In regards to searching for codes randomly in a notepad, this is easy for a normal sighted person to do, for the blind, it may take longer.

Perhaps to improve random seek time when using a screen reader on source codes, we can study how the human eyes scan codes when seeking.

The way I think people perceive when scanning. Is that they already know what the code looks light roughly. Which means they are looking to recognise a line of code as the end condition. (Thus you would sped the speaking speed by x3, as we are less about readability and more about patterns).

Hmmm... also people scanning speed is variable. You start very fast, then you get the general areas, then you search for the specific line.

Which means you would have 3 speed settings. One which jumps entire sections (focusing on reading major comments). The second which jumps between parentheses. And the last one that scans between lines. (Logic depends on outcome of studies of how people actually randomly seek for a line of text)

<<<Sections | << Blocks | < Lines > | Blocks>> | Sections>>>

tl;dr edit: The idea is basically, to make "jump searching" via screen reader to be a little smarter, by actually analysing the text structure.
-- mofosyne, Jan 30 2015

Original Comment Reddit (Posted by mofosyne) http://www.reddit.c...on_programs/co5fs0q
[mofosyne, Jan 30 2015]

... what ?
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 30 2015


Well, I'm wondering if there is an equivalent to "flipping the page, and quickly looking for a topic of interest" for "text to speech" screen readers.

One that can do well perhaps in searching for a line of code (that you don't remember exactly). And also perhaps for other things like flipping though a newspaper.
-- mofosyne, Jan 30 2015


Oh. You could have said so. Good luck with your homework :-)

The solution is conceptually pretty easy, though parsing source code for some unmentioned reason (debugging somebody else's stuff ?) would be pretty clunky. But plain old text would be a snap.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 30 2015


Well conceptually it's easy to understand. Only issue is finding the right settings and algorithm, and getting it tested with actual blind people who are as blind as a bat (and see if it actually works).

And even if you do get it working... it would require more work on applications developers to make their stuff accessible (can't just expose the text... need to make it dynamically searchable, and self descriptive too D: ) It's already hard to get them to label their buttons properly.
-- mofosyne, Jan 30 2015


Yes, but, to the point, you haven't posted an Idea and you're trying to make us go look to find out what you're going on about.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 30 2015


Eh, I don't remember seeing this particular concept anywhere. This post is the idea.

The idea is basically, to make "jump searching" via screen reader to be a little smarter, by actually analysing the text structure.

---

Perhaps this is not well explained. If so then, I can try rewriting it again more concisely. (Oh and btw "Original Comment" is actually my post. Link edited to make it more clearer)
-- mofosyne, Jan 30 2015


Try googling for ' "programming editor" for the blind ' . Some of the results look promising. Another useful string might be " blind 'text editor' features " or something like that.
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 30 2015



random, halfbakery