[nfbcs] Screen Reader & Coding

[Joseph C. Lininger]

Ida,
First,  take this word of encouragement. Yes, it does get easier. It 
takes getting used to, but over time as you get used to it it becomes 
second nature. The suggestion by another poster to do it under blindfold 
is a good one; it forces you to use audio instead of vision to navigate 
the computer.

You asked about how to deal with languages like Python that are 
sensitive to white space. Turns out all of the major screen reader 
products I have used can give you formatting information. They can, for 
instance, announce if the indentation level changes as you move through 
lines. That particular function is typically disabled by default because 
it is annoying unless you actually need that information, but it can be 
easily enabled.

I do a lot of my programming using a basic text editor called Notepad++. 
I also use Visual Studio for certain tasks at work. Both work fine with 
NVDA, and I've heard they work with JAWS too.

As for getting up to speed on a  large project, I imagine its a similar 
process to the one used by a sighted developer. If someone can tell you 
the over all architecture that helps. It also helps if the developers 
have high level summaries or good in-code documentation. You'll find 
this will vary radically between projects, sometimes even between 
projects at the same company. Hell, sometimes it even varies radically 
within the same project. Personally, I also like to browse the user 
documentation for a package if it exists, in order to get a good handle 
on what is *supposed* to happen. Sometimes, though, you're going to be 
reduced to digging through the code to figure it out. Whether you should 
use a top down or bottom up aproach to do that depends on the package, 
and the methods you'll use to do that are similar to those employed by a 
sighted person.

--
Joe

On 8/16/2018 14:54, Ida B via nfbcs wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I am new to this group, and would love some advice. I am a 21 year old university senior studying computer science. I am extremely excited to begin my career in the field. Up until now, I’ve mostly programmed with screen magnification software. However, as my vision deteriorates, I am starting to transition to screen reader software like JAWS.
>
> How long do you think it takes for someone to become an advanced JAWS user? I feel frustrated because I feel like it takes me a long time to navigate the computer using just the keyboard and my ears. Does this frustration ever go away? Will I ever become as fast at using the computer as my sighted peers?
>
> For those of you who code, how do you do it? Especially in languages like Python that are super finicky about things like white space or punctuation. How do you get up to speed on a large code base with many different layers of code from front-end, to the database layer? What IDE or environment do you use?
>
> I’d appreciate any advice, wisdom, and insight.
>
> Thank you so much,
> Ida B
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