PrusaSlicer accessibility development  

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

All PrusaSlicer development related questions should be asked on the Issues section of the project on Github, which is located under the URL that you provided.

You can create an issue with details about the problem and can ask them if they are willing to accept the pull request.

Notice that there is incoming PrusaSlicer 3.0 with some major changes so they may not be eager to merge anything prior that release.

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

Thanks @_kaszpir_. I'll follow up as you suggest.

Is the 3.0 source available? (I can't find it.) Does it typically become available at the time of the release?

Gary

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

I believe it is in private repo, not yet cloned to the public repo, but you should be able to create an issue anyway and ask if they are interested, how to create a PR and so on. 

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

Thanks, will do.

Aside from creating the issue, do you know of any avenues for connecting with other interested parties? I can google around, but any hints would be great.

Gary

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

Not really. I think there may be some related github issues already, though.

Don't forget that under EU law they are required to consider and if possible to make provision for accessibility issues; as such an approach offering collaboration or specialised user testing might be welcomed.

Cheerio,

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

Thanks, I started looking at issues. It's a large collection 😉

RE: PrusaSlicer accessibility development

Hi Gary,

It's wonderful to hear that you're interested in helping with this. I'm a blind maker based in the UK, I run theblindmansworkshop.com. I recently started learning 3D modelling via code-based CAD frameworks (OpenSCAD and CadQuery) and I've been looking to buy a 3D printer. I have considered Prusa and I've reached out to them to see if they'd be open to discussions around accessibility. I reached out to them, and received this:

We are indeed trying to make the 3d printing as accessible as possible. If you decide to get one of our printers, I would definitely recommend using the wireless printing feature it offers - PrusaConnect. The whole web interface was built so it would be as compatible as possible with all the different 3rd party accessibility tools, and at this point, the majority of printing steps can be done there.With that said, we are still lacking proper feedback for this use case, so if you decide to try it out, we would be grateful for any feedback and experience you could provide, so we can make it even better.

I did follow up with them but haven't heard anything back, hopefully they will make contact. The way I see it there are a few primary issues:

1) Setting up the printer. The initial setup (language settings, wifi settings etc) are inaccessible to us. Ideally we'd be able to write all initial settings in a text file, plug it into a USB drive and fire up the printer to have it automatically recognised. Either that or the printer would immediately become available as an access point on startup, we could connect using a computer and use a web interface to set everything up. As far as I know none of that is currently possible.

2) Printer settings. I don't know whether all settings and calibration options are exposed in the controls apps for the printer, or whether using the interface of the printer itself is necessary for some tasks. Ideally all settings would be exposed either via an API or a browser-based interface, but this isn't clear in any of the documentation I've been able to find.

3) The slicer. The official slicer GUI seems somewhat accessible but there's a way to go. The features you've outlined sound like they'd be extremely helpful. It would be even cooler if we could implement AI descriptions directly, providing our own Open AI or Google AI Studio API keys in the settings and then having a "describe this image" prompt built into the slicer, which would send the current view to GPT or Gemini and return a description.

Integrating the APIs directly in this way would also enable another important function - auto rotation. We could have a "auto rotate" button which would determine the best orientation for the image, and the AI could return a visual description for the user. For example, "I rotated the object so that x face is on the print bed".

I haven't heard anything about version 3, though I'd like to think that if Prusa were open to the accessibility conversation they might be willing to give access to the pre-release code so that accessibility features could be integrated from the get-go. Possibly wishful thinking, but we'll see.

I'm definitely open to chatting with you further about this and would be glad to contribute in any way I can to the effort. If you want to contact me directly, feel free to do so at [email protected]. And a massive thank you for your efforts and willingness to help!