The idea of fixing open source inaccessible software sounds like a great idea! In regard to your complaint about college courses not exactly matching your career needs is valid, but keep in mind the most important things to learn in college are critical thinking and learning how to learn. Especially in technology, there will always be more skills to learn and new technologies to master. I guess that is the reason that at the age of 48 I am eager to take on the Python!
Don Marang -------------------------------------------------- From: "DaShiell, Jude T. CIV NAVAIR 1490, 1, 26" <jude.dashiell@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 9:25 AM To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: RE: Any support/suggestions for a blind student...
One thing I forgot to mention is that blind programmers need to spend time and effort learning how to write inaccessible programs which fail on their assistive equipment and the assistive equipment of others. The reasoning behind that is that they'll know many programming practices to avoid and will have a ready defense for either avoiding them or cleaning them out of other's source code when they do maintenance of other's code during their careers. One way to find out about some of this is with inaccessible open source software by first running the software and documenting inaccessibility then looking through the source code and finding out what made that software inaccessible. Less-3.54 for dos written for the gnu project I found didn't work with my dos screen reader so I got the source code and examined it. I found out why the code produced inaccessible software too. Seems the conio.h library was used rather than the stdio.h library and the cprintf() function got used instead of the printf() function. The cprintf() function writes to ram not to bios int 16 screen writes rather than int 10 screen writes. Before I tried that version of the less software I had no idea about the accessibility impact of conio.h asopposed to stdio.h. That learning didn't happen in college and happened after I finished college. I wonder what else I missed out on learning because college programs don't spend time going into this particular area of knowledge. -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of DaShiell, Jude T. CIV NAVAIR 1490, 1, 26 Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 8:30 To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Importance: Low Joseph, The Association For Computing Machinery (professional computer programmer's union) did the ground work for getting blind people into computer programming back in the 1970's. Windows didn't exist then and as I wrote earlier that put some wrinkles into the possibilities for one class of blind people. All of the work and findings the A.C.M. came up with still holds true for console-based programming for blind people though, and lists like this and the speakup list which supports the speakup patch set for Linux accessibility which has been written up in an issue of Linux Journal magazine as well as the orca list on gnome.com ought to be clear enough evidence that this line of work is possible provided the user goes in directions their capabilities will support. Then of course, there's the nvda list on freelists.org. The one list with the most sighted programmers on it that actually build any of these projects might be the gnome-orca list. The rest of them have people with varying degrees of blindness doing the programming. The people in the disabled students center would do well to look these resources up on the web and start contacting the people behind them. By the way, T.V. Raman who wrote emacspeak and is blind another emacs speech environment not a screen reader now works for google in the googleplex. He is another possible resource to look up and contact. Arkansas Enterprises For the Blind 2811 Fair Park BLVD. Little Rock Arkansas has had a program to train blind programmers for several years. I got some of my training through that program and finished college after that and went into Government work awhile after that. I was doing well while DOS was the main operating system but when Windows took over, suddenly it was work fit failure city most of the time. That was even before the R.N.I.B. study happened. If I were you now in your present situation, I'd spend some time studying console-based programming and then do some courses that don't use the computer and then study graphical user interface programming. After that, I'd make up my mind as to which kind of programming I most enjoyed doing and when career picking time came along I'd point my feet toward that kind of programming I most enjoyed doing. If you're going to get paid, it's criminal to work, better to enjoy yourself because the only two things that ever come out of that are that you do better work because you're happier about it and you move up the promotion line and salary line faster that way. Even if not necessarily the salary line, good work in intelligent organizations has ways of attracting separate awards. I shouldn't have written this much, but you did ask for advice. -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joseph Lee Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 19:48 To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Hi, Yes, we do have that facility (at least a center for disabled students.). When I talked to them about my situation, they were interested in how a blind student can even learn programming. Although they have JAWS for Windows (at least school license), they don't have a decent things such as loaner laptops and braille displays (well, as you know, the budget for California schools are tight these days...). Hope this gives you a fair picture. Cheers, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Elf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date sent: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:33:05 -0700 Subject: Re: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... a question for you, does your college have a disabled student center? and how extensive is it. when I was working on my computer information systems degree at a local college (well local to where I was living at the time) the college had a decent sized center and extensive additional items like voice speech recognition, and hearing adapted computers in several sections and labs, portable units to install in others, and a disabled student tutorial area with things for almost every disability available, you could also get loaner laptops and Braille displays if needed, so on and so forth. you might want to call Santa Ana college and find out if Don Dutton is still there, he would be a great resource for your instructors since he heads (or headed if he isn't there now) that adaptive computer center, and set up almost all the equipment around the campus. (I contributed and set up a couple units in the DSC center but I simply added to his already great work there). HTH, elf "Three things that should NEVER! be brought together; a laptop computer, a full cup of coffee, and a sneeze!" - Unknown Author- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Lee" <joseph.lee22590@xxxxxxxxx To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 12:23 PM Subject: Re: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Hi Inthane, Thanks. I'll pass your email to my professor. Cheers, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Elf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date sent: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:04:02 -0700 Subject: Re: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Joseph, you can add me to the list of references, it's been a few years but I was almost completely through an AA degree in computer information systems and did math and the rest via computer. I think somewhere I have a reference for a math assistance application, I'll take a look and see what I have on hand now. take care, and good luck, elf "Three things that should NEVER! be brought together; a laptop computer, a full cup of coffee, and a sneeze!" - Unknown Author- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Lee" <joseph.lee22590@xxxxxxxxx To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 4:44 AM Subject: RE: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Hi Jude, Yes, I do have vast memory of vision (I was a low vision kid before I got glacoma at age 14). As for user interface, I can picture it in my head. For now, those are not of my concern, but maybe for future classes (there is a class just for graphics development at my school, and one of the professors here is a researcher in this field). If you permit me, I'm happy to share your email address (along with Black Aires) to my professors (especially the graphics researcher) so that you can assist them. Thanks for your notes (I'll keep those in mind). Cheers, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: "DaShiell, Jude T. CIV NAVAIR 1490, 1, 26" <jude.dashiell@xxxxxxxx To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date sent: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:26:29 -0400 Subject: RE: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... If memory serves one of the email lists I receive distributed a message containing R.N.I.B. summary study results from a study R.N.I.B. published in 2009. The study used 300 participants with all levels of blindness. The study's purpose was to discover to what extent blind people could do graphical user interface software development. The results shouldn't have been surprising either. It was found that those participants who had some memory of vision could do graphical user interface programming; the longer the memory of vision, the easier it was for them to do software development. The participants that had no memory of vision however had major difficulties with doing that kind of programming. In time this will impact windows and software development platform interfaces that run on windows but that hasn't yet happened. A real good analogy to consider on the Linux side is a software package called xenity. What xenity does is to inhale a bash script and produce a graphical user interface-friendly program equivalent that can be run on gnome with a mouse click. As I see it, Microsoft made two mistakes with Windows which until they're corrected the best software for those of us with no memory of vision to program for will be Linux in its varied forms. First, the command line interface was made into a very poorly equipped environment for software development. Second, if someone does console-based development of software within Windows to my knowledge to date no xenity equivalents yet exist for any supported software development package now running on Windows; I would love to be corrected on this point if at all possible even if packages under active development are all that can be offered as suggestions. Rot47: <;F56]52D9:6==@?2GJ]>:= -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joseph Lee Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 17:11 To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Any support/suggestions for a blind student... Hi veterans, programmers and students, For those who does not know me, I am Joseph, a computer science sophomore student at University of California, Riverside (UCR). My main interests are all about assistive technology and computer education, more specifically embedded devices, networking and so forth. One of my CS professors who teaches C++, asked me to ask you if you have any suggestions/opinions for learning graphics and general mathematics, which I know is important for engineering. I thought of using tactile arablets such as so-called "Talking Tactile Tablet" or via PIAF (Picture In A Flash). Since I'm the first blind CS student at UCR, the engineering professors there are interested in how a blind student can learn programming and graphics. I told the professors there about this list and how there are blind programmers (like you guys) who writes GUI apps. So, in summary, I'm wondering if there is a programmer here who can work with me to come up with a solution - allowing me to learn programming effectively from a blindness perspective. If you permit me, I'm willing to pass on your contact information to the UCR CS faculty so that they can contact you for assistance (especially when it comes to learning graphical information such as math, hardware organization chart and so forth). Thanks for any assistance on this matter. Sincerely, Joseph S. 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