I built a Mac browser that repairs pages for VoiceOver — and I need blind testers, because mine were all sighted

Dennis, thank you — three honest answers.

iOS: no, and not because we ran out of time. Apple does not allow a third-party browser engine, so anything called a browser in the App Store is a shell around WebKit. Repairing a page before your screen reader reads it needs the layer Apple keeps closed. An iOS version would be a weaker thing wearing the same name, and you would find that out on the first badly built page. If the rules change, I will build it — until then I would rather say plainly that it is not coming than let you wait for it.

Windows: yes, today. There is a build, and it works with NVDA and JAWS as well as with its own voice. One caveat I would rather you heard from me than discovered: the installer is not signed yet. Windows will show a blue window headed "Windows protected your PC", and the only button you will find at first says "Don't run". Press "More info" and a second button appears, "Run anyway" — that is the one. Where it names the publisher it will say "Unknown publisher". Our certificate is bought and going through the authority's identity checks; until it is issued there is nothing to sign the file with. Because the name cannot vouch for the file, the download page publishes the checksum of the exact file we released, so you can verify the file itself instead of trusting a label.

Mac: no rush. That build is signed and notarised, and it is not going anywhere. Everything the browser does without the AI is free forever, whenever you get there.

If you do try the Windows one, the report I would most like is the boring one: what it said, what you expected it to say, and where you got stuck.

João, this is the comment I most wanted, so thank you for writing it rather than closing the tab.

On augmenting rather than replacing: that is what it does. Legato does not replace VoiceOver and cannot — you keep your screen reader, your voice and your settings, and it reads the page after the repairs rather than instead of them.

On leaving AI out of screen-reading: mostly it is out. The repairs that fix the majority of pages are rules, not a model — a button gets its name from the markup around it, a heading that was styled text becomes a real heading, focus order stops jumping, a dialog stops trapping you. That part runs on your machine, needs no account and no key, and is free forever. No model is involved and none is asked.

The AI is a separate, paid thing that never runs by itself. It is called when you ask, on the page you are on, for the pages the rules could not fix: describe this image, tell me what this form wants, say this in plain words.

And it is optional at a finer grain than "on or off". There are three separate switches in Settings, one per skill, and under each one the interface states exactly what leaves your machine — the picture itself for describing images, the shape of the form and never your answers for the form summary. Each asks once, the first time you use it. Say no and it says "Not sent", and it does not ask again. Never touch them and no model is ever called; the browser keeps doing the rule-based repairs exactly as before.

On security: on a cache lookup what leaves the machine is a hash and the page language. Not the markup, not the URL, not your licence key — and a hash cannot be read back into content. Sending an actual fragment is a different act with its own consent dialog.

On hallucination: you are right and I am not going to argue it away. A model can invent a plausible name for a button, and a confident wrong name is worse than silence. That is why it is asked for a name or a description — the smallest possible answer — and never for the page's meaning, and why the plain-words rewrite is something you request per page rather than something applied to your reading.

On WebKit: you are right, and I would rather concede it than dress it up. Fixing the engine is the better fix where the engine is what is broken. But most of what I am repairing is not a WebKit bug — it is a site that never gave its button a name. No engine can invent that name, because the information was never there. WebKit patches and this are not competing; they fix different halves of the same misery, and yours is the half that lasts.

And one thing I would genuinely ask of you, not as a turn of phrase. If, after all that, you still think the AI part should not exist in this shape — even switched off by default and asked for by hand — I would rather learn it properly than from one exchange. Ask the people here whose judgement you trust, and let them say it in their own words. If it comes back that this is the wrong thing to have built, tell me plainly and I will change it rather than defend it. I would much rather hear that now, from you, than after people have paid for it. I am not asking you to approve of it; I am asking you to tell me if I am wrong, and I will take the answer.

If you do go and contribute to WebKit, that helps more people than I will.

Dennis, here it is.

Download page, Windows button is the first one: https://qiksy.app/legato/
Straight to the file, if you would rather skip the page: https://api.qiksy.app/legato/download?os=win&v=0.3.58

File name: Qiksy-Legato-Setup-0.3.58.exe, about 162 MB.
SHA-256: 51be29b0c9865bca382fd0fccc687a7e3b647e2b1c54d82fec355766f5e7ec87

Now the part I would rather you heard from me than found out on your own screen.

The file is not signed yet, so Windows will make a scene about it. You will get a blue window headed "Windows protected your PC", and the only button on it says "Don't run". Press "More info" and a second button appears, "Run anyway" — that is the one. Where it names the publisher it will say "Unknown publisher". Nothing is wrong with the file; Windows simply has no name to read off it.

The reason is dull, and I am in the third week of it. The certificate that puts my name on the file is bought and paid for — that part took a card and five minutes. What it takes to actually get it issued is a documents queue: a state register extract, an identity check, a phone line they have to verify by calling it, and, at one point, a postcard sent to my physical address so somebody can confirm a human being lives there. Every round trip is days, and each one is answered by a different person who asks for the thing the last one already had. It is not something I can pay to skip, and I am not going to pretend it is anything more interesting than paperwork.

So: a couple more weeks and this warning disappears — the same installer, signed, with my name where it currently says "Unknown". If you would rather wait for that, wait, and I will say here when it is done. If you would rather have it today, it is the same build either way.

Meanwhile, since the name cannot vouch for the file, you can check the file itself. In Command Prompt:

certutil -hashfile "%USERPROFILE%\Downloads\Qiksy-Legato-Setup-0.3.58.exe" SHA256

If that number matches the one above, the file is the one I released, byte for byte.

It works with NVDA and JAWS, and with its own voice if you prefer. The report I would most like is the boring one: what it said, what you expected it to say, and where you got stuck.