blinddev

How do you know they're American? As a Canadian I'm disgusted by this, reeks of fascism to me.

In what way is that inaccurate? The ad hominem only tells me that maybe it is indeed correct.

$9-million? Yikes.

Hi Nate,

Will any of that $30M go towards making Lever's website even remotely accessible to screen readers and such? If you're not sure what I'm talking about, try visiting your website with Safari and VoiceOver enabled and watch it crash the browser (or put it into a perpetual loading state). If I see your website linked in a job listing I just skip it altogether. I don't ask for much, just don't kill my screen reader.

lindybee,

I am a blind developer and may be able to help. Email is in my profile.

The fact that the real Erwin van Haarlem seemingly vanished is suspicious. I would assume you would only want to assign an identity of someone who is known to be dead, yet the orphanage apparently sent many letters to the mother. Assuming that's true, of course.

There was also a push to put ads on the player's jerseys. This is already common in sports like football/soccer. It is just visual noise at this point.

Yes, shoot me an email (in my profile) and I can invite you to the Google Group.

Thanks, will reach out for sure.

I have created both, still a work in progress, but once there's something to show a Show HN might be in order.

https://github.com/blind-dev https://blinddev.org

No, but I have now. Very cool.

In addition to this Google Group, I have also created the following GitHub organization: https://github.com/blind-dev

And have started a website to provide a resource for software development and accessibility: https://blinddev.org

Both are works in progress. If interested in contributing feel free to reach out, my email is in my profile.

If this is directed at me, I don't think I'm arguing to put blind developers in a corner. The tools that could be developed could either be new or improvements on existing tools. The latter sounds like your preference, but I don't think it is the only viable option. I can envision a whole suite of tools that, while targeting blind developers, could enhance their abilities or even just make what was otherwise inaccessible accessible.

A possible analogy might be crossing a busy intersection. Someone made pedestrian cross signs audible, allowing a pedestrian to know what the walk sign says at any given time. But this is an enhancement of a pre-existing technology. That blind pedestrian will still likely require a white cane, a blind person specific tool, in order to cross the street. I think there's room for both in software development.

I have an Echo and it is a life changer for a blind person. I've written a few trivial skills for it, but definitely would like to do more.

You're welcome. :)

I was feeling pretty down and wanted something positive to come out of it. Glad to see I'm not alone.

There might be something here. I'm personally not a fan of shaming, but documenting where a piece of software falls short and making specific recommendations in a public forum might go a long way.

I didn't know that Fedora's accessibility was better than Ubuntu's. I had pretty much stopped using Linux on the desktop because Orca in Ubuntu just left me wanting more. But I'll definitely give Fedora a try now. Thanks.

I don't know if there's a market for this, but I'd be interested in exploring it. You or your friend can get in touch with me, my email is in my profile.

Wow, lots of potential here. Will definitely reach out.

What would this look like?(no pun intended) Like a web site that documents accessibility issues for common web sites and software? Or a guide that walks through a typical development process for a blind dev?

This is really cool, thanks for sharing. Will try it out.

This is really interesting. I've often thought about a browser extension that could describe a web page. I don't mean text, as screen readers are (usually) more than capable there. I mean a visual description like:

"The web site has a off white background with black text. There is a horizontal menu at the top that fills the screen 95% horizontally and 10% vertically. The horizontal menu has a navy blue background with white text. There is a logo on the left of the horizontal menu filling 25% of the screen horizontally and 5% vertically. There are five menu items to the right of the logo image in the horizontal menu."

That's probably a little more verbose than it needs to be. But it could be a combination of CV, tapping into the renderer and traversing the DOM in order to best describe a page. Then if my screen reader isn't cutting it and I'm feeling lost I can just have the current view described to me.

You aren't coming off as arrogant at all. I've thought a lot about this, largely because I'm faced with it every day. There are probably two ways to approach the accessibility problem:

1. Make the inaccessible accessible through clever tools, relying on CV or similar. 2. Make tools that reveal to sighted devs how accessible their software really is, much like you've described.

These two approaches tackle the same problem from opposite ends and would hopefully meet somewhere in the middle. I view #1 as empowerment, getting back abilities that one has lost (or never had to begin with). I view #2 as awareness, giving the sighted visibility into where their software falls short in terms of accessibility.

I'm not sure which would have the biggest impact. But in my mind, I'd rather be empowered by technology. I'd be curious what other blind devs think, though.