7 ms·

John Boyer, blind software engineer, has died

355 points by JasonFruit 4y ago

pfannkuchen 4y ago
I think people in the 1800s might have quite a dim view on how we highlight certain personal traits today. "Blind engineer?? It's the title of his bloody obituary, mate, surely you can say something nice about him??" (Yes yes, of course I know that people do this today to try to remove the negative connotation of being blind/etc, but you must admit it's kind of funny at times)
- gerdesj 4y ago
  He - Boyer - was off of 1936. "Do not go gentle into that good night"
  - pfannkuchen 4y ago
    Are you suggesting the man himself would be offended?
- emodendroket 4y ago
  it is an essential aspect of the story, though.
- pbj1968 4y ago
  Person first, condition second. We are not our afflictions. I’m with you on this one.
irrational 4y ago
I dated a girl in the mid to late 1980s whose father was completely blind and worked as a software programmer. At the time, knowing little of computers, I didn’t think much of it. 30-35 years later, having worked as a programmer for nearly 25 years, I wish I was still in touch with the family so I could ask how he did it. I assume things would be easier now for a blind programmer, but, maybe not.
- sophacles 4y ago
  Oxide and friends had this episode a bit back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GVJg0LRX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GVJg0LRX4 The guest is a blind person and the main topic is a history speech synthesizers but also goes into how that translates to his experience using and programming computers over the years too. You might find it interesting. (There was another episode a few before it too where the same person talked a bit about his experiences).
- jareds 4y ago
  I'm a totally blind software developer who was born in the mid 80's. From my experience and limited discussion with other blind individuals I was born at the beginning of when life became a lot easier as a blind programmer as well as a blind person in general. When I started to learn programming in the early 2000's electronic versions of a decent number of programming books were available. I don't know how I would have learned C from a print copy of the K&R book in the late 80's. By the time I entered college I had GPS to help me get around campus. PRetty much everything but math was also available in fully accessible electronic format. Ten years earlier it would have been a lot more dificult.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I’m very curious. When developing software I do /try/ to make it accessible. But sometimes I think certain things, there’s no point in making accessible because a blind person wouldn’t be able to use it. But this is my ignorance of not understanding how people who are blind consume information. Are there things I can do better when developing software to assist with blindness?
    - jareds 4y ago
      I'm going to preface the following with the fact that I'm not an accessibility expert and accessibility is not a field I'm interested in. With out more info on the software it's impossible to give specific suggestions. For a tool that produces structured diagrams such as flow charts a way to move from node to node with arrow keys and have announcements on what connects to what would be a good way for me to read flow charts with out being able to look at them with my eyes. If your creating a color matching game for two year olds I can't think of any reasonable way to make it accessible. Other people may argue the game should announce colors and have a mode to pick them based on words only but at that point your starting to write a completely separate game.
ryanschneider 4y ago
If anyone is looking for ways to help the blind community a very simple one is to sign up as a volunteer for Be My Eyes (https://www.bemyeyes.com/ https://www.bemyeyes.com/). It relies on conversation so wouldn’t work for a blind and deaf person like John without some sort of (external) “voice to braille” system, not sure if such a system is available.
- napsterbr 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, just downloaded it. It's good to know it may take weeks until I receive my first call because there are so many volunteers!
- dundercoder 4y ago
  Blind guy here (<5 degree visual field) the app is fantastic. I get a little emotional when I consider how many people volunteer. In a sighted world it makes a huge difference.
  - mbreese 4y ago
    The current stats listed on the site show a little less than 500k users. But over 6 million volunteers. (!!!) That’s an amazing program.
- moomoo11 4y ago
  Wow that’s amazing. Thx for sharing.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Looks useful. But only available from the monopoly app store. So unfortunately I cannot help.
gregfjohnson 4y ago
John and I were in graduate school together (computer science, U Wisconsin - Madison). He was indeed a remarkable person. He was blind and deaf. He carried around a little mechanical Braille typewriter. To talk with John, you would type, and he would extend his hand into the device and feel the Braille impressions of what you were typing. He was not qualified for a normal seeing eye dog program because of the extent of his disabilities. So, he got a dog on his own and trained her. Her name was Sugar, and I can still hear John talking with and giving instructions to her. He was a living demonstration of the stunning heights that people achieve from time to time. I believe his PhD advisor was Marvin Solomon who was (is) also a remarkable and admirable person.
- splatzone 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing this lovely tribute
- cardosof 4y ago
  This is amazing, thank you for sharing.
- bitcoinmoney 4y ago
  HN never disappoints me.
- sq1020 4y ago
  Wow, thank you for sharing!
6502nerdface 4y ago
The Journal also ran a lovely obituary of him earlier this month: https://wsj.com/articles/blind-software-engineer-expanded-access-to-braille-11675868952 https://wsj.com/articles/blind-software-engineer-expanded-ac...
- gautamcgoel 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing, that was lovely.
camdenreslink 4y ago
I’ve never heard of this guy before, but it sounds like he had an amazing life and invented his own solutions to life’s obstacles. Makes me laugh to think of the minor inconveniences I’ve allowed to dissuade me from pursuing something. These were inconveniences that already had solutions available, no inventions required!
arbitrarian 4y ago
This guy was a legend. He wrote a program to translate print to braille and back again, as is noted in the linked article. He wasn't the first person to write such software, not even the first person to open source his copy, but he did write the library that is pretty much the go to version if you are serious about wanting to integrate braille into your software.
livinglist 4y ago
As an app dev, I really want to make my apps more accessible, but just not sure where to start. I have experience working with a11y requirements in my pervious companies, but all of the requirements are from professional auditing service provider. Is there free a11y auditing services for FOSS?
- 414techie 4y ago
  Are your apps installed apps, or web apps? There is a tool called WAVE that can help expose a great deal of accessibility issues to fix on a website. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-tool/jbbplnpkjmmeebjpijfedlgcdilocofh?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-to...
cortesoft 4y ago
I have been fascinated by blind computer usage since “Whistler” from the movie “Sneakers”.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I’ve become fascinated since I saw an Instagram video of a blind girl showing how she uses an iPhone. https://youtu.be/EEpsoCPL518 https://youtu.be/EEpsoCPL518 I’m blown away by the typing.
sammalloy 4y ago
> He always preferred to emphasize that everyone has abilities, and we should see what people have, not what they don’t have," Schroeder said. "He never felt he’d been shortchanged or cheated or anything. He was never bitter or resentful about his condition." Boyer is an inspiration to me, and hopefully to all of humanity.
dourdaen 4y ago
I remember going to a LibrePlanet years ago (2012) and a woman gave an awesome presentation on the effort going into Gnome to make it more accessible. It also peaked my interest in Emacspeak.
- sn41 4y ago
  One of the contributors to Emacspeak is also blind: T. V. Raman. He won an ACM distinguished doctoral dissertation award for his work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman
b7r6 4y ago
A minor note (many others here know Boyer personally and have more to add): there is a lot more to that CV than Boyer-Moore. Counting, all kinds of stuff. A true legend. May he RIP.
- rbolkey 4y ago
  I think you're confusing the wrong Boyer. Robert Boyer is the namesake for Boyer-Moore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Boyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Boyer
  - b7r6 4y ago
    You are correct. Thank you for straightening me out, and for linking to a good resource.
pxc 4y ago
A question for blind engineers in the comments here: Got any tips on how to prepare for going blind, and/or for dealing with that process as it unfolds?
- triyambakam 4y ago
  There are a number of threads on the subject if you search. Try "going blind"
  - pxc 4y ago
    facepalming rn. Thanks!
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 Ask HN: Any other blind devs interested in working on dev tools for the blind? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482
broast 4y ago
I have a blind colleague at work. I interviewed him and recall he was using a screen reader in the IDE while solving our coding problem. I thought that was amazing to witness. He's a great engineer.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
It wasn't until he was at the New York Institute for the Blind that a teacher realized what was happening and taught him manual sign language, where word symbols are formed by the questioner's fingers pressed against the palm of the blind person's hand. You can see an example of this in the movie about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. This is my favorite scene -- where Helen finally understands. It always makes me cry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac
dr_dshiv 4y ago
These glasses for the visually impaired are the coolest smart glasses that I’ve ever seen: https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses The product basically combines computer vision with people. It is based on great user research (one of my students at Delft contributed!). The 2 minute video is really great to see/hear/read. “Lightweight glasses, with a camera and direct speaker, Envision Glasses speak out text and environmental information, recognizes faces, light, and colors, and lets you share that information …features: Instant Text, Scan Text, Batch Scan, Call an Ally, Call Aira, Describe Scene, Detect Light, Recognise Cash, Detect Colors, Find People, Find Objects, Teach a Face and Explore.”
David_Holladay 4y ago
I knew John Boyer fairly well. My company, Raised Dot Computing, hired him to work on the mathematics translator for our program MegaDots. Collaborating on software required lots of time communicating with him, mostly me with the Teletouch, and him speaking. I was on the board of his non-profit for a time. I sadly lost touch with him after my family left Madison, and I was working on a competing product. I have so many good memories. May he always be remembered as a shining star of the human race.
- mlambie 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this tribute. If you have many more memories, could we trouble you for another? This man is inspiring.

355 points by JasonFruit 4y ago

I think people in the 1800s might have quite a dim view on how we highlight certain personal traits today. "Blind engineer?? It's the title of his bloody obituary, mate, surely you can say something nice about him??" (Yes yes, of course I know that people do this today to try to remove the negative connotation of being blind/etc, but you must admit it's kind of funny at times)

gerdesj 4y ago
He - Boyer - was off of 1936. "Do not go gentle into that good night"
- pfannkuchen 4y ago
  Are you suggesting the man himself would be offended?
emodendroket 4y ago
it is an essential aspect of the story, though.
pbj1968 4y ago
Person first, condition second. We are not our afflictions. I’m with you on this one.

irrational 4y ago

I dated a girl in the mid to late 1980s whose father was completely blind and worked as a software programmer. At the time, knowing little of computers, I didn’t think much of it. 30-35 years later, having worked as a programmer for nearly 25 years, I wish I was still in touch with the family so I could ask how he did it. I assume things would be easier now for a blind programmer, but, maybe not.

sophacles 4y ago
Oxide and friends had this episode a bit back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GVJg0LRX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GVJg0LRX4 The guest is a blind person and the main topic is a history speech synthesizers but also goes into how that translates to his experience using and programming computers over the years too. You might find it interesting. (There was another episode a few before it too where the same person talked a bit about his experiences).
jareds 4y ago
I'm a totally blind software developer who was born in the mid 80's. From my experience and limited discussion with other blind individuals I was born at the beginning of when life became a lot easier as a blind programmer as well as a blind person in general. When I started to learn programming in the early 2000's electronic versions of a decent number of programming books were available. I don't know how I would have learned C from a print copy of the K&R book in the late 80's. By the time I entered college I had GPS to help me get around campus. PRetty much everything but math was also available in fully accessible electronic format. Ten years earlier it would have been a lot more dificult.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I’m very curious. When developing software I do /try/ to make it accessible. But sometimes I think certain things, there’s no point in making accessible because a blind person wouldn’t be able to use it. But this is my ignorance of not understanding how people who are blind consume information. Are there things I can do better when developing software to assist with blindness?
  - jareds 4y ago
    I'm going to preface the following with the fact that I'm not an accessibility expert and accessibility is not a field I'm interested in. With out more info on the software it's impossible to give specific suggestions. For a tool that produces structured diagrams such as flow charts a way to move from node to node with arrow keys and have announcements on what connects to what would be a good way for me to read flow charts with out being able to look at them with my eyes. If your creating a color matching game for two year olds I can't think of any reasonable way to make it accessible. Other people may argue the game should announce colors and have a mode to pick them based on words only but at that point your starting to write a completely separate game.

ryanschneider 4y ago

If anyone is looking for ways to help the blind community a very simple one is to sign up as a volunteer for Be My Eyes (https://www.bemyeyes.com/ https://www.bemyeyes.com/). It relies on conversation so wouldn’t work for a blind and deaf person like John without some sort of (external) “voice to braille” system, not sure if such a system is available.

napsterbr 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this, just downloaded it. It's good to know it may take weeks until I receive my first call because there are so many volunteers!
dundercoder 4y ago
Blind guy here (<5 degree visual field) the app is fantastic. I get a little emotional when I consider how many people volunteer. In a sighted world it makes a huge difference.
- mbreese 4y ago
  The current stats listed on the site show a little less than 500k users. But over 6 million volunteers. (!!!) That’s an amazing program.
moomoo11 4y ago
Wow that’s amazing. Thx for sharing.
usr1106 4y ago
Looks useful. But only available from the monopoly app store. So unfortunately I cannot help.

gregfjohnson 4y ago

John and I were in graduate school together (computer science, U Wisconsin - Madison). He was indeed a remarkable person. He was blind and deaf. He carried around a little mechanical Braille typewriter. To talk with John, you would type, and he would extend his hand into the device and feel the Braille impressions of what you were typing. He was not qualified for a normal seeing eye dog program because of the extent of his disabilities. So, he got a dog on his own and trained her. Her name was Sugar, and I can still hear John talking with and giving instructions to her. He was a living demonstration of the stunning heights that people achieve from time to time. I believe his PhD advisor was Marvin Solomon who was (is) also a remarkable and admirable person.

splatzone 4y ago
Thank you for sharing this lovely tribute
cardosof 4y ago
This is amazing, thank you for sharing.
bitcoinmoney 4y ago
HN never disappoints me.
sq1020 4y ago
Wow, thank you for sharing!

6502nerdface 4y ago

The Journal also ran a lovely obituary of him earlier this month: https://wsj.com/articles/blind-software-engineer-expanded-access-to-braille-11675868952 https://wsj.com/articles/blind-software-engineer-expanded-ac...

gautamcgoel 4y ago
Thank you for sharing, that was lovely.

camdenreslink 4y ago

I’ve never heard of this guy before, but it sounds like he had an amazing life and invented his own solutions to life’s obstacles. Makes me laugh to think of the minor inconveniences I’ve allowed to dissuade me from pursuing something. These were inconveniences that already had solutions available, no inventions required!

arbitrarian 4y ago

This guy was a legend. He wrote a program to translate print to braille and back again, as is noted in the linked article. He wasn't the first person to write such software, not even the first person to open source his copy, but he did write the library that is pretty much the go to version if you are serious about wanting to integrate braille into your software.

livinglist 4y ago

As an app dev, I really want to make my apps more accessible, but just not sure where to start. I have experience working with a11y requirements in my pervious companies, but all of the requirements are from professional auditing service provider. Is there free a11y auditing services for FOSS?

414techie 4y ago
Are your apps installed apps, or web apps? There is a tool called WAVE that can help expose a great deal of accessibility issues to fix on a website. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-tool/jbbplnpkjmmeebjpijfedlgcdilocofh?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wave-evaluation-to...

cortesoft 4y ago

I have been fascinated by blind computer usage since “Whistler” from the movie “Sneakers”.

philliphaydon 4y ago
I’ve become fascinated since I saw an Instagram video of a blind girl showing how she uses an iPhone. https://youtu.be/EEpsoCPL518 https://youtu.be/EEpsoCPL518 I’m blown away by the typing.

sammalloy 4y ago

> He always preferred to emphasize that everyone has abilities, and we should see what people have, not what they don’t have," Schroeder said. "He never felt he’d been shortchanged or cheated or anything. He was never bitter or resentful about his condition." Boyer is an inspiration to me, and hopefully to all of humanity.

dourdaen 4y ago

I remember going to a LibrePlanet years ago (2012) and a woman gave an awesome presentation on the effort going into Gnome to make it more accessible. It also peaked my interest in Emacspeak.

sn41 4y ago
One of the contributors to Emacspeak is also blind: T. V. Raman. He won an ACM distinguished doctoral dissertation award for his work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman

b7r6 4y ago

A minor note (many others here know Boyer personally and have more to add): there is a lot more to that CV than Boyer-Moore. Counting, all kinds of stuff. A true legend. May he RIP.

rbolkey 4y ago
I think you're confusing the wrong Boyer. Robert Boyer is the namesake for Boyer-Moore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Boyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Boyer
- b7r6 4y ago
  You are correct. Thank you for straightening me out, and for linking to a good resource.

pxc 4y ago

A question for blind engineers in the comments here: Got any tips on how to prepare for going blind, and/or for dealing with that process as it unfolds?

triyambakam 4y ago
There are a number of threads on the subject if you search. Try "going blind"
- pxc 4y ago
  facepalming rn. Thanks!
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 Ask HN: Any other blind devs interested in working on dev tools for the blind? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482

broast 4y ago

I have a blind colleague at work. I interviewed him and recall he was using a screen reader in the IDE while solving our coding problem. I thought that was amazing to witness. He's a great engineer.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

It wasn't until he was at the New York Institute for the Blind that a teacher realized what was happening and taught him manual sign language, where word symbols are formed by the questioner's fingers pressed against the palm of the blind person's hand. You can see an example of this in the movie about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. This is my favorite scene -- where Helen finally understands. It always makes me cry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlKuJBiw1ac

dr_dshiv 4y ago

These glasses for the visually impaired are the coolest smart glasses that I’ve ever seen: https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses The product basically combines computer vision with people. It is based on great user research (one of my students at Delft contributed!). The 2 minute video is really great to see/hear/read. “Lightweight glasses, with a camera and direct speaker, Envision Glasses speak out text and environmental information, recognizes faces, light, and colors, and lets you share that information …features: Instant Text, Scan Text, Batch Scan, Call an Ally, Call Aira, Describe Scene, Detect Light, Recognise Cash, Detect Colors, Find People, Find Objects, Teach a Face and Explore.”

David_Holladay 4y ago

I knew John Boyer fairly well. My company, Raised Dot Computing, hired him to work on the mathematics translator for our program MegaDots. Collaborating on software required lots of time communicating with him, mostly me with the Teletouch, and him speaking. I was on the board of his non-profit for a time. I sadly lost touch with him after my family left Madison, and I was working on a competing product. I have so many good memories. May he always be remembered as a shining star of the human race.

mlambie 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this tribute. If you have many more memories, could we trouble you for another? This man is inspiring.