A collection of thoughts on what comes to mind
I’ve written previously about tracking a fantasy football draft in Excel. The 2024 version of my Excel Tracker is now available.
My podcast, The Podcast To Be Named Later, also has a demonstration of using the 2024 version of the tracker with a screen reader.
Leave a CommentOne of the larger changes I’ve encountered in the Mac OS 15 betas is not immediately obvious unless you know to hunt for it. The VoiceOver Commanders item within VoiceOver Settings has been replaced with an item named Commands. But this is far more than just the renaming of the same old controls.
The various tabs for the different commanders such as Numpad and Trackpad have been replaced with check boxes to turn control on or off with each of those items as well as the Option key. Again none of this is new, just a bit of a different way to turn things on or off.
However, move past all those check boxes and you’ll find the new and powerful ability to customize VoiceOver commands. First off is a set of radio buttons to choose if you want to control VoiceOver with Built-In commands or Custom commands. Choose built-in and VoiceOver works the way it always has. Pick Custom commands and that’s where the power for customization appears.
An edit button becomes enabled and activating that you can customize more than 350 VoiceOver commands.
For each command the customization options are wide-ranging. You can capture a keyboard command, assign a trackpad gesture, assign a numpad command, assign a QuickNav gesture and an option key command.
Choices within the dialog allow you to filter the command list by the areas you’d expect including tables, text, information and the remaining VoiceOver command areas that appear when you bring up the VoiceOver command list. You can also filter based on the different command types, such as trackpad, numpad, assigned commands, unassigned commands, commands that are not able to be changed and more.
Using all of this is quite straight forward and a welcome enhancement for VoiceOver.
Leave a CommentIf you are not comfortable tinkering with your OS install and potential consequences, please ignore the rest of this post.
I have a range of computers I use, several of which do not meet the official hardware requirements to run Windows 11. Most notably, they either do not support what is known as Secure Boot and or do not have a TPM 2.0 chip. Every few months I see another mainstream publication write an article about how to install Windows 11 on such hardware. These all basically say the same thing, go set a few registry keys and run Windows setup. Sometimes this has worked for me and sometimes not.
Recently I tried what has proven for me to be the most reliable and easiest option here. This involves using an open-source program called Rufus to create a bootable USB drive. Note, even though you are creating a bootable drive, you do not have to boot off the drive. You simply need to run the setup off the created drive.
Rufus can be downloaded from https://rufus.ie/en/
Take note, use the download links within the table of product versions. The other download links are for different ads on the site as near as I can tell.
The author of Rufus has an extensive FAQ on Rufus at https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ.
In addition to downloading Rufus, you’ll want to download an ISO file. Windows 11 ISO files can be downloaded from https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11
Locate the heading that says, “Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices” and then download the ISO file.
Once you have these two downloads, run Rufus, ensure you’ve selected a USB drive and the ISO file from within Rufus and choose to start. Another dialog will come up with various setup options including a check box to bypass the Windows 11 hardware requirements. This is checked by default. Start the USB creation process at this point.
Once your USB drive is created, open it from within Windows and run Setup. Again, you should not need to boot off the USB drive. Finish setup and your OS will be updated.
Within Rufus as I mentioned you can select an ISO file. Although it isn’t announced as a split button, the select button here does support that functionality. Instead of pressing space or enter, press Alt+Down arrow and you can choose between select and download. If you do not have an ISO file, arrow down to download and press enter. You’ll return to the same button but this time it will be named download. Now press space or enter.
You are then given choices for Windows version, edition, and language. Each of these are separate selections where you pick from a list, choose continue and advance to the next choice. Eventually you reach the standard file save as dialog.
Note, although this process will update your computer to a released Windows 11 version, if you try and take actions such as joining the Insider program, the hardware checks for those installs will still fail. Additionally, the process of creating a bootable USB drive from a Windows Insider ISO is not supported by Rufus. You can create the drive, but it too will fail hardware checks. The Rufus FAQ clearly says insider ISOs are not supported.
As far as I can tell, if you put your machine into this sort of a state, Windows updates for security and such appear to download properly. I suspect when the next official OS release happens, that install will not work and you’ll need to update through another Rufus-created bootable USB.
Finally, although I’ve outlined using Rufus for Windows 11, it supports creation of more than just a bootable Windows USB drive. You can explore other options from within the program.
7 CommentsIn late July, Senator Bob Casey introduced the Section 508 Refresh Act of 2024. The text of the law has not been published online as far as I can find. The senator’s office sent me a PDF of the proposed legislation and I’m sharing it here with their permission.
I’m told the bill text should show up as S.4766 at https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4766/text?s=8&r=16 but that there can be a backlog for legislation to show up here.
In an election year I don’t know how much traction a bill like this is going to receive but some of the accountability requirements proposed are stronger than I’ve seen before.
Section 7 of the legislation outlines the procurement process requirements. They include:
There is much more in the legislation and I’m sure policy and legal experts will have more analysis in the coming months. This though is long overdue legislation in my opinion.
Any factual errors in this posting about requirements are my error. I’ve made every attempt to summarize what I’ve read correctly but please review the actual document.
If you are reading this document with a screen reader, I’ve found it reads more accurately in the full Adobe software then the PDF interpretations in Edge or Chrome.
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