[chuck-users] Multiline Braille display

Rich Caloggero rjc at mit.edu
Sat Aug 27 17:39:14 EDT 2011 

*>guess that means i can remove the directory and its contents called
"learning python" though what language would be a good replacement?
rather, what language that meets all the criteria of being free (or
cheap), has tools that work with my screen reader, will compile, has
plenty of teachable stuff from the aspect of the blind
programmer/newbie, likely some stuff i'm forgetting here.

Well, this is a tall order. Developer tools are the most difficult piece of 
the equation. They are usually highly visual and complex.  Microsoft's dev 
environments are probably pretty friendly to Jaws and Window-eyes, but I 
believe they are expensive.  I remember seeing something about free 
"express" versions of windows dev tools a few years back, but I was never 
able to get them installed and working properly.

There is an open source editor which runs on Windows written by a blind 
programmer named Jamal Mazrui. Here's a URL and a little blurb about it.  I 
was helping a blind student recently learn python and delved into this a 
bit.  It looks pretty powerful and does have some facilities for making 
programming easier for screen reader users, but I work with javascript and 
html these days and find it overkill for what I do.

...
http://empowermentzone.com/EdSharp.htm

EdSharp is a full featured text editor that is friendly, powerful, and open 
source. It uses a standard Windows interface for an application that 
supports
multiple document windows. Though intended for sighted users as well, it 
seeks to enhance productivity for users of the JAWS, Window-Eyes, or System 
Access
screen readers by automatically verbalizing relevant information. These 
speech messages supplement default speech heuristics, providing confirmation 
or
results of commands without the need for manually interrogating the screen. 
If JAWS, Window-Eyes, or System Access are not detected in memory, EdSharp 
uses the default SAPI voice, if available, which may be configured via the 
Speech applet in Control Panel.
...

I use something called textpad.
http://www.textpad.com/download/

It is not free, but you can evaluate it and pay if you like it; its only 
about 27 dollars.

The version you want is 4.7.3; version five does not work with my screen 
reader (I use Jaws).  This is a typical problem with software; it gets 
changed to make it more visually rich, and accessibility suffers.
This editor is pretty simple, but it works for me.  It does a few more 
things than the basic notepad and the price is right.

To my way of thinking, the development tools usually get in the way more 
than they help, especially when just learning to program.  If I could see, I 
might not feel this way, but as a screen reader user, all the tools I have 
tried have been so hard to use and so the interfaces so confusing that any 
help they may have provided to the programmer was soon lost in time and 
energy fighting with the stupid things...

As a language, I actually like Javascript a lot. It is a full featured 
programming language, and because its built into a we browser, the user 
interface is built in.  I think it might be an interesting way to get your 
feet wet as a programmer.  If you do any serious Javascript programming, it’s 
a good idea to also use a library called jQuery:
http://www.jQuery.com/

It makes many things much easier, especially UI type programming.

If you want a more standard language - one which compiles and produces files 
you can run on the desktop, then I think Java is a good choice. There are 
many resources out there to help you get started, it uses standard c-like 
syntax (no indentation necessary), and for simple stuff you really don't 
need all the development tools - just a text editor will do.

I do encourage you to check out Python though. Sounds like you've already 
gotten some tutorials on it, and if you get used to the indentation stuff 
from the outset, then perhaps it won't be such a big deal for you.  Most 
screen readers like Jaws or Window-eyes have modes which will tell you about 
indentation, and as I mentioned above, the edSharp editor can help out in 
this regard as well.  I'm not sure if the NVDA  screen reader has an 
indentation mode, but based on the fact that it is coded in Python, I 
imagine it will have such a mode.  The developers of this screen reader are 
blind, so I think if you learn to deal with Python early in your programming 
adventures, the indentation may not be such a big deal.  I've been 
programmin g too long, and just find it annoying, but I have looked at 
Python and I can see its appeal.

There are also languages like Ruby and PHP which are aimed more at website 
development (on the server end rather than the client like Javascript), but 
PHP can also be used on the desktop I believe (although this is not its 
strength); Ruby I'm not so sure...


Not sure what the tactile mouse is called. Maybe google can help...

As per the iPhone, I got to tell you I was very skeptical about it when I 
first heard about it, but having played with it a bit I find its interface 
very interesting.  I still think that it would be difficult to get info from 
a  map this way, mostly because the screen is so damn small and there is 
nothing really to feel. You might be able to get a vague sense  of where 
things are in relation to other things, but I think the small size would be 
a show stopper, especially to people like me with rather large fingers.  The 
iPad might be a better bet; I've not tried this however so have no opinion 
on it yet.

Good luck, and do let me know how it goes.
You're welcome to write me off list at rjc at mit.edu if you like.

-- Rich




-----Original Message----- 
From: tempjayren at gmail.com
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 12:47 AM
To: ChucK Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [chuck-users] Multiline Braille display

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On 8/25/2011 12:29 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
> I think forcing indentation on someone (ala Python) is just wrong.
> This is unfortunate, since python seems like a very powerful
> language. You can get the screen reader to read out indentation (3
> spaces, 5 spaces, etc), and I'm sure there are many blind folks out
> there who enjoy coding in Python,

i've actually done a small bit of looking in to this, it appears the
screen reader nvda is actually coded in that language.


but I really wish indentation was not part of the language
> definition -- seems kind of like a step backward in language
> design (Fortran anyone)!

guess that means i can remove the directory and its contents called
"learning python" though what language would be a good replacement?
rather, what language that meets all the criteria of being free (or
cheap), has tools that work with my screen reader, will compile, has
plenty of teachable stuff from the aspect of the blind
programmer/newbie, likely some stuff i'm forgetting here.


>
> I'm a screen reader user,

really? what is your reader of choice?

and find indentation totally unnecessary. The
> way I deal with c-style languages is to mark my end braces with a
> comment:
>
> while (true) { // ... } // while
>
> I also tend to stay away from deeply nested code if I can.
>
> function f(x) { if (! x) return false; // more stuff } // f
>
> This last bit is obviously very contrived, but if you dispatch all
> tests for undesired conditions first and return, then you don't
> need deeply nested conditional blocks. Obviously, nested loops are
> quite another thing and if you need them, you need them.
>
> As for the multiline display -- I've been wanting one of those for
> as long as I've been programming. I have not tried it, but there is
> some sort of tactile mouse out there that will pop up braille as
> you move around

really? what company makes that? i wanna have a go at their website
and read about the thing.

, but this really doesn't
> help much. To get a real kinesthetic sense of layout, its very
> helpful to have two hands involved. Your brain is adapted for the
> use of both hands and can map this much more easily into sort sort
> of internal spacial image. I could not imagine trying to read a map
> with one finger

what about the iphone? this has the flat display that you touch, and
with voiceover feedback, to my way of thinking, this would be
equivalent to that map example you just mentioned.

.
> It would be very slow and tedious, and would defeat one of the
> purposes of having braille in the first place. Braille, like
> printed text or graphics, allows you to examine a static image. One
> of the inherent problems with speech, and this one-finger braille
> concept, is that the image is not static; it is essentially moving
> in time and requires you to build up a static image in your mind.
> Think of how difficult it would be to lood at a page of code
> through a straw, where all you can see is one symbol at a time.
> This is what its like listening to code, or anything really.
> Reading proes is sort of different in that your brain is adapted to
> this from birth from listening to spoken language, but code and
> other highly symbolic communication like mathmatics is very
> difficult to read via speech, or one-finger braille.
>
> Hopefully, I'll see a full-page braille display before everything
> goes 3D! Ah, one step forward, two steps back -- or maybe its two
> steps forward, and one step back! Depends when you ask...
>
> -- Rich
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Robert Poor Sent: Wednesday,
> August 24, 2011 11:03 PM To: ChucK Users Mailing List Cc: ChucK
> Users Mailing List Subject: [chuck-users] Multiline Braille
> display
>
> I always thought the way to make a  multiline Braille display was
> with a fingertip sized "mouse" that would actuate mechanical pins
> as you roll over a virtual page. You'd want the pins to have a much
> higher resolution than standard Braille so you could simulate
> smooth motion.
>
> Does anyone make anything like that yet?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 24, 2011, at 5:01 PM, tempjayren at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> my thoughts on indentation as regards screen readers, bad idea.
>> unless you are using a multiline braille display, then it could
>> work. unfortunately, i don't know of such a beast, though a
>> single line braille display is expensive in itself, a multiline
>> one would be  worse, and probably best used by someone that had
>> no ears as well as eyes,  and that would make chuck coding rather
>> silly to my way of thinking.
>>
>>
>> On 8/24/2011 10:18 AM, Kassen wrote:
>>> chuck doesn't seem to care about how .ck files look, or am i
>>>> wrong there?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Not at all, no, whatever works for you is fine. Actually part
>>> of  the whole point of ChucK is that it should be there for
>>> you, not for the computer. That said; I would take future usage
>>> of the file into account and try to make things clear for
>>> people who may read it in the future (maybe you in half a year
>>> <smile>). I could imagine that some forms of  indentation
>>> would be especially good for working with screen-readers, I
>>> wonder  whether any research has been done there.
>>>
>>> Yours, Kas.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ chuck-users
>>> mailing list chuck-users at lists.cs.princeton.edu
>>> https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users
>> _______________________________________________ chuck-users
>> mailing list chuck-users at lists.cs.princeton.edu
>> https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/chuck-users
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