Interview with a blind developer on how he works (2017)

This may have been a better option in the early 90's when GUI screen readers were not as good. I did z/OS Assembly programming for several years using ISPF as a text editor and submitting jobs to compile my code. I"ll gladly take an IDE with features from 1995 like renaming variables, moving to the next error, and jumping to a function definition.

Unfortunately, accessibility under Linux at least is considered lagging and problematic. Microsoft Windows seems to have better accessibility support all round than Linux.

See:

https://scribe.rip/@r.d.t.prater/linux-accessibility-an-unma...

Those don’t expose semantics and state in the same way that well coded GUIs do.

I actually tried using Ed and didn't like it very much. My main gripe with it is that you strictly have to operate on a line-by-line basis, there's no way to go word-by-word, do option+backspace to erase the word that you just went past and then replace it with something else. Sure, there's the s command, but then turning "Eric" into "Daniel" also turns "American" into "Amdanielan", and you have to be extra careful around that sort of thing.

I would hate to have to do any editing in ed. Just reading a file line by line would be painful.

GUI programs are actually often easier for blind people in the same way they are for everyone else as long as they have good keyboard navigation and use a toolkit with good accessibility support.

I currently mainly use VSCode for development; they are putting a lot of effort into accessibility.

Why do you think this? I'm totally blind and find Chat GPT to be useful for quick answers to questions instead of searching through SEO spam and low quality tutorials. I find Copilot to be sueful for better code completion and helping to write basic unit tests. I don't find that it can actually write complex code for me. I very well may be using the tools wrong though.

Not much, though I use GPT Vision (through a Mac app[1]) occasionally, especially for screenshots and sometimes plots.

[1] https://github.com/chigkim/VOCR

I'm sighted but goshdarnit some of the little accessibility features that microsoft have worked into their products are super useful. Readaloud for example in Edge, a lifesaver when you have to trawl thru azure docs at doublespeed.

My biggest beef with Microsoft around accessibility is how keyboard shortcuts are slowly dying out as apps move to becoming embedded webapps. Excel on windows for example has great keyboard navigability. Teams does not.

My greatest realization with a11y came when I sat down and used screen reader software on my work project and realized how unusable it was for anyone visually impaired. Even tiny things like font sizes take on a different perspective once you realize what it can be like.

It also made me realize that making an accessible site, such as all the gov.uk ones, means that the site will almost by default have a great UX flow and be easy to use. You have to make some decisions that can limit you, but at the same time you achieve so much in usability once you design things with a11y in mind.

Blind leading the sighted

Off topic, and I hope it doesn't cause offense, but Im very curious; what do you find to be good domains to work with as a blind developer? As a nonblind web developer whose domain is highly visual, I'm sometimes irrationally worried that I'd be out of a job if my vision went for one reason and another, and it gets me speculating about what the programming life is like for blind developers. Other visual aspects that I'd maybe worry about are graphical presentations made by other parties in my org.

I definitely second the VS Code recommendation. I'm doing a lot of work with Jupyter these days, and Jupyter's accessibility really sucks. The VS Code Jupyter plugin is just as good as the rest of the app.

I'm also a fan of the IndentNav[1] addon. It essentially allows you to navigate code like a tree, using indentation levels for hierarchy. This is very useful to skip over functions or blocks of code you're not currently interested in, get a quick overview of what a large function is doing without getting into the nitty-gritty details, or quickly figure out what if statement an "else" belongs to.

[1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TonyMaly...

Do you mind walking me through your setup?

Blind programmers are always so impressive with their skills and tooling. I’ve tried to adopt some stuff I’ve learned, but it’s hard and y’all make it look so easy

Blind person here, do you remember what tools they used by any chance?

I find modern IDA pro to be pretty inaccessible, same with Ghidra (though I only tried that one on Mac, and the Windows version is apparently somewhat better).

If my limited knowledge is correct, many braille displays are fairly loud, and you'd hear the clacking when the engineer wasn't typing (if you used a live coding website).

None of the blind engineers I've worked with used them- too slow to refresh, too limited number of characters that can be displayed at once, and/or too expensive. Some are better than others, but they're all expensive.

If I had to guess, the usual tool the engineer used for coding had voiceover support for tab stops, but not in the browser editor.

Thanks a lot! I expected the samples to be hard to understand, but this is absolutely mind blowing.

Any sighted around here who managed to improve their ability to understand fast speech?

It’s like when I’m speed running a podcast or YT video.

Thanks, very interesting. Those samples sound like total gibberish to me. I'm a native english speaker, and if I really concentrate, I can sometimes pick out a word or two, maybe a phrase with the written text right there too. Maybe I could get to understanding speech that fast if I worked my way up to it.

Thank you good man!

This makes me realize it must suck to be a mediocre blind developer.

The average person is just average. Unless there is something about visual impairment that makes them better at development, then I would expect them to be on average, just average developers.

Yet I would guess that visually impaired developers get more scrutiny. If nothing else, just because they are a novelty.

Anyhow, I guess I am just reminding myself to treat each person as an individual.

I refer to my vision as "no useful vision" I can see enough light to sometimes tell if the lights are left on in a room or if the son is out. I can not see color, it's either bright, neutral, or dark.

I wonder if there’s a disability friendly version of the famous Apple Pascal poster

I had the same thought and learned how to comprehend TTS at very high speeds (~5x plus or minus a bit depending on how alert or tired I am.) I recommend it, it allows me to "read" for longer/more than my normal fatigue limit would permit.

I wonder if there are any blind training services for non-blind people.

Blind people generally get mobility (i.e., navigating with a cane) and technology accessibility (i.e., using your phone and computer with screenreaders) training through social programs that are for blind people, but the individual teachers often offer private tutoring beyond the scope of those programs. Presumably some of those instructors are also willing to teach sighted people. If you call around, I bet you'll find one.

Unfortunately that video is gone. Is that the one where he was using sped up audio cues to analyze code?

"The answer of course is Visual Studio", pun intended.

That second thread is really interesting — I don’t think I have to worry about blindness, but I’ve wondered how I’d adapt to working if I couldn’t see, or didn’t have use of one or both hands.

Thanks for the references, especially the 2nd one. I came here to post it as a comment, but here on HN, there will always be someone who will outperform you :).

For me, the mentioned post (Ask HN: I'm a software engineer..) is a true classic, at least for me. The first/top comment is legendary as well.

Also, the above story was the highest voted Ask HN submission of all time until a few months ago where it was beaten by Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of IoT security updates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37392676

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Blind software development at 450 words per minute (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898537 - Dec 2019 (53 comments)

Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 - April 2020 (473 comments)

Wow, the fact that he can understand what's being said at that speed is incredible. His brain must've repurposed most of those visual processing neurons for audio.