How to program if you are blind
stackoverflow.com
How to program if you are blind
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: How to program if you are blind
#2Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely intolerable to the mods at SO.
Not sure how the rest of you feel but in my mind if the answer is black and white, the question was probably bad.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#3Last year a young blind man who recently got a degree in computer science did an AMA on Reddit. It was one of the most inspirational things I've read on the Internet. Looking back at it now makes me feel ashamed that I'm not enjoying life (or programming) as much as this guy clearly was
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_...
Here he answers someone how he can program while blind
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_...
Re: How to program if you are blind
#4As mentioned in the SO question, the head of Google's accessibility team, T. V. Raman [1], is blind. I feel like this speaks volumes about the opportunities for disabled programmers on its own, and, though a bit cliche, reinforces the thing I love most about engineering--in many ways, this line of work is as close to a pure meritocracy as one can get. I hope Mr. Raman would agree that it seems fitting that someone who is blind himself would be sensitive to the needs presented by blind and low-vision users of computer software, and I'm happy he's around to provide guidance for accessibility features for a company like Google.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#5Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
It was locked fifteen months after the question was asked...I think its prudent to protect a significant discussion from the noise that it will inevitably generate as people discover it via long tail in years to come
Re: How to program if you are blind
#6Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
Exactly. I've desperately needed answers to a handful of questions in the last 2 weeks alone that were all locked. I think unless you can quote an error message there's a good chance it will be locked. Didn't know server hard drive space came at such a premium. Honestly what good does it do to lock a question? I can see wikipedia wanting to groom their site to maintain some credibility and focus to achieve high overall quality with limited editing resources. But Stack Overflow? Give up the power trip already. How has Joel not created Subjective Overflow already?
Re: How to program if you are blind
#7Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
It was locked fifteen months after the question was asked...I think its prudent to protect a significant discussion from the noise that it will inevitably generate as people discover it via long tail in years to come
There is another way to protect question on SO - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-prot...
Re: How to program if you are blind
#8Anecdote: In college I earned a few bucks working as a tutor. One of my jobs was to assist a blind student. I think they were an EE major. I wasn't tutoring, though; I was dictating an engineering textbook onto cassette tapes.
The school was in a converted office building. I was given a portable tape recorder (this was back in the paleo-Eighties, when analog ruled the Earth) and I would go up to the top of the stairs by the fire exit and sit in the landing to do my recordings. It was a reliably quiet place. (Also a good place for a mid-day nap.)
The book was, of course, filled with equations. At first I tried to read them aloud and that's OK for some things but some were just complicated. That's when I was given a special drawing board. It was a clipboard with rubber padding and clear plastic sheets. I used a stylus to write on the plastic, pushing down into the rubber padding to leave an indentation.
I hope technology has a improved a bit since then.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#9Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
It is off-topic, though, for StackOverflow. By rights, the question should be on the Programmers StackExchange site, where it would actually have relevance. (On the other hand, ProgrammersSE isn't exactly a hospitable environment itself, so migration might not be such a great idea. Which may, in fact, explain the fact that it was locked rather than migrated when ProgrammersSE came out of beta. It was supposed, originally, to be more about the programmer than the programming, but it seems to have lost its way.)
Re: How to program if you are blind
#10I've wondered about this too, since I can't really picture myself doing any sort of programming without my vision. My problem is juvenile arthritis which came on when I was 12 and will probably leave me with another 8-10 years or so before the pain will be too unbearable to continue. I'll be around 40 then.
I really don't wanna program "Captain's log, supplemental" style. Besides, how does one do CamelCase with speech-to-text?
It's because of that and because I'm getting tired of tech, I've started to wean off programming into something more artistic, but won't require as much dexterity.