How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video] • Hacker News Board

Sounded and behaved like the default narrator that comes with Windows. They all tend to rely on the same APIs, though, so what they “see” of the screen or the focused control is very similar.

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#44

Post by jcadam » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:23 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #29

dbattaglia wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy part to me is working in an office where 50 people are simultaneously saying code out loud. Or my wife ready to kill me as I'm saying code while she's watching tv. :)

Rather than my usual tirade against open offices, I would point out that options for subvocal voice pickups exist like throat mikes. You could speak softly enough your neighbor couldn't hear you, and they also attenuate external sounds quite well.

So basically you'll be trying to think above a constant, low-level din of unintelligible murmuring. Not unlike having a brown noise generator in your office. That would drive me insane.

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#45

Post by falcolas » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #44

falcolas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than my usual tirade against open offices, I would point out that options for subvocal voice pickups exist like throat mikes. You could speak softly enough your neighbor couldn't hear you, and they also attenuate external sounds quite well.

So basically you'll be trying to think above a constant, low-level din of unintelligible murmuring. Not unlike having a brown noise generator in your office. That would drive me insane.

Well, when I say "your neighbor can not hear you", I mean that literally. Not mumbling, just talking at a sub-audible volume.

And, IMO, even mumbling would be better than the current open office constant flow of loud conversations (one of which I'm trying to drown out with headphones this very moment).

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#46

Post by jcadam » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #4

I imagine many would benefit if we had a smart developer assistant where it could have a higher level understanding of programming. "Jarvis import library foo" - could be said from anywhere in file "Jarvis jump to file bar.c" "Jarvis declare var current temperature equals zero" - var currentTemperature = 0 "Jarvis write for enumeration on var word over var name list" "Jarvis build and run" or simply "Jarvis run" By t…

And then one day there will be a generation of programmers who have only known coding via a voice-driven developer assistant. Imagine trying to interview such a person.

"Please stop shouting at the whiteboard. It doesn't work that way. I need you to pick up one of the dry-erase markers and write your algorithm to invert a binary tree."

"What? Who codes with their hands? I need my assistant!"

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#47

Post by steveax » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

Accacin wrote: post #15

masklinn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer it seems is to speed up the voice tenfold! That seems very common for systematic text-to-speech users, I saw a video a few months back of a lawyer (?) demonstrating ios's accessibility (rotor, voiceover, blind curtain, …) and the TTS speech was so fast it sounded like white noise to me.

That would be interesting to watch. Do you have a link for that?

I believe this article from David Pogue is the one:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#48

Post by joyofdata » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

woliveirajr wrote: post #39

I met two blind programmers. The process they used was exactly how it's described in this video. What was odd was that: 1 - they were given the worst place in the room: no windows, literally facing a wall. Took some time to realize why they didn't complain. 2 - The computer had monitors. Then I learnt that Windows (don't know what version it was) wouldn't work it no monitor was attached.

two thoughts:

1 - does sun light have no physiological/psychological value for blind people? the sun light might still be captured on the skin or even in the eyes and trigger relevant biological processes.

2 - having a monitor is also important for a blind person when working in a team.

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#49

Post by jlebrech » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

why can't we code like this "remove that comma on line 3" or "move line 4 inside the braces above"? surely it would benefit everyone?

you could even ask "which lines have if statements?"

for something like this wouldn't you be talking to an AST rather than a text editor?

Re: How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]

#50

Post by jareds » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

ygra wrote: post #43

vorotato wrote: post #41

What screenreader is he using?

Sounded and behaved like the default narrator that comes with Windows. They all tend to rely on the same APIs, though, so what they “see” of the screen or the focused control is very similar.

Listening to the beginning of that video as a blind programmer I'm 99% sure he's using Jaws for Windows. http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS I program in Java and Eclipse for my day job but have found Visual Studio to be really nice to use and accessible with Jaws.