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Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute

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

#41

Post by Klockan »

jhgb wrote: post #20
yorwba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ ..., Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. And which lets it piggy-back on Windows' accessibility features, which seem to be quite good. I guess Sublime Text and Atom draw their own GUIs to get more control over the look-and-feel, but don't add the necessary hints to make screen readers work.

Wouldn't a proper structured editor be more suitable for blind coding? The market isn't large but I can't imagine blindly navigating through a sea of characters. Sounds terrifying.

People once coded in ed and it is kinda like coding blind. You don't have a display, instead you can move to specific line numbers and print or replace them. It sounds impossible at first but you get used to it if you only use ed.

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

#42

Post by lsc »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #23
akuji1993 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I skimmed Skimmed really fast looking for something related to the title

It's interesting; none of the 'speed reading' wisdom has worked for me. When I 'skim' I seem to be way slower than most people who 'skim' - even though I'm quite competitive when 'reading' - but I also seem to usually have some idea of what the text was about, while I find it is quite common for people skimming to not have absorbed much at all from the text. That's interesting too, because I find that in 'reading' my reading comprehension is not better if you compare me to others who have the level of education implied by my profession.

When I skim, my focus is on reading faster, pushing myself through the document, and I let my unconscious deal with what information is dropped. It does move things along much faster than 'reading' at regular speed, and it does lower comprehension, but it does these things in a sort of incremental way.

Most of the time when I've read about 'speed reading' it talks a lot about consciously managing that information drop, and managing where your eyes go, which for me, slows me down quite a lot, and usually ends up making my retention all but useless.

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

#43

Post by satysin »

yorwba wrote: post #11
nerdponx wrote: post #3

What about Notepad++ makes it work with screen readers while Sublime and Atom don't?

From https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ ..., Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. And which lets it piggy-back on Windows' accessibility features, which seem to be quite good. I guess Sublime Text and Atom draw their own GUIs to get more control over the look-and-feel, but don't add the necessary hints to make screen readers work.

This is correct. By sticking to pure Win32 controls it allows screen readers to do their job properly. While making your own controls or using third party UI libraries will give you a nicer looking UI it makes the screen readers job much harder if not impossible.

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

#44

Post by torgoguys »

seanwilson wrote: post #5

> 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 work your way up to it. Open up a podcast app and start listening at 1.5x. After a while (days to weeks), that becomes comfortable. Then work your way up to 2.0x. Once you're at that point, listening to familiar shows (familiar people/voices), at 1.0x makes them sound drunk. They seem. to. speak. so. slooow.

Some podcasts I listen at 3x which feels near my limit of comfort (comprehension drops off at speeds higher than that), but I suspect nearly any normal person can get used to 2x speed. When you are, you can absorb twice as much information in the same amount of time.

(The above applies to talk type podcasts. Music is best at 1x, and dramatizations and such are often best left at 1x to get correct pacing).

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

#45

Post by tom_mellior »

alkonaut wrote: post #24

I wonder how many times in a regular day a blind person nearly throws thew computer out the window because some application randomly does something inaccessible and they get stuck. Some tray app from dell popping up a dialog about your trial backup subscription expiring, with no standard/accessible UI? Things like that. This is what surprises me most about not having a screen. I get that a blind person doesn't NEED t…

> This is what surprises me most about not having a screen.

That thing on the right of the photo is a closed laptop. This person does have a screen, it's just not constantly in use. (Not "in sight", as the article puts it.) They can open up the laptop to show stuff to others when needed. This is how my blind colleague does it.

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

#46

Post by mfoy_ »

freehunter wrote: post #30
alkonaut wrote: post #24

I wonder how many times in a regular day a blind person nearly throws thew computer out the window because some application randomly does something inaccessible and they get stuck. Some tray app from dell popping up a dialog about your trial backup subscription expiring, with no standard/accessible UI? Things like that. This is what surprises me most about not having a screen. I get that a blind person doesn't NEED t…

I'm wondering if they use screen sharing. It'd be dead simple to share your screen to someone and have them look at it, you don't even need your own monitor.

As some sort of comparison, imagine having to call an IT support guy to come restart your computer every 15-30 minutes... I'd lose my sanity before a single day was out.

I imagine you very quickly identify software / features that cause such interruptions and ruthlessly prune them from your environment.

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

#47

Post by egeozcan »

satysin wrote: post #43
yorwba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ ..., Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. And which lets it piggy-back on Windows' accessibility features, which seem to be quite good. I guess Sublime Text and Atom draw their own GUIs to get more control over the look-and-feel, but don't add the necessary hints to make screen readers work.

This is correct. By sticking to pure Win32 controls it allows screen readers to do their job properly. While making your own controls or using third party UI libraries will give you a nicer looking UI it makes the screen readers job much harder if not impossible.

There must be an API for it though, right... That being my first reaction, after thinking about it again, well, a custom UI that is accessible and cross-platform... Maybe a semantic web site IS the holy-grail in that regard? ARIA[1] seems more detailed than Qt-quick[2], at least.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... [2]: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtquick-accessible.html

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

#48

Post by trishume »

mstade wrote: post #26

I'd love to read more specifically how coding style makes things easier or harder. It'd be really interesting to know if there are some general rules in this space, and if so how they may or may not help sighted programmers read code. Really interesting perspective on a topic which is usually just a mosh pit of opinions.

I'm not blind, but I found this comment by a blind programmer really interesting. Block comments are way more important when using a screen reader: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/fmt-rfcs/issues/17#issu...

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

#49

Post by wildpeaks »

On a related note, I wish Youtube had an option to play a video faster than 2X (other then downloading the video to play in a local viewer like VLC).

Even as a sighted individual, listening to conference talks at high speed is convenient (and you can still pause if you want to look deeper into something).

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