[nfbcs] Research

[Mike Gorse]

Alright, I'll try to answer these questions, but some of them seem vague 
or otherwise hard to answer, and I graduated back in 2001, so I don't 
remember everything and don't know how much the average CS program has 
changed since then.

> Research questions:
> Advocacy:

> (1)	What accommodations do you believe were most beneficial to you in completing your degree?
It was helpful--particularly for math courses--that professors often used 
LaTeX to write their tests, so, if I had the source document, then I could 
read the test on my computer even if a rendered document wouldn't have 
been as accessible. I don't remember how often I had this or asked for it, 
but electronic copies of slides would have been helpful, and having the 
source might be useful as well. I sometimes ordered recordings of 
textbooks through Learning Ally, although that wasn't necessarily optimal, 
and not all books were available through them--nowadays a student can 
probably get electronic copies of books, but that is only helpful if 
things like equations are accessible.

> (2)	What accommodation(s) were necessary when completing visual components of one’s degree requirements?
Readers sometimes, but there were a few courses that I probably struggled 
with for accessibility reasons (some math courses and an EE course on 
computer architecture come to mind), since I didn't always know what 
accommodations could have been made or what would have worked best for me, 
and I was at a small school that didn't really have any experience with 
blind students, since they hadn't had one in a long time. I wish I had 
been on some mailing lists back then; it might have helped to have some 
interaction with other blind students or alumni who had taken similar 
courses.

> (3)	In what ways have you advocated for the modification of materials to ensure equal access for yourself or future computer science students?
It became my routine to email my professors to introduce myself before 
taking classes. Sometimes that would lead to further conversation. For 
tests, most professors were happy to hand me a disk with the test on it, 
although there were courses where someone would read me the test questions 
instead. I didn't always know how to go about advocating, although the CS 
classes themselves were generally not the problem from an accessibility 
perspective. In one class on assembly language, there was a course project 
which I must have found to be inaccessible (I don't remember the details, 
but I remember discussing an alternate project with the professor).

> (4)	What is the most important question(s) a computer science student should ask their instructors before and during a selected course of study?
I would ask what software I'd be expected to use, so that I can be aware 
of potential accessibility issues.

> (5)	Are there any Universities, companies, or organizations who have been greater benefactors?
I don't understand the question.


> Academics:
> (1)	How much math and science is necessary for a person to be successful within the computer science field.
Some. Probably depends on the school.

> (2)	In general, are materials accessible with access technology?
Equations and the like are the things that would have given me trouble, 
but I don't know how things are nowadays.

> (3)	What are some effective, and somewhat universal, techniques for manipulating and writing computer languages?
Not sure how to answer this--it seems a bit like asking about techniques 
for writing novels.

> (4)	In what ways did your assignments get modified, to establish equal access to all requirements?
The assembly course that I mentioned earlier comes to mind (I proposed 
writing a paper rather than doing whatever the project was), although this 
wasn't a normal programming assignment.

> (5)	What are some effective ways for designing accessible algorithms and data structures?
If you're asking how to represent symbols, then something like mathml 
would probably help. LaTeX can also be useful. Code itself shouldn't 
present significant accessibility issues (aside from UI perhaps, but that 
isn't what you're asking about here).

> (6)	When developing a portfolio, did you find an accessible way of publicly displaying your code, or for hosting your portfolio?
I would suggest github, although so far I haven't really used it for that 
purpose.

> (7)	After publishing your code, what methods do you use to ensure the visible code is visually appealing or readable?
There are many different coding styles; when modifying someone else's 
code, the important thing is to try to conform to whatever coding style 
is already being used, as projects tend to standardize on a particular 
style and convention for naming variables and such, so that they don't 
have a bunch of programmers all doing their own thing. It helps to know 
how far a line is indented (to have a screen reader be able to tell you 
this, or perhaps a Braille display). Also, there are tools such as gnu 
indent that can ensure that code corresponds to a particular style of 
indentation.

> (8)	Are there any courses you might recommend to take in high school to prepare someone going into the computer science field?

A computer science course, along with the standard math and science 
courses. Also, nowadays I'd suggest installing Linux and learning one's 
way around the shell, since there's a good chance that such knowledge will 
be useful later on.

> (9)	Besides the source work required to obtain your degree, what additional course work might you recommend to enhance one’s employment effectiveness?


> Access technology:
> (1)	What access technology gave you the greatest degree of opportunity to compete on an equal playing field with your peers?
Eventually I wrote yasr and started using it for the Linux console. I 
don't remember having assignments involving GUI programming (I might be 
dating myself), and there wasn't really a screen reader for the Linux GUI 
at the time.

> (2)	What challenges did access technology present when interacting with the technology required to complete tasks and assignments for your computer science degree or profession?
I could have taken a statistics course but avoided it because I was under 
the impression that it used a Unix version of SAS that wasn't going to be 
accessible. In retrospect, I feel like it should have been possible to 
work things out somehow, but at the time I thought that it made sense to 
find another course to fulfill my math requirement.

> (3)	What role does access technology play in the completion of your daily assignments or tasks?
I'd have no idea what was being displayed without it!

> (4)	How might modifications to standard technology create more opportunity for usability with access technology?
Sometimes programs are inaccessible because they use controls that don't 
implement accessibility APIs (not sure if that's an answer you were 
looking for).

> General technology:
> (1)	In what ways is the general technology inaccessible when paired with access technology? Are there any work arounds for these issues?
> (2)	What sort of accommodations are necessary for the use of most general technology used in this field of study or profession?
> (3)	Can standard tasks be completed on a unit without extensive modification or accommodations?
Nowadays, some OSes come with a screen reader pre-installed, and it just 
needs to be activated. I don't think that this question is in any way 
specific to computer science.

> Does most technology come ready to use? Are there ways to increase one’s productivity when using Python JavaScript C++ swift and racket, and integrated development environments (IDEs)—such as CodeLite, Eclipse, NetBeans, VisualWX, Xcode, and KDevelop? 
Probably, but I've never used IDEs except for when I used to code for 
Windows and needed a debugger.