4 ms·

Emacspeak at Twenty: Looking Back, Looking Forward

72 points by qdot76367 12y ago

swartkrans 12y ago
Emacs is a great editor, very capable, and it's awesome that accessibility is possible with such a great editor. The author knows a lot and I'm glad they shared their experience. However that blog is nearly unreadable for someone with sight. Also I wonder if vim or IDE's like IntelliJ provide comparable accessibility. I'd hope they do.
- yzzxy 12y ago
  It's totally readable. You may dislike the aesthetic but it's a capable, simple page layout, unlike many modern sites "optimized for readability." It doesn't mess with your scrolling or use unreadable color combinations. It doesn't use crazy fonts or table layouts. What's unreadable?
  - Kluny 12y ago
    I thought the tiled puppies were terrific!
  - gwern 12y ago
    It is a little distracting to have that dog tiled across most of what would otherwise be whitespace. No doubt it's not a problem for anyone using a screenreader who just hears the text and doesn't seen the tiling...
- jareds 12y ago
  As a blind programmer I assume IntelliJ is completely inaccessible. I attempted to use Android Studio several months ago and it was completely inaccessible. Eclipse is pretty good though, I think part of this is do to IBM being a big backer of the Eclipse foundation.
  - swartkrans 12y ago
    Wow, that's too bad. I hope they fix this.
  - partomniscient 12y ago
    I'm wondering roughly how old you are? Curious question: As a blind programmer - has the 'JavaScript everything' approach to the web made your personal content consumption easier or harder? I briefly crossed paths with some blind users back in the late 1980's back when there was no heavily established GUI for the sighted masses (i.e. Windows 3.11). I'd be interested to know, compare and contrast how easily 'consumable' present cyberspace is versus the command-line era.
    - jareds 12y ago
      I'm 28. My first memories of heavily using the internet were internet explorer 4.0. I'd say that web accessibility has gotten better and I can use most web applications. Some of this is do to the fact that I am a power user and know my screen reading software well. I can't talk much about how the GUI has effected blind users since I started teaching my self to program at 14. WHile learning to program I also learned to use the commandline and find it is still better for some things. For example I use todo.sh on my PC along with the todo.txt touch app on iOS to keep track of tasks since I find that on the PC a commandline interface for something like task tracking is quicker. FOr email I use the standard gmail web interface or Thunderbird instead of a text based email client because I find it easier to use especially since I do not have a lot of email to deal with.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  > that blog is nearly unreadable for someone with sight. I'll take dog tiles vs pop-up ads or ads embedded in the text.
  - philsnow 12y ago
    I'll take dog tiles vs sites "cleverly" hiding and showing content based off of scroll position. Modern web sites often feel like flash hell from the 90s ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/03/03 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/03/03 )
mwcampbell 12y ago
A little context for readers who are unfamiliar with the field of assistive technology for the blind: When Raman started working on Emacspeak in 1994, most blind computer users, including him, were using screen readers for MS-DOS. Naturally, these only worked in text mode. They intercepted BIOS interrupts and/or polled screen memory to find out what was on the screen. So naturally, these screen readers didn't have access to any information about the structure of what was on the screen, just the text and colors. They used various heuristics to determine what to speak in a given situation, but this was far from optimal IMO. I dare say the same applies to Linux text-mode screen readers, specifically Speakup. Today, there are multiple excellent screen readers for Windows, both commercial and free. The most popular commercial screen reader is JAWS for Windows; the best and most popular free one is NVDA. Apple provides a good screen reader called VoiceOver on both Mac and iOS. On Android there's TalkBack, and for GNOME, there's Orca. The primary way of providing access to GUIs is through accessibility APIs such as Microsoft Active Accessibility and UI Automation on Windows. These APIs expose GUI widgets and containers as a tree of objects, with attributes such as name, role (e.g. button, list view, editable text), state (a set of flags such as focused, selected, checked, etc.), value, location, and more. So there's much more information about the structure and meaning of what's on the screen; this is practically a necessity for GUI screen readers, as opposed to text-mode ones. Some GUI screen readers, such as JAWS, NVDA, and Orca, also provide ways to associate scripts or plug-in modules with specific applications, to add application-specific behavior. The ability to modify screen reader configuration settings on a per-application basis is also common (as it was in DOS screen readers). I don't have an informed opinion of my own about Emacspeak versus the current crop of GUI screen readers, since I don't use either full-time. But based on my observation of the blind people I happen to know, including blind programmers, Emacspeak doesn't seem to be very popular even among blind programmers; the ones I know mostly use Windows and NVDA. Anyway, I hope this comment will help to provide some context for the OP. It's not often that I see a post about assistive technology hit the HN front page.
- jareds 12y ago
  I'm a blind Windows user because general desktop accesibility in Linux is not great. I've attempted to set up Emacspeak under a Linux VM but installation has always been dificult. Seeing this article though has gotten me to look into using Vagrant to create a Linux Vm that will install Emacspeak.
JetSpiegel 12y ago
https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email Here's a description of the process of sending an email by the creator of Orca, the GNOME screen reader.

72 points by qdot76367 12y ago

Emacs is a great editor, very capable, and it's awesome that accessibility is possible with such a great editor. The author knows a lot and I'm glad they shared their experience. However that blog is nearly unreadable for someone with sight. Also I wonder if vim or IDE's like IntelliJ provide comparable accessibility. I'd hope they do.

yzzxy 12y ago
It's totally readable. You may dislike the aesthetic but it's a capable, simple page layout, unlike many modern sites "optimized for readability." It doesn't mess with your scrolling or use unreadable color combinations. It doesn't use crazy fonts or table layouts. What's unreadable?
- Kluny 12y ago
  I thought the tiled puppies were terrific!
- gwern 12y ago
  It is a little distracting to have that dog tiled across most of what would otherwise be whitespace. No doubt it's not a problem for anyone using a screenreader who just hears the text and doesn't seen the tiling...
jareds 12y ago
As a blind programmer I assume IntelliJ is completely inaccessible. I attempted to use Android Studio several months ago and it was completely inaccessible. Eclipse is pretty good though, I think part of this is do to IBM being a big backer of the Eclipse foundation.
- swartkrans 12y ago
  Wow, that's too bad. I hope they fix this.
- partomniscient 12y ago
  I'm wondering roughly how old you are? Curious question: As a blind programmer - has the 'JavaScript everything' approach to the web made your personal content consumption easier or harder? I briefly crossed paths with some blind users back in the late 1980's back when there was no heavily established GUI for the sighted masses (i.e. Windows 3.11). I'd be interested to know, compare and contrast how easily 'consumable' present cyberspace is versus the command-line era.
  - jareds 12y ago
    I'm 28. My first memories of heavily using the internet were internet explorer 4.0. I'd say that web accessibility has gotten better and I can use most web applications. Some of this is do to the fact that I am a power user and know my screen reading software well. I can't talk much about how the GUI has effected blind users since I started teaching my self to program at 14. WHile learning to program I also learned to use the commandline and find it is still better for some things. For example I use todo.sh on my PC along with the todo.txt touch app on iOS to keep track of tasks since I find that on the PC a commandline interface for something like task tracking is quicker. FOr email I use the standard gmail web interface or Thunderbird instead of a text based email client because I find it easier to use especially since I do not have a lot of email to deal with.
rdtsc 12y ago
> that blog is nearly unreadable for someone with sight. I'll take dog tiles vs pop-up ads or ads embedded in the text.
- philsnow 12y ago
  I'll take dog tiles vs sites "cleverly" hiding and showing content based off of scroll position. Modern web sites often feel like flash hell from the 90s ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/03/03 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/03/03 )

mwcampbell 12y ago

A little context for readers who are unfamiliar with the field of assistive technology for the blind: When Raman started working on Emacspeak in 1994, most blind computer users, including him, were using screen readers for MS-DOS. Naturally, these only worked in text mode. They intercepted BIOS interrupts and/or polled screen memory to find out what was on the screen. So naturally, these screen readers didn't have access to any information about the structure of what was on the screen, just the text and colors. They used various heuristics to determine what to speak in a given situation, but this was far from optimal IMO. I dare say the same applies to Linux text-mode screen readers, specifically Speakup. Today, there are multiple excellent screen readers for Windows, both commercial and free. The most popular commercial screen reader is JAWS for Windows; the best and most popular free one is NVDA. Apple provides a good screen reader called VoiceOver on both Mac and iOS. On Android there's TalkBack, and for GNOME, there's Orca. The primary way of providing access to GUIs is through accessibility APIs such as Microsoft Active Accessibility and UI Automation on Windows. These APIs expose GUI widgets and containers as a tree of objects, with attributes such as name, role (e.g. button, list view, editable text), state (a set of flags such as focused, selected, checked, etc.), value, location, and more. So there's much more information about the structure and meaning of what's on the screen; this is practically a necessity for GUI screen readers, as opposed to text-mode ones. Some GUI screen readers, such as JAWS, NVDA, and Orca, also provide ways to associate scripts or plug-in modules with specific applications, to add application-specific behavior. The ability to modify screen reader configuration settings on a per-application basis is also common (as it was in DOS screen readers). I don't have an informed opinion of my own about Emacspeak versus the current crop of GUI screen readers, since I don't use either full-time. But based on my observation of the blind people I happen to know, including blind programmers, Emacspeak doesn't seem to be very popular even among blind programmers; the ones I know mostly use Windows and NVDA. Anyway, I hope this comment will help to provide some context for the OP. It's not often that I see a post about assistive technology hit the HN front page.

jareds 12y ago
I'm a blind Windows user because general desktop accesibility in Linux is not great. I've attempted to set up Emacspeak under a Linux VM but installation has always been dificult. Seeing this article though has gotten me to look into using Vagrant to create a Linux Vm that will install Emacspeak.

JetSpiegel 12y ago

https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email https://blogs.oracle.com/richb/entry/my_first_blind_email Here's a description of the process of sending an email by the creator of Orca, the GNOME screen reader.