Taylor’s Teardowns are back. In 2020, I reviewed products for accessibility as a blind user—and people loved it. Now in 2025, I'm doing full accessibility reviews, public on YouTube with blog posts for each. Sponsored teardowns start at $20 for an intro and include honest, real-world feedback. Perfect for apps, websites, and AI tools made for the public. Want yours reviewed? Get in touch. #Accessibility #A11y #BlindTech

ChatGPT’s Mac app now records meetings, but it’s nearly unusable with VoiceOver.
Buttons are unlabeled, transcripts are hard to access, and navigation is broken for blind users.
Full write-up: https://taylorarndt.substack.com/p/chatgpt-for-macs-new-meeting-recording
Demo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nGhfTH1ZNW8
OpenAI needs to include accessibility in every release. This one missed the mark.
#Accessibility #ChatGPT #VoiceOver #MacAccessibility #BlindTech #InclusiveTech

Accessible with AI” panel.
I'll demo ViddyScribe, a tool that lets creators embed audio descriptions directly into video files—essential for blind and low vision users.
As a blind creator, I found ViddyScribe intuitive, powerful, and screen reader-friendly.
Read more: https://taylorarndt.substack.com/p/making-video-more-accessible-with
Watch the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnbkyXGK628
#Accessibility #BlindTech #ACB2025 #AudioDescription #InclusiveDesign #ViddyScribe

The latest edition of my newsletter is out.
This week, I cover:
– The launch of the new Techopolis Online Solutions website
– A free SwiftUI course I’m co-teaching with Michael Doise this fall
– Two upcoming presentations, including Microsoft Reactor and ACB
– An unofficial developer meetup at the ACB Convention in Dallas
Read it here:
https://taylorarndt.substack.com/p/new-website-ai-presentations-acb
#AI #Accessibility #SwiftUI #TechNews #BlindTech #AppDevelopment #Inclusion #ACB2025 #MicrosoftReactor #Techopolis

Many apps aren’t built for blind or low vision users—but we’re changing that. At Techopolis Online Solutions, we build accessible iOS and Android apps that work with screen readers, follow clear design standards, and include smart features powered by AI. If you’ve struggled with apps that don’t include you, we’d love to help. Learn more at: https://www.techopolisonline.com/services
#Accessibility #BlindTech #InclusiveApps

A phone for the blind with ChatGPT built in?
The BlindShell Classic 3 might be the sleeper hit of the year.
Smart, simple, and it just works.
#BlindTech #Accessibility #AssistiveTech
👉 https://buff.ly/5gYDBHC

I didn’t plan to write about Wayland yet. But Xorg is dying — not eventually, but now. GNOME’s dropping X11 support. RHEL already removed it. Ubuntu and Fedora are next. And if you rely on accessibility, you don’t get to wait this one out.
So here’s Post 4 of I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back.
I’m using Wayland now. Primarily. Not because I love it. Because the fallback is disappearing, and I want to be there helping fix what comes next. GNOME with Orca actually works. KDE and COSMIC are making progress. I’ve talked to the people involved. They care.
But a lot is broken.
MATE — the desktop most blind users preferred — isn’t on Wayland.
ocrdesktop doesn’t work. xdotool is gone.
wlroots compositors still don’t reliably support Orca’s keybindings, especially on laptops.
This isn’t GNOME’s fault. They’re the only reason accessibility on Wayland works at all.
But the old excuses are gone. “Just use Xorg” isn’t going to be an option much longer.
So yeah. I’m a Wayland shill now. Because I’m using it. Because I have to.
And I want to make sure we’re not excluded from what comes next.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/
#Linux #Wayland #Accessibility #Orca #GNOME #KDE #COSMIC #FOSS #a11y #BlindTech #xorg

The ACB Community Call Let’s Talk AI now has a mailing list for ongoing conversation and resource sharing between calls.
If you want to:
•
Ask questions
•
Share tools and tips
•
Stay informed about upcoming topics
•
Connect with others interested in accessible AI
You’re welcome to join the list.
To subscribe, send a blank email to:
talkai+subscribe@taylorarndt.com
Looking forward to continuing the conversation.
#LetsTalkAI #BlindTech #AccessibleAI #ACBCommunity #AIForEveryone

Are there any Hamburg based blind or visually impaired ux/ui designers, users or programmers on here?

I'm not blind but have an academic background in human-computer interaction and have thought a lot about purpose-built ui/ux for screen readers during the past few weeks and would love to have some folx to bounce around ideas for better, "accessibility first" interface design.

Any code which might result from these discussions would be free (in the GPL sense) and open-source of course!

#ux #ui #accessibility #screenreaders #blindtech

I just purchased MS Office, and what a great decision that was. Now I’m looking for a reference manager that works well with JAWS and Word. Ideally something accessible, stable, and reliable for academic writing. Does anyone have any recommendations?

#Accessibility #JAWS #ReferenceManager #AcademicWriting #MSWord #BlindTech #DisabilityInAcademia

Hoping those familiar with #LaTeX can give me some advice here. I've started using it to create my assignments for school. I'm not writing technical papers yet, but I find using LaTeX with #Zotero in #VSCode more #accessible with a #ScreenReader than most other setups I've tried.
Since my discussion posts have to follow #APA style, I’m using LaTeX for those as well as full papers. That part is going well—but I’m running into trouble when I need to actually post what I’ve written.
My school uses Brightspace, which allows discussion posts in either rich text or #HTML. I have #Pandoc installed, so I tried converting my LaTeX source to HTML and pasting the code. But Pandoc didn’t include my references section in the output.
I also tried copying from the PDF, but that stripped all formatting.
Does anyone know how I can get a clean HTML version of my work—with references included—that I can paste into Brightspace?
Here’s the command I’ve been using:
pandoc main.tex \
--bibliography=references. Bib \
--csl=apa.csl \
--standalone \
-o main.html
It creates the HTML file, but the references section is missing.
Any tips?
#Accessibility #AssistiveTech #Pandoc #APAstyle #Brightspace #EdTech #AcademicWriting #InclusiveTech #BlindTech #HigherEd #CitationTools #OpenSource #WritingWorkflow

So here’s one of those keyboard shortcuts I probably should have known about already after over 10 years of using #JAWS, but didn’t! When I press Alt+Windows+S, JAWS announces “meeting status unavailable”. This appears to be a global shortcut and doesn’t seem to change no matter what I do from my (admittedly very brief) testing. FS Companion says that the keystroke is used to toggle between the local machine and the remote machine in a tandem session, which is incorrect. Anyone know what this does? I’m also using #Leasey if that makes a difference. #BlindTech #ScreenReader @freedomscientific

Thanks everyone for the great recommendations for MS Word alternatives! I’m now on the hunt for a good PDF reader that works well with JAWS on Windows 11. Or even something that can convert PDFs to text files so I can read them with my Braille display and add notes easily. Any suggestions?

#JAWS #BlindTech #PDF #Accessibility #Windows11 #ScreenReader #DisabilityTech #BrailleDisplay #AccessibleApps

I'm looking for a markdown editor for Windows that’s accessible with JAWS. I currently use iA Writer but not sure how well it works with a screen reader. I also need the ability to export to Word. Any recommendations? Thanks. #BlindTech #JAWS #Markdown #Accessibility #WindowsApps #ScreenReader #WordExport

I’ve published Part 3 of “I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back.”

This one’s about the so-called universal interface: the console. The raw, non-GUI, text-mode TTY. The place where sighted Linux users fall back when the desktop breaks, and where blind users are supposed to do the same. Except — we can’t. Not reliably. Not safely. Not without building the entire stack ourselves.

This post covers Speakup, BRLTTY, Fenrir, and the audio subsystem hell that makes screen reading in the console a game of chance. It dives into why session-locked audio breaks espeakup, why BRLTTY fails silently and eats USB ports, why the console can be a full environment — and why it’s still unusable out of the box. And yes, it calls out the fact that if you’re deafblind, and BRLTTY doesn’t start, you’re just locked out of the machine entirely. No speech. No visuals. Just a dead black box.

There are workarounds. Scripts. Hacks. Weird client.conf magic that you run once as root, once as a user, and pray to PipeWire that it sticks. Some of this I learned from a reader of post 1. None of it is documented. None of it is standard. And none of it should be required.

This is a long one. Technical, and very real. Because the console should be the one place Linux accessibility never breaks. And it’s the one place that’s been left to rot.

Link to the post: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-3-speakup-brltty-and-the-forgotten-infrastructure-of-console-access/

#Linux #Accessibility #BlindTech #BRLTTY #Speakup #Fenrir #TTY #PipeWire #ScreenReader #DisabilityTech #ConsoleComputing #LinuxAccessibility #FOSS

Just published a blog post tearing into hCaptcha’s so-called “accessibility” mode.

It’s not accessibility. It’s a cookie. And to get that cookie, you now have to submit your email and send a code via SMS to an U.S. phone number. It fails silently. It doesn’t confirm anything. You click “Confirm Code” and get “An error has occurred.” No cookie. No fallback. No support. And if you somehow get it? It’s a third-party cookie your browser probably blocks, and it expires. Then you get to do it all again.

Meanwhile, hCaptcha’s text-based challenge — the only mode that might actually work with a screen reader — isn’t tied to the cookie at all. It only shows up if the website owner specifically enables it. Most don’t. So even if you’re blind, even if you’re using assistive tech, you get the same unusable image grid as everyone else.

This isn’t accessibility. It’s exclusion wrapped in PR.

The blog post breaks it all down: how the cookie flow works (or doesn’t), why the system is broken by design, how developers got misled, and what real alternatives look like. If you care about accessible design or just want to understand how bad this gets, read it.

Link: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/hellcaptcha-accessibility-theater-at-its-worst/

#Accessibility #a11y #BlindTech #hCaptcha #HellCaptcha #UX #WebDev #ScreenReaders #Disability #TechRant #DevTools #Ableism #Privacy #FOSS #Inclusion

🎓 Returning #Blind #CS #Student – Seeking Advice on LaTeX & #Accessible #Math Tools

Hi everyone! I’m a blind student returning to college to pursue a B.S. in Computer Science through Colorado Christian University Online. This is my third attempt at college due to chronic illness, but I’m excited to be back and determined to make it work.

I’m looking for advice on two fronts:

📝 1. LaTeX on #Windows

I’ve recently started learning LaTeX and find it a more accessible way to write papers—especially when paired with Zotero for citations. My main machine is a Windows 11 Pro mini PC, and I also have a Raspberry Pi running Arch Linux ARM.

So far, I’ve tried:

• Overleaf – nice interface, but the PDF viewer isn’t very screen reader-friendly and the editor has some issues too (JAWS/NVDA repeat lines).
• VS Code with LaTeX Workshop – most accessible option I've tried
• TeXnicCenter – only briefly.

👉 Question: What LaTeX editors or workflows do you use on #Windows, and how accessible have you found them?

➗ 2. Relearning College-Level Math

I’ll be starting with calculus early next year. It’s been a long time since high school, and chronic illness has affected my memory and cognition. I used to use a Perkins Brailler for math, but arthritis/lupus (still being diagnosed) makes that painful now.

👉 Question: Can anyone recommend accessible resources for relearning math—especially for someone doing everything online?

Any tips for doing math, science, or programming fully online as a blind student would be incredibly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! I’m happy to share what I learn along the way.

Feel free to boost or tag others who might have insights.

#BlindTech #Accessibility #LaTeX #STEM #DisabilityInSTEM #MathAccessibility #JAWS #NVDA ##ScreenReader Zotero #ChronicIllness #OnlineLearning @mastoblind @main

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for an accessible Reddit app for Mac that works well with VoiceOver. What do you suggest? I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

#BlindTech #MacAccessibility #VoiceOver #Reddit #AccessibleApps #Apple #ScreenReader #TechForAll #BlindCommunity

Aira x Google: Innovations in AI Explained on Double Tap!

What does Aira’s new partnership with Google and DeepMind mean for blind and low vision users?

On a special episode of Double Tap, Aira CEO Troy Otillio breaks down how visual interpreting is evolving with AI — from the debut of Aira’s AI Visual Interpreter, powered by Project Astra, to what’s next with smart glasses and memory-aware AI.

- Built through the Build AI initiative with thousands of users
- A natural, conversational tool for real-time interpreting
- Backed by human agents for trust and safety
- Open to Trusted Testers — help shape what’s next

Listen now 🎧 https://doubletaponair.com/inside-airas-ai-future-with-google-deepmind/
Join the waitlist → https://aira.io/projectastra/
FAQ → https://aira.io/introducing-project-astra-join-the-trusted-testers-waitlist-today/

*Currently U.S. only (some state exclusions). Not eligible? Apply to show demand and help us advocate for global access.

#DoubleTap #AiraAI #ProjectAstra #AIForAccessibility #InclusiveInnovation #BuildAI #BlindTech

This week:
✅ What’s coming from Google I/O + Microsoft Build (keynotes + registration links)
✅ Major AccessU takeaway on accessible JavaScript
✅ An interview with Quincy Larson from freeCodeCamp—TOMORROW!
✅ New features for paid subscribers
Read and subscribe: https://taylorarndt.substack.com/p/newsletter-issue-2
#WebAccessibility #Substack #NVDA #AI #TechEvents #HTML5 #BlindTech