How Google’s Blind Lawyer Does His Job | Hacker News Reader

How Google’s Blind Lawyer Does His Job

bol.bna.com

89 pointsjuanplusjuan11 comments

I work with Jack on a regular basis. You couldn't ask for a more fun colleague to work with too, he not only does all of those things but he does them with incredible grace.

His story really illustrates how we all need to start thinking more about accessibility features in the products we build, however time/budget constrained we might be.

One of the things I really admire about Google is the effort it makes to be an inclusive workplace. I love that they'll go out-of-their-way to tailor the environment to be comfortable for anyone who happens to work there.

Supposedly, this is pretty much... the law in the United States. That you make reasonable accommodations to allow the disabled to do their jobs. However, Google is incredibly good at marketing and PR, and hence gets journalists to write posts like this for them.

Companies going out of their way to help the blind is not the norm.

It's interesting to me that he uses an iPhone instead of an Android phone. Apple must be fairly far ahead when it comes to accessibility.

It's not even close.

From two years ago, but here's an account of the second attempt from a blind (iPhone) user at using Android: https://marcozehe.com/30dayswithandroid/

620 words per minute? While I do not have any form of visual impairment, I wonder how useful it would be to be able to absorb spoken information at that pace.

Can anyone tell me more about this?

That stood out to me too, I imagine it's more akin to 'skimming' than reading each word for comprehension. Most legal documents are highly repetitive, full of legalese filler, and generally you just need to get the gist of something quickly rather than analyze it on a small scale. I bet that when he's carefully writing or reading an important clause it's at much less than 10 words a second.

Probably not "much less", I am not vision impaired but I use TTS every day; over time it becomes easier and easier to listen to higher and higher frequency speech (if the speaker can actually enunciate that fast.)

I currently use the fastest built in voice speed windows (by default) offers and I believe that is just slightly slower than 10 words per second(8 or 9.)

As if Daredevil was based on a true story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com