Re: Some Fantastic News for the Blind Programmer Community
- From: "The Elf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:48:50 -0800
Andreas,
a note, I don't know if your abilities will be able to do anything with or
about this, but a number of blind programmers and other computer specialists
are trained at local colleges especially, but also at universities, when and
where they can get the instructors to work with them, which in my experiences
at Santa Ana college in orange county, city of Santa Ana, California. was
quite good, as good as they could make them for me, though lack of accessible
tools did hinder me several times.
availability to such organizations would be phenomenal as well, if doable
hope this information can be of some use,
inthane
proprietor, The Grab Bag,
for blind computer users and programmers
http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
Owner: Alacorn Computer Enterprises
"own the might and majesty of a Alacorn!"
www.alacorncomputer.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Andreas Stefik
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; Sodbeans ; dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ;
Victoria.Wieldt@xxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 6:19 PM
Subject: Some Fantastic News for the Blind Programmer Community
To the community
My co-investigator, Chris Hundhausen and I have been given the official word
from the National Science Foundation that our grant proposal to continue work
on tools for blind computer programmers is being recommended for funding. This
is excellent news, as it is a major government grant and will inject a
significant amount of capital into our team, both for development and other
research purposes. Once the capital is distributed, the following will begin to
happen:
1. We will be expanding our development team for both the Sodbeans and Sappy
projects.
2. Both Sappy and Sodbeans will be distributed to 5 schools for the blind
rolled out slowly over the next 3 years.
3. The participating schools for the blind will be teaching full courses on
computer programming to blind students using our tools.
4. We will be conducting a number of summer sessions at the Washington State
School for the Blind on how to use both Sappy and Sodbeans. A few select
members of the blind programming community that wrote letters for our grant
will be flown out to participate in these events and will act as mentors to
both the students and us.
5. We will be developing auditory video game libraries that allow blind
children to plug into an audio video game architecture, to help get them
interested in programming from a young age and, hopefully, providing them a
path toward college courses and employment.
And finally, I would like to express my deep thanks to both the blind
programmer community and to the extremely helpful folks out at Sun
Microsystems. Many of you have written letters of support for us, helped us
with the development of our software, given general advice to our research
team, helped us learn more about the NetBeans Platform, or have just lent us an
ear as we try to figure out some of the incredible technical challenges
involved with building custom compilers/debuggers/IDE's for the blind. I can't
thank you all enough for your support!
Now the fun begins,
Andreas Stefik, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
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