James Scholes

I believe that the #accessibility of everyday tech for #screenReader users is on a slow but consistent decline. Operating systems, browsers, messaging apps, email clients, even command line tools.

These things are not being replaced with more #accessible alternatives, but nor does the investment exist to stop the rot within the current options.

This in itself is concerning, particularly as it mirrors tech trends more broadly. But what I worry about quite a bit is what it does for user expectations.

What happens when generations of people grow up with inefficient keyboard access models, faux desktop apps, and a thousand tiny papercuts here and there? When the new baseline is worse than it was before, it takes that bit more effort to imagine and advocate for best rather than just better.

Interviewer: "How would you describe your greatest ambition as a software developer?"

Me*: "To never work on software that requires a reboot after being installed."

*Not really, this is made up.

A repost of a quote post which links to one additional post... why do humans complicate things so?

Dear Marriott,

If in order to unsubscribe from your marketing emails that I didn't sign up for in the first place I have to: choose between two unsubscribe links, manually type my email into a field with inappropriate auto-capitalisation and without type="email", check some boxes and then press "cancel subscription," you're doing it wrong.

What's more, I suspect you're doing it wrong on purpose. But I will be unsubscribing regardless.

A commit is not a release.

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An undisclosed AI narration of George Orwell's 1984, with entirely AI-generated five-star reviews, bubbled up to the top of my Audible search results.

Sharing as an example of what this scam looks like; please don't buy this shit.

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B0GL4P89FH

#Dropbox finally (finally!) added a .dropboxignore feature:

https://help.dropbox.com/sync/how-to-prevent-files-from-syncing

A severe #accessibility issue I've seen very few people talking about is the widespread adoption (in my country at least) of touch-only card payment terminals with no physical number buttons. Not only do these devices offer no tactile affordances, but the on-screen numbers move around to limit the chances of a customer's PIN number being captured by bad actors. In turn, this makes it impossible to create any kind of physical overlay (which itself would be a hacky solution at best). When faced with such a terminal, blind people have only a few ways to proceed: * Switch to cash (if they have it); * refuse to pay via inaccessible means; * ask the seller to split the transaction into several to facilitate multiple contactless payments (assuming contactless is available); * switch to something like Apple Pay (again assuming availability); or * hand over their PIN to a complete stranger. Not one of these solutions is without problems. If you're #blind, have you encountered this situation, and if so how did you deal with it? It's not uncommon for me to run into it several times per day. why do you think this is not being talked about or made the subject of action by blindness organisations? Is it the case that it disproportionately affects people in countries where alternative payment technology (like paying via a smart watch) is slower to roll out and economically out of reach for residents?