Looking at the code with eyes closed

I am a programmer. I'm also blind. Blind as a mole, as they say. This is me from birth.

When I say this to my comrades, those who have never had vision problems usually ask one of three questions:

• How can you then read what I write?
• Wow. And how can you code then?
• Or - the most popular question - Do you see dreams?

I am asked these questions again and again. Therefore, in this blog post I want to answer them. I will try to draw a picture for those of you who are interested in accessibility and how blind people use computers, code and do other work in the 21st century.


It's me: Florian Badgers, or Zersiax, as they know me in coaching circles. I was told that I turned out well here.
')

How can you read what I wrote?

I love this question because it allows me to immediately explain how blind people use a computer.

Many people have the impression that the blind can only use special, specially adapted computers. Even some of my friends who have vision problems think so.

Let me dispel this confusion right here and now. Now I am typing this text on a regular Dell Inspirion 15r SE laptop, which can be bought at any computer store selling not the newest laptops. Windows 8 is running on it (I didn’t choose it, but replacing it is too problematic because of UEFI). To prepare it for use, I just installed NVDA , an open source on-screen speaker.

Narrator usually just reads out loud what is on the screen. It tells you the text content of the screen in a synthesized (Siri-like) voice. Narrator also allows you to work with a braille display, an output device for reading by touch.


David Strathairn plays the blind hacker and phone freak of Erwin Emory, Whistler, in the 1992 thriller Tihushniki. His character uses a computer with a braille display.


This is all the adaptation that a blind man needs to use a computer. I can do much of what you most likely find impossible for a blind person. For example:

• Climb the web using Firefox.
• Write reports in Microsoft Word and format them according to the requirements of college teachers for the design of texts.
• Write awesome blog posts like this.
• Record, edit, mix and publish audio (my hobby is singing and recording music).
• Use sound programs like Reaper, Goldwave, Audacity and Sonar.
• Develop websites using Eclipse, Visual Studio (ironic name) and good old Notepad ++.

I list all these common technologies to show: I can use them in the same way as people who have no vision problems.

If you write another large-scale application with a stunning interface and a great workflow, I humbly ask you to make sure that its availability is included in the plan. These days there is no reason not to use the interface accessibility toolkit. It is much easier than you think. Yes, this includes Android Activities, iOS NsViews, and HTML5 widgets that you might think about.

I entered Free Code Camp a few weeks ago and I really liked it there. For the past few years, I have studied computer science and failed the semester, which included a lot of work with the MEAN stack. And I am very glad that I have found such a wonderful community in which you can consist and learn. I am sure that this time I’ll finish this semester with honor.

Unfortunately, I ran into an accessibility issue when I worked on well-known General Assembly Dash tutorials . These materials are undoubtedly good, but for me they were completely unreadable, since the authors decided to insert all the texts in pictures. The text description of the pictures, which screen speakers could work with, was minimal. Unfortunately, screen readers can only read text descriptions. They are not so smart to recognize graphics.

Fortunately, several comrades at Free Code Camp sympathized with my position and voluntarily transcribed all the slides for me. These people “struck me pleasantly,” as our dear western neighbors overseas express themselves. I am very grateful for the work they have done for my training. You know who I'm talking about. Thank you very much!

But ... how do you write the code?

If opening bracket x is equal to five closing bracket opening curly bracket print opening bracket quotation mark hello world exclamation point quotation mark closing bracket closing brace.

This is how I hear the typical “If” block in a Java-like programming language. In some detail, as you can see. I try to turn off references to brackets if I don’t need to specifically check their placement when catching mistakes, so I’m not going crazy about pretty wordy descriptions of punctuation marks. Others solve this problem by replacing the “opening bracket” with something like “oskob” or “beginning”, just to save a few milliseconds. The speed of the voice of the text is very high for people not used to it.

Link to the sound recording of "Zersiax's Screen Reader"

For those of you who do not understand: this is how my screen reader reads the first part of this blog post, which I write in NotePad ++.

So the way I write code is not much different from how others write code. I learned blind typing and mentally visualize the code, so I can work with it just like you. The only difference is that I barely use a mouse. Instead, I try to use hotkeys and the command line.

Unfortunately, this area is still not quite good. The leading tools used by coders, such as the IntelliJ editor, as well as its subspecies (PHPStorm, WebStorm, PyCharm) are completely unavailable simply due to the fact that their developers did not adhere to the accessibility guidelines. They did not prepare text labels or descriptions for screen readers to work with. The same applies to applications like SourceTree, which, although it is gradually getting better, is still very inconvenient to use.

Therefore, I have to look for available training materials, programs and tools, and not just take and use a suitable development environment.

How do you see dreams?

I promised to answer all three questions, so I will answer this. But don't expect anything out of the ordinary.

I have dreams just like you. My brain translates the experiences and events that happened to me during the day into dreams that I see at night. The difference is that I do not see anything in them.

Instead, I hear, smell, and touch everything, as in life. The reason is simple: dreams are based on previously obtained visual images, creating from them a visual series of sleep. Since I have been blind since birth, there are no visual images in my memory on which to base. The visual of my dreams gets a big fat 404 error: image not found.

Go with me

Volunteers with Free Code Camp asked me to write this blog post in order to share my way of working with the world. After the warm welcome I received in this community, I was only glad to write it. I really hope that you will benefit from it.

I can talk about it for hours and this article has already outgrown the size that I originally planned. If you have questions, find me in the Free Code Camp chat rooms . There I am under the nickname Zersiax, and under it I’m on Twitter. Thank you for reading. See you later! (Sorry, I could not resist and say this) :)

UPD: Added a link to the original.
UPD2: Replaced “availability” with “adaptation”.
UPD3: Replaced “adaptation” back to “accessibility”.
UPD4: Zersiax invited to Habr.