Hearing Voices

Something that you have to account for in professional software development is that your software may be used by people with disabilities. Many government agencies will not purchase software that is not "508 compliant"; i.e. doesn't work well for users with disabilities. Blind computer users, for instance, use special programs that will read the text on the screen for them.

Fortunately, I don't have to write the software that reads the screen. I just need to make sure that the user interface that I design and code will work well with the screen readers. Unfortunately, it is really easy to overlook certain problems in the UI because the problems aren't visible just by looking at them. Instead you need to "listen" to the UI like a blind user would to figure out where the rough spots are.

I spent a good portion of yesterday tracking down one such bug in our address selection dialog. I installed JAWS to read the text on the screen for me as I navigated through the UI with my keyboard. It always amuses me to have my computer talk to me... although I think that it would get old really quick.

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like to send an email if you were blind? Listen to this audio clip if you would like to find out :)