Scary Worlds

Technology and blindness: for most people these are scary worlds. That's why I'm here.

Post in #italiano che non ho voglia di scrivere in inglese.

Il titolo “bambini, avete rotto!” non è una provocazione ma è piuttosto uno sfogo.

Non ce l'ho coi bambini, ci mancherebbe altro! La ho veramente a morte con tutti quei personaggi che li usano e li strumentalizzano per i loro interessi.

Soprattutto quando vengono messi in mezzo per inquinare, in qualche modo, il dibattito: chi mai si metterebbe contro i piccoli pargoli? Solo un mostro, ovvio! Stratagemma vecchio come il mondo, per metterti in silenzio.

Nello specifico stasera discutevo di libri digitali e uno si è messo a raccontare storie catastrofiche di bambini che non sanno sfogliare libri. Vere, non vere? Al momento non mi importa perché non è questo il punto.

A farmi innervosire è che il tizio sul profilo aveva nome e indirizzo di una libreria, probabilmente ne è il gestore e di per sé questo non sarebbe un male, anzi.

Il problema è la disparità: io parlo di me tranquillamente, “ho una disabilità e i libri digitali sono un ausilio fondamentale” e questo mi viene a raccontare la storiella dei bambini che non sanno sfogliare i libri, poi dal profilo scopro che vende libri cartacei?

Dibattito sano:

  • “Io non vedo, e per me i libri digitali sono pratici, li posso portare ovunque, mi basta un telefono e ho una biblioteca in tasca”... Lui: “Questa è la tua posizione, adesso ti dico la mia: sono un rivenditore di libri cartacei e mi piacerebbe che più persone avessero la curiosità di sfogliare dei bei volumi, entrare in una libreria e farsi consigliare, esperienza interessante a ogni età. Se vieni nella mia magari ti posso anche fare dei begli sconti.”

Là sarebbe stata una discussione comunque impari in quanto non ci possiamo venire tanto incontro, ma almeno non ci sarebbe stato quel comportamento da “ti racconto la storia emotiva per sconvolgerti”. Anzi, ho evitato di raccontare dettagli su come vivessero le persone prive della vista negli anni 90 senza il digitale, proprio per evitare reazioni emotive. SPOILER: libri Braille che pesano e ingombrano peggio di tre libri in grafia tradizionale.

L'argomento “bambini usati per scioccare” però c'è ovunque: tutte le leggi che in giro vorrebbero censurare Internet, per chi dicono di farlo? Per salvare i bambini. Perché bloccano i corsi di educazione sessuale? Per non confondere i bambini. Gli omofobi che rompono le palle ai gay che si baciano? “Ci sono i bambini”, quando spesso e volentieri i piccoli capiscono le cose dieci volte meglio di noi. Quindi basta, smettetela di usare per i vostri porcacci comodi, chi non si può difendere.

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After listening to a podcast about lovebombing and mind manipulation, I wanted to google again the trap I was falling into, years ago.

This is a tech blog so I don't explain details but some years ago curiosity was almost destroying me.

I read a book, where a radio speaker whose show I like a lot, wrote about how his life changed through a community he joined. “Inclusive, everyone loves each other”, and then, “repeat this mantra during the day and you'll feel better”.

I've always been rational and never considered any religion but this time I got CURIOUS! What's all that? Could a cult really be inclusive?

That speaker is gay, lives with HIV, he can't lie. So, I decided to retrieve information about it.

Let's see if there are people joining this community in my area?

SEO matters!

Yes, this is the way a good SEO strategy has saved my life. Literally.

First thing I noticed while Googling, was tons of testimonials of people talking about how [cult name] ruined their life. Not one, not two, but literally entire pages.

So, what's going on, I thought about it and forgot the cult completely. I mean, I didn't forget it but I learnt the lesson, I faced my own vulnerability.

Years later

So, let me check if in 2024 those testimonials still exist?

Googling the same words of years ago, I realize now the very first results are testimonial IN FAVOR of the cult, published by the cult itself.

Those folks have money, those folks pay. What if I read that book today instead of years ago? How could I figure it out, whom could I have talked to, behind family and close friends, before it were too late!

SEO matters. Always.

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I've always been a Braillist since I was a little kid when #accessibility and #technology were not as advanced as now.

I used to write and read on paper, and this has helped me to acquire the ability orienting in flat, bi-dimensional spaces. Yes, like a touch screen.

Now it's strange to say it as when the situation requires it, I try to get the best from circumstances, without a hardware #Braille display: having a huge, fragile and very expensive device in my hands every time I have to take a note, could make smartphone and tablet less portable than they currently are.

In fact I mostly use my iPhone and iPad with their touch screen and voice feedback only: since 2015, iPhone and iPad's operating system has implemented a function called BSI (Braille Screen Input) which uses these devices' multi-touch functionality, to reproduce Braille dots to type letters and numbers.

How Braille Screen Input works

Just using iPhone/iPad's assistive technology called VoiceOver, you can actually learn to type with “standard” keyboard. But, even on a large iPad, it's quite difficult to learn typing as fast as you do on a computer, or as sighted folks do; despite being trained, without sight it's difficult to be precise when relying just on a flat, smooth surface which talks when touched.

So, Apple has invented this method. Are we able to accomplish gestures with more than one finger, on the screen, even with 3 or 4 fingers, even with 2 hands simultaneously? Yes. We do...

So, they implemented a feature where the screen becomes a sort of interactive Braille platform: every finger touching anywhere on the flat surface, produces a Braille dot; and you can use 5 fingers at once – at least 3 per hand on iPhone, 4 per hand on iPad if you set the 8 dots Braille.

Explaining the concept of 6 or 8 dots Braille would be long, and not appropriate here. But I can admit it easily, if I did not know Braille, I could never have been able to write as I do now.

It's been a long time dream: having a small device in my pocket, extract it and write whatever I can, without being forced to use my voice! And now the dream came true.

When is a hardware needed?

If Braille's knowledge is essential, not in any situation Braille physical devices are essential; I do not give too technical details on Braille-related software and hardware, but I just explain:

Braille hardware gives you the physical view of what's written and it's essential if you have to code; I can't properly code myself but I know some basic PHP functions and HTML and without physical dots under your fingers, the risk of typos is very, very high and when you work with code, a typo can be fatal.

Anyways, Braille hardware becomes essential for my passion, besides work: anagrams.

I play with words in my native language (Italian) as I'm not that confident with English. I can write of course, but your native language makes the difference.

There's a page where a group of people from all over Italy have fun with anagrams, building a sentence from another (or even a name).

This requires much concentration and having confidence both with the language, and words! The page I'm talking about, creates ironic anagrams from titles, politician's names and quotes, even poetry; such an intriguing phenomenon, you even get his activity, from a politician's name!

But to create all of this, Braille is essential. Yes, I admit, current Braille devices are made by one line only, but if they were multiline it could have been even more fun!

Moving letters around and creating words is a good hobby and gives Braille a new life. The detail is that Braille isn't for everyone: being a Braillist doesn't make me think that this code is for everyone.

Braille needs a relevant learning curve and must be acquired during childhood or very young age; a person becoming blind as an adult, has not the same sensitivity in hands to allow them learning, it could be a frustrating effort instead.

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I have tried lots of #plugins to satisfy my needs of customizing #WordPress search, but nothing covered all my requests, especially for what concerns #accessibility both in front-end and back-end. So, I started to search for it on Google and find some code blocks: 1. a block variation, found in an article where [Kinsta blog]{https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-6-1} explained what’s new in WordPress 6.1 2. a developer called [Mark Wilkinson]{https://markwilkinson.dev/code-snippets/wordpress-search-block-to-only-search-in-a-custom-post-type/} built another code snippets where search block for only a post type was based on PHP, without JavaScript and using a custom CSS class on the Search block I wanted to set with a specific post type. Class named such as “post-type–i18npost” Unfortunately, both solutions didn’t work! Tried both modifying the function php file in the theme as the guide recommended, and building a small plugin, with the block-variations JavaScript saved in the /assets/ folder of my current theme.

First fail

After having everything set, I realized nothing worked properly. A first search took me to “no posts found”, the second returned undesired results from the wrong post type, namely “posts” when the instruction was to just give me i18npost contents.

Unexpected help

Here came a sighted person’s help who told me “watch out, the address bar is different when you perform searches from the navbar and from the results page.” I honestly never paid attention to the browser’s address bar!

My sighted co-worker was right, then:

  • performed search through the customized search block: address bar returned site-url/?s=keyword&post_type=i18npost

  • second search, performed by the search box appearing just immediately in the results page: site-url/?s=keyword – without other specific parameters. That convinced me to try further tests by manually reaching the pages using given parameters: what about categories, without bothering myself with post types, what should I do for filtering contents by categories!

    How to manage categories

    Tried to type the URL [my site] /?s=english&category=international – nothing. category=i18n (the slug), nothing. I have done something wrong, without any doubt. Performing some in-deep research on Google I discovered the trick: the URL parameter for category isn’t category but “cat”, and it returns results if associated to the category’s ID, number associated to it.

Then, not being able to identify a category’s ID by keyboard only (as far as I know you can hover it with mouse to get it), I have used the “Show ID” plugin installed from the repository, which adds an extra-column to the administration panel which shows post types and taxonomies.

Now comes the adventurous part.

They often say:

If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain.

And that’s what I did!

I took the Block Variation code as Kinsta’s website shared about search function and queryvar, then with my very poor PHP/JS knowledge I created the plugin as follows:

<?php /* Plugin Name: category international search Plugin URI: [site URL] Description: This plugin should create a search block filtered for International category only Version: 1.0 Author: Bongo, the coding monkey Author URI: [my site URL] /
function internationaleditorassets() { wpenqueuescript( 'international-block-variations', gettemplatedirectoryuri() . '/assets/block-variations.js', array( 'wp-blocks' ) ); } addaction( 'enqueueblockeditorassets', 'internationaleditor_assets' ); ?> / JavaScript block-variations.js file follows */ wp.blocks.registerBlockVariation( 'core/search', { name: 'international-search', title: 'international', attributes: { query: { cat: '118' } } } );

And it seems to work!

Mystery of results

Despite all this effort, I consider the issue still open as the results page still loads the traditional search block, with no variations or filters. Next challenge is to fix this, in a way or the other.

Final note

I shared this experience in the WordPress community forum, but moderators blamed me and archived the discussion saying “please blog on your own site, not here”.

Blog? What? I wasn't blogging, I was sharing my experience as I assumed that a support forum was here to give support, not just to ask for it. And giving help is also sharing our own experiences so that they could be useful for others. Never mind, I learned the lesson and write on those forum ONLY if it's seriously the very last hope I get.

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Search Block Saga

First chapter: [The Obstacle in WordPress Search]{https://noblogo.org/scaryworlds/the-obstacle-in-wordpress-search} To summarize it: I am trying to have my personal #WordPress web site with two different search engines, one for the Italian and one for the English section.

Code? No longer a taboo

Needless to say, all free plugins concerning search missed some functionality or, in the worst case, they were inaccessible to blind users. Or even both! The last hope was on SearchWP, but it was and is so damn expensive! Not wanting to pay for a plugin, I googled some words: – WordPress search by post type – how to customize search box in WordPress – filter results search by post type ...

So there are two articles: one from Kinsta about “WordPress 6.1, the other about post types and search, coming from a certain Mark Wilkinson blog. But, guess what? Tried to build a small plugin and JavaScript files with provided codes, and in the end? Nothing worked! Thankfully I've not decided for editing my function.php file! The results do not filter content type I instruct the code about, they continue returning the main posts, without considering desired ones. Worst issue is that I can not even contact this code's author as he has transferred his contact information to the web agency he founded, and that company asks for big projects, not sure they are going to reply to an amateur code newbie.

If you have to pay...

So, in the end I resigned: if we have to pay, give it a try. At the most we ask for refund. Plugin installed, and guess what? #accessibility isn't there! How could it be, a plugin which costs 199 dollars per year in its lowest subscription, does not pay attention to accessibility? This is the least frustration though, the biggest one came as soon as I received one e-mail from the customer care asking me how is it going with search wp. I have replied to it in the kindest way possible, warning them about accessibility and then I provided some questions for them to solve a couple doubts I have. And, here is the answer: “Could you please share a screenshot?” So what? I tell you that I am blind and you ask me for a screenshot? I am giving them last chance, until this week-end 8/9 June 2024. Then if I get no convincing reply, I'm going to ask for refund. Money doesn't stink, but probably someone thinks that blind people's money is less valuable.

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An adventure with my new website

#WordPress search: if you can't code or you can't pay an expensive plugin, there's no easy way to get different search forms for different areas on a web site.

Let's assume you have two article areas, one concerning Italy and one about America – in Italian and English respectively.

You create two headers, two footers, two sidebars. All set, without any plugin. But obstacle comes for search! The native block won't filter contents accordingly so writing “computer” keyword for example, will take you to “America” and “Italy” sections without any difference, confusing readers.

You even might land into an unwanted article and, because of the different headers in the other area, you might get stuck and won't immediately go back.

This doesn't involve accessibility directly, but #usability does. And this would become a bad experience for the reader.

Other plugins promise to satisfy those needs, such as Relevanssi, Ivory Search, Searchwp or WP Extendes Search. But they have no #accessibility in mind or no #gutenberg block, they mostly rely on #shortcodes and “function.php” making it quite difficult to set up.

That's why I opened a #github issue as a feature request in Gutenberg editor's repository.

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/62221

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