[neverartful]

Several years back I worked with a team that had a blind developer. The team was transitioning to Java. The blind developer told me in a meeting that she was having trouble doing something in Eclipse. I told her that I would go with her to her desk to help diagnose the problem. Watching a blind person use Eclipse with a screen reader was simultaneously awe-inspiring (the screen reader part) and horrifying (the Eclipse part). Needless to say, Eclipse was not well suited for the blind.

[zersiax]

Please, elaborate on this. I tend to use Eclipse as my primary IDE and am wondering what the blind person had trouble with, what screenreader they were using and how long ago this happened.

[neverartful]

This occurred in 2009 and unfortunately I don't recall any of the details. I only remember that it was running on Windows. I was blown away watching her use a screen reader for doing all sorts of things. I know that some of the developers on the team had originally worked with COBOL on mainframe or AS400. I don't know how well (if at all) 3270 or 5250 terminal emulators work with screen readers, but I strongly suspect that COBOL source code was easier to manage than Java in Eclipse.