The Challenges of a Visually Impaired Developer

I have always been very fascinated with technology. Ever since I found that I could use a program to make the computer speak things on the screen, I dabbled to get knowledge on making ‘things’ within the computer. Whether it was tweaking the wireless network configuration or trying to perform ‘ethical’ hacking tests, the field of technology has been very interesting for me as a visually impaired individual. I found a separate joy in making apps for computing devices and learnt Java programming for the past couple of years to make apps for Android devices with prime focus being making apps with focus on accessibility for visually impaired so I could make lives easier for people like me.

Now I think I resound to many visually impaired individuals trying to learn to program through the internet if I say this – speak the freaking code you are typing, Youtubers! Going through tutorials on Youtube, it is hard to find ones who speak the code as they type. I understand that it might not be the best way to present videos and imagine it would be annoying for the broader sighted audience. But there are certain other issues that I think can be tackled by making content more accessible. I am going to list some of them below.

Access to learning resources

When it comes to accessing great content, an individual with visual impairment always has to think about accessibility at first before straightly jumping to that content. And specially, when it comes to coding, this thing always matters. While learning, if you have access to those contents/resources, wouldn’t that be awesome? So, the whole point here is to make content accessible which is related to programming. I know, some of you might be a sighted coding instructors who are reading this post. I would like to make you aware of this limitation to accessing your content. If you guys could add source code for changes you make throughout the code in a versioning system, that could aid a lot.

Proper support to visually impaired person

Ok, here is my short story: When I was learning Java, a friend of mine suggested me a Udemy course which was in discount at that time. It was a Java course which was supposed to teach OOP in Java. When I saw that course for the first time, oh boy, you can’t imagine how I felt! However, the course didn’t go as expected. I could not understand the pronunciation of that instructor. So I lastly asked him in the chat section to provide a note which would be accessible through a screen reader mentioning them my condition with blindness. He said “dear friend, I cannot provide any notes, please watch all the videos which I have created from your playlist”. So it clearly tells that they were not interested providing support to people who are visually impaired and want to code. I wish there were better opportunities to learn for the visually impaired.

Proper support from the development tools

Development tools or mostly refered as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) are very essential tools which are highly recommended if you are developing scalable, maintainable, and refactorable applications. Although I am not a game developer, I hear from my friends that a widely popular development platform called Unity is not fully accessible. Same happens to other programming tools as well. But mostly, I would like to talk here about some popular tools such as Android Studio and Visual Studio Code. Android studio is more demanding software if you are going for native android app development. Things are so much better in Android Studio. But I always wonder If I could create layouts by using same approach as other sighted people use. Because it is so much faster to drag-and-drop items than writing layout code.

Another popular code editing tool is Visual Studio Code, which is mostly liked by many fronted/backend developer.

Visual studio code is very accessible, but I haven’t found those amazing features which is found on Android Studio such as smart refactoring, extracting references, symbols, methods, etc. for Java and Android development. But the point is not that, the whole idea is whatever tool you are using for writing your applications, each and every part of that tool has to be made accessible.

These are just some issues which I listed which can be tackled by making content accessible, but there are even more. Whether you want to be a programmer, a web developer, a game developer, or even a data scientist, accessibility always matters. But despite these challenges, I still have hopes! You can do whatever you like, there are alternatives for doing such work if regular ways does not work, so, don’t give up coding! I would be even glad to know challenges faced by you while programming, so don’t hesitate to drop your thoughts below. Thanks for reading this short rant of mine.