Dear all.

I am very sad to inform everyone that our friend Didier died last week.

Early 2015, I asked on the slackware list if brltty could be added in the installer ; Didier answered promptly that he could do it on slint. Afterwards, he worked hard so that slint became as accessible as possible for visually impaired people.

You all know that all these years, he tried and succeeded to answer as quickly as possible to our issues and questions.

He will be irreplaceable.

…Should Have Used Challenged, Instead Of Negative Framing Term, Disabilities!!!!!

Repo: https://github.com/ctsdownloads/easyspeak/tree/dev?tab=readme-ov-file#easyspeak

cross-posted from: https://rblind.com/post/17753100

In this article, I will discuss the details of 10 innovations throughout history that were only possible through unlocking the power of accessibility and including the voices of people with disabilities. In the disability community, it is a deeply believed and often repeated fact that improving accessibility leads to innovations that improve the world for everyone. Necessity is the mother of invention is, after all, a proverb so frequently quoted that it has become a cliché. And yet, people with disabilities still find ourselves left out of research and design, and all too often we don’t get a seat at the product development table. This leaves our inventions overlooked, unrecognized, and sometimes unrealized.

Decades after her act of defiance, Rosa Parks galvanized a cadre of activists to protest their own conditions and, though the scope of her legacy for them is still coming into focus, it remains just as powerful.

They were fighting for disability access, and, like Parks, they used public transportation as a springboard.

The disability rights movement took shape against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, growing in size with each passing year. By the 1980s, it had made strides, successfully passing legislation and increasing the visibility of people living with disabilities.

But on roads and rails, small advances made in bus accessibility throughout the years did little to meet the needs of commuters with disabilities, whose use of public transportation was severely limited. Oftentimes, they were relegated to using separate services entirely, relying on transit services such as Dial-a-Ride, which required passengers to request a pickup and were frequently unreliable.

In 1984, something changed. In Chicago, about a dozen wheelchair-bound activists from the disability rights group ADAPT placed themselves in front of city buses to protest the Chicago Transit Authority’s decision to purchase more than 350 buses — none of which were accessible to them due to the city’s refusal to pay for wheelchair lifts.

The demonstration was reminiscent of Parks’ own protest that had taken place more than 700 miles south and nearly 30 years prior, when she refused to vacate her seat for a White passenger. As law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, a single sentence was emblazoned on each of the protesters’ name tags: “My name is Rosa Parks.”

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/31003562

• Of the 193 members of the United Nations, 164 signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, agreeing to provide access as a right for all people to effectively participate in society, but many fall short when it comes to outdoor spaces.
• Researchers reviewed accessibility features provided by UNESCO Biosphere Reserves for physical, sensory, mental, and cognitive disabilities.
• They found that while more than half of the Reserves provide access for people with some physical disabilities, most do not appear to accommodate sensory, cognitive, or mental disabilities.

Maybe the socks were just to fund this.

This week, while trying to catch up on schoolwork, I've been discovering all the things that put my body into nap mode, and wow, it’s a lot. Pillows, recliner angles, even kicking my feet up can flip the switch from "study" to "sleep."
It's been like running my own ergonomic lab this week, testing what keeps me awake vs. what puts me to sleep.
Turns out I focus way better with my feet supported, but that's tricky when you’re short and most setups aren't built for you. Fully kicking my feet up feels nice… until I wake up two hours later wondering what happened.
I can't tell you how many hours I've lost to nap mode when I was trying to study, but maybe now that won't happen anymore.
#disability #DisabilityLife #ChronicIllness #Fibromyalgia #RheumatoidArthritis #Neurodivergent #Fatigue #Accessibility #StudyStruggles #Ergonomics #ShortPeopleProblems #DisabledAndStudying #NapMode #ActuallyAutistic #Spoonie #CollegeStudent
@disability @autistics @spoonies @chronicillness @accessibility

If you don't have use of your hands.

See also this video:

It's basically a giant optical mouse usable with one foot.

The ADA is hailed as a historic civil rights milestone. For the first time, it formally recognized disabled people as a protected class, banned discrimination, and mandated reasonable accommodations in public life. It reshaped the built environment—adding curb cuts, closed captioning, ramps — and created a legal vocabulary to describe exclusion.

But the ADA was limited from the start. Enforcement depends on individuals filing lawsuits. Many private entities are exempt. Digital accessibility remains poorly regulated. And deeper systems — healthcare, housing, benefits — were never meaningfully addressed. As a disabled adult, I’ve had to fight to access basic services, find jobs, and navigate public life, all while watching the federal agencies tasked with protecting my rights slowly fall apart.

…just as a well-designed visual interface guides your eye and confirms your actions with subtle animations or color changes, sound can be an equally powerful tool. For us visually impaired folks, it’s not just a nice-to-have; it can be the only way we know what in the digital darnation is going on!

The words "building spaces for autistic people" over a castle background. There are bookshelves in the corners and candles on the floor and a window in the middle. In the top right there is an autistic pride flag of 5 different colors.

This clever gizmo turns any USB input devices - or combination of input devices - into any other HID device. Different versions also accept individual switches as inputs.

This means if you have trouble using a mouse, you can turn a joystick or a gamepad into a mouse.

Or if you can use a mouse but you can't click, you can remap the button to some other switch, like a foot pedal.

The possibilities seem endless, but it is a bit on the geeky side. If you're not the technical type, you might want to get some help from a computer or electronics engineer to put together your ideal setup with that one.

Check out the manual's section on accessibility:

https://www.remapper.org/manual/#accessibility-applications

Toymaker Mattel worked with Breakthrough T1D to create a Barbie doll who visibly lives with type 1 diabetes and carries an insulin pump.

Upcoming webinar from the Great Lakes ADA Center:

35th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): Celebrating the ADA Through the Decades

Event Date/Time:

Tuesday, July 15th, 2025

2:00 PM EDT - 3:30 PM EDT

Location:

Virtual

Description:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed on July 26, 1990 by former U.S. President, George H.W. Bush. This year, we celebrate three and a half decades of protections under this comprehensive disability civil rights law and the many milestones that have been reached by the disability community thanks to this important piece of legislation. Join us as we take a journey through the decades to look at:

• 1990s – Major Supreme Court decisions and how they have shaped the ADA’s enforcement;
• 2000s – The efforts that led to the ADA Amendments Act of 2008;
• 2010s – Revisions to the Title II and III regulations and the Accessibility Standards which shaped how service animals and other power-driven mobility devices are addressed as well as added architectural accessibility requirements for playgrounds, swimming pools, recreation facilities, children’s facilities, and more;
• 2020s – The impact of COVID-19 on remote work and the increased focus on technology which contributed to the push by DOJ to release new regulations for web content and mobile apps used by Title II entities. In addition, the renewed effort to abolish an outdated regulation that allows for people with disabilities to be paid sub-minimum wage.

During this session, our panel of speakers will lead us in honoring the sacrifices and hard-won battles of the past as we move forward and continue our fight for a more accessible future.

Max will debut Sinners in the U.S. on Friday, July 4, when viewers will be able to watch it two ways: by 1) streaming the exact theatrically released version, and 2) choosing Sinners in Black American Sign Language (BASL). It’s the first time a streaming service has interpreted a film into BASL, Warner Bros. says.

BASL is “a distinct dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) with its own dynamic history and unique grammar, signing space, rhythm, facial expressions and cultural nuances,” reads an announcement released Monday. Max says the release of Sinners in BASL marks “a major step forward in accessibility, representation and visibility in streaming.

“For the first time, the Black Deaf community will have streaming access to a more immersive experience in their language,” the press release continues. The written announcement also encourages Max subscribers who sign in ASL but are unfamiliar with BASL to “follow along with this interpretation.”

Sinners with BASL is interpreted by Nakia Smith, “an influential voice in the Black Deaf community, who delivers a powerful interpretation with cultural depth and linguistic richness that aligns with the film’s themes and historical timeline,” Max said. Smith performs the BASL as directed by Rosa Lee Timm.

Among the prominent leaders in the history of Blind education in Japan are Konishi Nobuhachi (1854-1938) and Ishikawa Kuraji (1859-1944), two sighted educators who contributed greatly to the early development of Japanese Braille in the 1880s and 1890s. Kunmōain, the school where Konishi and Ishikawa taught, opened its doors to blind and deaf students in 1880, and was renamed in 1887 as the Tokyo School for the Blind and Deaf (in short, the Tokyo School; the school was reorganized into a school for blind students in 1909, and a school for deaf students in 1910).

At the time in Japanese society, Blind education in schools, as well as Deaf education, was fairly new. People with disabilities, in general, had limited opportunities and support. The Tokyo School, which earned its status as a school under the direct authority of the Ministry of Education, was one of the few places in Japan where blind and deaf students with some financial means could receive formal education. In addition to a broad curriculum of academic courses, such as language, history, and mathematics, the school offered vocational training in music, acupuncture, and massage – the traditional professions of blind people. Shortly after Konishi was appointed to the school in 1886, Ishikawa joined the teaching staff there upon Konishi’s recommendation. Ishikawa’s immediate task was to thoroughly understand the principles of Braille and transform Braille into a suitable script for the Japanese language. This was no easy feat for anyone, not least because the phonetic and semantic nature of the Japanese scripts had to be accurately codified in the much more limited template of Braille dots.

Japanese Braille took shape over a few years of trial and error. Ishikawa and his committee aimed to develop a functional Japanese-based Braille template that could be used not only at the Tokyo School but also disseminated nationwide as the new standard script for Blind education. From early on, the committee made the crucial decision of comparing Braille with the Japanese kana syllabaries, which are phonetic characters and can be used in writing to represent the sounds of a vast number of kanji characters. [...]

This font is awesome!

I'm not blind but my eyesight isn't what it used to be, like all men my age, and this font really is legible at a much smaller size even for me.