#text to speech reader

[sag-dab-sar]

Monetizing Accessibility

I wrote a review awhile ago for an app that I heavily relied on due to my dyslexia and TBI— Speechify. Its a text-to-speech reader that I can take photos of text books or signs and have them read to me. I used it plenty. You can take as many photos as you want, upload them, and have it read to you. Well..... thats what you used to be able to do. Then I updated the app and tah dah the main feature is behind a paywall!!! I can upload 3 files (photo/photoset) only! And if I want more I have to pay THIS fucking much:

So I updated my app review from 5 stars to 1

Then a long time later I got this email:

"One time discount" on something that was fucking free. Its the most basic feature. There were plenty of additional features to pay for and ads prior. Now the ENTIER goddamn app, including the absolute most basic function, above 3 files is behind a $140 paywall. I don't want 90% of the features just keeping files like I could before. Its not even a one time fee; its a subscription. As if my TBI and dyslexia only lasts a year. Not to mention I already deleted my entire library.

I fucking hate how goddamn expensive being disabled it is. The email is an insult.

[twotangledsisters]

A quick reminder that fanfics shouldn't be reposted anywhere ever unless you have the express permission of the author.

You want to translate a fic? Awesome, ask!

You want to make a podfic? Amazing, ask!

But it's disrespectful to an author to take their content and repost without telling them, EVEN if you did transformative work on it.

Yes, fanfics are free, and on ao3 they are even downloadable, but they are downloadable for private use! For you to have on your kindle and read in whatever format best suits you. Not to be REPOSTED on another site!

Please, please, if you want authors to continue posting stories publically you have to respect an author's desire to maintain some level of ownership over their work.

[thethronezone]

How would the first interaction between the High Consort and TTS Emperor Would go? What would they say to each other?

High Consort: *enters throne room* "I hope your have a good reason for requesting my presence. I was busy doing very important Imperial duties."

*flashback to them playing Go Fish with their dogs*

High Consort: "Do you have any fives?"

Dog: "Bork!"

*flashback ends*

High Consort: "That bitch was cheating for sure..."

Kitten: "Well, my lady/lord, you see..."

Big E: "SUP BABE."

High Consort: "What the fuck!?"

Big E: "IS THAT HOW YOU GREET YOUR HUSBAND? SMH, I THOUGHT YOU'D BE HAPPY TO HEAR FROM ME."

High Consort: "Happy? HAPPY!? You bastard! Do you know how much work I've had to pick up since you decided to semi-die? A shit ton! And because you couldn't even go ahead and fully die, I couldn't even declare myself a widow and take out your life insurance! Stars know the Astra Militarum needs the extra funds..."

Big E: "BOHOO, POOR YOU, HAVING TO WALK AND TALK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON INSTEAD OF BEING CONFINED TO LIFE SUPPORT. YOU HAVE MY SYMPATHIES."

High Consort: "Fuck you you lich."

Big E: "TWAT."

High Consort: "Uggo."

Big E: "BUTT-FACE."

High Consort: "Crusty bitch."

Big E: "GOOBER."

High Consort: "..."

Big E: "..."

Kitten: *under his breath* "Please don't get a divorce, please don't get a divorce..."

High Consort: *chuckles* "I missed our talks."

Big E: "ME TOO BABE. NOW WANNA HAVE HOT PSYCHIC REUNION SEX?"

High Consort: *already in lingerie* Fuck yeah."

Kitten: "Aaaaasnd I'm getting out of here before I get horrifically mentally scarred. Have fun!"

[dvchvnde]

excerpt; hitchhiker au | Simon Riley x Reader gore. graphic descriptions of decomposition. implied noncon.

“You’re not real,” she whimpers, words a rough scrape out of her raw, torn throat. “You can't be real.”

He doesn't answer tonight. Silent in his appraisal, his hatred; the bloodlust rolls off of him in waves, a suffocating deluge that tangles in her chest. Heart pulsing at the base of her throat, clogging her airways. She can't breathe. Can't move. Can only watch as the man cocks his head slowly to the side in a mutated parody of consideration. Confusion. Taking her in as he stands in her doorway, massive body filling the frame in an outline of black, making him more shadow than man. An apparition that haunts her at devil's hour. Always.

The moon's glow casts a line through the open window. A pale meridian between them. 

Childishly, she thinks of hiding under her blanket. Bad things can't touch you under the covers. Curling into a ball with her eyes squeezed shut, fingers plugging her ears. Wishing for her mother. Howling for her dad. Waiting until morning when the thing haunting her finally leaves.

But he doesn't. Not tonight. 

And she knows if she tries to hide, he'll just crawl into the bed next to her—

“Fix your bumper yet?” He asks, measured in his mockery. The weight of his words makes her stomach churn. Nausea a cold, familiar comfort that tethers itself to her ribcage. “Better get that fixed before someone comes askin’ questions, pet. Clean the blood off it, too. Caused quite the nasty spill.”

His directive makes her want to curl into a ball. “I–I didn't mean to, I didn't—”

“What'd you tell everyone? Hit a deer? Left ‘im in the bushes to die? And now he's got maggots crawlin’ all around ‘is ‘ead. Eatin’ his brains clean outta ‘is skull—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up—you’re not real! You're not real—”

The man—Simon Riley, her mind supplies bitterly, brokenly; tinged full of regret and sorrow and hatred—lashes out in an instant, moves like water, like shadows on the wall, the too bright flicker of a moving car, until he's in her face, looming over her. A massive, unclimbable wall. And she hates it. Hates when he's this close to her. Close enough to smell the stench of rotten blood that dries on his chest, the side of his head. A brown stain that sinks into the too-large frame of his chest. 

He smells of death. Sickening. Tainted with a noisome sweetness that glues in her nostrils, leaks down her throat. She can taste him there, right on her tongue. Him. Simon Riley. 

Missing, the newspapers say. But only she knows the truth. Stowed away in a facsimile of a grave by the swamps, left to rot. Here, in her bedroom. Waiting for her whenever she tries for a modicum of sleep. A veteran. A drifter. Homeless, they write, and he barked out an ugly laugh as he read over your shoulder, but said nothing else as you scrolled. Tense. Shivering in your seat, waiting for the day the police show up and arrest you. You did a terrible thing. A horrible thing. Pay for what you've done—

His hand reaches out, fingers wrapping around the delicate arch of her throat. The width spans the entirety of it until the bone china, the vulnerable slope, is clenched tight in his slick, slippery palm. Moss, she knows; it grows over his hands and feet now. The earth reclaiming the body she threw into the swamp—

“Not real?” He mocks, wrenching her closer by her throat. Pulse thudding like the wings of a hummingbird against his thumb. “Oh, pet. M’very real—”

He leans in, too, until his horrid face is lit by the sliver of pale blue moonlight. Scraps of tissue slough off of his head, skin purpling beneath the balaclava that peels off in patches. Animals, he'd told her idly, like talking about his body being eaten away by creatures was piecemeal. The jaundiced bone of his cheek pokes out from raspberry skin. It shifts when he speaks, and draws her eye to the devastation of his mouth. Jawbone visible; muscle blackened, clinging by a strip of thin tissue to his lower mandible. His teeth gleam in the light. Yellow and crooked. The rest of his face is covered under the blood soaked fabric of his mask. A small mercy, she thinks.

But the worst is his eyes. 

Once black, midnight grey, is now filmed over. Milky. And the other—

Something moves in the cherryred chasm. A long, thin black line slinks out of the gaping hole. Another. Another. From the rotten socket, a large spider emerges, crawling over the craggy pieces of his broken nose, making his decomposing body her home. 

She whimpers as the bile surges up, swallowing it down when the blue skin of his mouth peel back in a horrifying grin—

Something white falls from the corner of his eye, rolling down the slick, damp skin of his oily face in a mockery of a teardrop, the image glueing to the bone deep remorse that coils like a noose around her neck. Tighter, tighter. 

His tongue lulls out. Cold, slimy, when it flickers over the trembling ridge of her jaw. Fingers digging into her skin, stealing the warmth from her flesh. The air from her lungs. 

He'll have her like this, she knows. Always does when he gets in these moods—the kind that makes him touch her more, sink boney fingers beneath the hem of her pants, and cooing in her ear about how much he wants to eat her alive. Buzzing with some strange, electric energy. She can't run. Can't scream. 

Going to the police isn't an option when she buried a body under loose rocks and sticks. Hit and run. Vehicular manslaughter. Life over in a blink—

No. No—

She just has to wait, she thinks, her eyes slipping shut as his rancid breath curdled over the tears on her cheeks. Wait until his body rots all the way. 

Until he's nothing but bones—

Only then will this ghost finally leave her alone. 

[rogueshadow1124]

~WHEN YOU FULL NAME THEM~

[THE BATFAMILY SERIES]

Summary: you full name the batboys when they do something wrong.

*text chatfic*

Warnings: none.

(Age ups; dick-28, Jason-25, Tim-19, Damian-15)

[girl-named-matty]

HL characters react to you getting flowers from someone else - Modern AU

Receiving flowers that weren't from them. Tags: Fluff, hints at jealousy, girlfriend is used to refer to the reader twice (can be swapped out for "lover" to make it gn), y/n is used once. Parings: Sebastian x reader, Ominis x reader, Garreth x reader, Leander x reader, Amit x reader, Natty x reader, Imelda x reader, Poppy x reader ...

Hellooo everyone 👀. As you can probably tell, I am getting into some new content. with this modern texting AU! Lmk what you guy's think of this and if you would like to see more content like this!! ..

I hope you all enjoyed ❤️

[orv-random-quotes]

day 24

Han Sooyoung: The darkest dark, the most legendary tale, greatest Dragon among them all, the blessing of the Black Flame Dragon shall accompany this bod-- Screw this shit! Tou're doing this deliberately, aren't you? I'm not doing this anymore!

[Constellation, 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon', cackles and says that's enough.]

[youknowwhoiamassbutt]

Okay, I may be jumping the gun a little bit. But I am almost done with a longer story set in an angels and demons au, where Jack and Hiccup are Jamie's guardian angel and guardian demon. I've made some art for this longer version which I'm excited to share but can't yet for spoiler reasons, but I wanted to give my Hijack shippers a tiny, tiny taste of what's to come.

For context, God is narrating the longer story.

There are no words to describe what they meant to each other, only the feeling of calm when they convened after a long day, the sense of safety when they confronted challenges united, the breathless wonder of seeing each other excel.  How does one encapsulate the endless experiences of an eternal love that has spanned the lifetime of a planet, and will continue until the end of time?  How does one express gratitude for a connection unconstrained from the limitations of mortal emotions?  I wish I had the words to describe this relationship to you, but there is nothing comparable within the human experience.

[netscapenavigator-official]

Hey, so here’s a fun accessibility thing I just learned. If you use the “Speak Selection” option (or a screen reader) on iOS, you can teach it to pronounce things correctly. Go to

Settings -> Accessibility -> Spoken Content -> Pronunciations

and you can set custom pronunciations for any word the screen reader voice doesn’t pronounce right. I use the iOS “Speak” button in the Copy/Paste menu a lot to check for typos and generally make sure my grammar is compatible with text-to-speech programs, so occasionally I stumble across a word that the Siri Voice just butchers. Now I can correct it, and that’s pretty neat!

[yeetacai]

In my free time, I've made some silly art of the whole Tumblr CEO trans rights debacle. Was trying to decide if I wanted to share it or not because I am sort of attached to my account and beloved mutuals. Would rather my account not be banned. But, I guess that just goes to show that anti-trans sentiment silences free speech. Anyway...

Man Door Hand Hook Car Hammer Explosion Matt

Trans Rights and Trans Solidarity 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍⚧️

For this Perler piece, I used @auratale hammer car design and put it into a Pixel-Bead Converter.

I hated how it looked when I ironed it, so I put that bad boi into the oven and melted it into a puddle.

Anyway,

TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

Here is a site that tracks Anti-Trans bills throughout the United States. This site is FILLED with good info about active bills that have been introduced both nationwide and by state. Go take a look and see what's out there. Knowledge is power.

Get involved in your local trans support groups. Or, if that's not your type of activism, accepting and being their for your trans friends, relatives, neighbors, etc. goes a long way.

It's all of us, or none of us.

Take care! <3

[cacodaemonia]

I've seen a lot of people panicking, getting really angry, and sharing blatant misinformation about this upcoming lore.fm app, so I wanted to share this update I found from the creator.

I'm not defending it because I haven't seen exactly how it works yet, but from what I can tell, it's similar to a desktop program such as Calibre, which is what I (and many other people) often use for text-to-speech to read fics.

Calibre downloads the fic (just like ANYONE can download fics from AO3, mind you) into the computer from a URL provided by the user, and reads it from that file with the wonky robotic voice. I don't know if the lore.fm app even downloads the pages users provide for it to read, or if it just accesses them on a case-by-case basis, but I suspect it's the latter because otherwise, they would need to pay for a LOT of cloud storage.

Maybe the app is totally shady, but it could also be an attempt to make an accessibility tool for mobile screen reading that doesn't suck. The project definitely seems clumsily-executed, and they should really be providing more information beyond their TOS, privacy policy, and tiktok videos, but that doesn't automatically make them nefarious. It's also unclear to me if they are simply 'marketing' this as a better way to listen to fics that haven't been podficced, or if it can be used on any website, but I think it's the latter? I don't have a tiktok account and I don't feel like sifting through a bunch of videos, so. 🤷

Anyway, before you send them angry emails or messages on social media or share rumors, please consider looking into this on your own rather than relying on wild speculation.

Oh, and here's a reddit post from someone who emailed @ao3org and got a reply from them regarding the legality.

EDIT: looks like the app is shutting down. I'm still not sure what their goal was, exactly. Such a weird situation.

[chicago-geniza]

I am going to be so powerful once I do the PT that makes me able to read more than a few pages at a time without getting an eye strain migraine

[fleshandbonez]

❝THE HANGING TREE!❞

Pairing:Erwin Smith x afab!oc

Chapter: Prologue

Warnings: implicitly implied cannibalism, mentions of death(s).

Word counts: 693 words

Three Years Before the First Hunger Games

Dark, cold, dirty– full of debris from the war that took over the land of Paradis.

Everything is in shambles, no proper home, no source of food, the snow covering the entire place–everywhere one would look.

It's silent as much as it's freezing in the streets of Mitras, Wall Sina. Out in the middle of the remnants of war, are two young children walking aimlessly on the dirt road.

A little girl—no older than 11 with shoulder-length dark brown hair that they often kept tied up in an unkempt high ponytail with bangs parted down the middle.

And a little boy, what seems to be at the age of 8 with blond hair kept neatly parted on the left side.

snap.

A loud snap of wood under a foot rang up the street, turning their attention to the sound with a mix of fear and confusion, the two were met with a rather gruesome sight.

A man— heavily bloody and limping but what's odd is not that he's covered in blood because he's hurt. It looks more like he had done the hurting. He looks feral, absolutely bonkers with a bloody piece of metal in hand.

With one trembling glance from each other, the two broke into a sprint. In a second, the man run after them —albeit stumbling several times.

“ Run! Erwin! Run!” shouted the little girl.

And run he shall, turning towards the corner leading to the alleyways.

“ Come on Hange! ” the blonde boy yells, turning to his older cousin who's running after him. Hearts race fast and breathe heavily when they meet with a wall, blocking their means of escape.

“ Oh no!” yells the brunette in panic. The man is just on their heel and there's nowhere to climb nor to hide.

Not a second later, the deranged man stands a few feet away from the poor frightened youngsters. Backs against the bitterly cold cement, the two expect the worst.

Closing their eyes, and gripping each other hands— accepting that maybe, this is the end.

Not really, not the end.

A loud honk of a car took their attention. Driving across the street facing the alley where they stood. A black car ran passed, well not quite, it ran over the lunatic that was running after the scared juveniles.

Silence took over the place after the body of the man fell down the snowy pavement and the car went along its merry way.

Too stunned to even comprehend what had happened, Erwin and Hange slid down the wall—knees too weak to hold them up.

“ What was that?” Erwin muttered, staring at the now corpse of their supposed killer.

“ I don't know.”

“ Why do you think he does that? Why does he kill so gruesomely?” urged the blue-eyed boy.

“ He was hungry. So hungry, he lost it,” uttered Hange, rubbing her hands together to produce heat.

“ Would we end up like that?”

His question was met with silence and even then, he knew the answer.

Taking a few minutes to collect themselves and the rations and food that can fill their stomach—for the most part, they manage to regain their composure and start their trek back to their home, at least what was left of it.

“ I wonder who owns that car,” Hange said, remembering the vehicle that—in a way, saved them.

“ Must be someone of position here in the capitol if they can just run over someone and not as much as a glance. ” she continues.

Shrugging, Erwin focused on getting back to the house for warmth and safety.

Upon arriving, they're met with their grandmother's forlorn expression.

“ Your father is dead, Erwin. It was a rebel they say. A trap out in the forest in 12. ” their grandmother said and handed over a small metal object to the young blonde.

“ It's up to us now to make him proud.”

Looking up at the living room's wall where a stained glass portrait of a blonde man with a commanding demeanor, resembling the ocean-eyed child proudly standing in the room with a determined expression.

masterlist | next | previous

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Jeeves novels drinking game is you take a shot every time Bertie makes a point of demonstrating that he won that Scripture Knowledge Prize fair and square

[acidbodywoman]

is there a masterlist of everyone that's in resiannie's lab. i want one. i think we should all have a groupchat.

and there should be an in-character one that they all make without annie in it as well.

[genshinpng]

Gaming - Character site profile art and splash art