3 ms·

First of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. Most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, o

by bramd 12y ago

First of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. Most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, or can see something. I've been totally blind since birth. Blind people can have a good or bad sense of direction, just like their sighted peers. I think the device described in the article might be more useful on short distances and less relevant for knowing where your home is while you're far away from it. This because blind people don't have the visual queues to determine if they're walking in a straight line for example. Getting immediate feedback could help with such skills and learn them how to verify the signals from the device with other senses. Sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic.

eranation 12y ago
> I've been totally blind since birth. Please forgive me for the naive question, I'm probably full of misconceptions about blindness, but out of pure curiosity, how do you read and write so well without seeing? Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same) You really didn't have any typos, and as well your indentation and styling are perfect (much better than me but I'm not a native English speaker) Can you read and write code without seeing? Are there any blind programmers that you know of. again asking out of pure naivety tl;dr, I'm impressed with your reading and writing considering that you said your are totally blind, and curious how do you do it. (I always was afraid of going blind for some reason, and afraid I will never be able to write code again)
- gohrt 12y ago
  TV Raman has done a lot of work and storytelling relating to his blindness. He is a CS researcher at Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman
- bramd 12y ago
  I'm not a native English speaker either. > Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same) Yes, I'm using a regular keyboard and a screenreader. Besides speech output I use a device called a refreshable braille display which can display up to 40 or 80 characters at a time depending on the model being used. I'm sure you will find some pictures if you Google it. However, those devices are quite expensive and many blind people just use speech output. Even with just speech there are options for reading letter by letter, word by word etc. However, I see some people make much spelling mistakes because they just listen and not rreally read how a word is spelled. > Can you read and write code without seeing? Are there any blind programmers that you know of. Sure you can. I make a living by programming and doing web accessibility consultancy. Another nice example is the free and open source NVDA screenreader[0], which is developed by two blind guys. [0]: http://www.nvaccess.org/ http://www.nvaccess.org/
  - eranation 12y ago
    This is awesome, thanks for the reply! p.s. are there IDEA / Eclipse plugins that support accessibility?
    - bramd 12y ago
      You mean making the IDE itself accessible? Eclipse is already quite accessible out of the box.
  - stevenrace 12y ago
    Fascinating, thanks. At what speed do you replay text->audio (ie realtime, 1.5x,2x,...)? Lastly, if you disregard price is the braille 'refreshable display' a better experience?
    - bramd 12y ago
      > At what speed do you replay text->audio (ie realtime, 1.5x,2x,...)? Approximately the speed that the guy at the beginning of this video uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo > Lastly, if you disregard price is the braille 'refreshable display' a better experience? It just what you're used to I guess, I know lots of people who can get by without one. I especially like it when doing coding and doing stuff in a terminal. Easier to see indentation, parenthesis, quotes etc.
leoc 12y ago
> Sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic. Indeed! Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ?
- bramd 12y ago
  > Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ? Yes, I have played with it. However, I'm not convinced yet if I should invest a lot of time learning it. Another useful and interesting skill is echolocation[0]. I have used that since Iwas a child to survey my environment. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
  - leoc 12y ago
    I seem to recall research claming that vOICe users already had very impressive results after 50-100 hours of use/training, so I would guess that it's worth the time. Human echolocation is absolutely balling, what else can I say?

by bramd 12y ago

eranation 12y ago

> I've been totally blind since birth. Please forgive me for the naive question, I'm probably full of misconceptions about blindness, but out of pure curiosity, how do you read and write so well without seeing? Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same) You really didn't have any typos, and as well your indentation and styling are perfect (much better than me but I'm not a native English speaker) Can you read and write code without seeing? Are there any blind programmers that you know of. again asking out of pure naivety tl;dr, I'm impressed with your reading and writing considering that you said your are totally blind, and curious how do you do it. (I always was afraid of going blind for some reason, and afraid I will never be able to write code again)

gohrt 12y ago
TV Raman has done a lot of work and storytelling relating to his blindness. He is a CS researcher at Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman
bramd 12y ago
I'm not a native English speaker either. > Is the technology so advanced today? Are you using a screen reader and a regular keyboard? (e.g. typing and than playing it via the reader) how do you know if you made a typo? (e.g. who's and whose sound the same) Yes, I'm using a regular keyboard and a screenreader. Besides speech output I use a device called a refreshable braille display which can display up to 40 or 80 characters at a time depending on the model being used. I'm sure you will find some pictures if you Google it. However, those devices are quite expensive and many blind people just use speech output. Even with just speech there are options for reading letter by letter, word by word etc. However, I see some people make much spelling mistakes because they just listen and not rreally read how a word is spelled. > Can you read and write code without seeing? Are there any blind programmers that you know of. Sure you can. I make a living by programming and doing web accessibility consultancy. Another nice example is the free and open source NVDA screenreader[0], which is developed by two blind guys. [0]: http://www.nvaccess.org/ http://www.nvaccess.org/
- eranation 12y ago
  This is awesome, thanks for the reply! p.s. are there IDEA / Eclipse plugins that support accessibility?
  - bramd 12y ago
    You mean making the IDE itself accessible? Eclipse is already quite accessible out of the box.
- stevenrace 12y ago
  Fascinating, thanks. At what speed do you replay text->audio (ie realtime, 1.5x,2x,...)? Lastly, if you disregard price is the braille 'refreshable display' a better experience?
  - bramd 12y ago
    > At what speed do you replay text->audio (ie realtime, 1.5x,2x,...)? Approximately the speed that the guy at the beginning of this video uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo > Lastly, if you disregard price is the braille 'refreshable display' a better experience? It just what you're used to I guess, I know lots of people who can get by without one. I especially like it when doing coding and doing stuff in a terminal. Easier to see indentation, parenthesis, quotes etc.

leoc 12y ago

> Sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic. Indeed! Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ?

bramd 12y ago
> Have you ever tried something like the vOICe http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ ? Yes, I have played with it. However, I'm not convinced yet if I should invest a lot of time learning it. Another useful and interesting skill is echolocation[0]. I have used that since Iwas a child to survey my environment. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
- leoc 12y ago
  I seem to recall research claming that vOICe users already had very impressive results after 50-100 hours of use/training, so I would guess that it's worth the time. Human echolocation is absolutely balling, what else can I say?