Re: Credible rumor that deserves serious consideration, IMHO

  • From: Chris Hofstader <cdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:36:28 -0400

Hi Kerneels,

Thank you for such a thoughtful addition to this sometimes contentious thread. 
Including myself, I think a lot of us get a bit thin skinned about things we 
say and believe and react emotionally rather than with a more logical and 
thoughtful statement like yours.

I still believe that hackers with vision impairment need to learn to make a 
GUI, even if is only temporary and will be replaced or modified by someone more 
skilled in ways to present information in a graphical manner that will conform 
with the marketing goals for the program.

Your idea for a list of non-graphical programming tasks that can be done easily 
by people with vision impairment is interesting. I don't want to become keeper 
of this list but I would recommend including writing programs that only have a 
speech interface.

Today, programs with speech only interfaces are becoming increasingly popular. 
The most notable would be the software that runs on the latest iPod Shuffle 
from Apple. This cute little MP3 playing device has no visual UI, it is 
VoiceOver (the Apple screen reader) or nothing on the Shuffle. If you want to 
make sure that VoiceOver doesn't interrupt your music, you can press the 
VoiceOver button on the little device and it will shut up; if you want the 
menus and such again, you press the VoiceOver button again and it will talk 
based upon your commands and such.

Apple did not make the Shuffle for a blind audience but we can use it as easily 
as our sighted friends. At about $80 per unit, the Shuffle couldn't survive if 
it didn't cater to a mainstream audience and the mainstream is buying the 
little things by the boatload.

I expect that other things will be coming down the pike with speech only 
interfaces and, as that is the world in which most of us live (braille displays 
can be prohibitively expensive) so we probably have ideas for good design of 
talking UI and, those of us who have been kicking around for a long time also 
have seen lots of examples of how bad UI can be avoided.

Another area where we can shine is in making software that gets built into 
products other than what one would traditionally call a computer. The Shuffle 
is one such example but virtually every piece of consumer electronics contains 
a lot of software these days and finding people skilled in embedded systems 
hacking is really hard for employers because most programmers want to make 
pretty things.

Just a couple of ideas...

HH,
cdh





On Oct 13, 2010, at 4:13 AM, Kerneels Roos wrote:

> Kerneels

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