Hi, thanks for joining the discussion.
A screen reader at its most basic is a talking monitor.
The reason why w3c.way states that progressive enhancement design is most
inclusive is because, much like parts of our body, changing technology that
largely serves as an extension of or substitution for a bodily function is
not always feasible.
add that while such tools exist, the cost, training, and configuration is
not standard or in some places in the world even available.
voice browsers use basic html I am told, so do braille displays.
It provided a clear and in order presentation, allowing for ease of
navigation.
In standard gmail elements are often spoken, out of order, with confusing
patterns that sort of thing.
And this is not just a blindness related problem, working with a small
screen o a small phone is a problem too.
All the coverage I have read media wise about Google's removal of basic
html indicates how valuable the choice is for everyone.
Removing choice of how you read your email, how it gets presented?
How has the world moved on from needing options on the table?
I just thought of another population, those with learning disabilities
who use highlighters, again in order. standard does not often present
well for those tools.
What really made me personally angry?
Google stated to the media that removing basic html would happen in
January 2024.
Imagine my surprise on November 20th to find my basic html door
closed..entirely.
I could not even log in, with the body I have using the tools working best
for the combinations of disabilities I experience to so much as generate
an app password for Alpine.
That google thinks the world has moved on is a fit excuse for this change
is frankly quite reprehensible.
You are not providing adaptive tools, or training..you do not even read
your own accessibility list.
Kare
On Thu, 30 Nov 2023, [email protected] wrote:
On Thu, 30 Nov 2023, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
I am also concerned with loosing Google html search page but one for
duckduckgo.com exists. I include everyone in my message who could benefit
by any changes that increase accessability to all.
Is there some risk this will happen? I use `lynx google.com` with some
frequency and it still works. I've not heard about them trying to remove
html search.
Full disclosure, I've worked at Google for almost 17 years. You may be
pleased to hear that it's full of command line loving UNIX nerds, some of
whom use alpine though more who use mutt (there are dozens of us!).
We also have blind googlers.
Most of the people that I am working with that are having the most problem
are those using console line interface (CLI) and who often never have a
graphical interface (GUI) installed.
I envy you :)
Most have changed their email program to mutt but they very much miss the
features available in alpine like its address book and ability to access
newsgroups.
Wait what? Alpine has better xoauth2 and IMAP support, if this is
misunderstood that should be corrected. If it's the new master password
option, can't they live with just a single letter password like "f" ? (on a
home key so even useful for the blind). Or can't they blank the password
using `openssl` as suggested in this thread?
Some would like to use emacs and gnunews (spelling?). That's beyond my
knowledge.
Emacspeak used to be well known for cmdline blind users and gnus tied into
that giving blind users a good option. I believe the kludge that mutt uses
of a helper process for xoauth2 is compatible, but this is technically
complex.
One of the problems they are having is with Gmail, they've managed to get
an application specific password, and can use alpine by using an old
version which does not have the master password, but Google has changed
the way email is displayed, what used to be the default was the INBOX of
their email, but now they have to change folders to one labeled Gmail and
inside there they have to select the folder with the new email.
Enabling xoauth2 is not that complicated, future proof and works passwordless
with the tokens stored by alpine. Alpine is better at this than mutt.
Enabling ASPs might work now but Google may want to deprecate them in future
as they have old-style access everything passwords.
The internal mutt and alpine mailing lists at work (I run alpine-users@)
discussed this when they moved to xoauth2 and we scrambled to solve this.
The UI changes in GMail often can be undone in settings, I'm not familiar
with what you're describing with a change in INBOX. But I do know that the
IMAP settings are quite advanced in the various styles you can configure for
how it works, like only serving the last 1,000 messages per folder, or how
delete/expunge works.
I didn't know about the demise of the plain html version, but sadly services
which are free have to have some compromises as the world moves on. Email is
barely used by younger generations as it was a decade ago, screen readers can
cope with complicated graphical sites and no longer rely on needing older
plain html versions.
I suspect 100s of people still using html were costing a lot in SWE hours to
maintain, vs billions of users using the latest versions they keep releasing.
When they broke flowed format text in the last update, I raised a bug and
it's been mostly ignored for 5 years :(
It seems that it would be possible when configuring alpine to have a
switch much like the one that creates the ability to use the pinepass
file.
The default would continue to be as it is now but the user could decide to
use the less secure method of accessing alpine if they wished.
TBH I kinda agree that it's sensible to have some master password, pick
something easy, or learn/hack openssl to resolve this.
- Damion
_______________________________________________
Alpine-info mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/alpine-info
