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Comment by gchpaco | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is that most accessibility software has a hell of a learning curve, that the blind have implicitly overcome already to use the thing at all. (e.g. emacspeak) It can be very daunting to try to use it as a sighted person with a blindfold over their eyes.

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Have blind people overcome this because of past experience and living with the fact of being blind, or is it the case that the software isn't necessarily intuitive in the first place?

I think when I have a moment I might attempt this as an exercise...

If I were to see this moment, I would wonder how you can bear using a mouse when the keyboard is so much quicker. However, you can probably use the mouse much faster than I can.

Why? It's probably the power of habits. Using a keyboard-mouse combination to interact with the computer is how you've always worked. Using a screen reader with a large number of specialized keystrokes is how I've always worked.

I've had a tiny, tiny amount of experience with using NVDA through work and the first hurdle is the incredible number of keyboard shortcuts to learn. The only other tip I can give is to unplug your mouse and give it a go.

I do not, myself, know why this is the case. I can come up with several plausible reasons; for example, you're basically coming up with an alternate input device for your computer piggybacked onto something that's already there. Additionally these programs basically are the computer if you're blind; you develop a lot of experience with them quickly because the alternative is not using it at all. And some amount of it is probably cultural/historical, we make it hard because it's always been hard. Truly, I don't know, and I don't know anyone who does.

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