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Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

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Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

#1
Hey HN,

My friend’s children are starting their adventure with programming at school with Scratch. Unfortunately, the eldest one is blind, and as Scratch is visual, he won’t be able to use it. A pity: the kid has probably the most vivid imagination of all people I know.

Can you recommend an alternative? Something tactile or audial, perhaps? A quick googling yielded https://codejumper.com/ – is it worth the $1K it costs?

Personal experience reports are most welcome. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

#2
I wonder if something like Inform might be a good environment for them. Obviously it falls far short of what you can do with Scratch, but an imaginative child could achieve a lot, and integrating it with voice/accessibility tools seems feasible.

https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

#4
I saw the code jumper tech at a conference once, it was actually really thoughtfully done, I had no idea it cost 1k though!

One other option I've seen is this Spintronics platform: https://upperstory.com/spintronics/

I first saw it on Steve Mould's youtube channel, they're basically mechanical circuits and it looks super cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrkiJZKJfpY

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

#5
Logo with a physical turtle?

Can something be done with an overhead camera, and a bunch of cardboard cutouts using QR codes? I remember one of the (big name?) universities had a project along these lines. In their case they used different patterns of coloured dots on objects, and every object in the room was mapped to a virtual equivalent. Interaction with the computer was solely by moving objects around in the room. I can't find it on Google. It might have had a connection to the Dynabook project? They probably have code ready to go.

Edit: Found it: Dynamicland

https://dynamicland.org/

No source code available?

It has appeared on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725370

Also: https://paperprograms.org/

https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms

Maybe you could have different shaped bits of paper which implement blocks using javascript? Add a "print" function and the programmer could consolidate something they have written using multiple blocks/sheets into a single block/sheet, so allowing more complexity in a smaller space? Alternatively, can it be mapped directly to scratch instead of javascript?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child?

#9
post #8

[flagged]

Unless you're T.V.Raman [1] or any one of a number of other blind programmers, of course. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman

Would reaching out to this particular individual be option for the OP?

His homepage appears to be here: https://tvraman.github.io/

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