To my fellow blind DOS users. I have some real machines and genuine hardware synthesizers, but at the moment, they're not available. I have a Windows 3.1 virtual machine with ASAP installed. Someone gave it to me a few years ago. But I think there's a problem with com0com. I have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. I think the older one I used wouldn't work on 64-bit systems. Regardless, I forget how to use it. I know I need to set it to com9, so that ASAP thinks I'm using a Braille-N-Speak, when it's really NVDA that's outputting the speech. Can anyone help me? Also, I know that many developments have taken place since the last official version of MS-DOS, from FreeDOs, to FreeDOS-32, to Enhanced DR-DOS. I also know that the Provox screen reader has been made open source. To my knowledge, it's the only one that has. Has anyone tried to update it or use it with the later versions of DOS? What about real software synthesizers? Is there any way for me to obtain a full version of Vocal-Eyes, now that the company that made it isn't even around anymore, let alone supporting it?

#accessibility #ASAP #blind #DOS #EnhancedDRDOS #FreeDOS #FreeDOS-32 #MS-DOS #Provox #screenreaders #speech #virtualmachines

Stages of a Dos-Lover's Linux Journey
1. Ooh! There's an operating system I haven't tried, and it has a screen reader!
2. Yay! I chose one. Let's download it.
3. Hurray! It's installed. Wait. It's not talking. What's wrong? let's try another. Okay, that one talks.
4. Why isn't it seeing my shared folder from VMware? Never mind, I'll just ask Perplexity.
5. Great. It gave me some commands, let's try them.
6. What the hell is this! Why are there no drive letters? What is that command? Why is it a mile long? Why must I always enter sudo for everything?
7. Okay. Several hours have passed. This is maybe my third or fourth attempt in the last two months or so. Even Perplexity admits that it was giving me the wrong commands! sigh Let's try this one.
8. Yay! It finally sees my folders! At last, I can learn the operating system!
9. What the bloody hell! It sees my text file as an executable? How the hell can a .txt file be an executable? How do I fix this to make all .txt files be seen as... normal text files!
10. Back to the commandline,again, because people can't figure out how to do this graphically! Why do Linux commands give me a headache when I can work with DOS all day? Why don't these make any sense?
11. Even Noel Coward would be blushing at my hypothetical vocabulary right now, so I won't type the rest. I'm going back to XP, 7, and DOS! On second thought, I'm going to make a cup of tea, watch an operetta, and forget that computers exist at all!

#accessibility #commandline #Debian #Linux #DOS #Orca

I'm trying to figure out which is the best computer for my needs. I'm caught between three options. I want something very portable that's smaller than my Del Latitude 3120, and even than my Acer Aspire One D270! I would use all of these with an external keyboard. The MeLes can run off a power bank and needs speakers, while the Toughbook has its own battery and speakers. The MeLes have more usb ports, where as the Toughpad would require a usb hub (owned). Some of these come with more ram or storage. I tried to choose similar specifications when possible. All cost about $300, once you add in the power bank for the last two, though they may be on sale, due to Black Friday.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 MK3 with 7th generation Intel Core i5-7Y57 vPro processor with two cores and four Intel Hyper-Threads, 8GB of soldered DDR3L RAM, and a 128GB M.2 2280 SSD.

amazon.com/gp/product/B0DK7W87…

MeLE Mini PC Quieter 4C, 12th Gen Alder Lake-N100 - processor. Featuring 4 cores and 4 threads, with speeds of up to 3.4GHz, 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM (4266MHz) and 128GB of storage (128GB eMMC, M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0x4 3940MB/s).
(Note: the m.2. is just a slot, not an installed drive, so it's empty, and I won't be taking things apart to install it)

amazon.com/MeLE-Mini-Quieter-4…

MeLE PC PCG02 Pro, with Quad-Core Alder Lake 12th N100, 8GB 4266MHz LPDDR4 ram, 128GB emmc storage and a Micro SD port that supports expanding up to 2TB.
(Note: I think this is for a micro sd card, which I can insert and use on my own)

amazon.com/MeLE-PCG02-Pro-Comp…

If I chose one of the last two, and wanted to use it with a power bank and not the regular cord, it would have to be this one, as no others are accessible to the blind.

accessibility.energrid.us.com/…

These are the programmes I use.

screen reader: NVDA

Internet Browser: Supermium (modern fork of Chrome, works with XP through 11)

Text Editor: Notepad2 (11), Notepad (XP/7), with spell checker: Jarte (all)

Media Player MPCHC (all)

MP3 Recorder: Virtual Recorder v1.4.0.2 (all)

E-Mail Thunderbird (Legacy 102 (7/11) Icedove or Outlook Express (XP), considering Windows Live Mail (all)

Youtube: Accessible Youtube Downloader (11)

Friendica: site (all) TweeseCake, TWBlue (11)

Timer: Cook Timer (all)

Computer Cleaner: CCleaner 5.49 (XP) KCleaner (all)

Uninstaller: Revo Uninstaller (much older version, newer is not accessible) (all)

OCR/pdf converter: Openbook, Kurzweil 1000 (all)

Virtual machines: VMWare Player 6.0.4, VmWare Workstation 17 (11)

#accessibility #blind #computers #powerbanks #tablets #technology #virtualmachines #Windows7 #Windows11 #WindowsXP

Note: Despite this negative post, the people at Newsmast do take accessibility seriously and have said they would fix the issues that I mentioned earlier. So please don't let this reflect on them. I only told them about these a few days ago. Today, I found the new ones. Maybe, their site is simply not working properly for anyone at the moment.
I found yet more inaccessibility with newsmast. I went there using Supermium, and hit all the "button" links until I found the one that was for communities. I tried to follow one by entering my Friendica.world information, and told it to authorise the interaction, which is all normal and is how I joined the others when I found myself tagged in them. Then, I was sent to a page that asked me about my birthday, location, etc. I had never seen this when joining a Newsmast page, but I began doing it. There was an edit box for country, but regardless of what I typed, it kept telling me that I needed to select a country. But there was no combobox to do so, just an edit box for typing. I closed the window and tried to return to the communities page, but it kept returning me to the form where I had to enter my location, even when I specifically removed that part of the url. I'm going to try it with Firefox, which is a bit more accessible with the site (it shows some links not all unlabelled buttons), but this shouldn't be happening. I also need to figure out how to delete the cookie from Supermium so that I can visit the site without the prompt.

Update. I just went there with Firefox. I was able to find and follow a community. Again, it sent me to the location page, even when I closed the initial one that opened. Now, whenever I go there, it does the same. I guess I have to use a different browser or virtual machine every time I want to join a community, or just type a large number of tags into one post, hoping that some are communities, so that they will boost my meaningless post, just so that I might be lucky enough to land on their follow page and not the location one again. Yes, that was sarcasm. In reality, I'll just go back to my other pages that list various tags and communities to join because they work.
#accessibility #blind #blindness #Newsmast #firefox #NVDA #Supermium #Windows @newsmast.org @newsmast

This is truly ridiculous. In order to post here, I have to use Semaphore, TWBlue or Pachli, because I can't figure out how to do it on the main site. I know I did it a few times, but it's very difficult to find and is not available as and immediate edit box. In order to read my own posts, I have to go to the main site or Pachli, because I can't do it on Semaphore or TWBlue. (Note. I figured out how to red them but can't reply on Semaphore, since there is no edit box.) So I basically have to use several sites plus an app (I almost never use apps for any websites) just to be able to use Friendica. I specifically left Facebook due to inaccessibility! Even with this mess, it's still not as horrible as there, but It would be nice to have one site where I could do it all, like on Dreamwidth, or at least one Windows client that would allow me to do everything, without having to resort to using my phone! Tweesecake was nice the few times it worked, but now, no matter what I do, I can't even get it to load. It says something about configuring and then disappears! Enafore is supposed to allow me to edit my posts, but I have no idea how to do that since there is no normal edit link or button, and half the time, when I go to my page, the edit box for me to type in isn't even there! Semaphore inserts rubbish when I'm trying to write tags, so that I have to write everything in Notepad and paste it in.

#accessibility #Android #apps #blind #clients #Dreamwidth #Facebook #friendica #twblue #Tweesecake #Windows

Someone recommended this page to me. It was quite interesting, but I found this confusing.

"My first week on Friendica I was puzzled by all the posts I would see in my feed from accounts I was not following. I only had 24 contacts then and yet my feed was populated by posts of people I did not recognize. I could not figure out why they showed up or how to “weed” those out. On Friendica you can follow hashtags - just like you can do on Mastodon - but those posts have a subtle hashtag icon at the top. I could not understand where the posts by random people came from... they did not contain hashtags I was following.
Friendica’s settings have a myriad of options. I finally figured out that what I needed to do was go to Settings > Social Networks > Followed Content Scope and select the option “only conversations my follows started”. That’s because the default setting on Friendica (as of August 2024) is “conversations my follows started or commented on”. This populates your feed with posts by people you do NOT follow, if one of your contacts replied to them."

I have the same problem. I went to Settings and couldn't find anything like this. Could it possibly be disabled at the friendica.world instance?

I had to laugh when I read that she doesn't like when Friendica is compared to Facebook. I actually joined precisely because Facebook was discontinuing their Basic Mobile site (not app) and I needed something that was actually accessible with NVDA! As for finding the page old fashion, I actually find it to be too modern for my taste, with collapsing menus, submenus, tabs, etc, instead of normal links. Using the main site, while nowhere near as bad as Facebook, is still a chore. For instance, I have to go through all sorts of links just to find the link to post, instead of there being an edit box and a post button right on the main page. Again, does all of this depend on instance, or is this the standard look of all Friendica pages?

On the positive side, I love the long posts here. In fact, that's why I chose Friendica in the first place. I never really format anything, other than indenting for paragraphs at times, but for those who do, it's good to have those options available.

blog.elenarossini.com/the-futu…

#accessibility #blind #Facebook #formatting #friendica #NVDA #timeline

I think I know what I hate about modern websites, web apps, etc. They use these ridiculous menus, from hamburger menus that collapse, to menu bars. Whatever happened to normal links, radio buttons, checkboxes, and comboboxes? Why does everything have to be a menu, and half hidden, with a million steps to get to it? It's beyond annoying! As for the regular programs, many of those don't have normal menus (accessible with the alt key or alt+f) either, and either have ribbons, which I detest, or strange looping menus with no "okay" and "cancel" buttons. I like to know that I completed a task, not to just leave something. Plus, "cancel" means that I could undo any changes immediately. Fortunately, 99% of the programs I use are normal, since I mostly to use the modern rot. But I can't help it with websites or these new web apps, which is why I am always looking for good alternatives to things. The phrase "keep it simple, stupid", while crude, is most certainly true. Don't even get me started on appliances that use touchscreens instead of dials, switches, and buttons. I'm proud to say I don't own any of those!

#accessibility #apps #blind #computers #menus #simplicity #technology

Below is a conversation I've had with Perplexity. I am not including the links given, just to make this shorter. I am hoping that someone here could offer advice. I really love Friendica, but this drives me mad. I also use Semaphore, but it does the same thing. By the way, I don't "reach out" to people. I'm not a member of the four Tops. I write to them, contact them, speak with them, etc. I hate modern slang.

Me. "What is thread mode in Tweesecake? Does it link posts together as in GMail with e-mails? One major problem I'm finding with Friendica is that, when I read my timeline, regardless of whether I'm using the main site, Tweesecake, Pachli, or Tusky, I see posts out of context. Instead of seeing five separate posts, clicking on one, and seeing its contents, I see parts of conversations scattered throughout my timeline, and I have no choice as to which posts I want to read, because they're all there at once. I am blind and use NVDA and Talkback. This is very confusing."

Perplexity. "I apologize, but I don't have specific information about a "thread mode" in Tweesecake or how it might link posts together. However, I can address your concerns about the timeline experience in Friendica and provide some general information that may be helpful.
The issue you're describing with scattered conversation parts in your timeline is a common challenge in many social media platforms, including Friendica. This type of display is often referred to as a "flat" timeline, where posts and replies are shown in chronological order regardless of their relationship to each other.
To address your specific concerns:
Timeline Organization
Friendica's default timeline behavior shows posts and replies in chronological order, which can indeed lead to fragmented conversations appearing throughout your feedFriendica timelines are compelling - Col·lapse / Colapso. This can be particularly challenging for users relying on screen readers like NVDA or Talkback, as it may be difficult to follow the context of conversations.
Filtering Options
While Friendica doesn't offer a built-in "thread mode" as you've described, there are some filtering and organization options that might help:
1. Hashtag Filtering: Friendica has hashtag filters that can hide posts containing specific tags, though they don't remove them completely from the timelineEnable the filtering and hiding of hashtags in the timelines "New ....
2. Content Filtering: There's an addon called "advancedcontentfilter" that allows for expression-based content filtering, which might help in organizing your timelineFriendica Addons.
3. Collapse Features: Addons like "showmore" and "showmore_dyn" can collapse posts at a user-defined character length or dynamically limit the height of posts, potentially making it easier to navigate through your timelineFriendica Addons.
Potential Improvements
It's worth noting that there have been discussions and feature requests related to improving the timeline experience in Friendica:
1. A feature request has been made to completely hide blocked content rather than just collapsing itHide blocked content completely · Issue #14505 · friendica ... - GitHub. This could potentially help in decluttering your timeline.
2. Some users have expressed interest in having "exception groups" or "negative groups" for more granular control over what appears in their timelineDisplay - Motley.
Accessibility Considerations
As a blind user relying on screen readers, the current timeline structure in Friendica and its various clients may indeed pose challenges. It might be helpful to reach out to the Friendica development community or the developers of the specific clients you're using (Tweesecake, Pachli, Tusky) to express your accessibility concerns and see if there are any plans or possibilities for improving the experience for screen reader users.
While not a perfect solution, you might find it helpful to use the "Network" or "Community" views in Friendica, which sometimes offer a more structured way of viewing conversations, though this may vary depending on the client you're using."

#accessibility #blind #Friendica #Mastodon #organisation #Pachli #posting #Semafore #timeline #Tweesecake