Notices by Eric Eggert (yatil@yatil.social), page 3

The web was created with accessibility in mind, but in reality most stakeholders give as much shit as the general public about accessibility. Which is not a lot.

@baldur “We have to pretend this is surprising because we have largely enabled this unsustainable behavior.”

Why can’t Deutsche Post just let me know in an email in advance that there is a fee on the post I get from abroad?

They attempt to deliver once and ask you to have €9.38 on hand to pay for it. If you don't have the amount handy or take more than a minute to answer the door, they bring it to the nearest branch, where they keep it for a week and then return it.

Just let me pay online and deposit it in my letterbox. It’s not that hard.

“Wow, AI can now describe images!” == “Wow, image interpretation algorithms have now stolen enough data from people who have always cared about alternative text, so that I can add mediocre descriptions to pretend to care.”

(Edit: It’s totally good that this technology exists for users when no alternative text exists. It’s problematic when it’s used in lieu of writing proper alternative text in the first place.)

#a11y #accessibility

@notabene It’s why I always use “AI” in quotes and never use human words for it. It doesn’t “learn”, it “splits up sentences and words and notes their relative usage with other sentences, words, and phrases”. It doesn’t “hallucinate”, its dataset has information in a way that “lumps these specific words and phrases together”.

I try to be very careful with this.

COVID incidence is now at 2.500/100.000 in Germany. Or 2.5%. Previous high this year was 3% at the end of February.

In a room with 50 people, one person had COVID during the last 7 days.

Wear masks, get your jab if you can, stay safe.

https://www.unimedizin-mainz.de/SentiSurv-RLP/dashboard/index.html#tage-inzidenz

#COVIDisNotOver #NoVid

(TL;DR continued: That does not mean I like the current situation, and it is not a good choice to make. But if I had to choose, why put the power over what browsers get required into the company which not only controls the world’s most-used services but also the world’s biggest advertising network? And the world’s most used browser. This might be the end of the web as we know it.)

URGH. Terrible news.

(The TL;DR on my view is that the “Open Web” advocates look at walled gardens from a browser perspective but not from a services perspective. Once Chrome can be required on iOS, Google will likely do it for its services. Combine it with the removal of ad blockers coming up, this can destroy browser diversity for good. OWA assumes browsers are on equal footing, but people prefer service access to browser choice, they will switch in a heartbeat.)

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-loses-on-appeal/

“Maybe traditional accessibility services are not marketed or priced properly to compete with Overlay tools.” they said on a business social network.

“Hard to be competitive against a scam.”, I replied.

(Technically those people see themselves as allies. They are not.)

“Sure people don’t give a shit about accessibility, but you could at least complain a little nicer!”

*sigh*

I’m tired of begging for access, y’all.

@svenja „Ich hab’ da so einen mysteriösen Husten, der gar nicht weg geht. Und müde bin ich auch. Neee, COVID isses nicht. Wie, testen? Testet doch keiner mehr. Kann ja auch gar nicht, weil gibt es ja gar nicht.” *seufz*

One of the best things about a regular 32 hour/4 day workweek, that I think many people underestimate:

When you have a week and you feel that there are too many loose ends at the end of your week, you can come in on Friday morning and tie them up without the feeling that a) you compromised your weekend too much, and b) without having loose ends hanging over you for the weekend.

You don’t want to do it regularly, but it helps with stress reduction for me.

#fourdayworkweek

Edit: It is not, see: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/110847705842291571

OK, considering Zoom is End-to-End encrypted… What is there to use to train AI on? Sure, you need to record locally instead of in the cloud, but that’s an option so far.

(I disagree with Zoom’s stance here, but in previous Zoom news cycles people jumped ship to inaccessible places, harming disabled people in the process. If End-to-End encryption is compromised for AI training, then we should quickly find something else that is accessible and no AI)

@bastianallgeier @thomasfuchs The local brewery had an exhibition of their E-Truck and after 3 hours of driving, the range was still at the maximum due to recuperation. (To be fair, I assume that the truck was not fully loaded for the exhibition, but at least for short-haul it seems to be a decent enough option w/ DC fast charging at night.)

https://www.ak-kurier.de/akkurier/www/artikel/129386-hachenburger-e-truck-ueberzeugt-testfahrer-auf-anhieb

If a commercial conference (ticket prices 150€ and up is a simple indicator) asks you to speak, be aware that you should be entitled to:

1. Attending the conference.
2. Travel, food and hotel room.
3. A speaker’s fee.

Yes, it’s hard to ask for it when starting out, but getting used to knowing that you provide value to the conference pays off in the long run.

Signed, someone who almost gone broke speaking at conferences. 😅

Like blogs, the Fediverse does not need to win. This is not about having the most users. Or making the most money. This is about interested people finding and connecting. It doesn’t really matter how large it is. It never mattered how many blogs there have been. But each blog is valid, even if it is only read by a handful people. And so is the Fediverse. People publishing, connecting.

@w3c The preview image uses the old logo. That’s what you did to yourself for redesigning it! 😂

The new @w3c logo snuck up on me. Interesting subtle changes. Compare here (with alternative texts):

https://codepen.io/yatil/live/oNQeBqQ

#ShowYourStripes (with alt text!)

https://showyourstripes.info/c/europe/germany/rheinlandpfalz

@daveshea @patrick_h_lauke @mu See this article by Nic Steenhout (vavroom on Twitter): https://incl.ca/the-problems-with-ramps-blended-into-stairs/