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Blind Guru
Personal blog · blind.guru/blogprogrammingweb
Blind Guru is a personal blog at blind.guru about programming and web. Since 2015, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “A Raspberry Pi Zero in a Braille Display”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- A Raspberry Pi Zero in a Braille Display4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-12
- For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-08-07
- Why the text terminal cursor is important for accessibility3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-06-25
What Hacker News says?
As a braille user, I was always fond of "laptops" without a built-in display, simply to save ssace, weight and power. I found a braille display which features a small compartment with micro-USB inside. Used a Pi Zero (these days 0w) to transform that braille display into a full-features Linux laptop. I documented the first version here: https://blind.guru/brlpi.html
Comment linking /brlpi.html
on “Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?”Submitted I am no longer able to use Google with Lynx as a story · 575 points
HN discussionQt also isn't very good for accessibility. https://blind.guru/qta11y.html
Comment linking /qta11y.html
on “It’s time to kill the web app”Submitted For software that is cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt as a story · 147 points
HN discussionI think it depends on how you work / how much resources you need. Yes, writing much on the SD card is not a great idea, but you can always use a USB stick instead. At least I did use a pi0w as a laptop for a few months. Granted, my requirements for a mobile Linux machine are pretty different from what the masses use these days, but it was a great experience for me. With a power bank, I could go on for days . I even…
Comment linking /blog/2016-06-12-brlpi.html
on “I bought 200 Raspberry Pi Model B’s and I’m going to fix them”Submitted Why the text terminal cursor is important for accessibility as a story · 89 points
HN discussionSince I am still mostly on a plain terminal, I used to have a time when I used a rpi0w as a laptop, since I really dont need much more then an instance of Emacs and a few ssh sessions in a tmux. I switched to a real laptop by now, and its nice to have a bit of local power. But I could actually do all my dayjob on a rpi0w. https://blind.guru//blog/2016-06-12-brlpi.html https://hackaday.com/2019/03/26/not-all-raspberr…
Comment linking //blog/2016-06-12-brlpi.html
on “The chip shortage keeps getting worse – why can't we just make more?”Submitted Why the text terminal cursor is important for Accessibility? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThank you for caring about accessibility. However, I don't think the pros and cons between Qt and Electron are as straightforward as you may think. First, Qt accessibility on Windows is improving: https://blind.guru/qtwin.html This blogger specifically mentions the JAWS screen reader, but this should also help users of the Narrator screen reader built into Windows. Speaking of which, Electron is not very accessible…
Comment linking /qtwin.html
on “Show HN: Cross-platform desktop applications with PyQT”Submitted A Raspberry Pi Zero in a Handy Tech Active Star 40 Braille Display as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBlind users definitley notice the difference, because Qt apparently doesn't implement the platform accessibility APIs quite right, particularly on WIndows. Two anecdotes: 1. The TeamTalk ( http://bearware.dk/ ) voice chat system is popular among blind people. Originally when it was Windows only, it was an MFC application. Then when it went cross-platform, the developer used Qt. But the Qt version was inferior for bl…
Comment linking /qta11y.html
on “Flutter – A mobile app SDK for iOS and Android”Submitted A Raspberry Pi Zero in a Braille Display as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere is https://blind.guru/qta11y.html as a problem with QT, I think it made to HN like three days ago.
Comment linking /qta11y.html
on “Lazarus – A Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE”Submitted I am sorry, but this looks insane as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSomething like this? https://blind.guru/brlpi.html
Comment linking /brlpi.html
on “We Hired a Blind Coder”Submitted Why the text terminal cursor is important for Accessibility as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRacket is fun. You can indeed use it to write about any language you want, not limited to Lisp-alikes. https://blind.guru/MarioLANG.html
Comment linking /MarioLANG.html
on “Compiling a Lisp: Reader”Submitted Why the text terminal cursor is important for accessibility as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAsk someone who is visually impaired. I know that they historically use browsers that do not support JavaScript. I also am acquainted with one developer who uses software for reading his terminal outloud, although I never asked the specifics of what he uses for web browsing or IRC for that matter. I do know that he loves the iPhone. That said, I just found this post by a blind person who uses Lynx and complained abo…
Comment linking /blog/2019-11-25-endofgoogle.html
on “Google Ends Support for Lynx Browser”Submitted The lang= HTML attribute as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPlease don't use Qt if you want to target platforms other than Linux and make your applications accessible to blind users. [1] Electron is OK on Windows, but I've heard it's not currently accessible on Linux. Don't know about Mac. [1]: https://blind.guru/qta11y.html
Comment linking /qta11y.html
on “Say no to Electron: use JavaFX to write a fast, responsive desktop app”If you want to improve TUI accessibility, there is really one magic trick that gets you almost all the way there: https://blind.guru/blog/2021-06-25-brick.html TL;DR: Use the terminal cursor to indicate focus. Hide it if it bothered you, but place it where the action is. Never use something like just background color to emulate a cursor. Use the real thing.
Comment linking /blog/2021-06-25-brick.html
on “The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility”https://blind.guru/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”
