
Software development and screen readers at 450 words per minute - mieky
https://www.vincit.fi/en/blog/software-development-450-words-per-minute/
======
alkonaut
I wonder how many times in a regular day a blind person nearly throws thew
computer out the window because some application randomly does something
inaccessible and they get stuck.

Some tray app from dell popping up a dialog about your trial backup
subscription expiring, with no standard/accessible UI? Things like that.

This is what surprises me most about not having a screen. I get that a blind
person doesn't NEED the screen but when you want to ask someone about some
code, or need help by a seeing person, the screen might help... I admit it
does look cool though.

~~~
freehunter
I'm wondering if they use screen sharing. It'd be dead simple to share your
screen to someone and have them look at it, you don't even need your own
monitor.

~~~
mfoy_
As some sort of comparison, imagine having to call an IT support guy to come
restart your computer every 15-30 minutes... I'd lose my sanity before a
single day was out.

I imagine you very quickly identify software / features that cause such
interruptions and ruthlessly prune them from your environment.

------
Justsignedup
450 wpm. I can't even descipher 2 words out of that. It is amazing if he can
understand that fast. Did his brain just rewire the visual cortex to process
audio?

Makes me wonder what a human would be with double the neurons in the brain.

~~~
christiangenco
I've been making a habit of listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube
videos at increasingly faster speeds, and after listening to the clip two or
three times can understand about 80% of it. My comprehension problem with it
right now is the style of the voice, not the speed it's talking.

Like anything, I think understanding this computer voice at 450 wpm is a skill
anyone could learn with practice.

~~~
stillhere
Though I'm not blind I would imagine it is like speedreading. Occasionally
skipping words has no effect to the main idea of a sentence because the mind
fills in the blanks. Anyway disability related tech news is very cool stuff
and I hope to see a lot more on HN.

------
seanwilson
> A screen reader intercepts what's happening on the screen and presents that
> information via braille (through a separate braille display) or synthetic
> speech. And it's not the kind of synthetic speech you hear in today's smart
> assistants. I use a robotic-sounding voice which speaks at around 450 words
> per minute.

After listening to the English sample....maybe I'm being naive but is it
typical to be able to understand computer speech at that rate? I could barely
make out a handful of words and probably wouldn't have believed there was a
text to understand in there if the words weren't above it.

~~~
torgoguys
You work your way up to it. Open up a podcast app and start listening at 1.5x.
After a while (days to weeks), that becomes comfortable. Then work your way up
to 2.0x. Once you're at that point, listening to familiar shows (familiar
people/voices), at 1.0x makes them sound drunk. They seem. to. speak. so.
slooow.

Some podcasts I listen at 3x which feels near my limit of comfort
(comprehension drops off at speeds higher than that), but I suspect nearly any
normal person can get used to 2x speed. When you are, you can absorb twice as
much information in the same amount of time.

(The above applies to talk type podcasts. Music is best at 1x, and
dramatizations and such are often best left at 1x to get correct pacing).

~~~
Joeri
I've tried going faster but found that I had to concentrate too hard on
listening to leave time for reflection during the listening, which is the
whole point for me of listening podcasts. I wonder if a blind person struggles
with similar issues, where they have to dose the speed reading to allow them
to actually think about what they heard.

~~~
sobani
Instead of listening to a podcast/audiobook once on normal speed, you could
try listening to it twice on double speed.

* Especially audiobooks generally have only one core idea so even if you miss a part, you're not missing much.

* By listing twice, you will 'revisit' the topic, increasing comprehension.

* Most podcasts/audiobooks actually don't have a lot of new ideas (especially after you've heard a lot of them), so in those cases you're only wasting half the time.

------
ender89
I would totally put a screen on his desk hooked up to a separate computer that
just displays nonsense so that people who don't know that he's blind think
he's just hanging out in the office watching the entirety of strawberry
shortcake or something.

~~~
dawilster
Totally should have The Matrix screensaver playing at all times.

------
tyingq
I was curious about the braille display mentioned, so I had a look:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=braille+display&source=lnms&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=braille+display&source=lnms&tbm=shop)

These things are priced from $1k up to $12k. I understand it's complicated
since there are tons of actuated pins needed, but wow.

~~~
adisinom
They're actuated by piezoelectric strips. The PZT ceramic is low power and
robust, but heavy-ish (lead), large-ish, and shockingly expensive.

History:
[https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm00/bm0001/bm000...](https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm00/bm0001/bm000110.htm)

------
vimy
> Windows is the most accessible operating system there is

I was under the impression macOS and iOS are the preferred platforms for
people with disabilities?

~~~
jareds
I’m totally blind and bought a Mac several years ago hoping to learn iOS
programming. As far as I can tell it’s impossible to create a simple app
without using drag and drop in XCode. While it’s technically possible to do
drag and drop with Voiceover I can never get it to work correctly. Apple has
not put out any documentation on how to use XCode when blind that I’ve been
able to find. This is disappointing since I find iOS to be much easier to use
then Android. I also find Voiceover on the mac does not have quite as many
shortcut keys as my Windows screen reader when reading the web, for example I
cannot jump to a heading at a specific level or move by region. While Mac OS
did have easy availability of Unix tools as a plus that no longer is a point
in its favor. I find WSL to be quite good and accessible. Luckily the 11 inch
MacBook Air was the best ultra-book I could get at the time so I don’t feel
like I wasted my money even though I boot into Windows 95% of the time. For
general use Mac OSX is pretty good. I find the screen reader to be quite
intuitive and there is a good tutorial to help you learn it. Voiceover just
doesn’t have the breadth of shortcut keys or customizability of Jaws for
Windows which is my preferred screen reader despite its cost.

~~~
hellcow
If you're discussing storyboards in XCode (given you mentioned drag and drop),
you actually don't need that feature and can lay out both iOS screens and the
flows between them programmatically. I actually prefer writing views
programmatically for iOS--it gives you readable diffs, which is especially
helpful for code reviews.

~~~
jareds
I have not found an introduction tutorial that assumes you go from no iOS
knowledge to a working app with just code instead of storyboards. DO you know
of a tutorial that does this?

~~~
hellcow
Here's one that might help for Objective C:
[https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-
app-100-progr...](https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-
app-100-programmatically-updated-95951cb189c4)

Alternatively this is the same tutorial using Swift:
[https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-
app-100-progr...](https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-
app-100-programmatically-xcode-7-2-swift-2-1-9946d09610c4)

Sadly the images in those articles don't have alt tags, but the images are
well described by the surrounding text.

Googling "build iOS views programmatically no storyboard" should bring up some
more resources. The rest of iOS development will be normal/consistent with
other tutorials--the only thing that's different is learning to describe the
view itself in code.

~~~
jareds
I haven't had a chance to actually run through the tutorial but looking at it
I don't think I'll have problems following it. It's well written and the
graphics are not required to understand what's going on.

------
k__
I worked with a blind dev for years and he mostly used the command line.

He said, this is the only real accessible interface where you get 100%
control.

~~~
pvdebbe
This holds true for everyone

------
mstade
I'd love to read more specifically how coding style makes things easier or
harder. It'd be really interesting to know if there are some general rules in
this space, and if so how they may or may not help sighted programmers read
code. Really interesting perspective on a topic which is usually just a mosh
pit of opinions.

~~~
trishume
I'm not blind, but I found this comment by a blind programmer really
interesting. Block comments are way more important when using a screen reader:
[https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/fmt-
rfcs/issues/17#issu...](https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/fmt-
rfcs/issues/17#issuecomment-250933230)

------
wildpeaks
On a related note, I wish Youtube had an option to play a video faster than 2X
(other then downloading the video to play in a local viewer like VLC).

Even as a sighted individual, listening to conference talks at high speed is
convenient (and you can still pause if you want to look deeper into
something).

~~~
4lun
I have the same wish. Though not ideal, you can work around it in the console
quite easily:

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3

~~~
icebraining
Just create a bookmark with that code prefixed by "javascript:", then it
becomes 1-click to activate:

    
    
        javascript:(function(){document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3;})();

------
czechdeveloper
I was thinking what I need for programming and assumed that no hands (or hand)
and no vision would be complete deal breaker. But by now I've seen people
programming using voice and now this guy without seeing. It's amazing what
they can do just by being dedicated enough.

------
altotrees
This is amazing and a scenario I had never really considered before. I know it
has been said that the best programmers carry around small programs in their
heads and map things out mentally — this is kind of the same idea taken to the
extreme.

I thought the portion on frontend development was really interesting.
Something I had never considered, but to think of it from the angle in which
it is presented just kind of blew my mind. This piece made my morning.

edit: I guess this post also just shows that if you want to learn to program
and be an engineer, there are certainly ways to make that happen, regardless
of specific elements of your situation (to a point, obviously). Really, really
neat.

~~~
pacaro
I worked with an engineer who was partially sighted and could only see a tiny
fraction of the screen at a time, he had essentially memorized most of the
code base.

What struck me was that when I started working, while not the same, that was
how you got anything done, API docs were on paper, we had stacks of books on
our desks, code navigation tools were laughable, no intellisence, and screen
were small (14" 640x480). When I was regularly writing win16/32 code I would
rarely need to look anything up, the cost of doing so naturally trains you to
remember.

I don't miss it tbh

------
nerdponx
What about Notepad++ makes it work with screen readers while Sublime and Atom
don't?

~~~
yorwba
From [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/)

 _..., Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which
ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size._

And which lets it piggy-back on Windows' accessibility features, which seem to
be quite good.

I guess Sublime Text and Atom draw their own GUIs to get more control over the
look-and-feel, but don't add the necessary hints to make screen readers work.

~~~
satysin
This is correct. By sticking to pure Win32 controls it allows screen readers
to do their job properly. While making your own controls or using third party
UI libraries will give you a nicer looking UI it makes the screen readers job
_much_ harder if not impossible.

~~~
egeozcan
There must be an API for it though, right... That being my first reaction,
after thinking about it again, well, a custom UI that is accessible and cross-
platform... Maybe a semantic web site IS the holy-grail in that regard?
ARIA[1] seems more detailed than Qt-quick[2], at least.

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Test_Cases) [2]:
[http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-qtquick-accessible.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-
qtquick-accessible.html)

------
jondubois
I'm not blind but I also hate side by side diffs. When resolving conflicts, I
prefer opening the raw text file with the conflict segments and manually
delete and copy paste stuff; it's so much faster and more flexible.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
There is a fairly popular thought that software which is accessible tends to
be better for "normal" users as well.

------
Mz
FYI for anyone interested: There is a google group called Blind Dev Works. It
is run by a blind developer. (I am co-admin, but it is his group.)

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/blind-dev-
works](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/blind-dev-works)

------
dreta
I'd be interested in learning more about how a blind person does software
development. I already do most of my coding work in the terminal with keyboard
only where possible, and it'd be an interesting exercise to try and get rid of
the monitor altogether.

~~~
yorwba
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-
progr...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-program-if-
youre-blind)

Most recent discussion on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702287)

This video from the comments is worth a watch:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0)

------
ringaroundthetx
its about coding for a blind person

but under what circumstance would typing speed really matter? most of my
coding is a creative process with tons of autocomplete via the IDE, as well as
copy and paste for boilerplate that can't be inherited

~~~
akuji1993
How to spot the guy that didn't read the article.

~~~
OtterCoder
It's a disingenuous title. The article is cool, but not what I was lead to
believe.

~~~
freehunter
It really is. There is nothing "software development" about the speed of his
text-to-speech other than he uses it for reading code in addition to reading
normal sentences.

The more accurate title would be "Software developer reads at 450WPM". Still
interesting enough to get people to click to find out how, but "development at
450wpm" really really does sound like he's typing at 450wpm.

Reading code is not "software development", and reading is all he does at
450wpm.

~~~
OtterCoder
A very skilled reader can read text at around 400wpm with good comprehension,
so I can believe he can listen to code at those speeds.

A professional typist is somewhere around 80wpm, and a stenographer can reach
up to 250wpm. 450 would have to represent an enormous innovation in typing
methods.

Frankly, even if you could, 450wpm would be an irresponsible speed to code at.
As mediocre as my own typing speed is, it's never the limiting factor when I
code. There's just too much to consider.

