willwa.de
Will Wade
@willwa.de
34 followers 22 following 59 posts
AAC, Assistive Tech geek. Occupational therapist.
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · 10d
Oh! Of course you can make a headmouse from apples headphone range! Genius developer.apple.com/documenta… (from HN)
CMHeadphoneMotionManager | Apple Developer Documentation
An object that starts and manages headphone motion services.
developer.apple.com
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · 22d
I’m doing a ton of work on languages at the moment. This article is a good read why we don’t have diacritics in the English language. Love it.

"After the Conquest, French took its place for centuries … But the period of French dominance left it... https://willwa.de/2025/09/17/im-doing-a-ton-of.html
Why English doesn’t use accents
And why French is full of them
www.deadlanguagesociety.com
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · 23d
Winning the Access Award for Echo: https://willwa.de/2025/09/16/winning-the-access-award-for.html
A man is smiling while holding a clear award and a winner certificate for the Access Award from 2023. Three people in formal attire are on a stage with a starry backdrop, and one is speaking at a clear podium.
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Aug 23
Made a little tool to print alphabets (in alphabetical order, frequency, uppercase or lowercase) in a wide range of languages - and then keyboards for each of these languages.. for python or nodejs

github.com/willwade/…
GitHub - willwade/WorldAlphabets: A python and node tool to get alphabets of the world: uppercase, lowercase, alphabetical and frequency order
A python and node tool to get alphabets of the world: uppercase, lowercase, alphabetical and frequency order - willwade/WorldAlphabets
github.com
Reposted by Will Wade
simonwillison.net
Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · Jul 6
Just found out that George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, written around 1948, describes a "versificator" that composes the words for songs "entirely by mechanicsl means" simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/6/n...
A quote from Nineteen Eighty-Four
There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except ...
simonwillison.net
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Jun 28
I woke up this morning to see a ginger cat looking at me. Now I’m sure many of you are thinking “ ah that’s nice. you’ve got a new cat!” I haven’t got a cat. I have no idea how this cat got in my house.
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Jun 25
Correcting Text in AAC (or a failed computer scientist figures out how to correct text): https://willwa.de/2025/06/25/correcting-text-in-aac-or.html

A very light hearted - non-research friendly exploration of our model generation process.
Correct-A-Sentence/helper-scripts at main · AceCentre/Correct-A-Sentence
A really simple REST API to take a string which may have no spaces in it, find the word segments, correct it and then capitlaise it correctly - AceCentre/Correct-A-Sentence
github.com
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · May 27
AI doesnt hallucinate. Its not a bloody person. Lets be clear - it get its wrong. If we want to anthropomorphise our technology we could say “Poor AI it got confused” or “That shit. It just lied”. But no. Its a statistical inference machine. It got it wrong.
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · May 27
AI doesnt hallucinate. Its not a bloody person. Lets be clear - it get its wrong. If we want to anthropomorphise our technology we could say “Poor AI it got confused” or “That shit. It just lied”. But no. Its a statistical inference machine. It got it wrong.
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · May 27
Owls in Towels is what you need. Not AI. owlsintowels.org
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · May 6
So I went to use sharedrop.io WTF? Limewire.. Didnt that die back in the 90’s - so fine a fine OSS bit of web has been gobbled - but why does a file sharing system need a bloody “Create with AI” button? Like seriously. How to ruin a good bit of software. Use pairdrop.net instead I say..
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · May 5
Donnie 2 Dolls. The best thing I’ve read today.
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Apr 18
“I just want to look at my bank balance and say fuck it. I’ll buy a Dyson”
jonathanpienews.bsky.social
Jonathan Pie @jonathanpienews.bsky.social · Apr 7
Call Jonathan Pie Series 2: Pie talks about billionaires.

Available on @BBCSounds - and wherever you get your podcasts. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand...
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Mar 26
Does anyone know how I submit a bug report to Microsoft Azure Team on their translation tool? I keep coming across problems - like Eng->Pashto - all strings are “Afghanistan National Cricket team”. Is nobody checking these lang pairs? Seen similar problems in Kurdish and other langs..
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Feb 21
Who the hell would be crazy enough to buy this? Shaking hands with my friends? How did that reach the top of the pile for v1 must have features? I’m more concerned that this would “Memorizes your kitchen inventory..”.. “Memorizes your clean home layout”. Go on, cyber overlords. Take everything.
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Feb 18
Direnv - and reinventing the wheel with envloader: https://willwa.de/2025/02/18/direnv-and-reinventing-the-wheel.html
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Feb 17
So we built this aacprocessors library. Intention was to read and manipulate any AAC software. Its not ideal but just made a new method just for the grid right now.
def replace_cell_with_xml(
self,
gridset_path: str,
... https://willwa.de/2025/02/17/so-we-built-this-aacprocessors.html
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Feb 16
If anyone out there is a python dev - and wanting TTS support in theri code - I’d love someone to help roadtest this python library. I think its probably the most extensive TTS wrapper accessing pretty much every online and offline TTS engi... https://willwa.de/2025/02/16/if-anyone-out-there-is.html
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Jan 28
Adam did this marvellous reprint of the poppy mini trackball for a client needing a chin controlled trackball. This modification stops it falling out. It’s a win as the designs are all open source. @[email protected]

ploopy.co
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Jan 20
Want to access Panels editor in Mac? Access it here
/System/Library/Input Methods/Assistive Control.app/Contents/Resources/Panel Editor.app

Pin it to your dock (saves you opening in rather wierd way via system settings)
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Dec 16
Been working with Sherpa-Onnx TTS a lot over the last year. It’s a nice project to make a onnx runtime for lots of different languages and interfaces. Just whipped together a Gradio demo to show all the voices and hear them - most notably MMS Onnx models Sherpa-Onnx Demo
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Oct 5
Great episode on TTS on the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/e…
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willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Aug 21
Monkey Management : https://willwa.de/2024/04/15/monkey-management.html
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Aug 21
From Ask for Advice, Not Permission

"The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a ... https://willwa.de/2024/08/18/ask-for-advice.html
willwa.de
Will Wade @willwa.de · Jul 31
Published our py3-tts-wrapper python library finally this week. Should power a lot of funky things. Supports all the major TTS engines online and new ones offline. Use alongside this app to see what voices are available (API here)