Ancestors

Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 21:38

So, I've found a french distributor of products from the adafruit company.

This is great, right? Means I can buy them straight from a store in france and wait less before getting them.

But also, adafruit is one of those companies that make hardware and 99% of the things they make come with unsoldered headers. To their credit, they mention this in the description, so that means not making the mistake of buying a product that's got no headers on it.

Adafruit is proud to be a business owned by a woman. But also they don't care much for accessibility, it looks like.

Want to register on the forum to get support? Gotta solve a captcha where you get asked for example the color bands of a group of resistors. You also can't ask them to provide support via email instead given the inaccessibility of their forum. They also refuse to solder headers when you ask, should you find a way to ask.

[#]accessibility #blind #electronic #fail

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Toot

Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 21:43

So honestly, what am I to do? There's a couple solution here.

I can move on and just find an alternative product from some other companies that would have pins on it, but it's not always possible to find something like that. I could also go and bother one of my neighbors, totally spontaneously, to ask them if they could solder for me. Like I would seriously consider doing that. Nop, no way. I'm not sociable, I don't know my neighbors, ergo no chance I'm randomly going up one day and asking.

The third option I now have is this french distributor, who's willing to solder headers on items, as a curtesy aka free of charge, when their workload isn't too full. And that is really, really good.

I can ask them if they could do this first and they will say yes. But the first time they did soldering for me, the headers were not straight in. The pins themselves were straight no problem. But the bit of plastic was not.

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Descendants

Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 21:49

So, I tried to make it nice. I told them that I really appreciate the service they are offering free of charge when their workload allows it, because it's true. Without them, I couldn't have used an esp-01 module on a breadboard.

I even used chat gpt to make the wording as gentle as possible so they wouldn't take offense.

And yet, I feel as if this was not successful. Their latest email reminds me that this is on a best effort basis and they don't generally do that sort of thing.

So it's kind of bitter now, I guess? It's both nice to have, and not nice, because something badly soldered and potentially unusable is as bad as something unsoldered, to me.

I absolutely don't wish to be perceived as entitled, but I can't help but think this is only temporary and I won't get away with this curtesy each time.

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Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 21:54

And the fact most people online, both on irc and discord tell me to just go and see a random neighbor of mine and ask if they can solder connectors for me, by now has become the routine song I'm used to.

It's like for them it just makes sense to go and bother someone they don't know to ask for a service. Noone is really thinking about my disabilities. I can't go around my residency just waiting for people to pass me by and ask at random "hey, can you please solder something for me?"

This is the kind of response I get every time, and it's getting old.

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Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 21:59

Then there are also the outright ableist ones who act like blind people, especially fully blind people, can't do electronics, just because that doesn't fit in their narrow view of the world.

It's true, I can't do electronics on my own. But if I'm guided by someone sighted, I can make a pretty good map of a circuit on my breadboard, connect wires to and from the various components just like sighted folks can. I might be slower, and make more mistakes, but I can do it.

There's a lot of folks who I tell this to who won't believe me. They think for some reason I'm making up my blindness, or making up the fact I can do electronics.

I'm tired of having to fight at every single thing I try in my life.

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Written by D.Hamlin.Music on 2024-08-19 at 22:35

@xogium Sounds like you need to find better discord servers, and yeah people suck

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Written by zerbp on 2024-08-20 at 14:55

@xogium

This neighbour thing really annoys me like soldering is not easy and you can't ask random people to do it for you

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Written by zerbp on 2024-08-20 at 14:53

@xogium

Most of the time it is not a problem if the headers are soldered at an angle no harm if you bend them afterwards

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Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-20 at 14:56

@zerbp I'm aware of this, but it's one more stressful thing to deal with for me. I'm already struggling to figure out why something just won't fit in my breadboard, so having to then figure out which way to bend the pins, did I bend that one too far, too little?

That was exhausting enough to do with the 8 pins adapter board to fit the esp-01 module, I'm not willing to think about what it would be like to figure out all the pins exposed on adafruit id 5400 (esp32 feather v2).

I know it isn't a big deal for the hardware itself, but it is a big deal for my poor brain to take in, is what I meant.

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Written by zerbp on 2024-08-20 at 15:00

@xogium

But soldering it so straight it will go in without trouble is really hard. I think I understand why it is stressful for you. Have you checked if there is a hacker space near by maybe there is better help for you

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Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-20 at 15:07

@zerbp Yeah. Unfortunately there appears to be none. The closest I got is a fablab type of thing, and they have no soldering equipment there as it's not their focus.

The nearest hackerspace to me would be at least a few hours away in car.

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Written by Jeffrey D. Stark on 2024-08-19 at 21:57

@xogium in many cities the universities have maker spaces that will do this type of thing for you... I know here in ottawa there are 2 universities that I could easily get a student to do it for me with a quick request...

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Written by Casey Reeves on 2024-08-19 at 22:00

@jstark Yeah... Cities being the key word here. I'm in a somewhat small town of about 15000 people. The nearest hackerspace is several hours away in car. Which then leads me back in circle to the, just go and ask a random neighbor of yours for help.

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Written by Jeffrey D. Stark on 2024-08-19 at 22:20

@xogium yes, it's sometimes... location location location

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Written by Jeffrey D. Stark on 2024-08-19 at 22:20

@xogium there might be a hobbyist or other type group in the area ?

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