What are some good computer science resources for a blind programmer?

Question

I\'m a totally blind individual who would like to learn more of the theory aspect of computer science. I\'ve had an intro data structures class and the general intro programming

Answer 1

I wonder would the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs video lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman be of any use?

If the audio content is enough on its own without the video, they are an excellent digital resource.

Answer 2

Check out this Stack Overflow question about podcasts.

Answer 3

The podcast "software engineering radio" is excellent. Though not CS courseware, it is the most academic and intellectually stimulating podcast I have found about software development and computer science.

http://www.se-radio.net/

Answer 4

I to am a new blind programmer! I only lost my vision 5 years ago. Anyway, I have been programming in Visual Basic 2008 throughout the past year. It turned out to be more accessible than I had at first suspected. I start a Java class next semester and the required text is a free online text! It is posted below. Introduction to Programming Using Java, Fifth Edition http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/

Can some of you seasoned blind programmers share with us any blogs or websites where other blind programmers can be found??

Answer 5

The text book for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs appears to be accessible. Software engineering radio is a good podcast that I listen to but recently has focused a lot on model driven development and UML which doesn't interest me. The UC Berkley lectures are of varying quality, it's like all other college classes it depends on the professor. I've found I can follow along with the cs162 lectures fine but not so much with the cs61b. Part of this is because of the professor and part is probably because 61b is more math heavy since it's a data structures class. Unfortunately the RSS feeds are useless since the file names are meaningless. I used my podcatcher to download the entire lecture series, then used the converting capability of foobar 2000 to rename the files with there track number so I could listen to them in order. I've used Safari at work before and it is accessible although to expensive for me to get a yearly subscription. Open Courseware appears to have a lot of good stuff. Unfortunately I don't use itunes so instead of downloading each mp3 file individually I used the firefox extension DownThemAll! with a custom filter to grab all the mp3 files at once from the specific course I wanted. Another series of books that looks useful are the data structures books by Bruno R. Preiss several of which are available online at http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus5/ Some of the equations are represented as graphics but I can often tell what the general idea is by context.

Answer 6

A language called Quorum is a lot like Python but optimized across a few more syntactic details, and the corresponding development environment is designed with the blind in mind. https://quorumlanguage.com/ This might fit especially well with the use case where most students are using Python.

A 2016 blog about CSed (actually a response to a blog post) points to

• program-l discussion board for blind programmers at https://www.freelists.org/list/program-l
• The EPIQ conference for blind and other programmers interested in Quorum https://quorumlanguage.com/epiq.html

Also, see other ideas in a similar question on another SO site: https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/3441/teaching-a-blind-high-school-student