A Man on a Mission: To See GitHub Copilot Be A Life-Changer for Disabled Developers
This is a copy of my first post on the GitHub Copilot Community forum. My hope was that this message would attract the attention of someone on the Copilot development team as a first step toward partnering with GitHub on a pilot project to explore the use of Copilot to enable the contribution of disabled developers to Digital Humanities, Citizen Science, and Open Source projects. This was posted to the forum on October 24, 2021. Images added for visual interest.
OMGaia, Twitter:@natfriedman & the Twitter:@github #Copilot Dev Team,
Thank you SO MUCH for including me in this week’s incoming cohort of Copilot Technology Preview users. While I know the selection process was simply a numbers game where mine came up, I cannot tell you folks how thrilled I was to get the welcoming on-boarding email to join the Preview community.
You see, I am a man on a mission. More specifically, I am a Disabled Developer and Citizen Scientist on a mission to do whatever I can to ensure that the benefits of breakthrough Machine Learning technologies embodied in GitHub Copilot achieve the potential life-changing impacts that I believe are possible for folks like me.
At 70 years of age, I am on the downslope of my flight on the travels aboard Spaceship Earth. But I am far from throwing in the proverbial towel as presciently recommended in the Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams.
Nine years ago I was fortunate enough to miraculously survive a horrific battle with cancer thanks to a cadre of amazing doctors and cancer researchers. While that travail cut short my working career, it put me on a road less traveled that led to my reinvention as an independent, unaffiliated Citizen Scientist in the domain of Digital Humanities. The focus of my research is in the development of a Ground Truth Storage format to facilitate text- and data-mining of digitized serial publications, more precisely, for print era magazines and newspapers. And had everything gone according to plan, I was making decent steady progress in that regard.
Then in July of 2020, everything came to a crashing halt when a fall at home led to my suffering a severe spinal cord injury which very nearly ended my life. Seven days in ICU, two months of intensive daily inpatient therapy, followed by a year plus of at-home rehab, and I am making slow but steady progress getting back to work on my research and reconnecting with my research community colleagues. My ability to restart my research activities is due in large part to the amazing accessibility/assistive features built into today’s computer operating systems and communication devices.
With serious limitations in the use of my hands, writing code is by far the most challenging post-accident requirement for me to return to pursuit of my research development. Coding assistance is one of the most exciting aspects of the application of #AI/#ML technologies that will positively impact the quality of life for folks like me whose minds are willing but our bodies are not.
I know that this self-introductory post is TL;DR, but it is my sincere effort to start a conversation that may result in development of a sub-community of Copilot developers and users interested in the use of this technology to positively impact the lives of disabled developers and the Citizen Science, Digital Humanities, and Open Source projects to which we aspire to contribute.
For my part, I know I can bring leadership members of the @SciStarter and @TimeMachineEU programs to the table to explore kick-starting a pilot project to support the exploration of Copilot as an enabler for disabled developers to participate in Citizen Science, Digital Humanities, and Open Source projects. I am also fairly confident that, with this core group of interested parties, we can bring in organizational interest from the Library of Congress’ @LC_Labs, British Library’s @BL_Labs, FAU’s Pattern Recognition Lab, Salford’s @PRimaLab, the @Transkribus consortium, and other organizations to support and participate in this agenda.
If you individually or organizationally are a Kindred Spirit to this idea and want to be involved or supportive of seeing Copilot help change the lives of disabled developers, please reach out in reply to this post or via DM so we might work together to make it happen.
Regardless of whether this idea goes any further than this initial post, I thank GitHub and the Copilot developers for doing what you are doing to create what will surely be the means to enhance and extend the abilities of all developer/coders regardless of their physical or knowledge challenges. I know Copilot is going to be a BIG help to me starting this week and going forward to a brighter day ahead.
Happy Healthy Vibes from Colorado,
— Jim Salmons —
Jim Salmons is a seventy-one year old post-cancer Digital Humanities Citizen Scientist. His primary research is focused on the development of a Ground Truth Storage format providing an integrated complex document structure and content depiction model for the study of digitized collections of print era magazines and newspapers. A July 2020 fall at home resulted in a severe spinal cord injury that has dramatically compromised his manual dexterity and mobility.
Jim was fortunate to be provided access to the GitHub Copilot Technology Early Access Community during his initial efforts to get back to work on the Python-based tool development activities of his primary research interest. Upon experiencing the dramatic positive impact of GitHub Copilot on his own development productivity, he became passionately interested in designing a research and support program to investigate and document the use of this innovative programming assistive technology for use by disabled developers.
