Kes: I'm trying to find accessible events and activities for screen reader users: there is a "Screen reader" checkbox, but I'm not seeing any results for it.
We need to crip the code so we can stage our own hackathons, because wouldn't it be awesome if we could all be able to hack our own prosthetics, like Hugh Herr?

Hour of Code
https://hourofcode.com/us/learn

Join the largest learning event in history, December 7-13, 2020
https://hourofcode.com/us
How to plan your Hour of Code
Join the movement and introduce your students to computer science with these steps.
Computational thinking helps nurture problem-solving skills, logic, and creativity. And technology is transforming every industry on the planet. Students today should learn how to create technology, not just use it. By starting early, they’ll have a foundation for success in any 21st-century career path.

Trying an Hour of Code is a simple and fun way to introduce students to computer science, perhaps for the very first time, and it fits perfectly for both in-class and after-school settings. Take a look at our
participation guide
https://hourofcode.com/files/participation-guide.pdf
if you still have questions.

I just saw this LifeHacker article on How to Easily Edit Audio and Video with Descript
Edit Audio and Video Like a Text Document With Descript
by Brendan Hesse
https://lifehacker.com/try-this-program-to-edit-audio-and-video-like-a-text-do-1845466379

I haven't tried it out, but I'm wondering if this would be an accessible way to edit audio and video for visually impaired people. Yes, there are accessible programs out there but they all seem to have a pretty high learning curve, like the ones mentioned in the LifeHacker article.

Will post about results when I try it.

You would think that, web developers having assigned numeric values to colors, that these systems would be precise, or even reliable...okay, perhaps somewhat predictable?

Not so!

I'm not asking for weird girl colors: all I wanted was forest green text on a cream background.

I fially got a result of forest green for at least the h1 heading.

Cream has been a lot more adventurous. Using the hex, rgb, or even the color name "cream," I have gotten lemon chiffon, gray, and default white. I even tried settling for cornsilk, but that gave me bisque. And bisque can be another weeny color word that varies from off-white to beige, which are even more variable as colors categories.

So, can I borrow some eyeballs out there? (I promise to let you keep the tooth.)
What colors are on this webpage: https://kestrell7.github.io

Looking at this page
Best Fonts to Use for Website Accessibility by the Bureau of Internet Accessibility
https://www.boia.org/blog/best-fonts-to-use-for-website-accessibility
which will also answer your questions about specific fonts.
Their blog
https://www.boia.org/blog#main-content
has an amazing amount of up-to-date information, including
this post
Enhanced Braille Support Now Available for Google Docs
https://www.boia.org/blog/enhanced-braille-support-now-available-for-google-docs

Of course I've subscribed to their blog.

When I was in grammar school and spent most of classtime drawing, I came up with this image of a visually impaired bookworm that I drew on everything. It was green with big round spectacles that were as big as its head, and had little arms with two-fingered hands, so it could hold the book open and turn the pages.

When I designed one of my early web pages, Alexx's dad came up with a blind bookworm with dark sunglasses for me. You can see it on my old Blind Bookworm website at
https://www.panix.com/~kestrell/

I have this crazy hope that some people out there can help me obtain an updated version of my little bookworm, either by locating a similar Creative Commons version, or using mad art skills to update the graphic.

So this is me, asking folks to participate in a sort of demented art project. Thanks ahead of time for any suggestions/contributions.

I went back into my livejournal archives to find this, because I remembered how addictive *and* accessible this color scheme picker was.

You can pick different motifs –city sidewalks would be great for an urban-based website, for instance—or you can pick schemes such as “green trees,” which I include a link to after the main url.

Instant Color Schemes
http://www.gpeters.com/color/color-schemes.php

green trees

https://gpeters.com/color/color-schemes.php?search_term=green%20trees

I'm trying to revive my knowledge of the command line interface, but can't remember how to change to the home directory. I'm actually trying to learn Git, so the help documentation assume I remember all the commands. I remember

I realize that I am opening a serious can of geeky worms by asking this, and I even encourage that, so...

Do folks have favorite fonts?

I'm trying to decide on a font for my webpages. I want something sans serif and accessible/easy to read, but also something that evokes books. My favorite font is actually futura, which is what my business cards are in, because it is both supposedly the most easy to view font--it's a geometric sanse serif-- and associated with space travel and science fiction, due to being the easiest to see at the farthest distance. For some reason, however, it is suggested that futura should only be used for headings and signage.

Kes: I posted a question to a blind computer users list asking why a link on my webpage, which I had written so that the link and the title of the link appeared on the same line, was being broken up to two lines, one for the text title and the other for the actual link itself. Below is the answer I received from Heather Thomas, a technology instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind. I have a little more info added after her answer.

from Heather Thomas:

The default behavior of JAWS is that it breaks each link onto its own line. This will be true even if that link appears in the middle of a sentence or on what sighted individuals perceive as a single line containing multiple links. This makes it easier to activate the links by pressing Enter because it is very clear what has focus. This is what Freedom Scientific calls “simple layout.” You can change the “document presentation mode” to “screen layout” within Quick Settings (JAWS key + V) if you want JAWS to announce information in a way that is similar to what a sighted user sees on the screen. I will warn you that, even in screen layout, you still will not hear lines exactly as they appear visually, but it will be closer than in simple layout. For comparison, NVDA’s default behavior is closer to the JAWS’s “screen layout” document presentation mode. So, you might either check out how your page presents when using JAWS in “screen layout” or read it with NVDA. Also, always keep in mind that screen readers are accessing the underlying code, so there may be other times where your sighted professor “sees” your screen content differently than you do.

Kes: I changed the Jaws setting for document presentation mode to screen mode and it does indeed show my webpage very close to how I wrote the HTML for it: if there are deviations, they aren't apparent at first look.

Here are basic steps to changing the document presentation setting:
1. Jaws settings are contextual, so you need to have a webpage or virtual document open to have the document presentation mode show up in the settings options.
2. Press Jaws+v to open Jaws settings.
3. Start typing document presentation mode in the search edit field: you should hear Jaws auto-fill potential search results, so listen for "document presentation mode".
4. You will hear Jaws say something like "Two results": down arrow to the combo box.
5. Press the spacebar to expand the combo box.
6. There will be two options: simple, which is the default to which Jaws is now set, and screen, which is what you want to press spacebar and enter to select.
7. You may at some point later wish to repeat the first few of these steps and browse through the other settings that control how Jaws presents web pages and virtual documents, but I don't recommend changing any other settings unless you know what you're doing.
8. To learn more about Jaws settings which format how webpages and virtual documents are presented, refer to the following document:
JAWS Settings to Change for Web Page Testing
https://doccenter.freedomscientific.com/doccenter/doccenter/rs11f929e9c511/2014-12-02_webpagetesting-l1/02_JAWS-Settings.htm

Final comment: this is probably another reason why blind software developers and programmers seem to all be using NVDA and Firefox.