I work in a restaurant and am in the process of making resources such as allergen sheets and manuals.
I want to make a braille menu, I think the most efficient and long lasting way to do so would be with 3d printing at the public library.
Does anyone have any experience with 3D printed braille?
Is it comfortable and understandable?
Any feedback would be more than welcome!!!
My new phone arrived on Saturday, and I've been playing with it so that I could give at least a somewhat knowledgeable review. Note that I have not tried Calculator, E-mail, Browser, Messages, or usb tethering and hotspot. I know that it will speak inside of the message edit box, but I haven't sent a message, since it seems I need to add a contact first. The only ones i would really use from those are Calculator and hotspot/tethering, anyway. I shall divide this into pros, cons, and overall opinion.
Pros
*It has real buttons. This was my main purpose in buying this phone. I was sick of touchscreens. The navigation pad isn't really tactile in the sense of having separate buttons as my Kyocera Rally did, but it's fairly easy to figure out, since it's just a circle with only four options.
* Yes, it has a screen reader. It's called Readout. Tello does not include the user manual in the box and directs users to the official one by TCL. For some inexplicable reason, while they mention other accessibility features such as hearing aid compatibility, they say absolutely nothing about a screen reader. Fortunately, both AT&T and Tracfone do. This is from AT&T.
https://www.att.com/device-support/index/tcl/flip-2/
* Readout reads almost everything. Almost all menus are read. Certainly, important ones such as settings are, except for the battery percentage. I can easily add a Bluetooth device, set an alarm, change ring tones, switch to usb file transfer mode, read all files on the phone (and presumably on an sd card/I'm waiting for that to arrive), read notifications, use the Music, Recorder, and Notes programs. I think I can also add contacts, but I'm still working on that.
*Files are easily transferred from my computer to the phone and vise versa. Even though it's a very old version (11), on AOSP, so I'm not truly surprised about that.
*It works well with an external keyboard. Mostly, I won't be using one, but it really helps when adding contacts, writing notes, or sending texts, though I usually do the last via Google Voice on my computer.
*It's not huge. I was concerned that it would be a very long phone, but it's really not. It's also narrow and very easy to hold in the hand.
*The battery life is excellent. It lasts for a long time if it's just sitting idle.
*It has a headphone jack. I really missed that when going to the SE3 from my A15. Now, I can listen to things without worrying that the batteries in my earbuds will die.
Cons
*Setting it up the first time requires sighted assistance. There is no way to turn Readout on with a hotkey such as the volume buttons, as with regular Android. But the option appears very early in the process, and if you wanted to, once it was on, you could finish the process yourself.
*Setting alarms can be confusing at first. For some reason, while it always speaks the first number in each column (hour and minute), when I arrow up and down, it says nothing. Then, when I go back to it, it will tell me the changes. For example, if the hour is on 9 and I set it to 10, it will not say "10". IIf the minute is on 29 and I set it to 30, it says nothing. But if I then go back to the hour column, it will say "10" and if I then go to the minute column, it will say "30". Now that I know this, it's fairly simple to do.
*The battery percentage isn't announced via the menus. As with the clock, I don't understand this. It reads everything up to clicking on "battery level" and then it just says "okay" without actually telling me the level. The only way I can be sure of it is to plug the phone into a wall outlet, a computer, or a power bank.
*The calendar does not speak at all. Absolutely nothing in the calendar speaks.
*It does not announce whose calling. At first, I was upset about this. Then, I realized that the only phone which did that was my Kyocera Rally and then only because I chose a ring tone that specifically read out messages. None of my iphones (SE, SE2, and SE3) nor my galaxy A15 read out numbers. I must unlock the phone to read them. Here, though, if I open the phone, it answers. The other option is press any key, so no matter what, I won't ever know who's calling. I can, however, set specific ring tones for contacts and just ignore everyone else.
*Programs can be installed on it, but it's not easy or officially supported. I wasn't sure whether to include this in Pros or Cons, but since everyone says it's extremely difficult, as the phone must be rooted and failure and even ruining the phone are possible, I put it under Cons. I won't be attempting it. But for those interested, this is a forum discussion that explains how to do it. It also contains a site with programs for flip phones in general, so you might find it useful, even if you own another model or brand entirely.
https://www.howardforums.com/threads/tcl-flip-2-modding-info.1927948/
*The branding on this phone is very confuding. When trying to determine if this phone had a screen reader, I came across several similar-sounding names. The Alcatel My Flip 2 and Flip Go 2 are entirely different phones. But the TCL Flip 2 and Alcatel TCL Flip 2, all with the model number T408DL (or ALT408DL) are the same thing.
Overall Opinion
I absolutely love this phone! It's small, light, has real buttons, speaks what I need it to speak, and even has some extras like music, Recorder, Notes, alarm/timer, and hotspot. I can finally simply call someone and hang up without annoyances, an use a phone that doesn't require the strength of Hercules and the hands of a giant to hold! I would highly recommend this to anyone who just wants a simple phone and doesn't want to pay over $300 for the Minivision2+. While the Flip 2 isn't designed for the blind, it does most things right and can definitely be used daily.
Hi all. I'm developing a bit of hardware to read data from bluetooth enabled devices, e.g. scales and thermometers, and speak that aloud via TTS. I started thinking about this because I've got a Govee thermometer. Reading the numbers with Voiceover while trying to poke my meat and not flash fry my phone is...difficult. If you've got a device, be that a scale, a blood sugar monitor, a thermometer, anything with a bluetooth connection, and this would be of interest, let me know what brand and model of "thing" you have. Also, if this exists already, or I sound crazy, I'll take that feedback as well.
Recently, I've been experimenting with Gemini to help me to read things like the weight on a scale or some product label or maybe describe something on the screen that my screen reader cannot read…
Even though I still can perceive many mistakes made by AI, it's been very helpful and I wonder how other people with total blindness or low vision are using this tools…
Also, I am very happy to see a community named blind and fine because the other one really bums me out with all the incentive to be depressed
I am sharing this with you because not only did it begin here, but it may prove useful to some of you, both for individual arias and full operas that you may wish to make clearer or add some bass or trebel to. Some time ago, I began this enormous thread about frequency restoration in acoustic recordings. (link for background/can be skipped)
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldOpera/comments/1oqgz2k/frequency_restoration_in_acoustic_recordings/
To make a very long story short, there is software that can do this, but ninety-nine percent of it is inaccessible with NVDA (my screen reader). The one program that is, Audacity, is far too complicated for me to understand. I found some sites with sliders, but even they didnt read out what they were, leaving me confused and annoyed. So after months of getting nowhere, I decided to write my own program. This is actually becoming quite popular in the blind community, so I thought why not try it? I named it Otello, both to honour Francesco Tamagno, the quality of whose recordings started me on this journey, and because I felt like some kind of a warrior while doing this. Below are some essential facts from the help file.
"***Important Notes
This program was made with Windows Forms and was written in C#. It was created with Perplexity. I myself am not a programmer and know nothing about code. However, I tested each and every feature before releasing this to you. So I know that it works and that it is safe.
This is a portable program. It will not be installed on your machine. Simply run Otello.exe and it will start. If you delete the folder, it's gone. However, it does require Microsoft .Net Framework 4.8, which can be downloaded from their site.
While this program was created with artificial intelligence, it is not used in the processing of the files. Otello is simply an equaliser. At best, it can help reveal features that exist in recordings which may be difficult to hear due to the original recording technology. It does not technically add anything to them. Therefore, it may work better on some types of recordings than others i.e. electric versus acoustic.***
===
System Requirements
This program works on Windows 7 and later, on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. However, it was specifically made for Windows 7.
===
General Purpose
Otello is a simple, screen reader-accessible audio equaliser. It is designed so that anyone, including those with no knowledge of technical terms and frequency numbers (I'm among them), can use it to change the sound of recordings. If you've used the sliders on a stereo or the knobs on a mixer, this should be easy. If you're used to controling the sound on an original acoustic machine, you're a genius and this should be very easy!"
Downloads (if the link doesn't work, I will re-upload it)
Otello Light (program only)
https://wormhole.app/kAjKrW#svJ-YnuqYF4B0NFg9OabYg
Otello Full (program and source code)
I have some images I want to save on my computer. They are labeled with voice over on my iPhone. This does not transfer to JAWS when I export the photos. I know renaming them is an option. Can I add descriptions other ways? Or do I just rename them? I have JAWS 2022. Windows 11.
Dark Mode should be the ONLY mode. Won't somebody please think of the eyeballs?
Hello everyone!!
I'm a sighted person who is interested in learning Braille. I'm thinking of getting a slate and stylus (as well as some 110 lb. paper off of Amazon) to start learning Braille. Grade 1 at first, but hopefully eventually Grade 2 if I get good enough at it.
Anyways, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in receiving and/or exchanging Braille letters, and if Grade 1 Braille would be satisfactory for this purpose, at least to begin with. I'd be happy to write or read about absolutely anything.
And if I do end up doing this and finding someone that's interested, are there any formatting or content conventions I should be aware of? I already write a fair few number of personal letters using a standard typewriter, but I imagine there are at least a few differences when writing in Braille.
Also, is there anything I should know for sending these letters? I hear flat envelopes might be good?
Anyways, thank you all! Please forgive me if any of these are obvious questions. I am just very overenthusiastic when it comes to picking up new interests, and I had a hard time googling "Braille letters" because it just brings up resources for learning Braille.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
OK, so I’ll admit I have been pretty hard on Madden in the past as I feel like as a mostly blind player there haven’t been a ton of improvements in accessibility features, especially with the screen reader in the game. However, I will give credit where credit is due so far this year it seems like there has been at least some decent steps taken with the screen reader for example, it now seems to read the descriptions for settings and stuff which previously it has never done. There are still a lot of parts in the game and menus that I have not been in yet but from what I have found so far I see steps in the right direction, but I also have some issues and hope these can be fixed as these are also important.
So to any developers or anybody who can help this get to the right people to be resolved, the most major issue that I have seen or noticed with the screen reader so far from the time I have spent in the game, is that at least in franchise, when you click into a player profile, it doesn’t read the vertical list of options that usually show up in that, and this is new as this menu has been read aloud in most previous years so this is actually a step backwards. This menu usually includes the options to edit the player and things of that nature so this is actually very important and I really need this to be fixed so that it actually reads with the screen reader.
Also in franchise, I have noticed that things like free agency where in previous years it was kind of set up in a table where you could scroll left and right to read various stats about players like their age, they’re overall, and things like speed and different players statistics I don’t have a way to access or read those within free agency anymore. These are also extremely crucial, and I really need these to be fixed as well because otherwise I don’t have a way of knowing what players have what ratings within free agency and I assume this is probably the same within the contracts menu as well though I have not actually been in there yet. All it reads is the first letter of the players name and then their last name as I scroll vertically there’s no horizontal scrolling. These so far there may be more that I haven’t gotten to yet in different menus, but these are the most important and most needed fixes that I hope our small fixes and can be addressed in an update or patch, please.
Another thing that I have noticed, though it is not the end of the world, but when I am in a menu and changing an option within say like the Settings menu, when I scroll left or right to change the option, it doesn’t seem like the screen reader will read that option as you are changing it. I have to scroll down or up to the next option after changing it and then scroll back down to it to get it to read what it currently is, which is a new issue as this has not been an issue in previous years. It is something that I can live with as the scrolling up and down has been a way to work around it, but it is still an inconvenience be it as it may.
I feel like it’s possible that I could come across other issues the more I play the game, but especially the issues with free agency and not being able to get to that information as well as player profiles our big issues and I will try to give more feedback if or when I find more issues, but I really hope these can be addressed. I feel like I have tried a lot of avenues to get accessibility issues fixed or improved in this game and college and haven’t had much success or seen much change so this is a different method and I hope that it will get to the right people and actually get some changes and updates done.
If more context is needed, I’m happy to give it or help. I just want the game to be more accessible for not only mostly blind players like myself, but anybody who needs accessibility features.
Thank you
*Administrator*
A comment made yesterday inspired me to write this post. Please note that this is for everyone. I am not singling out anyone. It seems that some are a little confused as to what can be posted here. Unlike r/Blind, posts do not need to be about blindness or even related to it. We certainly do accept questions and discussions about blindness, adaptive technology, surveys, and student/individual/company projects relating to the blind, but really, this is a place where we can get to know each other and post what's on our minds. Almost anything is fine, as long as it's legal. I just ask that those who join be over eighteen and act respectfully. Please note that this is not a support group. It's meant to have a positive, relaxed atmosphere for the blind and sighted alike.