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Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

neurrone.com

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Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#51

Post by giantrobot »

ljf wrote: post #44
gizmo686 wrote: post #5

Some vaguely related research: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 If you compare different languages, the speed people tend to speak (measured in syllables per second) varies significantly. However, the number of possible syllables also varies significantly. Once you account for that, the speed of speaking in terms of information is fairly consistent across languages. I'm not aware of any specific res…

I've been using Optimal Recognition Point (ORP) style apps (I use Balto Speed Reader) to comfortably read at 800wpm or more - for fact books and materials I can keep this up for quite some time - though for fiction I find it too fast to parse all the characters and tones of voice ( https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spritz-display-The-Optim... )

Holy shit getting to that paper was such a hassle. I had to jump through so many hoops to just download a PDF. Not your fault at all but anti-bot stuff and general enshittification has is ruining the web for actual people.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#52

Post by joseda-hg »

Neurrone wrote: post #36
Fokamul wrote: post #15

Big respect to you, I cannot imagine being functional without sight. Pretty interesting post. "I use my computer during natural pauses in the conversation or presentation." Casually dropping that everyone is speaking so slow. That you must use the time between sentences for something meaningful, pretty funny. :-)

> Casually dropping that everyone is speaking so slow. That you must use the time between sentences for something meaningful, pretty funny. :-) Didn't mean it that way . But that is truly the only way that I can use the computer while in a meeting.

If I'm listening to a Podcast or a Video at 2X or 3X, coming back to normal feels glacial by comparisson

If you're used to 800 wpm bursts, I'd Assume normal speaking pace will feel slow any way you cut it

On a slightly related note, have you felt this affecting your speech patterns?

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#53

Post by Neurrone »

joseda-hg wrote: post #52
Neurrone wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Casually dropping that everyone is speaking so slow. That you must use the time between sentences for something meaningful, pretty funny. :-) Didn't mean it that way . But that is truly the only way that I can use the computer while in a meeting.

If I'm listening to a Podcast or a Video at 2X or 3X, coming back to normal feels glacial by comparisson If you're used to 800 wpm bursts, I'd Assume normal speaking pace will feel slow any way you cut it On a slightly related note, have you felt this affecting your speech patterns?

> If you're used to 800 wpm bursts, I'd Assume normal speaking pace will feel slow any way you cut it

Edit: if you're referring to videos or podcast then yes, assuming the objective is to get information as quickly as possible.

Actually that isn't really the case. That might happen if you're asking someone to read something to you for an extended period of time, but that's not how normal conversations happen.

> On a slightly related note, have you felt this affecting your speech patterns?

Nope.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#54

Post by esafak »

thunderbong wrote: post #28

From the article - > Windows might not be trendy among developers, but it’s where accessibility works best. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get audio working reliably. The NVDA screen reader works on Windows and is free and open source, actively maintained, and designed by people who are screen reader users themselves. > That said, I’m not actually developing on Windows in the traditional sense. WSL2 gives…

MS has to make accessibility a priority because it's mandated by government (its customer).

Smaller companies would benefit from better libraries and design systems that make it easier to incorporate accessibility. Make accessible the default.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#55

Post by hombre_fatal »

mbb70 wrote: post #31
thunderbong wrote: post #28

From the article - > Windows might not be trendy among developers, but it’s where accessibility works best. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get audio working reliably. The NVDA screen reader works on Windows and is free and open source, actively maintained, and designed by people who are screen reader users themselves. > That said, I’m not actually developing on Windows in the traditional sense. WSL2 gives…

His comments on VS Code reminds me of the quote "Good accessibility design is mostly just good design": > Consistent keyboard shortcuts across all features, and the ability to jump to any part of the interface by keyboard This is something I notice and appreciate about VS Code as a fully sighted person. Just like I appreciate slopped sidewalk cutouts when I'm walking with luggage. A11y is a big commitment and cost, a…

I've been working on polishing accessibility features for a hobby web app, mostly out of curiosity to see what a deep dive would look like.

Some of it is definitely UX polish, like if a button can be pressed to toggle a sidebar, then ESC should dismiss the sidebar and return focus to the button that toggled it. And when the sidebar opens, focus should be moved to the top of the sidebar.

Though you can also get trapped in a fractal of polish-chasing. When it comes to screen readers and live-content like a rich chat app or MUD client, I'm not sure how you would target anything more broad than, say, Safari + VoiceOver on macOS and then some other combo on Windows. You quickly realize the behavior you see is an idiosyncrasy in the screen reader itself.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#56

Post by xiande04 »

Neurrone wrote: post #33

Author here, surprised this somehow got onto HN since I only posted on Mastodon. Happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for the blog post!

I was wondering what TTS voices you use? I've heard from other blind people that they tend to prefer the classic, robotic voices rather than modern ML-enhanced voices. Is that true in your experience, too?

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#57

Post by noahjk »

xiande04 wrote: post #56
Neurrone wrote: post #33

Author here, surprised this somehow got onto HN since I only posted on Mastodon. Happy to answer any questions.

Thanks for the blog post! I was wondering what TTS voices you use? I've heard from other blind people that they tend to prefer the classic, robotic voices rather than modern ML-enhanced voices. Is that true in your experience, too?

That was my initial thought, too - "I bet they can use a nicer voice now!"

Sounds like the robotic voice is more important than we give it credit for, though - from the article's "Do You Really Understand What It’s Saying?" section:

> Unlike human speech, a screen reader’s synthetic voice reads a word in the same way every time. This makes it possible to get used to how it speaks. With years of practice, comprehension becomes automatic. This is just like learning a new language.

When I listened to the voice sample in that section of the article, it sounds very choppy and almost like every phoneme isn't captured. Now, maybe they (the phonemes) are all captured, or maybe they actually aren't - but the fact that the sound per word is _exactly_ the same, every time, possibly means that each sound is a precise substitute for the 'full' or 'slow' word, meaning that any introduced variation from a "natural" voice could actually make the 8x speech unintelligible.

Hope the author can shed a bit of light, it's so neat! I remember ~20 years ago the Sidekick (or a similar phone) seemed to be popular in blind communities because it also had settings to significantly speed up TTS, which someone let me listen to once, and it sounded just as foreign as the recording in TFA.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#58

Post by gtirloni »

mbb70 wrote: post #31
thunderbong wrote: post #28

From the article - > Windows might not be trendy among developers, but it’s where accessibility works best. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get audio working reliably. The NVDA screen reader works on Windows and is free and open source, actively maintained, and designed by people who are screen reader users themselves. > That said, I’m not actually developing on Windows in the traditional sense. WSL2 gives…

His comments on VS Code reminds me of the quote "Good accessibility design is mostly just good design": > Consistent keyboard shortcuts across all features, and the ability to jump to any part of the interface by keyboard This is something I notice and appreciate about VS Code as a fully sighted person. Just like I appreciate slopped sidewalk cutouts when I'm walking with luggage. A11y is a big commitment and cost, a…

Fixing issues that seem to only affect people with disabilities often have positive unexpected consequences for others, indeed.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#59

Post by xiande04 »

noahjk wrote: post #57
xiande04 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the blog post! I was wondering what TTS voices you use? I've heard from other blind people that they tend to prefer the classic, robotic voices rather than modern ML-enhanced voices. Is that true in your experience, too?

That was my initial thought, too - "I bet they can use a nicer voice now!" Sounds like the robotic voice is more important than we give it credit for, though - from the article's "Do You Really Understand What It’s Saying?" section: > Unlike human speech, a screen reader’s synthetic voice reads a word in the same way every time. This makes it possible to get used to how it speaks. With years of practice, comprehensio…

Yeah, that bit about each phoneme sounding exactly the same everytime really made a lot of sense. Even if the TTS phoneme sounds nothing like a human would say it, once you've heard it enough times, you just memorize it.

I guess sounding "natural" really just amounts to adding variation across the sentence, which destroys phoneme-level accuracy.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#60

Post by collectedparts »

Neurrone wrote: post #32
collectedparts wrote: post #14

Just FYI OP (assuming OP is the author of the post) there's no margin on your blog. Text goes all the way to the edges. As a related sidenote, I wonder how quickly ChatGPT replaces much of the customized tools here? ChatGPT is probably pretty proficient at being able to describe the contents of eg a screenshare, or a screenshot of a website.

Edit: typo I didn't post this onto HN, so I only just found out about this thread. Thanks for mentioning the margin issue, I've tried fixing it now. Let me know if its still an issue. > I wonder how quickly ChatGPT replaces much of the customized tools here? Probably not many. It is prone to Hallucinations, and the latency involved for getting a response means that I only use it when I have to.

Awesome, looks great! Thanks for jumping into the thread here.
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