Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Accessible Programming Tutorials. (self.Blind)
submitted by kailikameoka
I’m a self taught software developer who is visually impaired. I learned by following a lot of great video tutorials that made programming a lot of fun. I wish these tutorials were accessible for people who are blind or visually impaired so I thought I’d try making some tutorials here:
http://www.kailikameoka.com/blog/
I’m looking for some feedback. Are the tutorials helpful? What other kinds of things would you want to build? Is anyone even interested in this kind of thing?
http://www.kailikameoka.com/blog/
I’m looking for some feedback. Are the tutorials helpful? What other kinds of things would you want to build? Is anyone even interested in this kind of thing?
EffectiveYak0 5 points 2y ago
I'm self taught as well, and work in tech. I lost a lot of my vision two years ago. In my case, I tend to learn more from examples on github and simply reading the docs more than anything else.
With that being said, I am always in favor of adding more accessible learning resources.
With that being said, I am always in favor of adding more accessible learning resources.
kailikameoka [OP] 1 points 2y ago
How do you go about learning from repos? I tried to just look at the repo instead of watching the tutorial and I got confused after a while. How do you know where to start and how to progress through it?
EffectiveYak0 2 points 2y ago
I read the documentation around something I want to learn, and then I try to find an open source project that uses that thing. I try to reverse engineer how the particular project used the code and then reference the documentation.
In the end it's just a lot of trial and error, but that's how I learn best.
In the end it's just a lot of trial and error, but that's how I learn best.
Fridux 3 points 2y ago
Your tutorials don't seem to differ much from what I've been reading online, and in addition they seem to be written from the perspective of someone who doesn't use a screen-reader. Skimming over your first article revealed two problems:
1. The editors you mentioned aren't very accessible (Visual Studio Code might work well on Windows but is barely usable on MacOS, at least from my experience, and the rest are completely inaccessible as far as I know);
2. The code snippets are formatted in such a way that all the line numbers appear before the code begins, so if we encounter a 100 line snippet we have to listen to the screen-reader count up to one hundred before it begins reading actual code, and in addition neither the line numbers nor the code are easily skippable.
As far as the first problem is concerned, on MacOS I use Xcode for Apple stuff as well as TextMate 2 which is fully accessible and has lots of extensions available, and the second problem can be fixed by displaying code in tables, which is bad for copy-pasting but good for screen-readers since they are easily skipped and allow us to choose to only read the code column.
Also, take this from a natural learner, which isn't worth much because naturals usually never introspect about the way we do things: my learning strategy is extremely chaotic, but usually starts from finding a small working example of something using the technology that I intend to learn as an introduction, and from that point forward reading the official documentation. Beyond that I create an index of information in my head where I ignore the details but keep references to places where I can learn more about particular subjects later. For this reason I like tutorials to be as concise as possible, helping me walk the very first steps but not attempting to guide me through the entire learning journey. For example when I started over 20 years ago I was just given a small C example of a bot that just connected to IRC, said hello, and disconnected, was told where I could find documentation about the system and library calls that were being used, and that was all I needed.
Finally, I advise you against just taking my word for it, i.e.: don't just mention TextMate 2 in your blog because I said it, learn a screen-reader if you haven't already and experience it yourself.
1. The editors you mentioned aren't very accessible (Visual Studio Code might work well on Windows but is barely usable on MacOS, at least from my experience, and the rest are completely inaccessible as far as I know);
2. The code snippets are formatted in such a way that all the line numbers appear before the code begins, so if we encounter a 100 line snippet we have to listen to the screen-reader count up to one hundred before it begins reading actual code, and in addition neither the line numbers nor the code are easily skippable.
As far as the first problem is concerned, on MacOS I use Xcode for Apple stuff as well as TextMate 2 which is fully accessible and has lots of extensions available, and the second problem can be fixed by displaying code in tables, which is bad for copy-pasting but good for screen-readers since they are easily skipped and allow us to choose to only read the code column.
Also, take this from a natural learner, which isn't worth much because naturals usually never introspect about the way we do things: my learning strategy is extremely chaotic, but usually starts from finding a small working example of something using the technology that I intend to learn as an introduction, and from that point forward reading the official documentation. Beyond that I create an index of information in my head where I ignore the details but keep references to places where I can learn more about particular subjects later. For this reason I like tutorials to be as concise as possible, helping me walk the very first steps but not attempting to guide me through the entire learning journey. For example when I started over 20 years ago I was just given a small C example of a bot that just connected to IRC, said hello, and disconnected, was told where I could find documentation about the system and library calls that were being used, and that was all I needed.
Finally, I advise you against just taking my word for it, i.e.: don't just mention TextMate 2 in your blog because I said it, learn a screen-reader if you haven't already and experience it yourself.
kailikameoka [OP] 2 points 2y ago
Thank you for all the feedback! Your fight, I’m not typically a screen reader user, but I have encountered the problem you mentioned with code snippets. I’ll look into finding a better Wordpress plug-in. I’ll also try out some Code editors to see what’s accessible with voice over.
You made a great suggestion ok how to go about writing the tutorials. I was getting a bit worried about how I was going to go line by line and explain every little thing.
You made a great suggestion ok how to go about writing the tutorials. I was getting a bit worried about how I was going to go line by line and explain every little thing.
CloudsOfMagellan 2 points 2y ago
Emacs with emacspeak is the editor I use and is very accessible
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