Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Visually Impaired Developer (self.Blind)
submitted by biopticcoder
I am a software engineer, and have mainly been a screen magnifier user, but I am looking to get more into screen readers to help with eye fatigue, and to maybe one day get to keep my hands on the keyboard 😃.
I haven't been able to find many, if at all resources on learning to use screen readers with VS Code, Command line, VIM, etc. especially with VoiceOver. Are there any resources anyone can recommend that can point me in the right direction?
I haven't been able to find many, if at all resources on learning to use screen readers with VS Code, Command line, VIM, etc. especially with VoiceOver. Are there any resources anyone can recommend that can point me in the right direction?
Fridux 7 points 1y ago
I find Visual Studio Code very hard to use on MacOS, but Windows users seem to like it. As for vim I can't use it at all; it's an ncurses program that interacts with the terminal in non-obvious ways, and gvim / MacVim was totally inaccessible on MacOS last time I checked. For this reason I use TextMate 2 for all my code and text editing needs, as it's a very accessible editor and supports both local and remote file editing. The only exception is when I'm developing for Apple platforms, in which case I just use Xcode which is mostly accessible.
No-Satisfaction7842 5 points 1y ago
I decided to ask my company for a PC laptop instead because I started getting the impression the Mac wasn’t the ideal platform for accessible development tools. On the PC you have more options of screen readers you can use, more tweakability of those screen readers in most cases, and just more ways around things, at least in my experience. I’m using NVDA and it’s heavily customizable, even allowing you to save different settings for different apps. Not sure that’s relevant or even possible in your situation, but it might be something to consider.
mehgcap 5 points 1y ago
Agreed. VoiceOver has some nice features, and Xcode has things I miss, like rotor actions for functions and errors. Overall, though, I find VSCode and NVDA on Windows to be a massive improvement over anything macOS can offer, to say nothing of how much better NVDA is with the terminal.
No-Satisfaction7842 1 points 1y ago
Yeah. My impression of macOS versus windows is that for every day use and intuitive, out-of-the-box screen reader friendliness, macOS winds, but for some specialized uses, you kind of hit a wall where VoiceOver doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility
Marconius 2 points 1y ago
I primarily write all my code in TextEdit, though have just picked up TextMate 2.0 to try that out. Xcode works decently well with VoiceOver, just have to get good at understanding the modular nature of the different areas of the app and where you have to interact and uninteract.
I don't have any trouble with Terminal, and both Terminal and iTerm work with VoiceOver. However, I now use TDSR when in Terminal and have VoiceOver muted with an Activity when Terminal is active and focused. TDSR is much faster and cleaner when interacting with the command line and all the Terminal output.
I don't have any trouble with Terminal, and both Terminal and iTerm work with VoiceOver. However, I now use TDSR when in Terminal and have VoiceOver muted with an Activity when Terminal is active and focused. TDSR is much faster and cleaner when interacting with the command line and all the Terminal output.
biopticcoder [OP] 1 points 1y ago
TDSR seems to work well, it doesn't seem to work with vim, but other interactions work better.
TechnicalPragmatist 1 points 1y ago
I am in a similar but different boat looking in to all the same stuff but I am totally blind for many years now but beginning to look in to coding.
I heard emacs is good
I heard emacs is good
ftrnlt 1 points 1y ago
I'm in the same boat as OP. Apparently Visual Studio Code's accessibility features were developed and tested with NVDA by Microsoft. But damn is it hard to use a screen reader 😁
biopticcoder [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Have you gotten it to work with VoicOver or are you mostly on Windows?
ftrnlt 1 points 1y ago
I'm a Windows user, sorry, by "I'm in the same boat" I meant occupationally, using magnification but want to learn how to use a screen reader because of the constant strain
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