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Command Line Programs for the Blind

67 points| spencerwgreene | 3 years ago |eklhad.net

17 comments

order

skupig|3 years ago

I really enjoy how this page is perfectly accessible for blind readers but is difficult to read visually because of the lack of formatting. Feels karmically appropriate for all the software I've written without thinking of accessibility.

Fnoord|3 years ago

Which formatting is missing? It features proper punctuation and grammar, making it akin to reading an essay with large blocks of text. This is how a book reads as well, or an e-reader, or Usenet or IRC.

What it misses is limit of 80 characters per line which makes it rough to read in terminal as well as portrait mode on smartphone. And it does not adapt to portrait mode on smartphone, indicating the website is not responsive.

Still, it also misses a lot of distracting BS an average website contains.

harryvederci|3 years ago

Haha, true. You still have options though, like using firefox reader or copy pasting and doing whatever you like with it.

Maybe the page author could add some links without a description and disable selecting text to give us the "full" experience.

GoblinSlayer|3 years ago

You miss the spinners and cookie consent popups? To me it reads better than most internet sites, especially SPA blogs.

Grimburger|3 years ago

Am I missing something here? It's perfectly fine if not perfect for static blog content.

Trouble_007|3 years ago

A nice clean page! A joy to read!

view-source:http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html

mrob|3 years ago

Almost, but it's missing paragraph tags for the first paragraph of each section, which makes them run into the following paragraph when viewed with Firefox's Reader View.

kilnr|3 years ago

Huh, I'd forgotten unclosed p-tags were a thing.

anthk|3 years ago

https://edbrowse.org

Not just for the blind. Check the SQL bindings and the scripting support.

Also, it supports enough JS for commenting threads in web pages and most login widgets.

yeetsfromhellL2|3 years ago

Don't forget nethack! The interface makes it playable with a screen reader.

mrob|3 years ago

As far as I know, the most difficult part of playing Roguelikes with a screen reader is interpreting the map. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup supports setting a fixed random number generator seed, and pre-generating the dungeon using that seed. This means it would be possible to print embossed maps in advance. It would make the game easier by removing the "fog of war" exploration, but it would probably still be difficult enough. Possibly the code could be modified so the monsters and items remain random even when the map is fixed.

What's the current state of the art of embossing printers? Does this sound feasible?

anthk|3 years ago

Not so much (long time slashem player here). IF and MUDs are better.

The Nethack devs could patch the infamous 3.4.3 version in order to be much more accesible for the blind with a similar interface like the one done for Pokémon Crystal.

They could use flite as a library so it could describe items, menus, help files and surroundings.