Sina Bahram

@sinabahram
33 Followers
50 Following
68 Posts
Accessibility and inclusive design practitioner. President at Prime Access Consulting. Blind computer scientist. Building accessible digital, physical, and hybrid experiences. Polymath. piano player. I enjoy coffee, cocktails, wine, and impeccably executed food .
I don't know who needs to hear this, but when it comes to web performance, if you're measuring in seconds, you're admitting defeat.
Americans are realizing that unfettered federal power to detain and arrest is a very dangerous thing. I learned that lesson as a child when they put us into internment camps just for looking like the enemy. Don’t go further down this road.

Here are a few vital specs of the unique NASA crawler-transporter vehicles. No other vehicle comes close.

Each CT is larger than the size of a baseball infield and powered by locomotive and large electrical power generator engines.

The crawlers are designed to roll underneath the mobile launcher (ML) along with assembled rocket, pick it up, and steadily carry it 4.2 miles to Launch Pad 39B.

https://www3.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/combined_crawler-transporters_fact_sheet_final.pdf
5/n

We now have a working SAPI5 version of the Speechify engine that was used on NOAA Weather Radio from 2003 to 2016. Installation and setup instructions are included in the archive. https://datajake.braillescreen.net/TTS/SAPI/Various/Engines/Speechify.zip.
The default voice is Tom, however you can also use Jill by editing the voice name in config/SWIttsConfig.xml.
Victory adds braille to all their amps https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BuKUZQY8x/
Victory Amps

“Being born blind, when I discovered music 14 years ago, playing guitar was the one time I didn’t feel blind… Every time I had to ask someone to read the knobs on my amp, it was a reminder. When I...

Another report from MN from a friend of a friend, a US Citizen:

I am a US citizen from Minneapolis. Yesterday, while doing legal observation, ICE stopped their cars to harass my friend and me. They sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our vehicle. We held our hands in the air and told them we were not obstructing, that the car was in park and they were free to drive forward and away. There was no active immigration raid. They returned to their cars, and drove forward a bit, then decided to stop again. They surrounded us, smashed the windows of our car, opened the doors (they were unlocked), ripped my friend and I out of the car and arrested us on charges of obstruction.
I was put in an unmarked SUV, separated from my friend. As I was put in the back seat an ICE agent tore the whistle off my neck and said “I’ll be taking this, I might need it later.” My phone was knocked out of my hand while being arrested. As we drove away I asked the driver and the passenger if they wouldn’t mind buckling my seatbelt, as they were driving erratically. I was ignored. I asked them if I could have the handcuffs loosened, as I was losing circulation, and was told no. At one point the passenger realized his own driver's license was in the backseat next to mine, and tried to surreptitiously grab it without me seeing it.
We were taken to the Whipple federal building, where I saw dozens of brown people being processed in an unheated garage. I was frisked, told of my charges, and saw buses and vans being prepped. I later learned that these were being filled with detainees and driven to the airport for deportation. As we were led in, I noticed that the building was very busy. I got the impression that one of the 2 agents bringing me around was being trained. At multiple points throughout my stay, government agents were unable to open doors, not sure where they were meant to be going, and overall confused and overwhelmed. They couldn’t figure out how to use the building phones, or complained about a lack of cell service preventing them from checking the internet or making calls.
The people in the cells were extremely scared. We heard people screaming "let me out!", crying, wailing and terrified screams. There were cells with as many as 8 people. I have no way of knowing how long they have been there, if they were allowed any contact with the outside world, or if they were being brought food or water. Most people were staring at the ground with almost no energy. I was not allowed to talk to anyone imprisoned. I distinctly remember seeing a desperate woman. She was staring at the ground with her head in her hands crying, hopeless, while her friend or family member sat on a bathroom seat observed by 3 men.
My friend and I were put in an area for "USCs," which we eventually learned meant US citizens, separated by gender. We were imprisoned for 8 hours, during which my friend was never allowed a phone call. I was allowed to call my wife and tell her where I was. During my interview with Special Agent William and Special Agent Garcia, they asked me to empty my pockets. When I pulled out gloves, Agent William said those were meant to be taken when I was processed, and complained about having to fill out the form again. He frisked me once more, where he found glass in my pocket from when our car window was shattered. He filled out the form listing my personal items again, but put the wrong date. I was read my rights, I pleaded the fifth and was led back to my cell.
Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire. I would ask over the intercom provided in the cell for a bathroom break, be told someone was on their way, then ask again 20 minutes later, be told someone was on their way, wait another 20 minutes, etc. Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us. I am vegan and the only food they offered were turkey sandwiches, fruit snacks with gelatin, and granola bars with honey. I eventually ate a granola bar out of hunger.
I was in the cell alone for between 1 and 2 hours, then another man was put into my cell, whose shirt was ripped open from his arrest, and an injured toe, who was carried aggressively into an unmarked car during his arrest. After about 4-5 hours, another man was brought in who had a cut on his head from his arrest. He told me he was tackled by 4 or 5 agents during his arrest. At no point was he offered medical assistance.
Later I was told that a lawyer was here to see me, and I was able to speak with him in a visitation room. The special agent told me that the door could not be closed all the way, so it was cracked during my interaction with my lawyer. I got the impression that they were not used to having lawyers present, and were trying to follow procedure as best they could. I asked an agent if the other detainees were allowed lawyers and was not answered.
At one point, 3 men from the department of Homeland Security Investigations brought me into a cell. They insinuated that they could help me out. After inquiring several times what exactly they meant they finally told me that they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.
Finally, after hours of detention, I was told to follow an agent. At no point was I told whether or not I was being charged, or where I was going, but I was led out of the building. I asked if I could use a phone to call my wife to pick me up, and was told I could not. After pleading for several minutes eventually Special Agent William let me use his phone to call my wife. As I was escorted off the property by government agents, I was told to turn right. I was escorted to the protest area, where 5 minutes later, tear gas was deployed and I was struck by a paint ball gun. I was not protesting, I was simply being released without charges after an 8 hour detention. I was on the other side of the street, as instructed by the agents that released me and the agents shouting orders over a bullhorn. A passerby who was tear gassed was panicking and having an asthma attack, so I helped her find a medic to get her an inhaler. I used a stranger's phone to co-ordinate pickup, and was picked up by my wife.
During my detention I knew that I was being released. I knew that as a citizen of the United States I have legal protection. The hundred or so other people being detained had no such protection. At this time I don’t need your help, it is the families that are being separated, abused, terrorized, harassed and killed that need your help. If this is happening to me, an American citizen born in the United States, then what is happening to the people in here that have no one calling lawyers on their behalf? That have no constitutional rights to due process? What is happening to the people that they will never be released to see their families, go to their jobs, or walk through their city ever again?

Please take care of yourselves, your family, and your community. I am safe and healthy, if you feel compelled to help, please offer your help to the Immigrant Defense Network at https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/. If you know someone detained by ICE, call or text CAIR-MN at 612-206-3360 for 24/7 legal intake.”

#MN #ICE

Immigrant Defense Network – Protect the human rights and dignity of every Minnesotan

The story tellling in Mythic Quest keeps surprising me. There are episodes that are beautifully written and full of sincerety. I'm pleasantly surprised at just how good this show is. Major hat tip to everyone who pulled that show off.
New Braille-Accessible Public Library Opens in Maadi

Noon El-Sahar 2 provides Braille-supported resources, including selected titles published by the Ministry of Culture.

CairoScene

Mantis Q40 question: when using the onboard applications, I can switch between QWERTY and #braille input by pressing F12. Is there a way to achieve the same thing while connected to an external device in terminal mode?

In other words: I want to use the FDS and JKL keys as simulated Perkins-style input while connected to NVDA, VoiceOver, etc. without using any software-based simulation features built into the #screenReader itself.

@RyanFrancis OK. Lets try this. Imagine you hear about this amazing new app. Everyone’s raving about it—your neighbors, your family, even your cat is meowing the name in its sleep. It’s open-source, the developers are "nice people", contributing to stopping climate warming, saving the planet with their money,keeping pigeons alive, and you’re actually excited to download it.
Then you open it, and the screen is just black.
The developers didn’t bother to consider your device, so it doesn't render. Now, what are you supposed to do? Throw money at them and hope they fix it? They won’t. Because they are ignorant. You're just yet another obscure idiot to them. OK. Option 2. Spend months of your own time coding a fix because it’s "open-source," only for a new update to wipe out your work and send you back to square zero. So its an up hill pointless battle. Or maybe you ask them nicely, and if you’re lucky, they give you a half-baked, black-and-white version where the buttons barely work, because they still don't care. Of course, we occasionally have the devs who do, and the story should end here.
Right. Maybe contributing code, money and time makes sense. But for a lot of people behind accessibility barriers, this shit happens literally 5x a day, in the most unexpected places. And not just with low value entertainment apps. This happens with apps required for work, managing your finances, ordering products, staying connected.
So, Eventually, you just go back to the old corporate app that steals your data—not because you want to, but because it actually works.
"Gratitude" towards developers? Gratitude my ass. It’s hard to feel thankful for a "great" application when it literally won't work. When this happens five times a day, you don't feel grateful; you just delete the app and find a version which actually works.
This is the reality of accessibility. It’s not that our devices aren’t compatible; it’s that the apps fail to talk to perfectly functional tools like screen readers, screen magnification, voice control, eye-gaze trackers, heck, they can't make their apps work with your typical keyboard most of the times. So please, stop being ignorant and try to understand the daily blockages we face before you start demanding "gratitude" from people who are just trying to stay sane and productive. @PepperTheVixen @jonathan859 @dansup