#Signal for iOS v7.65 release notes:

* Message status indicators (sent, delivered, etc.) are now supported by the iOS VoiceOver feature in order to improve accessibility for blind and low-vision individuals.

#accessibility

@VeroniqueB99

@cachondo @datajake1999 @rommix0 Yes, the older versions were used in doubletalk, iirc 1.5 and 1.6 are floating around and sound closer. 97 used a completely different method to generate the speech.

@x0 @jcsteh @cachondo @KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof @NVAccess The way ZDSR solves this is it looks for sounds in 2 directories. First in the program's own sounds folder, but also it looks for any sound files that you paste into your user settings directory. If it finds a sound file in your user folder, including the startup sound, it'll be used over the built-in one. I wonder if this would be viable to do for NVDA, or for things like playing the startup sound that happens before it starts looking to see where the user settings are.

I got interesting news from the fedora accessibility room today! this concerns blind and visually impaired #linux users exclusively, however:

For a bit of time, specifically pipewire >=1.4, one can start pipewire as root. That includes the regular daemon and the alsa layer, because jack emulation is a library loaded inside programs. Anyway, more recently than that, pipewire-pulse got the ability to be launched via root, as a system service:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/commit/dea6fa7f4c3053050d2819afa80265e5ffb39730

I'm not sure if ubuntu can use any of this yet, I suppose not, but most other distros which aren't debian based should be able to do so, for example arch, gentoo, probably nix and fedora starting with 42. This means that your system can start talking much, much sooner without the use of scripts, as long as you enable the system services instead of the user ones, or well, apparently the user units don't conflict, weird as that might sound. Either way, the same security is achieved, because who cares if root apps can listen to your microphone, the battle is lost if those apps are already root anyway!

In particular, this means that one can start espeakup with the system and it'll speak as soon as possible. Not in the initramfs, not at the enter decryption key prompt, but that's still huge progress in case your system crashes and so on.

What do y'all think, does this change anything, or it's still the same for you because you use scripts anyway, or because your systems rarely crash in such a way where that'd be required?

#VibeCoding your MFA

Beyerdynamic wird an chinesische Investoren verkauft 😢

Wer noch keinen dt770 pro hat: Jetzt noch zuschlagen - besser wird's nicht mehr.

Und es schadet vielleicht auch nicht, sich ein paar Ersatzteile auf Lager zu bestellen. Irgendwie kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass die Versorgung mit Ersatzteilen so weitergehen wird...

https://porta-fi.com/cosonic-intelligent-to-acquire-beyerdynamic-in-e122-million-deal-targeting-global-growth/?amp=1

#music #headphones #kopfhörer #beyerdynamic

Discovery of the day: Turns out you can make Steam accessible on the Mac, and in general there is work on making it more accessible. I wrote about it here https://forum.audiogames.net/post/911982/#p911982

With REAPER 7.40, you might have noticed that playing your projects isn't possible anymore when you're in the OSARA Parameters dialogs.
An OSARA update is ready with a fix. As a bonus, now you can play using Space when focus is on the sliders, you don't need to remember to use Control+Space to hear results anymore.
Control+Space also works to play/pause in those dialogs now, pausing moves your edit cursor, useful if you want to cue up a different part of the project to hear the adjustments you're making in context.

Shout outs to Toni and Jamie for much help with many scary code.

https://osara.reaperaccessibility.com/snapshots

IOS 26 is going to make it possible to add ringtones using the share sheet. Tech sites are not hyping this up enough because you still have to create the ringtone, but I know lots of us know how to do that already and just need the easy way to add it to our phone without going through iTunes. And now, approximately 14 years after Apple supposedly untethered the iPhone from the computer, we have it. So now if you go to one of those ringtone sites, or someone texts you an audio file, or you’re handy with Hokusai or some other audio editor for the iPhone, you can make your own ringtones without a billion steps. Like everything else Apple has done in recently years, it’s taken so long for such a basic feature to arrive that it’s hard for me to even be excited about it, but I sure won’t miss blundering my way through iMazing.

I was asked by a 20 year younger friend how my internet was back then. I needed a moment but then I told her the story of an IRC channel and how we made the day for a young girl who happened to be on our IRC channel. Because this is what my internet was like back then and I wish sometimes it still was like this. Let me tell the story:

I was 25, the channel members were like 20 to 30 years old. Somehow this young girl found her way to us. She was 14 when she joined the channel. >>

@ToniBarth @FreakyFwoof Yeah, I think definitive includes the 2 DLC packs that came out. The second one is interesting in particular because it adds an additional chapter of single player story that follows after the main campaign so I’d go for the definitive edition just for that alone.

@TwoThousandStu @lexipic @FreakyFwoof It is. The voice for the Switch 2 was provided by Readspeaker, aka the people who either bought voiceware/neospeech.

@FreakyFwoof @ysotomayor Do any of the built-in apps, like game chat, nintendo switch online or the echop speak? A lot of people on the audiogames.net forum are curious about the shop, which I suspect may not speak because on the Switch 1 it was just a web view. How about the keyboard if you have to type in something? Lastly, for game recommendations 2 I can think of off the top of my head are brok the Investigator and Mortal combat 1. They’re both switch 1 games but should work on the 2 and talk out of the box.

#AudioMo day 5: A Quick Look At The Nintendo Switch 2 TTS Accessibility https://youtu.be/xt5sPvaoshc

I've just gotten a hold of this console so I know nothing much yet, but I will learn more over the coming days and weeks.
This is a quick demo with me only having had access to it for about 30 minutes if that.
#Nintendo #Switch2 #ScreenReader #TTS #Accessibility

Oh, you want to know how the fediverse/activitypub works? Let me explain it to you!!! 🧵

To my fellow blind people:
This is the month of AudioMo. If you will be participating and if you're one that benefits from #AltText on photos, take the time to reciprocate when posting your audio.
Let's not have 'one rule for you, another for me' rule going on.
Practice what we preach. If you benefit from alt-text, add it to your audio description. Many people benefit from knowing what the audio is before clicking on it.
In the same way some images are NSFW, some of your audio might not be either. It may be loud, it may be noises of your pets which could cause pets at the other end to go wild and so on.

Hey Google,

A few months ago I yelled at you for replacing the TalkBack screen reader voice with an artificially incompetent model.

Today is why you shouldn't have done that.

I got in an argument with a friend about them typing an uppercase "I" instead of a lowercase "L" in "lbp."

TalkBack reads: "i b p"
espeak reads: "L B P"

Casing doesn't matter.

Shove your AI up where the sun don't shine, please.