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I've been struggling with eye strain and have considered trying to approach development in a fashion similar to that takeb by blind devs. Any suggestions for gu

I've been struggling with eye strain and have considered trying to approach development in a fashion similar to that takeb by blind devs. Any suggestions for guides or overviews for how I can get setup?

gostsamo 5y ago
Hi, it depends on what you are working on and what you want to do. Generally, screen readers are not as good for programing as they are for plain text stuff, so they will be a limited substitute for whatever you are using now. If you are okay with working slower, they can help you listen through code and tool's messages providing relief for your eyes. If you are using Windows, NVDA is the screen reader. Jaws is a bit too expensive for my taste without any significant edge over NVDA. The builtin narrator is still immature in my opinion. VSCode has excellent accessibility with a dedicated and involved team. Visual Studio also has extremely good accessibility support though I'm not using it. InteliJ sucks. Not completely, but enough that people do not see the benefit of using it. Eclipse is not popular these days, but it has good accessibility as well as far as I know. Sublime is not accessible. If you are on Linux, the screen reader is Orca. It does not have the same level of support as the Windows stuff, but I know people who are developing on linux boxes so it is doable. Emacs must be good enough because it has self-voicing plugin and people who like and use it. As far as I know, VSCode for Linux has some accessibility features but I don't know how they compare to Windows. If you are on Mac, your only choice is Voice Over by Apple as screen reader. It is good but not always perfect to my knowledge. I know people who use TextMaid, XCode, VSCode, and Emacs, but I don't have much feedback from there. It is totally doable though. On Windows, I'm also using notepad++ as secondary editor because it is faster and works better for large files. Also, it is a good notetaking tool. We can connect offline if you need some more info.

gostsamo 5y ago

Hi, it depends on what you are working on and what you want to do. Generally, screen readers are not as good for programing as they are for plain text stuff, so they will be a limited substitute for whatever you are using now. If you are okay with working slower, they can help you listen through code and tool's messages providing relief for your eyes. If you are using Windows, NVDA is the screen reader. Jaws is a bit too expensive for my taste without any significant edge over NVDA. The builtin narrator is still immature in my opinion. VSCode has excellent accessibility with a dedicated and involved team. Visual Studio also has extremely good accessibility support though I'm not using it. InteliJ sucks. Not completely, but enough that people do not see the benefit of using it. Eclipse is not popular these days, but it has good accessibility as well as far as I know. Sublime is not accessible. If you are on Linux, the screen reader is Orca. It does not have the same level of support as the Windows stuff, but I know people who are developing on linux boxes so it is doable. Emacs must be good enough because it has self-voicing plugin and people who like and use it. As far as I know, VSCode for Linux has some accessibility features but I don't know how they compare to Windows. If you are on Mac, your only choice is Voice Over by Apple as screen reader. It is good but not always perfect to my knowledge. I know people who use TextMaid, XCode, VSCode, and Emacs, but I don't have much feedback from there. It is totally doable though. On Windows, I'm also using notepad++ as secondary editor because it is faster and works better for large files. Also, it is a good notetaking tool. We can connect offline if you need some more info.