
Ask HN: Any other blind devs interested in working on dev tools for the blind? - blinddev
Just lost my fourth job this year. I can&#x27;t definitively claim it is because of my blindness, I may just not be very good at software development. But one thing is for sure, there are many dev tools that are either hard or impossible to use if you&#x27;re blind. I&#x27;m looking at you JIRA, GitLab, Chrome Dev Tools, etc.<p>I&#x27;m tired of feeling helpless. I want to build tools that make my life easier. Any other blind devs in the same boat who would be interested in collaborating?
======
olalonde
I'm not blind but here's an (unsolicited) project idea for you.

To be candid, I have no idea what it feels like to be blind and have never
paid much attention to accessibility other than reading a tutorial or two and
making sure I use alt tags on my images. The main reason for that is that I'm
lazy and based on my experience, most developers are in the same boat.

Now, if there was a service which would spin up a remote VM session inside my
browser (a bit like BrowserStack or SauceLabs do) with all screen reader
software setup and no screen (only audio), it'd make it a lot easier for me to
experience my software as a blind user. There should probably also be a
walkthrough to help new users use the screen reader and help them get started.
If you're lucky, you could turn this into a business and it could indirectly
help you achieve your goal of making better software for the blind by exposing
more of us to your issues.

Anyways, I know you probably have more pressing issues to solve and I hope I
didn't come across as arrogant, just throwing the idea out there.

~~~
mwcampbell
As a partially sighted developer specializing in assistive technology, with
several friends who are totally blind, I think this is an excellent project
idea.

The cheapest way to do it would probably be using the Orca screen reader for
GNU/Linux, probably combined with the MATE desktop (forked from GNOME 2) so
one doesn't have to worry about 3D acceleration in the VM, which will
presumably be hosted remotely on a cloud provider somewhere. The main
technical challenge that springs to mind will be capturing all keyboard events
in a browser window. This is particularly important because screen readers
tend to rely on esoteric keyboard commands, which repurpose keys like CapsLock
and Insert as modifiers. I don't know if this can actually be done in a normal
web browser.

Anyway, just throwing out my quick thoughts on this. I don't currently have
time to pursue it further myself.

~~~
avtar
_> I don't currently have time to pursue it further myself._

I work for a non-profit where we tackle accessibility issues related to the
web, documents, and tech in general. We have a few Vagrant boxes that we use
for development and testing, one of them is a Fedora box (GNOME 3 though) that
comes with Orca configured [1] so that it doesn't prompt you for setup
options. Chrome and Firefox are installed as well. If you have Vagrant and
VirtualBox installed you can make use of it like so:

    
    
        vagrant init inclusivedesign/fedora24 && vagrant up
    

The box is ~2 GB. This is the repository for the box in question:

* [https://github.com/idi-ops/packer-fedora](https://github.com/idi-ops/packer-fedora)

* [https://atlas.hashicorp.com/inclusivedesign/boxes/fedora24](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/inclusivedesign/boxes/fedora24)

We track Fedora releases and update boxes fairly regularly so there should be
a Fedora 25 one with Orca once there's an official release upstream.

I hope it can be of use to anyone here. If you have any questions we hang out
in #fluid-work on Freenode.

[1] [https://github.com/gpii-ops/ansible-gpii-
framework/blob/mast...](https://github.com/gpii-ops/ansible-gpii-
framework/blob/master/tasks/configure.yml)

~~~
jareds
Do you think Fedora is a usable option as a totally blind person? I'm a
totally blind software developer and looked at Linux several years ago. It
didn't "just work" and since I already have Jaws for my job which requires
Windows I never bothered trying to use the Linux GUI for an extended length of
time. I'll have to look at this.

~~~
ndarilek
I'm blind and prefer Fedora because it tracks GNOME more closely, and GNOME
seems to reliably get accessibility right whereas Ubuntu/Unity doesn't.

So admittedly my development workflow isn't super high-tech. I do lots of
JavaScript, some Rust, and a few others. All my languages have reliable
command line tooling, which of course works well under Linux.

Some blind folks advised me to try Windows because it was supposed to make me
more productive. I tried it for about a year and a half. I've used Linux since
Slackware96, and whenever something failed under Windows I was stuck googling
error codes and tracking down system logs. I can launch a Linux system upgrade
from the command line. If it fails, it fails for an obvious/searchable reason,
and prints its failure cause in the terminal. I don't have to track down logs
in non-standard locations, google odd hex codes, etc.

Under Windows, the best I could find for accessible JS/Rust dev was Notepad++.
That's just an enhanced text editor. At that rate I might as well use
Gedit/Vim under Linux for development, which I do and it works well.

If you're developing heavily in Windows specific tech, then Linux wouldn't be
a good fit. But as a technical user I'm quite happy with Linux generally, and
Fedora specifically. About the only accessible Windows things I miss are audio
games and Netflix, and my VM satisfies most of those. There are corner cases
where Orca/Firefox act up, but under Windows there were _lots_ of cases where
I fought the OS, so there's just no perfect solution. I'd take a stronger
foundation over slightly less accessibility any day.

~~~
camlorn38
Windows 10 just works and now we have WSL (i.e. bash i.e. run all your
favorite CLI tooling). In general, Microsoft has gotten a lot better about
Windows just working. Perhaps Linux has too, but you still had to make sure
you had fully Linux-compatible hardware and then do extra steps to get Wi-fi,
last time I played with it.

Also, the web browsing experience on Windows is so much better, and the audio
stack doesn't fall down at the drop of a hat because you edited a config file
wrong (hope you have someone sighted who knows how to unedit it for you). I'm
not sure I'd call Linux a stronger foundation; this was not at all my
experience with it. OS X is, but then desktop Voiceover sucks to the point
where you can't really program with it (basic things like terminal do odd
things, nevermind the 10 or so keystrokes needed to navigate from code to the
project explorer in Xcode. And we have to mention the speech latency). Then
they just killed the function keys, which is an additional problem knocking OS
X off the list.

But I think the biggest thing about Windows for me is that it's got synths
which are capable of being intelligible upwards of 800 words a minute. Linux
didn't even let you get at these settings via Orca last I tried it, and you
can't set the inflection either, so it never emphasized punctuation. When your
interface is linear and top-to-bottom, the biggest bottleneck in the general
case is how fast you can go with the synth, and any platform which
significantly cuts this down is therefore not a winner in my book.

But whether or not you agree with my points, I consider it pretty clear-cut
that only a blind programmer even has the option of trying Linux in the first
place, and certainly not a new one at that. You need too much knowledge to
have even a halfway decent experience. In terms of making things accessible
and having them matter, you've got to hit Windows first.

------
ctoth
I'm also a blind software developer. I scrape by building apps[0] and
services[1] for other blind people, and running the occasional crowdfunding[2]
campaign.

First off, you're 100% correct when you talk about how devtools are
inaccessible. This problem is an historic one, stretching back as far as early
versions of Visual Studio, or other early IDEs on Windows. Basically, the
people who build the tools make the tools for themselves, and not being blind,
make inaccessible by default tooling.

I do most of my work on Windows, using the NVDA screen reader, and
consequently I have the ability to write or use add-ons for my screen reader
to help with a variety of tasks[3]. This being said, this always means more
work for equal access, if access is even possible.

I'm interested in any sort of collaborative effort you might propose.
Targeting accessibility issues in common devtools does seem to me like a
reasonable place to start attacking this problem. I had read a few months ago
that Marco Zehe, a blind developer at Mozilla, was pushing some work forward
for the Firefox devtools[4], but haven't heard much about that recently, and I
think they might be distracted trying to get a11y and e10s working together.

Basically, I'm interested in helping in any way you might suggest, and from
the thread here it looks like there are some enthusiastic people at least
willing to listen. My email is in my profile, let's make something awesome.

[0] [https://GetAccessibleApps.com](https://GetAccessibleApps.com)

[1] [https://CAPTCHABeGone.com](https://CAPTCHABeGone.com)

[2] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nvda-remote-
access/](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nvda-remote-access/)

[3] [https://github.com/mohammad-
suliman/visualStudioAddon](https://github.com/mohammad-
suliman/visualStudioAddon)

[4] [https://www.marcozehe.de/2016/01/26/making-the-firefox-
devel...](https://www.marcozehe.de/2016/01/26/making-the-firefox-developer-
tools-accessible/)

~~~
WhitneyLand
Is there anything that would be a relatively small change, but would make a
big difference to blind developers?

If it's closed source like a feature in Visual Studio or some other company,
I'll volunteer to ask them for it.

Maybe low hanging fruit is the easiest way to convince people at first.

------
kasbah
I am sighted myself but I work with a company called Bristol Braille
Technology and we are trying to make an affordable multi-line Braille e-book
reader.

If you have an interest in Braille and have software development skills there
might be something to do there. The UI program that drives our prototypes is
open source and available on GitHub. [https://github.com/Bristol-
Braille/canute-ui](https://github.com/Bristol-Braille/canute-ui)

We have plans to open source the hardware as well.

If you want to add support at a lower level, our current USB protocol is
outlined in this repository. It is a a dev-kit I knocked together to allow
some Google engineers to write drivers for BRLTTY (and thus for ChromeOS).
[https://github.com/Bristol-Braille/canute-dev-
kit](https://github.com/Bristol-Braille/canute-dev-kit)

------
saqibs
Hi, I'm also a blind dev - successfully been developing back-end systems and
libraries at Microsoft for over a decade. There are certainly accessibility
problems, but the awesome thing about being a dev is that you can also make
your own solutions. Look at T V Raman at Google, and Emacspeak - which whilst
not everyone's cup of tea, certainly serves him well.

For any developer, it's important to practice your craft, and when looking for
a job, it's valuable to have a portfolio of work you've contributed to. So you
can get multiple benefit by helping create a tool which will help you be more
productive, and also show your skill.

Clearly, this project should be something that you're passionate about, but
one project I've had on my when-I-have-time list is below - I would be happy
to work with others who are interested (@blinddev @ctoth @jareds).

After your text editor / IDE, one of the next most important tools is a tool
for tracking bugs/tasks. Unfortunately, many of the common ones, like VSTS,
Jira, and Trello, are either not accessible, or at least not productively
usable with a screen reader.

Over my career I've developed my own scripts for working with such systems,
but it would be good to have something that others can also benefit from. I
should probably put my initial bits on Github, but time is currently consumed
by other projects. Email me if this interests you. Also happy to mentor on
general career challenges around being a blind software engineer.

------
tarboreus
Low vision programmer here. I've made a few tools that make my own programming
easier, like a lightweight version of Emacspeak
[https://github.com/smythp/eloud](https://github.com/smythp/eloud) (now in
melpa) and just gave a talk on blind hackers and our tradition of
bootstrapping:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_O3joo4aU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_O3joo4aU)
Would be happy to help out with a project, email at my name + 01 + @ +
gmail.com.

------
russomf
I am an adjunct professor in a CS department. I usually end up with
introductory level courses, often for non-majors. This semester I have a
visually impaired student in an introductory Java course who is unable to see
the screen. He uses JAWS as his primary screen reader. To my great surprise,
most of the tools we typically use were completely inaccessible to screen
readers. I spent the first several weeks of the semester scrambling to find a
reasonable set of tools that would work for him. We settled on Notepad++ and
the terminal. Also, I provide him with special versions of the slide decks,
readings, assignments, quizzes and exams.

I would be very interested to learn how visually impaired developers such as
yourself and others got started, and for any suggestions for how I can make my
student's experience more positive.

Thanks.

~~~
jscholes
The solution you've settled upon (text editor plus CLI) is pretty much the
best you and your student can hope for at the moment. When I was at
university, speaking as a screen reader user myself, the very first thing I
asked my tutors was whether I could skip all the Eclipse learning and jump
straight into command line compilation.

Further down the line, the student might find that programming is no longer so
new to them that they can afford to explore something else. But at the moment,
if they're a beginner, trying to learn a tool like an IDE, which is supposed
to make your life easier but generally has the opposite effect for blind devs,
is just going to confuse matters. So I would stick with what you're doing,
because you probably won't get any better support from the disability services
team at the university because it's not an area they know.

Your student needs to learn, sometimes the hard way, that if you're blind and
want to make things, you have to be prepared to do things in ways which go
completely against the grain - having to basically use Windows to be
productive is one of them - and to solve these boilerplate accessibility
problems without becoming discouraged.

~~~
russomf
Thanks. That is very helpful.

------
jareds
I'm a totally blind developer and have some of the same issues you do. As far
as Chrome dev tools go I've given up on doing any kind of UI work, partially
because of accessibility and partially because it does not interest me. My
current job is working on a large Java web app. Luckily my company is
understanding when it comes to UI so I don't do much of that work but do a lot
of API and database work. API's can be tested using curl and database stuff
can be done from a command-line. The advantage to working on the app is if
accessibility gets completely broken it's discovered early and made to work
well enough. We use Eclipse as an IDE and it works pretty well with Jaws. I've
used IntelliJ a bit and it's what I'd call barely usable. I am hoping it will
continue to improve, the impetus for adding accessibility appears to have been
Google switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ when coming out with Android studio.
Hopefully Google will continue to insure accessibility improves. As far as
JIRA goes I agree with you. I'd really like to hear from Atlassian why they
can't display dashboards and issue lists using tables to provide any kind of
semantic information. I've found your best bet with JIRA is to have someone
sited help set up filters that display what you need. Export the results of
the filter to Excel and you can brows a lot of issues quite quickly. I haven't
used Gitlab but find Github to be fairly easy to use in the limited experience
I have with it. I'm not particularly interested in building tools from scratch
since I don't have a lot of free time but would be interested in trying
anything that comes out of this.

------
AtomicOrbital
I am working on a project to parse an image which then synthesizes an audio
representation which retains all the information of the source image ... next
step is to parse live video to enable people to hear what others see ... shoot
me an email as well ... its not specific to dev tools yet could parley into a
general enabler ... I am using a Hilbert Curve ... nice intro video at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuiryHHTrjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuiryHHTrjU)

~~~
blinddev
Wow, lots of potential here. Will definitely reach out.

------
chrisdotcode
I'm not blind, but I would certainly like to contribute where I can. Shoot me
an email (it's in my profile).

The world can certainly use more open source accessibility standards,
protocols and tools.

------
Mz
I am not blind nor a programmer. But I do have serious eyesight problems and
other handicaps. I also have moderating experience. Given the number of people
saying "Shoot me an email" I have gone ahead and set up an email list via
Google Groups called Blind Dev Works. If anyone wants to use that as a
collaboration space, shoot me an email (talithamichele at gmail dot com) and I
will send you an invitation.

~~~
blinddev
In addition to this Google Group, I have also created the following GitHub
organization: [https://github.com/blind-dev](https://github.com/blind-dev)

And have started a website to provide a resource for software development and
accessibility: [https://blinddev.org](https://blinddev.org)

Both are works in progress. If interested in contributing feel free to reach
out, my email is in my profile.

------
mwcampbell
Out of curiosity, what operating system and screen reader(s) are you using?

As a partially sighted developer, I generally use a screen reader for web
browsing and email, but read the screen visually for my actual programming
work. So I don't have significant first-hand experience with the accessibility
(or lack thereof) of development tools. But some of my totally blind
programmer friends have expressed some frustration with the accessibility of
some tools, especially web applications. They generally use Windows with NVDA
([http://www.nvaccess.org/](http://www.nvaccess.org/)). At least with NVDA,
you can write add-ons (in Python) to help with specific applications and
tasks.

------
tedmiston
Any chance you could start with an education component? I think most of us
don't really know the nuances of a blind developer's workflow, especially
which tooling breaks down where and if there is anything that is infeasible.

~~~
blinddev
What would this look like?(no pun intended) Like a web site that documents
accessibility issues for common web sites and software? Or a guide that walks
through a typical development process for a blind dev?

~~~
tedmiston
Something like the latter. I think just a few blog posts would be very
helpful.

------
WhitneyLand
I think you are smart to consider your developer skills as a separate thing to
improve. One way to objectively measure this might be to explain a technical
concept to someone.

For example, could you read this article and then give an overview of the main
issues of web site performance? Could you then come up with one recommendation
for a performance improvement in a code base you're familiar with? Could you
justify in practical terms why your recommendation was the best bang for the
buck, vs. other other possible improvements?
[https://medium.baqend.com/building-a-shop-with-sub-second-
pa...](https://medium.baqend.com/building-a-shop-with-sub-second-page-loads-
lessons-learned-4bb1be3ed07)

Now, how do you judge yourself?

1). Have the conversation with a dev whose skills and opinion you trust.

2). Record your answers on audio, and ask someone on HN to give you fair and
constructive feedback. Many here would be glad to do this (feel free to ping
me as well).

------
WalterBright
I would very much like to make the D programming language dev tools work
better for visually impaired users. Any suggestions you can give would be
welcome, pull requests even more so!

dlang.org

------
norcimo5
Yes please! I'm not blind either, but would love to collaborate / contribute
also. My email address is in my profile. Thanks.

------
artpi
Currently, I'm launching an app that is reading Slack messages out loud - Team
Parrot [http://teamparrot.artpi.net/](http://teamparrot.artpi.net/) . Once
launched, it will be open source (built in react native) If you think it's
useful, I will welcome contributions.

I am not blind, but I designed it to operate without looking at screen. If the
app will take off, I'm considering into forking/pivoting into RSS reader that
also is not using screen. App is already accepted in the app store, I'm
sorting out launch details.

Please accept my deepest apologies for the shitty job we (the developers ) are
doing at providing interfaces for vision impaired.

Probably when we're all old, we'll have vision problems of our own :).

------
ezufelt
I am a completely blind developer and have been working on and off with code
for about 20 years. When I started I was able to see well enough to work
without the assistance of a magnifier or screen-reader, now I rely completely
on VoiceOver and JAWS.

I too find frustration with some of the tools with which I work. Although they
may slow me down, they seldom create complete barriers. Most of my work at
this point in time is with PHP and Javascript, so this may help the situation,
I am less familiar with the current state of affairs of the accessibility of
developing with other languages.

All of the complaining I do about JIRA aside, I do find it to be a reasonably
usable tool for what I need (page load times annoy me far more than
accessibility issues). There are some tasks that I cannot complete (reordering
backlog items), but I collaborate with team members, which can help us all to
have better context about the rationale for changes.

Gitlab I find quite poorly accessible, but thankfully it is just a UI on top
of an otherwise excellent tool (git). I find that the same trick that works
with evaluating GitHub PRs works with Gitlab MRs. If you putt .diff after the
URL to a PR or MR, you can see the raw output of the diff of the branches
being compared.

Debuggers are definitely my biggest current pain point. I tend to use MacGDBp
for PHP. This is quite reasonably accessible. It allows me to step through
code, to see the value of all variables, and to understand the file / line
number being executed. It isn't possible to see the exact line of code, so I
need to have my code editor open and to track along.

I haven't found a very accessible Javascript debugger. For Javascript and DOM
debugging I still find myself using Firebug. I use lots of console.log()
statements, and would rather be able to set breakpoints and step through code
execution. That being said, other than "does this look right?", I find there
is little that being blind prevents me from doing with Javascript. As recently
as last night I was squashing bugs in a React app that I am helping to build
for one of my company's customers.

I'd be happy to learn more about any projects you take on to improve web
application development tools and practices for persons with disabilities.
Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn if you would like to talk.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezufelt](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezufelt)

------
nbonatsakis
Legally blind developer here. I still have some vision in one eye and I make
extensive use of it as far as being able to primarily code with screen
magnification and some spoken text for select code all using OS X). I've had
good success in my career but I will say I've had to at times work a lot
harder to get the same results as fully sighted coworkers.

I'm mostly responding to encourage you to keep at it, and if you haven't tried
Mac OS, maybe give it a whirl. Apple is pretty good about accessibility and
their accessibility team is very good at accepting and acting upon feedback.

~~~
wila
Guess it helps that apple does employ at least one blind engineer. [1]

[1][http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-
engine...](http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-
engineer/#uMR5WvohmZqK)

~~~
nbonatsakis
FWIW i have it on good authority that Apple employs at least 4-5 blind
developers on the accessibility team alone, possibly more elsewhere in the
company.

~~~
wila
That makes sense. Perhaps TS should try and get a job at one of the big
companies like google, apple, facebook etcetera. Being blind and have
programming experience might be an asset for working on an accessibility team
like that.

------
WhitneyLand
Would it be helpful for a news site or blog to call out software that won't
take easy steps to improve accessibility?

My sight issues are not comparable to being blind, but as an example, I've
asked Pandora for simple accessibility improvements for years and they never
take action. Have even offered to write (less than a page) the code for them.

Would they (and software tool vendors) feel the same way if this were
highlighted on a high traffic web page?

~~~
blinddev
There might be something here. I'm personally not a fan of shaming, but
documenting where a piece of software falls short and making specific
recommendations in a public forum might go a long way.

------
rhgraysonii
I have a tool I'm working on that is specifically geared towards assisting the
transcription of printed books to braille for The Clovernook Center for the
Blind [1] built on top of Atom as an extension.

A super-rudimentary basic version will be something I finish when I've the
time in the coming months. I was hoping to get some interested from the blind
community and get ideas for further OSS work involving that general space
(editors).

~~~
jscholes
FYI, Atom isn't particularly screen reader friendly.

------
hendekahedron
I'm not blind but I have very poor eyesight in my left eye which makes reading
tiring so I started this experimental Morse-based system
[https://github.com/Hendekagon/MorseCoder](https://github.com/Hendekagon/MorseCoder)
for the Apple trackpad. It's not very successful. What I really want is a
fully haptic dynamically-textured surface.

------
dmytroi
Not a blind dev, and would love to help community as much as possible, though
I don't even know where to start :( Would be really helpful to have
centralized place which directs developers effort to valuable open source
projects.

Another interesting idea: try using braille screen for ourselves, so we as
dev's will be able to work at complete darkness without any light :)

------
eivarv
I’m not blind either, but I too would be interested in contributing.

Send me an email; my address is in my profile.

------
nstj
One of the best (and most engaging) HN threads of the year from my
perspective. So much better than "$STARTUP raised an n hundred million dollar
series Q" on TechCrunch article.

Thanks @blinddev.

~~~
blinddev
You're welcome. :)

I was feeling pretty down and wanted something positive to come out of it.
Glad to see I'm not alone.

------
cignext
I am not blind but my daughter has albinism and low vision as a result. I have
been looking to find ways to contribute and make it easier for her and others.

I would be happy to help.

------
saverio-murgia
I am not blind but might have the chance to offer you a dev job (related to
blindness). Here's the product we are working on:
[http://horus.tech](http://horus.tech) Just send me an email at saverio at
horus dot tech if interested

~~~
enzolovesbacon
I'm not sure what's the protocol for this kind of stuff (I'm not blind), but,
your website being directed at blind people, wouldn't it be better to be set
english as the main language?

~~~
saverio-murgia
It should pick English or Italian depending on your browser language. If it
does not, then it's a bug. I'll look into it

~~~
lucb1e
I have my OS and browser set to English and am browsing from a Dutch IP
address. I get the Italian page. Not sure which part of "Accept-Language: en-
US,en" (which Firefox sends) is unclear.

Edit: oh there is an English button in the right top. Only saw it just now (a
flag might be more colorful to spot).

~~~
enzolovesbacon
I have a similar setup: OS and browser set to English from brazilian IP
address. I got the italian page as default.

And I also took some time to find where to change to english.

------
austincheney
[https://github.com/prettydiff/a11y-tools](https://github.com/prettydiff/a11y-tools)

------
pdevr
I am not blind, but would very much like to contribute. I have been developing
tools and applications for a very long time now.

Do let me know how to contact you.

------
elil17
Dear blinddev,

I'm a seeing student with an upcoming six week block of time to do a out of
school project. I have previous experience developing accessable software and
would love to work with you. If you're interested, shoot me an email at
eliaslit17@gmail.com

------
jlg23
> I'm looking at you JIRA, GitLab, Chrome Dev Tools, etc.

I'm not sure that using tools that try to provide a good visual experience is
the right approach. Have you tried writing scrapers that provide an optimized
textual representation?

~~~
connorshea
I disagree, I think we should all have the responsibility to make sure our
sites and apps are accessible.

~~~
jlg23
Yes and no.

Yes, we should all make our sites/apps accessible.

No, some sites/apps are great exactly because they offer a better visual
representation that allows faster parsing of the information presented to the
vast majority with adequate eyesight.

Just because someone develops a great way to visually take in information,
that person should not be forced to develop an equally great textual
representation.

------
datashovel
I'd be interested in discussing this with you further offline. I'm not blind,
but definitely interested in exploring ways to help. If you add some
information to your profile about how to reach you I'll reach out.

------
julian37
I know you're asking for collaborators and not recommendations for tools, but
since you were mentioning Chrome Devtools I wanted to make you aware of
kite.el [1] which I believe TV Raman had working with Emacspeak [2] at one
point. kite.el is unmaintained, but it might make for a good starting point?

[1] [http://github.com/jscheid/kite](http://github.com/jscheid/kite) [2]
[http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/](http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/)

------
johnwheeler
I created a framework for the Amazon Echo. I've been curious if it could help
the blind. My e-mail is John At John Wheeler Dot Org. I'd be willing to help
you if you could use me.

~~~
blinddev
I have an Echo and it is a life changer for a blind person. I've written a few
trivial skills for it, but definitely would like to do more.

------
blindza
I am a 100% blind, (primarily) web application developer, and, main focus area
at moment is PHP, MySQL, javascript/jQuery, with things like python as a form
of side-line, and, main thing for me is finding right alternative tools to use
- work on windows platform, using NVDA screen reader, which itself is done
using python, and, while I use both WAMP and XAMPP on dev machine, I use a
specific programmer's code/text editor, called edSharp, which was created by a
blind dev himself, and, for things like DB management, I generally work with a
web interface, from adminer.org, which can handle multiple DB platforms, but,
on the program-l VI programmer's mailing list, there are a bunch of guys who
work with a wide range of dev tools, for all sorts of platforms, and, there
are probably a few guys there who might be interested in helping with this
type of thing, but, for example, guys there work with things like eclipse,
sodbeans, VS.Net, and, multiple other tools, at times with workarounds, etc.,
but, really just depends on your primary dev focus areas? Either way, check
out
[http://www.freelists.org/list/program-l](http://www.freelists.org/list/program-l)

------
Mz
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820985)

FYI, I sent courtesy invitations to nine people who said in this discussion
"shoot me an email." One email address provided here was invalid. One or two
other people who said "email in profile" did not have an email in their
profile. If you want an invitation, contact me (talithamichele at gmail etc).

------
mst
There's a guy called Octavian Rasnita who's a blind perl developer who I've
met before. We basically never agreed on anything but he always disagreed with
me intelligently. You might be able to contact him by emailing user teddy on
domain cpan.org. No idea if he's a good person to talk to or not tbh but I've
always found him worth arguing with.

If you do contact him please blame me so he can shout at me, not you, if I
made the wrong guess here.

------
misiti3780
I'd help, shoot me an email. (I'm not blind)

------
Anm
I'm part of the Blockly team
([https://developers.google.com/blockly/](https://developers.google.com/blockly/)),
an open source project for visual drag-and-drop programming, usually targeting
kids. Despite being a "visual programming editor" first, we are exploring
blind accessible (i.e., screen reader ready) variants of our library.

See our first demo: [https://blockly-
demo.appspot.com/static/demos/accessible/ind...](https://blockly-
demo.appspot.com/static/demos/accessible/index.html)

Right now, it is effectively a different renderer for the same abstract syntax
tree. We'd love to see people evaluate the direction we are currently going,
and possibly apply the same accessible navigation to our existing render.

In terms of dev tools, Blockly blocks are usually constructed using Blockly
([https://blockly-
demo.appspot.com/static/demos/blockfactory/i...](https://blockly-
demo.appspot.com/static/demos/blockfactory/index.html)). That said, no one has
considered what it would take to make our dev tools blind accessible. The
fundamentals are there.

Granted, Blockly programming is far from being as powerful as other languages.
It is aimed at novice programmers, whether for casual use or to teach the
fundamentals of computational thinking. You can write an app in Blockly
([http://appinventor.mit.edu/](http://appinventor.mit.edu/)).

If anyone is interested, reach out to us:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/blockly](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/blockly)

------
azhenley
My research is on dev tools so I have a huge interest in this. Also, I
interned at Microsoft Research and got to meet a few of their blind devs and
how they are building tools to support others.

There is also a fair amount of research out there on the topic (see Richard
Ladner at UW).

Feel free to send me an email if you get anything going!

------
nanch
I'm making web apps and mobile apps and I'd like to learn how to make my apps
more accessible. Is there a community where I can ask for assistance with
accessibility testing? I'd be willing to pay for testing. Thank you kindly.
Nanch.

------
pvaldes
Just in case you don't know this still, there is a latex package for braille.
You can write a .tex file in english an put \usepackage{braille} in the
preamble of your tex files and your output will be translated to braille
automatically. The pdf can be then raised printed with the appropriate
hardware. You could find it useful for documenting your software (tutorials,
faqs, manuals, etc...), in both languages even if your collaborators don't
know a single word in braille.

You will need to have the package texlive-fonts-extra installed.

You could want also to contact with the maintainers of brltty, cl-brlapi,
ebook-speaker or brailleutils

------
evincarofautumn
I’m a programming language developer, and I’m interested in developing
languages and programming environments for the blind and visually impaired, or
at least making existing languages more usable. Feel free to get in touch.

------
varlock
Great initiative! Are you considering setting up a blog / github page /
anything to keep track and coordinate the effort?

I'm asking because though I'd love to help I know I won't be able to commit to
it full-time. So it would be great to be able to follow up and get an idea of
where the project is going, what areas it is tackling, etc.

Also, maybe a "Show HN" could help spreading to a wider audience whatever you
set up.

~~~
blinddev
I have created both, still a work in progress, but once there's something to
show a Show HN might be in order.

[https://github.com/blind-dev](https://github.com/blind-dev)
[https://blinddev.org](https://blinddev.org)

------
UserNamesStupid
I wish you well and will help in any way that I can. ld

------
Mz
Project update: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/10/blind-dev-
wo...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/10/blind-dev-works.html)

Posted to HN here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841156)

------
GeorgieB33
Thanks so much for posting this. I'm not blind or partially sighted, but I do
work on one of the software tools that you mention.

I would love to learn more about how you would like development tools to
support you in your work.

I know as an industry we have a long way to go, and I would love to work with
you to get us there.

My email is in my profile, and I will also reach out to Talitha. Hoping we get
a chance to chat.

~~~
blinddev
Thanks, will reach out for sure.

------
hippich
If you develop frontend stuff, please get in touch at pavelkaroukin@gmail.com
. Company I work at developing single page app for higher ed and we constantly
struggle with proper practices to make UI to be accessible to people with bad
sight. Who knows, maybe it will perfect opportunity for both you and my
company.

------
connorshea
Out of curiosity, what kind of developer are you? (e.g. languages you know,
frameworks, platforms, etc.)

------
Michie
Hi blinddev,

You might want to read this: TOOLS of Blind Programmer
[https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-
pro...](https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-programmer/)

Hope this can help.

------
navalsaini
I am planning to work by blinding myself (covering my eyes) everyday for half
an hour - starting one of these days. Though I am not immediately planning to
work on software for the blind, I might get some inspiration to do so in
future with this exercise.

------
egonschiele
Not blind, but interested!

------
bondolo
Have you heard of the BATS group and mailing list?

[http://bats.fyi/](http://bats.fyi/)

~~~
blinddev
No, but I have now. Very cool.

------
dejawu
I am sighted, but I am a developer (primarily web) and I'd like to help. Is
there room for people like me?

~~~
blinddev
Yes, shoot me an email (in my profile) and I can invite you to the Google
Group.

------
neoncontrails
Sighted person here. I'm very interested in this question. Most developers I
know are not considering accessibility as part of the intrinsic design of an
app. Blind people are more keenly aware of this problem, unfortunately,
because it affects them a little more directly. Accessibility to screen
reading clients is considered a "good to have," nonessential, an optimization.
And yet when you ask the same people if search engine optimization is
considered a "good to have," many will laugh and say no, that it is a
necessity, if for no other reason than their clients demand it.

Clients want sites that implement current SEO best practices. What sort of
best practices are those? A Yoast SEO plugin, maybe. Developers often mention
the URL structure of the site itself, say it's "clean." This might be
appreciated by future admins of the site, but it's unrelated to the goal of
making pages that can be scraped.

It surprises me developers and SEOs overlook the difficulty of scraping the
web. Keyword density does very little to help a page that cannot easily be
serialized to a database. It's true that machines have come a long way. Google
sees text loaded into the DOM dynamically, for example. But its algorithms
remain deeply skeptical of ( or maybe just confused by ) pages I've made that
make a lot of hot changes to the DOM.

And why wouldn't it be? I ask myself how would I cope with a succession of
before and after states, identify conflicts, and merge all those objects into
a cached image. Badly, sure. At this point, summarizing what the page "says"
is no longer a deterministic function of the static page. Perhaps machine
learning algorithms of the future will more and more resemble riveting court
dramas where various mappings are proposed, compared to various procedural
precedents, and rejected until a verdict is reached.

I wasn't very good at SEO. I found web scrapers completely fascinating, I
spent way more time reading white papers on Google Research and trying to
build a homemade facsimile of Google. Come to think of it, I did very little
actual work. But I took a lot of useful lessons that have served me well as a
developer.

I realized, for example, how many great websites there are that are utterly
inaccessible to the visually impaired. With very few exceptions, these sites
inhabit this sort of "gray web," unobservable to the vast majority of the
world's eyeballs. The difficulty of crawling the web isn't simply related to
the difficulty of summarizing a rich, interactive, content experience. They
are instances of the same problem. If I really wanted to know how my site's
SEO stacks up against the competition, I would not hire an SEO to tell me, I
would hire a blind person.

------
gentleteblor
I'd like to help.

------
mtrycz
> I'm looking at you Chrome Dev Tools...

Puns aside, Who on earth would make a blind person work on UI? I think it's
better that you parted with them, even tho I'm sorry you have trouble finding
a good job.

Best of luck.

------
camlorn38
I'm a blind programmer. I'm currently working on the Rust compiler [0] and a
large library for 3D audio that is essentially desktop WebAudio [1]. I'm the
kind of person who people often ask for help with their college classes
because I went through everything without trouble and came out of college with
a 3.9 GPA, and the only reason I'm not making significant amounts of money at
the moment is that I have other health problems that I won't go into here (but
I would trade with someone who is only blind in a heartbeat). I think I am
qualified to say that this is a bad idea.

Firstly, just offhand, the following stacks should be fully accessible with
current tools: Node.js, Rust, Python, truly cross-platform C++, Java, Scala,
Ruby, PHP, Haskell, and Erlang. If you use any of these, you can work
completely from a terminal, access servers via SSH through Cygwin or Bash for
Windows, and do editing via an SFTP client (WinSCP works reasonably, at least
with NVDA). Notepad++ also makes a perfectly adequate editor, again with NVDA;
I'm not sure about jaws if you're using that.

GitHub has a command line tool called hub that can be used to do some things,
and is otherwise pretty accessible. Not perfect, but certainly usable enough
that NVDA (one of the most popular screen readers) uses it now. Many other
project management systems have command line tools as well. If you write
alternatives to project management tools, you will have to convince your
employer to use them. Replacing these makes you less employable. You need to
work to make them accessible, perhaps by getting a job on an accessibility
team.

The stacks you are locked out of--primarily anything Microsoft and anything
iOS--can only be fixed with collaboration from the companies backing them.
Writing a wrapper or alternative to msbuild that can let you do a UWP app
without using the GUI is not feasible. I have looked into this. Doing this for
Xcode is even worse, because Xcode is a complicated monster that doesn't
bother to document anything--Microsoft doesn't document much, but at least
gives you some.

I imagine this is not what you want to hear, but separating all the blind
people into the corner and requiring custom tools for everything will just put
us all out of work. if you're successful, none of the mainstream stuff that
cares even a little right now will continue to do so, and you'll end up
working on blind-person-only teams at blind-person-only companies.

0: My most notable Rust PR is this monster: [https://github.com/rust-
lang/rust/pull/36151](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/36151) 1:
[https://github.com/camlorn/libaudioverse](https://github.com/camlorn/libaudioverse)

~~~
blinddev
If this is directed at me, I don't think I'm arguing to put blind developers
in a corner. The tools that could be developed could either be new or
improvements on existing tools. The latter sounds like your preference, but I
don't think it is the only viable option. I can envision a whole suite of
tools that, while targeting blind developers, could enhance their abilities or
even just make what was otherwise inaccessible accessible.

A possible analogy might be crossing a busy intersection. Someone made
pedestrian cross signs audible, allowing a pedestrian to know what the walk
sign says at any given time. But this is an enhancement of a pre-existing
technology. That blind pedestrian will still likely require a white cane, a
blind person specific tool, in order to cross the street. I think there's room
for both in software development.

------
Boothroid
I'm almost completely blind in one due to an eye condition and would be
interested in being involved.

