Hey, Mastodon hive mind. I'm wondering what the best sollutions are these days for accessibly interacting with IRC? I come from the era of tools like MircWithSpeech and TalkingIRC. I'm currently using ADIIRC, with its speech plugin, which I helped develop! Along with @fastfinge, but i'm not sure if that client is seeing a lot of development, and there's still some annoying accessibility quirks, I'm also quite comfortable with irssi, but would prefer a windows native sollution if possible. Anything still good for mIRC? Something else? #IRC#Accessibility#A11Y#Chat
@arfy@fastfinge Hey hi! I still use mIRC with the mIRCSpeech plugin. Sure, the plugin hasn't changed in like 20 years, but neither has the JFW or presumably NVDA API.
@quanin@arfy I mean technically, the NVDA API has changed. But nobody uses the new functionality. I honestly wish I still had the code for sjams that me and @cachondo worked on years ago. It was my favourite incarnation of that concept, and would probably still work honestly. Just needs NVDA added.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo I mean, probably technically so has the JFW API. It's been 20 years, after all. But the old functionality still exists, apparently, because I've been using it for 20 years. LOL
@quanin@arfy@cachondo So don't ever lose mircspeech. It's not on the internet anywhere anymore. Like totally gone. What version are you using? Is it the one by The Fudge and Mo/Ace? Or is it the one with my name on it? or the talking IRC one, Or the one Sean refactored? If it has my name on it please do feel free to dump it on github just so it's not lost forever.
@quanin@arfy@cachondo Is it bundled with a version of mIRC? Or does it install into an existing version of mIRC? If it's bundled with mirc, it's not mine. If it installs into an existing mIRC, it's either mine or Sean's. The one good thing about github, these days, is that abandoned projects stay there. This was long before github even existed LOL.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo It installs into an existing mIRC version. I explicitly avoided the bundled version because I do remember if you ever updated mIRC for any reason that thing hit the floor.
@arfy@cachondo@quanin The installer is probably NSIS. So unzipping it instead of running it should get you the source. Or just send it to me and I'll make it a repo LOL. It still works and it should be online somewhere.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo Yeah, I'll give it a repo later today. I might see if the readme is somewhere on my machine and use that as the basis for the readme.md GitHub looks for.
@quanin@arfy@cachondo If it's anywhere, it'll be part of the installer when you unzip it. It might have also been dumped into your mirc directory in program files as well. Good grief this is making me feel old. Pretty sure as a teenager I touched, in at least some small way, every single talking IRC solution that ever existed.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo Okay, ReadMe located and yes, your name is definitely on it. It goes on GitHub later today. IF I don't feed you a repo URL by tomorrow AM, you have my permission to slap me.
@quanin@arfy@cachondo Oh wow! This is old! Even before mirc script allowed loading of dll files. There’s no way this supports NVDA. Jaws 3.5 was still newish when this was born.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo Yeah, I could have swore it did, but I was apparently incorrect. Woops. I made the source available in case someone wants to hack at it.
@quanin@munchkinbear@fastfinge@arfy and I used to use Colloquy on iOS back in the day. I don't think it's still developed ut it was usable. This was back when my main machine was running mIRC from a wired connection, I guess.
@fastfinge@quanin@arfy I wasn't using NVDA with SJAMS; JAWS, window Eyes both had com support but the NVDA controller was a dll. I guess I'd have had to write an actual mIRC DLL to interface with NVDA. Or perhaps it'd be easier to write an NVDA addon to mimic the JFW Com API, who knows.
@arfy@fastfinge@cachondo It should absolutely all work. It's a pretty basic program and I've tested it on JAWS versions as recent as 2025. No reason the NVDA API should behave any differently.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo What message types are those? And I assume that would just be a matter of updating the scripts and repackaging it. I just haven't seen any to test.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo Well, once I throw it up on GH later if you want to update it, I mean it's partially your code. Just send me the new installer and I'll add it to the repo. Or give you access, whichever.
@quanin@arfy@cachondo lol I think I forgot everything I ever new about Mirc. Also, all the old irc hangouts I knew of are dead dead. So I’ve got nowhere to test.
@quanin@arfy@cachondo I keep wanting to bring irc back in our community. But there’s just no good accessible iOS client. So it’s dead in the water.
@fastfinge@arfy@cachondo I don't even know how you'd make IRC accessible on iOS. Or even Android. On iOS in particular VO would be tripping over itself every time someone posted something new. You'd have a hell of a time doing anything.
@fastfinge@quanin@arfy I have a vague memory of using mIRC with SJAMS on windows 10, but that could really have still been with JAWS or even SAPI if I was using NVDA by that point. I can't see how that old SJAMS code interfaced with NVDA at all.
@cachondo@arfy@quanin I have similar memories. But they're so vague I can't put a finger on them. I find it hard to believe that nobody did NVDA support for mIRC, though!
@fastfinge@cachondo@quanin I'm not sure where mo's gotten to these days, but I'm sure he, or I, at some point, got mIRC and his TalkingIRC script working with NVDA, via a mirc layer to toke. That's all i can think of.
@arfy@fastfinge@cachondo Welp, I'm one of these days going to sit down and see if I can't rewrite the version I have in Python and call it good. Accessible Output 2 should cover JAWS, NVDA and SAPI if needed.
