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  New post: Google still can't make an accessibility menu accessible. Put more than one service on Android's accessibility shortcut and holding the volume keys brings up a menu with no speech, at the exact moment no screen reader is running. Apple and Microsoft solved this years ago. I fixed it in ten minutes at one in the morning. Google has had years. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/google-still-cant-make-an-accessibility-menu-accessible/ #Accessibility #A11y #Android #TalkBack #Bl...

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  You need to be able to trust a screen reader the way you trust your eyes. A lot of people on Android right now are shipping software that makes that impossible, and calling it accessibility. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/stop-vibecoding-screen-readers/ #accessibility #Android #TalkBack #screenreader #blind #a11y #blog #writing #opinion

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  @TheQuinbox@dragonscave.space Least hyping hype email ever. Hey, we're launching new products. at some point. but we won't tell you anything. same thing we do every year. carry on

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  I need to stop having project ideas.

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  The state of Linux accessibility in 2025. This started out as a rant but became a series. Please feel free to leave feedback, comments, and subscribe via rss or email for more stuff as I release it. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/

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  New post: The Galaxy Z Fold 7, one month in. I expected to hate this phone. I thought the fold was a solution to a problem I didn't have. I thought the flip was the right form factor and the fold was a gimmick for people with more money than sense. A month later, it has changed how I work. Dev work, blogging, AT training, video calls — all better. The inner display turned my phone into an actual multitasking device instead of a single-app pipeline I constantly switched between. It&amp...

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  TapType v3.0 is out! This release includes two of the most requested features. French language support: Full AZERTY layout with a 50,000 word dictionary and all announcements translated. Traditional keyboard mode: A new way to use TapType without swiping. Every tap types a character immediately. Visible buttons for space, delete, enter, shift, numbers, and emoji are built into the keyboard surface. Word predictions appear at the top, tap one to accept it. Hold and drag to explore keys with no de...

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  I write a lot of code. Sometimes it's good code, sometimes I read it back later and think "What the hell was I thinking".

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  TapType v2.0 is out! TapType is a keyboard for blind users — no visible keys, just tap where QWERTY keys would be and it predicts your words. Fully accessible with TalkBack. What's new in v2.0: Multi-language support — English (US/UK), Deutsch, Espanol. All speech, announcements, and punctuation fully translated. Switch languages right from the keyboard. Reorganised settings into clean categories with per-language user dictionaries and punctuation. TTS engine fixes — language switching a...

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  I made a keyboard because I needed one and nothing on Android was built for blind users. I put it on GitHub because someone else might need one. Then I woke up this morning and Mastodon had eaten it. New blog post — what overnight virality actually looks like from the inside, the TalkBack problem nobody else bothered solving, Flexy, and why I spent the day building instead of panicking. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-made-a-keyboard-nobody-asked-for-my-experience-making-taptype/ #TapTyp...

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  Yet another failure where google should be called out for not having a fallback tts engine for Talkback. I just had to use a third-party screen reader, developed by one person (me) to recover a multi-trillion corporation's fuck up. This is fucking tragic. If you care about #accessibility, hound them. Please. Tell them this is an essencial recovery path. I can only do so much, I've been asking for a fallback for a tts engine failure since talkback 3.3. I can only do so much. Spam...

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  TapType is out. It's a keyboard for blind Android users. There are no visible keys. You tap where QWERTY keys would be from muscle memory, and a spatial prediction algorithm figures out what you meant. It scores nearby keys using a Gaussian proximity model and runs a beam search against an 80,000 word dictionary. You don't need to be precise. That's the whole point. Swipe right to commit a word. Swipe down or up to cycle through suggestions. Swipe left to delete. It learn...

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  A quick demonstration of Sandfly, the android screen reader I'm working on in very early alpha. Don't ask for an apk, release date, or any of that. I don't know and you can't have one. Not yet.

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  Sometimes I want to implement usage metrics in my software to see if people are actually using it but then I remember I'm not evil.

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  Day one with the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Setup was a disaster. Smart Switch didn't. TalkBack went silent. Samsung installed everything I told it not to. This is why nobody upgrades their Android phone. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/galaxy-z-fold-seven-day-one-the-fold-has-arrived-setup-was-a-disaster-this-is-why-no-one-upgrades-their-android-phone/ #Samsung #GalaxyZFold7 #Android #TalkBack #Accessibility #Blind #tech #writing #blog #reviews