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I talked to a three different blind programmers in the last few years. They all dismissed Python and other indentation-based languages, because - surprise-surpr

I talked to a three different blind programmers in the last few years. They all dismissed Python and other indentation-based languages, because - surprise-surprise - screen readers don't read out significant whitespace.

coldtea 8y ago
A Python-aware screen-reader trivially could. Why would someone use a generic one for programming?
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  It's a barrier to entry. It doesn't come with python, and I'd be most random developers wouldn't know of a "python-aware" option.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    The PythonVis community used to recommend the EdSharp editor (Windows only IIRC).
- pjc50 8y ago
  How, exactly? Read out the number of spaces at the start of every line?
  - svat 8y ago
    The only whitespace that Python cares about (that other languages do not) is whether a line is indented more or less than the previous line (off-side rule). So the screen-reader could read out “INDENT” and “DEDENT” when the indentation changes (matching the Python lexer: http://web.archive.org/web/20180217005004/http://www.secnetix.de/olli/Python/block_indentation.hawk http://web.archive.org/web/20180217005004/http://www.secneti... / https://docs.python.org/2.0/ref/indentation.html https://docs.python.org/2.0/ref/indentation.html), or read “start block” and “end block”. This would be about as frequent as reading out (in brace-using languages) “open brace” and “close brace”.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    One could read only changes in indent.