[qznc]

Are there any blind compiler/interpreter hackers? A programming language optimized for the blind would make an interesting esolang [0]. I guess a REPL works great. Does Forth or Lisp read better to the blind? Can you do syntax "coloring" in sound? Are static types helpful or is type inference prefered? Would they like an editor like ed?

So many questions ...

[0] http://esolangs.org/

[ndarilek]

Check out Emacspeak[0] for one of the best audio coding environments I've worked with. Not a big fan of Raman's "ignore decades of accessibility work and run Emacs apps for everything!" approach, but based on my recollections of 15 years or so ago, it was one of the best coding environments I've worked with. It did a sort of audio syntax highlighting with different voices for different tokens, and more or less nailed auditory bracket/paren matching.

I can't for the life of me code in any Lisp-like language. Too much nesting, and whereas speech synthesis inserts pauses at commas and other punctuation marks, Lisp's lack of them makes it hard to parse a heavily-nested function call by ear. This is true to a lesser extent with Haskell and its emphasis on ., $ and other operators that change how a function call is structured.

As always, opinions expressed are my own, and shouldn't be taken as a statement of how collective blind people do X. I'm one of many, so please don't walk away from this thinking Lisps are hard for blind folks. They're tough for me, and above are my particular reasons why.

0: https://emacspeak.sf.net

[zersiax]

come talk to me on IRC. your questions are too involved to answer in one comment