Well for some reason, the US government likes to keep all blind people in the dark so to speak. I remembered a few years back when I was still involved with my blind services, I asked them if there were other blind people in my town. Their answer to me was that information is confidential. I also asked them if they offered any programming classes for the blind, and being able to see a little what I received was just a blank confused stare. They then proceeded to tell me that, no a better job position for me to be in would be either a switchboard operator or a snack machine filler. My assumption has become it is not they don't keep numbers on us, it is the blind services that keep the numbers only keep the numbers on the people they can employ through their employer contracts. If what we want to do does not fit in what they are contracted to hire, they lose all hope for us so to speak and say we don't feel our services are what you need and bid you adue.
JohnPG search for all of your Jaws scripts at http://www.blindcrawler.com/Also be sure to check out Blind Crawler's Legend of the Green Dragon server at http://www.blindcrawler.com/lotg/
There will be more to come from Blind Crawler very soon. Administrator: John Greer Blind Crawler.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Trouble" <trouble1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 9:59 AM Subject: Re: Number of folks on the list
The biggest reason you won't find any stats on blind programers in the USA, is because the government determent info on disability, sex, religion and anything dealing with personal information. To be a evasion of privacy and have stated such in the constitution. Just like this list, not all are totally blind. Therefor not all on this list would use the tools others would. Some only need magnification where others need screen readers and some do better with braille.At 05:14 PM 10/19/2007, you wrote:Exactly, mathew, in order to make a case to a government funding agency that our research lab should be given any funding at all, we need to be able to demonstrate that working on programming tools for blind computer programmers is something researchers should bother to do. The team I work with thinks the problems blind programmers must, inherently, face are pretty fascinating, but we have to convince the rest of the community to deny funding from other projects and divert it to ours. Funding is always a difficult case to make. Basic community statistics would be helpful. Since the major organizations, apparently world wide, don't seem to keep any kind of statistics on blind computer programmers, as far as they report to me at least, the best we can do is reference a popular blind programmer mailing list. If no stats are available for the list, or they cannot be revealed without giving away information that is truly private, that's totally reasonable, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask. Andy __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblindTim trouble "Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance." --Sam Brown Blindeudora list owner. To subscribe or info: //www.freelists.org/webpage/blindeudora __________View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
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