Accessibility of Command Line Interfaces

Sampath, Harini; Merrick, Alice; Macvean, Andrew

doi:10.1145/3411764.3445544

Cited by 15 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Each modality was shown to have advantages and disadvantages. For example, text-only interfaces can provide accessibility [54,78] and productivity [53] advantages, whereas graphical user interfaces provide greater discoverability [10,88]. Some researchers explored ways to bridge the two interaction modes, such as by developing GUI wrappers for command line programs [53,94] or by developing tools that converted GUI activities into procedural descriptions [55].…”

Section: Conversational Interaction Vsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Programmer's Assistant: Conversational Interaction with a Large Language Model for Software Development

Ross,

Martinez,

Houde

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Large language models (LLMs) have recently been applied in software engineering to perform tasks such as translating code between programming languages, generating code from natural language, and autocompleting code as it is being written. When used within development tools, these systems typically treat each model invocation independently from all previous invocations, and only a specific limited functionality is exposed within the user interface. This approach to user interaction misses an opportunity for users to more deeply engage with the model by having the context of their previous interactions, as well as the context of their code, inform the model's responses. We developed a prototype system -the Programmer's Assistant -in order to explore the utility of conversational interactions grounded in code, as well as software engineers' receptiveness to the idea of conversing with, rather than invoking, a code-fluent LLM. Through an evaluation with 42 participants with varied levels of programming experience, we found that our system was capable of conducting extended, multi-turn discussions, and that it enabled additional knowledge and capabilities beyond code generation to emerge from the LLM. Despite skeptical initial expectations for conversational programming assistance, participants were impressed by the breadth of the assistant's capabilities, the quality of its responses, and its potential for improving their productivity. Our work demonstrates the unique potential of conversational interactions with LLMs for co-creative processes like software development.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models; • Software and its engineering → Designing software; • Computing methodologies → Generative and developmental approaches.

show abstract

Section: Conversational Interaction Vsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Programmer's Assistant: Conversational Interaction with a Large Language Model for Software Development

Ross,

Martinez,

Houde

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Accessibility research has majorly concentrated on increasing digital access for BLV users [18]. This includes improving the narrative experience for digital mediums such as IDEs [21,24], collaborative documents [16] and sci-entific reports [28]. The focal point of the research community has been generating non-visual representations for visual content.…”

Section: Accessibility Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Optimizing OCR for Accessibility

Mowar¹,

Ganu²,

Guha³

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual cues such as structure, emphasis, and icons play an important role in efficient information foraging by sighted individuals and make for a pleasurable reading experience. Blind, low-vision and other print-disabled individuals miss out on these cues since current OCR and textto-speech software ignore them, resulting in a tedious reading experience. We identify four semantic goals for an enjoyable listening experience, and identify syntactic visual cues that help make progress towards these goals. Empirically, we find that preserving even one or two visual cues in aural form significantly enhances the experience for listening to print content.

show abstract

“…These challenges are amplified by IDE documentation that rely on screenshots and do not list relevant keyboard shortcuts [16], [17]. For programmers with visual impairments, a common workaround is switching to plaintext editors [9], [10], [12] in conjunction with command-line interfaces (CLIs) for installation, debugging, and version control [18]. However, the latter present text in unstructured form without any markup, which poses navigation challenges for screen reader users [18].…”

Section: A Accessibility Of Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accessibility of UI Frameworks and Libraries for Programmers with Visual Impairments

Pandey

Bondre

O’Modhrain

et al. 2022

2022 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The availability of numerous UI components, the promise of accessibility, and cross-platform support have made UI frameworks (e.g., Flutter, Xamarin, React Native) and libraries (e.g., wxPython) quite popular among software developers. However, their widespread use also highlights the need to understand the experiences of programmers with visual impairments with them. We adopted a mixed-methods design comprising two studies to understand the accessibility and challenges of developing interfaces with UI frameworks and libraries. In Study 1, we analyzed 96 randomly-sampled archived threads of Program-L, a mailing list primarily comprising programmers with visual impairments. In Study 2, we interviewed 18 programmers with visual impairments to confirm the findings from Study 1 and gain a deeper understanding of their motivations and experiences in using UI frameworks. Our participants considered UI development essential to their programming responsibilities and sought to acquire relevant skills and expertise. However, accessibility barriers in programming tools and UI frameworks complicated the processes of writing UI code, debugging, testing, and collaborating with sighted colleagues. Our paper concludes with recommendations grounded in empirical findings to improve the accessibility of frameworks and libraries.

show abstract

Accessibility of Command Line Interfaces

Cited by 15 publications

References 23 publications

The Programmer's Assistant: Conversational Interaction with a Large Language Model for Software Development

The Programmer's Assistant: Conversational Interaction with a Large Language Model for Software Development

Towards Optimizing OCR for Accessibility

Accessibility of UI Frameworks and Libraries for Programmers with Visual Impairments

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About