Hi Nick,
Thanks and Happy New Year to you and everyone else as well.
Those are good and valid points regarding front end development and Python
frameworks. I have a somewhat different perspective though.
It's very possible to learn HTML/CSS/JavaScript and the plethora of bleeding
edge technologies associated with app development, and I don't think you're
suggesting that's not the case. A blind developer brings an extra, very
personal perspective to the process. We live accessibility every day thus are
highly motivated to ensure not only does an app look the way it is supposed to,
but it is functionally accessible as well.
By functionally accessible, there are the obvious issues like labels for
buttons and other form fields. Keyboard only navigation is a fundamental
concern as well which benefits more than the blind or mobility challenged. And
focusability of items like <p> with error messages is an example of something
only a blind person might consider.
If you're building a tool intended for internal use only, the UI is probably
not of great concern. Usability ought to be the main goal. And I believe a
blind person can build a highly usable UI regardless of how pretty it is. If
someone is bothered by the look of an internal tool, let them submit some CSS.
I would argue the goal of internal tools is simplify workflow and reduce the
opportunity for error. Again, this is about usability which blind people
probably have a greater understanding given how many apps might be technically
accessible, but usability sucks (I'm looking at you Slack).
If you're working on an app intended for customer use, hopefully there is a UX
person involved with the project as well. Depending on how technical the UX
person is, and how well the blind full stack developer knows something like
React, they could collaborate and probably build at least the MVP together.
Again, the blind full stack developer can know how to build the React
components, and also know how to build them to be accessible. Also, the blind
full stack developer could provide feedback to the UX designer regarding
accessibility and usability.
I suspect most here know the phrase, "nothing for us without us." I'd argue
we're very well positioned to bring more to the full stack arena, or at least
as valuable though differing skills as our sighted colleagues.
I'm currently pushing hard within my company to take a more sustainable
approach to accessibility. I also want to encourage blind people to be more
involved in front end development. Not to disparage any companies, especially
ones often hiring blind people, but if we're all working for/as accessibility
consultants, it's harder for us to affect the product lifecycle. If we're
working for companies building products and services, and we're part of teams
building front ends, we can have a much greater impact on accessibility by
advocating for its consideration at the beginning and helping our colleagues
understand why it's important.
Apologies if this is sounding preachy, and I realize I'm off topic of Python
development. I've ben thinking a lot about this idea of full stack blind
developer. I've also been looking in to how to build React and/or Svelte apps
with Python as the backend. I think there's a lot there and I encourage others
to dig in.
Cheers,
Joel
-----Original Message-----
From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Dzhovani Chemishanov
Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 2:01 PM
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [program-l] Re: Question for python developers.
Hi Nik,
let me straighten things out because I might've mislead you. I said that I've
been asked if I'm interested in ML and ML ops. My current job is mainly backend
web services, though I have some formal education in search and text
processing. Also, my current company might introduce some low-level
classification and labeling models that are not the modern deep learning, but
decision trees.
The jobs that I've been asked for were mainly text processing and number
crunching for fintech startups. However, this might be mainly due to geography.
Eastern Europe is currently an outsourcing destination for many such companies
and the jobs reflect that. What I've gotten from industry people is that the
other big trend are recommendation engines.
HTH,
Dzhovani
On 1/3/22, joseph.lee22590@xxxxxxxxx <joseph.lee22590@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
For GUI design, I follow the design from NV Access (NV Access hired a
sighted developer several years ago, and this developer has worked
tirelessly on GUI redesign). Even then, I follow the below steps:
1. After the program backend is verified, I sit down and sketch out a
"tactile" representation of graphical elements, including control
placement and labels. Typically, what I mean by tactile design is not
using braille papers or tapes to measure distances, but rather tracing
GUI layout on a desk with my fingers, partly because I used to have
low vision when I was a child.
2. I then use a combination of mouse, touchscreens, and screen review
to verify GUI layout. I use a combination of mouse and screen review
since I'm interested in removing overlap (I frequently rely on object
location to understand where things are). If I really need to examine
layout (specifically, labels), I use touch devices (this is one of the
reasons for purchasing touchscreen laptops in recent years).
3. Sometimes I ask for feedback from users to make sure GUI is working
and looks okay. The biggest reason is to avoid overlaps where a
control does not cut labels of other controls. This is more so when
designing settings interfaces.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Joseph
-----Original Message-----
From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Behalf Of Nikoloz
Sent: Monday, January 3, 2022 12:56 PM
To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Dzhovani Chemishanov
<dzhovani.chemishanov@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [program-l] Re: Question for python developers.
Hello!
Happy new year to you all! I wish you a successfull year, Strong
health, year full of joy and happyness and everything best in life.
All of your inputs are very well received and you gave me some good
peaces of advice, which I will definitely use. I have some questions
from those
inputs:
Dzhovani, you mentioned that you do machine learning and work related
to it's deployment. Could you please specify in which domains are you
mostly in? You know, it is in different places now, face recognition,
natural language processing, speech recognition, fintech, chatbots and
etc. Also, what kind of libraries do you use? Do you have a formal
degree in Computer science, maths or disciplines alike?
Joel, Thanks so much for your inputs. I of course search for those
listings, For example I have tried web development, jango and flask
are fairly straightforward, well organized and powerfull libs in that
area, however requirement of design makes it scary for blind users,
because most of those which I was able to find require some sort of
design or a full stack dev. If you can't see how your creation looks,
it can be difficult to get it right what your client really wants and
as a result properly and correctly address those needs in development
process. To be honest, I understand the fact that for business it's
easier to hire one person to do the job, instead of hiring 2 to make
the same thing and they don't want the plain HTML/javascript stuff anymore.
Tony, Thanks for advice, I really use your ad-on a lot while working
in python source code and it's been really really helpful to me. Cudos to you.
Joseph, Yup, I am aware of your contributions to NVDA and think it's
awesome! Using profiles is also a great productivity trick. I would
have the same design related questions to you. Specifically, how do
you arrange elements visually on screen? Or how do you check weather
that creation looks good at the end of the day? You know, desktop
development is one of the paths you can take when it comes to python.
Of course, I don't mean gaming and stuff, where c/c++ with engines
like unity would have much better speed and performance advantage over
python. But you still can do other stuff with it, such as tools or
other apps, but they have to bee visually pleasing in order for users to use
it.
Thanks for any inputs to all again,
Nick.
On 12/31/2021 00:15, Dzhovani Chemishanov wrote:
Hi,** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
I'm a python developer. The work that I'm doing and that recruiters
are offering most often are web services backend, machine learning,
and machine learning deployments. Also, python is used quite
extensively in devops for managing builds and deployments.
HTH,
Dzhovani
On 12/30/21, Nika Tsiklauri <ntsiklauri2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello everyone! Sorry if this is OT. Is there any blind python** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:-
developer here in this list? If so, could I ask you what kind of
jobs you guys doing?
I am planning to make a switch to python development, so I am trying
to understand what kind of jobs do blind people do as python
developers and how they go about doing it, their suggestions, etc.
Any input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Nick.
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