this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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Blind Main

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The main community at rblind.com, for discussion of all things blindness.

You can find the rules for this community, and all other communities we run, here: https://ourblind.com/comunity-guidelines/ Lemmy specifics: By participating on the rblind.com Lemmy server, you are able to participate on other communities not run, controlled, or hosted by us. When doing so, you are expected to abide by all of the rules of those communities, in edition to also following the rules linked above. Should the rules of another community conflict with our rules, so long as you are participating from the rblind.com website, our rules take priority. Should we receive complaints from other instances or communities that you are repeatedly, knowingly, and maliciously breaking there rules, we may take moderator action against you, even if your posts comply with all of the rblind.com rules linked above.

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Communities like this (rblind.com) and r/blind are focused on serving the blind and visually impaired community, including friends and family. They’re also valuable as an opportunity for people outside the community to learn about the blind experience.

That brings us to the question: sighted friends, what have you learned that you’d like to share?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I worked for a company that was hard core focused on accessibility. We had a tester with full blindness that would make sure we didn’t miss anything in our web apps. The thing that surprised me was how they oriented the phone. Facing away, using a special 8 finger key board. They fact they could operate any accessible website with that was amazing because they were also thinking about what they were doing and listening to the screen reader. A lot of split attention.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Ah, yeah, Braille screen input in screen away mode. Braille is typed out on a six key chording keyboard. Think home row mods.

When you don’t have to look at the screen, it’s more comfortable to hold a phone that way than to put it down somewhere to type, since you still need both hands.

Neat paradigm shift, for sure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

@MostlyBlindGamer kind of random but when I met a Blind power user of text to speech who would listen to documents read aloud at a much higher speed and explained that "Robotic" sounding voices work much better for this than natural sounding synthesized voices. till then I always thought the ideal for everyone was the most natural sounding voice possible and that robot-like voices were worse

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@MostlyBlindGamer I've been surprised that blind programming is such a thing, because I've always considered programming so visual. But maybe that's more about how I perceive it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Having worked a bit with LabView, I’d almost agree, but isn’t it also like writing a letter to the compiler or interpreter?

A lot of the design, architecture, and algorithm work can be done in a very visual way, but it’s also a kind of storytelling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Tommy Edison talked about how he just can't wrap his head around photographs. I had never thought about it but if you mainly know your surroundings by touch, a 2D image might be weird to imagine.

He also hates spaghetti. He touched them when he was a kid and it felt super strange to him

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That linux boot process is not accessible. Would've never thought should or shouldn't be in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah, Linux is… complicated. macOS, on the other hand, has screen reader support through the whole process, including recovery. Talk about a disability tax, huh?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The use of accessibility tools including apps to be the eyes and ears off blind or deaf people. As someone with hearing damage who will likely lose a significant part of my hearing in old age I'm surprised and pretty happy with these services and how great they've become in such a relatively short time. That being said I have so many suggestions to make it easier and make the services better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

We really live in an incredible time - while many barriers are social rather than technical, the mainstream and assistive usability we have these days is nothing short of magical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

@MostlyBlindGamer @alttexthalloffame I was a bit surprised that there's a sizable community of blind gamers.

One thing I've realized over the past few years is that it's not the disability that keeps you from enjoying life, it really is about how the rest of the world treats you.

And it's always great to see when people put in the effort to make sure everyone is included.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

[raises hand] Yeah and it keeps getting better and better with improvements to mainstream videogame accessibility.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

@MostlyBlindGamer That's really great to hear!