Visually Impaired Data Processors International, "a special interest affiliate of the American Council of the Blind. VIDPI, established in 1969, is an organization of blind Data Processing professionals and other people interested in promoting the use of computers by the blind."
Interview: Curtis Chong (sic.), NFB Director of Technology, a December 1999 Slashdot interview with this National Federation of the Blind official. "Today Curtis explains the reason for the AOL lawsuit, tells us how to make Web pages more accessible for blind users, and generally talks about life as a blind programmer."
"Facing Windows of Lost Opportunity", a Computerworld article which explores the joys and sorrows of being a blind programmer in November 1998. A bit downbeat, especially in the beginning, this article avoids taking the more ephemeral longer view of how computers will become remarkably smarter - and hence more accessible to all persons - during the lifespan of the vast majority of readers. The most optimistic scenario offered by an accomplished inventor (Ray Kurzweil) is available briefly here and at length here.
O'Reilly & Associates press has earned a sterling reputation for useful, careful, authoritative, and pedagogically able books about programming and computers. This link explains how blind persons can gain access to ASCII editions of these texts.
Justin Daubenmire's Online Visual Basic Tutorial For Blind Or Visually Impaired Programmers receives this review from Dave Csercsics, a blind computer science student on our staff: "This is a great tutorial... I [had Visual Basic] when I took... computer science last year... and I sure could have used [this] website then!"
Microsoft's Accessibility home page provides information and tools that can help remove barriers.
What Accessibility Options Exist for Unix? ( SlashDot BBS topic )
Proceedings of the Fourth U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind (October 1999). "All major organizations of and for the blind in the United States and Canada were invited to participate along with the major manufacturers of technology for the blind and the governmental entities..." Read fascinating, detailed expositions of the history, status and prospects of such technologies!
(proceedings of) The Fourth International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies (November 2000). Click on the PDF icons there to download each paper you want. When asked for login name, type "tremaine"; when asked for password, type "assets". (Download information courtesy of ASSETS 2000.)
"Word gamers" A Salon article (Nov. 19, 1999) on theatre of the mind: text-based computer games today, including Web-based communities.
Audyssey magazine "a bimonthly e-mail magazine that is dedicated to the discussion of computer games which, through accident or design, are accessible to the blind either with or without sighted assistance. This magazine is free in its electronic form." See also the related Yahoo! eGroup here.
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