RE: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers
- From: "Homme, James" <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 14:50:40 -0400
Hi,
I'm proud to tell you that we have a beautiful thing up on
Nonvisualdevelopment.org. It's called a book module. In the Book module, you
can build and outline something called Book pages. So, when you want to create
an organized set of instructions of any kind, you would create the first book
page. This book page is the level 0 of your book, if you will. You then have a
link called Create Child Page. When you do that, the child page becomes the
level 1 of your book. You can then create pages on the same level as the first
child, or children. With a simple list box, you can give the pages weights
within the book level they belong to. I am now in the process of gathering
preliminary information for creating a beginner's book about using Eclipse
while blind as a proof of concept. If we want to, we could create a page called
Books, which would be the entire collection of all organized tutorials on the
whole site. So let's get contributing.
Jim
Jim Homme,
Usability Services,
Phone: 412-544-1810. Skype: jim.homme
Highmark recipients, Read my accessibility blog. Discuss accessibility here.
Accessibility Wiki: Breaking news and accessibility advice
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kerneels Roos
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 2:12 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind
programmers
Hi.
Having read all the comments on this thread I think what is emerging as
the best solution is in part what exists here already -- a forum for
visually impaired programmers to share tips and tricks. It would be
worth while to formalise this into a meta university / school of
computer science for the assistance of the visually impaired.
Becoming a member of this meta university would mean that you receive
assistance while advancing on your path of education, whether this might
mean a formal degree at a physical or online mainstream university, your
own study of a free online course, or your studies at any other facility
teaching computer science. The fact is, even with a doctorate in
computer science behind your name you still need to keep on learning all
the time, so this meta school would also be for you, as in, even as an
advanced computer scientist hacker guru, if you are visually impaired
you could do with advice, tips and tricks on the latest and greatest.
Senior members of this meta university or peer group if you like could
assist in educating your lecturers in ways they could teach you so that
you can focus on the course subject and not be forever side tracked by
your fights with inaccessible tools or teaching methodologies.
Some time during the last ten years, disability units have emerged at
the universities in my country, South Africa. These units assist
disabled students in their studies but I can imagine they would be
extremely grateful to be able to tap into a global, focused
organisation's resources -- the focus being computer science or rather
how best to assist disabled students wanting to study computer science.
The meta university of assistance I'm invisaging could be this valuable
resource individuals and disability units could tap into.
And finally, about this topic, on a practical note. I think a great
start is sites like nonvisualdevelopment.org and the fruitbasket site,
but what really is needed is structured information on how to get from
point A to point B and how others have solved the challenges along the way?
Another great resource would be a structured wealth of information on
the work options for visually impaired programmers, as in, all of us
working as programmers could complete a carefully designed sort of
resume or profile explaining how we got to be professional programmers.
This would serve as an encouragement for new students and also help all
of us identify opportunities that otherwise might go unnoticed.
This is really just my opinion, but the obsession of the visually
impaired programmer community, or some of it's members, with building
GUI's is downright sad. One shouldn't be fooled in thinking computers or
programming is all about pretty interfaces and eye candy. What about web
servers, command line tools, compilers, RDBMS's, network stacks,
Google's back ends, Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing infrastructure,
operating system internals, device drivers, micro code, parallel and
distributed concurrent real time systems and the list goes on and on and
on...
Any school of higher education that spends time on teaching how to code
GUI's is missing the point, unless they teach broad, general human
computer interaction design principals. How GUI's actually should look
should be part of an arts programme really, or information design / new
media course., not programming.
Regards,
Kerneels
On 4/8/2011 6:29 PM, Dave wrote:
> The lack of employment for the blind isn't exclusive to those who
> choose to be developers. It's a more general problem of inequities in
> education, resources, and socialization to which many blind folks
> face.
>
> At least from my personal experience, the journey of discovering one's
> own path towards an accessible environment whether it be a virtual one
> used for development or a physical one to navigate through unfamiliar
> geographic regions is valuable in it of itself and is an individual
> skill that one needs to learn for him/herself. If someone's serious
> about doing professional development along side sighted colleagues,
> you will have to "roll" your own accessibility and often times that
> means digging into systems or spending extra time automating tasks.
> It's not for everyone :). In short, that means you need an even
> deeper understanding of frameworks, OS's, and general computer science
> theory than your average "programmer".
>
>
> On 4/8/11, Bryan Garaventa<bgaraventa11@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I believe the answer to 'why are there fewer when there is more access to
>> knowledge' has to do with an irony actually. In general things are much more
>> accessible than they used to be, and there are many more accessible
>> distractions available to everyone. Necessity drives innovation after all,
>> so if there is less necessity for the general population, less people will
>> be compelled to test the bounds of innovation.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Cox"<waywardgeek@xxxxxxxxx>
>> To:<programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 8:20 AM
>> Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind
>> programmers
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Ken Perry<whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> I think trying to just teach programming though is counterproductive
>>> because the classes in college do that rather well. I guess teaching
>>> people
>>> to use tools might be a better goal then teaching coding.
>> Well, you may be right. With the web, learning just about anything is
>> so much easier than when I was a kid. What remains a mystery to me is
>> why we're not seeing blind kids going nuts programming computers.
>> Surely they have plenty of access to them in the US. Is there
>> anything that can be done to inspire the new generation of blind kids
>> to dive in and learn what's under the hood? Why do so few seem to
>> make it?
>>
>> Bill
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--
Kerneels Roos
Cell: +27 (0)82 309 1998
Skype: cornelis.roos
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