Accessibility for the Blind
on
Quake For the Blind
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm mostly blind myself, and I have to agree... improvements in technology are not making access easier at all. For every technology that comes out to make things more accessible, a hundred new inaccessible ones show up. The web is the best example I can think of. Back In The Day (TM), web sites were fairly accessible. High contrast enhancements, Lynx, and OS Accessibility support worked fine. But now, too many web sites use Flash, tweaked out style sheets, complex layouts, and other features that render these access tools useless.
Games are worse... Back In The Day (TM) most games could be played without too much difficulty. Now the color schemes and tiny-text are making gaming rather difficult, too. Most game developers do not cater to this very very tiny minority (I'm not even really saying that they should... I'm just pointing out a fact.) SMAC is the only game I can think of in recent history that had specific features fot the visually impaired... a "Color Blind" palette made the game playable for the 20% of the male population that's color blind.
Am I complaining? Not really. It's frustrating that I can't do some of the things that I want to do, but I get over it and deal. I, and most of the other blind folks that I've met, either find a workaround or find something else to do. If computers reach that point, I'll be disappointed, but I'll get over it. Though unless everyone starts coding in forth, I think I'll be OK for a while.
Incidentally, Linux' support for people with low vision SUCKS. There are plenty of tools out there, but they all focus on the BLIND... voice synthesizer,s braille readers, etc. For people with low vision (20/200 and worse) KDE, Gnome -- pretty much all of X in general -- just suck a big fat one. Even MS windows is better, though I think the changes in XP are actually a step backwards. I haven't used a Mac in a while, but I always thought Mac support for people with low vision was far better.
I agree, and have come to the conclusion by a similar method. Whenever I register on a website, I use an e-mail address of "domainname@mydomain.com" Not only does this tell me who is spamming me, but also who has sold my addresses to whom (or who has allowed it to be pilfered.) The nytimes address had to be pointed to the bitbucket about a year ago.
Well that doesn't make sense... EVERY point lies on a line parallel to an axis. In fact, for each axis there exists a line parallel to that axis that passes through your point.
Heh. I paid rent from Au 97 to Sp 99... I think I remember you guys. I think I once talked about running network cable between the aprtments through the attic.
And before the offtopic karma eating moderators come and whup my ass... this conversation might be better suited to e-mail.
I tried to introduce ryan to Linux once... he couldn't wrap his mind around the open source concept, for one thing, and he just didn't dig X.
As for the apartment, yeah, I lived there for two years with those fools, but left before the ceiling fell into the kitchen, before the third floor railing fell down, and at about the time the vomit stains on the wall behind the toilet started to decompose the drywall. Still talk to 'em all fairly often. Ryan's gone all weird(er) and worships trees now. And as for Vince... he's still in grad school. Since he reached the epitome of weirdness some time in '94, he can't really get any more weird.
The fact that geiss runs under emulation is... impressive. The author was my roommate is college, (he's a spunk monkey, trust me,) and I've seen the code. I started a port to Linux once, but the volume of obscure directx calls made it impossible. That, and I didn't know x86 assembler as well as he did.
So kudos to the winex team for getting this to work. If it can run Ryan's code, it'll run just about anything.;)
That would be spamassassin. Works great for me. I catch over 95% of my users' spam, with only a single known false positive after three months of use. Combined with Vipul's Razor, it contributes to others' ability to catch spam, as well.
Failure to do proper research on a product is no excuse. Joe 90 year old president of large corporation didn't get where he is without doing research before making strategic business moves, and if he's smart, he hired managers who do the same. In this case, the manager that bought the thing should find out what needs to be done to make the thing work, and take steps to make sure it IS done. In this case, hire a DBA.
Buying a solution and installing it without configuration and investigation is dangerous and lazy, whether it's a machine tool, a truck, a copy machine, or a web/database/mail server.
So no, I have no sympathy. Not for the machinist who is sued by his employee that just got a steel rod shot though his shoulder by misusing a machine, nor for the shipper who needs to replace his truck fleet every two years because the undercarriages rust out, nor for the manager whose customer database is released to the internet because his passwords were unlocked.
If your goal is to have access while on the train, wouldn't it be cheaper to outfit the TRAIN with access points and have a single data connection from the train to some home base? They already have some form of communication with the station anyway. It would be MUCH cheaper to retrofit that line on each passenger train and equip each passenger train with WAPs.
A secure system for validation and verification of downloads will obviously need to be implemented. Imagine all of the fun things someone could do if they, say, inserted a rogue module into the linux kernel code. Or the latest release of samba, gtk, glibc, Mozilla, ssh, openssl... the list goes on and on.
What about Solaris? It hasn't been the same since version 2.6, I say. All of that weird skipping of versions and everything just got strange. It's unnatural, I tell you! See, first we had version one, thentwothenthreethenfourthenfive. OK, we're doing well. Then we jumped to one again, but the five was still in there. So really it was two versions. Then we had some other weirdness for a while, and 5.6 was 2.6, but... ok, I could deal with that. Then SEVEN, which was really 5.7 which was really 2.7. Huh? Where does five become 2.6 then become seven? Huh? Now eight and nine? It's unnatural! You just don't DO that. YOu may as well write parts four, five, and six, then promise seven,eight and nine, make one,two, and three and decide not to make seven, eight and nine, then decide to make ten, eleven, and twelve! It's not right! Not right, I tell you! Soylent green is JAR JAR! JAR JAR I TELL YOU!
Oh yeah; was glad to see "The Day the Earth Stood Still" made the list. Klatoo, Verada, Nickto gets too much recognition from Army of Darkness. These kids today; bunch of savages. Ooh! Silent running should be on the list, too. (No, not Logan's Run or Blade RUnner. The other one... the one about flying forests and such.)
The article on Tom's mentions the end of VGA as the common denomenator for video, but mentions no replacement. So what's the new standard? When it comes to a standard video format, we really need to have SOMETHING common to all (most) platforms...
Am I the only person that wonders why MS hasn't sued the crap out of Ximian yet? As far as look and feel goes, Ximian Evolution is as close to Outlook in terms of apperance as it could get. The only real differences in user experience exist in areas where functionality differs in such a way as to necessarily alter the UI.
Your assumption is incorrect. A piece of dirt the size of a grain of sand could cripple the shuttle or any other orbiting body. Bullets (ok, small ones) are right around the 1 cubic centimeter range, and they kill people travelling only around 700 miles an hour. These pieces of debris are travelling in excess of 15000 miles per hour; they'll punch a hole through lots of things. Heat shielding, windows, astronauts...
That office being NORAD, located in Cheyenne mountain. So yeah, that one's covered budgetarily, methinks. You think they're going to pay for a door that big and let the thing close?
Forget Acme Rent-A-Car in Connecticut - get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph."
This level of rampant paranoia cracks me up. To hell with the positive benefits of making cars safer in the long run... no, let's strap on our tinfoil hats and find the black lining. Watch out, michael! Casio has made a deal with the porno industry! They've put a chip in your wristwatch so they can measure your pulse rate and report back on what particular twisted fetishes get you off the most! Watch out! Booga booga booga!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm mostly blind myself, and I have to agree... improvements in technology are not making access easier at all. For every technology that comes out to make things more accessible, a hundred new inaccessible ones show up. The web is the best example I can think of. Back In The Day (TM), web sites were fairly accessible. High contrast enhancements, Lynx, and OS Accessibility support worked fine. But now, too many web sites use Flash, tweaked out style sheets, complex layouts, and other features that render these access tools useless.
Games are worse... Back In The Day (TM) most games could be played without too much difficulty. Now the color schemes and tiny-text are making gaming rather difficult, too. Most game developers do not cater to this very very tiny minority (I'm not even really saying that they should... I'm just pointing out a fact.) SMAC is the only game I can think of in recent history that had specific features fot the visually impaired... a "Color Blind" palette made the game playable for the 20% of the male population that's color blind.
Am I complaining? Not really. It's frustrating that I can't do some of the things that I want to do, but I get over it and deal. I, and most of the other blind folks that I've met, either find a workaround or find something else to do. If computers reach that point, I'll be disappointed, but I'll get over it. Though unless everyone starts coding in forth, I think I'll be OK for a while.
Incidentally, Linux' support for people with low vision SUCKS. There are plenty of tools out there, but they all focus on the BLIND... voice synthesizer,s braille readers, etc. For people with low vision (20/200 and worse) KDE, Gnome -- pretty much all of X in general -- just suck a big fat one. Even MS windows is better, though I think the changes in XP are actually a step backwards. I haven't used a Mac in a while, but I always thought Mac support for people with low vision was far better.
Hs anyone tried any 3d engineering applications with this product? How's the OpenGL support?
I agree, and have come to the conclusion by a similar method. Whenever I register on a website, I use an e-mail address of "domainname@mydomain.com" Not only does this tell me who is spamming me, but also who has sold my addresses to whom (or who has allowed it to be pilfered.) The nytimes address had to be pointed to the bitbucket about a year ago.
Well that doesn't make sense... EVERY point lies on a line parallel to an axis. In fact, for each axis there exists a line parallel to that axis that passes through your point.
And they say _I_ suck at math.
;)
Heh. I paid rent from Au 97 to Sp 99... I think I remember you guys. I think I once talked about running network cable between the aprtments through the attic.
And before the offtopic karma eating moderators come and whup my ass... this conversation might be better suited to e-mail.
slashdot at skroz dot net
I tried to introduce ryan to Linux once... he couldn't wrap his mind around the open source concept, for one thing, and he just didn't dig X.
As for the apartment, yeah, I lived there for two years with those fools, but left before the ceiling fell into the kitchen, before the third floor railing fell down, and at about the time the vomit stains on the wall behind the toilet started to decompose the drywall. Still talk to 'em all fairly often. Ryan's gone all weird(er) and worships trees now. And as for Vince... he's still in grad school. Since he reached the epitome of weirdness some time in '94, he can't really get any more weird.
The fact that geiss runs under emulation is... impressive. The author was my roommate is college, (he's a spunk monkey, trust me,) and I've seen the code. I started a port to Linux once, but the volume of obscure directx calls made it impossible. That, and I didn't know x86 assembler as well as he did.
;)
So kudos to the winex team for getting this to work. If it can run Ryan's code, it'll run just about anything.
That would be spamassassin. Works great for me. I catch over 95% of my users' spam, with only a single known false positive after three months of use. Combined with Vipul's Razor, it contributes to others' ability to catch spam, as well.
I'd call it Dave v. Goliath, or Joe v. Volcano instead. Unlike those earlier 'cases', though, I don't predict a similar outcome.
Indeed, but look at the reserve prices he set. I'm very curious about how he arrived at those reserve prices.
I want to know how he arrived at those prices...
Failure to do proper research on a product is no excuse. Joe 90 year old president of large corporation didn't get where he is without doing research before making strategic business moves, and if he's smart, he hired managers who do the same. In this case, the manager that bought the thing should find out what needs to be done to make the thing work, and take steps to make sure it IS done. In this case, hire a DBA.
Buying a solution and installing it without configuration and investigation is dangerous and lazy, whether it's a machine tool, a truck, a copy machine, or a web/database/mail server.
So no, I have no sympathy. Not for the machinist who is sued by his employee that just got a steel rod shot though his shoulder by misusing a machine, nor for the shipper who needs to replace his truck fleet every two years because the undercarriages rust out, nor for the manager whose customer database is released to the internet because his passwords were unlocked.
If your goal is to have access while on the train, wouldn't it be cheaper to outfit the TRAIN with access points and have a single data connection from the train to some home base? They already have some form of communication with the station anyway. It would be MUCH cheaper to retrofit that line on each passenger train and equip each passenger train with WAPs.
It was Sociology, wasn't it. Nobody wants to admit to a sociology degree. Stupid, stupid social science majors.
A secure system for validation and verification of downloads will obviously need to be implemented. Imagine all of the fun things someone could do if they, say, inserted a rogue module into the linux kernel code. Or the latest release of samba, gtk, glibc, Mozilla, ssh, openssl... the list goes on and on.
What about Solaris? It hasn't been the same since version 2.6, I say. All of that weird skipping of versions and everything just got strange. It's unnatural, I tell you! See, first we had version one, thentwothenthreethenfourthenfive. OK, we're doing well. Then we jumped to one again, but the five was still in there. So really it was two versions. Then we had some other weirdness for a while, and 5.6 was 2.6, but... ok, I could deal with that. Then SEVEN, which was really 5.7 which was really 2.7. Huh? Where does five become 2.6 then become seven? Huh? Now eight and nine? It's unnatural! You just don't DO that. YOu may as well write parts four, five, and six, then promise seven,eight and nine, make one,two, and three and decide not to make seven, eight and nine, then decide to make ten, eleven, and twelve! It's not right! Not right, I tell you! Soylent green is JAR JAR! JAR JAR I TELL YOU!
What were we talking about again?
Oh yeah; was glad to see "The Day the Earth Stood Still" made the list. Klatoo, Verada, Nickto gets too much recognition from Army of Darkness. These kids today; bunch of savages. Ooh! Silent running should be on the list, too. (No, not Logan's Run or Blade RUnner. The other one... the one about flying forests and such.)
Hells yeah, it would have to include Forbidden Planet. Id, Krell Metal, Leslie Nielson as a starship captain, ROBBIE!
And GaTtaCA? I rarely use it myself, sir. It promotes rust.
The article on Tom's mentions the end of VGA as the common denomenator for video, but mentions no replacement. So what's the new standard? When it comes to a standard video format, we really need to have SOMETHING common to all (most) platforms...
Am I the only person that wonders why MS hasn't sued the crap out of Ximian yet? As far as look and feel goes, Ximian Evolution is as close to Outlook in terms of apperance as it could get. The only real differences in user experience exist in areas where functionality differs in such a way as to necessarily alter the UI.
Do you just want automation, or do actually need perl? 'cause if you just want automation, there's always imageready...
I'd sell my soul for photoshop in linux. OK, well maybe not my soul. My conscience, maybe.
GIMP is great, but it's no photoshop.
Your assumption is incorrect. A piece of dirt the size of a grain of sand could cripple the shuttle or any other orbiting body. Bullets (ok, small ones) are right around the 1 cubic centimeter range, and they kill people travelling only around 700 miles an hour. These pieces of debris are travelling in excess of 15000 miles per hour; they'll punch a hole through lots of things. Heat shielding, windows, astronauts...
That office being NORAD, located in Cheyenne mountain. So yeah, that one's covered budgetarily, methinks. You think they're going to pay for a door that big and let the thing close?
Ah, what the hell... I've the karma to burn.
This level of rampant paranoia cracks me up. To hell with the positive benefits of making cars safer in the long run... no, let's strap on our tinfoil hats and find the black lining. Watch out, michael! Casio has made a deal with the porno industry! They've put a chip in your wristwatch so they can measure your pulse rate and report back on what particular twisted fetishes get you off the most! Watch out! Booga booga booga!
Freak.