C programming and voice over

Hi: My name is Fritz Sieker and I am a volunteer at Colorado State university. This semester I am working with a blind student for a class in which he need to program in C. The Mac with X-code seems like a good fit. However, I am a complete novice with voice over and I'm not sure how to help the student. Here is a typical use scenario that works for me and I'm trying to understand how this might function for him: I would typically have two terminal windows open (Not using an IDE). One contains the program being written. The second is used for compiling and testing. When switching between windows (or could be tabs of one terminal). It would be nice to have only the title read as confirmation of the active window/tab. However, voice over seems to want to read much more. It want to tell me that is is a terminal, when I last logged in, and the prompt. Even better would be if voice over were silent, but I could easily ask for the name of the current window/tab. It I use an editor like vim, I can set line numbering which is handy because error are reported by line number. When I simply navigate up/down using the arrow keys, the lines are read out as would expect. However, if I navigate directly to a line number (:line number on vim). Only the line number is read out. To get the whole line to be read, I need to go VO up/down. Is there any direct way to just get voice-over to read "current" line? This would also be useful when navigating to a different window/tab to be able to have the "current" line read. This way I can bounce back and forth between the editor and the compiler error messages. When I actually compile the program, it may produce many errors, often resulting from a single earlier error. It would be handy to be able to navigate to the beginning of the output and then be able to browse the error message one by one without having to hear the entire output. My mode is to fix the first error, then immediately re-compile the program, fixing things one at a time. I try to encourage students to write a little, then compile, fix and test. Many, however like to write lots of code all at once. At any rate, are there resources you could point me to that might help me and my student make progress? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Fritz Sieker