You know, I was working with a student who only has a MacBook as a computer.
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You know, I was working with a student who only has a MacBook as a computer. So a few days ago, I was getting them set up with our Typing Club so they could practice typing on their own time, on the keyboard that they're going to be using. Unsurprisingly, we had to do so many workarounds to get it to work sufficiently. And I don't know what version of MacOS is on that Mac, I've been way too busy to dive into someone else's machine. But my goodness, having to turn off VoiceOver so that letters aren't repeated by both the web speech synthesizer thing sending the letters to the system voice, *and* VoiceOver reading when the letters are deleted from the text field that the Typing Club web page uses to... capture input? Some... Something like that. It's just... I just don't care what it takes. VoiceOver needs to work like Windows screen readers because *that* is the fucking standard. It doesn't fucking matter what the fucking standards bodies say. People don't fucking give a singular damn about standards when they're building shiny edtech. They don't. Hahaha it's so fucking absurd that when Windows users Shift Tab around the list of lessons, the thing scrolls for them. Pages? What's that! But on the Mac? Oh no, you *got* to use VO + arrows and navigate pages, and for someone that's just fucking getting started with VO? Makes everything look frustrating as fuck! I'm too damn worn out for all this shit at the end of the month y'all. Like damn. Apple needs to come out of their fucking bubble and talk to these fucking web app edtech fuckers and get shit working. Like, fuck! But you know as well as I do that they won't. Because Apple declares what's worth it and what isn't, and well, they definitely don't seem to need to capture the blind computing market lol.
And I'm sure it isn't all their fault. I'm sure the stupid ass edtech folks just go "oh it needs a11y? Oh um, let's uh, stack that on top of everything else we've built." But damn it, when NVDA works with it, it's at least possible. And that possibility and somewhat ease of use is what I'm looking for. Like damn. It's all a mess. It's all a fucking mess.