Robert KingettJust had a sighted person tell me they often use features, clients and programs that were made for us, they don’t use screen readers, but they use accessibility features, even when they do not have disabilities, but also clients like a blind Mastodon client, or a text editor designed with screen readers in mind such as the ones I list on my Tools page at the end, as an example, because they said, the interface is 1000 times cleaner, there’s a lot of keyboard shortcuts, clutter free interface, even though the UI is basic, speed, less bloat, and a whole host of other things including, but not limited to, and never having to put up with distracting animation nonsense. You know software development has vastly sank in quality when sighted folk are using blind clients. To see the tools and stuff I use, go to https://sightlessscribbles.com/tools/ #Programming #Software
Matt Campbell@WeirdWriter I've never heard of a Mastodon client called SonarPad. Now, I did just find this program called SonarPad, that's apparently a modern Notepad plus document reader for Windows: https://github.com/Ambro86/Sonarpad
GitHub - Ambro86/Sonarpad: Modern Notepad in Rust: read PDF/EPUB/DOCX, play MP3 audiobooks, create audiobooks with high-quality TTS, and manage bookmarks.
Modern Notepad in Rust: read PDF/EPUB/DOCX, play MP3 audiobooks, create audiobooks with high-quality TTS, and manage bookmarks. - Ambro86/Sonarpad
@matt Yeah I was refering to the text editor SonarPad. Will edit to make it clearer
@WeirdWriter On the subject of Mastodon clients developed by and for blind people, though, I'm guessing that Fedra (https://github.com/trypsynth/fedra) would probably be the best one for sighted users, because it doesn't directly assume it's being run in conjunction with a screen reader, or use TTS output as a fallback. I would be surprised, though, if many sighted people found the typical blindy Mastodon UI, showing posts in a list box, one line per post, with no styling, satisfying.
@WeirdWriter To clarify, I don't mean to criticize any of the blind developers of Mastodon clients. They're using the GUI environment that we're all practically required to live in, in a way that works for us. I just doubt that it would work that well for sighted users.
More controversially, we, especially on fedi, are currently bombarded by negativity about software, and I wonder if you're reading too much into one or two anecdotes about sighted people using blindy apps. Confirmation bias.
Marco Zehe@matt @WeirdWriter Yeah, sighted people obviously expect to see a preview of the avatar, a preview of any included images, and also a preview of a website if a link is included. Moreover, most sighted people I know just use the browser. So they'll probably just use the Mastodon UI.
Random Geek@marco @matt @WeirdWriter well, there's a certain type of sighted user that finds common visual design elements distracting: avatars, animations, tiny text, unlabeled "mystery meat" navigation icons, stuff like that.
These interfaces also often hijack common keyboard shortcuts, breaking muscle memory.
That's me. I'm one of them. Yes I enjoy an aesthetically satisfying visual presentation, but I also enjoy the lower cognitive cost of "here's a post. And here's another post. Read and enjoy!"
@randomgeek @matt @WeirdWriter Oh yeah, I can see that. Would be curious to know what you'd actually think of the visual appeal of such blindness-centric apps like FastSM or so. Because, created by blind people, we often don't consider any kind of visual amenities.
@marco @randomgeek @WeirdWriter I'd specifically suggest trying Fedra (https://github.com/trypsynth/fedra), not FastSM, because FastSM assumes that you either run a screen reader or want direct text-to-speech output, while Fedra just uses a live region within the GUI for its explicit announcements.
@matt Can't use it because of a) Windows and b) I use FastSM for Bluesky, not for Mastodon, which I have Mona for.
@marco Sorry, I wasn't clear. I wasn't suggesting that *you* specifically try Fedra, but the sighted person you were replying to.
@matt FWIW, on the Mac, FastSM uses VoiceOver and normal screen controls only to speak things. I haven't had instances where it tried to use Apple's speech and therefore circumventing VoiceOver. The Braille display also tracks focus as normal. But then, there's no hidden UI on the Mac, so that's that.