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I’m totally blind and bought a Mac several years ago hoping to learn iOS programming. As far as I can tell it’s impossible to create a simple app without using

by jareds 9y ago

I’m totally blind and bought a Mac several years ago hoping to learn iOS programming. As far as I can tell it’s impossible to create a simple app without using drag and drop in XCode. While it’s technically possible to do drag and drop with Voiceover I can never get it to work correctly. Apple has not put out any documentation on how to use XCode when blind that I’ve been able to find. This is disappointing since I find iOS to be much easier to use then Android. I also find Voiceover on the mac does not have quite as many shortcut keys as my Windows screen reader when reading the web, for example I cannot jump to a heading at a specific level or move by region. While Mac OS did have easy availability of Unix tools as a plus that no longer is a point in its favor. I find WSL to be quite good and accessible. Luckily the 11 inch MacBook Air was the best ultra-book I could get at the time so I don’t feel like I wasted my money even though I boot into Windows 95% of the time. For general use Mac OSX is pretty good. I find the screen reader to be quite intuitive and there is a good tutorial to help you learn it. Voiceover just doesn’t have the breadth of shortcut keys or customizability of Jaws for Windows which is my preferred screen reader despite its cost.

hellcow 9y ago
If you're discussing storyboards in XCode (given you mentioned drag and drop), you actually don't need that feature and can lay out both iOS screens and the flows between them programmatically. I actually prefer writing views programmatically for iOS--it gives you readable diffs, which is especially helpful for code reviews.
- jareds 9y ago
  I have not found an introduction tutorial that assumes you go from no iOS knowledge to a working app with just code instead of storyboards. DO you know of a tutorial that does this?
  - hellcow 9y ago
    Here's one that might help for Objective C: https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-programmatically-updated-95951cb189c4 https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-progr... Alternatively this is the same tutorial using Swift: https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-programmatically-xcode-7-2-swift-2-1-9946d09610c4 https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-progr... Sadly the images in those articles don't have alt tags, but the images are well described by the surrounding text. Googling "build iOS views programmatically no storyboard" should bring up some more resources. The rest of iOS development will be normal/consistent with other tutorials--the only thing that's different is learning to describe the view itself in code.
    - jareds 9y ago
      I haven't had a chance to actually run through the tutorial but looking at it I don't think I'll have problems following it. It's well written and the graphics are not required to understand what's going on.

by jareds 9y ago

hellcow 9y ago

If you're discussing storyboards in XCode (given you mentioned drag and drop), you actually don't need that feature and can lay out both iOS screens and the flows between them programmatically. I actually prefer writing views programmatically for iOS--it gives you readable diffs, which is especially helpful for code reviews.

jareds 9y ago
I have not found an introduction tutorial that assumes you go from no iOS knowledge to a working app with just code instead of storyboards. DO you know of a tutorial that does this?
- hellcow 9y ago
  Here's one that might help for Objective C: https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-programmatically-updated-95951cb189c4 https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-progr... Alternatively this is the same tutorial using Swift: https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-programmatically-xcode-7-2-swift-2-1-9946d09610c4 https://medium.com/@danstepanov/your-first-ios-app-100-progr... Sadly the images in those articles don't have alt tags, but the images are well described by the surrounding text. Googling "build iOS views programmatically no storyboard" should bring up some more resources. The rest of iOS development will be normal/consistent with other tutorials--the only thing that's different is learning to describe the view itself in code.
  - jareds 9y ago
    I haven't had a chance to actually run through the tutorial but looking at it I don't think I'll have problems following it. It's well written and the graphics are not required to understand what's going on.