#PSA: If you, like me, have a heck of a time seeing/finding something in a dark colour, empower yourself with some nail polish!

Nail polish works great on metal and plastic, wears well (and can be touched up) and comes in a zillion colours for either matching or contrast.

#MedicalDevices often seem to be #black by default, and this week I finally got so sick of my #CGM reader getting lost in my bedding and/or anywhere else if I set it down, I made it the equivalent of #SafetyYellow.

(This is colour 010 "Marigold Maven" Ultra HD Snap! by Revlon, in case you are seeking the same.)

Not my best work design-wise but as I still needed to use the CGM reader, time was of the essence!

(Also, the polish had dried out a bit and I dodn't know about #NailPolish #Thinners until yesterday).

A bit of painters tape over the touchscreen, charging port, and fine print on the back and the result is a NON-invisible device!

#hack
#disability
#diabetes
#vision
#LowVision
#HighContrast
#Usability

You should definitely read about @nina_kali_nina 's project to reverse engineer #VisiOn and produce the first ever (published) 3rd party application for the platform. It's a massively impressive piece of work, even by the already high standards of the #retrocomputing community. Her notes are available at https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/note/index.md.

A few notes on why I think this is important. Firstly, I don't think you can really understand any field without understanding its history, and I think software engineering is especially bad at this. We tend to dismiss anything more than a couple of years old as irrelevant, which is why we're constantly reinventing the wheel and have people who don't realise that you can build a web page without using a JavaScript framework. One of the nice things about historical software is that you can actually use it, and take it apart and modify it, which leads to a much deeper understanding than you'd get from just reading about how it was used.

1/n

#PSA: If you, like me, have a heck of a time seeing/finding something in a dark colour, empower yourself with some nail polish!

Nail polish works great on metal and plastic, wears well (and can be touched up) and comes in a zillion colours for either matching or contrast.

#MedicalDevices often seem to be #black by default, and this week I finally got so sick of my #CGM reader getting lost in my bedding and/or anywhere else if I set it down, I made it the equivalent of #SafetyYellow.

(This is colour 010 "Marigold Maven" Ultra HD Snap! by Revlon, in case you are seeking the same.)

Not my best work design-wise but as I still needed to use the CGM reader, time was of the essence!

(Also, the polish had dried out a bit and I dodn't know about #NailPolish #Thinners until yesterday).

A bit of painters tape over the touchscreen, charging port, and fine print on the back and the result is a NON-invisible device!

#hack
#disability
#diabetes
#vision
#LowVision
#HighContrast
#Usability

You should definitely read about @nina_kali_nina 's project to reverse engineer #VisiOn and produce the first ever (published) 3rd party application for the platform. It's a massively impressive piece of work, even by the already high standards of the #retrocomputing community. Her notes are available at https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/vision-sdk/tree/main/note/index.md.

A few notes on why I think this is important. Firstly, I don't think you can really understand any field without understanding its history, and I think software engineering is especially bad at this. We tend to dismiss anything more than a couple of years old as irrelevant, which is why we're constantly reinventing the wheel and have people who don't realise that you can build a web page without using a JavaScript framework. One of the nice things about historical software is that you can actually use it, and take it apart and modify it, which leads to a much deeper understanding than you'd get from just reading about how it was used.

1/n

@Gargron

Thanks Eugen. You have delivered a tool that opened a window to return to the original intention of the Internet.

Your focus on decentralisation brought thousands of communities the ability to communicate safely. Among themselves or in connection to others.

The Fediverse wouldn't be where it is now without your tenacity and focus to bring Mastodon to where it is now.

You have the respect and gratitude of many.

#Mastodon #Eugen #Rochko #Vision

⛐ Bridging Vision, Language, and Mathematics: Pictographic Character Reconstruction with Bézier Curves

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00076

#cs #graphics #text #characters #cg #béziercurves #llm #ai #vision #machinevision

⛐ Bridging Vision, Language, and Mathematics: Pictographic Character Reconstruction with Bézier Curves

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00076

#cs #graphics #text #characters #cg #béziercurves #llm #ai #vision #machinevision

Human Fovea Detector

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4dsXzM

#HackerNews #Human #Fovea #Detector #Technology #Innovation #Vision #Science

A Vision of Chocolate's Future in an Amsterdam Brownie

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-opinion-future-of-chocolate/

#HackerNews #Chocolate #Future #Amsterdam #Brownie #Vision #Food #Innovation

Transparent computer monitor designed to protect your vision

https://www.visualinstruments.co/phantom/display

#HackerNews #Transparent #Monitor #Vision #Tech #Innovation #Health

How quickly can the US go from suspending funding to #hearing and #vision challenged folks because #DEI to...

... "Thursdays... Thursdays we burn all the cripples"

By chance, does anyone reading this write or publish nonfiction books? If you do, please take a moment to read about my experiences as a reader.

I keep encountering nonfiction books in which most of the text is large black letters on a plain white background, which I can read. However, other text in the books is difficult or impossible to read, due to a lack of contrast between the text and the background. In some books, special information is contained in boxes that have gray backgrounds. In other books, especially books about wildlife and nature, there are full-page photos with black text ON the photos. For example, one book had black text on a photo of the ocean, which meant that the black text had a gray-blue background. In still other books, pages are of random colors.

If you have good eyes and can read black text on a dark background, you are fortunate. Please be aware that not all of us share that good fortune. If you want to reach a wider audience, please ensure that all black text is printed on a light-colored background.

This applies to all books, including books for children. There are children with low vision. There are also countless adults with vision problems who read to children or who simply like children's books. (The large print in many nonfiction books written for children makes them especially attractive to adults who lack 20/20 vision.)

Some people reading this post may be thinking that technology provides the solution to unreadable text. Although technology is great, there is no substitute for being able to read a book directly. For example, if I'm riding a bus, I use one hand to hold onto the bus and the other hand to hold onto my book, and there are no hands left for holding a gadget that could read the book to me.

Thanks for reading this.

#books #publishing #accessibility #vision#LowVision

By chance, does anyone reading this write or publish nonfiction books? If you do, please take a moment to read about my experiences as a reader.

I keep encountering nonfiction books in which most of the text is large black letters on a plain white background, which I can read. However, other text in the books is difficult or impossible to read, due to a lack of contrast between the text and the background. In some books, special information is contained in boxes that have gray backgrounds. In other books, especially books about wildlife and nature, there are full-page photos with black text ON the photos. For example, one book had black text on a photo of the ocean, which meant that the black text had a gray-blue background. In still other books, pages are of random colors.

If you have good eyes and can read black text on a dark background, you are fortunate. Please be aware that not all of us share that good fortune. If you want to reach a wider audience, please ensure that all black text is printed on a light-colored background.

This applies to all books, including books for children. There are children with low vision. There are also countless adults with vision problems who read to children or who simply like children's books. (The large print in many nonfiction books written for children makes them especially attractive to adults who lack 20/20 vision.)

Some people reading this post may be thinking that technology provides the solution to unreadable text. Although technology is great, there is no substitute for being able to read a book directly. For example, if I'm riding a bus, I use one hand to hold onto the bus and the other hand to hold onto my book, and there are no hands left for holding a gadget that could read the book to me.

Thanks for reading this.

#books #publishing #accessibility #vision#LowVision