Notices by James Scholes (jscholes@dragonscave.space)

Well this is a new one on me. A CAPTCHA in a completely unlabelled image with no alternative, but the image shows a math problem rather than characters I should type.

How depressingly inevitable that websites would go down this route to prevent scraping, even though an LLM solved it on the first try.

#accessibility

I just linked a work Dropbox account to my personal one to be able to access both from one mobile or desktop client.

On one hand, it seems to have worked flawlessly.

On the other, the behaviour and outcomes don't match the documentation on Dropbox's website literally at all.

"Share this game with friends and earn one gem":

To quote the loathsome Meatloaf, "I would do anything for gems... but I won't do that." I will, however, send it to myself on WhatsApp.

Has anyone ever used the #Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) website from the World Intellectual Property Organization to download accessible #eBooks and/or #audiobooks? How is it?

It used to be that I could point to aspects of native Windows UI, like how Win32 handled mnemonics in menus, and ask developers to replicate it to make their apps more accessible.

With the constant regressions and pointless redesign in Windows 11, and the fact that those two are often indistinguishable from one another, that's becoming less and less palatable.

If a web app has an inefficient menu implementation, it's hard to say whether adopting whatever nonsense Microsoft is breaking this week would make it better.

I'm looking for a hook, or set of hooks, that I can clamp to the edge of a desk similar to how many microphone boom arms can be mounted without drilling or screwing anything. Mostly to hang headphones and cables on.

Does anyone know of something like that?

@aral There are some nations with country-wide JAWS licenses, but not enough of them. Only Colombia, Spain, and Hungary AFAIK.

Are there stores selling JAWS Home subscriptions globally without payment method/residency/other country-based restrictions? I don't live in the US, nor a country with a distributor offering online orders.

"dear customer, please don't forget to pay for your Services."

"but I have a direct debit set up to pay for my Services on the 30th of each month."

"yes but there was no 30th day in February."

TellMe: exactly whose problem is it that there's no work around in place for this yearly occurrence? Because it doesn't seem like it should be mine.

First came Windows Vista, and I decided to stay one version behind on XP.

Then came Windows 8 and 8.1, and I decided to stay one and two releases behind on Win 7.

Then came Windows 11, and I decided to stay one release behind on Win 10.

Then came Windows 12, and I decided to question whether I really need this technology stuff in my life anyway.

I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.

These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.

This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.

What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.

@KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof @pixelate I'm guessing that company I bought a textbook from once, who took so long to manually enable their accessibility mode in response to my equally manual email that I'd quit university by the time they did. Can't remember their name though.

After updating from iOS 26 to 26.3, Safari has reverted to the behaviour of collapsing the address bar even though I had it configured not to before the update. Does this mean the setting no longer exists? Is there another way to make the address bar be always expanded?

Fed up of the miserable search experience that I have on Mastodon.

1. Search for a term that I know appeared in the post I'm looking for. No results.

2. Go to a different instance that hopefully has full text search enabled, and repeat the search. No results.

3. Remember that there's no feature in my desktop client to search the current timeline.

4. Switch to Mona on my phone, which does have a feature to find text in timelines. But I've recently unfollowed the person in question so Mona has removed the posts.

5. Give up.

6. Finally locate the post by manually reading a couple of timelines I vaguely remembered might contain a repost of the content I'm looking for. Realise it was posted on my own instance, making it even more ridiculous that the search didn't work.

7. Favourite the post so I don't lose it again, even though searching thousands of favourites doesn't seem like a solved problem either.

For use in a demo, does anyone have examples of things that are announced in distinctly different ways by JAWS and NVDA?

Current downsides: I need to get used to typing "wt" in the Run dialog instead of "cmd" that I've been typing for about 18 years, and typing "wt" in the Explorer address bar doesn't seem to open Terminal in the current directory.

Yesterday I switched to Windows Terminal and PowerShell 7 from the old Windows Console Host and batch syntax, and I do somewhat feel like I've been asleep at the wheel for years.

Proper UTF-8 support, aliases, a profile to configure things at shell startup, command output capture, correct parsing of ANSI escape sequences... In short, things people should expect from a real shell.

Hopefully this doesn't prompt NVDA to start shitting the bed at every opportunity as it apparently does for many others.

In today's #blind ballaches:

FedEx handed a package of mine over to a "trusted third-party vendor" for last-mile delivery. This afternoon, a driver for said vendor sent me a WhatsApp message and photo without a description:

Driver: "I've left your package at <local business name> for you to pick up."

Me: "I can't do that, please bring it to the house."

Them: "You can pick it up after five."

Me: "No, I can't. I paid for home delivery, not a drop off at a different place. I'm busy and also blind, and that isn't convenient."

Them: *silence*

Me: "So, can you please bring it to the house?"

Them: "No. I already left it. Have a good week."