Tag: weblinks

In memory of Titanic, some interesting resources that bring events to life.

So today is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and as such, I thought I’d share a few rather interesting resources. One often overlooked aspect of the Titanic are the actions portrayed by her radio operators. Using Morse code, these brave folks not only did their absolute best to message the world that help was needed, but were daily engaged in handling lots of traffic to and from passengers. The BBC did a really neat documentary, “The Titanic, in Her own Words” on the radio operators. Using speech synthesizers to read out many of the Morse code messages recorded on this fateful night, you can’t help, but get an idea of just how chaotic things must have been. You can listen to this fascinating documentary here.

There is also a Twitter stream, @TitanicRealtime, which is tweeting what events might have been like from a first person point of view. I’m watching these tweets as I write this post and have to say, it really helps bring this horrific event to life in a way that only social media can.

I hope you enjoy these resources and find them as interesting as I do.

Mudder, A Mud client for the Mac with accessibility

Mudder, A Mud client for the Mac with accessibility

Ever since the evolution of VoiceOver, blind folks have been looking for accessible Mac-based MUD clients. MUDs, because of their text-based nature, tend themselves to be very accessible. Unfortunately, due to the way that VoiceOver reads application screens and terminal windows, most Mac-based MUD clients have not made for a great solution. The main problem is that VoiceOver doesn’t read new text as it presents itself within an application window, the user may review this text, but it’s not read out automatically. In the case of terminal windows, incoming text is read, however, it is interrupted with any newer incoming text meaning that Voiceover essentially interrupts itself.

This client strives to create a balance between the need to review text and having new text auto-spoken. I’m still playing around with it, but so far, i’m finding this very promising. If you’re a Mac user and are still looking for an accessible MUD client, you may want to check this out. Confused about what MUDs actually are? There’s certainly much better information out there, but in a nutshell, they’re text-based adventure type games that allow the player to play with and interact with other people in the game. Depending on how well this client works for me, I may be writing a follow-up article in the near future.