How A Blind Developer Uses Visual Studio

Here's a video of blind person programming with Visual Studio using a screen reader. It reads so fast the words come out to me like mumbles or almost a buzzing sound ▶ this video

Windows has fantastic accessibility properties/support. They even have a blind dev working on Visual Studio (or did)[0] for awhile. Apple's accessibility options are not anywhere near on-par with Windows. Linux ... I honestly haven't ever tried a screen reader in Linux and I have a feeling it is 100% up to whichever dev implemented something with no centralized style of doing things. [0] ▶ this video

Saqib Shaikh, a blind developer at Microsoft, gave this short talk on using Visual Studio: ▶ this video I realize this isn't a console, but I think it is a good demonstration of an expert doing typical developer activities.

My understanding is that blind or visually impaired people tend to use Windows because that's where the two(?) big screenreader programs run; JAWS is one[1], I forget the other but it might be NVDA[2]. Microsoft have traditionally had some focus on accessibility, e.g. there's a video from a few years back of a blind programmer demonstrating how they program in Visual Studio[3]. Outside that, Emacspeak[4] is an eyes-free Emacs, I think it can boot into that environment; it was developed by a blind person and claims: > Emacspeak introduces several improvements and innovations when compared with screenreaders designed to allow blind users to interact with personal computers. Unlike screenreaders that speak the contents of a visual display, Emacspeak speaks the underlying information. As an example, using a calendar application with a screenreader results in the blind user hearing a sequence of meaningless numbers; In contrast, Emacspeak speaks the relevant date in an easy to comprehend manner. > The system deploys the innovative technique of audio formatting to increase the band-width of aural communication; changes in voice characteristic and inflection combined with appropriate use of non-speech auditory icons are used throughout the user interface to create the equivalent of spatial layout, fonts, and graphical icons so important in the visual interface. This provides rich contextual feedback and shifts some of the burden of listening from the cognitive to the perceptual doma

I'm reminded of this short video of a blind software developer using Visual Studio. Maybe it'll give you some idea ▶ this video

I recommend watching (and listening to) this talk by Saqib Shaikh, a blind developer using Visual Studio and how we codes and debugs with his screen reader ▶ this video

Hey, there you have a few references that could be of some help! Google: link Visual Studio: ▶ this video Forzano (Amazon) link , link Wishing you the best, J

On the other side of this, I found it very interesting how a programmer who can't see codes using text-to-speech: ▶ this video

There's a blind developer giving a talk on Visual Studio accessibility here - ▶ this video - and you can hear examples of him using text to speech starting at about 0m 45s but he doesn't say how fast.