Notices by Amir (amir@tweesecake.social)

@KaraLG84 Welcome. It's under development, but DAISY support isn't there.

@KaraLG84 One small point in favor of Bookworm. Its 2024.2 release has fixed the Epub chapters issue. Epub chapters are now ordered according to the document's spine.

Update:
The state of book-reading apps on Windows is pretty disappointing:
• QRead: Discontinued, lacks formatting display, doesn’t announce links, and can’t hide blank lines.
• Bookworm: No DAISY or Bookshare support.
• Thorium Reader: Still in development, but buggy—crashes with many DAISY books and only displays one page at a time.
• Dolphin EasyReader: Limited to a single page view, no smooth navigation between pages, and has an odd navigation UI.
• Kurzweil 1000: Versatile with a built-in dictionary, but discontinued, lacks heading navigation, and is very expensive.
• Speech Central: Costs $8, making it impossible to test if it truly supports text-only navigation via screen readers, as it's mainly marketed as an audio reader. According to the dev, development for Windows 11 has been paused.
#Accessibility

NVDA and its oddities. Should newly added features be pulled to avoid issues which they might most likely generate, issues which won't probably be fixed in a timely manner? Remember the link destination feature and the saga surrounding it not working with all link types? Now unmuting other apps with newly added NVDA commands, in alpha, does not work as expected. I don't think useful features like this should be pulled, but take a look and decide for yourself: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/16402
@NVAccess

Folks, do you happen to have access to the Italian library for the blind called Fondazione Ezio Galiano? If so, please kindly contact me. Also please boost this. Thanks.

OSARA accessibility plug-in for Reaper, new feature, courtesy of @jcsteh :
Optionally configure REAPER for optimal screen reader accessibility.
The user will be prompted once at startup to do this. Alternatively, they can run the action OSARA: Configure REAPER for optimal screen reader accessibility at any time. This currently does the following:
Undocks the Media Explorer by default so that it gets focus when opened.
Enables legacy file browse dialogs so that REAPER specific options in the Open and Save As dialogs can be reached with the tab key.
Enables the space key to be used for check boxes, etc. in various windows.
Shows text to indicate parallel, offline and bypassed in the FX list.
Uses a standard, accessible edit control for the video code editor.
https://osara.reaperaccessibility.com/snapshots

With Android accessibility, one can never understand what Google is up to. Take Google TTS for Android as an example. Google doesn't allow TalkBack to use high-quality Google voices despite playing high-quality samples via the Test voice button. And the low-quality ones sound pathetic - like low-quality Vocalizer voices - even worse. However, if you install an app like Auto TTS, a paid product, you can force TalkBack, or other screen readers, to use high-quality Google voices. And Google keeps tweeking TTS-related options in strange ways. Yesterday's update, for instance, made voices a bit more expressive by raising the pitch of the first syllable of each utterence.

Now get this one from Be My Eyes/Be My AI on iOS:
"Be My AI failed to respond, reason: You exceeded your current quota, please check your plan and billing details. Image description provided with Be My Eyes."

NPR story:
Screen actors reading audiobooks bring more than just a big name:
Michelle Williams' voicing of Britney Spears' new memoir has received high praise. We look at why top-level actors want to be involved in audio book performances.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/27/1209130495/screen-actors-reading-audiobooks-bring-more-than-just-a-big-name

folks, do you happen to know where one can purchase white canes in Germany, either online or through blindness centers? A friend of mine wants to do it on my behalf in Germany, but we've got no clue.