ShaneNotes
Kirstin’s notes on Shane Ditmar’s talk.
“Where are the computer scientists? I think I want to be one.”
- Shane’s Background:
- 12 years old
- 6th grader (though 7/8 math level)
- Attends Governor Morehead School
- Has loved computers since pre-school
- From Raleigh, NC
- Father, Kirk, accompanied him
- Twin brother Darrick has same condition
- Both are extremely gifted
- Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis:
- Retina damage from birth
- Not contagious
- Wasn’t obvious that Shane suffered from at first
- Recessive genetic trait
- Not sure where in family it came from
- What Shane sees:
- Lights
- Computer Screen – basic locations
- Some colors (partially colorblind)
- High contrast / “vibrant colors”
- Shane’s fun activities:
- Playing outside (hitting others with bats ;) )
- Computer games
- Video games (X-box)
- Talking
- Eating
- Treadmill
- Stationary Bike
- Trampoline with net surrounding it
- Schoolbooks:
- Takes an extremely long time to get Braille versions
- Occupy large amounts of space
- Social Studies book occupies two boxes
- Daisy Digital Talking Textbooks
- Making audio textbooks available
- Human voice with emotion and feeling
- Shane prefers
-
JAWS
- Screen Reader
- Developed by Freedom Scientific
- Many blind programmers with this company
- “Dog Fooding”
- $800 / copy
- Friends say it’s an “annoying” voice
- Yields a higher pitch on a capital letter
- For spellchecking, there is an auto-correction setup
- Programming with JAWS
- Variables with multiple cases can be confusing
- read the same by JAWS
- Shane uses capital at beginning only
- IDE with variable confirmation would be nice
- Shane finds pyShell agreeable
- He mostly programs in Notepad and uses the command prompt to execute
- JAWS won’t read the command prompt window
- Shane copies errors into Word to make JAWS read them
- Variables with multiple cases can be confusing
- Shane’s Programming Interests:
- Not GUIs
- Can’t use them
- Games
- Uses Drag-and-Drop Game Maker
- IM client
- Reading help files to learn all he can
- Not GUIs
- Shane’s Technology:
- Uses a laptop from the school
- 5 years old, but looks like new
- Runs Windows 2000
- Uses JAWS 4.5
- Uses a laptop from the school
- Some Web Accessibility:
- Title tag is read by JAWS
- Can navigate to form fields
- Can skip navigation sections
- Mozilla doesn’t work with JAWS 4.5
- Text scrollable off screen isn’t read by screen reader
- An ideal solution would be a separate visually impaired web, right?
- Separate but EQUAL doesn’t work
- Tables are extremely inaccessible
- Why Make a Website Accessible:
- Google searches will hit it
- Google search engine is like a “blind person”
- Google searches will hit it
- IM Clients:
- GAIM is not accessible
-
AIM is somewhat accessible
- Purposely change client with each new version
- Not know which window contains new message
- G-Mail
- Auto-refresh puts JAWS back at top of page
- Basic html format for accessibility with screen readers
- No chat feature available
- Shane’s Aspirations:
- Computer Science/ Business double major
- Wants to make it big in computer industry