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Multi-dimensional information processing with Emacs and Emacspeak: a blind man's perspective

Arkadiusz (Nuno) - https://swietnicki.dev

The following image shows where the talk is in the schedule for Sat 2026-12-12. Solid lines show talks with Q&A via BigBlueButton. Dashed lines show talks with Q&A via IRC or Etherpad.

Schedule for SaturdaySaturdaySat 9:00- 9:10 Saturday opening remarkssat-openSat 9:10- 9:30 The Emacs Planning Habits of a Questionably Effective Person: My 40-year journey of planning with Emacs, Org Mode, paper journals, etc.planningSat 9:50-10:10 Emacslisten: Controlling Emacs by voicelistenSat 10:30-11:00 Multi-dimensional information processing with Emacs and Emacspeak: a blind man's perspectiveemacspeakSat 11:10-11:30 ltx-talk: Accessible presentations with ox-beamerltx-talkSat 1:00- 1:20 Plots with ROOTs and SHAPEs: Resilient data visualization with Emacs, Org and gnuplotplotsSat 1:40- 2:00 Personal task management under stress (with Org mode)tasksSat 2:20- 2:30 How I solved Org Mode's biggest mobile and collaboration problemsmobileSat 2:50- 3:10 Hyperbole, My Dear WatsonhyperboleSat 3:30- 3:50 Hyperbole Koutliner: The Best Autonumbered, Hyperlinking Outliner for EmacskoutlinerSat 4:10- 4:30 Close the writing accountability gap with EmacswritingSat 4:50- 5:00 Saturday closing remarks / open sessionsat-closeSat 10:30-11:30 [Panel] Improving the Emacs Community: Onboarding, Participation, and GrowthcommunitySat 1:00- 1:15 Emacs as my portable user space across operating platformsportableSat 1:35- 1:55 Emacs everywhere: A fun romp through esoteric operating systemsosSat 2:15- 2:25 My Space Cadet Deck - an Android Stream Deck replacement with deep Emacs integrationcadetSat 2:45- 3:00 El Remoto: browse any GitHub repos without cloning themremotoSat 3:20- 3:40 æmacs: having a hoot with a guile emacsguileSat 4:00- 4:20 Plain text presentations in GNU Emacs with ffsffs9 AM EST10 AM EST11 AM EST12 PM EST1 PM EST2 PM EST3 PM EST4 PM EST5 PM EST

Format: 30-min talk ; Q&A: IRC https://chat.emacsconf.org/?join=emacsconf
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-emacspeak
Discuss on IRC: #emacsconf
Status: Waiting for video from speaker

Times in different time zones:
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~10:30 AM - 11:00 AM EST (US/Eastern)
which is the same as:
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~9:30 AM - 10:00 AM CST (US/Central)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~8:30 AM - 9:00 AM MST (US/Mountain)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~7:30 AM - 8:00 AM PST (US/Pacific)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~3:30 PM - 4:00 PM UTC
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~4:30 PM - 5:00 PM CET (Europe/Paris)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~5:30 PM - 6:00 PM EET (Europe/Athens)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~9:00 PM - 9:30 PM IST (Asia/Kolkata)
Saturday, Dec 12 2026, ~11:30 PM - 12:00 AM +08 (Asia/Singapore)
Sunday, Dec 13 2026, ~12:30 AM - 1:00 AM JST (Asia/Tokyo)
Find out how to watch and participate

Description

Emacs is a tool that is extremely suitable to be operated by a fully blind person. In this talk I would like to demonstrate one of its strongest features, which is audio font locking. Using this mechanism the user can get information in two dimensions, that is: "Information snippet" as well as its metadata, carried by the font. In this talk, I would like to briefly compare how blind people retrieve information versus how the sighted do it, then briefly compare Emacs to other traditional tools. At the end I am going to showcase a couple of practical points: messages management with Telega, file navigation with Dired and retrieving contact data with BBDB, all while using only speech and sounds.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org

Back to the talks Previous by time: Emacslisten: Controlling Emacs by voice Next by time: [Panel] Improving the Emacs Community: Onboarding, Participation, and Growth Track: General - Watch