How do deaf or hearing impaired programmers perform in debugging java code?

Resumo

People who are deaf or hearing impaired (DHI) often struggle with low-paying jobs. Access to education can change their perspectives. Many jobs in the information technology industry are left unfilled due to the lack of skillful candidates. Our lab offers distance learning Java programming courses to the DHI. We wondered how good our java DHI graduates are in finding and fixing program errors and changing program logic. We asked 5 DHI and 5 nonDHI programmers with the same amount of experience and training to perform debugging related tasks. We performed task and situated analysis and found that DHI programmer performance inferior to those without the disability. We argue that a debugging tool based on a mode more kin to the DHI should mitigate the disparity.