[Python-ideas] Accessible tools

[Bryan Duarte]

Honestly I live in VIM in my terminal. I use VIM for everything and even have integrated a VIM plugin to my Eclipse IDE. The commands are easy, and customizable. VI and VIM were built off of "ed" which was the first line editor available on the Unix OS. For this fact it has great integration with the terminal and system utilities. I can write code, compile code, call in external files, save off versions, execute code, without ever living my terminal window. The question is not really if I can read, write, or access the code it is mostly about getting the assistance of the IDE when it comes to "auto complete", and whatever the name is for Python for "intellisense". I know there is the interpreter for quick references and tests but why should I have to use two programs to do what my sighted peers do in one? This is not a direct question this is just the problem I am exploring. Is there a tool out there that can do this for someone who developers with the assistance of a screen reader or is it something to be developed still? 

A professor and I were discussing the idea of creating a completely text based IDE for blind developers. Every block of code could be collapsed and expanded with high level information about each block being provided. Every module would be tabular in nature meaning the developer could quickly and easily scan through every block of code as if it were a line of code then hear what is contained in the block. Tools and features would obviously be audible in nature with verbosity customizable. 
> On Feb 19, 2015, at 2:20 AM, Wes Turner <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> From http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/accessible.html <http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/accessible.html>:
> 
> > [...] Semantic information about user interface elements, such as buttons and scroll bars, is exposed to the assistive technologies. Qt supports Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and IAccessible2 on Windows, OS X Accessibility on OS X, and AT-SPI via DBus on Unix/X11. The platform specific technologies are abstracted by Qt, so that applications do not need any platform specific changes to work with the different native APIs. Qt tries to make adding accessibility support to your application as easy as possible, only a few changes from your side may be required to allow even more users to enjoy it. [...]
> 
> On Feb 18, 2015 1:56 PM, "Wes Turner" <wes.turner at gmail.com <mailto:wes.turner at gmail.com>> wrote:
> A few (possibly more aceessible) alternatives to IDLE:
> 
> * IPython in a terminal
> * IPython qtconsole (Qt toolkit)
> * IPython Notebook may / should have WAI ARIA role tags (which are really easy to add to most templates)
> * Spyder IDE (Qt toolkit) embeds an IPython console with a Run button and lightweight code completion: https://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/ <https://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/>
> * I have no idea whether the python-mode Vim plugin is accessible: https://github.com/klen/python-mode <https://github.com/klen/python-mode>
> * Here's my dot vim config: https://github.com/westurner/dotvim <https://github.com/westurner/dotvim>
> It could be helpful to get a Wiki page together for accessibility: tools, features, gaps, best practices, etc.
> 
> On Feb 18, 2015 1:43 PM, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu <mailto:tjreedy at udel.edu>> wrote:
> On 2/18/2015 12:30 PM, Bryan Duarte wrote:
> 
> Here are the tools I have tried already  ... Idle ...
> it would be nice to have something like Idle made accessible.
> 
> Idle uses tkinter, the interface to the tcl tk gui system.  I have read that tk is not designed for accessibility.  There is nothing we can do about that.  If our idlelib code makes matters worse, say with tooltips, we could try to improve it.  But I just do not know if there is anything we could do.
> 
> -- 
> Terry Jan Reedy
> 
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