Disability

Has Anyone Used This Site with a Screen Reader?

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 20:52:09 GMT

Posted by: jazzyjj

Hi everyone. It's been awhile but I'm back with a website question. First, the back story. I was perusing Dw several years ago as always, and I discovered http://www.allpoetry.com . I read through the site and it seemed interesting since I like poetry, so I created an account. I had no problem with registration, nor did I have a problem getting a short poem posted. It is still up there, but the site is now less accessible with VoiceOver on the Mac. Fast-forward to Friday evening of last week. That's when a neighbor of mine hosted a poetry reading. He's been writing poetry off and on for several years, and somebody suggested he register on the All Poetry website. He did that, and thus far a few of his poems are up there. I have been able to read some of them and do a couple other things. But for the most part the website seems rather cluttered and not everything is labeled for screen reader users like myself. I actually opened a support ticket about this earlier in the week, and received a response within minutes. The person responding asked which screen reader I'm using, so I told him. I've been attempting to explore the site a bit more today, but it just seems very busy. Poetry is the main focus of this website, and I understand that but I'm wondering if any of you have been there and if so what do you think? Even their mobile website is pretty cluttered. Earlier this week I sent the following email to the National Federation of the Blind's Center of Excellence in Non-Visual Accessibility, and am awaiting a response from them.

Hi Jonathan. I first want to wish you and the other inhabitants of Mosen Towers a very happy and safe 2025. In addition, I want to congratulate you on your position at the NFB. I've had some time to kill this morning, so thought I'd do a few things. One of those was listening to the most recent episode of Access On in which you talked about the Center of Excellence in Non-Visual Accessibility. This was the first episode which I listened to, and I really enjoyed it. I've got a question regarding a website which I apparently registered on several years ago, but it kind of slipped my mind that I had registered on there. The website in question is http://www.allpoetry.com . As the URL suggests, this is a website for poets and I'm wondering if any of you have been there before. A neighbor of mine hosted a poetry reading last week, and it was most enjoyable. He's been writing poetry off and on pretty much for several years, and recently found out about the All Poetry website. Anyway, this website worked well on the Mac with VoiceOver several years ago when I signed up. I was even able to publish a short poem on there, which I can still access. However, most of the links don't seem to work anymore. I was able to click a link to follow this neighbor, but I'm not able to read any of his poems. Upon further exploration, it seems like there are other accessibility errors such as comment forms without submit buttons. I'd really like to comment on my neighbor's poems and perhaps write more of my own, but as of now the site seems too cluttered. Thanks again, and I look forward to future episodes as well as previous ones which I've not yet checked out.

Best regards,
Jake

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From Lainey Feingold

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 16:05:46 GMT

Posted by: jazzyjj

Hi everyone and happy New Year. This comm has been rather dormant for awhile, so I thought I'd change that. I received the following link in this week's issue of "Access Information News", a new publication from Mind Vault Solutions. I navigated through it using my screen reader's heading command, but I don't have time right now to read it all as I've got to get my new apartment ready for the cleaning lady. But I think this contains some pretty useful stuff. Mods please feel free to tag this if I don't get to that soon. Update Thursday 12 January: Oopsie, looks like I forgot to include the link. Sorry about that but here it is! https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/lainey-feingolds-annual-digital-accessibility-legal-update/

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Another test request for screenreader users

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 10:01:11 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

(Sorry. I'd install one and try myself, but that would almost certainly not cover the range of typical uses, which is what I really need and want.) Anyway, the text coming next has lines numbered 1 to 6, laid out visually in two columns, odd and even. I want to make sure my attempt to lay out two poetry excerpts side by side works reasonably. Using your screenreader as you normally would, do you get Line 1 to Line 6 in ascending order, or odd lines first followed by even lines? Can you easily make your screenreader render them the other way? If you can make sense of my HTML, is there a better way to lay them out that way?

Line 1 Line 3 Line 5

Line 2 Line 4 Line 6

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Off-road wheelchairs made from bike parts

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 03:26:12 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

I thought this was pretty neat when it came up on my YouTube feed. Off-road electric wheelchairs made from bike parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbfZ7Tiqsw

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Wheelchair/scooter/walker/crutches/cane/etc walkability in Wien/Vienna?

Sun, 28 Aug 2022 11:36:38 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

Does anyone know how walkable Wien/Vienna is for someone using a wheelchair, scooter, walker, crutches, a cane, or another mobility device? Specifically interested in the neighborhood of the Freihaus Campus of Vienna’s Technical University on Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10.

I'd ask on accessworld, but it looks inactive.

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IPA-transcribed English, screenreaders, and annotation with actual English text

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 18:49:59 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

For screenreader users: does the text

aɪ lɔv mi s̪ʌm ˈaɪ.pʰiː.eɪ‖

sound like recognizable English for I love me some IPA.?

For everyone: is the title= annotation in the quoted text above giving the intended English text obviously present and accessible to you?

For people knowledgeable in accessible HTML5 (and inline CSS if needed or useful): given the intent of the above (English in IPA with actual English text as an annotation), is there a more accessible (or better, generally) way to do it than <span lang="en-fonipa" title="I love me some IPA.">aɪ lɔv mi s̪ʌm ˈaɪ.pʰiː.eɪ‖</span>?

Thanks in advance to all.

ETA: apologies for the lack of tags, but I'm not allowed to set them when posting or later, maybe because I'm not (or not yet) a member.

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Inkprint+Braille IPA mug?

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 05:54:18 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

So, inkprint International Phonetic Alphabet mugs and I wondered whether there would be interest in sending them a suggestion for a mixed inkprint and Braille IPA mug.

Having made that suggestion, I'm going to let go of it and let anyone interested discuss the details and submit it to the designers because:
- I don't want to be a sighted savior.
- I'm not a linguist so can't decide which to keep symbols, since Braille IPA is significantly larger, so some may have to haves hzrd

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Thought of y'all

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 13:02:46 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

Finally a legitimate application for hostile architecture

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Screenreader users, I'm curious about how yours renders the IPA glottal stop if it uses speech

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 01:32:32 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

Does ʔ sound like an actual glottal stop, or the equivalent of the words "glottal stop" in the language you chose?

(This question brought to you by me using it in describing the picture of me in this tweet and going... wait.)

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I designed a Disability Pride Flag

Sun, 29 Aug 2021 18:14:14 GMT

Posted by: capri0mni

I'm embarrassed that I didn't think to post about that here (until now)

So -- it's been an eventful summer for me, over in Tumblr-land...

Long story shortened: I'd been casually fiddling around with the idea of a Disability Pride flag ever since I read Dave Hingsburger's blog post Wave your flag, back in 2011 (but I wasn't too thrilled with simply borrowing a signal flag with a different meaning in other contexts). But I didn't get serious about it until after the mass-knife attack against residents of a "care home" institution in Sagamihara, Japan in 2016, and the subsequent silence about it from nearly all media outside the Disability Community.

Then, I knew I needed a way to express my rage, my hope for solidarity, and my refusal to stay silent.

After looking up basics of flag design, I decided on a "Lightning bolt" or zigzag design of four colored stripes on black, going from corner to corner. The black was for grief and rebellion (pirate vibes), the zigzag was to represent how disabled people have to move around barriers, and the four colors were for: physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and sensory disabilities.

I posted it on Tumblr, asking for feedback and suggestions.

Someone asked if I could please add a stripe for invisible disabilities, and I agreed that was an oversight on my part, and eventually settled on putting a white stripe in the middle.

After more feedback and consensus that it worked, I put the zigzag design into the public domain (legally and completely) in June of 2019.

Everything was quiet around it until this year, when (I think) someone posted about the flag on a Reddit forum. Suddenly, the number of people who saw it entered the tens of thousands. And that's when I found out that the zigzag design created a flashing light effect when viewed while scrolling online, and was actually dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy and migraines (yikes -- that's the importance of sample size, folks!)

More collaboration -- with many more people -- followed. The zigzag was removed, and the colors rearranged and softened to be easier on eyes and brains. And so, with a much broader consensus than before, I entered the updated Disability Pride Flag (under the new name "Visually safe Disability Pride Flag" into full and legal public domain on July 28, 2021. And here it is:

[Image description: A charcoal grey flag with a diagonal band from the top left to bottom right corner, made up of five parallel stripes in red, gold, pale grey, blue, and green. Description ends]

During the redesign process, several people got back to me and let me know that the fully saturated colors of the original design didn't bother them like they did on a screen. So for parades and protests, and such, I think a brighter version of the flag will work well (more visible from distance, with lots of other flags around).

In place of the zigzag's symbolism, the straight diagonal now represents a contrast to & defiance of walls and locked doors that have kept so many of us hidden for so long.

Whew! It's been a long ten years!

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Prosthetics in high heat

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 10:47:55 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

I've got this character who lost an arm and has a prosthesis, and she's going to be going to the desert, specifically somewhere in the American southwest. I tried Googling prosthetics in desert heat. I did get one article about a guy who walked for 100 miles or so in the desert with prosthetic legs, but it wasn't very helpful. I'm trying to sort out what materials would work best for that environment, issues of comfort, other little things that might make being out in the desert with a prosthetic difficult. Oh right, and another character has a prosthetic foot, but she was born that way. So if there'd be any differences in experience between someone born needing a prosthesis and one who acquired one later in life that apply to this scenario, that would be good to know as well.

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Print-disabled access to Open Library

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 06:58:25 GMT

Posted by: duskpeterson

For those of you who don't know, Internet Archive's Open Library has nearly four million e-books available for print-disabled readers. You can also access the e-books through Internet Archive. However, you need to sign up for special disability access to be able to read some of those e-books. (There's currently some controversy over Internet Archive lending in-copyright e-books to readers who aren't print-disabled, but there's no controversy over them lending in-copyright e-books to print-disabled readers; that's clearly permitted by U.S. Copyright.)

If you have print-disabled access to Open Library, you can read e-books that aren't available to other readers. You can also skip the waitlist to borrow e-books, and you may be able to borrow the e-books for longer. Or you can download the DAISY files, but you can only read the DAISY files on specialized equipment. With the regular e-book files, you can read the e-books on your computer.

For some reason, Open Library's FAQ doesn't mention all the ways in which print-disabled readers can access the e-books. That information is over at Internet Archive.

Here is Internet Achive's FAQ for print-disabled readers.

And here is the page where you apply for print-disabled access.

If you are already a member of NLS, Bookshare, or ACE Portal, you simply type in your membership password at the appropriate spot on the page. (I did this for Bookshare, and I was accepted into the system within seconds.) If you're not a member of those organizations, the application page mentions two other ways in which you can gain access to their print-disabled program.

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Request for guidance about what to answer Wikimedia

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 23:51:14 GMT

Posted by: pauamma

Context: I got into an email discussion with someone from Wikimedia about their efforts (or lack thereof) to make Wikipedia more accessible to PWDs. They're telling me about some of their ongoing work (for the technically inclined) and asking me about specifics of what accessibility changes I would suggest, but I'm kinda out of my depth here, in addition to not wanting to speak for/instead of actual PWDs.

My draft email is ( under cut, so you can comment without reading it if it works better for you )

All comments, suggestions for improvement or additions, and constructive criticism will be gratefully accepted.

Edit February 25, 2020: draft email instead of tentative thoughts.

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Clever!

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 02:20:17 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

LOL this woman is very clever. Woman adds spikes to wheelchair handles to stop strangers pushing her uninvited.

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Awesome!

Fri, 26 Jul 2019 23:25:54 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

I went to a Renaisaance faire last weekend. I saw a lot of cool stuff by the vendors, but I also saw something WICKED COOL among the patrons: this guy had heavily modified an ATV into an ELECTRIC WHEELCHAIR for his daughter!!! O_O Amazing! And I tell you, it was needed, too. Lots of people in wheelchairs and walkers were having issues with the terrain there, but this little girl was having no problems at all riding around in a pink ATV wheelchair with a canopy!!! I think I'm gonna use that in my Ravenstone story, for Brandon! (Though blue in his case, since it's his favorite color.)

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A Disabiity Pride Flag that I've desiigned and registered as Public Domain:

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 00:14:15 GMT

Posted by: capri0mni

I posted this to queerly_beloved at the start of Pride Month. But since this July (2019) is the 29th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I thought it might be a good idea to share it, here, too (Tumblr, at least, has declared July Disability Pride Month)

Here's a lower-contrast version for online:

[Image description: A charcoal grey/almost-black flag crossed diagonally from top left to bottom right by a “lightning bolt” band divided into parallel stripes of five colors: light blue, yellow, white, red, and green. There are narrow bands of the same black between the colors. Description ends.]

Here's the official public domain notice (acquired through CreativeCommons.org)

To the extent possible under law,

Ann Magill
has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Disability Pride Flag.

(clicking my name, there, will take you to my personal Dreamwidth, where this version is up in a sticky!post, along with a slightly higher contrast version for printing out on things (or converting into an actual, wavable flag), and instructions (Both illustrated and written out) for recreating this flag on a field of any dimension)

And here is what all the different elements symbolize:

The black field is for mourning all those who've been abused and/or killed because of their disability.

The long zigzag across the flag represents how we Disabled people have to navigate barriers in the normate world.

The five colors represent five general categories of disability (reading from the blue to the green): Mental illness, Neurodivergence, invisible and/or undiagnosed disability, physical disability, and sensory disability.

That the zigzags are parallel: Solidarity within the Disability Community, despite our different individual needs.

All six of the standard flag colors: like the Olympic Flag, this one is meant to represent a transnational, global, community -- united by spirit, rather than a shared government or geographical region.

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Question

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:51:51 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

I have a character in the books I'm writing who was born without a left foot, and so uses a prosthetic foot. The issue is, I feel weird calling her an amputee, because that word comes from amputate, or "to cut off." But it wasn't cut off, she never had that foot to begin with. So does anyone know if there exists a better word for her than "amputee"?

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DREAM: By and For College Students with Disabilities

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 17:39:50 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

This video (captioned & audio-described) introduces the US-national advocacy group, DREAM, through the words of eight disabled students (and one disabled instructor).

Much more info (including a weekly newsletter) at

DREAMcollegedisability.org

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Wheelchair question

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 06:21:15 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

So I found this Tumblr post, which contains a lot of good information about being a first-time wheelchair user in school. This is useful to me as a writer, I have a character who's a boy in a wheelchair. But it causes me to wonder something else. The post mentions static electricity being a problem. My character who uses a wheelchair, he uses an electric wheelchair. I wonder, does anyone here know if static electricity would still be an issue with an electric wheelchair?

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Safer Rolling in the City

Sat, 18 Nov 2017 18:14:45 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Bit of self-promotion: Here's my epic post on power mobility and US sidewalks:

https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/237989.html

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Chiropractors

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 09:50:54 GMT

Posted by: fayanora

Simple enough question: Does anyone know if Medicare covers chiropractor visits? I used to go to one in high school, and it really helped. Thanks in advance!

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Signal boost: Petition related to US trademark of the term "invisible disability"

Tue, 09 Aug 2016 17:21:59 GMT

Posted by: untonuggan

( gross ableism )

If you can, please help signal boost, as I am currently low on spoons.

Cross posted to signalboost

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University Accommodations Help

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 06:39:27 GMT

Posted by: eldritch_panda

Hey y'all,

I'm starting at a University in the fall. I'm excited though anxious. I was curious if anyone who has depression/anxiety and got accommodations from a University would be willing to share what accommodations they received? I'm a bit nervous at what is a reasonable ask and even what is available. It's not like they offer a checklist. lol

It's just me (no family or anything), so I'm trying to figure this out on my own. I'd appreciate hearing other people's experiences. I'm in the United States at a public uni.

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Memorization or Script?

Sat, 13 Feb 2016 17:11:20 GMT

Posted by: jazzyjj

Hi everybody. Yesterday morning I attended a training rehearsal at work for our disability-awareness trainings, and it was rather discombobulated which I'll discuss in a bit. But first a bit of explanation is in order about what exactly I do. I work for a nonprofit, cross-disability? organization called JJ's List, which connects the disability community with businesses. We do this in a couple of ways. First off, we run a website where people can post reviews of businesses and services. It's along the same lines as Yelp, Craig's List and I think Angie's List although I'm not as familiar with them. Our site is http://www.jjslist.com . It is sort of a work in progress, although nobody really seems to have the resources to update it much.

The other thing we do is run Disability Awareness trainings, where we go to various businesses and teach them about interaction with people who have disabilities. We also do several role plays to demonstrate different kinds of interaction. When we first started doing these trainings a little over 6 years ago, we used written scripts all the time. But now we are required to memorize all our lines. Just last evening I was talking with 2 neighbors about this, and one of them brought up something which I had never even considered before and I would like to get your take on this one. Not to steal his words or anything, but he basically said that different disabilities might interfere with memorization skills. I think that has happened with some of my teammates at work, and one of them might have even left because of this. He happens to be a good friend of mine. I have never really had a problem with this kind of stuff, but others have. Yet our founder/executive director insists on all of us memorizing our lines to the letter.

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A visual description worth admiring

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:44:18 GMT

Posted by: jesse_the_k

Little bit ago I posted a very surrealistic video. azurelunatic did an epic job describing it––check it out:

http://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/185995.html?thread=801163#cmt801163

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