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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
matrix @fastfinge:interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@DavidRedmond thanks! There are some more offline examples in this article that I didn’t include because I was focused on the story of digital. I’m glad more blind folks are writing similar articles.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Accessibility, The Origin of Innovation: In this article, I will discuss the details of 10 innovations throughout history that were only possible through unlocking the power of accessibility and including the voices of people with disabilities. In the community, it is a deeply believed and often repeated fact that improving leads to innovations that improve the world for everyone. Necessity is the mother of invention is, after all, a proverb so frequently quoted that it has become a cliché. And yet, people with disabilities still find ourselves left out of research and design, and all too often we don’t get a seat at the product development table. This leaves our inventions overlooked, unrecognized, and sometimes unrealized. stuff.interfree.ca/2025/12/16/origins-of-accessibility.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
The new offline Ava HD voice available for Windows 11 insiders in the Narrator is...wild. Who...what...why? She wants so badly to be my friend and I hate it! I just want her to read the things on the screen. Why is she so smiley and happy? To be fair, all of the other natural voices for Narrator are nearly perfect. If they were just a bit quicker, and had fewer weird pauses, and worked with NVDA, they could almost replace eloquence.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Yup! I got an early start with eloquence because I knew it was going to be difficult and annoying work, with no help from NVDA themselves.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Apple Music on Windows is infuriating. This morning it decided that it just can't load my library. At all. Ever. No music for my workday today, I guess. Yes I know, self-hosted music libraries. But I have neither the time 'nor the money to find, sort, manage, and back-up all the music I'm interested in. And even if I did, they'd be music ripped from used CD's from the thrift store, so the artist wouldn't get any money anyway. Plus I do enjoy discovering new music. And none of the internet radio stations I know of quite meet my taste, and they don't offer a no repeat workday anyway. Plus the only one that comes close has ads and no way to pay to remove them.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Right, but they don't get any money from you for doing that. And it's not really planned as much as it is forced. Python itself is going to discontinue 32-bit support in the next couple of years. So NVDA doesn't have much choice. They couldn't keep 32-bit even if they wanted to.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Try that, yeah. Otherwise...I'm really not sure. Nobody else has reported this issue to me, and a couple folks have confirmed that audio ducking is now working correctly for them. Best I can say is file an issue on the repo and see if anyone else chimes in.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Odd. I can't replicate the issue here. Are there any errors in the logs? I'm also on Windows 11 and audio ducking is working.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Also, planned obsolescence only really applies to things you pay for. Unless you pay for NVDA, it's not really an appropriate term.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew Is it running as admin? IE can it read the secure logon screen, UAC screens, etc? In my experience, whenever I see that error, it's because NVDA doesn't have the permissions it needs. Addons can't generate that error as far as I'm aware.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@BlindHedgehogStew You can’t use audio ducking unless NVDA is installed. It doesn’t work in portable copies.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
So I finally got a working version of unspoken-ng that uses steamaudio for reverb instead of verblib. Unfortunately, this was a case of be careful what you wish for! Calculating occlusion and doing raytracing is slow, and also sounds significantly worse than just using verblib, and making it sound about equally good makes it take so much CPU time it's just not worth it.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@tomayac @Lukew @cwilcox808 If you throw together a version with the aria removed I can take a look on Tuesday.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@cwilcox808 @tomayac I tested on NVDA with chrome and edge on windows 11, and safari and voiceover on iOS. I’m hoping to get to Mac, jaws, and Firefox testing early next week.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@cordova5029 They're like...flat discs like on a gramophone, but instead of played from the outside, they're played from the inside. And instead of using a disposable needle, they use a shiny steel ball that bounces along the grooves and makes the sound that way. So no needle to replace. And the grooves are cut up and down, rather than side to side. Also, the ball places less wear on the record than a needle would. Unfortunately it didn't catch on outside of Europe. While it was a better system, before electronic amplification, the ball meant it was quieter than systems with a steel needle. So it just lost out because all anyone cared about was volume.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
I got to Pathé discs reading about the , a much less interesting, yet much better covered, machine, that isn't really a format of its own.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Wow. Tonight I discovered Pathé discs. This might be the only rare audio format that techmoan hasn't covered! Anyone got a good video or podcast on 'em?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@phil Running a go to social server must get him...an extremely specific type of nookie, I guess.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Today is audio ducking day here at interfree! If you use the 64-bit , there are a couple small releases for you:
* eloquence: audio ducking now works thanks to akj: github.com/fastfinge/eloquence_64/releases/tag/v5
* unspoken-ng: if you use this addon, you also need to update, or audio ducking will remain broken, because someone (glares at himself) didn't quite understand NVWavePlayer: github.com/fastfinge/unspoken-ng/releases/tag/v1.0.3
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Sigh. Set up a firewall rule that banned my own ip, because I didn’t realize how hard Mona and lire hit the server. It’s gonna be one of those days.