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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
8mo
@lynessence Same!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry Yikes! Why? LOL
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
One of my closest and longest friends is starting a new YouTube channel documenting his journey to fulfill a life-long dream of his. Even though he's low vision, through a new program available in Ontario, he has the opportunity to gain his drivers license via the use of a bioptic telescope. If you love cars as much as he does, are just curious, or are a low vision person interested in what a program like this could mean for you, check out his first video on the channel! As far as I know, this is the first time someone has documented the journey of learning to drive with a bioptic telescope from day one, from the perspective of a person with a disability, rather than a doctor or other medical professional. You can find the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZdw1CzYtI
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry Perfect! That looks like the place to start.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry Thanks! If only Android had some kind of files API the way Apple does. These days, on IOS, it doesn't matter what an app supports, because it all gets accessed via files anyway.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry Perfect, thanks for checking!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@jonathan859 I'm glad you're enjoying the series! I carry too much junk already when traveling; I'm not sure I can manage two phones at once LOL. Jieshuo is really overwhelming at the start, but once you get it going, it's way faster than TalkBack. You've just gotta spend a day at it. Now if only it would stay enabled...
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry I actually use One Drive, not dropbox. Do any of those apps support that?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@matt hahahahahaahahahahahahaaaa! Will it save a wealthy executive a penny, while also allowing him to transfer all liability to "the computer" for anything that goes wrong? If yes, then it's absolutely happening. Sorry, I'm cranky and sad and your optimism triggered me.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@mcourcel I have not! From a brief glance it looks just like shortcuts, though. I've got a dozen or so of those on my iPhone that trigger regularly.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
Android day Four: Equality Achieved
I complete Android customizations bringing me what feels like equality with IOS, at least for the base system.
stuff.interfree.ca/2025/05/28/android4.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@JamminJerry If you have jieshuo set to use the accessibility volume control, neither voice typing, 'nor holding down the lock button for gemini, will work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
Yup, Nova Launcher has already made my life significantly better. And the tip about not using volume fixed my issues with accessibility voice typing and gemini. Apparently the secret to using Android is just replacing all of it.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@alexchapman Interesting, I'll let you know if I notice any changes.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@J3317 Yeah, Nova is on my list to investigate.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@VE3RWJ It's just regular HTML. Malware bytes has blacklisted my server IP since day one, and they don't allow reporting by non-users of the software. So nothing I can do.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
Android Days two and three: There has to be a way to make this better. Where I become frustrated with the out of the box experience and try to improve things: stuff.interfree.ca/2025/05/27/android-23.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
First post from tusky!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@talon @jscholes And yet, at least in my experience, NVDA is the screen reader with the fewest number of these sorts of bugs. Apple isn't interested in fixing anything; they have fifty new features to ad to voiceover. Jaws needs to add AI everywhere to justify making the software a yearly subscription, and have started regularly just listing bug fixes as new features to justify a new major version. Narrator gets one or two new features a year, and maybe a bug fixed every once in a while. And if NVDA doesn't add stuff like this, people will complain that they're falling behind. Honestly I hope they can add extra optional AI features like translation, image description, cloud preferences syncing, etc, as a subscription feature, to make NV Access a bit of money. The NVDA Spanish guys are doing it right with a paid subscription to access their LibreTranslate. The model also seems to work for ZDSR and jieshuo: offer a free screen reader, with subscription AI addons. In all of these cases, the payment and licensing infrastructure is awful. But NV Access could get this right, and hopefully unlock a funding model that isn't just begging for donations.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
8mo
@tjolsen @Jage @jscholes @jcsteh @talon The problem is I'm pretty sure this is Microsoft's fault; I experience excel freezes with Narrator pretty frequently, ttoo. The only place they don't happen is jaws, so they're obviously doing something custom to work around it that they're not going to share with the rest of us.