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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)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
blog https://stuff.interfree.ca/
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@clv1 @jscholes @jcsteh The perfect solution would be for everyone to just learn a language that already does, like Korean. The world only needs a single language, and then we can get rid of AI translation services, and save the environment! I mean, as long as we’re all dreaming impossible dreams…
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jason @jcsteh I think social media should be handled the same way we handle TV in Canada: no ads or sponsored content for children. If your website shows ads, it either needs to be adults only, or it needs to show zero advertisements to children. Then all of the incentives for the social media networks to capture children’s attention the way they have are gone, because they can’t make money at it. And places like Mastodon can just keep doing what we’re doing.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@mcourcel Nah. He's spent the entire negotiation rolling over and shaking a paw like a good little puppy. I expect after they force the provinces to put American alcohol back on the shelves and nobody buys it, we'll all be given legally enforced quotas for how much of it we're required to buy in order to show support to our American friends.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh I wonder how all of the social media bans and age verification requirements and things are going to affect that? As they remove computers from the schools, and kids aren't allowed to use Gmail or Google Docs until they're 16, will Braille make a comeback? Or will the kids just be left to wrotte because "Well, they can just use a screen reader when they're old enough". As I understand it, Australia decided that github qualifies as a social network. So technicly a 13 year old student is legally not allowed to download NVDA there.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jscholes @jcsteh Right, but everyone in the room would notice...something...was different about it, even if they couldn't articulate what. The same way even though I can't play a single instrument, I can tell if someone else is playing an instrument poorly. Even if I can't explain what they're doing wrong.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh Also, remember that billions of dollars and years of manpower have been spent helping people who struggle to read print do a better job of it, so they can read signs and billboards, even if they would never willingly pick up and read a novel. In comparison, almost zero resources have been spent on helping people who struggle to read Braille. They're just told to give up on it.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh I think it's more about removing the stigma around being illiterate, honestly. I know some sighted folks who, for one reason or another, are functionally illiterate. But they would never, ever come out and say it, even if reading a menu is a fifteen minute struggle. Some people's brains just aren't set up for reading fluintly, either in Braille or print. It's not a problem unique to Braille.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh Yes, but most style guides are major enough that they're easy for sighted readers to learn. If you grew up in Canada, almost every newspaper article you read probably follows the Canadian Press Book of Style. Same for US news and AP Style. So for sighted writers, it's just "do the natural thing". For blind folks who don't read Braille daily, it's just a giant pile of a few thousand rules to memorize.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh And that's not to mention things that even Braille readers can't learn, but authors/writers are absolutely required to know. For example, are you aware of drop caps and why/how they're used? That was another thing I constantly got marks taken off for forgetting when I submitted certain documents.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh I used to agree with you a lot stronger until I went into journalism at university. They had a required "spelling and punctuation" exam that every other student past on the first try. It took me three. Without reading Braille, you just don't notice things like God needs a capital g, LORD is in all caps in some cases (and YHWH always is), titles that go after a name (esq, phd, OBE, etc) are capitalized differently from titles that go before the name (mr. mrs. and so on), not to mention all of the non-obvious homophones; everyone gets there/they're/their, but what about pail vs. pale? When should you write the number 5, and when should you spell it out? When should a word be a compound, and when should it be hyphenated? How and when should words be split across lines? What types of subheads can go in the middle of a page, and what should always go at the top of the next page? When is it okay to skip an accented letter at the end of a word, and when is it not? What is the difference between dashes, Hyphens, and em-dashes, and when should each be used? When does punctuation go inside the quotes, and when does it go outside? There are three types of quotation marks; when is it appropriate to use each one? These are things any sighted person picks up naturally, just by reading, well enough to pass this sort of exam. Whereas I mostly used speech for everything but math and science, so I had to study for several months to squeak a pass. Because none of that is stuff you'd think to pause your text to speech reading and check, or even realize was a thing unless someone directly told you.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@Tamasg So what you're telling me is that you have Arthur to thank for your entire career, and he should really get propper credit in the TGSpeechbox repo. LOL JK
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jscholes They wanted the screen wrapping addon. So when they pressed h on the last heading, it would wrap back to the top of the screen.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@twynn@mas.toThey wanted the screen wrapping addon, so NVDA would go back to the top of the page when they pushed a key like h and were at the last heading.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@twynn No, it was not. It was an iMessage I got on my actual phone from someone I met at a blindness gathering.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@jcsteh And some of it is probably due to secondary mental illnesses, that get completely ignored because everyone was focused exclusively on their blindness growing up. But I suspect the vast majority of it comes from the dreadful state of disability education. Far too many blind people (and too many sighted people for that matter) have no idea how to actually learn anything. But it's far worse if you're blind, stuck into a special education classroom with everyone else, have no teacher who knows Braille, and are pretty much just left to sit by yourself in the corner; the staff are just happy you're not causing them anymore problems and will just leave you to your own devices. This is, in general, not a criticism of the usually under-funded, under-resourced, and under-trained teachers and staff. But in a class of 40 third graders, the blind student isn't going to get much attention. Or you could go to an underfunded blind school, where they teach you in grade nine what sighted students get in grade four. Sorry, you touched a bit of a nerve. Obviously blind folks have some responsibility for our own destiny. But by the time you're old enough to realize you should be responsible, it could well be too late for you.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
Sometimes there's no excuse for blind people spelling. "What's the NVDA addon for raping with shortcuts?" they ask plaintively. First off, it needs another p. And then we can worry about the missing w. But honestly, maybe you should just stick to dictation.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@FreakyFwoof I know you teach music sometimes. This might be useful to you: runjs.app/blog/music-theory-for-programmers
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@ppatel @matt Never heard of startpage.com. Do you know where it gets its results from?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@matt I think the only way to learn anything about programming from an LLM is to look at the code it produces, but never ask it any questions about the code it produced. The code itself is usually well-commented, and if you're looking for a sort of average example of how to do a sort of average thing, you can teach yourself that from LLM output. But when it comes to the "hard sciences", LLMs are built to assume you're smarter than they are and please you. Interestingly, when it comes to the "soft sciences", LLMs are built to assume you're a mentally disabled five-year-old, and refuse any request that could possibly hurt anyone anywhere, while lecturing you about how wrong and stupid and dangerous and problematic you are.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
2mo
@matt Right, and to challenge in a way that won't cause it to just blow smoke up my bottom would require me to already know about the thing I'm challenging it on. LLMs are designed to please you, not to teach you.
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