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Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

vincit.fi

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#31

its about coding for a blind person but under what circumstance would typing speed really matter? most of my coding is a creative process with tons of autocomplete via the IDE, as well as copy and paste for boilerplate that can't be inherited

How to spot the guy that didn't read the article.

It's a disingenuous title. The article is cool, but not what I was lead to believe.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#32

This is amazing and a scenario I had never really considered before. I know it has been said that the best programmers carry around small programs in their heads and map things out mentally — this is kind of the same idea taken to the extreme. I thought the portion on frontend development was really interesting. Something I had never considered, but to think of it from the angle in which it is presented just kind of…

I worked with an engineer who was partially sighted and could only see a tiny fraction of the screen at a time, he had essentially memorized most of the code base.

What struck me was that when I started working, while not the same, that was how you got anything done, API docs were on paper, we had stacks of books on our desks, code navigation tools were laughable, no intellisence, and screen were small (14" 640x480). When I was regularly writing win16/32 code I would rarely need to look anything up, the cost of doing so naturally trains you to remember.

I don't miss it tbh

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#33
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't both English but with different accents?

No. without reopening the article, I thought one was Finnish read with an English accent. This was due to what the author had grown accustomed. In his youth screen readers did not have as many options?

>I'm reading English with a Finnish speech synthesizer

I think it's English but the robot voice is geared for Finnish speech patterns.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#34
post #21
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't both English but with different accents?

No. without reopening the article, I thought one was Finnish read with an English accent. This was due to what the author had grown accustomed. In his youth screen readers did not have as many options?

I think it was the opposite - English read with a Finnish accent.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#35
post #15

> A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words per minute. After listening to the English sample....maybe I'm being naive but is it typical to be able to understan…

Aren't both English but with different accents?

Finnish has highly regular pronunciation with almost 1-to-1 correspondance between letters and sounds. In the first clip English is read as if it was Finnish, using Finnish pronunciation rules. Works pretty well as Finnish would be pronounced correctly and for Finnish speaker it's quite easy to catch Finnish pronunciations of foreign words.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#36
post #12

> Windows is the most accessible operating system there is I was under the impression macOS and iOS are the preferred platforms for people with disabilities?

There's a note in the article about the author's distaste for macOS and iOS because of VoiceOver's slow release schedule and how it doesn't work for his style of interacting.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#37

> A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words per minute. After listening to the English sample....maybe I'm being naive but is it typical to be able to understan…

You are comparing your first time trying to digest rapid speech, compared to someone who has done it for years. Yes, it's typical.

A new screen-reader user would start such an endeavour at normal speed, then gradually increase the speed. It's not much more different to people listening to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x speed. The robotic voice is more of a help than a hinderance because of it's consistency.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to spot the guy that didn't read the article.

It's a disingenuous title. The article is cool, but not what I was lead to believe.

It really is. There is nothing "software development" about the speed of his text-to-speech other than he uses it for reading code in addition to reading normal sentences.

The more accurate title would be "Software developer reads at 450WPM". Still interesting enough to get people to click to find out how, but "development at 450wpm" really really does sound like he's typing at 450wpm.

Reading code is not "software development", and reading is all he does at 450wpm.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#39
post #17

> A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words per minute. After listening to the English sample....maybe I'm being naive but is it typical to be able to understan…

It's gibberish to me too, but surely it's something that can be learned.

I downloaded it and set the tempo 60 percent lower, and it's still difficult. It's not just the speed...the quality of the synthesis is pretty bad. I bet it takes quite a bit of time to get good at it.

Re: Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

#40
post #18

> A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words per minute. After listening to the English sample....maybe I'm being naive but is it typical to be able to understan…

I wonder the same. I often listen to videos at 1.5-1.8x. I can listen to faster, but after about 2-2.5x it becomes enjoyable. As I need full concentration to parse the speech and miss out on the visual experience. Perhaps being blind the audio processing is heightened or just the visual distraction is absent allowing full concentration on the audio?

I would imagine that the consistent robotic voice helps too, allowing large chunks of text and whole sentences to be processed as a single pattern, like when speed reading.
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