Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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hrddt.com - a site to turn text-based subreddits and posts into audio content (self.Blind)
submitted by [deleted]
Hi!
I recently created https://hrddt.com, a website that could be beneficial for the /r/blind community. It is a website that uses your browser/device's capability of speech synthesis to take subreddits/threads and make them easy to listen to.
Right now it's pretty straightforward. At the minimum, you put in a reddit URL (ex. https://reddit.com/r/blind or just /r/blind for the hot posts or you can use a link for a specific post) in the input for reddit-uri and if you press on the "Play thread" button, you should be good to go. There are some checkboxes and dropdowns that can be used for customization of the recitation such as limiting number of posts/comments, skipping title, post content, parent comments, or upvotes, and changing the voice to whatever is available on your device.
I have some experience with accessible websites and I've mostly satisfied Google's lighthouse accessibility score but I'm sure that there's more improvements to be made.
Some other things to note: I have tested this on Windows and Mac for Chrome and Firefox and have tested on Chrome on Android. As the SpeechSynthesis API is experimental, there may be gotchas here and there. I will try and mitigate them as best as possible when they come up and will appreciate any feedback given.
The point of this post is twofold: first is to let people know that my site exists and second is to get feedback to make this site usable for anyone. I hope that people are able to use this in many circumstances such as listening to threads at work/school or on the go so any kind of word of mouth or mentions on reddit are super appreciated.
Thanks to the mods for letting me post this and hopefully this is useful for the /r/blind community and beyond!
edit: I appreciate the feedback and comments given. I'm glad to have learned something new today. I should've been clearer that this was a personal project that I enjoyed making for myself to be able to passively browse reddit without focusing my attention on it and wanted to share it with a community that I thought may have benefited from the project. Thanks for your time of taking a look at my site!
I recently created https://hrddt.com, a website that could be beneficial for the /r/blind community. It is a website that uses your browser/device's capability of speech synthesis to take subreddits/threads and make them easy to listen to.
Right now it's pretty straightforward. At the minimum, you put in a reddit URL (ex. https://reddit.com/r/blind or just /r/blind for the hot posts or you can use a link for a specific post) in the input for reddit-uri and if you press on the "Play thread" button, you should be good to go. There are some checkboxes and dropdowns that can be used for customization of the recitation such as limiting number of posts/comments, skipping title, post content, parent comments, or upvotes, and changing the voice to whatever is available on your device.
I have some experience with accessible websites and I've mostly satisfied Google's lighthouse accessibility score but I'm sure that there's more improvements to be made.
Some other things to note: I have tested this on Windows and Mac for Chrome and Firefox and have tested on Chrome on Android. As the SpeechSynthesis API is experimental, there may be gotchas here and there. I will try and mitigate them as best as possible when they come up and will appreciate any feedback given.
The point of this post is twofold: first is to let people know that my site exists and second is to get feedback to make this site usable for anyone. I hope that people are able to use this in many circumstances such as listening to threads at work/school or on the go so any kind of word of mouth or mentions on reddit are super appreciated.
Thanks to the mods for letting me post this and hopefully this is useful for the /r/blind community and beyond!
edit: I appreciate the feedback and comments given. I'm glad to have learned something new today. I should've been clearer that this was a personal project that I enjoyed making for myself to be able to passively browse reddit without focusing my attention on it and wanted to share it with a community that I thought may have benefited from the project. Thanks for your time of taking a look at my site!
BenandGracie 10 points 3y ago
I can just use a screen reader for reading Reddit. I don't need a website to read it for me.
p-tarkington -3 points 3y ago
That makes sense and if you're happy with your screen reader for reading Reddit, all the power to you.
I'm not well-versed in the functionalities of screen readers but hrddt is more tightly-knit with reddit's functionality so it might be able to skip over content that you don't care about if you're passively lurking (such as different links and unnecessary text) or just be a faster way to load up a subreddit and go through the posts.
I am not trying to compete with screen readers as I know they're very powerful but this may be a useful tool for other people. After usage, I'd love to take into consideration features/changes that would make it more attractive to use. Either way, I appreciate the feedback and respect your opinion.
I'm not well-versed in the functionalities of screen readers but hrddt is more tightly-knit with reddit's functionality so it might be able to skip over content that you don't care about if you're passively lurking (such as different links and unnecessary text) or just be a faster way to load up a subreddit and go through the posts.
I am not trying to compete with screen readers as I know they're very powerful but this may be a useful tool for other people. After usage, I'd love to take into consideration features/changes that would make it more attractive to use. Either way, I appreciate the feedback and respect your opinion.
Marconius 3 points 3y ago
You've committed one of the most fundamental errors of assistive tech development. You should have researched what tech is already out there for us before spending time and effort creating something that already exists and has for decades. You are not well-versed in the tech or how we use it, so you cannot assert that your site will have benefits over the tech we already have. You also need to follow WCAG 2.1 standards and not just go by what google claims is accessible. You also should have asked the community and done research first, seeing if it is tech we would want and not just assume it's filling a need when there was none in the first place.
p-tarkington 1 points 3y ago
I can see your viewpoint of someone swooping in and claiming to have something great and new that really isn't all that useful. I should've been clearer in my post but this was something I had built for myself to be able to passively browse reddit without focusing my attention on it. I ended up deciding to share it with a community that might've thought it to be interesting. I understand now that it was probably a naive idea and the criticisms are valid. I appreciate the feedback that it isn't an improvement over current flows and I completely accept that. Thanks for the feedback.
Marconius 3 points 3y ago
Uh, you do know that we already have this technology? We use screen readers to interact with web content and text, can customize the speech synthesis, can granularly move the cursor character by character, word by word, line by line, etc., through the content, plus interact with controls and semantic markup and landmarks/regions... I'm not quite sure what your site here will accomplish when I'm already using a screen reader to navigate the text content.
Doporkel 3 points 3y ago
Hello! You may want to check out the sidebar post for sighted visitors making assisted technology:
$1
$1
bradley22 3 points 3y ago
I tried the site.
It read up to the first posters comment and skipped your reply entirely.
As the poster said; I can just use my screen reader, it's faster but having said that, if you ever thought about making a reddit client for windows, i'd check that out.
Old.reddit.com is great but a client where you can use a couple keystrokes to wiz through the posts would be nice.
At the moment; i'd use my screen reader over this as I don't see an advantage to using it, it jumps over upvote and downvote stuff but we have keystrokes to jump all over pages. For example, b and shift b jump you through buttons, h and shift h headings, l and shift l lists and e and shift e for edit boxes (boxes you type in for forms and things.) Oh and the up an down arrows to read line by line.
Even though I won't use it the design is great and works as it's meant to.
Perhaps there's a design subreddit you can post to or something along those lines.
It read up to the first posters comment and skipped your reply entirely.
As the poster said; I can just use my screen reader, it's faster but having said that, if you ever thought about making a reddit client for windows, i'd check that out.
Old.reddit.com is great but a client where you can use a couple keystrokes to wiz through the posts would be nice.
At the moment; i'd use my screen reader over this as I don't see an advantage to using it, it jumps over upvote and downvote stuff but we have keystrokes to jump all over pages. For example, b and shift b jump you through buttons, h and shift h headings, l and shift l lists and e and shift e for edit boxes (boxes you type in for forms and things.) Oh and the up an down arrows to read line by line.
Even though I won't use it the design is great and works as it's meant to.
Perhaps there's a design subreddit you can post to or something along those lines.
CloudyBeep 3 points 3y ago
I'd also like a Windows client.
bradley22 2 points 3y ago
It would be nice, I use old.reddit.com and dystopia.
Marconius 2 points 3y ago
I use BaconReader and it's pretty great.
bradley22 2 points 3y ago
Have you tried dystopia?
If you go to audiogames.net then go to the off topic room, you can find my reddit guide with a link to the testflight link.
If you go to audiogames.net then go to the off topic room, you can find my reddit guide with a link to the testflight link.
p-tarkington 2 points 3y ago
I appreciate the feedback on the using the site.
The comment thing is kind of intended that to be the behavior. My page only reads the parent/most high level comments from a thread. It was initially intended for just personal usage for browsing subreddits such as /r/askreddit where I personally felt like much of the children comments are just fluff.
The Windows client is a great idea and it's something that might be out of my ballpark for now since I think it might be much more complicated to implement than my simple site but hopefully I could look into it in the future or someone else is able to see your comment and see the interest.
The comment thing is kind of intended that to be the behavior. My page only reads the parent/most high level comments from a thread. It was initially intended for just personal usage for browsing subreddits such as /r/askreddit where I personally felt like much of the children comments are just fluff.
The Windows client is a great idea and it's something that might be out of my ballpark for now since I think it might be much more complicated to implement than my simple site but hopefully I could look into it in the future or someone else is able to see your comment and see the interest.
bradley22 1 points 3y ago
Ah ok.
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