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BillWoodruff wrote: I have not backed up the beast with AOMEI for over six weeks. Even though I'm all clouded-up, the thought of another day of installing and installing, and making sure apps are registered, etc., fills me with deep existential dread.
I'll refer you to HEndrik's rules of computing:
1) Make a backup
2) Make *ANOTHER* backup
3) *CHECK* those backups
They are actually in *reverse* order of importance 
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Some of this dates from the days of Win16, but it still brings tears to my eyes when I revisit it. And I haven't even done enough network programming to appreciate the entire list.
The Windows Sockets Lame List
Much of it isn't Windows-specific.
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Ages ago, it was normal to expect the accessability-functions to work correctly in WinForms.
We had machines that sold train-tickets with braille on the buttons, tiles in the pavement that you could feel with your feet to lead you in the right direction. Then they got replaced by a touch-screen.
Cheaper, yes.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Thought #2 - Eddy, looks like an opportunity for a braille touchscreen
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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You and I both know that somebody would find a way to have sex with it ... and no one would touch them again. 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I guess you have heard of the guy who was so visually handicapped that he recognized girls by the Braille method.
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Sometimes it just sucks to be blind. I'm not intentionally being harsh, but I am saying Mr. Robles is fos. Anyone want to challenge me on some lawyer thinking they can market this? Sheer and total nonsense. Why do I say this?
What prevents Mr. Robles just calling the elephanting store?
Me? If I ran a business and I had to do this? No website.
Charlie Gilley
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: What prevents Mr. Robles just calling the elephanting store?
Reading the phone number prolly. If he had simply bought a Google Assistant or an Alexa, it wouldn't happen.
OTOH, tis as simple as providing an alt-text to pictures 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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or as simple as using the reader view and a text-to-speech converter. Possibly.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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..which reads you the alt-text to pictures. Ever tried them?
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Ehr.. no.
A text-to-speech converter can't explain what an image represents without the alt-text. It's really that simple, sorry.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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It can't explain, but if the "image" really is a scanned text, it can do OCR on it and present it on a Braille line.
OCR tends to be far from perfect, and will do a lot of mistakes (although by use of a dictionary, it will often guess the right interpretatio of a fuzzy image), but you'd be surprised how tolerant visually handicapped people are to errors, and how easily they learn which are the "common" mistakes, using their "mental dictionary" to deterine the actual word. The text must be really garbled before they give up (and probably the OCR gives up a lot earlier...).
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Rick York wrote: Rick York has posted a reply to your message at "The Lounge":
that right there is the crux of the issue and I think it IS exactly that simple.
The question is should it be mandated that websites supply text for the images so that a text reader will make it fully functional? I am sure what my opinion on that is right now. I am leaning toward no, it should be a business decision of whether you want to support that level of functionality. That's just my leaning though as I am not fully convinced.
If you can't or dare not to reply on the board; I'll just post it here
Any html-course explains how the alt-tag is important. It is not a very complicated addition. Of course you should be free to ignore it, as I should be free to point out the only difference is lazyness 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Had I wanted this posted I would have done so myself. I thought that would be pretty damned simple to figure out. Apparently I was mistaken.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Very
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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With all due respect, which is absolutely none to speak of, go f*** yourself a**hole.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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damn, I hate auto-censoring.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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*shrugs*
You expected confidentiality or what? 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Back in the good ole days, I was working at a U.S. Army Post on a language called CSP. There as a programmer there who was totally blind and used touch typing and a screen reader to do all his COBOL work. Excellent programmer, had been there for years. He was a beta tester for several screen reader software companies.
When we started doing web sites (VBScript none of this .Net stuff), we had to research and use U.S. Code Section 503 regulations for creating sites. Then the ADA stuff started hitting us. His experiences can in very handy.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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WHEn I worked for a VDT (Computer terminal, predates PC's) manufacturer in the 80's, one of the models we had to produce was a colour VDT for the blind. It had a line-by-line text to Braille converter, but it had to be colour, not monochrome, and they had to be able to change the foreground and background colours to their preferences ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Norwegian public services are by law required to provide "Universal Access", not only for those hard-of-seeing, but also for wheelchair users, hard-of-hearing, color blind etc. It would be a lie to say that the requirements are always satisfied, though, especially in older facilities established long before the UA requirements were defined.
For web services, you will often see that the consultant who developed the interface doesn't have a clue about the real needs of handicapped people, and when a solution is presented, it often takes a huge effort to remodel it to fit the UA requirements that was completely ignored in the initial design. Lots of solutions are never remodeled. So in spite of the requirements of the law, the situation is far from ideal. And commercial web sites largely ignore UA requirements. Still, I believe that we have come much further along the Universal Access route than some other countries.
If you are developing user interfaces, why don't you try out how it is to be hard-of-seeing: Smear a thick layer of Vaseline on your glasses (use sunglasses if you do not normally wear glasses), turn your PC of and on again and take it through everything from boot up to starting your application or connecting to your web site, and do all the operations available. You will probably remember where some text/graphic elements are located (such as that 8pt text explaining "If this text is too small for you to read, click here"), so after you have completed the exercize yourself, invite someone who does not know the layout to do the same thing, and observe his success.
Repeat the same with your glasses covered with a thick black paper, only with a quarter inch hole for each eye, to simulate tunnel vision. Let the hole be significantly off center - tunnel vision often is off-center. (An alternative method is to cover the screen with a large cardboard with a hole a couple inches across: You can move the cardboard up/down and left/right across the screen, but you will see only a small fraction at a time.)
To simulate complete blindness, turn your screen completely off before booting up the PC, and see how much you can make out of the synthetic speech (or braille line, if you have one available and either are able to read braille or can get hold of a human "braille-to-speech translator").
For users that are not "visually handicapped", just with old, worn eyes: Make sure to test your application with the zoom (ctrl-scroll) turned up high: Does any essential information drop out of the window/frame? Is a proper layout of the page maintained, or is the layout completely wrecked? Turn the zoom up immediately after startup, and leave it there - resist the temptation to zoom out to get the overview.
To check if your application is suitable for color blind, turn down the color saturation of your screen down to the bottom, giving you a graytone picture, and check the readability and clarity of graphical information. This is a very crude "simulation" (there are web sites that can provide a far more "true" simulation of various kinds of colorblindness - the disadvantage is that the simulation takes quite some time to calculate, often 10-60 seconds, and generally work on static images only) - but you can do it with almost zero effort, and it works on all material.
To simulate motoric limitations or other physical disabilities: Put on your winter mittens (not gloves!) and take your application from PC boot up through all functions. If climate allows (i.e. you can do some testing at ten degrees or more below freezing - use a freezer room if one is available), and try do do some fine mouse cursor positioning without wearing mittens / gloves.
Very few UI developers do even the very simplest of such UA tests. Those who do, often fake it: I have several times seen developers demonstrate how everyting is available to blind users - but to demonstrate it, they must stare at the screen all the time. I have never seen a demonstration where the presenter turns the screen around, towards the audience, away from himself!
The very basic UA tests are really cheap to carry through. Every UI developer should to them. Trying to excuse yourself by e.g. "but I don't know the difference between different kind of color blindness, so it is no use", is not even a poor excuse; it is no excuse at all for not doing the simple tests.
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Up voted and bookmarked.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Anyone else writing code you really shouldn't be writing?
This is just a hint of what I'm currently messing with:
...$"Relaunching using the security token for processId {processId}"...
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