Wider Tech Discussions: AppleVis Forums Expand Beyond Apple

I have a view blind friends IRL that are awesome people, now I wouldn’t call this sight a community because when we got into the android vs apple stuff some people were vary whiny and lying, looking at you Denis, yeah me and him never got along but hay your not got gonna get along with everyone and that’s ok

My vision is my business. I'll marry someone sighted, because I grew up as such. Enough of this topic on this discussion forum. My user name is available on most platforms. FB is different contact me off here. BTW, I mean the sighted verses blind debate.

The blind community has been divided for as long as I can remember. I used to hang out at a community before social media became dominant. It was known simply as The Zone. As social media grew, that place closed down, and people drifted apart. Other online communities like Klango and Vorail came and went; I believe Vorail is still active. However, they all had what many of us refer to as "Blind Drama." This drama is common because not everyone shares the same opinions, which keeps things interesting. Personally, I don't post much on forums unless I can offer help. I usually prefer to observe and enjoy the interactions without getting too involved.

OK this is all going in a weird and uncomfortable direction.

I guess we maybe have different definitions of community. I don't really see thst as a place where everyone comes along with the same opinion and gets on great. I think I'd call that a cult.

If a load of cats get together in a field to talk about the best way to use their litter trays, I would call that a community even if all they do is rabbit kick each other in the face whilst spitting and hissing.

We are all here because we need assistive tech and either are interested in or just have a need for tech.

If people on here feel like they have been bullied then that makes me very sad to hear.

Let us please not call out ignorance as anything to be ashamed of and also let's not say this isn't a place to come if you are needing to be educated because it's a great resource for that.

But maybe we are talking about what you do with that ignorance - there's no need for anyone on here to be confrontational or rude to others here.

We can complain about the blind community being this and that. WE can say it's not a community at all. Or whatever, but we all have a small part to play in that. We can't find intolerance with more intolerance.

I'm not intending this as a comment on anyone in particular as I don't really know where everyone is coming from. I said I wouldn't poke with my stick and maybe I'm doing that by posting here again.

At any rate I think we can maybe all agree that this topic is going off on a massive tangent. Please let us try to appreciate the work the people who run this forum put in and show them our support.

I have been blind ever since I was no older than a few days, so I am not a so-called privileged member of this so-called community from birth, yet I do see-I mean acknowledge the fact that we all have certain needs in common, but disability-based activism won't get us anywhere as it is the non-disabled thatt we are trying to communicate with, after all. I don't quite get why certain people consider blindness as part of what they call their identity, and are so sentimental. If one's identity should be defined as the sum of all the characteristics that defines a person and distinguishes him or her from others, it is all those characteristics as a whole that make you you. Why treat blindness separately then? We all have certain things like hair or eye color, hobbies and interests, sex, mother tongue and a bunch of other things that we share in common with so many blind and sighted people from all around the world, many of which are not even considered by most to be worth arguing about. If you treat a person differently just because (s)he is blond(e) or is taller than you or doesn't like action movies then this is problematic. These differences do mean something while discussing that particular topic but should otherwise be treated as but one of many traits that makes us both unique and alike, pretty much like our genetic material. And just as it is all the genetic material as a whole that make up your cells and mutations in a certain part of that material can have an impact on the entire cell, we should also consider our traits as things that are meaningful and can make up our identity only when treated as a whole. There are over three hundred million blind and visually-impaired individuals worldwide, but there is only one of each of us, just as is the case for each and every sighted person on earth. Many of these three hundred something million people have so many things that they have in common with each other and some of the remaining sighted population. Why is blindness alone considered to be a vital feature that makes certain individuals so unique? I'm afraid this has evolved from well-intentioned attempts to an unnecessary endeavor to be heard and and seen by everyone and attract everyone's attention by exploiting disabilities and certain other concepts, either deliberately or unknowingly. Oh, by the way, I had a question on my mind but then forgot to ask it: What about those becoming blind in adulthood, or what about those losing their sight over time? Do they suddenly or gradually become part of this so-called blind community? And what about those regaining sight? You know, this will likely be easier with all the technological advances. Are you just gonna excommunicate whoever becomes sighted (again)?

OK maybe we are talking about two different things here. I feel comfortable calling Applevis a community, whereas I would agree that saying there is a general blind community is a little bit more of a stretch.

But all the same, I think we are just arguing over semantics. Whether we think this or that is a community, or not, let's just try to be nice to each other even if sometimes it's not easy.

Oh boy, let me try and steer this another direction. Whether we like discussions of non apple products on a site called applevis seems rather beside the point to me, it's happening and will continue to happen. At the risk of being political we all know how Prohibition worked in early twentieth century America, banning the thing just made its distribution move underground and all of a sudden law enforcement, the metaphorical mods here, had even more problems on their hands with organized crime and such. People will talk about android and windows on applevis, it's been happening for years. It can be regulated and categorized or the mods can give themselves more work trying to ban every slightly off topic thing only to have 2 more off topic posts come up in its place, it seems to me those are the only choices unless you just want to be ineffective and ignore the issue entirely.

I think this is a great idea, and I'm glad AppleVis is being expanded to allow discussions about other operating systems and tech, but I think there should be a section about Linux as well. Since the new sections include Windows and Android, it seems only fair to include Linux too, to represent all the main non-Apple operating systems. Linux has multiple screen readers for its different interfaces, and even though GUI applications are often less accessible than on Mac and Windows and Orca has less features and capabilities than other screen readers, there are still plenty of accessible GUI applications, not to mention Emacs and the command line, which are extremely accessible with a few different screen readers. Braille is also supported in all of these environments, and works extremely well on the command line.

I understand that there are less blind Linux users than blind Windows and Android users, but I have definitely heard Linux mentioned a few times here. Also, part of the reason less blind people use Linux is probably that there are very few online resources about Linux from a blindness perspective, even less so than for Windows and Android, and having a Linux section on AppleVis might help more blind people learn about it and get help if they need it. Linux has its own advantages and disadvantages just like other operating systems, and I think it can be offer some unique benefits to blind users.

Just adding my vote for a linux section once the pilot is done. I understand that the mods probably don't want to break out too much at first, but linux is a logical inclusion in the future though, it might be that it can be included in the general, accessible technology, section for now as it may be too small a user base... Realise its kinda catch 22 though.

It's a catch 22 situation isn't it? Les blind people use Linux because there aren't many online resources, but presumably there aren't the resources because a lot of us don't use it. I've never used Linux myself, but I wouldn't mind learning about it. Thing is I don't want to install it on my computer because then I wouldn't have Windows presumably? Is that what that VMware thing is for though? Maybe I could install it on my laptop running Windows 11? I haven't got a spare laptop lying around. Can people install Linux without sighted help? Or do you have to get sighted help to install it? I've never got a straight answer about this from anyone. And what about raspberry pi.? I know a little bit about that, but for those who have got one, a forum to discuss this would be cool. I haven't got any idea of the benifits of Linux over Windows or the Mac. At least with the Mac, I can read about it here, and I know enough people to ask things. Linux I don't know anyone or anywhere to ask stuff. Understanding why someone would prefer Linux rather than Windows or the Mac would be nice. These aren't rhetorical questions, some answers would be cool, thanks.

Would love to have a forum to discuss this. From what little I have been able to find on the inter-webs, it is supposed to be a user-friendly, accessible desktop-like environment for Linux.

There are ten-thousand versions of Linux distributions, or flavors, or whatever you want to call them, most with a desktop environment. I use the Mate desktop (as in the caffeine loaded drink of Latin America) by way of Debian as my main OS.
If we end up with a Linux section, it might be interesting. Most of those discussions are on email lists right now.

I like the idea of adding a Linux forum at some point, likely when we get a sense of how the current pilot is going, so as to avoid expanding too rapidly.

I too have long wanted to explore Linux, and installed Ubuntu in a virtual machine on my Mac a few years ago. While Orca seemed generally usable and easy enough to learn according to its documentation, I for whatever reason had a hard time reliably navigating interfaces. Whether that was because there was a distribution or desktop environment that would've been better-optimized for Orca, the virtual machine was underpowered, I couldn't find many comprehensive resources for beginners, or a combination of all the above, I couldn't seem to get the hang of it and eventually stopped using it altogether.

I'd love to learn and use linux more, I've had several false starts. Once I ran some linux apps on my chromebook (orca ran surprisingly well, all things considered) but that was an entertaining disaster. I tried Ubuntu in a vm on my decently powered windows machine and there was some weird boot up bug where I could only get Orca running in guest mode and gave up before I could set up BRL TTY. I found this new tutorial for replacing Chrome OS with whatever distro entirely, instead of running it through the container thing. That's my next step and has been for about a year, I know enough to know I can probably figure that out with a lot of difficulty maybe and, anyways, all that is to say I really, really want the blind Linux community to move beyond mailing lists. I need help.
That said I can't think of anything more anti Apple than Linux. I'm not talking in a cage fight which is better way, not saying there aren't plenty of people who use and enjoy both. It's more that I can't think of two more diametrically opposed design philosophies than Apple, the pinnacle of in house closed source fine tuning and Linux, the pinnacle of the infinitely breakable and infinitely customizable open source world. For all the debate and surface level differences iOS and android are mostly alike and emulating each other more with every new release. Windows and MAC are fundamentally GUI centered platforms with secondary terminals while Linux, if I've learned nothing else in my aborted experiments, is a terminal centered system with secondary desktop environments. This is obviously more or less true depending on your distro and desktop environment but I can see how this mix could frustrate a lot of not super geeky people if the linux forums cross pollinate with the rest of the site, much more than if android talk spills over into the iOS topics now and then. That is only natural in a way, even people who don't like it generally understand why it's happening. mods just move it to the right place and that's that. Get a hardcore linux geek arguing with a hardcore apple fanboy because someone accidentally asked for help running a Mac OS virtual machine in Kvm on the Mac OS forum and that could make all the Android or iOS playground fights look almost desirable. Anyways, the TLDR is I want this as long as it's done carefully.

I'm not a lynix user and honestly doubt i'd need it but more in this case is always better.

The open-source nature of Linux has always intrigued and confused me. I've been looking for helpful answers to questions like how to get started and what distro to use. I once came across a website that listed accessible distros and hosted other useful resources, but can't find it now.
I have an ancient laptop lying around that now has left no battery to power it so the BiOS thing shows up with beeps that worried me so much when I first heard them when you power it on after long enough. This is probably because it requires me to specify the date and time. It takes about a couple of minutes to start up and possibly even more to shut down, as I once made the stupid mistake of installing the 32-bit version of Windows 10 on it. Now I want to be able to somehow install and use Linux on it, which would technically mean the revival of that old machine. We would call it the wooden computer among friends because of that characteristic noise it would make particularly when hitting the space bar.

After googling around, I found this link with distributions accessible to blind and visually-impaired users.
https://itsfoss.com/visual-impaired-linux/

It certainly answered a few of my questions anyway. Hope that helps.

A lot of Linux distributions allow you to enable Orca with a keyboard command, including in the installer. I personally use Arch Linux, but I would probably not recommend it to beginners since you have to set everything up yourself, and it has a steep learning curve. If you press down arrow followed by enter after you hear a beep after booting the installer, it will start Speakup, a command line screen reader, as well as brltty, which communicates with Braille displays. The Mate desktop is the most accessible and easy to use desktop environment I have tried, and when I use the GUI, that is almost always what I use.

Virtual machines are indeed a good way to try Linux. On Windows I remember Virtual Box being pretty accessible, as well as VMWare Player, although its been a long time since I used either one. On MacOS, UTM is an excellent application for running virtual machines, and is fully accessible. It can run on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and all three of these programs are free. Also, if you try to create a virtual machine, make sure to enable sound, and if you think the screen reader should be talking and you don't hear anything, choosing different emulated sound hardware might fix it.

I have been using Raspberry Pi's for a long time, and I'm pretty sure Raspberry Pi OS, the official Linux distribution for them, includes Orca by default. However, since I use Arch Linux on them, I have never tried to turn on Orca on Raspberry Pi OS. I think the keyboard command to turn it on in most Linux distributions is Alt+Windows+S.

Some of the reasons why I use Linux include:

• Customizability: Unlike other operating systems, you can make Linux into anything you want. If you don't like your desktop environment, which basically controls the whole GUI experience and things like the applications menu, there are many others to choose from. Or if you want something simpler, you can use a window manager and configure more things yourself. Or you can not have a GUI at all and just use the command line. And for distributions, they range from ones meant for desktops, to ones meant for servers, to ones meant for small embedded systems. You can even compile the kernel and all the applications from source code if you want to.
• Hardware compatibility: Linux usually uses a lot less resources than Windows or MacOS, so it runs a lot better on older hardware. Additionally, it runs almost just as well on other CPU architectures like ARM, which is what the Raspberry Pi uses. Also, since most Linux programs are open source, it is usually pretty easy to compile them for other architectures, meaning you rarely need a compatibility layer for X86 like you do on Windows or MacOS. These compatibility layers effect performance, so its best to use them as little as possible. You can even run Linux programs under Android or iOS, using Termux or iSH, and ChromeBooks can also run Linux programs now.
• Cost: Linux and most of its programs are free, and run well on inexpensive hardware.
• Strong foundations: Linux is the most used operating system on servers, and the Linux desktop benefits from this. For example, Linux has some extremely robusts and feature-rich filesystems, supporting things like compression, RAID, encryption, subvolumes, snapshots that can be taken instantly and don't duplicate data, checksum verification, etc. There are also many security features, and if you set everything up right, you can make it more secure than probably any other operating system. You can even turn a Linux computer or a Raspberry Pi into a router, a web server, an email server, or whatever else you want by configuring a few programs, rather than buying expensive enterprise software.
• Command line: Linux has the best command line experience of any operating system, and command line programs are almost always accessible because they only output text. There are command line programs for a very wide variety of tasks, including editing files, converting documents, email, web browsing, playing media, etc, and using the command line can be extremely efficient, especially with scripting.

I knew about servers and stuff like that, but it's interesting about the security stuff. I'll have to have a play around one day. Thanks again for the info.

Thank you to those who have suggested adding a Linux forum. This was absolutely an option that was on our radar when determining the initial set of technology areas to include in the pilot.

Ultimately, we decided to keep the scope fairly narrow for now. However, Linux is definitely an option that we will consider if we opt to expand the forum areas after evaluating the success of this pilot.

For now, I'd ask that we refrain from steering the present discussion too deeply into the specifics around Linux and the various distribution options. While this is certainly an interesting topic, going too far into those details would stray from the intended focus here of gauging overall community interest in broadening the scope of our forum beyond Apple.

Thank you all again for sharing your thoughts and suggestions!

I have bee waiting for something like this for a while. I've noticed that there are a few other online spaces you can go and talk about tech as a visually impaired person, but they are often times older and in need of some TLC. This place was the first forum I joined, as back when I joined there weren't that many other good places to speak about tech. I always felt relatively safe posting things, and replying to people. Now I have more tech that is not necessarily apple stuff. So it will be cool to discuss other stuff without having to scour the internet for other places to speak.

for reasons previously stated I think should just stay focused on Apple.

If you don’t wanna see the other poasts unrelated to apple simply don’t go to that heading

Not sure why this is hard for people to understand

I’m just wondering what the worry is. What do you think might happen?

This has been a apple forum. Applevis worked very hard to work with Apple to get things solved. I don't want that diminished.

I don't think this will stop applevis working with apple, not sure if they do work with apple but if they do that's super cool

are so close with apple in the first place. If you look closely in the forums here it's sometimes hard to differenciate misinformation from frustration of real bugs. Not a critique, apple especially for mac have a lot to improve if they ever do it, but it's a fact.
As for the name of the site, keept it as it is please. We would have a very hard time to find a decent short form for applevis anyway. Accessibility policies for people loving electronics? :P Like. Domain redirections are a horrible things to manage for older websites like this one, and if you ever do that then the chance of apple removing any consideration for applevis are very very high then.

Unless the wayland dramma around orca is resolved, or we get another real screen reader with proper funding for the poor dev this time, I am no longer seeing linux gui as an alternative worth the try. Terminal are the ideal of accessibility as virtually everything is text, but with web browsing you're struck. Links2 or whatever its clones are called are more a proof of concept than anything else in my humble opinion ast they don't have any JS or dynamic webpages. 99% of modern site won't work there. But yeah, if we had speakup in 1980s it would have been the golden age for blind people able to afford computing device at that time. The online resources are very outdated too for documentations and stuff about linux and accessibility.
If someone can tell me how to have proper speech output on raspberry 3b+ or pi400 with speakup on terminal I'd glad to hear that. Oh and raspberry pi imager is not accessible for mac if you want to install raspberry pi os and don't look online for how to generate ssl encrypted password and where # how to create a user in the mounted image because it's made in qt. Diet pi or others would be your best bet then.

I'm enjoying all the other discussions - think this was a good move.

How about a forum for console gaming? Or is that going too far off topic?

It's great. Keep it up.

It was getting highly frustrating to try and talk about accessibility in a wider setting as either the conversation had to be shut down because it exceeded forum rules, or pedants.

I use my apple devices to interact with non-apple devices all the time. The forum needed to follow function... See what I did there? A few years ago when there were just a few accessible products on the market, all made by apple, this made sense. It's way bigger than that now. Keeping it restricted to apple chat would result in the forum falling apart. I left because my voice was muted, I returned because the forum evolved.

We're already restricted in our choices, restricting channels of conversation would have been a terrible thing. I really like how Apple Vis have done it too, there is very little cross pollination and I'm finding the site even easier to navigate.

It's a huge success. Nice work.

Not much to say other than it's nice to know there's somewhere people such as myself and others can go and get help about platforms other than Apple.

This is done, AppleVis did it. What I did not like is that they did not ask and just did it. Like parents to kids where they decide and the kids just goes along.

Just imagine the conversation if they'd asked!

Fact is, it makes little if any difference to those people 100 % on mac but makes all the difference to those working on many platforms.

Unless all gaming topics (both mainstream or specialized) should go under one forum, they would probably need to be split up among the following areas:

1. Console Games (both local and online)
2. Mobile Games (both local and online)
3. Assistant Games (Siri, Alexa, Google, Bixby, Etc)

though I do agree that a forum for discussing accessible mainstream games would be boss, I think I'd move on to the side of caution with others here.

I think a spin out of apple VIS or, maybe just a helping hand from them to any brave soul who wishes to do this, would be better. My thought is there is an entertainment side to accessibility, Games, movies, shows, audio books, etc, which all have their own and specific accessibility requirements for blind and partially sighted and probably deserves a platform of its own. EntertainmentVis.com or something similar. The current expantion, to my mind, is a sensible evolution, it's like for like. Those of us wanting to write documents can now look between platforms for the one with the best accessibility... Spoiler, it's not mac. I think shared intent on platforms is what makes this work, whereas an broadening to include games, play throughs, tips, advice and all the other things such mainstream gaming forums deal with, would be bloat.

A suggestion is this, a reddit and, if apple vis allows, we could promote it on here for those of us who want to game. There is already a sub, I think, that just isn't very active.

I do know having everything in the same place would be great but, as it stands, we can now come to apple vis and discover ways of using different platforms for the same tasks we've always had. Adding in gaming would be like keeping your cutlery in your sock draw. Socks are needed, forks are needed, just not in the same place.

Think that's fair? I'd love to set up a forum for just this, but I imagine it would be a great deal of work and I'm currently working to deadlines. I'd be interested in being an admin and generally helping with such a new site, such skills that I have, but I'd not be a good fit for one of the important players in doing so.. Player, games? See what I did there?

Also, I know a few blind gamers through the internet who might be able to get on board for reviews etc, with a kick back to their own sites. A centralised place for gaming does seem overdue.

Hi Olly,
Audiogames.net does discuss playable mainstream games as well as audio games.
https://www.audiogames.net/
There is also a website called 'Can I play that?' for disabled gamers who want to play mainstream games. It might be worth checking that out. That was mentioned on RNIB tech talk so they do include stuf for blind gamers.
https://caniplaythat.com/

Yeah, fair enough - I just got a little excited by a post elsewhere on this site.

I follow Can I Play That, but I think for information on blind gaming specifically it often falls a little short. I think there is a difference between a game that someone who is extremely determined and quite skilled can manage, and a game that a lazy old man might stick on after a hard day at work when trying to unwind. I rarely read anything on there and feel that I have a good feeling of whether I would personally be able to play the game or not.

My feeling on gaming is that there are a lot of near misses. I I was following Sightless Combat on Twitter and he was getting incredibly excited about Ragnarok to the point where I had to scroll past an advert for Ragnarok stuck in his name before I could read his tweets. And then when he finally reviewed it, it felt like a case of it being nearly accessible but with some problems which meant that you couldn't really get through it on your own. Although maybe things have changed.

Audio games is probably the best bet for gaming info, but I think the people on there are in a different league to me. My suggestion on here was that maybe it would be a more accessible way to talk about things in a casual manner.

But I get the point that if you open it up for gaming then it does open up a whole new world of other stuff and then where does it end.

I've never really understood reddit. I guess I've only just come across posts when googling for answers to questions and the site has never felt very accessible. I guess you need to be using a different app to get anything out of it.

Anyway, apologies I have yet again managed to go off on a tangent.

Yeah, the remit of can I play that is a little too wide. It's a good way to get a general disabled perspective on games, but it does lead to most of the information being redundant.

I'll check out audiogames.net though last time I visited the website was in desperate need of streamlining. I think I've just been spoiled by apple vis and it's tidy interface.

Hi to both,
Thanks for the heads-up about 'can I play that', I think I'll give that a miss. I used to play audio games a lot more about 15 years ago or more, and coming back to it was relatively hard since audiogames.net, though a good resource, tends to be full of abbreviations and jargon, understandable since people are regular players and know what they're talking about. So I ended up having to google a tonne of stuff, or having to go back through the audiogames.net forum archives to find out what exactly people were talking about. Maybe there should be somewhere for beginners, not here though, we probably should have some limits!

Only technology donot use other than technology

I'll warn you that the place can be full of drama and the website is very old, they've not updated the design in years.

I don't like it for reasons stated previously. This was not my call or it wouldn't have happened. I rarely disagree with the applevis team but I strongly disagree on this. This is a site to help apple users. That is what it should stay. nOW IF THEY WANTED TO LAUNCH A SEPERATE SITE THAT'S FINE.

I must confess a certain glee as you, Denis, shut down my conversation regarding windows laptops. Now I can talk about windows laptops all I like... Even writing windows laptops again and again here, isn't a bad thing. Windows laptops.

Hopefully you won't have to dip further down the page where all us cross platform skulkers live, festering away, fearing the light; the Morlocks of apple vis. the benefit is, we have a space to speak of non-apple stuff now rather than having that uncertain tightrope we had when trying to ask for help from other blind people for tech that was only tangential to apple products. I've given a lot of help on this forum, received it too. I trust certain people on here for solutions, course, some people I won't touch their advice with a barge pole... But still.

Maybe this subject has run its course.