โ NomadNet 1.4.2 released
๐ฌค rns.recipes
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โ screen-readers, speech-to-text, general accessibility questions โ
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Started by mermaidadjacent ยท 3d ago ยท 7586ec4b64721b52
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โ mermaidadjacent #1 โ
โ 7586ec4b64721b52 โ
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โธ 3d ago
hello everyone!
I am really excited about Reticulum and trying to help some of my friends and comrades
get involved. many of them are intimidated by the perceived technical complexity of
Reticulum, so I am trying to write a simple user's guide for them that will explain
building their own networks step-by-step. some of these friends and comrades rely on
screen-readers or speech-to-text to navigate their devices, so I am trying to learn how
to use a terminal and various Reticulum apps using those programs, so that I can pass
along clear and simple instructions. in particular I intend to develop instructions for
using Reticulum with the Orca screen-reader, the NVDA screen-reader, and Talon
speech-to-text. so far, I have only tried using Orca myself, on Ubuntu.
I was able to use the terminal with Orca pretty easily, but I had trouble with the
Reticulum apps that I tried. NomadNet was super easy to navigate with just my keyboard,
which was awesome, but I couldn't figure out how to read aloud the shortcuts at the
bottom of the screen (ex. [C-w] Disconnect). and I could not figure out how to get Orca
to read aloud from the Micron pages that I was able to display.
Orca did not work with Sideband at all. It did not even say anything when I opened or
closed the application.
MeshChatX was more challenging to navigate with my keyboard, although it was possible.
Orca did read aloud all of the text and options that I could see in MeshChatX. but I
still had trouble with the Micron pages; it wouldn't read the body of them, but I could
tab from link to link and Orca would read the link text aloud. I have no idea why.
so, here are my questions:
is there anyone on this forum already using Reticulum with a screen-reader,
speech-to-text, or any other adaptive tech? if so, do you have any advice or insight to
share?
does anyone know of any documentation about accessibility for Reticulum or any of the
main Reticulum apps? I checked the manual, the community wiki, these forums, and the docs
for NomadNet, Sideband, and MeshChatX, and I couldn't find anything. if there is any
existing guidance for app compatibility with screen-readers or other adaptive tech, that
would be so helpful to read.
does anyone have any other guidance on what I should do next? I am uncertain whether to
attribute my difficulties to my own knowledge gaps, Reticulum bugs, Orca bugs, something
else. any clarity that anyone can provide on the subject would be very welcome.
thank you all for your time!
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post-2
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โ Alledegly_noderunner #2 โ
โ 2a323a0ad8734e73 โ
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โธ 3d ago
Very interesting, whole classes of device could be designed for this use case. A voice
paging system over lxmf comes to mind. No visual user interface, just physical buttons.
Both could be used, text to speech and voice messages. I love retibooks but i dont think
ill ever use an e reader on the device I want to use for RNS, but TTS would make that
possible.
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post-3
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โ Zenith #3 โ
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โธ 3d ago
Are there screen readers that use OCR?
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post-4
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โ Base64Keymashing #4 โ
โ 112807a362ecfaa0 โ
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โธ 3d ago
(Still new to Reticulum and don't use a screen reader) I don't think TUIs have a good
track record for screen-reader-friendliness. I've heard of blind people liking Dungeon
Crawl Stone Soup which uses ncurses(?) but idk what they use to access it. Is there a
(local) web frontend people here recommend? Not that those can't also be an accessibility
nightmare, but probably less so? If not, I wonder how far you can get with plain old cli
commands. Is there a particular usage you're focused on (direct messaging, chatrooms,
pages, etc)?
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post-5
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โ mermaidadjacent #5 โ
โ 7586ec4b64721b52 โ
โฐโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโฏ
โธ 2d ago
โ Alledegly_noderunner wrote:
โ Very interesting, whole classes of device could be designed for this use case. A
โ voice paging system over lxmf comes to mind. No visual user interface, just
โ physical buttons. Both could be used, text to speech and voice messages.
I do love the idea of a pager! And I am very curious what kinds of possibilities exist
for dual use of TTS and STT, although I haven't necessarily seen them used together
myself. I doubt we will see good integration between these two types of systems until
there are really good open source STT navigation programs, though.
โ Zenith wrote:
โ Are there screen readers that use OCR?
Not to my knowledge. From everything I've learned so far, OCR programs handle the
translation of an image of text into text, while screen-readers translate text into
audible speech. I think that part of the reason why they are not generally integrated is
that OCR translations may not always be accurate, so it's best practice for those
translations to be reviewed before they are published for use with screen-readers.
โ Base64Keymashing wrote:
โ I don't think TUIs have a good track record for screen-reader-friendliness. I've
โ heard of blind people liking Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup which uses ncurses(?) but idk
โ what they use to access it. Is there a (local) web frontend people here recommend?
โ Not that those can't also be an accessibility nightmare, but probably less so? If
โ not, I wonder how far you can get with plain old cli commands. Is there a
โ particular usage you're focused on (direct messaging, chatrooms, pages, etc)?
That is actually really surprising to me! I had assumed that text-based user interfaces
would be easier to make screen-reader friendly by virtue of already being all-text, with
no images or icons to translate for a screen-reader. I'll definitely be doing some more
research.
I am focused on finding the simplest possible means by which a user with a screen-reader
could use the full range of functionality that Reticulum applications offer to users who
don't rely on screen-readers, and on identifying exactly what accessibility needs each
Reticulum app does or does not support. If no Reticulum apps are compatible with any
screen-readers, then I will make a guide that explains how to use exclusively the CLI; if
some Reticulum apps are compatible with some screen-readers, then I will make guides for
both; if there is any Reticulum app that can be made compatible with the major
screen-readers, even with some configuration, then I will make a guide for that app. That
goes for each feature: direct messaging, pages, chatrooms, etc.
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post-6
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โ Base64Keymashing #6 โ
โ 112807a362ecfaa0 โ
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โธ 2d ago
It looks like urwid (TUI framework I see in the nomadnet import list) has the ability to
do some sort of html output. (Search for Other Display Modules in their manual) Maybe
that would be a good starting point. I can try to mess around with it tomorrow.
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post-7
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โ mermaidadjacent #7 โ
โ 7586ec4b64721b52 โ
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โธ 2d ago
โ Base64Keymashing wrote:
โ It looks like urwid (TUI framework I see in the nomadnet import list) has the
โ ability to do some sort of html output. (Search for Other Display Modules in their
โ manual) Maybe that would be a good starting point. I can try to mess around with it
โ tomorrow.
thanks so much for the suggestion! [is this the manual section you were referring
to?](https://urwid.org/manual/displaymodules.html#other-display-modules) I've read it
over a couple times now, but if I'm honest a lot of it is going over my head. if there is
a way to use html output though that sounds like it could be very helpful! I don't know
whether Orca is compatible with every browser but I do know it is intended to be able to
read html.
I have experimented a bit more myself with Orca and NomadNet, answering some of my own
questions and generating new ones in the process. for starters, I have determined that
the command list on the bottom of the screen can be read aloud with the right and left
arrow keys. what still seems unpredictable to me is where your focus needs to be before
you hit those arrows in order to get each list of commands. most pages have more than one
list, and which one is visible depends on what you have in focus / what you're trying to
do, but when using the left and right arrows it is not always clear to me exactly where
the focus is or where it's being moved to.
I believe that my confusion can be at least partially attributed to the fact that it
seems Orca cannot necessarily distinguish between the left-side and right-side panels.
where I was tabbing through things like my list of saved nodes relatively quickly on my
first try, I am now going much shlower and waiting to see whether anything is read aloud
after the name of the saved node has been fully read. doing this, I learned that Orca
will read straight across the screen, from the beginning of the name of a saved node to
the end of a line of a Micron page level with that line of text. it does the same thing
in the Guide section, too, so that the Introduction reads aloud like this:
โ Introduction Concepts & Terminology Communicate Freely. Channels & RRC Interfaces
โ The intention with this program is to provide a tool that allows you to build
โ Hosting a Node private and resilient communications platforms...
so, it seems that Orca can read Micron as it is displayed in NomadNet after all. the
trouble is distinguishing between the different sections of the screen displaying
information, and navigating between them without consistently clear audio feedback. I'm
kinda hoping that if I just keep messing around and get really familiar with the key
navigation, I'll be able to learn the pattern underlying the navigation logic enough to
explain it to someone else. I'm planning to experiment more in MeshChatX with Orca when I
get a chance, with the same hope.
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post-8
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โ Base64Keymashing #8 โ
โ 112807a362ecfaa0 โ
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โธ 2d ago
Yep, that's the link! Sorry for not pasting it, MeshchatX on Android doesn't let me paste
in the browser for some reason. It's a pretty short entry, I'm not 100% sure what it does
either, but I'm hoping a more structured output than the sidebar reading you've
encountered. Another thing as you're working on this: have you asked the potential users
of these features in your community what they prefer for tech? Like, screen reader or OS?
I'd be testing with Orca too since that's what I have, but I know people using a screen
reader can have strong opinions about OS/screen reader and different screen readers have
different quirks. It's hard to test different ones on your own ofc and testing with
Orca's a good start, but just be sure not to commit too hard to it without checking.
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โ Anonymous #9 โ
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โธ 18h ago
Just chiming in to say that accessibility is very important. Sideband uses Kivy, which
seems to totally lack accessibility features unfortunately. One other issue is that
NomadNet selects the first letter of buttons instead of the whole text, so Orca only
reads a single letter.
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โ INFO โ Identify to this node to post. How?
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