How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone (2020)

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by CJefferson on Thursday May 27, 2021 @09:37AM (#27302923)

The first time I taught a blind student, I was teaching C. I walked up to them to find they were clearly irritated, and said something like "Nothing works, I don't understand".

Looking at their computer, it appeared to be off. I said, delicately, that were they sure the computer was turned on. They laughed and turned their laptop's screen on, saying (as you say), they left it off to save battery life!

The problem turned out to be they were using textedit, which while a nice light (and highly accessible) editor, by default turns "s into “”. Unfortunately, Apple's text-to-speech "helpfully" just described all these as speech quotes. This made it impossible to understand, from the compiler error, why the code wasn't working. A quick head into settings and the student was off (they soon changed to textmate, also very accessible).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by vmception on Thursday May 27, 2021 @10:48AM (#27303801)

I hate text editor assumptions

Well only the ones that don’t work for me

But i hate how hard it is to find an assumptionless and offline text editor these days

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by throwaway77112 on Thursday May 27, 2021 @12:11PM (#27304710)

What about SciTE or Geany?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SciTE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geany

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by asddubs on Thursday May 27, 2021 @11:59AM (#27304570)

pluma is pretty good

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by ufo on Thursday May 27, 2021 @12:22PM (#27304843)

I didn't know it was possible to turn off the laptop screen while it's in use. How is that done?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by jackson1442 on Thursday May 27, 2021 @12:38PM (#27305040)

I know you can turn a MacBook's brightness essentially off, just by bringing it to the lowest tick. On iOS there is a VoiceOver gesture to turn off the screen even while the phone is on, so there may also be a purpose-built version of that in VO for macOS.

edit: Evidently there is VO-specific tooling: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201443

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone... by Vrondi on Thursday May 27, 2021 @03:52PM (#27307406)

Most PC laptops have a key in the function key or media control row for this. Look for one that resembles a monitor, or check your laptop's owners' manual.

[ Parent | on HN ]