Post Ak3ciXsslSkMJZ78iW by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
(DIR) More posts by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
(DIR) Post #Ak3A5CCsd5t34Zus40 by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-07-18T08:56:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Which operating system has been shipping without a functional screen reader for the last nine years?#a11y #accessibility #screenReader #macOS #iOS #Windows #Fedora
(DIR) Post #Ak3C1m0HnNvAqRWNMW by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-07-18T09:17:50Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Hint: Windows ships with a functional screen reader by default.(It’s also a motherfucking panopticon but that’s another matter.)
(DIR) Post #Ak3H17yh6r4ITiHvjU by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T10:14:03.987967Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral microsoft and apple only ship a screen reader with windows because they are legally mandated to do so.Apparently the screen reader in windows sucks and so people have developed a free replacement released under the GPLv2-only (unfortunately there is an exception for proprietary plugins and it seems that some plugins are proprietary - which is unacceptable).`git clone https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda`https://www.nvaccess.org/
(DIR) Post #Ak3Hm5WM3weuT5QPqa by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T10:22:35.787798Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral microsoft and apple only ship a screen reader because they are legally mandated to do so.Apparently the screen reader in windows sucks and so people have developed a free replacement released under the GPLv2-only (unfortunately there is an exception for proprietary plugins and it seems that some plugins are proprietary - which is unacceptable).`git clone https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda`https://www.nvaccess.org/Fedora isn't focused on respecting the users freedom, so it's not something that's suitable for usage - a different GNU/Linux distro with a working screen reader would be a much better thing to recommend.Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre comes with the Orca screen reader by default and last time I tried it, it worked, plus that distro respects the users freedom (the issue of the GPU driver possibly not having good performance shouldn't matter to those who can't see well enough to make out text, plus I don't see how those who are visually impaired could tolerate the unreliability of Wi-Fi (having to keep re-connecting to the network is a pain even if you can read the button text) instead of using wired).
(DIR) Post #Ak3ICj33isoYacQLXU by menherahair@eientei.org
2024-07-18T10:27:24.511512Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki @aral the unreliable wi-fi vs the good old try to connect a cable blind every time you move your laptop
(DIR) Post #Ak3JlhEyXIZV4YEkmu by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T10:44:54.812256Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@menherahair Why would you be moving a computer regularly?People really love assuming that all visually impaired people are completely blind, but many honestly just have issues reading text and small icons and can see well enough to fit a plug into a socket that's always in the same place (same as the power socket and usb devices - a 8P8C plug is probably easier to plug in than USB B, as you can tactically determine which orientation the plug is facing).
(DIR) Post #Ak3KkYx3y6gj1ssjpY by menherahair@eientei.org
2024-07-18T10:55:56.633356Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki Can't fool me, I've gamed in dark rooms enough, I'd rather work to make the wi-fi reliable.>Why would you be moving a computer regularly?Because I don't want it to clutter my desk when it's not being used.
(DIR) Post #Ak3M7N78FKxCvk21WC by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T11:11:14.262121Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@menherahair >I'd rather work to make the wi-fi reliable.You'd need to then remove the Wi-Fi card that runs proprietary software from the laptop and replace it with a quality, freedom-respecting Atheros one and Wi-Fi will become reliable.I've always had trouble with reliability with cards that run proprietary software, but the ones that don't just work in my experience.
(DIR) Post #Ak3VPm4z40XH9usQD2 by zersiax@cupoftea.social
2024-07-18T12:55:01Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral I mmean ... it kinda needs to be? The minute something happens the screen reader isn't aware of, that also means the user isn't aware of it. Security's all well and good, and screen readers can ABSOLUTELY be weaponized as malware, but that's like saying the screen's bad for showing all the things. Having processes communicate through all sorts of communication protocols to the screen reader is what most Linux architectures do, and it leads to fantastic clusterfucks like this one: https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/470
(DIR) Post #Ak3YJjNsTHwWvOWY8e by meowski@fluf.club
2024-07-18T13:28:03.366396Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@aral which mastodon user can't stop virtue signaling for clicks?
(DIR) Post #Ak3aigUaYlaR6VgoEq by meowski@fluf.club
2024-07-18T13:54:59.101456Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@aral you trolled me into testing the screen reader in fedora 40, and you are simply wrong. it works. out of the box. it's not *great* but a blind person could use it. orca is installed by default.that said, i think we could do a lot better in current year with modern speech synthesis capabilities why don't you make something with your great skills instead of complaining and posting false information about fedora
(DIR) Post #Ak3bFra2M9B7353hoW by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T14:00:51.810081Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@meowski >i think we could do a lot better in current year with modern speech synthesis capabilities It uses espeak-ng, tweaked to favor the output of understandable words, rather than tweaked for natural sounding speech.If anyone was to provide some decent quality voice samples under a free license, espeak-ng could use those samples and would sound more nature.All the so called "modern speech synthesis capabilities" are all proprietary and patented up the wazoo, so nobody can actually use those in freedom.
(DIR) Post #Ak3bma2sZTFeDo9NKK by meowski@fluf.club
2024-07-18T14:06:53.938083Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki i bet there are some open speech models on hugging faceapparently orca has a pluggable interface for different speech engines. so you could basically use whatever u want. i use open AI whisper for transcription and it's very good. i just have a model running locally for voice mail transcription. i also want a good speech synth api ... have been thinking of working on this
(DIR) Post #Ak3ciXsslSkMJZ78iW by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T14:17:15.012174Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@meowski Every single case of LLM stuff I've seen so far has been proprietary and/or not usable in freedom - sometimes there's actually a free license on the software, but when you look closer part of it is proprietary.A further problem is that models are usually unauthorizely trained off proprietary sources and thus the model itself is proprietary and is not legal to distribute (sure many businesses and people love to do this anyway, but I reckon this won't last).Free software has to be verifiably legal to distribute for free distros to be able to distribute it with confidence (alas some proprietary distros love distributing proprietary software that clearly infringes copyright).Also, LLM stuff is known to be processing power hungry and it's no good if the LLM is using a lot of cycles and isn't leaving much for the software on the system to run with.
(DIR) Post #Ak3d26U0Lqaf7fntqa by meowski@fluf.club
2024-07-18T14:20:54.261747Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki brother, almost all pre trained neural network models, all but the simplest ones, could be seen as proprietary blobs that are difficult to reverse engineerorca is like ganoo plus car. i don't know- maybe @aral will donate some money, bring up a GPU farm and train some free and open speech models to plug into orca- put his money where his mouth is so to speak
(DIR) Post #Ak3d6rLM4DxHcH1eoy by aral@mastodon.ar.al
2024-07-18T14:21:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@esoteric_programmer > not even gnome wayland is bad enough with orca to be considered a broken experienceYou can’t control the screen reader. How is that not a broken experience?
(DIR) Post #Ak3dkJe2mEH6gYa7Xc by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T14:28:47.059098Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@meowski >all but the simplest ones, could be seen as proprietary blobs that are difficult to reverse engineerYes, that is another problem.How can you be sure the software serves you if the software cannot be understood even collectively?Training speech models is unnecessarily complex - what you really need is a voice actor with a clear voice and to get them to pronounce all the English sounds and a few hundred or thousand of the most common words and tag every single one and then you'll be able to programmatically output whatever sentences you want with only uncommon words sounding odd - alas nothing like that has been released under a free license.
(DIR) Post #Ak3dpou7yykz5BjHSC by Zergling_man@sacred.harpy.faith
2024-07-18T14:29:29.940307Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki @meowski skat-e-board
(DIR) Post #Ak3eQ5pGXuBTzNkecC by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2024-07-18T14:36:20.526750Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@Zergling_man That's a pretty common word so it'll probably go in the default list, but that would be replicated with skate+board, or ska+te+bo+a+rd.
(DIR) Post #Ak3eVBVgq6Hr4B1TyS by meowski@fluf.club
2024-07-18T14:37:20.966877Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki that's what orca sounds like it does. it sounds like crap. you can't do natural sounding speech with sample playback. it doesn't have inflection. you need a synthesis model. this is a solved problem- just not to your level of autism. reversing pre-trained networks isn't completely intractible, it's just difficult.
(DIR) Post #Ak3ea4ChQo8Lr1T5wO by Zergling_man@sacred.harpy.faith
2024-07-18T14:38:07.497053Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Suiseiseki I'm interested.Also the latter is probably exactly what happened since "te" is different to the "te" in "skate".
(DIR) Post #Ak4Q7Z5YJrIX2kbHfM by luiscarlosgonzalez@mastodon.social
2024-07-18T23:30:20Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@datajake1999 @aral Haiku, a BeOS successor