4 ms·

I always wondered how someone could use text-to-speech effectively, especially with a programming language full of symbols with long names such as 'semi-colon',

I always wondered how someone could use text-to-speech effectively, especially with a programming language full of symbols with long names such as 'semi-colon', 'underscore', 'left parenthesis' etc. The answer it seems is to speed up the voice tenfold! Honestly incredible he's fine-tuned his other senses well enough to be able to code at a reasonable speed again.

rootlocus 9y ago
It's not only sped up, it's using a lot of abbreviations.
masklinn 9y ago
> The answer it seems is to speed up the voice tenfold! That seems very common for systematic text-to-speech users, I saw a video a few months back of a lawyer (?) demonstrating ios's accessibility (rotor, voiceover, blind curtain, …) and the TTS speech was so fast it sounded like white noise to me.
- Accacin 9y ago
  That would be interesting to watch. Do you have a link for that?
  - masklinn 9y ago
    Sadly no, I tried looking for it but I haven't managed to dig it back up.
  - steveax 9y ago
    I believe this article from David Pogue is the one: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...
    - masklinn 9y ago
      That's exactly the one, thank you! The relevant bit is at 4:10
Semaphor 9y ago
I was at a web design conference once with a talk by a heavily vision-impaired guy. I was amazed at the speed when he went to his IDE to fix a bug. I couldn't make out a word it was saying and he didn't seem slower working with it than I would be.
- Pigo 9y ago
  I'm glad you mentioned that. After watching this it made me wonder if this is normal, or if this guy is some sort of auditory wizard. It seems like an awful lot of work to master, but maybe not if it's a skill you're using everyday.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - masklinn 9y ago
    > After watching this it made me wonder if this is normal, or if this guy is some sort of auditory wizard. The "visual cortex" area is not deactivated but gets re-tasked with non-visual processing tasks, even in "late blind" people (people who lost their sight after age 12): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/ Considering the amount of visual information the sighted process more or less effortlessly, that's a pretty significant amount of processing capabilities which can get retasked with e.g. auditory processing.
    - sssilver 9y ago
      I wonder if any of it is also being directed at just being better at programming.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
johnhattan 9y ago
I watched the video twice, and I picked up a lot more the second time. At first, it seemed like he had the speech set to "incomprehensible chirping". I'm still impressed at how he found the syntax error, though.
Iv 9y ago
One of the company I worked with had to design an audio interface for blind people. I proposed something relying on several stereo located sounds of different pitches and intensity. I was told this would be too hard to use for a normal user. I wish I had such a video at the time to show the kind of bandwidth a blind person is able to get from audio alone.

rootlocus 9y ago

It's not only sped up, it's using a lot of abbreviations.

masklinn 9y ago

> The answer it seems is to speed up the voice tenfold! That seems very common for systematic text-to-speech users, I saw a video a few months back of a lawyer (?) demonstrating ios's accessibility (rotor, voiceover, blind curtain, …) and the TTS speech was so fast it sounded like white noise to me.

Accacin 9y ago
That would be interesting to watch. Do you have a link for that?
- masklinn 9y ago
  Sadly no, I tried looking for it but I haven't managed to dig it back up.
- steveax 9y ago
  I believe this article from David Pogue is the one: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...
  - masklinn 9y ago
    That's exactly the one, thank you! The relevant bit is at 4:10

Semaphor 9y ago

I was at a web design conference once with a talk by a heavily vision-impaired guy. I was amazed at the speed when he went to his IDE to fix a bug. I couldn't make out a word it was saying and he didn't seem slower working with it than I would be.

Pigo 9y ago
I'm glad you mentioned that. After watching this it made me wonder if this is normal, or if this guy is some sort of auditory wizard. It seems like an awful lot of work to master, but maybe not if it's a skill you're using everyday.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- masklinn 9y ago
  > After watching this it made me wonder if this is normal, or if this guy is some sort of auditory wizard. The "visual cortex" area is not deactivated but gets re-tasked with non-visual processing tasks, even in "late blind" people (people who lost their sight after age 12): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/ Considering the amount of visual information the sighted process more or less effortlessly, that's a pretty significant amount of processing capabilities which can get retasked with e.g. auditory processing.
  - sssilver 9y ago
    I wonder if any of it is also being directed at just being better at programming.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

johnhattan 9y ago

I watched the video twice, and I picked up a lot more the second time. At first, it seemed like he had the speech set to "incomprehensible chirping". I'm still impressed at how he found the syntax error, though.

Iv 9y ago

One of the company I worked with had to design an audio interface for blind people. I proposed something relying on several stereo located sounds of different pitches and intensity. I was told this would be too hard to use for a normal user. I wish I had such a video at the time to show the kind of bandwidth a blind person is able to get from audio alone.