At 12:12 PM 1/4/2021, Brian Vogel wrote:

Some of the longest conversations I've had with a very dear friend of
mine who's been totally blind since birth, and who's my Mom's age,
have been about the chasm that is color. As you have said elsewhere,
she can certainly understand that it constitutes a classification
based on vision as an abstraction, but it is absolutely impossible for
it to be anything else.? ? Even for the sighted, color description
except within classes such as blue, red, etc., is exceedingly
difficult when you get into shades, tints, and variations on a
color. And they all get described mostly using whatever the base
color is. I could no sooner describe blue, just plain blue, to
someone sighted than I could to someone blind. It is a visual axiom
- you simply recognize it - you don't really have any way to describe
it other than itself.? There are many aspects of vision that cannot
be translated in any meaningful way to language and the same is true
(as you'd well know) of sound. Most sound descriptions related to
instrumental characteristics are well-nigh impossible to describe as
other than, "it sounds like . . ."? The complexities involved in what
actually creates that sound are, even if qualified in language quite
precisely, not anything like hearing it.? They are their own

auditory axioms.


That's what makes each sense unique. although there is considerable overlap between senses, each sense has its own axioms. At a certain point, you have to taste foods to know how they taste, hear sounds to know how they sound and see colors to know how they look. The trick is in correctly estimating where the gulf between sensory translation and axiom begins.
A high school teacher once described blue too me by running my fingers along the tiled walls. But, when people talk about the blue sky or feeling blue, I don't imagine tiles. Besides, just like the artificial construct of race, color is an arbitrary pigment taxonomy, arbitrary in the sense that the exact amount of pigment between primary colors and shades is undefinable.
Then, some of the analogies are just downright confusing. Black is supposed to mean darkness, an absence of all color. Yet, when the color drains from faces, we don't say that people go black; we say they go pale. To say nothing of the terrible term "colored" for Black people. How can they be simultaneously dark and colored?

Orlando

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 01:01 PM, Chris Smart wrote:

People expecting to never read a manual or look something up for themselves would never survive in Linux Land, that's for sure.

 

-
Assertions by some others to the contrary, this is not limited to Linux Land nor to computing.  I have never met anyone who has not needed, at one point or another, to look something up for themselves and then, sometimes, struggle through the material alone for the most part.

RTFM is also not an inappropriate response to many simple questions where a momentary look at the manpage, however it were to be obtained, will answer all.  And if you don't know how to find said manpage (Unix/Linux lingo for manual page) then, let me tell you, job one is learning how!
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel

 

Brian. I agree, now that I think about it a little more.

Ok, how about this?

If you have never felt a wave, be it an ocean wave, or some physical representation of a sound wave, a sine wave, if you don't have that concept of it going up and down, do you understand the concept of zero crossings?

There. No visual terminology. :)

I'm finding this whole discussion fascinating, even though it is clearly off-topic.

I'd love to know why Sarah's email signature is so bloody big, why she deems all that stuff to be important, but I'll leave that for another discussion. Oh wait, I didn't!

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 01:20 PM, Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:

"Coma coma coma chameleon!"

-
(Sub)Culture Club!
 
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel

 

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 01:00 PM, Chris Smart wrote:

Orlando, if you don't think of wave forms in at least a rudimentary visual way, how do you understand the concept of zsplicing the audio at zero crossings then?

-
The following is asked sincerely, with zero snark intended, and may not apply to Orlando specifically:  How does one think of something in a visual way if one has never had vision?

I honestly do not understand how this would be possible in any meaningful way.  There's certainly got to be a conceptual schema one uses, but it could not ever rely on vision in the way those that have it, or have had it in the past, would do it visually.

To me, talking about a visualization of something is not just meaningless, but impossible, without having had the sensory experience of vision.  Just like talking about how something sounds (or thinking about how it sounds, to be more accurate) is meaningless and impossible for someone who has always been totally deaf.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what seems to me to be a literally impossible thing.  But I do not have the lived experience, either, so I'm listening.
 
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel

 

Orlando, you cad! Giving people more comas than they should have,
which is ideally none, is just plain cruel!! ;-)  [Sorry, but
this was just too easy and too hard to resist!]

"Coma coma coma chameleon!"

Orlando

At 12:03 PM 1/4/2021, Brian Vogel wrote:

Orlando, you cad! Giving people more comas than they should have,
which is ideally none, is just plain cruel!

Duly noted. Comma in this context has two Ms. It probably got its second M to distinguish it from the kind that put people to sleep in vegetative states.
Orlando

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 14:05:24 +0100
lutztiger.luigi@gmail.com wrote:
[...]

I've been using JAWS and NVDA 2017 (prior big update) for a long time. Recently I have installed the current version of NVDA.

Just to make sure by current version you mean NVDA 2020.3 - right?

It seems like there have been made changes regarding how interpunction is treated in the text-to-speech modules. NVDA pauses much longer at the end of sentences for example. I believe brackets are also treated differently, creating longer pauses. This pausing, probably having some advantages, dramatically slows down how fast I can go through texts and confuses me when working.

what synthesizer are you using now, and what synth were you using with
NVDA 2017?

--
Regards
Lukasz

No, I'm not just wrong. I'm saying that left behind depends on who you are. the person who uses the computer for purposes such as I've discussed won't be left behind. A lot of blind people use computers for browsing, e-mail, streaming, and other such purposes. They will not be left behind, they use programs for which there is plenty of material for blind people to learn from created for blind people. If you use a computer for other purposes, then you may be left behind and it is important to know how to translate mouse instructions and how to review the screen in the ways your screen-reader provides. the general statement you will be left behind assumes a certain kkind of user and is so general that it is meaningless. If you are going to make such statements, you need to define who you are talking about.

Gene

People expecting to never read a manual or look something up for themselves would never survive in Linux Land, that's for sure.

Orlando, if you don't think of wave forms in at least a rudimentary visual way, how do you understand the concept of zsplicing the audio at zero crossings then?

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 12:41 PM, Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:

To be fair, I've also searched online and found the perfect answer in the very first result. This is all to say that online searches are not always faster than posting questions to email lists.

-
To be fair to me, that was never stated nor implied.  That doesn't change the fact that you (the generic you) should at least give a web search and/or archive search a try when you have a question that any sentient adult would strongly suspect has already been answered.  And let's not pretend that most do not recognize that class of question.  And if you, the generic you, realize you don't know how, and get called out for having asked something that's been answered a thousand times, then please ask how you could have gone about finding this information, because you could have.

I will say that the reason you've likely never encountered any exchanges about web searches and skills on most blind-centric lists is precisely because the culture on many of these lists treats them as simple Q&A with no expectation of prior effort.  And I can say that having been on them for years now, myself.  There is a pernicious attitude that if I want to ask, I ask, and that if anyone gives grief about that that the grief-giver is "the bad guy."   Sorry, but no.  It is long past time that these groups not be treated that way, and the only way that will change is if enough of the membership who knows that doing so is irritating and counterproductive starts expressing that and pushing back.  I certainly haven't had any success on that front as a virtual lone voice in the wilderness.  In fact, most times I get the, "But not everyone knows how!," tossed out as though I don't know this.  I do know this, and I was once in the "doesn't know how," camp.  We all were, about virtually anything we may be anywhere from just OK to wildly proficient in doing.  You don't get there by not doing it and you certainly won't get there if there is a significant contingent that won't insist you do so, and engage in the admittedly harder work in the short term of helping you to establish those skills.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel

 

Which gets to a larger question. For sighted people, looking at a computer program interface usually appears to give them all sorts of immediate ways to do common tasks in that program, indicated visually. I learned this, much more than I knew it before, by going into a program in the main window, such as an e-mail program and issuing NVDA key b. that reads every object in the program. I found, in one e-mail program, all sorts of things blind people would usually not be aware of. There are buttons that say things like reply to a message, forward a message, and other common actions. This doesn't even get into using menus or ribbons or dialogs. This is an example of how sighted people are able to do all sorts of things in programs immediately if they understand how such a program works in general. You can switch from one e-mail program to another and immediately or almost immediately be able to perform a lot of basic actions. While I haven't checked with a more general survey, I expect the same to be true in a lot or most programs.

Its like having light switches labeled or having a dorr handle say "push." Sighted people get information on all sorts of minutia blind people aren't eeven aware of.

And what I am discussing helps explain why blind people require the amouhnt of computer training they receive while sighted people often require little.

Also, what I am discussing exposes another fallacy in your argument, Sarah. You visualize things based on what you know. But if you don't know about the kinds of controls I am describing and you don't think in that way, you are not thinking using what a lot of people use.

I'm not arguing about the importance to some blind peoople of knowing how to translate mouse instructions too keyboard instructions or how to review the screen. I'm saying that your entire model and justification is flawed because you are still using what you know, not all the methods that are available to sighted people, thus you are using circular logic.

Gene

At 11:37 AM 1/4/2021, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I actually took a music test with the staff alone, learned how to read
it with my fingers.

That would have been a raised staff inherently designed for you to feel rather than see. Had you been given a real sheet of staff paper, it would have felt blank to you, no more decipherable than any other print page.

I'm in a sighted world. By the way I got a 79 on
the printed test . I needed a 70 to pass.

Good gracious! When I got into the University of Pennsylvania, we all had to take a basic musicianship class for which there was a preliminary exam. On the appointed day, I showed up for the exam, surprising the professor, who insisted that no provisions had been made to administer my exam. He gave me the option to wait until the other students finished their exams to discuss alternate accommodations. I waited dutifully. When I was sure everyone had left, I sat down at the piano and played back, note for note, his rhythmic and melodic dictations, as well as the 100% exact four-part harmony of a Bach chorale. See, Sarah, there are many more important musical skills than being able to decipher a raised-line staff.

I also learned the symbols for
bowing, dynamics etc. It's better better than braille music any day.

Are you serious? The only way you would be able to feel those symbols is on a raised-line score, which are exceedingly rare. Were you presented with an average print score, your supposed knowledge of print bowing and dynamics symbols would be useless, since you couldn't access those symbols on the page.

and by the way I still will write and use click. You are expected to
know the terms and use them and translate them into keyboard or finger
actions or even probably head stick actions if you have to.

I've dealt with very high-level computer scientists, none of whom were punished for writing or saying "activate" rather than "click".



Orlando

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 12:38 PM, Devin Prater wrote:

Also, I would hope no blind people would use the deliberately obscure, for us, language of "hamburger icon," "paperclip icon," and such like that, unless the screen reader reads it like that.

-
Actually, I'd hope that they do, but, and it's a big one, twinned with what gets announced.  For example, "Hit the hamburger stack/menu button," or, "Get to the paperclip/attachment button." 

The reason I say that is you will, eventually, be given instructions by a kindly but clueless sighted person who says, "Click on the paperclip button," because that's what they see and they know, implicitly, what it does.  It's really handy to have had someone who's instructing you give you the sighted/announced pairs just because you're likely to be confronted with only the former at some point.

But I do agree that, particularly if the audience is a blind one, I'd likely reverse the ordering of the twins, giving the announced name (or something awfully close to it, I never remember them all, perfectly) first with the icon description afterward.
 
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel

 

At 11:36 AM 1/4/2021, Brian Vogel wrote:

Sorry, Mike, but I have to disagree, and not just in reference to
blind groups/lists, though I see what follows happen more frequently on them.
Anyone, before they impose upon the time of over a thousand people,
should think about whether what they're about to ask is likely already
answered and whether the answers to same are readily available to them
without imposing on the time of others. Expecting that someone will
have lifted a finger before imposing on the time of group members is
not unreasonable, at all, and I have seen many messages over the years
where the effort to type the subject and text took more effort than
distilling what was in the subject to a very tightly focused web
search that would have produced the answer many times over would
have.

I contest the speed point here. It has taken me hours to perform exhaustive online searches, especially when they involve web forums with innumerable threads, on sites containing lots of distracting ads. To be fair, I've also searched online and found the perfect answer in the very first result. This is all to say that online searches are not always faster than posting questions to email lists.
I nonetheless agree, it is insulting to expect the same people who answered the same questions previously to answer each new iteration of identical questions, only because the inquirer can't be bothered to search list archives.

It is lazy, and rude, to ask that sort of question without
having tried to find it yourself, first.

Not to mention, it's not in the user's best interests. Waiting around for possible answers seems like a losing bet, compared to exploring possibilities on one's own. If I had waited around for these lists to yield answers to my questions, my computing would have ground to an interminable halt. This has everything to do with how many blind people, mostly older adults, are taught to use computers. They are taught to be dependent on their instructors for step-by-step directions for everything. These users are frightened by the mere possibility of pressing a key and wiping their hard drives or muting their audio. In a worst-case scenario, with audio muted, a blind user wouldn't hear the prompts informing them that they're about to wipe their drives. However, most typical Windows installations don't even allow deletion of all drive contents; some files are designated as read-only, while others contain restricted permissions. This is all to say, folks, that unless you know where the Windows Disk Manager is located and how to use it, pressing random keys won't wipe your hard drives.
And, unless you know how to select between multiple sound devices and access their properties, where levels are set, chances are slim that you'll end up without audio. Escape usually gets you out of everything if you're unsure whether to keep changes. If changes can't be undone, applications can always be reinstalled, which usually overwrites custom configurations.

2. If you are told, "There's this thing called a web search,"
or, "Google is your friend," or similar that you realize you
deserve it. I have yet to see this response to anything that does
not warrant it. If you ask something that indicates you didn't
follow the practices outlined in items 2 through 4, before asking online
and imposing on the time of others when that's completely
unnecessary, this is a perfectly legitimate response to that.?
You've been lazy and rude; don't repeat that mistake.

First, there is absolutely no way for anyone to prove whether or not online searches have been undertaken before posting questions. Anyone with a pea-sized brain could get wise to the racket and indicate in every posted question that online searches turned up nothing.
Second, it is presumptuous to assume that the information presented online is digestable by every blind computer user. Most list posters understand that their questions impose moderate inconvenience on list members and that they might find relevant answers online. Why then do so many opt for list posting?

3. If you receive a reaction such as those in #5 above, the
appropriate response is NEVER to argue back.? The one and only
response that is appropriate, if you actually do not have the skills
to do your own searching, is to ask for assistance in acquiring same,
period.? Believe it or not, those who gave that reaction to you will
very often be your best assistants in acquiring the skills you need.?
That reaction is meant as a nudge to you to acquire them.

Oh? I've been on blind lists since 1997 and have never encountered a single exchange between an inquirer and a list member regarding online search skills pertinent to specific questions. I have, however, encountered hundreds of excoriations for posting questions that have been previously answered, if not on these lists, definitely online.
Orlando

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 12:15 PM, Gene wrote:

[With reference to not being able to translate instructions written for the sighted.] Saying you will be left behind is such a broad generalization that it is meaningless.

-
Sorry, Gene, but you are, quite simply, wrong.  Period. End of sentence.

Most computer instructional material is not, and never will be, written in keyboard centric language with screen reader output noted.  I can't think of a single user of a computer who has never, even once, needed to look up how to do something, however simple.

If you cannot use instructions written with a sighted audience in mind, at all, then you will very rapidly get "left behind."   As others, including yourself, I believe, have said every individual, regardless of their sensory palette, lives in the world at large.  And if they cannot negotiate the world at large, with compensations appropriate to their situations, they will get left behind (and, sadly, often do - and often play their own huge roles in that occurring).
--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 20H2, Build 19042  

The depths of denial one can be pushed to by outside forces of disapproval can make you not even recognize yourself to yourself.

       ~ Brian Vogel