Hacker News Reader

Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it might be worthwhile for sighted developers to set up a system that a blind person would use and then blindfold themselves, and start using the system...

Perhaps that would make it easier for us to develop software that works well for blind people?

View on HN

Part of the problem is that most accessibility software has a hell of a learning curve, that the blind have implicitly overcome already to use the thing at all. (e.g. emacspeak) It can be very daunting to try to use it as a sighted person with a blindfold over their eyes.

Have blind people overcome this because of past experience and living with the fact of being blind, or is it the case that the software isn't necessarily intuitive in the first place?

I think when I have a moment I might attempt this as an exercise...

If I were to see this moment, I would wonder how you can bear using a mouse when the keyboard is so much quicker. However, you can probably use the mouse much faster than I can.

Why? It's probably the power of habits. Using a keyboard-mouse combination to interact with the computer is how you've always worked. Using a screen reader with a large number of specialized keystrokes is how I've always worked.

I've had a tiny, tiny amount of experience with using NVDA through work and the first hurdle is the incredible number of keyboard shortcuts to learn. The only other tip I can give is to unplug your mouse and give it a go.

I do not, myself, know why this is the case. I can come up with several plausible reasons; for example, you're basically coming up with an alternate input device for your computer piggybacked onto something that's already there. Additionally these programs basically are the computer if you're blind; you develop a lot of experience with them quickly because the alternative is not using it at all. And some amount of it is probably cultural/historical, we make it hard because it's always been hard. Truly, I don't know, and I don't know anyone who does.

I imagine that if we tried to make programming by voice more practical, that would help solve part of the problem. A few developers have made it work but it requires a lot of setup.

http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html

More resources here:

https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/progra...

i think coding by voice is solving a different challenge than blind developers are facing. Blind developers have no issue with manipulating a keyboard. I feel the most immediate accessibility issue facing blind and low vision developers is quickly being made aware of context changes and making sure the element you expect to have selected is actually selected.

An IDE is pretty much useless to a blind developer if the screen reader cannot adequately relay the current context to the developer.

But what about making it work with existing tools? My u der standing is that when developing software there are a variety of things you must implement so that these tools work well.

I'm interested because LibreOffice has an accessibility layer which I've never explored but that is cross platform.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com