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0 pointskuschku11y ago0 comments

There was another post about this months ago, and the blind poster said that while C is usable (thanks to brackets), python is completely unusable or unreadable to them.

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8 comments · 3 top-level

danielbarla11y ago· 5 in thread

I'm pretty sure a screen reader could be configured to understand significant whitespace, even if it's not a trivial task.

socksy11y ago

This article had me thinking — what if the different levels of scope were represented by reading the text at different pitches? Kind of like rainbow parentheses with lisp for sighted people.

It'd be really interesting to try out a technique like that with a lisp, I think.

zhengyi1311y ago

I've personally helped TV Raman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman) re-setup his screenreader and Emacs stuff multiple times when his local PC required re-installation. He hacks on emacs code pretty effectively when he's not doing other things. IIRC different emacs fonts/faces are rendered via the reader as slightly different tones to the voice.

(I also helped introduce him to stumpwm when he absolutely had to have a GUI to do some specific testing; he was shocked and pleased that such a thing existed)

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samatman11y ago

Use pentatonics! Most other choices will sound poor.

How would you render (do (blah bler) (bip bop)) to make it different from (do (blah bler bip bop))? Emphasis?

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qznc11y ago

It should basically read the token stream instead of the text. For Python that includes indent and dedent tokens, which are equivalent to open and close brackets.

kryptiskt11y ago

Maybe it suffices to just say "end if/for/def/class/etc" at the end of each block.

zersiax11y ago

There is absolutely nothing preventing blind coders from using Python. Indentation can easily be reported by any screenreader I am aware of and it is a very clean, screenreader-friendly language for the rest. I really enjoy working with that language

andreasvc11y ago

While it makes sense that it would be unusable without proper treatment of the indentations, I don't think it would be hard to adapt the screen reader. Note that the Python parser itself converts indentations to begin / end tokens, which are exactly like braces, so those can be read out loud to make the indentations explicit.

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