I just installed Pied's flatpak package, let it install Piper, then downloaded the best English voice I could find ("Lessac", the basis for most other voices), and told Pied to set it as the Speech Dispatcher voice…

Now Orca sounds natural, and I can stand using it, for the first time in 20 years.

Video below demonstrates reading this post.

#Orca#SpeechDispatcher #accessibility#Pied#Linux #texttospeech

I just installed Pied's flatpak package, let it install Piper, then downloaded the best English voice I could find ("Lessac", the basis for most other voices), and told Pied to set it as the Speech Dispatcher voice…

Now Orca sounds natural, and I can stand using it, for the first time in 20 years.

Video below demonstrates reading this post.

#Orca#SpeechDispatcher #accessibility#Pied#Linux #texttospeech

My eyes are so itchy and watery (presumably due to seasonal allergies) that I haven't been able to get much work done in the past few days. I'm writing this toot with my eyes closed most of the time. 😑

Dear #accessibility hivemind, is there an easy way to have #Orca working with a natural-sounding text-to-speech voice, that is not eSpeak, but rather something like #MyCroft's Mimic3 ?

What's the state of the art for screenreader TTS voices on #Linux and how do I get it in #Fedora?

#a11y

#orcas have killed humans:

only in captivity

which makes sense and i don't blame them

but yes, very odd we have no documentation of an #orca killing a human in the wild

we have video of them stalking kayaks, but it seems mere curiosity

i think this video tells the whole story:

seal and human deathly afraid of orcas, orcas stalking both, one silently underneath staring up at the woman in one frightening moment:

I woke up to a comment so smug, so perfectly soaked in gatekeeping and faux-righteous posturing, it earned its own blog post.
You want freedom? You want GNU/Linux to mean something?
Then maybe start by not telling disabled users to go fuck themselves with a smile.
This commenter thought they were defending "software freedom." What they were really doing was kicking people out of the room. Dismissing accessibility. Mocking effort. Pretending that cruelty is some kind of rite of passage. They quoted Stallman like it was scripture, ignored real-world experience like it was noise, and wrapped it all in condescension dressed as virtue.
I’ve spent over a decade in this ecosystem. Writing patches. Rebuilding broken stacks. Helping blind users boot systems upstream doesn’t even test. I didn’t "just install Arch and whine about the terminal." I lived in it. I survived it. I held it together when maintainers disappeared and no one else gave a damn.
But apparently, because I didn’t call it GNU/Linux™ and because I dared to talk about how this OS chews people up and spits them out, I’m lazy. I’m weak. I should "get a dog."
So I wrote a response. Line by line. No mercy. No euphemisms.
This isn’t just about one comment. This is about every time someone’s been told they don’t belong because they couldn’t learn fast enough, code well enough, or survive long enough. It’s about everyone who was pushed out while the gatekeepers patted themselves on the back for "preserving the spirit of free software."
You want a free system? Start by making it livable. Because freedom that demands you crawl bleeding through a broken bootloader isn’t freedom. It’s abandonment dressed in ideology.
And if this kind of gatekeeping is your idea of community?
You can keep it.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/
#Linux#GNU #FOSS#Accessibility#BlindTech#FreeSoftware#Gatekeeping#DisabilityInTech#OpenSource#Orca #ScreenReaders#ArchLinux#BurnItDown #blogpost

I woke up to a comment so smug, so perfectly soaked in gatekeeping and faux-righteous posturing, it earned its own blog post.
You want freedom? You want GNU/Linux to mean something?
Then maybe start by not telling disabled users to go fuck themselves with a smile.
This commenter thought they were defending "software freedom." What they were really doing was kicking people out of the room. Dismissing accessibility. Mocking effort. Pretending that cruelty is some kind of rite of passage. They quoted Stallman like it was scripture, ignored real-world experience like it was noise, and wrapped it all in condescension dressed as virtue.
I’ve spent over a decade in this ecosystem. Writing patches. Rebuilding broken stacks. Helping blind users boot systems upstream doesn’t even test. I didn’t "just install Arch and whine about the terminal." I lived in it. I survived it. I held it together when maintainers disappeared and no one else gave a damn.
But apparently, because I didn’t call it GNU/Linux™ and because I dared to talk about how this OS chews people up and spits them out, I’m lazy. I’m weak. I should "get a dog."
So I wrote a response. Line by line. No mercy. No euphemisms.
This isn’t just about one comment. This is about every time someone’s been told they don’t belong because they couldn’t learn fast enough, code well enough, or survive long enough. It’s about everyone who was pushed out while the gatekeepers patted themselves on the back for "preserving the spirit of free software."
You want a free system? Start by making it livable. Because freedom that demands you crawl bleeding through a broken bootloader isn’t freedom. It’s abandonment dressed in ideology.
And if this kind of gatekeeping is your idea of community?
You can keep it.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/you-dont-own-the-word-freedom-a-full-burn-response-to-the-gnulinux-comment-that-tried-to-gatekeep-me-off-my-own-machine/
#Linux#GNU #FOSS#Accessibility#BlindTech#FreeSoftware#Gatekeeping#DisabilityInTech#OpenSource#Orca #ScreenReaders#ArchLinux#BurnItDown #blogpost

I didn’t plan to write about Wayland yet. But Xorg is dying — not eventually, but now. GNOME’s dropping X11 support. RHEL already removed it. Ubuntu and Fedora are next. And if you rely on accessibility, you don’t get to wait this one out.
So here’s Post 4 of I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back.
I’m using Wayland now. Primarily. Not because I love it. Because the fallback is disappearing, and I want to be there helping fix what comes next. GNOME with Orca actually works. KDE and COSMIC are making progress. I’ve talked to the people involved. They care.
But a lot is broken.
MATE — the desktop most blind users preferred — isn’t on Wayland.
ocrdesktop doesn’t work. xdotool is gone.
wlroots compositors still don’t reliably support Orca’s keybindings, especially on laptops.
This isn’t GNOME’s fault. They’re the only reason accessibility on Wayland works at all.
But the old excuses are gone. “Just use Xorg” isn’t going to be an option much longer.
So yeah. I’m a Wayland shill now. Because I’m using it. Because I have to.
And I want to make sure we’re not excluded from what comes next.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/
#Linux#Wayland#Accessibility#Orca#GNOME#KDE#COSMIC #FOSS #a11y#BlindTech #xorg

My tiny artist collective has its first "gallery" up (some items are still pending and will be up later)!

https://0dd.company/galleries/deepsong/

My contribution is a song made entirely out of modified whale noises, powered by Orca as a midi controller / visualization tool! (https://100r.co/site/orca.html)

Uploading the video here for easy viewing!

Group is meeting this week to decide how we want to expand the group (whether to keep it local, how many invites we want to do at once, etc)

#orca #midi #music #project