Video: Blind Programming Project in NetBeans IDE

This video demonstrates a collaboration between Southern Illinois University (under myself, Dr. Andreas Stefik) and Washington State University (under Dr. Chris Hundhausen), on what is called the "Blind Programming project." Our teams are creating a custom compiler, debugger, virtual machine, and blind compatibility library (called Sappy) into NetBeans IDE in an attempt to broaden participation of the blind in the computing discipline.

In this video, we demonstrate our most recent summer workshop at the Washington State School for the Blind, where students and teachers are learning programming in this new system, including having the children work in a new programming language called Hop, designed in empirical studies to be easy to use.