u/astronomersassn

i've been using KDE tools since before i even knew what KDE was. krita was my first full-featured drawing program/image editor (back when i was drawing on a mediocre windows vista PC with a mouse), then i found an old version of KDE on windows through some youtube videos (never ran it myself, but many of my openshell skins were around it) and i developed more of an interest in it.

plasma was one of the more familiar-looking and accessible DEs when i made the jump to linux full-time. (especially as someone who's legally blind, being able to set up everything usably with maybe 5 clicks total was a godsend - i've noticed some accessibility gaps, but i usually need to have someone else read off my computer to me while setting up a screen reader and large font/screen zoom, while plasma was easy to navigate for me OOTB. i think it took me longer to set up firefox than plasma, LOL.)

KDE connect is genuinely so easy to use and is a lifesaver as someone who runs several devices with different OSes, especially with running some apple products in a primarily non-apple ecosystem. i don't want to even THINK about how much of a pain it was to get my ipad to communicate with my PC before finding KDE connect, and while some features aren't fully implemented on my ipad, the file transfer functionality alone is a lifesaver. i got it running on an old macbook as well, and yet again, the integration makes my life so much easier.

and kdenlive is frankly a great editor for my uses. it took me a bit to get used to, as i'm coming from much more basic tools (legitimately just my phone's built-in editor), but it's fun to play around with and the few hang-ups i've had were solved with a google search.

even things like kmag and kspeech have been invaluable - there's just some things that large font and a screen reader can't quite fill in for (such as images without alt text), and i'm also selectively mute IRL. while i use them less frequently than other KDE apps, i don't know how i got by without them (i sometimes have kspeech routed to voice/video calls, as an example, when my friends are using VC but i'm not able to speak directly and we're in a game with no private text chat).

i'm the furthest thing from a "brand loyalist." i use whatever device or tool happens to be available, needed, or convenient, and it's rare for me to find one integrated ecosystem that fully fits my needs. KDE has done that, so kudos to the KDE team and everyone who's contributed! i hope one day i'm able to offer more contribution than just an appreciation post, it still blows my mind how well things work together.

and if any of the KDE team sees this and are looking for visual accessibility feedback, i'm more than happy to help! i haven't encountered any major hang-ups thus far and quite appreciate how much is already built-in, and i'd love to see that trend continue :) i simply don't have enough direct coding skill to contribute much there.

tl;dr: thank you KDE team and anyone who's contributed to KDE projects. it's really amazing what y'all have done.

my sister and i were fraternal boy/girl twins as kids. i transitioned before her death, but i... am struggling. i feel like i'm "stealing" her place in the world, especially given i was the one who was a bit more sickly/weak growing up (and still am).

obviously, that wasn't the purpose of my transition, and i really am more comfortable living as a woman. i just... also have some complex feelings. sometimes i look in the mirror and it's like i'm looking at her.

exact conversation was about the street lights that narrate whether you can cross or not and went something like

"ugh these crossing lights are so annoying and loud, i hate them"

"yeah, they're for blind people to be able to cross safely though. you could always play some music or wear headphones to try to block them out?"

"well if they cant see well enough to cross safely, maybe they deserve to get hit. the noises are overstimulating."

i get that conflicting disabilities are a thing. i'm legally blind and have some hearing loss, trust me, i deal with this on a daily basis. but hate to break it to you, you can actually do something about the overstimulation, whereas i can't do shit about the fact i can't see the crossing signs and need it narrated to safely cross.

separate event but: i also posted a contribution guide for a project i'm heading to create an accessibility tool for people with memory problems. one of the requirements was to make it screen reader accessible as much as possible and not go out of your way to sabotage it. in the past 8 hours, i've already had 2 potential contributors complain about it when most of the project should be screen reader friendly by default! it's literally just making sure some buttons and images have alt text, and i'm able to patch it myself if there's a small oversight. to top it off, the project is literally around developing an accessibility tool for another disorder. "well why would a blind person want to use this?" because some of us have multiple accessibility needs, and my blindness is unrelated to an app focused around handling memory loss, which is a symptom i deal with and i haven't found a tool that works for me. (these apps exist and if they work for you, great! i've found that there's a couple of gaps that make them not work as well for me, so i wanted to develop a tool to fill those gaps.) the requirement was literally just to not actively implement things in ways that can't be screen read at all, and i've got the framework made to easily implement what's needed without contributors needing to even learn how to properly implement it (literally a function that makes text in buttons read as "button: [text]" rather than just "button" and a second function that lets you pass text in images as alt text, both of which are handled by passing the normal function and letting the API handle accessibility). like, oh no, using the already implemented tools. how dare i ask you to not go out of your way to code something ass-backward to avoid default functions in the language we're working in. i'm glad i planned on keeping the repo private until i had a first release because jfc i do not wanna deal with this once it's properly open-sourced and am already considering kicking them off the initial dev team if they start actively avoiding the default functions.

even worse on the dev side - i've had more support for accessibility from non-disabled folks working on projects. i submitted a bug report on an app because it wasn't reading or displaying correctly, and the dev pushed out a fix within about an hour and asked me to test it, and it worked fine. they just happened to not realize it was an issue because they didn't need to test it. most devs ive talked to just never bothered testing it for my use cases and are happy to fix it because they dont wanna alienate a potential user base.

this isn't about people who are like "yeah its annoying, but wtv, it's there for a reason." it's not even about people who just didn't think about it and found it annoying. it's about the people who would rather actively sabotage someone who has no other option when they very much do because "it's annoying/hard/etc." yeah, if listening to those walk lights or using the default methods for implementing clickable buttons is so hard for you that you'd rather wish death on the people who need it or go out of your way to avoid using said default method, that's a you problem.

i'm on data right now in a low-signal area. i expect the video to buffer a lot and ultimately try to play in lower quality, and i don't really care about that, it's part of the trade-off.

but of course the moment they run ads, they're in full HD with no stutters whatsoever. did you just spend the past 5 minutes buffering the ads instead of the video? it's a little ridiculous that the video's barely playing back in 360p and buffering every 20 seconds while the ads are 1080p with no stutters. the buffering is part of the signal speed, so why are the ads entirely unaffected? i swear it was easier to watch youtube over dial-up back in the day, smh.