How do you code if you are blind?

[jacdelad]

Hello,
if this post is indescrete or inappropriate, please delete it!

...but I just learned that at least two users of this forum are blind and I'm super curious now: How do you code if you are blind? I know this is kinda ignorant, but I didn't think this would be possible.

[Kiffi]

I also find it quite interesting. And as we have at least two programmers with visual impairments on board here, it would be great if they could share their experiences with us.

It would also be interesting to know what to look out for when programming user interfaces so that they can be perceived by visually impaired people without major limitations.

[wro]

Totally get the curiosity! I've actually chatted with a few blind coders before, and they use screen readers that read out the code and its structure. Some also use braille displays to feel the code.

[Quin]

As one of the blind programmers around here, I'll chime in. Although I can assure you, there are more than two of us, I think I'm certainly the most active at this time though
I code using a screen reader (NVDA), using speech around 800-900 words a minute. I started with synthesized speech before I even fully lost my vision at around age 3, and I'm 18 now, so almost 15 years to build up mustle memory and speed.
The PB ide is pleasingly accessible in most places, although the debugger isn't very. I haven't used it much though so I haven't felt confident enough to open bug reports. Genrally though the native PB controls work quite well!
Some of the biggest things to be aware of for blind users when designing interfaces are:
1. We don't use the mouse at all, so keyboard navigation is pividal.
2. Screen readers have no concept of images, so your icons don't help us at all, we need accessible labels. If you have a ButtonImageGadget for example, you can add accessible text to it with SetGadgetText(), although this is not documented and I'd like to see more official support added to PB, wrapping IAccessible etc.
3. Hotkeys are also nice, although this is made slightly more difficult by PB not providing the native Win32 behavior of putting & in a control's name adding an accelarator to it.
There's more for sure, but these should be a good jumping off point for a lot of apps. Happy to provide resources/support if anyone needs

[jacdelad]

So you're just 18? Feels like you've been here for ages. I would have never guessed you are blind. You are doing a great job here and you are really helpful (which doesn't mean the other blinders aren't, but I don't know them so well)!

I've never thought about the thing with the icons and pictograms. I like them, because for me it means independence from language. I'll try to consider changing my habits with future projects. Also, more shortcuts sound reasonable. Maybe there's an easy solution for point 3 of your list.

[PBJim]

It's good that the subject has been raised, because if there is a contingent of visually impaired users working with PureBasic, as it seems there is, then it can only be of great benefit to the language and therefore to the PB community as a whole. I was also interested in the practicalities of how this is done, but hesitated to ask.

I think as Quin says, there are quite a few forum members — I recall that during the past year or two of using PB, a number of contributors have indicated they are using screen readers.

[Paul]

I'm curious if ToolTips are read by your screen reader or only the Text of a Gadget?

[Quin]

So you're just 18? Feels like you've been here for ages. I would have never guessed you are blind. You are doing a great job here and you are really helpful (which doesn't mean the other blinders aren't, but I don't know them so well)!

I've never thought about the thing with the icons and pictograms. I like them, because for me it means independence from language. I'll try to consider changing my habits with future projects. Also, more shortcuts sound reasonable. Maybe there's an easy solution for point 3 of your list.

Thanks, glad to hear I've been helpful .
I got into PB very young, downloaded the free version when I was just 13! Feels like so long ago now...

As far as the alt shortcuts, Fred said this:

You should use DefDlgProc() instead of DefWindowProc() to handle keyboard shortcut and more. PB doesn't do that because all window are not dialog in PB. I might add a flag to the window creation to enable this.

In this topic. That flag has yet to be added though.

[Quin]

I'm curious if ToolTips are read by your screen reader or only the Text of a Gadget?

Tooltips are tricky. You can make screen readers read them, but they don't always by default.
I personally opt to keep it off, for example, because they're read after a delay.

[BarryG]

Surely you're not 100% blind with no vision at all? If you are, I find that absolutely amazing that you can code anything at all. As a sighted person, that literally seems impossible to me. Even your posts are correctly punctuated and laid out. Do you "see" an image in your mind (or something) of how it all looks? Genuinely curious; not being rude.

[AZJIO]

I noticed that I was not looking at the person in conversation. I don’t care what emotions a person shows, I care what he says. This is the main component of information transfer. This appeared when communicating on forums, when we do not see the interlocutor and do not notice emotions, do not notice the speed of reaction and timbre of the voice, we receive information that is meaningful over time. A quick reaction may be based on emotions, but a thoughtful reaction occurs with a delay.
Our eyes only provide external information, but a person lives in the inner world, and even external things can interfere with the work of internal analysis and impose perverted things. External things make a person think wrong. Even the Bible says that grain that falls in a thicket of grass does not produce fruit, or if it falls near the road. Sometimes a person needs to isolate himself from the outside world in order to work productively.
Imagine how the developer sees the 3D world. This is just a set of planes, where it is not important for the developer to see this plane, he knows that he has set certain coordinates for it. Sometimes I wash my face and cannot open my eyes, I continue to wash my body and understand that it is not important for me to see the body in order to wash it. At the same time, I began to wonder if I could get to the store without my eyes? And I realized that I could, because at work I counted the steps to determine which side to get around the obstacle in the form of a building and spend less time over the course of many years of work. In the same way I can count the steps for each support point in space. I think this is the same as a person who finds himself in a situation of not knowing the language in another country; after a year, necessity forces him to adapt and learn the language. Similarly, here, necessity forces us to live differently. Sometimes I wonder how God sees the world? Maybe the world is God’s thinking about the world, he created atoms that form surfaces and gave us reflection from these surfaces into the eyes, so that the brain perceives information without our participation, but at the same time we think that this is more important than the choice between right and wrong actions. It turns out that for God, as a developer, the world is just scenery, but beautifully created. A thinking person who contains many things in his head for development has more opportunities than a person who only knows how to contemplate the world.

[Quin]

Hope you're sitting down... I am indeed fully blind. I have light perception, which means i can detect that lights are on/off, but nothing else. I'm ajctually quite sensative to them, so I wear sunglasses most of the time.
I have a lot of friends in similar boats, although most of them have less light perception than me. We're all hackers/tinkerers in one way or another though, from ripping apart software in IDA to reverse engineering a book reader (one day I'll be able to talk more about that one to writing a game engine to all of the random other interests, we get up to a lot.
If you wonder what I look like and/or want to see a project me and a friend worked on for a capstone project senior year of high school that was a device to help blind students with math, look at this.
Like I said, all over the board.

[Quin]

@azjio, as I've been known to say, vision is the only conditional sense. Assuming you have all five senses fully intact, you can always feel, always taste, always smell, and always hear. But if it's dark, how well does that vision serve you? Granted, when it's light out it serves you enviously well, but that's a different issue.

[Demivec]

I noticed that I was not looking at the person in conversation.

--- snip lengthy rambling text ---

A thinking person who contains many things in his head for development has more opportunities than a person who only knows how to contemplate the world.

@AZJIO: Was that a response from ChatGT or another similar AI? IMHO, it was an honestly bizarre and awful wordy reponse that was not in keeping with the topic. It seemed reminiscent of a collection of phrases from fortune cookies.

[BarryG]

I am indeed fully blind

But... how do you know where the cursor is in the PureBasic IDE, and which line you're editing, etc?