kirche.social ist einer von vielen unabhängigen Mastodon-Servern, mit dem du dich im Fediverse beteiligen kannst.
Die gemeinschaftlich verantwortete Instanz von Menschen rund um die Kirche(n). Wir sind christlich, interkonfessionell und ökumenisch. kirche.social wird vom LUKi e.V. betrieben.

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#accessibility

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📣 Announcing Altbot 2.0: The Privacy & Green Update 🔒💚

Exciting news! After months of development, Altbot 2.0 is officially launching with major improvements to privacy, efficiency, and description quality.

What's new in Altbot 2.0:

  • 100% local AI processing for true privacy - unlike Google Gemini which saves data for training, Altbot 2.0 retains ZERO information about you or your images using the powerful Ovis2:8B model running on my custom AltTron server equipped with an A5500 GPU and expansion capacity for two additional GPUs
  • Full GDPR compliance with clear informed consent - I've implemented comprehensive privacy measures including transparent data handling policies, user rights protection, and minimal data collection practices that exceed GDPR requirements
  • Better quality descriptions across all 11 supported languages thanks to a newly developed translation layer specifically optimized for local LLM models
  • Significantly more energy efficient with a new feature that shows you exactly how much energy was used for each request! This efficiency comes from using a server-grade GPU optimized for lower power consumption, and 36% of the energy consumed is from clean sources mainly nuclear power (thanks to being based in Georgia)

The only data Altbot 2.0 records:

  • That a request happened
  • How long it took to complete
  • What type of media it was (image, video, or audio)
  • What language was used

No images, no content, no personal data saved - ever.

For those who don't know, Altbot has been helping make the Fediverse more accessible by automatically generating alt-text descriptions for images. The project has grown beyond anything I imagined, now serving thousands of users across the network.

Support Altbot's Future 💝

To bring these privacy and efficiency improvements to life, I had to invest in a more powerful server than initially planned. The server costs exceeded my budget by around $900, which I've covered out of pocket. Who woulda thought that competing with a $1.98 trillion dystopian mega corporation would be expensive? Shocking, I know.

I've set up a Ko-fi fundraising goal to help recover these costs and support ongoing development: Ko-fi.com/micr0byte

Your contributions will help ensure Altbot remains:

  • Free for everyone
  • Continuously improved
  • Sustainably maintained

Even small donations make a huge difference and motivate me to keep enhancing accessibility across the Fediverse!

This milestone represents a commitment to ensuring accessibility doesn't come at the cost of privacy or environmental impact. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built together.

As Altbot continues to grow, I'm open to sharing more about this journey with anyone interested in accessibility, ethical AI, or Fediverse projects.

For press inquiries: inquiries@micr0.dev

Feel free to boost or reach out!

Become a supporter of Micr0byte today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
Ko-fiBuy Micr0byte a Coffee. ko-fi.com/micr0byteBecome a supporter of Micr0byte today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
You can’t say ”it’s not worth making it accessible for only 1% of our users”. That’s a logical fallacy. And reveals a lot about your understanding of the subject area, and your value system.

If you had made it accessible to begin with, people with disabilities could’ve been 20% of your user base.

And it would have been better for 100% of your users.

#a11y #accessibility

There's something I've struggled with for most of my career, but never could properly put into words – until now.

Thanks to @LauraKBuzz and her wonderful metaphor, it'll likely be much easier in the future to help colleagues and employers understand this issue.

"In regards to multitasking, many autistic individuals struggle with processing multiple tasks at once, or being expected to unexpectedly and rapidly drop one task and move to another. The way I try to explain this is that, for me, it feels like when I get deep into a particular task or activity wires start connecting between my brain and the task. Switching tasks or doing something else at the same time means taking a moment to safely disconnect those cables so they can pause data transfer, or free up bandwidth to try and process something in parallel. It’s not as easy as yanking a handful of cords out, they need unplugging carefully which can take a moment."

youtu.be/c-a2bEuAETs?si=8sFA6L

This study explores using Spatial Audio, musical cues, and audio descriptions to enhance the video game experience and to make it accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. The study included a mix of participants with and without visual impairments. The feedback highlighted the importance of accessible keyboard controls and sounds that convey character movement and object location. #accessibility journals-sol.sbc.org.br/index.

journals-sol.sbc.org.brUnseen: Advancing Digital Accessibility with Binaural Audio Technology in an Immersive Gaming Prototype | Journal on Interactive Systems

The most effective way to make people aware of #accessibility issues is not audits, not reports, not blog articles, not ranting on social media or giving talks.

They have experience them first hand.
Through a video, a live demo or most effective: when they test themselves. With a keyboard, with screen readers and other assistive technology.

Establishing a „Keyboard only“ or „Screenreader“-hour can help creating an #a11y culture.

The Web #Accessibility Slack community attracts an unfortunate share of asks that go something like:

"I have an interview/have been tasked with giving a presentation/have been promoted to a role and need to become an expert in accessibility by tomorrow, but I know nothing. Can you please send me free resources?"

And like... it's up to every community member whether or not to respond to these, and I'm all for encouragement. But does accessibility really need people who aren't willing to pay for materials, have unrealistic expectations of how much there is to learn, and may have even lied their way into a position they clearly don't want?

I think not, personally.

Today I learned about Able To Play, a website that will apparently match you to #videogames based on your specific #accessibility requirements. It sounds potentially excellent.

Unfortunately it requires you to create and log into an account, linking a personal identifier (email address) to a bunch of metrics about your accessibility needs in a database owned by someone you probably don't know or trust.

This is such an astonishing misstep that it makes me question whether #disabled people were involved in its development at all. They could've let people use it anonymously, trading some repeat visitor convenience for trust or storing the data locally on their device.

Hello “Mast”ers,
Is there way for users to setup translation for posts to preferred language in Mastodon?. In my case, my preferred language is English and I would like for an option at the bottom or in the ellipsis to translate it on request. This way we would have access to more streams of thoughts and perspectives without the confines of the language. Is it just about tweesecake enabling it?
Translation is accessibility too.
#translation #accessibility #TweeseCakeSocial #mastodonengineering

Able to Play, a game repository that helps you find games that match your accessibility needs, just launched!

abletoplay.com

For gamedevs/game requests: Here's some info on how to make a game available on there:
help.abletoplay.com/docs/how-c

It's still a young platform, so please give them lots of feedback to help improve it!

@games

AbleToPlayAble To Play — The Easiest Way to Find Accessible GamesFind games that meet your personalized accessibility needs - quickly, easily, and for free!
#Games#Gaming#GameDev