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How can you program if you're blind?

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Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#21

Post by stevenbedrick »

tosseraccount wrote: post #15
yuchi wrote: post #12

I was developing a Liferay portal for a client which needed (in my idea) complete accessibility. I used my iPad to move in the page and was a big experience, most of my initial design was not tested over visual appearance but semantic accessibility. If you own an iOS device do activate VoiceOver and try to surf YOUR applications (and more important, your WEB applications). Even better, let someone else do it for you.…

They have "a right to access your content"? Is there a law specifying this? What are the penalties for breaking the law?

I recognize that you're posing a (presumably rhetorical) philosophical question, but it seems worth pointing out that there are certain contexts where accessibility is a matter of law.

If your content is intended for use or distribution by a US federal agency, or was created using federal dollars or as part of a federal contract, you are responsible for ensuring that it is compliant with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which specifies that your content be accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Leaving aside for a moment the larger question of whether specific blind and/or deaf individuals consider their sight/hearing status to be a disability or not, section 508 is generally interpreted to mean that your content needs to be as accessible as you can make it. That means (among other things) working to make sure that screen readers and other such software are able to make full use of your site's functionality.

In my experience, the process of getting a project compliant with section 508 is generally very valuable- it makes you think a lot about how your content is organized, and rewards use of semantic markup. It can be frustrating at times, but the end result is definitely worth it for a wide range of reasons.

Here are a couple of places to get started learning about 508 issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508_Amendment_to_the_Re...

http://www.section508.gov/

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#24

Post by jarek »

azelfrath wrote: post #18
tosseraccount wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have "a right to access your content"? Is there a law specifying this? What are the penalties for breaking the law?

I see what you're getting at, but I think you're being a bit douchey about it. Of course blind people do not have a "right" to access his content. Neither does anyone else. There is no law anywhere that says "X person or group has an inalienable right to view Google". That doesn't mean we shouldn't be considerate of disabilities. ADD: He says blind people have "the same right" and not "a right", the implication here…

Not a reply to azelfrath, sorry. chadmalik, if by chance you see this, your posts have been getting auto-killed since the "Why vertical farms are a crock" discussion.

For those without showdead on, here's the comment, which I thought was worth reprinting:

"I'd like to add another way of thinking of it. Several years ago I was part of a group working on a project that was composed of people from various companies. One of the attendees was blind. It became clear VERY quickly that our blind friend was light years above everyone else technically and in terms of thinking about process. He'd sit there, listen to people go back and forth on this or that issue, then come in with an incredibly intelligent and appropriate solution, time after time. He was using an audio browser to go over the project materials when we weren't working. If you don't make your services accessible to the blind, YOU might be the one missing the benefit of this type of person's input."

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#25

Post by jdf »

zxoq wrote: post #3

None of the answers were about the questions I had about how to program when you're blind. While the tools they use are interesting. I'm more concerned with how you would browse the code. Say you wanted to find a method, how do you scroll in a large file to locate it? I guess deft use of find & go to definition helps out here. How do you locate a line of code in a large function? Do you have to listen for the screen…

I had a TA at school who was blind and was excellent at helping CS students debug and fix their class projects. He helped me a number of times and was generally able to find bugs very quickly.

While I don't know the name of the program of he used, my vague recollection is that it read aloud the contents of whatever line he had the cursor on, a good deal faster than a human would speak it (I actually found the text to be read too quickly for me to follow by listening - I needed to read it myself).

I actually found this article about him on the Internet:

http://www.dimenet.com/disnews/archive.php?mode=P&id=276

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#26

Post by derefr »

zxoq wrote: post #3

None of the answers were about the questions I had about how to program when you're blind. While the tools they use are interesting. I'm more concerned with how you would browse the code. Say you wanted to find a method, how do you scroll in a large file to locate it? I guess deft use of find & go to definition helps out here. How do you locate a line of code in a large function? Do you have to listen for the screen…

You can ask anyone who has been programming for 40 years or so this same question. Before we had visual editors [but after we stopped using punch-cards], we had line editors, which worked under fundamentally the same constraints as programming blind has: only a little bit of content at a time, streamed, selected before "display", and requiring a "replay" after any edits to see if the edits were correct. A description of a working day for a grizzled ed(1) veteran would probably have a lot in common with an optimal blind-programming experience.

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#27

Post by chewxy »

Interesting. This post has inspired me to actually improve the usability of my sites. Anyone have any good guides? Strangers for Dinner and edgeyo are pretty much text-driven, but what about CSS layout etc? Will screenreaders parse those?

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#28

Post by ars »

Does anyone know a service that will review your website for accessibility?

I don't have a budget to pay them, but I'd be willing to put in reasonable recommendations.

I do already use alt attributes and label tags on everything.

Re: How can you program if you're blind?

#30

Post by mmagin »

saqibs wrote: post #16
zxoq wrote: post #3

None of the answers were about the questions I had about how to program when you're blind. While the tools they use are interesting. I'm more concerned with how you would browse the code. Say you wanted to find a method, how do you scroll in a large file to locate it? I guess deft use of find & go to definition helps out here. How do you locate a line of code in a large function? Do you have to listen for the screen…

This is certainly one of the harder aspects of programming blind - particularly tackling a large, unfamiliar, codebase. In the case of a new project, I build up a mental map of how the program works - and memorise the conceptual organisation. With an existing codebase go-to-definition is invaluable, and stepping through in a debugger is just as useful for a blind person as for anyone - you get to see the lines in the…

It seems unfortunate that you can't configure screen readers to say "_" as "under" or some such thing. Also, I think it would be very useful if punctuation was pronounced in a different voice or tone.
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