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Back in the good ole days, I was working at a U.S. Army Post on a language called CSP. There as a programmer there who was totally blind and used touch typing and a screen reader to do all his COBOL work. Excellent programmer, had been there for years. He was a beta tester for several screen reader software companies.
When we started doing web sites (VBScript none of this .Net stuff), we had to research and use U.S. Code Section 503 regulations for creating sites. Then the ADA stuff started hitting us. His experiences can in very handy.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
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WHEn I worked for a VDT (Computer terminal, predates PC's) manufacturer in the 80's, one of the models we had to produce was a colour VDT for the blind. It had a line-by-line text to Braille converter, but it had to be colour, not monochrome, and they had to be able to change the foreground and background colours to their preferences ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Norwegian public services are by law required to provide "Universal Access", not only for those hard-of-seeing, but also for wheelchair users, hard-of-hearing, color blind etc. It would be a lie to say that the requirements are always satisfied, though, especially in older facilities established long before the UA requirements were defined.
For web services, you will often see that the consultant who developed the interface doesn't have a clue about the real needs of handicapped people, and when a solution is presented, it often takes a huge effort to remodel it to fit the UA requirements that was completely ignored in the initial design. Lots of solutions are never remodeled. So in spite of the requirements of the law, the situation is far from ideal. And commercial web sites largely ignore UA requirements. Still, I believe that we have come much further along the Universal Access route than some other countries.
If you are developing user interfaces, why don't you try out how it is to be hard-of-seeing: Smear a thick layer of Vaseline on your glasses (use sunglasses if you do not normally wear glasses), turn your PC of and on again and take it through everything from boot up to starting your application or connecting to your web site, and do all the operations available. You will probably remember where some text/graphic elements are located (such as that 8pt text explaining "If this text is too small for you to read, click here"), so after you have completed the exercize yourself, invite someone who does not know the layout to do the same thing, and observe his success.
Repeat the same with your glasses covered with a thick black paper, only with a quarter inch hole for each eye, to simulate tunnel vision. Let the hole be significantly off center - tunnel vision often is off-center. (An alternative method is to cover the screen with a large cardboard with a hole a couple inches across: You can move the cardboard up/down and left/right across the screen, but you will see only a small fraction at a time.)
To simulate complete blindness, turn your screen completely off before booting up the PC, and see how much you can make out of the synthetic speech (or braille line, if you have one available and either are able to read braille or can get hold of a human "braille-to-speech translator").
For users that are not "visually handicapped", just with old, worn eyes: Make sure to test your application with the zoom (ctrl-scroll) turned up high: Does any essential information drop out of the window/frame? Is a proper layout of the page maintained, or is the layout completely wrecked? Turn the zoom up immediately after startup, and leave it there - resist the temptation to zoom out to get the overview.
To check if your application is suitable for color blind, turn down the color saturation of your screen down to the bottom, giving you a graytone picture, and check the readability and clarity of graphical information. This is a very crude "simulation" (there are web sites that can provide a far more "true" simulation of various kinds of colorblindness - the disadvantage is that the simulation takes quite some time to calculate, often 10-60 seconds, and generally work on static images only) - but you can do it with almost zero effort, and it works on all material.
To simulate motoric limitations or other physical disabilities: Put on your winter mittens (not gloves!) and take your application from PC boot up through all functions. If climate allows (i.e. you can do some testing at ten degrees or more below freezing - use a freezer room if one is available), and try do do some fine mouse cursor positioning without wearing mittens / gloves.
Very few UI developers do even the very simplest of such UA tests. Those who do, often fake it: I have several times seen developers demonstrate how everyting is available to blind users - but to demonstrate it, they must stare at the screen all the time. I have never seen a demonstration where the presenter turns the screen around, towards the audience, away from himself!
The very basic UA tests are really cheap to carry through. Every UI developer should to them. Trying to excuse yourself by e.g. "but I don't know the difference between different kind of color blindness, so it is no use", is not even a poor excuse; it is no excuse at all for not doing the simple tests.
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Up voted and bookmarked.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Anyone else writing code you really shouldn't be writing?
This is just a hint of what I'm currently messing with:
...$"Relaunching using the security token for processId {processId}"...
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... $"{processId} not found. Launching 'Global Thermonuclear War'." ...
"Five fruits and vegetables a day? What a joke!
Personally, after the third watermelon, I'm full."
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote: Anyone else writing code you really shouldn't be writing?
No.
Can't accept money from someone to dig their own graves, unless I'm sure they know what I am doing. It may be a shortcut for an important demo, but any shortcut implies a risc 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Module Common
Public co As Object
End ModuleAfter some digging around "co" means "current order" and must have an order object (not just any object, if you got that idea from the declaration).
It's used to share the current order between exactly one form and the other.
The other form is used in various places, but if you haven't used this one particular form that sets co a certain function will always break (because it lacks a Nothing check).
If you have used the form that sets co the other form will display just outright wrong data.
And if you open the form that uses co, then the form that sets co and then go back to the other form it will somehow have different data 
This may be one of the lesser evils in this application.
Don't talk to me about "code that shouldn't be", you've merely adopted it.
I was born in it, molded by it 
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Wow, that's some sh*t.
I'm just stealing the security token from a process running as System and using it to launch my own.
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I was browsing the local grocery store, and ran across a brand of egg that had this slogan on its container:
Vegetarian fed hens
and I thought to myself "Where did they get the vegetarians to feed them with? Do they have a vegetarian ranch, or are they vegetarians from the wild for wild chickens?"
[Edit: spell check can't tell between vegetarians and veterinarians!]
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, navigate a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects! - Lazarus Long
modified 8-Oct-19 18:21pm.
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Same supplier that provides real Girl Scouts for their Girl Scout Cookies!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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stoneyowl2 wrote: Where did they get the veterinarians to feed them with?
It's not hard to catch vegetarians. They have no muscle and can't put up a fight. Plus, no one misses them.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote: Plus, no one misses them.
I would miss Sander, regardless of his eating-habits.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: I would miss Sander
That's adorable. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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Sounds like a hen that is guaranteed to not go outside, and is purely fed grains or corn.
Chickens like to dig for proteins. Can't dig through concrete, so a non-outside chicken can be guaranteed to be raised vegetarian.
Wordsmithing.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Chickens are vegetarians so we don't have to be.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Chickens aren't vegetarian, only if they're fed nothing else and prohibited to forage.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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A friend of mine calls himself a "secondary vegetarian": He only eats meat of herbivorous animals.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Wordsmithing
Or "spin".
Yeah, very likely a way to put a positive light on chickens which aren't free-range.
Similarly, some years back KFC was advertising that their chicken parts were now something like a third larger than previously... which I took to mean that they were buying larger, older, tougher chickens and trying to make them sound more desirable.
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They used to grind beef and feed it to cows, which was one way "Mad Cow Disease" was spread.
These chickens don't eat other chickens I take it.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: These chickens don't eat other chickens I take it.
I read somewhere that chicken grown in 42-63 days will have very litte taste of chicken unless they are fed waste meat from other chicken. Also, to get enough calcium to develop their skeleton that fast, the feed contains the ground bones of slaughtered chicken; this also contributes to the taste.
And still, they never taste anything like a hen (as opposed to a chicken) did in the old days! Tastewise, chicken is to 95% nothing but a substrate for the taste of spices. The day I retire, I might start breeding slow-grow chicken/hens in the back yard to get myself some old style hen meat.
Same with eggs: The number of eggs per hen has almost tripled since the 1980s. So the same total amount of taste is spread out on three times as many eggs, with one third on each.
Two weeks ago I bought myself a (butchered) sheep - I do not want the mild, delicate lamb meat, but something with a firm, strong taste. Something like game. This sheep was of a special "wild" breed, with a double jacket of wool so they can live outdoors through the winter, eating wild grass, shrubs and berries. The meet gets tasty even though the are not fed ground mutton!
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Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) [^]Quote: In almost every computation a great variety of arrangements for the succession of the processes is possible, and various considerations must influence the selections amongst them for the purposes of a calculating engine. One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation.
Countess Ada Day: [^] Quote: Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage’s Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly.
Analytical Engine:[^]Quote: The Analytical Engine might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine… Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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That sounds so familiar for a developper, and though it was written a couple of centuries ago. Brilliant mind.
"Five fruits and vegetables a day? What a joke!
Personally, after the third watermelon, I'm full."
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Long ago, for an Air Force base not too far away, I helped develop a simulation of the F-16 STOL Maneuverability and Technology Demonstrator aircraft flight control system in the language that bears her name, Ada. I also wrote a white paper for a research effort entitled Automated Verification and Validation Test Case Generation for Ada. Very interesing stuff, in both cases.
Software Zen: delete this;
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To muse on what she might have accomplished had she been of our time...
Cheers,
Mike Fidler
"I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
"I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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