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Re: visually impaired front end developer

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From: JP Jamous
Date: Sep 19, 2017 5:20AM


I am going to throw my own 2 cents based on experience. Simply do not do it. I am totally blind as well and I had my own business doing just that. Web design from the back-end to the front-end. I had no problem with the back-end even when it came to the markup of the front-end. When CSS was applied, I fought it hard and for years. Heck, I won't waste my time on that anymore, because it is not economically worth it. I'd rather hire someone to do the CSS based on my recommendations and handle the other parts myself. That's how you build synergy.

As Roel was stating, Slicing is a darn nasty task. As a business owner, I used to have my interns explain to me their designs and I got heavily involved in that myself. However, I was paying them and they had to report to me directly.

Imagine that you are in a corporate and the design come to you through the UX design team and you have to figure it out. You ask the UX designers and your team mates, but they all have full plates. They will help for a while, but after that it would become an inconvenience to them. Not because they are rude, but because they are busy and need every bit of time to spend on their projects.

You can dive into DB design and coding, writing back-end code, and much more. If you like coding, those are 2 things that come to mind. So yes, there are alternatives besides HTML. You can code in XML and JSON so servers can communicate data through them.

As a friendly advice, I'd steer you away from front-end design. You will not be as good as a sighted person and a sighted person will never be as good as you are with a screen reader. If you realize that fact and you trade your services with your sighted counter-part, then both of you come out winning at the end as each is efficient in his or her area. If you want to get stubborn about it and refuse to accept this fact that each is an expert in his or her own area, then you'd be purchasing a ticket to hell. Look at countries that get isolated from the rest of the world, economically they suffer, because they cannot produce everything as good as their neighbors. That's a fact of life and will never change. Just as trading is important between countries, the same concept applies to jobs in general regardless whether you have a disability or not.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Roel Van Gils
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 5:29 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] visually impaired front end developer

Hi Bryan,

If they're just sending images over of what the final result should look like, I presume they expect you to 'slice' that design. Slicing is a term that's (unfortunately) still being used by many web agencies when referring to the process of turning (high-fidelity) visual designs into (hopefully) cross-browser, responsive, semantic, accessible and fast-loading to HTML and CSS.

From the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slicing_(interface_design):

"In fields employing interface design skills, slicing is the process of dividing a single 2D user interface composition layout (comp) into multiple image files (digital assets) of the graphical user interface (GUI) for one or more electronic pages. It is typically part of the client side development process of creating a web page and/or web site, but is also used in the user interface design process of software development and game development."

'Slicing' is only one aspect of modern front-end development, but I'm afraid it's an aspect that's very hard to do for someone who is blind. I've did it myself, for many years, being a completely colourblind front-end developer (I have achromatopsia). I could get around my limitations, by sampling colours from the design and use their corresponding values in my CSS (and double check a lot), but when you're blind, I'm afraid there's no way you can turn visual designs into code (especially CSS) without the help of someone else.

You'll need to adjust your workflow. You could, for example, be responsible for coding standards based, semantic HTML based on a textual representation of a page's contend and provide all the necessary CSS hooks, and then have a sighted developer write out the CSS.

Needless to say, perhaps, but apart from 'slicing', front-end development has many other aspect to it in which you can really excel as a blind developer (accessibility testing, performance optimisation, security, ...).

Roel


--
Roel Van Gils
Inclusive Design & Accessibility Consultant

Tel.: +32 473 88 18 06
Skype: roelvangils
Twitter: twitter.com/roelvangils
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/roelvangils


> On 14 Sep 2017, at 06:29, karthik k < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> thanks for your valuable comments, I've learned front end development
> very recently from a w3c recognized institution, however, i am not
> able to do the assignments given by them. say if the assignment is
> about html tags or forms, the trainer is just sending images, i don't
> even know what's there in the image. how can i proceed in this case?
> and, do visually impaired who work as front end developer face similar
> challenges? how to overcome this challenge?
> can we use any other application to read the image? i think the image
> contains a design which is expected to code. Am i correct?On 9/13/17,
> Bryan
>
>
> On 9/14/17, karthik k < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> thanks for your valuable comments, I've learned front end development
>> very recently from a w3c recognized institution, however, i am not
>> able to do the assignments given by them. say if the assignment is
>> about html tags or forms, the trainer is just sending these kind of
>> images, i don't even know what's there in the image. how can i
>> proceed in this case? and, visually impaired who are working as front
>> end developer, face similar challenges? how to overcome this challenge?
>> can we use any other application to read this image? On 9/13/17,
>> Bryan Garaventa < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Yes it is possible, though it's important for employers not to
>>> expect a blind front end engineer to be able to accomplish all of
>>> the same levels of visual design that a sighted person can such as
>>> visual styling entails.
>>> Unfortunately as a result, many in the field don't think this means
>>> that a blind front end engineer can do the same level of work as a
>>> sighted one, so they are often overlooked in the job market. This is
>>> ironic however, because speaking personally I have skills as a blind
>>> front end engineer that only the smallest percentage of the total
>>> pool of front end engineers globally have, which is that I know how
>>> to make front end components that are guaranteed to be accessible
>>> for the simple reason that they have to be in order for me to use
>>> them, and I don't see the point of building anything that I can't
>>> use myself. So blind front end engineers specialize in the field of
>>> functional accessibility where focus management, keyboard
>>> functionality, and intuitive user interaction is the most important
>>> aspects to concentrate on, whereas in contrast the majority of
>>> sighted front engineers focus on sighted and mouse related
>>> functionality and are often surprisingly lacking in basic knowledge
>>> regarding these skills, which is the primary reason why most of the
>>> most popular frameworks and libraries are still inaccessible to this
>>> day even though all of these concepts have existed for many years.
>>>
>>> Here are some tools that I use daily for these tasks.
>>> http://dlee.org/bx/bx.htm#intro
>>> I use this for DOM rendering analysis when applying CSS, markup
>>> examination, and MSAA/UIA accessibility tree examination when
>>> applying ARIA and the like.
>>>
>>> This is a code editor built specifically for blind programmers. I've
>>> been using it to write all that I have in the last ten years.
>>> https://github.com/jamalmazrui/EdSharp
>>>
>>> I guess I'm somewhat of a minimalist. Others here can provide
>>> additional tools to help.
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>> Bryan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bryan Garaventa
>>> Accessibility Fellow
>>> Level Access, Inc.
>>> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>> 415.624.2709 (o)
>>> www.LevelAccess.com
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
>>> Behalf Of karthik k
>>> Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 9:04 PM
>>> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
>>> Subject: [WebAIM] visually impaired front end developer
>>>
>>> Hi experts,
>>>
>>> can a totally blind person work as front end developer? is there any
>>> front end developer here? if yes, could you please explain some of
>>> the challenges that you face? other experts can also explain it in
>>> general
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> thanks and regards,
>>> Karthik K
>>> Phone, +919060989650
>>> >>> >>> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>>> >>> >>> >>> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>>> >>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> thanks and regards,
>> Karthik K
>> Phone, +919060989650
>>
>
>
> --
>
> thanks and regards,
> Karthik K
> Phone, +919060989650
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> ---
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