Meet the ones who can't see, but they can code
A software that changed Alok's world
And he can code just as fast — and well — as the next guy who can see. Coming to his aid is assistive software called “screen reader” that converts written text into speech. That, essentially, has changed his world.
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“I ‘saw’ the black hole using this”
Lal is an avid photographer and has adapted vOICe — an AI tool that offers the blind the experience of live camera views through image-to-sound renderings — for the Linux operating system.
Images here are converted into sound by scanning them from left to right. It associates elevation to pitch and brightness to loudness. “I ‘saw’ the black hole using this,” Lal said.
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Providing employment for disabled
JAW (Job Access with Speech) and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) are two popular screen readers while AI tools such as Microsoft’s See AI enables people to “experience” people, texts and objects.
“Technology is still limited to a fraction of India’s blind population,” Ali said. “We have to make it accessible and for that we need the government to look at disability as a development issue and not a welfare issue.” He added that the government should make it mandatory for all websites to be accessible with screen reader.
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The story of Mohammad Afzal
To an untrained ear, the screen reader text sounds like a robot reading out the hurried disclaimer at the end of an insurance TV commercial but the speed can be adjusted and so can the characters that you want the reader to pick up. English is normally spoken at a speed of 120-150 words per minute. Screen reader can read up to 450 words per minute.
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A successful programmer with impressive credentials
“I missed out most of the curriculum from Classes 6 to 8 due to the lack of braille textbooks,” said Kaushal, who went back to studying mid-school maths using audio books provided by the National Association of Blind. Today, he’s a successful programmer with impressive credentials, like developing the first open source screen reader.
While technology has made great strides in opening up the world for the blind, some blips exist. For example, the coders complained that many websites are screen reader-incompatible.
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