
How to program if you are blind - ralphchurch
http://stackoverflow.com/q/118984/127880
======
zainny
Locked. 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.

~~~
yen223
> "It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual
> questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere"

That's _exactly_ what StackOverflow is meant to be.

I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates what StackOverflow is trying to
achieve here - to be the place to document hard, solid facts - nothing more.
If I wanted to read commentary and opinions on programming, there's always HN
or Slashdot.

~~~
SiVal
Maybe you _are_ the only one who appreciates it. I sure don't.

I'll have a question, I'll google it, be excited to when Google finds that
someone else has asked the exact same thing, and then disappointed to find
that it was asked on StackOverflow, where the Red Guards will inevitably have
discovered an interesting question and taken steps to make sure it isn't
answered. Hint to SO mods: it's not the question that is "unhelpful", it's
_you_.

While Google manages to sort through the unbelievable chaos of the entire open
Web to bring up the most relevant answer to any question on any topic in a
fraction of a second using the latest 21st Century search algorithms, SO goes
at it from the other direction, making sure so few questions are answered that
what remains won't overwhelm its 1980s-era MS-DOS search technology.

I appreciate Joel's letting us use his vintage '486 to gather the world's
biggest collection of code snippets, but I'm hoping someone with less
primitive technology will replace SO with a system focused more on providing
answers than on preventing questions.

~~~
yen223
I'm not sure what kind of questions you normally have, but I didn't really
have much trouble getting answers from StackOverflow. It's no accident that
when Google "sorts through the unbelievable chaos of the entire open Web to
bring up the most relevant answer to any question on any topic in a fraction
of a second using the latest 21st Century search algorithms", the first link
is almost always StackOverflow ;)

Also I think it's pretty impressive that Joel managed to make the website run
smoothly on a vintage 486.

------
danso
Last 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_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_day_i_was_born_and_lovin_almost/)

Here he answers someone how he can program while blind

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fpxzk/blind_since_the_day_i_was_born_and_lovin_almost/c1hs654)

------
jamesbritt
Anecdote: 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.

------
sootzoo
As 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.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman>

------
ktt3ja
Is there a video of a blind person programming somewhere? Even though I see
the description, I still don't understand how someone can possibly program
without being able to see.

------
eksith
I'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.

~~~
danielbarla
> Besides, how does one do CamelCase with speech-to-text?

My guess would be tight integration with the IDE and knowledge of the language
being used; most of the time, the editor should be able to figure out that
chained, non-keyword or existing identifier words should be CamelCase. You'd
need some manual way to disambiguate when it gets it wrong.

------
Qantourisc
You need either an amazing memory (to remember all the code), or a Braille
screen that supports all those annoying signs like { }. The downside is going
to be no code overview ... to help with that the braile reader should support
| like ribbins: this way you can set the space/tab symbol to | (in programs
like Vim). This will allow you to more easily follow indentations.

After thinking and writing about it, I'm more concerned about other
applications, cause to write code you just need a text-editor. Browsing,
Office, ... is going to a far more painful experience...

------
ck2
_it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site_

Stackoverflow feels like it's turning into wikipedia sometimes.

I thought it was an excellent question for SO's knowledge pool.

------
neurostimulant
Does anyone know the productivity level of a blind programmer compared with an
average programmers? I'm pretty curious about this for a while now. If my
sight suddenly gone, can I actually retain my current productivity level with
rigorous training and suitable development tools?

~~~
jareds
As a blind programmer I would say that I can be every bit as productive as my
sited peers with comparable experience levels for back end development
although not nearly as productive for user interface work. If you suddenly
lost your site I’m not sure how well you could program, the way I use a
computer is significantly different from how I understand sited people to use
a computer. I also assume the way I generate a mental model varies from most
programmers and don’t know whether you could adapt existing mental models for
use with our site or would have to start from scratch. If you lost your site
you would want to focus on things like basic independent living skills and the
ability to use a computer for general internet browsing before you attempted
to learn to use screen reading software well enough to continue programming.
While you could probably obtain a similar level of efficiency after losing
your site it would be a process that would take several years at the least.

------
entropie
I read his page years ago, and found it quite interesting:
<http://emacswiki.org/emacs/MarioLang>

