Ask HN: Blind Programmers?

11 points by yureka 13 years ago | 7 comments

I'm curious to know if anyone has ever worked with a blind programmer before. Perhaps a non-blind programmer who became blind later in life? How does it affect their work? Any stories?

AjJi 13 years ago |

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-progra...

yureka 13 years ago | |

Thanks! That StackOverflow thread has some great discussions!

frou_dh 13 years ago |

A lecturer at my university became blind earlier in life. I completed an assignment for an audio-programming class of his that was to create a video game that had no visual component and was played by sound alone. It ended up fire-rescue game where the place was said to be full of smoke and you heard directional sounds from various fire sources and trapped people.

yureka 13 years ago | |

That sounds like a really interesting assignment!

It makes me wonder how much effort is generally spent on developing accessible applications. I should really look into whether or not any best practice documents exist for accessibility.

frou_dh 13 years ago | | |

I've read a couple of times that iOS is an example of a platform with good accessibility tech baked in. Although I'm sure app developers still need to expend some effort.

maltmann 13 years ago |

The latest Courant Institute newsletter has a nice article about a blind CS grad student: http://cims.nyu.edu/newsletters/Spring2012.pdf It discusses several apps he is working on that are aimed at the visually impaired, including a Braille keyboard for iOS.

spacetraveller 13 years ago | |

So here's a blind hacker (I have some sight – but not for computers). I'm employed software consultant and wanna be entrepreneur. I currently work on MS stack (everything – web/windows/database); but basically, I have found that I can work on any stack (whether Python/ruby/php if I so desire). So far wherever I have worked, I have outperformed my sighted peers (even seniors) with my ability to provide instant solution to issues and creative ideas.

I enjoy creating things and coding (whether simple/complex) has never created a problem for me (in fact, I often help my peers with there technical issues). But every now and then I come across a tool/application/website that is poorly accessible or not at all accessible and I have to waste my time adapting to it rather than using it for the task I originally intended. This is not a complain; I can understand that the interface of a app is limited to the worldview and needs of its creater. So if he uses an image for a button without an alt/title attribute is because his needs and worldview lack the knowledge that those attributes can be useful for people who can't see images.

A program can be made decently accessible without much effort, one needs to make sure only couple of things: 1) That every element is accessible via keyboard, and 2) every element has a textual information directly/indirectly attached to it stating its purpose. Be it an alt/title text for images, label for checkboxes, and so on. Note the first point doesn't apply to web page elements like p/ul/ol/etc.

If you want to do more, you may add shortcut keys for elements that you perceive will be used more than others (yes not to every odd element as it will exhaust available keys very quickly), for web pages structure content using ARIA regions, headings and ... well there are many things you can do if you desire to, but those couple of things are what you should at least be doing, and that should not be anything complecated to do if you try a little.