Kenneth Spector - Coding without seeing the screen

Posted By: The Channel 9 Team | Aug 10th, 2004 @ 4:42 PM | 52,210 Views | 24 Comments
Kenneth is working as an intern here at Microsoft for the summer on the Office team as a tester. He uses Visual Studio to find bugs (and to code on his own time). He writes emails in Outlook. Does all the usual stuff that most developers or testers at Microsoft do. With one difference.

He can't see the screen because he's been blind since he was three years old.

He invited us over to see how he does his work -- you'll see how he uses a screen reader and a braille keyboard to use Visual Studio.

For more information on making technology more accessible to everyone, visit the Microsoft Accessibility page.

He's a student at Arizona State University. Wired Magazine has an article on the accessibility programs there.

Another good resource for developers is Joe Clark's "Building Accessible Websites."

Do you have any other examples of how computers are improving people's lives and giving them new opportunities?
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#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 5:02 PM
John Melville-- MD
John Melville-- MD
Equality Through Technology

Congrats.  I am also disabled, though not blind, and have been similarly liberated through technology.  Its good to see others succeeding against some common challenges.

#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 7:05 PM
DEEETER
DEEETER
KEEP CODE ING ING ING !!!
V inspiring... great great great...
#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 7:38 PM
clint_hill
clint_hill
C-x,C-f

This is a great story. I admire Kenneth's "abilities".


It is something that makes me feel small and makes me humble.

#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 8:29 PM
Frank Hileman
Frank Hileman
VG.net
What a nice guy! I hope the Visual Studio team sees this, and starts thinking harder about accessibility. Blind programmers can be as productive as sighted ones, since most programming and debugging is text based. Only the tools are lacking.
#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 8:56 PM
The Channel 9 Team
The Channel 9 Team
5 guys from Redmond
We sent this video all over Microsoft, including to Sara Ford, accessibility expert on the Visual Studio team. In fact, she's been on Channel 9 too: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=5382
#Aug 10th, 2004 @ 9:10 PM
Gaurav
Gaurav
Truly awe-inspiring! All the best to Kenneth. Hope he returns to Microsoft as an FTE soon!
#Aug 11th, 2004 @ 6:12 AM
qwert231
qwert231
M Kenyon
Back in the late 90s, I knew a fella who was blind and ran/owned and ISP. He was the first in the area, and ran on Linux/Unix, which was all text based.

It's good to see people overcoming seeming adversities. To us, it's a big deal. To them, it's everyday life.
#Aug 11th, 2004 @ 10:46 AM
saraford
saraford

We have a very strong focus on accessibility in our Visual Studio 2005 release.  In addition, we have been working and testing with both JAWS, the screen reader Kenneth mentions in the video, produced by Freedom Scientific, and Window Eyes, a screen reader produced by GW Micro.  If anyone has any feedback regarding accessibility of either Visual Studio .NET 2003 or Visual Studio 2005, please feel free to contact me via my blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford.

Thanks!
-sara

#Aug 11th, 2004 @ 11:17 AM
njonsson
njonsson
Bad hair life
What a stud. Interesting that his name connotes ‘one who sees or watches’ in Latin. Seems to me he’s not so much a spectator to development as a contributor.
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