视觉是大多数程序员认为理所当然的感官之一。大多数程序员会花几个小时盯着电脑显示器(尤其是在他们全神贯注的时候),但我知道有些程序员是盲人(比如目前在谷歌工作的T.V. Raman)。

如果您是一个盲人(或逐渐失明),您将如何设置您的开发环境来帮助您编程?

(每个回答一个建议。这个问题的目的是把好的想法带到最高层。此外,屏幕阅读器可以更早地阅读到好的想法。)


当前回答

I'm a postgraduate student in Beijing,China. I major in computer science and a lot of my work is programming. I am born with low sight, I need to use magnifying tools to see fonts on screen clearly. I use microsoft's mgnify tools on windows and use compiz's magnify plug in if on linux. I usally set the tool to magnify as three times many as the original font size. For me maginify tools is ok, the main problem is the speed,I have to move mouse to keep cursors follow the text I'm looking at, microsoft's magnify provides a option of "auto follow the text edit points",that set me from continuously mouse movement when editting or coding. But it doesn't always works because of the edit software or IDE may not support that. Magnifying tools on linux are hard to use. The KMag come with KDE has a terrible refresh rate which make my eyes unconfortable, compiz's magnifying plugs which I'm using now is OK,but has no function of auto focus(focus auto following). iOS provides quite perfect solution for me with full screen magnifying, especially on ipad's 9.7 inches screen. there auto focus is not necessary because I hardly use them to code or do other edit stuff. Android provides very little accessibility functions, only like shake feedback, which is useless for me. there is no any kind of good magnifying tools on android , not to mention advance function like full screen magnify on iOS. I used to study Qt, want to build a useful magnify tools on linux, even on android. But hardly have some progress.

其他回答

I'm a postgraduate student in Beijing,China. I major in computer science and a lot of my work is programming. I am born with low sight, I need to use magnifying tools to see fonts on screen clearly. I use microsoft's mgnify tools on windows and use compiz's magnify plug in if on linux. I usally set the tool to magnify as three times many as the original font size. For me maginify tools is ok, the main problem is the speed,I have to move mouse to keep cursors follow the text I'm looking at, microsoft's magnify provides a option of "auto follow the text edit points",that set me from continuously mouse movement when editting or coding. But it doesn't always works because of the edit software or IDE may not support that. Magnifying tools on linux are hard to use. The KMag come with KDE has a terrible refresh rate which make my eyes unconfortable, compiz's magnifying plugs which I'm using now is OK,but has no function of auto focus(focus auto following). iOS provides quite perfect solution for me with full screen magnifying, especially on ipad's 9.7 inches screen. there auto focus is not necessary because I hardly use them to code or do other edit stuff. Android provides very little accessibility functions, only like shake feedback, which is useless for me. there is no any kind of good magnifying tools on android , not to mention advance function like full screen magnify on iOS. I used to study Qt, want to build a useful magnify tools on linux, even on android. But hardly have some progress.

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。

我认为这在使用结对编程原理的极限编程中会很有效。如果你是为盲人开发软件,那么谁会比那些真正了解业务需求的人更适合做这个软件呢,所以我认为这一点都不牵强。

至于写代码,除非有某种反馈,否则我认为一个人可能会在语法上挣扎。音频反馈可能会有所帮助。

这篇博文有一些关于Visual Studio团队如何使他们的产品易于访问的信息:

Visual Studio核心团队的无障碍实验室参观活动

许多程序员使用Emacspeak:

Emacspeak—完整的音频桌面

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。