there, doing nothing.
I feel sometimes like all of humanity is being enshittified.

2025-01-27 19:45:07 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 Are you unhappy with your current one, or just wanting to try something else?

2025-01-16 00:13:18 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 I got that a long time ago, never got to test it with anyone. 05b73b7e226da819b9faed41bca45ed55c3c587b90bc676f0ba64c0874909bba14

2025-01-11 10:41:01 UTC

Update: This morning there was an update to PalChat. It resolves several of the labeling problems but more importantly, it resolves an issue with swipe order, which must have been a bit more of an involved fix than adding some labels. This is one of those times when I was wrong and I'm glad of it. Last night this was what sounded like a dismissive developer response. This morning it was one of the fastest accessibility fixes I've seen in a long time.
ORIGINAL POST:
I've been using an app called PalChat, which interfaces with a lot of common large language models in a single app. It's very powerful, but has some VoiceOver issues. Namely, the swipe order is wrong in some places, and a few buttons are unlabeled. So I wrote a very detailed message explaining all of these issues in what I thought was a pretty clear way. The developer replied to that message—which contained three separate issues—with a couple of sentences, essentially saying "I didn't change anything, and I don't know enough to fix it, sorry."
And honestly, I'm unreasonably annoyed about this. I took the time to report #accessibility problems that clearly do affect me, one of which is just a labeling problem, and all I got back was "I don't know how to fix that."
Well then *LEARN* how to fix it! Do I have to Google docs for you so you can figure out how to label a button?
I'm not sure the dev could have said "I don't care about accessibility" any more loudly. And maybe I'm just expecting too much of a single developer, but it doesn't seem like these fixes would be rocket science. This basically tells me I'll be able to use the app until something breaks.
There's a subscription, which I would have been happy to pay for if I'd gotten anything above 0% interest in actually working with me, but now I won't.
I'm tired.

2025-01-10 23:41:15 UTC

Me: I forgot my password.
Email: Okay, here's a link to reset it.
Me: Click.
Website: This link has expired. Try generating a new one.
Me: What? You literally just sent this to me. Ok, fine, give me another.
Website: You just generated a link. Try using that.
Me: Click.
Website: This link has expired. Please generate another.
Me: ...
Website: ...
Me: 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

2024-12-12 04:07:28 UTC

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@nprofile…6h3y Interesting. Coincidence, you think?

2024-12-12 03:17:25 UTC

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@nprofile…6h3y Absolutely. If the author doesn't fix the article or approve your comment, that tells me they have more interest in being correct than in helping make things more accessible.

2024-12-11 02:55:18 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 Curious if a particular story gave you this realization.

2024-12-09 04:26:17 UTC

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@nprofile…c44g I've never seen it break quite that much, but in general I think we all need to find something else that is either open-source, actively maintained, or both.

2024-12-09 04:22:47 UTC

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@nprofile…c44g For me, it seems to have cut each username into two or three pieces, dumped those pieces in a box, shaken the box violently, and dumped it back onto your post. :P

2024-12-09 04:20:53 UTC

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@nprofile…c44g Your client did something silly with all those usernames, FYI.

2024-12-07 05:05:37 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 I have a whole sound effects pack with lots of jingles and bleeps and bloops, but that's not very themed. If you can find specific sounds you can always cut those out and make your own though.

2024-12-07 03:20:26 UTC

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@nprofile…aqq5 What are you looking for in particular? I have ... a lot.

2024-12-06 03:32:37 UTC

Just gonna put this here for the record.
I hate drama. I do not want to be a part of anyone's drama. I do my best not to take sides on anyone's drama.
But if you're going to bring my name into your drama and then block/unfriend me so I have to find out from a friend that you brought my name onto drama, I will not be on your side.
Thank you for listening.

2024-12-01 18:37:05 UTC

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@nprofile…0y3a @nprofile…ym0e I’m so tired of this narrative. It’s like saying “using e-mail requires navigating a confusing array of e-mail providers.” No it doesn’t. just pick one and sign up. The mobile app even defaults to Mastodon.social now. But it feels like people only think Mastodon is confusing because other people say it’s confusing.

2024-12-01 16:36:00 UTC

Today on r/Accessibility: Developer needs to be told that screen reader users don't just tab around the web. On the bright side, I found out there are some good WebAim articles about accessibility testing with a screen reader. https://reddit.com/r/accessibility/comments/1h1j1tt/tabindex_and_noninteractive_elements/

2024-11-26 20:43:00 UTC

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@nprofile…wnuz @nprofile…0uww Oh thank you; I didn't know you could do that.

2024-11-26 19:35:21 UTC

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@nprofile…0uww Hello paywall, my old friend.