-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to gemini.marmaladefoo.com:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini
date: 5-Apr-2021
Greetings to all you fellow travellers of the Geminiverse, especially those with screen readers or assistive technologies.
I've not penned a blog post for a while, but I'm pleased now to give an update on some recent improvements to GemiNaut.
GemiNaut is a user friendly Gemini client for Windows that aims to be very idiomatic and natural on that platform, providing a familiar and attractive user interface.
The two main changes in this version are to support client certificates and to improve accessibility for assistive technologies (such as screen readers).
As an alternative to logging in using cookies that we see on the web (boo hiss!), on the kinder, slower plateau of Gemini, users authenticate using client certificates. Each user can create their own identity via a client certificate, and when they access a site using it, the server will recognise them as a returning visitor.
A fun demonstration of a site using a client certificate is Astrobotany which is a sort of online virtual pet plant garden. You get your own ASCII art plant which you have to return to water from time to time - if you forget, it will eventually wither and die.
Now you can access Astrobotany and other sites requiring a client certificate with GemiNaut. There is a simple menu interface where you can:
Create a new identity/certificate
Activate and deactivate that identity on any site
One of the nicest features of Gemini text format (aka gemtext) is its lack of server side styling, instead serving simple content with a number of basic line types. This means users have a much more coherent experience overall compared to the web. And for users with assistive technologies (such as screen readers) it can be more straightforward for clients to provide an accessible interface.
Compared to the other line types, the least accessible aspect of Gemini is probably the preformatted text region (delimited by ``` line types). Sometimes these are used for ASCII art type pictures, other times for formatted source code, or poetry. They should have a label to describe the content, but sadly too often, this is left out by authors.
If you are using a screen reader, these preformatted areas - particularly when used for ASCII art - can often be a mere jumble of line noise. So users with assistive technologies may wish to skip over or fold these regions. See for example the mailing list thread on this started by Devin Prater:
GemiNaut now provides hidden links to users with assistive technologies to skip over any preformatted region. The link itself also includes any preformatted text label, which authors ought to have provided, to help the user make an informed choice.
Please everyone, don't forget to add a label to your preformatted regions. Especially for ASCII art.
0.8.11, 4-Apr-2021
new feature: generate and use client certificates
accessibility feature: hidden links to skip over preformatted text areas for screen readers
save user settings in persistent folder in profile
fix: require certificates for proxy servers
update jdenticon and toast notification libraries
use SelfCertSharp client certificate library
report expired server certificates
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