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Re: visually impaired front end developer

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From: karthik k
Date: Sep 25, 2017 4:14AM


Hi Bryan

could you tell me a little about blind programmers mailer list so that
i can subscribe, and there by understand the challenges and some
solutions available?

On 9/24/17, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Brian,
>
> An excellent post and fully agree with what you have said. I would even take
> it to the next level that tools haven't been design yet to permit someone
> with a vision impairedment to achieve their full protentual in front end
> development. I recall VB6 where the scripts with Jaws would give you pixcel
> positioning that assisted you in laying out a form (dialog). This same
> concept can be applied. With the introduction of AI and some smart computer
> design, I feel this is possible if someone had the time, resource and money.
>
> Just wish I had the forma, money as I would like to research this to see if
> it possible.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf
> Of JP Jamous
> Sent: Wednesday, 20 September 2017 8:30 AM
> To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] visually impaired front end developer
>
> Right on Bryan. It has taken me 10 years myself to get to where I am at and
> I had the same mentality such as you about visual design. Now, I have
> shifted to functional design and that opened up many other doors for me.
>
> Surely, there are opportunities in the a11y area that some that is blind can
> take advantage of, which are related to front-end design. I do know that
> going this route is always a challenge. If someone is up to that, then all
> he has to do is roll up his sleves.
>
> Back-end comes with its challenges as well. They tend to be lesser than that
> of front-end and some folks choose to go that way too.
>
> I state the above to attest that there is no right or wrong. How far someone
> wants to take his or her career is up to that person. Just know there are
> alternatives out there and opportunities are always present.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf
> Of Bryan Garaventa
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 4:16 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] visually impaired front end developer
>
> Indeed, as with all people and skills there are strengths and weaknesses,
> and the optimal balance is to work on honing the areas that are strongest so
> they can be applied to the greatest affect rather than concentrate all
> personal resources attempting to accomplish the impossible. In my case this
> was visual design, which I left to those who know this and have the
> requisite skills. Years ago I studied CSS in attempt to understand it, and
> there are tricks that I learned to examine spatial positioning ratios and
> identifying layers within rendered markup to see how and where things are
> applied, but this is basic mathematics and doesn't really apply within
> advanced visual design.
>
> There is still great value in blind front end engineering, for the simple
> reason that all assistive technologies interface with the front end and 99%
> of all accessibility issues occur at this level, so understanding how and
> why these things occur is a fundamental aspect of diagnosing and building
> accessible software. This being said, it is unreasonable to expect a blind
> person to ever be an award winning visual designer, because it won't happen,
> nor will they be a race car driver, or a fighter jet pilot, or any of a
> number of other impossible career choices.
>
> However, in the case of front end engineering, there is a whole category of
> necessary skills associated with this that are possible for a blind person
> to excel at, but it is extremely hard and the learning curve is extremely
> steep. It has taken me a long time to learn all that I have so far for
> example, and I continue to learn new things all the time. When I started,
> ARIA had not even been invented yet, so I had to learn all of these things
> when and as they became available. There were no university courses to learn
> these things.
>
> One of the things that I discovered while doing this, is that it is
> impossible for fully sighted front end engineers to ever become totally and
> unerringly proficient in the category of functional accessibility as we know
> it today, requiring the precise usage of focus management and accessibility
> attribute usage such as with ARIA, because they will never have the same
> level of assistive technology familiarization as a person who literally has
> no choice but to use such technologies every day and cannot stop using them.
> Both have value, but they approach it from different angles.
>
> In this last case, functional accessibility is a vital category of front end
> engineering that is often overlooked, and this is precisely where the vast
> majority of accessibility issues occur. Granted this is entirely separate
> from visual design, which is ideally done by those who know best in this
> regard. Typically however, those who know best about totally visual design
> have very little knowledge in the way of functional accessibility though,
> which perpetuates the issue.
>
> So, as with all things, achieving balance is a critical aspect to achieve
> both visual design and functional accessibility, where those who excel at
> one work with those who excel at the other, and thus both goals are reached.
> This is what I set out to prove when I requested help from a visual designer
> in the remaking of WhatSock, to see if this could be done as easily as I
> believed it could be, and yes, it is. One of the biggest problems though, is
> that there is not a balance of those who know purely visual design in
> comparison with the population of those who excel at blind front end
> engineering, nor are those who excel at purely visual front end engineering
> even aware that this whole other aspect even exists, and many don't see
> there is any value in it anyway.
>
> In regard to blind front end engineering, I'm not going to discourage
> anybody from learning, but I won't lie and say this is an easy path. When I
> started, I was subscribed to a blind programming listserv back in the early
> 2000's where I asked about doing this, and I was told that this was
> impossible and that I was crazy for even attempting it and that I would
> never succeed. I persisted though, and I did succeed in many regards that
> have led to all of the tools and development resources that I have built
> since then, but it has taken me eighteen years to do this without the aid of
> a formal education in any of these topics because they didn't even exist
> when I started learning how to do them. So for those wishing to go down this
> path, it is extremely hard, but there is great value to the industry for
> those who achieve it.
>
> Regarding the front end engineering field as a whole though, if accessible
> development is ever to become a mainstream process for education and
> practice around the world, people are going to have to start thinking
> differently about the topic of design. Design is not just what something
> looks like, but what it does and how it does it at the same time. If both of
> these don't work together, nothing is accessible. Those who have the
> required skills to achieve one or the other are going to have to start
> working together to make this happen, and this is going to have to become a
> basic concept that is taught in front end engineering courses so that it can
> propagate naturally instead of this always being a retroactive consideration
> when it's often too late to do anything about it.
>
>
> 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 Roel Van Gils
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 3:29 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
>> >
>
>
>
>
> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >
>
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> > > http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >
> > > > >


--

thanks and regards,
Karthik K
Phone, +919060989650