John Boyer, blind software engineer, has died | Hacker News Reader

John Boyer, blind software engineer, has died

jsonline.com

355 pointsJasonFruit48 comments

John and I were in graduate school together (computer science, U Wisconsin - Madison). He was indeed a remarkable person. He was blind and deaf. He carried around a little mechanical Braille typewriter. To talk with John, you would type, and he would extend his hand into the device and feel the Braille impressions of what you were typing. He was not qualified for a normal seeing eye dog program because of the extent of his disabilities. So, he got a dog on his own and trained her. Her name was Sugar, and I can still hear John talking with and giving instructions to her. He was a living demonstration of the stunning heights that people achieve from time to time. I believe his PhD advisor was Marvin Solomon who was (is) also a remarkable and admirable person.

Thank you for sharing this lovely tribute

HN never disappoints me.

This is amazing, thank you for sharing.

Wow, thank you for sharing!

If anyone is looking for ways to help the blind community a very simple one is to sign up as a volunteer for Be My Eyes (https://www.bemyeyes.com/).

It relies on conversation so wouldn’t work for a blind and deaf person like John without some sort of (external) “voice to braille” system, not sure if such a system is available.

Blind guy here (<5 degree visual field) the app is fantastic. I get a little emotional when I consider how many people volunteer. In a sighted world it makes a huge difference.

The current stats listed on the site show a little less than 500k users. But over 6 million volunteers. (!!!)

That’s an amazing program.

Thanks for sharing this, just downloaded it. It's good to know it may take weeks until I receive my first call because there are so many volunteers!

Wow that’s amazing. Thx for sharing.

Looks useful. But only available from the monopoly app store. So unfortunately I cannot help.

I dated a girl in the mid to late 1980s whose father was completely blind and worked as a software programmer. At the time, knowing little of computers, I didn’t think much of it. 30-35 years later, having worked as a programmer for nearly 25 years, I wish I was still in touch with the family so I could ask how he did it. I assume things would be easier now for a blind programmer, but, maybe not.

I'm a totally blind software developer who was born in the mid 80's. From my experience and limited discussion with other blind individuals I was born at the beginning of when life became a lot easier as a blind programmer as well as a blind person in general. When I started to learn programming in the early 2000's electronic versions of a decent number of programming books were available. I don't know how I would have learned C from a print copy of the K&R book in the late 80's. By the time I entered college I had GPS to help me get around campus. PRetty much everything but math was also available in fully accessible electronic format. Ten years earlier it would have been a lot more dificult.

I’m very curious. When developing software I do /try/ to make it accessible. But sometimes I think certain things, there’s no point in making accessible because a blind person wouldn’t be able to use it. But this is my ignorance of not understanding how people who are blind consume information.

Are there things I can do better when developing software to assist with blindness?

Personally I would say don’t set arbitrary limits. I knew of a blind guy who played a computer game very well because it had such a rich and responsive soundscape.

What's the game?

I'm going to preface the following with the fact that I'm not an accessibility expert and accessibility is not a field I'm interested in. With out more info on the software it's impossible to give specific suggestions. For a tool that produces structured diagrams such as flow charts a way to move from node to node with arrow keys and have announcements on what connects to what would be a good way for me to read flow charts with out being able to look at them with my eyes. If your creating a color matching game for two year olds I can't think of any reasonable way to make it accessible. Other people may argue the game should announce colors and have a mode to pick them based on words only but at that point your starting to write a completely separate game.

Oxide and friends had this episode a bit back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GVJg0LRX4

The guest is a blind person and the main topic is a history speech synthesizers but also goes into how that translates to his experience using and programming computers over the years too. You might find it interesting. (There was another episode a few before it too where the same person talked a bit about his experiences).

An old friend of mine in his late 70s who ran several software businesses is starting to experience vision deterioration. Of what type, I don't know, but it's interfering with his ability to do any kind of computer work. It really drove home for me that in the long run we're all disabled.

I have a bit set to try to learn how to use Emacspeak so I at least have a plan B for if/when my vision goes to the dumper -- or I lose it completely.

I started using Emacspeak in the late 1990's, and probably peaked ~2003-2006.

I have associates with visual impairments ranging from nothing (i.e.,completely gone (i.e. "blind")) to severe mis-alignment of vertical focus, ...and the standard of colour-blindness. I try to help them to the best of my abilities.

My own acuity (currently) allows the use of monospace typefaces/fonts and grey-scales. There are times when my vision cuts out pretty bad. I assume it will get worse and sometime in the future I think I will rely on Emacspeak. Also, pointer/mouse use is almost a complete wash for me.

Hence the "plan B" You mentioned.

Edit: I do not want to lose access to computers (screw networked ones (love those)), I really love (almost) any programming environment

I knew John Boyer fairly well. My company, Raised Dot Computing, hired him to work on the mathematics translator for our program MegaDots. Collaborating on software required lots of time communicating with him, mostly me with the Teletouch, and him speaking. I was on the board of his non-profit for a time. I sadly lost touch with him after my family left Madison, and I was working on a competing product. I have so many good memories. May he always be remembered as a shining star of the human race.

Thanks for sharing this tribute. If you have many more memories, could we trouble you for another? This man is inspiring.

I’ve never heard of this guy before, but it sounds like he had an amazing life and invented his own solutions to life’s obstacles. Makes me laugh to think of the minor inconveniences I’ve allowed to dissuade me from pursuing something.

These were inconveniences that already had solutions available, no inventions required!

This guy was a legend. He wrote a program to translate print to braille and back again, as is noted in the linked article. He wasn't the first person to write such software, not even the first person to open source his copy, but he did write the library that is pretty much the go to version if you are serious about wanting to integrate braille into your software.

The Journal also ran a lovely obituary of him earlier this month: https://wsj.com/articles/blind-software-engineer-expanded-ac...

Thank you for sharing, that was lovely.

These glasses for the visually impaired are the coolest smart glasses that I’ve ever seen: https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses

The product basically combines computer vision with people. It is based on great user research (one of my students at Delft contributed!). The 2 minute video is really great to see/hear/read.

“Lightweight glasses, with a camera and direct speaker, Envision Glasses speak out text and environmental information, recognizes faces, light, and colors, and lets you share that information …features: Instant Text, Scan Text, Batch Scan, Call an Ally, Call Aira, Describe Scene, Detect Light, Recognise Cash, Detect Colors, Find People, Find Objects, Teach a Face and Explore.”

> He always preferred to emphasize that everyone has abilities, and we should see what people have, not what they don’t have," Schroeder said. "He never felt he’d been shortchanged or cheated or anything. He was never bitter or resentful about his condition."

Boyer is an inspiration to me, and hopefully to all of humanity.

As an app dev, I really want to make my apps more accessible, but just not sure where to start. I have experience working with a11y requirements in my pervious companies, but all of the requirements are from professional auditing service provider. Is there free a11y auditing services for FOSS?

Are your apps installed apps, or web apps? There is a tool called WAVE that can help expose a great deal of accessibility issues to fix on a website.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-to...

It wasn't until he was at the New York Institute for the Blind that a teacher realized what was happening and taught him manual sign language, where word symbols are formed by the questioner's fingers pressed against the palm of the blind person's hand.

You can see an example of this in the movie about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. This is my favorite scene -- where Helen finally understands. It always makes me cry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac

A question for blind engineers in the comments here:

Got any tips on how to prepare for going blind, and/or for dealing with that process as it unfolds?

Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980

Ask HN: Any other blind devs interested in working on dev tools for the blind?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482

There are a number of threads on the subject if you search. Try "going blind"

facepalming rn. Thanks!

I have been fascinated by blind computer usage since “Whistler” from the movie “Sneakers”.

I’ve become fascinated since I saw an Instagram video of a blind girl showing how she uses an iPhone.

https://youtu.be/EEpsoCPL518

I’m blown away by the typing.

A minor note (many others here know Boyer personally and have more to add): there is a lot more to that CV than Boyer-Moore. Counting, all kinds of stuff. A true legend. May he RIP.

I think you're confusing the wrong Boyer. Robert Boyer is the namesake for Boyer-Moore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Boyer

You are correct. Thank you for straightening me out, and for linking to a good resource.

I think people in the 1800s might have quite a dim view on how we highlight certain personal traits today.

"Blind engineer?? It's the title of his bloody obituary, mate, surely you can say something nice about him??"

(Yes yes, of course I know that people do this today to try to remove the negative connotation of being blind/etc, but you must admit it's kind of funny at times)

Person first, condition second. We are not our afflictions. I’m with you on this one.

He - Boyer - was off of 1936.

"Do not go gentle into that good night"

Are you suggesting the man himself would be offended?

it is an essential aspect of the story, though.

I have a blind colleague at work. I interviewed him and recall he was using a screen reader in the IDE while solving our coding problem. I thought that was amazing to witness. He's a great engineer.

I remember going to a LibrePlanet years ago (2012) and a woman gave an awesome presentation on the effort going into Gnome to make it more accessible. It also peaked my interest in Emacspeak.

One of the contributors to Emacspeak is also blind: T. V. Raman. He won an ACM distinguished doctoral dissertation award for his work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman

Reply on news.ycombinator.com