Do you have a stable work? And what do you do
I admin an instructional data center at a community college.
Whoa, that’s mind-blowing. I always wondered what kind of jobs there would be for me if I suddenly lost my vision.
My favourite part of Lemmybis being able to block communities and users, don’t live in America so it’s not my problem you got a tangerine hitler for a president, we got our own problems.
Were you born sighted? Or did you go blind over time?
I was born blind.
I’m sorry to hear that. I had a friend in college born without eyes. I talked a lot with him about concepts like shapes and colors. He was able to tell how much battery the electric carts on campus had by the sound of the motor, it’s quite interesting. I guess you might have an easier time than someone that lost their vision. I now have a friend that went blind after a car accident, he gets a lot of help from neighbors. He try’s very hard to do things himself, but often needs help. I hope you have a good support network for the things you need in life.
Maybe I’m crazy for this, but I don’t like the term politics, I feel like it hides what people are actually talking about. Think about the difference between the statements:
“I’m not interested in understanding politics, it’s too crazy”
“I’m not interested in understanding who gets to decide what my rights are, it’s too crazy”
Or maybe:
“It’s annoying seeing politics in my feed all the time”
“It’s annoying seeing people discussing the implementation of mass surveillance in my feed all the time”
In both cases, do you see how the first one feels like a pretty standard perspective, but the second one feels insane?
I don’t know if you realize this, but when people say things like “I don’t talk about politics” that’s just a short form of what they really mean, which is often:
I don’t want to talk about politics here.
I don’t want to talk about politics with you.
I don’t want to talk about politics right now.
I don’t want to talk about politics like that.
Surely you have to have seen the changes over the past 10-15 years in online discourse that has resulted in politics invading every available space. It used to be quite easy to avoid political conversations online. And still, a lot of people don’t come online for that and that’s okay.
They aren’t insane. They’re trying to tell you to calm down. Please take a hint and change the topic when someone says something like that.
Imma pull a classic middle of the road …thingy. Sometimes people use “I don’t talk politics” to mean “I’m personally happy with how this part of the system is working so stop complaining” which is kinda shitty when they’re not the one on the ass end of it. It’s also cool to just have some crochet groups where the biggest drama is that I hold the hook like a knitter. Gotta decompress sometimes. Have the strength to do both and all.
When someone says “I don’t like or follow politics” my reply is something alomg the lines of “well, that’s your choice, but you know who does take an interest in politics? Your boss, their boss, your bank, your landlord… So go ahead and choose not to care about politics, just shut the fuck up with your whinging about the state of the world you’ve just told me you opt out of having a say in.”
Or something
How do you pick up your dog’s poop?
Guide dogs have bathroom breaks at set times, and in my experience if their diet is healthy they’ll drop a duce at the same time each day. In any case, the dog is kept on a leash and given a command to relieve itself. It’ll usually sniff around, then stop to do the deed. Straight back means pee and arched back means poop. The posture can be seen if the handler has sufficient vision or felt with a hand if not. If poop is indicated, you find the dog’s south end and use your foot to mark ground zero. When the dog is done it’s a simple matter of bagging it using your foot as the landmark.
Interesting! As a seeing person who used to walk the family dog, I can attest to the technique of using your foot as a landmark - it was invaluable in order to not lose track of the pile among similarly-colored fallen leaves while I was getting the bag ready.
Dogs are amazing.
Wait… You’re blind?
👋
Sí
Easier said than done, it seems.
I appreciate that you used a tilde. “Si” is an entirely different word.
Tengo una licentiatura en español pero no lo he hablado en años entonces no soy fluido.
Eso suena bastante fluido para mí! :P
Es mucho más fácil escribir que hablar.
What’s your favorite screenreader?
Probably NVDA for Windows. Microsoft has tried to flesh out Narrator but it’s still the MS Edge of screen readers IMO, you use it just to download another screen reader. The fact that VS Code is built around NVDA and not Narrator should show how MS feels about it.
I definitely agree that NVDA is the best on Windows. Narrator is eh (you described it well) and JAWS is somehow both costly and shit? I’ll give it to Apple too, VoiceOver is one of the best I’ve used.
What are your thoughts on AI powered screen readers?
Personally, despite being rabidly anti-AI, it seems like one of the few positive uses for AI since it can fill in the gaps where web a11y fails. I’m honestly curious about its development, but worried about the technology being tainted by capitalism (as is tradition)
Disclaimer: I’m not fully blind (though I do have my own complex eye disability), but I’ve done a TON of work on web a11y and appreciate the responses
What are your thoughts on AI powered screen readers?
One of my biggest gripes with AI is that it requires a cloud connection most of the time, and I’m all about my PC being my personal computer.
In terms of usefulness I can see it maybe for image description.
Well now I gotta now. How do they pick up their dogs poop? Is it the two dogs taking turns and eating it theory?
This is what happens when you browse “All” on lots of platforms.
Gotta stick to your niches. And sadly, it’ll come up in comment sections too sometimes, because power is everywhere.
lemmy is too small to have active niche communites. the only active communities are the general ones.
It’s an unfortunate dilemma. To sustain an active niche you need a huge user base like Reddit. But if you have a huge user base costs start piling up and the temptation to lessen the experience to pay the bills (or appease shareholders) grows.
The issue with the fediverse is that its members are highly self-selecting. If you’re an average Joe looking to join an online community, it’s going to be Reddit, not Lemmy, Twitter, not Mastodon, or Facebook, not whatever the fedi equivalent is. So the likelihood of amassing enough average Joes who just want to look at funny pictures of orangutans or talk about video games with anyone regardless where they fall on the political spectrum is small.
And I always thought that was the point of these little niches. Alice the gun nut likes vintage 80s computers, and Bob who wants to seize the means of production also likes vintage 80s computers, so Alice and Bob have fun together talking about vintage 80s computers despite their differences. The problems arise when Alice goes into the vintage 80s computers community and tries to make everything about guns.
I’ve helped a visually impaired person find their dogs poop so they could pick it up via the “Be my eyes” app. They activated their camera and I used it to direct them to the poop
I’ve been logged in for years, and I just got my first call last week! I was so excited. Lady’s laundry machine had stopped with the clothes still wet, and I read off the dial settings and LEDs to determine why it had stopped the cycle and what to do. Took about 5 min.
The calls are few and far between that’s for sure. I’ve only had four or five in total
I think it rings several sighted people simultaneously to speed up the connection. Twice it’s rung but I was not able to pick up, once I was too slow and the other I just wasn’t available. Super frustrating because I was really looking forward to it.
Hopefully now that I’ve answered a call I get prioritized somehow.
You are now a poop sherpa, thank you for your kind service.
Username checks out.
How do you wipe your butt?!?!
This question, asked by Jim Jefferies in his bit about guide dogs, ruined my wiping experience. When I was younger, my ass smaller and and my shits smoother, it was enough to give a single wipe and go on with my day. Then Jefferies asked the question of how blind people see the poop on the paper, and the next time I had to look at the paper and do a control wipe to see that it’s clean. But now that I’m fatter and my shits messier, I have to do like six wipes to get a clean one. Curse you Jim Jefferies.
Very few blind people have no vision at all, and many, including myself, have sufficient vision to see what’s on the TP. Otherwise, the friction as you wipe is a decent indicator, and if you’re not sure you can just make a few more passes.
I’d never heard that! So you might be able to see it from very close, or only in peripheral vision or something? That’s great.
That extra bit of context definitely helps to frame why someone would be asking you those things!
I thought most people on here would get the reference from how often “How do blind people wipe their butt?” comes up on /r/showerthoughts, but I’ll change the post title to avoid any other weird comments.
For what it’s worth, that’s probably more of a Reddit thing; I don’t think I’ve ever seen that asked on Lemmy.
I guess I assume all Lemmings are former Redditors like myself and I suppose that’s not the case.
I think most of us are, but a lot of us made the switch quite some time ago… mid-2023 was a pretty big migration wave, and so have largely forgotten about Redditisms. :)
I joined my first instance around that time, and finally deleted my Reddit account a few months later. But I still lurk on some subreddits. There’s no Orangutan community on Lemmy :(
Smell test
Taste test is actually more accurate /j
The same way they pick up dog poop. They have a theme or compulsion.
**American politics
This is the important part. I enjoy reading political news and discussions. But in the country I live in, not American politics which forced into each conversation.
My god… How do blind people pick up their dogs poop?
Dogs do poop in the blind person’s hand.
That is incorrect. Certainly at least not a bare hand. I’ve heard of people catching it midair with a bagged hand but that was when the dog was having an accident IIRC.
Sorry. I forgot add “/s” at the end. Thanks for the clarify.
Yes, politics is here, because Spez pushed a lot of it out, due to Elongated Muskrat.
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