Notices by James Scholes (jscholes@dragonscave.space)

In iOS 27, I can't seem to drag rotor items around in VoiceOver settings. I double tap and hold on the "reorder" handle for the relevant thing, move my finger up or down, and nothing happens.

Is there a workaround for this? Moving things one by one is going to take me all night.

@sclower @TheQuinbox Or running a cable from the bathroom because you're out of outlets in your office.

I'm looking for tools for cleaning up and reformatting #HTML, preferably within or callable from the #Python ecosystem.

I'm not talking about sanitisation for security purposes; I already use NH3 for that. Rather, I want something that can perform tasks like converting manual line breaks to proper paragraph usage, removing empty nodes and superfluous styling, reliably stripping out certain tags while leaving their text content intact, that sort of thing.

It specifically needs to work on markup fragments without requiring an entire document.

No LLMs but machine learning is fine.

"Trusted by companies like…

graphic Companies"

We have a Whirlpool hot and cold water dispenser that after nearly six years of usage suddenly started beeping repeatedly this morning. Short beeps, one every second.

We unplugged it for a few seconds and the beeping picked right up again when power was restored. Then we disconnected it for over a minute and it hasn't happened since.

We have no idea what it could mean, making it pretty questionable as an error indicator. The water is pulled from a bottle rather than the mains so it probably isn't related to replacing a filter, and I would've expected that to happen far sooner anyway.

Absolutely no useful info on the internet and this is exactly the sort of appliance with a meaningless model number that you don't think about or remember when buying it.

PowerShell has a bug (or a feature) that is causing me to relearn some muscle memory.

I often do a quick scan for a command in history by hitting Up Arrow immediately followed by Left Arrow to read the last character. If it ends in a quote, it might be that Git commit. If it ends with "t", it might be a run of pytest. And that sort of thing.

Granted this only works for commands that are still in my own working memory. But pressing Left Arrow seems to reset the history position, so Up Arrow gives you the exact same command because PS thinks you started editing or something.

Instead, I have to retrain myself to press numpad 1 or NVDA+Left Arrow to have NVDA read the last character.

The BBC offering free PR to OpenAI by pushing the Huggingface non-incident as news and signing off with: "This will fuel global anxieties about the cyber attack capabilities of frontier AI models." Yes I suppose it might if you artificially inflate the event and suggest people be anxious about it.

I've said it before, I'm saying it again: Morocco's national anthem is a banger.

Okey dokey then, how are people getting rid of this in Chrome with NVDA? (Please don't suggest I switch browsers.)

"To open Gemini in Chrome, press Alt+G alert".

I'm not clear exactly when it happens, but I've heard it three times and that's enough to be annoying.

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.