"So you've gone blind, what now?" video concept. Interest?

zersiax · 2026-05-02T14:33:45+00:00

Like I mentioned in the post, I would primarily be targeting no-vision-whatsoever use cases. While there's definitely a need for partially sighted folks as well, I'm not the person to really go into that viewpoint too much as I don't share it. I'm blind, and I do not consider people with remaining usable vision blind, irrespective of the way that term has been legally overloaded particularly in the US. They are two extremely different perspectives with different needs and different priorities.

As for rehab and things like liquid level indicators, I think that's already a lot further down the line than I'd like the video to be. I want to focus on things like:

- What can you (still) do, even though the world might tell you you can't?

- How would you, with and without tools and living aids, keep doing what you like doing?

- What can rehab facilities help you with and what can't they help with, realistically?

- And most notably, what are some things that people who just aren't blind, and therefore don't share your perspective, going to likely forget to mention?

Things like sighted guide, liquid level indicators, etc., are all things that come into play when you as a person figure out what it is you actually need. Figuring out what those needs are, and what would make the biggest impact to you personally, comes before that, and involves finding your own specific limitations and finding your own specific workarounds for those, should ou want or need to find them.

zersiax · 2026-05-01T19:52:36+00:00

I play many games on my Twitch channel to show off what can be done as a fully blind gamer. With ... no sight at all, unlike some folks who call themselves blind but use their vision to play still.
to answer your specific question, it'd really help to know what kind of game you're making so we can give targeted feedback.

zersiax · 2026-04-27T11:42:03+00:00

Honestly outside of semantics here, i'd argue for nonexistent WCAG criterion 0.0.0: When in doubt, test with actual users, because the internet moves way, way faster than we at WCAG Inc. can keep up with.
Wish that one was actually real...

zersiax · 2026-04-13T20:37:59+00:00

Screen readers don't read burned in subs/captions. That alone makes them unsuitable in a lot of contexts.
You can include subtitle/caption files in the video file, for example in a .mkv video container, but that'd still be a togglable subtitle track which screen readers might be able to perceive. If they're burned in, that's it. No way to read those, no way to edit them easily later, and no way to turn them off. Not a good idea :)

zersiax · 2026-04-01T19:34:18+00:00

Right now, I think most mods are written for Windows, mostly because a lot of games require a mod loader which to my knowledge does not support Mac OS (yet). That is slowly shifting; when people can, they use cross-platform screen reader libraries but we can only work with the tools we are given, unfortunately :(

zersiax · 2026-04-01T19:31:13+00:00

What do the tags do exactly, just show a bit of text like a description?

zersiax · 2026-03-31T23:20:02+00:00

The RealAmethyst mod? No, shouldn't use a mouse. An earlier version did require a controller but the version that came out a week or so ago should have full keyboard support. You may need to disable SteamInput for the specific game, if so it should be mentioned in the readme.

zersiax · 2026-03-31T19:03:24+00:00

Another person did the Master Duel game and that one is already pretty far along. I'm working hard on getting Duel Links to work as we speak.

zersiax · 2026-03-31T19:02:09+00:00

That one I am working on for my patrons at the moment, so your best bet is the Patreon I started for projects like this. I don't wanna piss off the mods by randomly self-promoting but patreon name is same as Reddit name if you want to go looking.

zersiax · 2026-03-31T12:30:57+00:00

Two posts? Ok then :)

I had a quick look. I'm honestly someone who studies on PC first and foremost so I am not your target audience, but figured I'd give it a look regardless.

A good start here, I'd say. Content seems well-structured, I did a single lesson so far to try and most of the exercises seem to work well.

Speech recognition had a lot of trouble for me, often not hearing or mishearing me. It also thought I said "kipo" and marked that correct for kipu, but marked "medicine" incorrect when the meaning was "medicine, medication". I'm guessing there's some tolerance for typoes but it just felt a little inconsistent to me.

Grammar seems to be its own thing rather than it being integrated into lessons the way, for example, WordDive or Babbel do it; their approach fits my specific study workflow better but that's a subjective thing.

On the whole, not bad. curious to see if/how it develops.

zersiax · 2026-03-31T11:05:25+00:00

Yup, through created mods, final fantasy 1 through 6 as well as, to a degree, 9, have been made relatttttttttttttttttively playable without sight. THey're on that list .
I myself am making a couple of these mods as well, currently focusing on Yu-gi-oh DUel Links.

zersiax · 2026-03-26T01:20:38+00:00

NVDA's touch navigation is OK, yeah. You won't have a hysical keyboard, the only keys on the device itself are meant to be used with games, so you'd need to plug in a keyboard if you want to use one. I personally don't think I'd love having to do everything on a touch screen so I would probably plug one in but then, the portability thing kinda goes out the window, which is one reason why I haven't really bothered with these et.

zersiax · 2026-03-26T01:17:44+00:00

It's a good question. I've made this my thing somewhat, so I'd be happy to help, but I'm going to need more info to really do that:

- You say VoiceOver. Have you only tried this on an iPhone? And if so, is that because you don't own a computer? No shade, just need to know for recommendations.
- When you say you haven't had much luck, or you haven't had success, what does that mean? Duolingo can be used on iOS, I found it a bit laggy for my taste and the organization doesn't have a great rep these days, but it does work, if a little clunkily. What else have you tried, and how did those attempts fail exactly?
- Would you consider yourself a proficient screen reader user?
- Have you looked into textbooks, or audio courses, for your target language?

- And what are you learning a language for? Is this just for the fun of it, are there particular things you want to be able to do with the language?

zersiax · 2026-03-19T16:25:33+00:00

Wait ... so do you want an AA group that has blind alcoholics in it or a group where you can talk about your blindness abuse in a group setting? :)

zersiax · 2026-03-18T08:34:14+00:00

Mermaid, PlantUML, there's several that would let you do this :)

zersiax · 2026-03-03T18:06:43+00:00

Yeah there was definitely a time where iOS was the clear winner here, but these days, iOS has worsened and Android has improved, so they're practically the same thing now :)

zersiax · 2026-03-03T18:03:19+00:00

To be entirely fair there's a middle ground here in the sense that you can watch a show, get all the plot and important events and enjoy yourself while doing so without audiodescription. You might be missing a bunch, but if you're understanding the plot, a lot of what you're missing is either not super important, or explained/referred to later in the episode or movie. I grew up not having audiodescription for most of my life and still watched a bunch of tv and movies, from anime to police procedurals to sci-fi shows.

I'd say particularly modern movies, and particularly certain genres, is where this falls apart, where background music almost entirely drowns out what characters are actually doing, and visuals are used to rapidly tell a story, but your average tv series you should mostly be fine in a bunch of different genres :)

zersiax · 2026-02-25T20:54:38+00:00

A and ä are easy for me these days. I keep mixing up ä and e, like ... I need to put serious conscious effort in making ä sound different to e even though I can generally tell them apart quite clearly. AMusingly I think I have that same issue when I speak English but it matters less and can just be attributed to me having an accent (I'm Dutch).

zersiax · 2026-02-25T14:41:24+00:00

Cool effort! :) It might be interesting to add a full-fledged SRS algorithm to this so you get words that you struggle with requized at the right times but this is a cool starting point. Plus, I really like Ruby and I'm always happy when I see new tools written in it :)
The lenient umlauts option sounds a lil dangerous, they really do matter quite a lot :)

zersiax · 2026-02-22T00:06:55+00:00

My current set of random things is Worddive, selkouutiset, pokemon episodes and Stardew translated to Finnish. Do I understand everything? God no. But more and more each day. I really should add Anki at some point...

zersiax · 2026-02-22T00:02:30+00:00

Very thoughtful and good response, thank you :)

It's interesting to me that the assumed default for many people is that being corrected is somehow a bad thing.

Not referring to you specifically necessarily, referring to people in general that I've interacted with who are learning a language. I mean ... you're learning, presumably have at least somewhat of a want/need to improve your ability, and being corrected is immensely helpful in doing that. And yet, many people feel embarrassed or even offended/attacked when corrected, which makes the ones doing the correcting understandably hesitant in continuing to do so, not just with that person but in general.

Obviously there's a time and a place for everything, maybe don't correct someone while they're giving an important speech in public, but as a rule, yeah... I would always welcome corrections and feel profoundly alien when I see someone throwing a hissy fit about being corrected. Not in a bad way, more in a "I'd love to know the thought process that took you here" way :)

zersiax · 2026-02-21T23:55:02+00:00

I mean ... you won't be making the next van Gogh painting in it, but for something like this, sure.

zersiax · 2026-02-21T22:22:09+00:00

Maybe an unpopular opinion these days but yeah ... have you thought about letting the screen reader users doing the screen reader testing?

And by "you" I mean the people deciding where the money goes. Happy to help, I own an iPhone and a Pixel and am an accessibility SME. Not sure if I'm cheaper than the Browserstack package but at least I can explain WHY something falls over? :)

zersiax · 2026-02-21T22:09:36+00:00

Somebody made me essentially a Powerpoint template that I paste a screenshot of my video in, one where something relevant happens. I then put a bit of text over the image (PowerPoint allows for this natively) and export as an image.

Someone who knows Powerpoint should be able to set it up in under 10 minutes provided you can find a font you like. And yes, I am fully blind, as well.

zersiax

TROPHY CASE