An Autobiography of a Blind Programmer | Hacker News Reader

An Autobiography of a Blind Programmer

parhamdoustdar.com

58 pointsedtechdev29 comments

> As for mathematics and theoretical subjects ... there was no way of learning them for me.

That's extremely saddening, since to me those are some of the subjects that I have really enjoyed in the past. The idea that there is no way for blind people to learn these subjects either at all or without great difficulty is rather appauling. However I'm not really sure of what a solution to this could be.

EDIT: Actually, given that most of mathematics was written down until (I think) the 1400s, and the person said their screenreader was around 520 words per second, would one possible solution be to have mathematics papers written down, with all the symbols reduced in some way to plain english.

It would make things marginally slower, but if the person can listen at that speed that I would say there should be a chance for it to work.

Hey,

Thanks a lot for going through the article! :-)

You should keep a few things in mind about what I said regarding the accessibility of math content:

- I am in Iran. A lot of the assistive technology (other than software) is not available to me. I have no idea what people have in the United States, but I know blind people who have been very successful in mathematics. So, there is definitely a way. You just have to be in the right place.

- At the time I was in university (that is 2008-2010) screen readers and accessibility were not as advanced. There was also no concept of MathML back then. Things are improving though.

With all that said, math content is still not as accessible to blind people as it is to their sighted counterparts. But with the right people, you can circumvent the lack of support.

I don't know why, but you have been shadowbanned, likely by some automated process. I vouched for each comment of yours. Hopefully, if enough people do it, everyone else will be able to read your comments too.

Go here for more information: https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements

That seems to be fixed now?

I think so. Maybe the system now automatically shadowbans new users and relies on others to vouch for them to make them active.

MathML existed then but support for it was scarce, in browsers it was poor to non-existent. For Internet Explorer there was the MathPlayer plugin. MathJax is a JavaScript library for rendering MathML that's very good. However much of the use of MathML is focused on the presentation of the math, how it's rendered, rather than its semantics so that still makes it more challenging to learn.

One of the better ways to access math is to learn human-readable TeX; it's just the parts of the TeX language needed to represent equations and scientific notation. TeX is already heavily used in STEM fields for laying out papers and such so there's material already in that form and there are many people who can write it. Even more people are familiar with its conventions like using the carat ^ to mark the beginning of an exponent, e.g. E=mc^2. Platforms like Wikipedia's MediaWiki can take human-readable TeX in the editor, render it to an image file in the published page but keep the TeX as the alt text of the image. MathJax can also render it.

From Japan, there's InftyReader [1], OCR software that specializes in converting scans of mathematical equations, and ChattyInfty, a speech interface for InftyEditor, a mathematical document editor. Unfortunately, both are expensive.

For statistics, the R language has existed for a while but I think it has become a lot more popular in the past five years or so. Having a command line interface, it's much more accessible than other statistics software like SPSS.

[1] http://www.inftyproject.org

[2] https://www.r-project.org

That was definitely one of the more readable articles on the front page. IMO if more web developers where blind like this guy then maybe the web would be more readable.

It's the one reason I positively hate all the eye candy and executable pages on the web. Accessibility went right out the window at some point, but it was actually a cornerstone of the web that the reader should determine what a page should look (or sound) like.

Now, you could of course craft a page that would still work well on screen readers and that at the same time does the whole dog-and-pony show on more capable browsers. But in practice that doesn't really happen.

Many pages which are in fact just text pages once rendered simply won't render or will render very badly with javascript off.

Get blind employees/coworkers. You'll find that you'll be making damn sure your page is accessible. I enjoy it a lot because you don't generally think about it, but accessibility does affect many people.

This is a very valid point. All the pages produced by the places I've worked at were 100% accessible, mainly because the developers could see that I am unable to use the website, and I told them how easy it is to make content accessible. It is really simple once you do know that it is possible, and having a blind colleague who serves as a human tester is, as you said, really cool in this regard.

And not only as a reminder, like I said before, but most of the time I don't even know how to use the accessibility tools! So it's very nice to have someone who knows what they're doing tell you "I can't read this".

This is also how I discovered what a clusterfuck the Android accessibility tools are. Talkback before Marshmallow is atrocious (as in very obviously buggy), I'm going to test the new Talkback now and see.

I personally find it unfair to make the whole web seem bland to a majority of people, so that a minority would find it easy to access. However, I believe that teaching developers about their responsibility to their fellow human beings, even in theory, would go a long way in reducing stuff that looks well, but is not usable to the blind.

What you mentioned about accessibility features being available but not being used in practice is not only in the web. You get the same thing in Android and IOS applications as well. I have always wondered about how we can fix this, but to be honest, I have never found a solution, sadly.

No, honestly this is more readable for sited people too (speaking as one). I am 100% for a "bland" web.

Thank you. I'm glad to know that sighted people were looking for readable articles as much as I am.

Would love to hear more about how he interacts with his computer day to day and what sort of software he uses to get through the mess that is web 2.0.

Me too, he never said how he manages to actually write and test his code. Going blind it's one of my nightmare scenarios not only because I won't be able to see but because I just don't know how I will be able to keep coding (and earn money) after that. I have even thought about using my PC/phone as if I were blind for about a month or so, that way if I lose my eyesight at some point I will already know how to navigate my system and the shock wouldn't be so great. That is how much I dread that relatively unlikely scenario.

To be honest, I started working on that first. Then, I realized that the reader needs more background to know what I'm talking about. Then, I decided to write this post.

I promise to write about that next Sunday.

> Having a screen reader that reads at about 520 words per minute is a blessing when you are gathering knowledge.

That's so fast it is incredible. I'm really quite shocked at that speed, is that a regular speed for a blind person to be using their screenreader at?

Apparently if you're poor or lacking in one of the body's basic senses, the others are heightened to make up for it? Maybe by not having to process the immense data that must be required by vision, they're able to dedicate more of their brain's "bandwidth" to processing a more intensive stream of aural data. :)

No, you just have to practice.

I'm not blind. I listen to all podcasts at 2x speed and I can't stand to go back to "normal" speed because it's so slow. While doing accessibility testing I've found myself turning the voiceover prompts faster and faster because I very quickly get used to it.

If you have an iOS device, set your home button triple click to bring up a shortcut menu and put Voiceover in as one of the options (inverse colors is another good one). Test your own app in Voiceover mode. Close your eyes and navigate around. You'll be surprised at how quickly you figure it out... and what rough edges your app has.

Being blind is just the most efficient way to improve focus. You are back against the wall, no other alternative to pursue. I don't say it loud but I somehow envy them. The see more than me.

I agree. Yoshiro Nakamatsu claims that he invents things while submerging himself under water. While I'm not sure if he's telling the truth, one thing everyone agrees on is your well-said statement. We perform best when under immense pressure, when our fight-or-flight response activates.

More than 'immense' pressure, it's regular and high enough desire. When I fubared my filesystem, I suddenly spent 4 hours very carefully reading man pages. Usually after 15min I quit.

You are right.

On a different note, I'm glad I got to know insightful people on HN through my post. You guys are helping me know more about myself through your interesting comments. Thank you.

Happy to have a positive effect on you but I'm really just an average guy (even though my ego likes to think otherwise).

Exactly. The reason I have been able to achieve such a high speed of reading is simply the fact that this sound is all I've heard for most of the day since I was 14. That makes it about 12 years.

I assume it's the equivalent of skimming?

It just takes practice. Hearing it out of context, it's just a jumble of words, but you can make out some things if you notice, plus if you're controlling it you know what to anticipate, so it gets better with practice.

Exactly. My screen reader is very adjustable in what it reads. When you have that level of control, you will be able to anticipate some of what you will be hearing, effectively improving the speed at which you understand. It's just how you read with your eyes (i.e. an experiment has found that when reading headlines, people read the first three words and last three words first).

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