I couldn't find any real information about how Yubikeys work with screen readers. So I decided to publish some.

The past year has seen an explosion in new text to speech engines based on neural networks, large language models, and machine learning. But has any of this advancement offered anything to those using screen readers?

cross-posted from: https://rblind.com/post/17753100

In this article, I will discuss the details of 10 innovations throughout history that were only possible through unlocking the power of accessibility and including the voices of people with disabilities. In the disability community, it is a deeply believed and often repeated fact that improving accessibility leads to innovations that improve the world for everyone. Necessity is the mother of invention is, after all, a proverb so frequently quoted that it has become a cliché. And yet, people with disabilities still find ourselves left out of research and design, and all too often we don’t get a seat at the product development table. This leaves our inventions overlooked, unrecognized, and sometimes unrealized.

In this article, I will discuss the details of 10 innovations throughout history that were only possible through unlocking the power of accessibility and including the voices of people with disabilities. In the disability community, it is a deeply believed and often repeated fact that improving accessibility leads to innovations that improve the world for everyone. Necessity is the mother of invention is, after all, a proverb so frequently quoted that it has become a cliché. And yet, people with disabilities still find ourselves left out of research and design, and all too often we don’t get a seat at the product development table. This leaves our inventions overlooked, unrecognized, and sometimes unrealized.

cross-posted from: https://blackneon.net/post/94922

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Good morning, everyone:

After months of troubleshooting various performance issues, we're pleased to announce that all of the outstanding back-end issues we are aware of are fixed. You should no longer receive errors on browsing user profiles, and posts should load much faster.

If you're not technical or interested in the gritty details, you can stop reading, now, in the knowledge that everything should now work as expected. For those of you who are technical, the problems were caused by two things. First, a lack of indexes on the users and posts tables. Analysing logs revealed some database queries were taking upwards of 8 seconds, especially when loading user profiles. If you've landed here from Google, because lemmy-ui is giving the unhelpful message "an error has occurred on the server" without actually showing you the error, and you're seeing enormous queries referencing dullbananas's or i_love_jesus in your logs, get into your postgresql database and add some indexes:

CREATE INDEX idx_post_aggregates_creator ON post_aggregates (creator_id);

CREATE INDEX idx_post_aggregates_scaled_rank ON post_aggregates (scaled_rank);

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS idx_post_saved_person_post ON post_saved (person_id, post_id);

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS idx_community_moderator_community_person ON community_moderator (community_id, person_id);

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY IF NOT EXISTS idx_local_user_admin ON local_user (admin);

Second, be careful when increasing your shared memory size in docker. If you have shm_size specified as "48 gb" or "48gb" in your docker compose, your shared memory will not increase, and you won't get an error message of any kind. Shm_size must be "48g", no space, and no b. For some bonus fun, shm_size only updates if you recreate the entire docker image. Restarting is not enough! You should always use df on the docker you're working with, to insure /dev/shm is actually the size you think it is. Because it probably isn't!

Happy holidays, everyone. Here's to a 2026 of stability and new features.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing clients say they've been left without critical services for more than two months since CHS workers hit the picket line.

Deaf professor who worked on one product says developers won’t listen to feedback – about their products or their tech bro ways

I wanted to share an opportunity for folks in the UK who use screen readers or screen magnification. Fable, the company where I've been employed for the past eight years, works with organizations to make their digital experiences more accessible, and we're expanding our Community to the UK and are looking for new usability testers. It’s flexible, paid gig work you can do from home. You don’t need any previous experience – we offer paid training to get you started. You choose which projects you want to work on and set your own schedule. We also pay what we call a “technology wage” (which basically means better-than-minimum and recognizes the value of lived experience with tech). If you’ve ever wanted to have a say in how tech can work better for people with disabilities – and get paid for your time – this might be a good fit. Here's the link to apply: https://makeitfable.com/community/

One of my closest and longest friends is starting a new YouTube channel documenting his journey to fulfill a life-long dream of his. Even though he's low vision, through a new program available in Ontario, he has the opportunity to gain his drivers license via the use of a bioptic telescope. If you love cars as much as he does, are just curious, or are a low vision person interested in what a program like this could mean for you, check out his first video on the channel! As far as I know, this is the first time someone has documented the journey of learning to drive with a bioptic telescope from day one, from the perspective of a person with a disability, rather than a doctor or other medical professional.