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the BlindBitcoiner
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Exploring the interface between those of us disbilities and the new digital world. Especially with regards to the new Bitcoin standard and related topics.

I know of a couple of fellow students at braille Institute who prefer the interface of instagram. Does anyone know if there is a instragram like nostr client for IOS? That might help grow the nostr ecosystem. Just a thought.

Has anoyone else found that they can’t coppy their nostr pub to twitter anymore or is it just me and possibly a voiceover issue? I would appreciate it if someone would let me know so I can hopefully get more nostr followers from twitter.

Replying to Avatar Guy Swann

A short story:

So I've been trying to get a lot of renovations and work done on the house and trying to finish the basement. I've recently gotten an estimate for putting a fence around the yard for the dogs.

It was a little more than I hoped but I had intended to just move forward, but they wanted a significant deposit immediately to get started. This immediately ran me into the headache of going from Bitcoin to USD in a quick and inexpensive manner.

This was also while ACH transfers that I've done to move the dollars to Fold (no way I'm spending thousands and not getting sats back on it), are suddenly taking 3x as long. A problem that started when SVB blew up.

After realizing that this was going to take a 2% fee on CashApp to sell, an ACH to my bank, then another ACH to my Fold, I decided to give a pitch for them to save me all those steps and just accept Bitcoin directly with the 1% fee using OpenNode.

The guy I was working with was interested and on board with my argument, but the owner refused despite the fact that it would obviously save them money and mean I could pay the deposit in 10 minutes time with no selling fee at all.

At this point I decided I was going to do something, especially with these sorts of jobs that involve large transfers which are a huge pain in dollars. I was just going to take the time to find someone who would accept Bitcoin.

I politely declined to do business with them. My response:

"Thanks man, appreciate the reply. I'm gonna look for other contractors here for a bit because I'd rather not build a relationship with a company that makes me have to revert to using a banking system that I literally could not despise more, or trust any less."

"I may get back in touch with you in a few weeks if there seems no other good option. No hard feelings, I do appreciate you taking this to the owner."

I added some choice words about the banking system for flair. 😆

The worker I was chatting with immediately agreed and then we started a short back and forth about how corrupt the banks were, why Bitcoin (of course he said crypto, lol) was the future, and HE brought up how the Fed was going to push a CBDC.

"Same. The more we use Bitcoin, the more irrelevant their attempt to centralize it is.

If the day comes that they push a CBDC on us, I'll officially be refusing to do business with anyone who doesn't accept Bitcoin, because I'm not touching that crap."

He responded with "Agreed!"

... that's where we left it.

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I just got a text message tonight from the guy. He said the owner is willing to work with #Bitcoin if I hadn't found someone else yet.

I think it's time that I will start pitching the case for Bitcoin, in short and sweet bullet points, with every company I work with — & where it feels like it makes sense, I'm going to refuse to do business with anyone who doesn't accept Bitcoin.

We have weight in the market. We need to be the intransigent minority. Bitcoin won't save the economy if no one knows how to use it, or is too afraid and too panicked to try something new when the shit hits the fan. The time to push for integration is now.

"When did Noah build the ark? *Before* the storm... before the storm."

— Spy Game

WOW! That took a lot of courage and I’m glad someone is doing that. I don’t honestly think I could do that at this point in my. Bitcoin journey.

Guy Swann in one of his bitcoin audable episodes made a rather interesting suggestion. This suggested idea is that instead of migrating AI to one gigantic centralized monster. We should strive to have billions of little AIs competing with each other. This makes sense as many useful assistive technologies for the blind already use AI. So the goal should be in my humble opinion is to keep. AI on humanity’s side. and Guys suggestion may be the way to do it.

Somethig that most people especially developers might realize is the a large majority of people with sustantial vision loss including those who are legally blind are senior. In fact the average age of students of Braille Institute of Southern California are seniors. I believe is something like 70 years old. That means many are not going to be as tech savvy as younger people. Just something to keep in mind.

I have another question how do you repost something you want to share on Damus? It that what the broadcast button in the share menu is for?

I would like to know gowever how or if it is possible to create a custom lightning address. This whole lightning address thing is quite new to me. So I hope to learn enough to be able to explain it if that should become needed.

A few days ago a learned that someone had asked if I had technical problems with setting up zaps. It looks like at this point not. I have a believe set up a lightning address. I would appreciate any feedback letting me know if in fact I have correctly set up to receive zaps. Thanks in advance.

Wow that sounds like a real challenge. I would be happy to have some sort of pdf that tells me what each button on the damus app does so I don’t feel like a 2 year old just pressing butttons and seeing what happens and hoping I don’t do something seriously wroing. this sadly a methood I have had to use on many apps I have encountered.

At this point I don’t know about a technical obsticle. But I just plain don’t know how to do add a lightning wallet for zaps. Maybe someone can teach this 55 year old dog a new trick.

Since i’m not a coder iI’m not certain how things work under the hood but what I ususally do is iether swipe to the left or right or if using a bluetooth enabled typing keyboard I use the arrow keys. Most upps I have noticed have at least one or two usually more unlabeded buttons. So what I hear is most often button or sometimes button unlabed when I encounter those. I have never encountered buttons like what you have on the babs portion of the app that has graphics called out. so I don’t know what the graphics sybmbolize. Let me know if this feedback is of any use.

I really appriciate that the pictures were audio described when I went to upload a picutre. It appears that this feature at least is voicover campatible. way to go Damus.

I have to say I lke the fact that one can now upload or take a pic and put on one’s Damus profile. That is a very good improvement.

Can someone please describe how I can manually search for someone if I have their public key? I do not know where to search for new people to follow using the Damus client. Thanks in advanced.

The one other thing that I have found rather different wit the interface is that the tabs on the buttom of the home screenwhile voiceover still doesn’t say any words. It does describe some pics. For example the tab just right of the add button says night skey. What does that mean. I wish that there was some sort of legend for those icons that voiceover describes so I can know what they mean. The other buttons in the middle. Area are just saying button,

I must say that the more I think about it themore I’m convinced that once a client is voiceover friendly it won’t take too much effort to convince many blind and visually impaired people that nostr is a good choice. I think more. People will get nostr than they currently can get bitcoin.

To thise who ae develoing damus I would like to say that so far my biggest issue is that many of the buttons are not labeled. GUI is fine when you can see but it is useless for people like myself who are totally blind. Please add texts so that Voiceover can tell me what the buttons are for. Thank you in advanced. Voiceover is the built in screen reader on Apple devices. This can be found in settings then click accessability. then you will be able to get an idea of how frustrating it can be to hear button button most of the time.

Hello world this is a test post. I’m totally blind and I am trying at Damus and seeing if blind and visually impaired people like myself can use this first NOSTR client for IOS devices.