Its been a bit since we’ve updated you all on what’s to come with Mojang Studio’s next update for Java Edition, this is the first part of a three-part news dump to catch up with the latest news.

• Tools are now sorted based on material in the creative inventory

SPAWNPOINT & SETWORLDSPAWN

Added angle parameter for setting the default facing angle of a respawning player.
Syntax: spawnpoint [targets] [pos] [angle]
Syntax: setworldspawn [pos] [angle]
New parameters:

• angle – Floating point angle in degrees. Supports the relative ~ modifier

• worldgen/noise_settings can now contain noise configurations

• MC-194464 – “large_oak_foliage_placer” incorrectly serializes to “blob_foliage_placer”
• MC-194298 – Bone meal can’t create flowers
• MC-194257 – Several instances of “snowy” being spelled as “snovy” in the vanilla_worldgen configuration
• MC-194220 – Totems of Undying give you Fire Resistance II instead of the maximum Fire Resistance I
• MC-194200 – Birch trees are not generated correctly in the Birch Forest and Birch Forest Hills biomes
• MC-194173 – Hitboxes are rendered offset while picking up items or experience on graphics settings Fast and Fancy
• MC-193662 – Player flying in creative slightly above blocks while sneaking and jumping are restrained to that block
• MC-193560 – Enchantment Glint doesn’t render on elytra in specific circumstances
• MC-192021 – Enchantment Glint effect on transparent blocks not properly rendered on Fabulous graphic
• MC-191623 – Ender dragon battle music does not stop after ender dragon has been defeated
• MC-191031 – Players in spectator mode can interact with boats
• MC-190559 – Baby Striders don’t die when it’s raining and they are in lava
• MC-189788 – Certain mobs in boats sometimes take drowning damage while the boat is moving
• MC-185019 – Worldgen settings with the empty structures parameter causes all structures to generate extremely frequently
• MC-176836 – Unarmed vindicators raise their arm in offensive way when attacking
• MC-176778 – Camera is reset when a block reappears due to high server latency
• MC-166718 – Mobs no longer suffocate inside of soul sand, farmland or grass paths
• MC-158735 – Pillagers without crossbows hold their arm up in an offensive way
• MC-153230 – Players in spectator mode can stop minecarts

• Modified how respawn positions are chosen for beds and respawn anchors
• Lanterns can now be waterlogged
• Soul Lanterns can now be waterlogged
• Tweaked the Bastion Remnant chest loot
• Chests in Bastion Remnants are now more likely to be located on top of gilded blackstone

RESPAWN BLOCK POSITIONS

• Respawn anchors will prioritize cardinal directions over corners
• Beds will prioritize the side of the bed the player entered from and then spaces circling around the foot of the bed up to the head of the bed
• Respawning players will now face the block that they respawned at
• Placing players onto dangerous blocks is now avoided when possible

• The sign edit screen will now initialize from existing sign text (should have no noticeable impact on vanilla)
• Tags can now have optional entries

OPTIONAL TAG ENTRIES

Entries in tags can now be marked as optional. Failure to resolve optional entries does not prevent the whole tag from loading.

Example:

{
  “replace”: false,
  “values”: [
    “#minecraft:beds”, // existing syntax
    { “id”:”#missing:tag”, “required”: false }, // optional sub-tag entry

    “minecraft:anvil”, // existing syntax
    { “id”:”minecraft:stone_button”, “required”: true }, // new syntax for required tags
    { “id”:”missing:block”, “required”: false } // optional single-element entry
  ]
}

• MC-35765 – Viewing text in Right-to-Left language while in another language renders backward and non-connected
• MC-57869 – Some item tooltips use § for coloring, rendering them incorrect in right-to-left languages
• MC-116857 – Advancement descriptions use unnecessary capitalization on generic resource names
• MC-148447 – Villagers often get stuck while trying to go through a door at the same time
• MC-149060 – Villagers “spam” doors by opening and closing them really fast
• MC-153195 – Mobs can drop items with duplicate enchantments
• MC-181925 – Unarmed vexes raise their arms in an offensive way when attacking
• MC-187344 – Fast graphics tooltip has incorrect ‘tree-leaves’ spelling
• MC-187379 – Text for pack.incompatible.confirm.new makes no sense
• MC-187380 – Incorrect grammar in en_us translation of pack.dropConfirm
• MC-188389 – Several minor errors in datapackFailure.title
• MC-188390 – Comma splices in four strings
• MC-188392 – Death message for getting shot by a skull is not grammatically correct in all situations
• MC-188621 – Mojang “Production Manager” credit is indented further than other credits
• MC-188880 – Baby zombified Piglins riding on chickens aren’t positioned properly
• MC-189918 – Multiplayer warning uses “Mojang” instead of “Mojang Studios”
• MC-190102 – Some UI strings are not consistently capitalized
• MC-190288 – Fabulous and Fancy graphics tooltips have missing commas
• MC-191441 – Right-to-left text is rendered bottom-up in some cases
• MC-191562 – “Cancel” button overlaps “Done” button when uploading a world to Realms, making users unable to upload world
• MC-192296 – Spider Jockey from a spawner minecart crashes with”java.lang.IllegalStateException: Entity is already tracked”
• MC-193276 – Player floats slightly above strider while riding it
• MC-193339 – NullPointerException during shutdown when rcon enabled with no password
• MC-194263 – Large End Cities do not generate correctly/get cut off
• MC-194273 – Save data of new Nether biomes is lost when upgrading a world to 20w28a or above
• MC-194350 – Some feature configurations don’t load in a datapack (java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: value already present: [email protected])
• MC-195052 – “angle” argument in spawnpoint command doesn’t use “minecraft:rotation” parser
• MC-195582 – Typing a colon twice or after a slash in chat when specifying a function/item/block/etc. in a command crashes the game

• New accessibility settings have been added to help with visual comfort

• Distortion effects such as nausea and the Nether portal overlay can now be reduced
• At lower values, the nausea effect is replaced with a green overlay as an alternative visualization
• Field of view effects shown after speed modifiers are applied can now be reduced

• Chains can now be placed in all orientations
• Endermen will no longer place their held blocks onto bedrock blocks
• Piglins now become angry with players who open or destroy a Chest Minecart
• Villagers now lose their job sites when changing dimension
• Chat delay has been added to the Chat Settings screen

• Custom world generation and dimension settings now use the same folder pattern in data packs as other resources (namespace/<type>/resource.json)

• MC-73884 – Throwable projectiles get destroyed on contact with non-solid blocks
• MC-125758 – Bubble column does not affect egg, snowball, ender pearl, splash potion, lingering potion, fireball, and shulker bullet
• MC-158987 – Raid still continues after a villager turns into a witch
• MC-163767 – Villagers get ejected from a minecart when converted to a zombie villager
• MC-167045 – Banners are rendered too dark in the inventory
• MC-170900 – New Nether plants can be picked up without shears/silk touch
• MC-174574 – Soul speed doesn’t work when slabs and blocks of similar height are placed above the soul sand block
• MC-176015 – Strider suffocates when player is saddled on and looking up with Warped Fungus on a Stick
• MC-176034 – You can walk on striders
• MC-177651 – Despite being cold outside of lava, striders don’t try to stay in lava
• MC-178061 – Chat Delay option doesn’t exist in Chat settings
• MC-182330 – Crossbow-wielding Piglins behave weirdly when they try to pursue invisible players
• MC-185490 – Separated trader llamas on leads cause TPS hit
• MC-187398 – Smithing table and stonecutter recipes are not unlocked when used
• MC-187904 – Data packs cannot replace settings of vanilla dimensions during world creation
• MC-189414 – Smithing table doesn’t calculate amount of output items correctly
• MC-189797 – Hoglins, Zoglins, melee Piglins, and Piglin Brutes do not properly attack invisible entities within normal range
• MC-191168 – Piglins that convert into Zombified Piglins while sitting on a minecart sometimes sink into blocks
• MC-192032 – Villagers don’t always try to claim the closest workstation and are sometimes focused on a non-existent one or one out of their reach
• MC-193213 – Leads are positioned incorrectly on players and wandering traders
• MC-194263 – Large End Cities do not generate correctly / get cut off
• MC-194299 – Template pools fail to load via datapack
• MC-194845 – Subspace Bubble advancement cannot be completed with 7 km distance
• MC-195062 – Raids often will not end in defeat when all villagers are dead if there are job sites in the village
• MC-195544 – Game crashes after killing a mob that is being ridden by a guardian while it is being ridden by a wither skeleton

• Crimson and Warped Roots no longer require shears when mined

EXECUTE COMMAND

• execute in now respects dimension scaling

• MC-69876 – Pistons at Y=1 do not push downwards / at Y=254 do not push upwards
• MC-124320 – Endermen can pick up and place snowless snowy grass blocks
• MC-130558 – Item frames cannot be emptied if gamerule doEntityDrops is set to false
• MC-134084 – If gamerule sendCommandFeedback is disabled, /msg or /tell don’t display the message to the sender
• MC-136553 – Dyes in creative inventory are in reverse order
• MC-152037 – Powered, activator and detector rails are deleted when pushed/pulled onto a block they cannot be placed on
• MC-187357 – Strongholds will not generate in floating_islands or caves preset
• MC-189736 – “distance” within predicate no longer works
• MC-190552 – Demo mode resets position and inventory upon launch
• MC-190859 – floating_islands or caves buffet worlds no longer generate strongholds and ender eyes do not locate previously generated strongholds after upgrading to 1.16
• MC-192136 – Lava damage works differently than in previous versions
• MC-192236 – Endermen can place blocks on top of item frames on the floor
• MC-192371 – Paintings in the same block space pop off when chunk loads
• MC-192845 – Block Event Lag in 1.16 is excessive
• MC-194217 – Lava sets nether vegetation on fire despite it being fire resistant
• MC-194867 – Minecarts come out the wrong side of a nether portal and lose momentum when coming back to overworld
• MC-194953 – Custom Biomes are not useable in Predicates
• MC-195803 – Mob kill statistics are formatted in reverse: “N killed you <mob> times”
• MC-195851 – “Hat” layer on helmets detaches from Piglins’ heads while bartering
• MC-196245 – Charged creeper does not always drop skull if zombie variants are nearby
• MC-196441 – Stonecutter/Smithing Table recipes are not given after crafting a stack of more than one
• MC-196469 – F1 hides the nausea green tint
• MC-196473 – Pufferfish gives Nausea II instead of the maximum of Nausea I
• MC-196653 – Creating multiple datapack dimensions which reference the same dimension_type string causes “unregistered dimension” crash
• MC-196743 – Custom/modified biomes don’t work in the overworld

• MC-105248 Wet wolves become nearly black in dark areas
• MC-107529 Marker:1 Armor Stands render themself and their equipment dark if inside solid blocks
• MC-167756 Wolf is rendered too dark when not directly affected by skylight
• MC-190103 Crash when using a nether portal: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: fromIndex < 0: -2368549
• MC-191388 “No key position_predicate in MapLike” console spam
• MC-197053 Pressing F3+D clears the pending lines message, but doesn’t clear the pending messages
• MC-197152 Ghost Blocks can be generated in some piston setups
• MC-197218 Piston arm appears twice during retraction in some mechanisms

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In my last post on free to play and mobile design, I talked about gacha and lootbox design. I also mentioned trying the game Arknights and how I was still in the honeymoon period…well, that is over, and it did not end well. For today, we are going to discuss the real wall of playing free to play games.

What Free to Play Values

As everyone knows, the lack of a paywall to get into a free to play game is a major attraction for people to try them out. Without it, designers need to find a way to generate revenue through the player base itself. Even though many mobile games will use ads, that is not the same as gacha and lootbox design as a way of keeping someone invested in playing.

The more addictive games know that if you want to keep someone playing (and hopefully turn them into whale) you need to get them invested, and to do that, you need to create value. A free to play game is not the same as a retail title whose initial paywall covers the investment on the player’s part. Obviously, we are ignoring retail games that have microtransactions for this discussion.

There are only two areas that are left to create investment in free to play games: Time and Money. Many years ago, Valve gave a talk at GDC about the two aspects when it came to Team Fortress 2 and how the game went free to play and generated revenue via the Mann Co store.

In that presentation, they spoke about the concepts of time and money, and how every player values them differently. For one person, they could play a game for hundreds of hours and will rebuke spending even one dollar to buy something; just as someone will happily spend hundreds of dollars if it means accomplishing months of tasks within minutes.

F2P designers have been courting both personalities for years. You can see similar elements across mobile titles: a massive in-game store and banners for people who value time; designing progress around repetitive tasks and grinding for those who value money.

There is nothing “stupid” or “lazy” as gamers have said about developers who make use of these tactics, they know what they are doing, and it is about generating the sunk cost fallacy.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The sunk cost fallacy is a term used to describe that tendency for someone to keep investing in something due to already having done it before, hence the sunk cost. Free to play designers know that the goal is to get someone to spend money one time—even if it is just a dollar. Once someone has invested into a free to play game, they are more willing to do it again, and more importantly, keep playing.

When we usually talk about the sunk cost fallacy it has to do with spending money, as that is the popular interpretation, but this can also apply to time. For someone who does not want to spend money, there is always the option of spending time. Resources can be earned by repeating content already done, or constantly logging in to repeat a task.

In Arknights, characters require multiple resources to upgrade their various traits. If you do not spend money, you are going to have to repeat missions again and again for those items. Even putting the game at 2X speed, you are still waiting anywhere from one to four minutes watching a map on autopilot to collect said resources. Even though that does not sound like a long time, all those minutes do add up. Again, you are going to be doing this constantly, as said resources are not guaranteed drops, and you have at minimum 11 characters to do this for.

Every F2P game starts out easy to progress, but then puts up this wall as kind of a test to see if the player is invested in continuing to play (or pay). As we talked about in the piece on gacha design, it never truly ends.

From One Wall to the Next

Supporters of F2P design will often say that skilled players do not need to spend money or are good enough at the game to make progress. Another aspect of F2P design not often discussed are the multiple walls of progress. Once you have spent enough money or time on a game to get past that initial wall, many basic tasks or challenges become easier.

During my time in Marvel Strike Force, I routinely earned free materials because my team was high enough to complete special challenges. Arknights features a similar philosophy with daily events whose reward goes up the harder the version you clear.

Breaking through that first wall of progress is like getting a massive weight off your shoulders, and is often that point where players become committed to a game. The sunk cost fallacy is in full effect: “I can’t stop playing, look at how far I’ve come.” And when the player gets committed to one aspect of a game, chances are they are going to commit to everything.

Unfortunately, here is the dirty secret around monetized F2P design—there is always another wall. To keep making progress, you are going to need more resources and higher up characters, which, you guessed it, means more grinding or spending money.

A F2P game that runs out of grinding to do is a dead game, and why they are designed around long-term play and continued updates.

The beauty about scaling content is that there is no such thing as running out of numbers. Every free to play game imaginable has some system that could be extended indefinitely. In Marvel Strike Force, during my time playing the developers kept the rarity system, but raised the max level of characters to 75 instead of 70. Those five additional levels would cost about a million in terms of in-game currency to make that jump.

Not only that but for character-driven games there can be further grinding to unlock a character, and then restarting the grind for each new character the player unlocks.

Gameplay Hostage

What frustrates me as someone who understands game design is how many of the F2P games I’ve looked at have legitimately great systems to them, but as I said in my last post: A game that lives by its gacha design, can also die because of it.

The elements that I complain about: the grind, the repetitive nature, the lack of evolving game systems, those are intentional by the designers. With Arknights, I really like the idea of a character-driven tower defense game, but the elements surrounding that lead to frustration. What hurts the most is that these games are so tethered to their monetization systems, there is no way to make a “retail version” without requiring an entire redesign.

As I said in the previous piece that game titles that are tied to gacha or heavy monetization can live or die because of it. Somewhere, there must be a middle ground between a retail experience and the traditional monetized mobile games. After catching the developers of Arknights in a lie with how they give out premium currency, I have no intention of ever spending money in the game, and possibly just deleting it.

Before the pandemic scuttled all plans in 2020, there were talks about governments cracking down on F2P games in terms of their addictive nature. I have made a promise to myself that I outright refuse to play any videogame that demands my constant time or money to enjoy it. Personally, I think it is a matter of when, not if, for governments to talk about this again, and when that day comes, a lot of games (and their consumers) are going to be left scrambling.

If you enjoyed my post, consider joining the Game-Wisdom discord channel open to everyone.

Mobile developer-publisher Big Run Studios has netted $5.25 million in seed funding, meaning it has raised a total of $6.6 million to date.

The funding round was led by early stage venture capital company Transcend Fund and joined by Galaxy Interactive, which previously invested $1.4 million into Big Run back in March.

The cash will allow Big Run to expand operations as it prepares to launch its next mobile title, Big Cooking, which will join a roster than includes other mobile games like Farm Sweeper, Blackout Blitz, Big Hearts, and Big Run Solitaire.

“The additional investment expands our capabilities and accelerates the exciting games we’re cooking up for players,” said company co-founder and CEO, Andrew Bell.

As fantastic as it is to play the Switch in handheld mode, the Joy-Con setup can become a little cramped from time to time. If you’re seeking a more ergonomic gaming experience while you play Animal Crossing, Mario Kart or Zelda for hours on end, you can’t go past the Split Pad Pro by peripheral maker Hori.

It was originally made available in one colour last October, got a special PAC-MAN design last month, and on 7th September will receive three more colours: Transparent Black, Midnight Blue and Volcanic Red (priced at $49.99 USD each). Take a look:

As noted by Hori, preorders are coming soon – keep in mind this controller only works in handheld mode. Here’s what else we had to say about the Split Pad Pro in our hardware review last year:

Hori has come back with a new controller, catering once again to the Switch’s Handheld player market: the Split Pad Pro. A larger, more ergonomic Joy-Con style controller that intends to give you the feeling of playing with a Pro Controller, but in handheld mode.

Please note that some links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

What do you think of this controller and the three new colours? Leave a comment down below.

This was a sweaty one.https://t.co/e6vH0DCT0d pic.twitter.com/bjss7JtBRf

— Barrett Courtney (@SadBoyBarrett) August 11, 2020

With the recent release of Paper Mario: The Origami King, the Paper Mario series now stands at a sizeable six entries.

It all began with the original Paper Mario on Nintendo 64, before moving onto the GameCube with the celebrated Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. That was followed by Super Paper Mario on Wii before the series took a quick handheld detour on 3DS with Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Finally, Color Splash brought a dash of pigment to the Wii U, which brings us up-to-date with the latest game on Switch. With the impending 20th anniversary of the series, we thought it the perfect time to ask you lovely people to rate the Paper Mario games to find out where The Origami King stands and which one you think is the absolute best.

Below you’ll find all six of the Paper Mario games, plus the Mario & Luigi crossover Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. Registered Nintendo Life users can click on the stars and rate any (or all) of the games out of 10. If you’ve previously rated these games–excellent!–you can just put your feet up. You shouldn’t need to use the search bar with just seven games, but it’s there if you really, really detest scrolling.

Much like our Top 50 platform polls, the resulting ranking (which we’ll publish very soon) will be created from the database of NL User Ratings and is therefore fluid and subject to change even after publication. So, if you’re in the middle of a Paper Mario game and don’t want to rate it yet, no sweat – you can add your score at any time in the future and it will still count and potentially influence the order.

Enough talk! We recently took a more in-depth look at the series which we recommend you check out. For now, simply click on the stars below to rate the games you’ve played…

Rate each Paper Mario game:

Click the stars below to rate out of 10 each Paper Mario game you’ve played:

Thanks for rating! We’ll be finding out the results very soon, but remember: much like our platform Top 50s, the list here is fluid, so even if you miss out on voting before the results are revealed, you can still influence the ranking after publication.

I’m a developer who is blind. I’ve been blind since very shortly after birth. I’ve never gone through losing my sight. I wanted to see if my perspective lined up with that of others who are blind, but have lost their sight later on in life. Here is what I found out:

I reached out to parts of the blindness community in my network to see if anyone wanted to sit down and talk to me about their experiences. Six people replied to my query for interviews. I interviewed three of them for this article, and I plan on talking to the others after this writing.

I run an email group where other people who are blind hang out called Pythonvis. Anyone else can join. I sent one query there. Another group I hang out on is called Program-l. That group is broader in scope. Both groups cater to the unique needs of those of us who are looking for both programming help and help using the tools necessary to use our computers.

Blind Developer Survey — Stories

Before he lost his sight, Jeff Thompson learned to program while in college, using punch cards. He went on to have a career in the insurance industry. It wasn’t until much older that he lost his sight. Jeff is a member of Pythonvis and runs a weekly Python coaching session on a site called Out-of-site.

Taylor Arndt studies Computer Science at Western Michigan University in the United States.

Vaibhav Saraf is a software developer from India who lost his sight a little over a year ago.

All three told me that they went through a period where they were despondent about being unable to use their computer, but reached out and learned that they had a way out.

How They Use Their Computer

All three developers use software called screen readers. Screen readers speak what the user types into the computer and read what they want to know about the code they write.

Interestingly, the original IBM screen reader software was invented by Jim Thatcher, who was not blind, but was influenced by his blind thesis advisor. Ted Henter, who lost his sight in a car accident, invented the most popular screen reading software, JAWS, after he lost his site and went on to co-found FreedomScientific (https://www.freedomscientific.com/), which has since become part of the Vispero group of companies. They also all use NVDA, which was created by two blind developers.

NVDA is mostly written in Python and is open-source. One of the reasons I am learning Python is to contribute to that project.

Programming Tools

Jeff uses EdSharp, written in C# by Jamal Mazrui, himself a blind software developer, who works for Amazon.

Taylor and I use Visual Studio Code, which has very strong support for those of us who use screen readers.

Vaibhav uses Eclipse, which IBM contributed much code to enhance its ability to work with screen reading software.

[Resources] How They Learned Python

When I asked how they learned Python, they pointed me to resources, such as:

• Bookshare, a site that houses many books on both fiction and non-fiction subjects, including Python development.
• Professors and team leads who provided them with material in HTML or PDF tagged so that it is able to communicate with screen reading software through accessibility tags similar to HTML, which communicates information about the structure of the documents, such as which elements are headings, tables, form fields, and so on.
• FreeCodeCamp.org which is a non-profit group that teaches full-stack web development, which has recently branched out into a section on Python.
• W3Schools, which also has a Python curriculum.
• The official Python tutorial
• Various other free resources on the web, some books, others forums.

All of the above have in common that they are written in a form easy to consume by screen readers: HTML, DAISY, or EPub.

How They Communicate On Projects

All three said that email is something that is easy to use with screen reading software. They also all use Skype, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other communication software. All of these packages work with screen reading software.

Taylor and Vaibhav use Microsoft Word, so any specifications or instructions written as Word documents that have adequate text descriptions can serve as specifications for projects. Taylor and Vaibhav told me that wen professors or team members present course materials live that when they point to something on the board or when screen sharing that it helps to say the name of the thing they are pointing too, rather than “this,” or “Click this.”

It also helps to give directions on where to find something or perform an action to help build a mental model of the thing they are describing. At this point, screen reader users can share screens as presenters in communication software, but screen readers cannot communicate to the user the screens shared by others who are presenters. One way to off-set this disadvantage is to get the material before the presentation so they can read it over and become familiar with it.

How They Understand Program Structure

All three told me that they use their screen reader’s ability to communicate the number of tab characters appear at the beginnings of lines coupled with the colon characters at the beginnings of conditional expressions, loops, classes, and methods to gain a mental model of the code they work with. As we talked about this, Vaibhav said that he depends on his memory a great deal to understand code flow.

Screen readers can read a line at a time, a word at a time, and a character at a time, and if a developer is able to obtain a Braille display, they can read and follow indentation by using their fingers to feel the dots.

Another helpful tool to gain the understanding of program structure is the previews in Eclipse and Visual Studio Code that list symbols in outline form.

These conveniences for people who are sighted are essential for screen reader users in gaining efficiency, because they cannot glance down through a screen all at once and gain a quick overview of what the code or reading material may communicate. EdSharp also has a way to jump among symbols.

What It’s Like Working With Other Team Members

All three said that once those around them become familiar with their disability that they have no issues communicating and working efficiently with others.

They said that others are generally very willing to adapt their working style.

All three say that they are able to pull their own weight as equal contributors to projects. When it comes to working on open-source projects or any that involve using Git and sites like GitHub, command line Git works well with screen readers, because it uses pure text and screen readers and command line environments are good friends.

Advice For Would-Be Programmers

I asked all three what advice they would give to anyone who is blind who would like to go into programming. Points mentioned were:

• This is something you can do if you really want to. You can reach out to forums such as Quora, Stack Exchange, Reddit, etc. and find others in your situation. There are email groups, such as Python-vis, Blind Programming, and other lists that specialize in one language or another where blind people hang out.
• You need to learn to use your screen reader to the fullest extent possible and to do all you can to make yourself as efficient as possible using the keyboard and the tools at your disposal.
• Take advantage of the communities around your chosen screen reader.
• You may need to use alternative tools or methods to do your job more efficiently. Speak up when you need to do this.
• Keep looking for more efficient ways to accomplish tasks.
• There is enough reading material on the web to enable you to get good at Python.
• Don’t get hung up because someone gives you material you cannot read or understand. Find material on the same subject from somewhere else.
• You will often find yourself in a situation in which you cannot read something or use some aspect of a piece of software. When reporting bugs, stick to the facts, be tactful, keep your emotions out of the conversation. Most people want to help, once they understand where you are coming from.
• You will need to work harder than the people around you and be patient while they come to grips with your disability. This is a given.
• Rely on your network of supporters, your faith, meditation, or whatever helps you gain positive energy.
• There will always be well-meaning people in your life who will tell you that you cannot do this. Smile and do it anyway.

To that I say Amen.

About the Author

Jim Homme is a former professional musician, father of three, husband, and a 32-year veteran in Information Technology. He loves to read and play chess. He leads a team of accessibility testers at Bender Consulting Services. He is the owner of jimhomme.com, where he writes about Python and related technologies.