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#screenreaders#visualstudio#accessibility

How A Blind Developer Uses Visual Studio

Coding Tech

712K subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Saqib Shaikh, software engineer at Microsoft

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

155K views8 years ago4 recommendations

Tools and practiceCareers and interviewsAccessibilityVim, Emacs and editors

Saqib Shaikh demonstrates how he writes, navigates, and debugs code in Visual Studio using screen reader software.

Saqib Shaikh, a developer who happens to be blind, shows how he uses Visual Studio 2017 with screen reader software for writing and debugging code. PERMISSIONS: The original video was published with the Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed). Original video source: youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 The World's Top Billionaires: youtube.com/watch?v=20kZ6HSiB64

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an eye-opening demonstration of how visually impaired developers efficiently navigate codebases using screen readers.

dejawuon Hacker News • Recommends

On “What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?”

On the other side of this, I found it very interesting how a programmer who can't see codes using text-to-speech: link to this video

DCRichardson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”

I recommend watching (and listening to) this talk by Saqib Shaikh, a blind developer using Visual Studio and how we codes and debugs with his screen reader link to this video

ChrisRRon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”

I'm reminded of this short video of a blind software developer using Visual Studio. Maybe it'll give you some idea link to this video

lzybkron Hacker News • Recommends

On “How does apt render its fancy progress bar?”

Saqib Shaikh, a blind developer at Microsoft, gave this short talk on using Visual Studio: link to this video I realize this isn't a console, but I think it is a good demonstration of an expert doing typical developer activities.

u/Alikontin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “How does programming language syntax affect screen readers?”

> I can't help thinking that hearing "space space space space echo left bracket total right bracket" etc. would get old very fast. People code like that. The best thing you can do is to find actually blind programmer who will help you by giving their perspective.

u/JB-from-ATLin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “When it comes to designing languages for the blind: is there a list anywhere of how screenreaders commonly pronounce special characters?”

I recall a video of a blind developer demonstrating Visual Studio features. He specifically said he had it configured to not read many characters like brackets because it was just unnecessary noise. You could take it to mean 1. That those characters aren't actually a problem since they can ignore them 2. Try to minimize their usage since they just ignore them anyways so they're not useful Edit: I think this is it but I'm not sure. link to this video

jodrellblankon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books”

There's a blind developer giving a talk on Visual Studio accessibility here - link to this video - and you can hear examples of him using text to speech starting at about 0m 45s but he doesn't say how fast.

3bollon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”

Hey, there you have a few references that could be of some help! Google: link Visual Studio: link to this video Forzano (Amazon) link , link Wishing you the best, J

jodrellblankon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Giving my mother-in-law an easy internet radio with real icon buttons”

My understanding is that blind or visually impaired people tend to use Windows because that's where the two(?) big screenreader programs run; JAWS is one1, I forget the other but it might be NVDA2. Microsoft have traditionally had some focus on accessibility, e.g. there's a video from a few years back of a blind programmer demonstrating how they program in Visual Studio3. Outside that, Emacspeak4 is an eyes-free Emacs, I think it can boot into that environment; it was developed by a blind person and claims: > Emacspeak introduces several improvements and innovations when compared with screenreaders designed to allow blind users to interact with personal computers. Unlike screenreader…

withinboredomon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Welcome to the M1 Windows project”

Windows has fantastic accessibility properties/support. They even have a blind dev working on Visual Studio (or did)0 for awhile. Apple's accessibility options are not anywhere near on-par with Windows. Linux ... I honestly haven't ever tried a screen reader in Linux and I have a feeling it is 100% up to whichever dev implemented something with no centralized style of doing things. 0 link to this video

cushon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Fastbook: Listen to Audiobooks Faster”

Here's a video of blind person programming with Visual Studio using a screen reader. It reads so fast the words come out to me like mumbles or almost a buzzing sound link to this video

u/JSpadernain r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “When it comes to designing languages for the blind: is there a list anywhere of how screenreaders commonly pronounce special characters?”

It’s not in the context of navigating a big project but still a great demonstration of how a blind programmer works and uses their tools: link to this video