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jscholes

@jscholes@dragonscave.space

Digital #Accessibility Engineer/Analyst, #ScreenReader user, and occasional #software developer. #a11y

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TechConnectify , to Random stuff
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New Internet Annoyance Unlocked:

Nitpickers who know a lot about specific things chipping away at (and not seeing) a holistic argument.

jscholes ,
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@TechConnectify Shout out to their closely related tribe: the "here's a technical solution to something that is not a technical problem" crowd.

talon , to Random stuff
@talon@dragonscave.space avatar

Hey if Sonos can just up and screw their UI then I can just up and decide to never use them for future speakers. Time to check the resale value of this garbage in case they can't fix the UI accessibility like yesterday.

jscholes ,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@simon I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but there is some suggestion that they may be using a cross-platform UI toolkit like React Native. That makes accessibility many times harder if true, and requires a level of dedication Sonos haven't shown thus far.

I'm not hugely affected, given that I do most things via AirPlay and voice. The resale market for Sonos equipment in my area is also non-existent, so I don't have much choice but to hold onto my stuff. Nevertheless, I'm not hopeful. @talon

jscholes ,
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@x0 They're wrong. Simple as that, really. @simon @talon

jscholes ,
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@x0 It's possible. But it's hard work, and none of the options (including React Native) are going to give you perfect, native-feeling accessibility out of the box. There will always be something off, and it's just a question of how much it ends up mattering to the user. Teams that opt for these toolkits also tend to lose some of the guardrails that native UI provides. @simon @talon

jscholes , to Random stuff
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Is there an aspect of more cringeworthy than writers trying and failing to craft believable, in-universe newspaper articles?

jscholes , to Random stuff
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Visit .net, and you too can try to decide who you dislike more: , the website admins, or the authors who keep posting there (hint: the last one is kind of unreasonable but not entirely without merit). Most websites give you at least one reason to hate them in 2024, but this is a three-for-one deal. For even more choice, get your recommendations through , where everybody ends up linking to the terrible, unnecessary mobile-specific version of the site because they have a terrible, unnecessary mobile-specific version of the site.

slashdot , to Random stuff
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After 32 Years, One of the Net's Oldest Software Archives Is Shutting Down https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/01/29/2310242/after-32-years-one-of-the-nets-oldest-software-archives-is-shutting-down?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

jscholes ,
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@slashdot @acarson Shame it's not Slashdot.

simon , to Random stuff

I've lost all hope of HCaptcha being a company that cares about accessibility.
I had major trouble getting the accessibility cookie to work in Firefox yesterday, though I eventually solved it by disabling both Privacy Badger and the enhanced tracking protection built into Firefox.
So I e-mailed the company with an accessibility inquiry. I suggested that when requesting an accessibility cookie by e-mail, the user should also be given a code they can enter into the HCaptcha challenge. This would save users from having to deal with cookie problems, and would also allow them to solve a captcha in something like Discord, where the captcha is embedded in the app and there's no way to use the cookie at all.
Support responded and said that it was up to each app developer to implement a way to use the accessibility cookie in their app.
I responded with the following:
> Now it sounds like we're shifting the burden of accommodating HCaptcha onto developers instead of users. Developers want to implement a solution that is accessible already. If they have to design their own UI for accommodating the accessibility cookie, the solution is not accessible. Why is HCaptcha so opposed to solving this problem once so that developers do not have to solve it over and over again?

And they responded:
> The reason is because cookies are supposed to be used in a web browser. If you open Discord or Signal in a web browser, it will work. However since the apps aren't web browsers they won't be able to consume it. We have other clients that have implemented ways to consume the accessibility cookie in their apps, so it's up to the developer.

Am I crazy or does this go 0% of the way to addressing anything I said in the previous e-mail?

jscholes ,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@JEkis I think the link between CloudFlare and hCAPTCHA is often misunderstood and overstated... I don't quite understand it myself. Nevertheless, CF has now shifted attention to Turnstile, its own CAPTCHA solution which should almost never present a challenge to users. @simon

jscholes ,
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@JEkis I do see that Brendan Eich is listed as an advisor on the About page for Intuition Machines, who seems to be the company behind hCaptcha, just in case you did need more reasons to hate it: https://www.imachines.com/about @simon

jscholes , to Thunderbird
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

Cool, has just decided to stop fetching messages from my primary email account. Is there an error message, or any indication that it's even trying? Of course there isn't.

jscholes OP ,
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

@thunderbird Thanks; interestingly it seems to have cleared itself up on its own. I suspect some sort of wider network issue, because my iPhone was stuck showing a "checking for mail" status message at the same time (although it was pulling in messages while TB was not). Even stranger was that both devices were successfully accessing one Google account, while not connecting to another. Anyway!

neil , to Random stuff
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk avatar

I use almost exclusively FOSS for my business, and I try to donate to the developers, but it is not always easy.

Thankfully, @thunderbird does make it easy, and, since I use Thunderbird on both desktop and mobile (currently as @k9mail), I'm very pleased to be able to donate.

jscholes ,
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@thunderbird Just a shame you're having to work on making what is a key tool for many people more accessible after making it less so. @bermudianbrit @neil

jscholes , to Random stuff
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The developer in me hates what 's anti-bot checks are turning the web into. As a blind person, I'm occasionally frustrated at having to obtain an accessibility cookie to bypass the CAPTCHA. My inclusive design/accessibility professional side hates that those cookies have to be obtained in a way that doesn't fully respect privacy.

But simply as a human, what I find most objectional of all is CloudFlare's "Checking if the site connection is secure" messaging. That sounds like a good thing; how nice that this site is looking out for my protection as a humble web user! When in fact, my activity and circumstances are being checked against an arbitrary set of requirements and baseline-level metrics, to determine if I have the right to go where I want to go. It has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with information lockdown.

Of course, CloudFlare's lawyers probably signed off on this copy as being just close enough to the truth. They are checking that the site connection is secure... against bad actors. Which they may very well find to be you if they can't prove your human nature beyond reasonable doubt, so watch out.

jscholes , to Thunderbird
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Once upon a time, there was an email client named . The makers of this not-great-but-necessary tool had, at some point, added single-key shortcuts to its message list, like K to ignore an entire thread. This didn't match the mnemonic for the same function in the relevant context menu, which was I, but that was okay for consistency in user interfaces was widely believed to be overrated. It was, however, acknowledged that this key was quite easy to press by accident, and hence a useful "Undo" button was added to the resulting alert, allowing the unintentional ignoring of an email thread to be quickly reversed.

One day, a gaggle of bandits rode into the town of Mozilla, proudly baring the banner of The Modern Design League. Over the course of the next few months, they poured scorn on convenience, terrorised the peddlers of good sense, and derided the small, voluntary efforts of the weekly Club, all in the name of better code structure and 21st century relevance.

When these fiends learned of the presence of the button to undo the ignoring of a thread, they were furious. They began a swift, vehement campaign to rework this functionality, maximising the spacing available to the alert text...

... and that, kids, is why you now have to open the "View" menu, drill down into "Threads", check the "Ignored Threads" option, manually locate a response to the thread you ignored by mistake, un-ignore it, and then repeat the first steps of this process to hide ignored threads again.

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