Speaking Python

[David Mertz]

Tim Churches <tchur at optushome.com.au> wrote previously:
|You are assuming that blind programmers use speech synthesisers to
|review or manipulate code. I've only met one blind programmer, and he
|used an electromechanical Braille interface, which presented a single
|line of text at a time, a bit like ed and other line-oriented text
|editors.

I'm not sure how widely used the Braille interface is though.  I got
into a conversation recently with an advocate of Braille
technologies--specifically about the encoding formats, and ways to
translate to visual forms.  The thing is, Braille is more complex that I
would have initially thought.  See, for example:

    http://www.dotlessbraille.org/Five.htm

In particular, proper Braille transcription is not simply a uniform
mapping of letters, but a markup system that can indicate typographic
features as well--and also that allows context-dependent reductions, in
the manner of shorthand.

I think a really good Braille-based program editor would require more
smarts than the simple terminal provides.  Of course, such simple
terminals at least provide some access to blind users, which is a step
in the right direction.

But the other part is that not all blind people read Braille.  My same
above correspondent suggested that about 7% of blind people in the USA
read Braille; in part, that is because people become blind at older ages
(when they typically also do not enter careers in programming).  For a
lot of reasons, I would think it works out to more than 7% of blind
*programmers*... but still quite likely less than 100%.

Yours, David...

--
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underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual
property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.