History records one man once.

Myth records what a thousand men held in common.

That is why the invented figure can often carry more truth than the real one.

An excellent insight drawn from Christopher Nolan’s casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and the backlash that ensued, tells a much deeper truth, which we see permeated and played out everywhere recently – influencing social cohesion and geo-political machinations, is summed up here.

“Here we are asked to accept, at face value and with no explanation, that Nyong’o is a believable stand-in for the most beautiful Greek woman ever imagined.”

“This is why films are generally terrible now, and the Greeks diagnosed it long before Hollywood existed. Mythos — story and narrative — must reflect Logos: the rational order of how the world actually works. Stories that survive three thousand years, like the Odyssey, survive because they encode real patterns in profound ways. You can draw generations of wisdom from a single one of them. That is why they resonate. Not because they entertain you, but because they tell you the truth about how the world works.

Modern films fail because their writers have inverted the order. They build stories around how the world should be rather than how it is — mythos severed from logos — and so the stories crumble on contact. And no matter how many times some commenter types “it’s just a made-up story,” it will never talk a people into accepting the steady defacing of the myths their civilization was built upon.”

via The Face That Launched a Thousand Dislikes

… So far, the update is available on iOS, Android and desktop platforms. However, it is only available in New York, Paris, Seattle, Boston, Budapest and Brisbane at the time of writing. 

Accessing the accessibility alerts is relatively simple. However, you will first need to be sure that you have wheelchair accessibility routes turned on as a preference. To do this, enter your destination into Google Maps, then tap the three dots in the upper right corner. This will bring up a new sub-menu where you will need to press options, and then scroll down to wheelchair accessible.

Read more on Tom’s Guide

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI” – Tim Cook from Apple

 “To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart.” That’s the nature of the Law of Connection. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask them for a hand. Know and like who you are, walk slowly through a crowd and make connections with people…

…

when you learn to touch their heart the task of their hands will change.

AI is fueling a new generation of technologies to help people who live with disabilities.

Why it matters: The right technologies can be life-changing for people living with a disability and will be essential in supporting our aging population, as healthcare costs skyrocket.

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/12/ai-assistive-technology-accessibility

I knew Microsoft are doing great things in the Accessibility sphere but this Disability Answer Desk is a step further.

In their own words:

Responsive, direct response from people that know can be key in solving access issues.

Windows, Office, and Xbox accessibility support is now also available via Twitter Direct Message.

And to encourage and enable corporations to support staff with access needs there’s Enterprise support options.

It’s an example more companies could stand to follow.

Microsoft Disability answer Desk

A chance typo (Win/Ctrl/L) brought t my attention that Microsoft (MS) actually provides a lot of captions at a system level that will in real time like captains of any audio played. It even will transcribe buit-in access features like Narrator and Read Aloud.

I often use closed captions on youtube, however often creators don’t always enable it. So I tested it on a youtube video with no cc: enabled and indeed the Microsoft live captions displayed text of the radio perfectly.

Live captions is available in Windows 11, version 22H2 and later.

I’m getting really sick and tired of every event that is put on defaulting to use these online ticketing systems for bookings and none of them catering for disabled access to be booked online like the rest of the community. Instead, we are ostracised once again, being forced to submit a form and wait for a call to be able to arrange our bookings.

Why should this be so?

It’s 2023 – it’s at least 30 years since the opening up of the Internet to the public was meant to transform our lives. There’s no valid reason why online systems cannot include us.

Categories for concession cards and other forms of benefits can be included on online forms. Accessible seating can be allocated and marked, and able to be chosen online the same as any other seating.

Excuses of having to verify cards, such as companion cards, are ludicrous in this day and age where digitised scans of everything are ready at an instant due to the mobile phone. And why even go to that extreme. Why not issue digital Companion Cards?

Why? Because none of this is a technology problem. It’s a policy problem. A glaring example of existing apathetic, legacy attitudes.

Almost everywhere I turn I encounter it. Systems and procedures that come from a mindset stuck – not bothering to look at how to solve a problem that sits just outside their normal purview. Not willing to cater for all people, and instead, too readily lumping a hurdle in the too hard basket – along with those it effects. Instead, out of step and out of date providers revert to their old ways of forcing us to jump through hoops to suit their ineptitude.

It’s more than about time inclusion was taken to be more than just lipservice. More than some means of societal, surface level, one-upmanship designed to give a flashy, up-with-it facade, whilst, where the rubber hits the road, people get pushed backed into marginalised reality..

MouthPad resembles a plastic retainer and encases a trackpad, pressure sensor, battery, charging coil, and Bluetooth chip. Here’s what users can do with it.

via: https://www.zdnet.com/article/want-to-control-your-electronics-with-your-tongue-this-company-is-making-that-happen/

Emojis can be read aloud to users with the power of screen readers. If emojis are used right, they can still convey all of the emotion and context intended, despite not being visible. Before we can determine how to best use emojis, let’s figure out what emojis “look” like to screen readers.

Between a laugh and a tear
Smile in the mirror as you walk by
Between a laugh and a tear
And that’s as good as it can get for us
And there ain’t no reason to stop tryin’

Days turn to minutes
And minutes to memories
Life sweeps away the dreams
That we have planned
You are young and you are the future
So suck it up and tough it out
And be the best you can

“Human consciousness is that faculty that confronts potential itself… What our consciousness seems to be for is to encounter those things that we have not yet encountered… Our consciousness is not for the past, it’s not even for the present, it’s to transform the future into the present.” ~Jordon Peterson

———————-

“We’re guilty and ashamed when we make choices that we feel are inappropriate. We understand to some degree that the manner in which time lays itself out has something to do with the ethics of our choice.” ~Jordon Peterson

(402) Is Human Conscience a Demon? – YouTube

—————————–

“We need more psychology, we need more understanding of human nature. Because the only real danger that exist is man himself. He is the great danger. And we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.” ~Carl Jung

(402) Is Human Conscience a Demon? – YouTube

Snowl is a wearable ring-shaped device that brings 3D range of motion to devices that are traditionally 2D such as touch screens and computer mice. With Snowl, you can experience precision control over your favorite devices through three motion tracking modes: Air Mouse mode, Gesture Mouse mode Joystick Mouse mode.

COXSPACE

RGB Backlight? Check. Powerful open-source firmware? Check. Graphical configurator? Check. This keyboard has it all — 47 keys is all you are going to need.

This compact keyboard impressed me as a possible good condidate for me or others who use a mouthstick or others who have a limited field of movement. Would love to try it someday.

Source: Planck EZ: A Powerful, Backlit, Open-Source, 40% Mechanical Keyboard | Planck EZ

via Source

Two articles come across recently that have re-kindled my deep-held thoughts. There’s parallels everywhere that I need to explore more.

Some summary key points:

Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours – alexdanco.com

Source: Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours – alexdanco.com

Worlds of scarcity are made out of things. Worlds of abundance are made out of dependencies. That’s the software playbook: find a system made of costly, redundant objects; and rearrange it into a fast, frictionless system made of logical dependencies.

[Fundamentality extends to more than software. Service provision in care. Abundant lives come from managing complex array of people I’m dependent on. The more organisation/more people need to live, more than exist, comes at a steep price in attention and energy and is never ending.

Need to make it easier to manage the complex dependencies – easier to have a life.]

Services free us to be pure consumers, seeking exactly what we want for as little friction and overhead as possible. So long as everything works, trading ownership for access is an attractive deal: everything under the hood just gets magic-ed away, and provided for us as a service. No files, no updates, no maintenance; just access.

[Disintermediation. Period. ref my thoughts from way back]

But there’s a difference between “the car broke down” and “the car got lost”. One is a fragility of things: if you drive a car, you need to take responsibility for keeping it in good shape. It’s a scarcity problem. But the latter feels more like an abundance problem: it’s fragility of something,

[Dependencies. viz Fragility of (connections) connectedness. “It’s about relationship empowerment.”]

Source: Everything is Amazing, But Nothing is Ours – alexdanco.com

The rise of the access economy

Source: The rise of the access economy – alexdanco.com

The access economy is what emerges when access to (x) becomes cheap, satisfactory, convenient and reliable enough that the premium on ownership of (x) disappears.  

When everyone has access to [x], we use [x] differently.

[when every pwd has access to $ (NDIS) the same service provision can’t cater for diff. use – old models can’t stand]

Source: The rise of the access economy – alexdanco.com

1. Upload the text image to Google Drive

2. Once the file is uploaded, use the contextual menu (right-click or two fingers on touchpad)

3. Select “Open with Google Docs”

4. A new Google Docs file is created, with the image at the top of a new Google Docs file. The converted text displays underneath the image

You can now edit the text, change formatting, or correct any typos.

Source: Quick Tip: How to Convert Image Text to Text

Lion aims to make your life a little bit easier, by taking the groundwork of feature complete, accessible, performant, and framework agnostic components out of your hands! Check out the repo at ing-bank/lion.

As some of you may already know, ING has a long and rich history of building Web Components, starting out with the Polymer library, all the way up to the recently released LitElement.

Need a refresher? Web Components are a set of browser standards that allow us to write browser native, reusable, encapsulated, and modular components.

Web Components standards have finally matured, and today, there are many ways to build and consume your Web Components, like: Angular Elements, Stencil, Vue, Svelte and many, many more. And with the release of the new Chromium Edge, this means that all major browsers support Web Components natively.

So today, I’m happy to share with you all that ING is open-sourcing its own core library of Web Components: Lion!

…

Hand curated by Lifekludger, original source: ING open sources Lion: A library of performant, accessible & flexible Web Components

Most computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and web browsers have specialized tools to help people read and take action on the content they display. Some of these tools are display modes, which are pre-defined display configurations you can tell your device to use.

Five such modes are Dark Mode, Increased Contrast Mode, Inverted Colors Mode, Reduced Motion Mode, and High Contrast Mode. Following is an explanation of each of these mode, who can benefit from it, how to enable it on your device or browser (if supported), and how to support it in code.

……

Hand cureated by Lifekludger, read full article at source: Operating System and Browser Accessibility Display Modes – The A11Y Project

I spoke a bit about my background, may accident and rehab and my thoughts on it all, about where I see the sector is changing and where it needs to position itself for the change,

This is the slidedeck I used.

Dave – Lifekludger

No matter your role, you can help your organization prioritize and implement digital accessibility.

Digital accessibility makes good economic sense. People with disabilities, and their friends and families, spend $1.2 trillion a year. Clearly, they’re more likely to spend their money on digital platforms they can navigate successfully. Plus, businesses with inaccessible digital experiences are at risk of being drawn into costly lawsuits.

Creating accessible digital products isn’t any one person’s responsibility. In fact, digital accessibility requires the effort of every person on your digital team, from marketing to product, to design, development, and content.

…

Read more at Source: Digital accessibility for digital teams: a role by role guide | Perkins Access

So good to see Accessibility being thought, talked about and more inportantly actioned at high levels in companies.

Clip from a video by Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) on Youtube.

Dave – Lifekludger

How SEO has made the web more accessible for everyoneSearch engines like Google are dependent on the same accessibility attributes that many people depend on to comprehend and navigate sites. Search engine optimizers have unwittingly made the web more accessible, and they are in the best position to make it even better.

…

Curated by hand by Lifekludger read original at source: How SEO has made the web more accessible for everyone

That prompted me to finally install iOS13 and give it a go.

I am very enthused by the result.

Voice Control acts just like most Apple products do – they do what they say and they show thought and attention to detail.

It’s a game changer for me. With Voice Control I can now switch settings to auto answer my phone with EarPods or Speaker – according to where I am and what I’m doing – without assistance and without being stranded ‘in-communicado’ if it wasn’t done.

Now just to get Shortcuts to play nice.

Summary

Curated by (Lifekludger)
Read full article at Washington Post