Keep monitoring Twitter etc for developments, because it won't be inaccessible forever. Jonathan Mosen Mosen Consulting Blindness technology eBooks, tutorials and training http://Mosen.org
On 27/08/2014, at 8:42 pm, Krister Ekstrom <kris...@kristersplace.com> wrote: > Yep, that sounds like just what i would need if it wasn't for the fact that > sighted assistance is nowhere to be found for me. I have home help, but their > time is very, very limited since they have others to visit, so i guess the > search continues. Qnap anyone? > /Krister > >> 27 aug 2014 kl. 02:02 skrev Jonathan Mosen <jmo...@mosen.org>: >> >> Hi Krister, if you have access to sighted assistance for the initial set-up, >> I can recommend the Synology products highly. Their iOS apps are wonderful. >> So for day to day use, it's really good. Administration is right now a >> dreadful business, unless you don't mind the command line. I will paste >> below a post from my blog at: >> http://mosen.org/index.php/my-new-synology-nas-great-product-nasty-accessibility/ >> While I am constrained in what I can say, I will say that since this post >> was published, I have had extremely productive dialogue with Synology and I >> am confident the access issues are temporary. >> My new Synology NAS. Great product, NASty accessibility >> 30/05/2014 by Jonathan Mosen >> A chance remark by a friend of mine a few weeks ago saw me embarking on >> quite a journey. He asked me if I had one of the Synology NAS (network >> attached storage) devices. When I indicated that not only did I not have >> one, but I wasn't familiar with that manufacturer, he launched into quite a >> soliloquy about how incredible they were, and how having one was like having >> your own Linux-based server in your house. My friend Gordon knows his tech, >> so I decided to bring myself up to speed. >> Coincidentally, we had this conversation just as the idea of the Mosen >> Channel was crystallising. I've kept a lot of my terrestrial and Internet >> radio shows over the years, mainly so I can pass them on to subsequent >> generations of my family. As I was going through the extensive archives, I >> was reminded about a glaring flaw in my backup strategy. I take backing up >> very seriously, but one area where my approach fell short was that there was >> no off-site backup. If my main network drive failed, I have copies of my >> irreplaceable data in other locations, but all those locations were in my >> house. Having a backup elsewhere would guard against data loss in the case >> of some sort of disaster. I'm not so concerned with music I could get again, >> but it's the personal mementos, not just radio stuff but home recordings of >> my kids, that I really care about. >> When researching this question, I finally found a few back-up services that >> would allow you to back up network attached storage to the cloud. Not many >> do, and quite a few that do charge a premium for the feature. These services >> varied widely in their accessibility, and I didn't like having the >> application running in the background all the time. Some of them impacted >> quite markedly on system performance. They also demonstrated just how easy >> it was for the NAS I was using, the Western Digital MyBook Live, to get >> bogged down. The processor in it is on the old side now, and if a couple of >> Time Machine backups and another cloud backup package were writing to the >> drive, it was affecting data access. >> The Synology Disk Station products are powered by their own operating >> system, Disk Station Manager (DSM for short). When I started to research the >> feature set of DSM, I was delighted to learn that by installing a number of >> packages, which effectively are apps for the OS, Synology Disk Stations can >> be backed up to a number of cloud services, including Amazon Glacier. >> Glacier is an extremely cheap form of mass-storage, designed for occasional >> retrieval, so it's ideal for making a cheap backup of last resort. >> I was impressed to read glowing reviews of Synology Disk Stations by almost >> everybody. Many IT people I trust said Synology make the best NAS products >> on the market, period. >> Looking at the wide range of models of Disk Station available, it reminded >> me a bit of Nokia's Symbian days. There are quite a few models with subtle >> differences and models full of numbers and letters. Synology offers a handy >> feature on their site where you can indicate what features are important to >> you, and you get a narrowed down list of products based on your >> specifications. >> Having done some reading, I placed my order for my first Synology product >> last week, and promptly cancelled it. My usual rule of thumb is that after >> researching a product range and determining what I'll buy, I make the >> purchase online, and busy myself reading the user guide and doing whatever >> research I can until the product arrives. >> Right after placing the order, I stumbled upon a very helpful feature on the >> Synology website. You can actually log in to one of their NAS devices, and >> experience the user interface for yourself. >> To do this, visit http://demo.synology.com:5000. The username is admin, and >> the password is synology. You're then working in a real drive, with a few of >> the functions disabled for security reasons. >> After logging in, I was confronted with what I can only nicely call the >> significant accessibility challenges of the DSM user interface. With a bit >> of JAWS cursor work and some judicious pressing of Enter on clickable >> elements, quite a bit can be done. It seems to work far better in Firefox >> than it does in IE. However, one of the most significant issues is that >> checkboxes and radio buttons are non-standard, and do not appear to screen >> readers as the controls they are. In practical terms, what this means is >> that you might go into a screen where you have the option to enable a >> feature. The control behaves like a checkbox, but a screen reader will see >> an unlabelled button. You have no way of knowing if that option is checked >> or not, so a lot of trial and error is involved. With a patient sighted >> person's help, you can get a lot more done by using the JAWS features >> allowing you to assign names to buttons and elements on the web. >> When you access the device from Safari in iOS, you get a stripped down, >> different interface, and in some ways it's more friendly for completing some >> tasks without help, using the VoiceOver screen reader built into iOS. So >> that's worth a shot. >> So, much as I liked the feature set of the Synology Disk Stations, I >> cancelled my order to give myself a chance to rethink. >> When I googled the matter of the accessibility problems with the OS, I was >> disappointed to read that Synology had been made well aware of the problems >> screen reader users are having, but to date have done nothing about them. >> This didn't fill me with confidence. >> It is very hard to match the performance and feature set of the Synology >> products, but I was able to try the web UI of a couple of other NAS >> products. They really weren't much better. The Twitter exchanges I've had on >> this topic over the last couple of weeks would suggest there is a serious >> overall problem with access to quality NAS products by screen reader users. >> For those of us using products like this as I am, at home and for my small >> business, it's a bit of an inconvenience and work-arounds of a sort exist. >> More about those in a moment. But the real concern for me is that for blind >> people who are perfectly competent network administrators, it can create >> serious problems when a company they work for deploys these products that >> are inaccessible. It's hard enough for blind people to get jobs as it is, >> without these tough interfaces making it harder. >> After realising that I was unlikely to find anything that did what I wanted >> that would be accessible, I went back and ordered another Synology product, >> the DS214Play. This is a two-bay NAS, and I put a Western Digital Red 4TB >> drive in both bays, running Raid for redundancy. >> I chose the 214Play because it has a good processor speed, ample RAM, and is >> designed for multimedia work. I'll talk more about some of the slick things >> it can do when I look at the accessibility of the iOS apps, but here's a >> comprehensive review of the DS214Play. >> When setting up the NAS, I found the only viable option was to enlist the >> help of one of my kids as a human screen reader. Notwithstanding the >> inaccessibility, the set-up of the drives, the opening of appropriate ports >> of your router for external services such as Telnet, SSH, FTP and more, and >> the installing of various packages to expand the drive's functionality is an >> effortless and friendly experience if you can see the screen. >> The set-up process also takes you through obtaining a quick connect ID. This >> makes it easy to connect your DiskStation via the free mobile apps, and is >> particularly useful if you have a dynamic IP address. For services like FTP, >> you can obtain a free dynamic DNS from Synology. >> You can even use this device to run your own mail server, Drupal, WordPress >> and much more. I wonder if anyone has managed to get Icecast or Shoutcast >> working on it? >> If you're not afraid of getting your hands dirty with the command line, you >> can get a human screen reader to enable Telnet and SSH for you. The drive >> can then be controlled via the command line interface, which of course may >> not be the friendliest thing out there but is 100% accessible. >> You can also create users and groups by carefully putting together a >> tab-delimited text file in Notepad, and running it through the importer in >> DSM. The Synology is a really good FTP server, so if you want to set up an >> FTP server and add people, the text file is a good way to get that job done. >> Most people will want to migrate data from an old NAS or other storage >> device to their new one, and there are a couple of ways of getting this >> done. You can mount both the old and new volume on your computer and copy >> across that way, but a faster way if you have sighted assistance is to use >> File Station, a feature of DSM. File Station lets you mount an external >> drive as a volume on the Synology NAS. What this means is that you can then >> use the web UI to copy all the data from the old volume to the new one. The >> process all takes place in the background. No computer is involved, and if >> both devices are hard-wired to the router with good cabling, it goes like a >> rocket, even while DSM is verifying volumes after the installation of new >> drives. >> Having to depend so much on sighted assistance for a computer task in 2014 >> does not sit well with me in the slightest. But it was a necessary evil >> given that I couldn't find anything accessible to do what I wanted as well >> as the Synology does. Now that I have it set up the way I want, it really is >> impressive. It's very fast, it can do a bunch of intensive tasks without >> breaking a sweat, and as I write this, it's happily backing itself up to >> Amazon Glacier with no discernible impact on anything else I need to do. >> Apart from the peace of mind of having my data backed up to the cloud >> without me having to worry about it, and all the seamless support for >> various ways of accessing content including a virtual private network, I'm >> very impressed with the Synology AudioStation iOS app. This is like a >> super-sized iTunes Match, and indeed I'm now considering not renewing my >> iTunes Match subscription for another year. One of the problems with iTunes >> Match is the paltry 25000 tracks you're allowed to upload to it. This is a >> fraction of my music collection, and it means I need to maintain two iTunes >> libraries, one for iTunes Match and a general one. AudioStation gives me >> access to my entire audio collection, anywhere I have an Internet >> connection. I've now set up the indexing so that not only my music, but also >> the spoken word content I have such as old time radio and audio described >> movies is all available through this app. >> And this is where a feature of the DS214Play comes in very handy. Quite a >> bit of the spoken word audio I have is encoded in OGG Vorbis, which the >> default Music app in iOS doesn't play. The DS214Play has a transcoder built >> in. Behind the scenes, without you needing to even worry about the fact that >> this is going on, the NAS takes an OGG file, re-encodes it on the fly, and >> sends it to the iPhone in MP3 so it can be played. It will also do this with >> a raft of other audio and video formats. Genius! So now that it's set up, I >> can truly play absolutely anything, anywhere, all from my phone. >> When you first install the current version of the AudioStation iOS app, >> there's one accessibility issue that can be fixed. When you flick through >> the list of albums, VoiceOver speaks nothing. This was seriously limiting my >> use of the app, until I discovered that the problem can be fixed by going >> into the app's Settings, and changing the view to "List". Voila, albums now >> speak. >> Some of the buttons are labelled in a bit of a verbose way, but there's >> nothing that prevents use of this remarkable app. This gives you all the >> benefits of the iOS experience, but frees you from the walled garden of >> Apple's limited format support and small iTunes Match size. >> The NAS itself is DLAN and Airplay-aware, so you can, for example, send >> content directly from the NAS to an Apple TV, without having to get your iOS >> device involved at all. AudioStation for iOS really does have that "wow" >> factor. It is brilliant. >> There are similar apps for video, downloading, photos, file management and >> more, and they are all useable. >> In summary, the Synology DS214Play is a welcome addition to our network here >> at home that is quite the game changer. Setting it up is needlessly >> challenging. It occurs to me that there might be a bit of money to be made >> by a coder who could make an accessible GUI wrapper for the command line >> interface. And since most NAS manufacturers offer a command line interface >> with a common feature set, a product like this which takes user input from a >> GUI and sends it to the command line could be used on a wide range of >> drives. If any blind person fancies having a go at this, I'd love to test. >> But I hope we might be able to use this post to somehow start a conversation >> with Synology about solving the accessibility issues once and for all. >> >> Jonathan Mosen >> Mosen Consulting >> Blindness technology eBooks, tutorials and training >> http://Mosen.org >> >> On 26/08/2014, at 6:59 am, Krister Ekstrom <kris...@kristersplace.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi, I'm thinking about switching my NAS from a Readynas that i have now to >>> something else, mainly because i think the web interface of the Readynas is >>> a bit complicated and i never could get the hang of the ITunes server >>> and/or how to make playing songs from the ITunes library that i have on my >>> Nas easy. The latter may just be me not being used to the whole Nas >>> concept. I wonder what people use and what you think about that from an >>> accessibility point of view? I heard of a NAS called Qnap it had among >>> other features some kine of sync that looked a bit like Dropbox and i >>> wonder if their configuration apps are accessible both on the mac an the >>> IOs? Any other recommendations? >>> /Krister >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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