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  New post: Google still can't make an accessibility menu accessible. Put more than one service on Android's accessibility shortcut and holding the volume keys brings up a menu with no speech, at the exact moment no screen reader is running. Apple and Microsoft solved this years ago. I fixed it in ten minutes at one in the morning. Google has had years. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/google-still-cant-make-an-accessibility-menu-accessible/ #Accessibility #A11y #Android #TalkBack #Bl...

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  You need to be able to trust a screen reader the way you trust your eyes. A lot of people on Android right now are shipping software that makes that impossible, and calling it accessibility. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/stop-vibecoding-screen-readers/ #accessibility #Android #TalkBack #screenreader #blind #a11y #blog #writing #opinion

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  @TheQuinbox@dragonscave.space Least hyping hype email ever. Hey, we're launching new products. at some point. but we won't tell you anything. same thing we do every year. carry on

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  The tech industry spent twenty years turning users into consumers, instruments into appliances, and technical literacy into a niche hobby for weirdos. They succeeded. New post: The Slow Death of the Power User https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/ #technology #opensource #linux #poweruser #techliteracy #foss

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  I need to stop having project ideas.

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  The state of Linux accessibility in 2025. This started out as a rant but became a series. Please feel free to leave feedback, comments, and subscribe via rss or email for more stuff as I release it. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/

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  The Android smartwatch ecosystem is dead. Not struggling. Dead. Google had ten years, billions of dollars, and the world's most popular mobile OS. They spent it renaming things, breaking promises, and burying their partners quietly in developer documentation. This piece is not balanced. The market hasn't earned balance. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/apple-watch-or-dont-bother/ #Smartwatch #WearOS #AppleWatch #Google #Android #Tech #TechWriting

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  New post: The Galaxy Z Fold 7, one month in. I expected to hate this phone. I thought the fold was a solution to a problem I didn't have. I thought the flip was the right form factor and the fold was a gimmick for people with more money than sense. A month later, it has changed how I work. Dev work, blogging, AT training, video calls — all better. The inner display turned my phone into an actual multitasking device instead of a single-app pipeline I constantly switched between. It&amp...

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  TapType v3.0 is out! This release includes two of the most requested features. French language support: Full AZERTY layout with a 50,000 word dictionary and all announcements translated. Traditional keyboard mode: A new way to use TapType without swiping. Every tap types a character immediately. Visible buttons for space, delete, enter, shift, numbers, and emoji are built into the keyboard surface. Word predictions appear at the top, tap one to accept it. Hold and drag to explore keys with no de...

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  I write a lot of code. Sometimes it's good code, sometimes I read it back later and think "What the hell was I thinking".

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  TapType v2.0 is out! TapType is a keyboard for blind users — no visible keys, just tap where QWERTY keys would be and it predicts your words. Fully accessible with TalkBack. What's new in v2.0: Multi-language support — English (US/UK), Deutsch, Espanol. All speech, announcements, and punctuation fully translated. Switch languages right from the keyboard. Reorganised settings into clean categories with per-language user dictionaries and punctuation. TTS engine fixes — language switching a...

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  I made a keyboard because I needed one and nothing on Android was built for blind users. I put it on GitHub because someone else might need one. Then I woke up this morning and Mastodon had eaten it. New blog post — what overnight virality actually looks like from the inside, the TalkBack problem nobody else bothered solving, Flexy, and why I spent the day building instead of panicking. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-made-a-keyboard-nobody-asked-for-my-experience-making-taptype/ #TapTyp...

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  Yet another failure where google should be called out for not having a fallback tts engine for Talkback. I just had to use a third-party screen reader, developed by one person (me) to recover a multi-trillion corporation's fuck up. This is fucking tragic. If you care about #accessibility, hound them. Please. Tell them this is an essencial recovery path. I can only do so much, I've been asking for a fallback for a tts engine failure since talkback 3.3. I can only do so much. Spam...

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  TapType is out. It's a keyboard for blind Android users. There are no visible keys. You tap where QWERTY keys would be from muscle memory, and a spatial prediction algorithm figures out what you meant. It scores nearby keys using a Gaussian proximity model and runs a beam search against an 80,000 word dictionary. You don't need to be precise. That's the whole point. Swipe right to commit a word. Swipe down or up to cycle through suggestions. Swipe left to delete. It learn...

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  Yet another failure where google should be called out for not having a fallback tts engine for Talkback. I just had to use a third-party screen reader, developed by one person (me) to recover a multi-trillion corporation's fuck up. This is fucking tragic. If you care about #accessibility, hound them. Please. Tell them this is an essencial recovery path. I can only do so much, I've been asking for a fallback for a tts engine failure since talkback 3.3. I can only do so much. Spam...

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  TapType is out. It's a keyboard for blind Android users. There are no visible keys. You tap where QWERTY keys would be from muscle memory, and a spatial prediction algorithm figures out what you meant. It scores nearby keys using a Gaussian proximity model and runs a beam search against an 80,000 word dictionary. You don't need to be precise. That's the whole point. Swipe right to commit a word. Swipe down or up to cycle through suggestions. Swipe left to delete. It learn...

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  A quick demonstration of Sandfly, the android screen reader I'm working on in very early alpha. Don't ask for an apk, release date, or any of that. I don't know and you can't have one. Not yet.

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  Mudpie 0.3.1 is out — a bug fix patch for 0.3.0. If you tried keyboard mode and found that character echo was silent, TTS interrupts on Ctrl or typing did nothing, or the software keyboard kept trying to appear: those are all fixed. The normal mode input bar had a separate issue where arrow keys, backspace, and cursor positioning were broken — that's fixed too. Loop sounds now loop seamlessly. The previous implementation caused an audible gap at every loop point; they now switch over i...

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  Mudpie 0.3.2 is out! What's new: Auto-updater — Mudpie now checks for new versions on launch and can download and install updates directly Per-world and global TTS muting controls — silence auto-read or speak triggers independently when a world is inactive or the app is backgrounded Fix for a crash on launch affecting users upgrading from older versions Download: https://github.com/aaron-gh/mudpie-releases/releases/tag/v0.3.2

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  Mudpie 0.4.0 just released! Big sound update. MSP support — Mudpie now negotiates MSP (MUD Sound Protocol) with your server. Sound effects and background music triggered by !!SOUND() and !!MUSIC() just work — downloaded automatically, cached per-world. Drop your own files into a world's sound folder to override server sounds. Tags are stripped from output so they never clutter your scrollback or TalkBack. Per-world sound folders — sounds are now stored per-world instead of globally. E...

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  Mudpie v0.5.0 is out! New in this release: Mudpie Pro — Support development through GitHub Sponsors and unlock premium features: AI trigger assistant (Claude creates triggers from plain English), keyboard mode, and local edit. Local edit — Servers that support the #$# edit protocol can now send text for you to edit in-app. Full keyboard mode support with Ctrl+S/Ctrl+Shift+S shortcuts. TTS punctuation — Four levels (None/Some/Most/All) matching NVDA's symbol groups, so punctuation is spok...

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  Sometimes I want to implement usage metrics in my software to see if people are actually using it but then I remember I'm not evil.

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  Jetpack Compose is fucking stupid sometimes. That's it, that's the post.

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  Fuck me. Think I'm going to have to host my own ntfy server. Don't really want to, but I use it for so much.

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  Mudpie v0.6.0 is out, and this one I'm really proud of. The headline feature: Connection Proxy (Pro). Mobile MUD has always had one awful problem. Your phone drops the TCP connection the moment you lose signal or switch networks. The proxy wraps your connection in a WebSocket relay that keeps your MUD session alive for up to 30 minutes when your device loses connectivity. Walk through a dead zone, ride a buss, hop between WiFi and mobile. Come back and your session is right where you le...

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  Mudpie v0.7.0 is out! The headline feature: Lua scripting. Enable "Advanced Mode" on any world to write Lua 5.3 scripts that automate your MUD experience. The mud.* API gives you full control — send commands, gag/substitute/highlight lines, echo client-side messages, play sounds, speak via TTS, fire notifications, and set persistent variables that survive app restarts. React to game events with pattern-matched handlers: mud.onLine, mud.onPrompt, mud.onConnect, mud.onDisconnect...

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  I've been building a MUD client for Android with a focus on TalkBack accessibility. It's at a point where it's usable, so I'm sharing it. Mudpie 0.1.0. Telnet and SSL, ANSI colours, triggers (literal and regex, with actions for sending commands, sounds, notifications, highlighting, gagging, substitution), aliases, multi-session, and a sound system with looping support. If you add an Anthropic API key you can describe a trigger in plain English and have Claude writ...

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  Day one with the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Setup was a disaster. Smart Switch didn't. TalkBack went silent. Samsung installed everything I told it not to. This is why nobody upgrades their Android phone. https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/galaxy-z-fold-seven-day-one-the-fold-has-arrived-setup-was-a-disaster-this-is-why-no-one-upgrades-their-android-phone/ #Samsung #GalaxyZFold7 #Android #TalkBack #Accessibility #Blind #tech #writing #blog #reviews

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  new post: "because fuck you" — why consumer choice is being systematically stripped away, and how the tech industry profits from your inability to leave. covers the App Store tax, the headphone jack, right to repair, accessibility as PR, smart device bricking, and the one thing that actually makes these companies change behavior (hint: it's not your complaint). https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/because-fuck-you-why-consumer-choice-is-being-stripped-away-and-how-the-t...