I am a blind developer and I work under Windows, GNU Linux and MacOS X. Each of platform has different workflows for blind users. This depends on the screen reader that the blind developer uses. Development tools are not completely accessible for blind developers. I can type code and use compiling functions in all IDEs but there are many problems if I have to design an interface using designing tools as Interface Builder, XGlade or other. When I was developing with Borland Delphi I could add a control, a Button for example, and I could modify each visual attribute of the control using object inspector window. Many IDEs use object inspector windows to modify visual and non visual attributes but the problem for a blind developer is add new controls because the method to add a new control consists of dragging and dropping a control from the palette to the canvas. Visual studio 200x uses alternative methods to do this but the interface of the IDE changes in each new version and this is a big problem because screen readers for Windows need special support, using scripts, to identify each area of some non standar applications. A blind developer can use Visual studio 2008 with his screen reader but when a new version of this IDE appears he has to wait for a new version of scripts for this version of the IDE. Xcode with Interface builder has no alternative for dragging and dropping tasks yet. I asked it to Apple many times but they are working in other things. I published 3 apps in the App store (Accessible minesweeper, accessible fruitmachine and Programar a ciegas RSS) and I had to design all the interface by code. It's a hard work but I can manage all features of each control. Eclipse has an accessible code editor but other development tools as debug console,plugins for designing or documentation area present problems for assistive tools for blind users.

对于盲目的开发人员来说，文档也是一个问题。许多示例和演示使用图像来显示解释(在图片中设置环境设置)

我认为问题不在于盲目。问题是，公司和开发团队认为可访问性会影响最终的软件，但它不会影响开发软件。他们认为盲人用户可以成为客户，但盲人用户不能成为开发伙伴。

盲人协会要求产品和服务的可访问性，但他们忘记了盲人开发者。盲人可以当律师、记者、教师，但盲人开发者即使对盲人来说也是一个奇怪的概念。很多时候我感到孤独，因为我的一些盲人朋友不能理解我的工作。

你可以在这篇西班牙文的文章中阅读我对这个问题的看法，在我的博客http://www.programaraciegas.net/2010/11/05/la-accesibilidad-en-crisis-para-los-desarrolladores-ciegos/ 网页中有一个翻译工具。对不起，我没有翻译。

来自南伊利诺伊大学爱德华维尔分校和华盛顿州立大学的一组学生正在为盲人开发一种编程语言:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1mOSdmzFc

请记住，“失明”是一系列的情况——有一些人在法律上是盲人，他们可以阅读一个非常大的显示器或在放大设备的帮助下，还有一些人根本没有视力。我记得大学时的一个同学有一种可以放大书本的特殊设备，还有一种可以放大屏幕一部分的特殊软件。她正在努力完成大学学业，因为她的视力越来越差，几乎要完全消失了。

编程也有一系列的需求——有些人擅长写出大量的代码，有些人更擅长看大局和架构。我可以想象，考虑到屏幕界面所施加的难度，失明可能会增强你获得大局的能力……

Emacs有许多扩展，允许盲人用户操作文本文件。您必须就该主题咨询专家，但emacs具有文本到语音的功能。甚至可能更多。

此外，还有linux:

http://leb.net/blinux/

盲人的Linux。已经存在很长一段时间了。我想十几年了，而且很成熟。

正如许多人指出的那样，emacspeak是许多老黑客的跨平台持久解决方案。由于它支持Linux和Mac开箱即用，它已经成为我开发Windows无关项目的首选方法。

关于通过听觉而不是视觉来真正理解语法的问题，我发现存在各种各样的技术来接近语法，即使不是在同一个领域。

例如，听觉图标可以代替口头描述符。你可以用音调表示一行缩进的程度。音调越长，缩进越远。由于音调可以与文本和语音并行播放，信息在相同的时间框架内传递，而不会序列化如此基本的交流。

盲文能够快速而精确地解码出一行文字的确切语法。这对于日常生活中使用盲文的人来说更有用;最大的优点是可以随机访问显示的内容。可刷新单元通常在每个字符单元上方有路由器键，可以将光标指向该单元。不要摆弄方向键O(n) op vs O(1)访问。

听觉维度(音调、速率、音量、变化、丰富度、重音等)可以传达一个概念(关键字、类别、变量、错误等)。例如，注释可以用单调变化来读……正合适，如果我可以这么说的话:)。

Emacs和其他较小程度的编辑器(Visual Studio)允许编码器严格地阅读程序(下一个块、折叠块、向下defun、跳转到def、向上解析树等)。这样做，你可以很快得到整个项目结构的“大”图景;通过像Cedet这样的扩展，你可以在文本编辑器中跨平台地使用VS/Eclipse/etc的优点。

可能还有很多，但简而言之，这就是为什么我们中的一些人在工业、学术界或地下室里不停地工作的基础:)。

我是个盲人，在过去的12年里一直是一名程序员。目前，我是一名高级架构师，在Sapient公司(一家总部位于剑桥的咨询公司，创建基于web和基于厚客户端的企业解决方案)工作。 我使用了几个屏幕阅读器，但大多数情况下都坚持使用Jaws用于窗口和NVDA。

I have mostly worked on the Microsoft platform and visual studio as my environment. I also use tools like the MS Sql enterprise studio and others for DB access, network monitoring etc. I tried to spend some time with emacspeak but since my work was mostly based on the MS platform, never really spent a lot of time there. I have also spent a couple of years working on C++ on linux - mostly used notepad or visual studio on windows for all the coding and then samba to share files with the linux environment. Also used borland C for some experimental stuff. Have recently been playing around with python, which as other people have noted above is particularly unfriendly for a blind user because it is written using indentation as the nesting mechanism. Having said that, NVDA, the most popular open source screen reader is written completely using python and some of the commiters on that project are themself blind. A particularly interesting question I get frequently asked as an architect is how do I deal with diagrams - UML and visio and rational rose etc. Visio is probably the most accessible diagraming tool out there. I was able to write jaws scripts to read rational rose diagrams for me. I've used a tool called T-dub (technical diagram understanding for the blind) developed by some german university for accessing UML 2.0 diagrams. Have used a java-based ugly tool called magic draw for doing model-driven development and was a commiter on the androMDA project and helped develop the .Net code generator from a UML model.

In general, I find that I thrive most in a team environment where I can work on my strengths. For example, while a diagram is extremely useful to communicate/document a design, the actual design process involves a lot of thinking and brainstorming and when the design has been thought out, one of your team mates can help you quickly put together a neatly drawn picture out of it. People incorrectly mis-construe the above to be lack of independence or ability while I see this as pure inter-dependence -- as in I am sure that the team mate alone could never have come up with that design on his/her own and in-turn, if I depend on him to document the design, so be it. Most hurdles I face are tool-based inaccessibility. For example all oracle products have been progressively declining in accessibility over the years (shame on them) and a team environment basically allows me an extra layer of defense against these over and above my screen readers and custom scripts.