Migrate from front end development to backend...
Learn to live in the command line.
Take car of your soul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_RL_Q8CR78
From 2015, a blind engineer uses emacspeak to write C++.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-blind-google-engineer-wr...
I have read some HN comments in the past from blind engineers. Not sure if they are frontend.
Hope to see some cool suggestions, tools, and software posted in this thread!
Gradually have it turned off for longer periods without turning it on to see what's happening until you can do it without seeing it at all.
I'm not sure where you're based, but I've heard of Usher's Syndrome after hearing a talk from someone named Molly Watt, who also has Usher's Syndrome. It might be worth dropping her a line, as in her line of work she might be able to either give some advice, or point you towards someone in your situation that can help.
Google: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-blind-google-engineer-wr...
Visual Studio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc
Forzano (Amazon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57P_dCEPtRw, https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/blind-since-b...
Wishing you the best, J
They have really good resources and training around accessibility for the web, and some of the software they develop[2] is incorporated into Google Lighthouse.
Their guides and videos might help you get a sense for how other people use alternative access methods to interface with the web.
With both the skills to write software and a deeper understanding of the use cases you'll be well-positioned to help improve things for a lot of people - I'm sure it could be tough at times, but stick with it, and best of luck to you.
[1] - https://www.deque.com/services/accessibility-empathy-lab/
I have also written some plugins for using Vim (text editing) and Weechat (IRC chat) with speech synthesis:
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/master/lib/vim/vim...
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/master/.weechat/py...
And I have a script for Sway (a tiling window manager) which also gives you audible cues:
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/master/bin/swaytal...
All of this is somewhat incomplete, but it's a good starting point if you want to get used to them and work on improvements while you're still sighted. Good luck, and let me know if I can be of service.
BTW, I don't know if asking the internet for advice on this subject is a good idea. I imagine it's gonna be mostly speculation. I'd seek out other people that have firsthand experience (i.e. they went blind) and ask what they did and how they're doing...
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/bh0vm0/emacspeak_how...
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-progr...
and also contact some individual programmers with visual impairments.
I don't have particular expertise in this area but I remember meeting a completely blind software developer in 1995 or 1996 (when presumably the tools available were much more limited!). He said that he had successfully pursued this career for a number of years already at that time. However, I think the things he was working with would be things that you'd consider more to be backend engineering.
I also know a computer scientist who is blind and who has continued researching, publishing, and teaching, but as he works in theory, his work might also feel more backend-like.
> - Besides a screen reader, what are some of the best tools for building software with limited vision?
If you decide to learn Braille well, Braille terminals are still a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display
(You might have seen one used in the movie Sneakers!)
Some fluent Braille readers can use these terminals at very high speeds (although people who use screen readers also often get used to using their screen readers at extremely high speeds).
> - Are there blind frontend engineers?
I know you might not want to pigeonhole yourself and work specifically on disability-related projects, but a lot of companies are trying to ensure accessibility of their web sites and so are interested in having developers with specific disabilities to help make sure that that works out properly. I believe there are consultancies of people with specific impairments who develop (and test) UI for accessibility to users with similar disabilities.
Have you considered that maybe you don't want to be doing software engineering and with this precious remaining time would rather prepare for something entirely different? Not sure what your financial situation will be or if you live somewhere with sufficient social support, but if you're going to be blind for life (and you're very young), optimizing for employment (ie. "I'm already a software engineer, may as well commit to that") might not be the best way to live a full and fulfilling life.
> This code turned out to be a lot more complicated than I anticipated. The patch ended up adding a hundred lines of Arc. A hundred lines of Arc! Do you have any idea how many lines of Arc that is? I just looked through the history and the last commit that added that many lines of code was over two years ago when we got Arc to compile to JS. [1]
Clojure is quite well documented, and you can do full stack development with it (clojurescript). Intellij has good support for it, and it stores the state of code as an ast. I think there are addons for dealing with ast (search/replace) as well.
Also, you might want to "settle down" wrt your dev setup (tech, tools), since jumping from project to project, tool to tool won't be that easy. Maybe pick a self contained environment you can learn inside out (smalltalk, tools.deps).
Emacs seems to check all these points, but it's still visual oriented. Maybe build one yourself.
Courts in the USA are by and large accommodating thanks to the ADA.
Your technical background, with the loss of vision, with a legal degree, and I think you’d have a very long, lucrative, and fulfilling career.
[1]https://www.vincit.fi/en/software-development-450-words-per-...
I wish you the best of luck.
Most of the folks I've worked with are either backend engineers or working on frontend accessibility-related features. (Frontend engineering doesn't just include design for sighted users!)
While I don't have any experience myself, I'd recommend looking at braille displays in addition to screen readers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display
There may be particular things blind people excel at and do very well with. Use a list of those things as your starting point.
Perhaps software engineering is on that list, but I'd make sure.
I'm fairly certain I'm going to get ARMD because of genetics and family history, and won't have anyone to care for me. It's going to suck.
As my late grandfather said: Getting old isn't for wimps, but the alternative is worse.
https://www.xataka.com/otros/soy-ciego-nacimiento-asi-mi-tra...
He often talks at conferences about his situation and setup, so if you understand spanish you might be able to find quite a lot on this. Also it might be worth a shot contacting him for more info.
Best of luck with your new adventure.
I work for Red Hat, we have a successful executive named Chad E. Foster (https://chadefoster.com/), he has some recorded talks that outline some of the pitfalls he's encountered and the ways he found around them. Maybe his advice can be of use. (You might even consider reaching out. He seems a very approachable guy.)
I worked closely with another person who went blind. He relied on big monitors and monitor settings to help him.
Good luck, we'll all be rooting for you.
I don't have the answers to those questions but I did want to drop a line of encouragement and say this; your hard work up until now will not be wasted, whatever you end up doing. You can — and will — find ways to continue to stretch and apply your engineering mind, and most likely in ways that you can't predict right now.
Later on, you will look back and find that nobody would be better placed for whatever you're doing at that moment than you.
Finally (and I'm not saying this to deter you from continuing down the SE route, there are plenty of examples online of partially-sighted or blind SEs doing very well and you're attitude is indicative that you should experience no different), but everyone of us has so much more to give to this world than just our skillset, and you don't need a qualification for the things that truly matter in life.
Keep going and I echo the other commenter, take car of your soul, it's important.
- finding businesses who would benefit from employing a blind SE. I have no idea who, but probably companies who care a lot about accessibility
- you could become a tech project manager or another career that is tangential to SE. I know there will be obstacles to overcome, but maybe not as many as in SE, idk.
All too often we get stuck in the tools and not the thing we are trying to do. I remember a quite about photography (sorry for a story about vision): “I wanted to become a photographer so I took a class. We learned all sorts of things shutter speeds, aperture, film types, etc. But of all the things we learned, we never learned where to point the damned camera!” The computer science take on this quote is “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." I try to keep these in mind when I feel myself drifting towards the tools side of things and come back to what’s important.
As also noted, there’s never been a better time for accessibility than now. It’s an opportunity to advance that area and become an expert.
i hope the link can help you trials of new medications
My employer is the U.S. federal government and I would highly recommend considering looking at government (or contractor) jobs: we take very seriously the need to serve ALL of the public and front-end engineers who deeply understand and value accessibility are extremely valuable contributors since they can provide the subjective guidance which no level of automated tool or guideline can provide.
The GSA’s 18F has a great guide to building accessible websites:
https://accessibility.18f.gov/
(The BBC guide is also good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/)
I’d treat that as both an area to learn the tools for personal reasons - e.g. get comfortable with the accessibility tools in your favorite operating system - and as an area to learn more. There’s a pretty good story for web accessibility these days but a lot of people do not make much use of it and someone who can make an entire team more efficient has a somewhat uncommon selling point.
Best of luck!
I do know one reason why a blind front-end developer can be very valuable for a company: there are a lot of blind people out there, and they need to be able to use the web too. For this reason, a lot of companies care a lot about accessibility, and so do a lot of developers. But despite those best efforts, those developers keep dropping the ball without even noticing, because they don't experience it. As a blind developer, you will notice when something your team has built, doesn't work for blind people. This can be very valuable in the right situation.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Hope this helps and best of luck!
I haven’t moved to non visual coding yet. Instead I have optimized for the vision I have left. I have a very bright monitor, very bright lights in my office (overhead) and have learned to make a place for everything, and always put things back in their place.
Never underestimate the amount of time you can lose from looking for something that is only slightly out of place. Be it a pen, your glasses, or a USB stick.
So long as you are able, don’t disclose your impairment to anyone in an employment situation during the interviewing or new hire phase. Discrimination is awful and frustrating and illegal, but it is still the norm and it’s easiest to just avoid it if you can.
I'm sipping a decent morning coffee, I'm in Japan, whereas my home is San Francisco. I've been here for ~5 weeks, trying to escape the coronavirus disaster that is unfolding in the US, and trying to enjoy spring in Japan as well. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford a few weeks abroad without too many money worries.
Work is a disaster. The last ~4 years of my life have been both unlucky (e.g. recently I was offered a highly lucrative executive job in SF, only to see the CEO change his mind on the whole operation - not on me specifically - at the last moment) and badly handled by me.
My professional career essentially came to a halt and so far didn't recover. I still keep my cool, but I am a bit worried about what's going to happen in the future, especially given the current situation with the virus.
And now, in all of this, few minutes ago I've read "I'm going blind, how to prepare", and my perspective suddenly changed. It's as if something clicked, and I can now "see" the world as it is.
I'm incredibly lucky. Most of us here are incredibly lucky. Zach, you probably didn't mean it, but today you somehow triggered a very positive reaction in me. I wanted to let you know.
I also wish you best of luck with your condition, and hope that you will manage to have a great life despite a deteriorating health.
Some approaches to consider: Algo trading , creating and selling off products, creating stuff for startups for a stake in the profits. Right now, you may want to consider all options rather than regretting not doing so later.
I have seen two blind persons in my work life: one is a guru with emacs and gnome programming and today runs his own Python training and also sells an accounting package ( called GNU Khata). He was born blind.
Another is an architect and advisor at a consulting company. He lost his vision to an accident. He was fortunate to have already built up capital, and used that as a buffer to take a year off to learn how to cope and to continue.
Until I’d met them both, I’d thought that suicide might be the only feasible approach were I to go blind. I am now completely positive about living even after blindness, but I do understand the benefits of having a capital base and being financially independent.
All the best.
1. Emacs and Emacsspeak in particular. Emacs is the richest text-based user experience out there; imagine if all Terminal apps were configurable and scriptable under the same coherent framework. This is why Emacsspeak is an incredibly valuable asset that I would lean heavily on in the event of vision loss.
2. I would invest heavily in making sure that I have a very trivial way to deploy Chrome user extensions or similar such that I could write my own screen readers, document explorers, etc. tailored to my own liking. The only thing close to Emacs is the DOM with JavaScript as it’s Elisp. A lot of people gripe about the web, but the fact that almost all my apps come under the same pliable DOM means I can manipulate without vision almost everything. See e.g. vimperator.
These two things mean that you could do most of your job as-is, with assistance from colleagues.
As you’re a full stack developer, you’ll find point 2 easy. And point 1 is hard but a worthy investment. Emacs is older than the web and will probably outlive it.
I would probably also look at using tree sitter to make screenreading code more efficient at the AST level, because code is parsed linearly but we read it with random access.
I’d start working with my screen turned off or covered with paper if I knew ahead of time, that way I could start training. Honestly, computing-wise I wouldn’t be that worried about losing my vision. It’s the rest of life that’s harder.
Best of luck to you! Drop me a PM if you’d like some pointers on my two bullet points.
Perhaps back-end work is easier without vision, in particular databases.
I hope you get to travel a bit whilst you can still see - catch some beautiful memories (nature) while you can... that's what I would do. All the best!
Many employers offer a combination of short-term and long-term disability that will provide income (in some cases until you retire) in the event that you can no longer work.
I would also echo the comment made regarding government positions. There are quite a few compelling coding jobs in the public sector and the government seems to take their responsibilities with regards to workplace needs quite seriously.
You said you have hearing loss. Is it bad enough to make speech output useless? If so you would need to learn braille.
I would never try front end design as I have no idea what it should look like, but you may still be able to do it if you have an image in your head of what you are trying to achieve. You would just have to ask someone to check it.
Python is not a problem with screen readers, contrary to what someone else said. The screen reader can be set to report the indentation level. In fact I can't think of any text based language that wouldn't be usable with a screen reader. Tools are a different story. Some work and some don't.
Feel free to contact me if you would like any more information, weather it's about computers or not. rob at mur.org.uk
The OCR is powered by PixLab[1] and is damn good. The application homepage is https://i2s.symisc.net. If you are interested in trying the Vision Impaired version, let me know via chm at symisc dot net.
https://lobste.rs/s/qi5dmk/how_does_your_current_dev_workflo...
I know you may not want to have your disability define your career, but if working to help others that have the same affliction appeals to you, let me know. I’m not there any more, but still have connections I could reach out to for you.
The experience of working with him was exciting and as challenging as it was enlightening, as I think I learnt a bit more about myself and all the things around me I took for granted.
Anyway, here are some of my observations
1. Navigating a busy open-layout office is possible, but hard. My colleague was really great at doing so without using his stick.
2. Often it is the sighted who would hesitate at water-cooler chat for fear of offending or saying something untoward, but the colleague took the initiative to put them at ease, so it was always fun. No one could slip out unnoticed by him. The puns were mortifyingly entertaining, which I think only a blind person can make.
3. The written form of communication goes great lengths in bridging the communication gap (This is applicable in general as well)
4. ASCII diagrams and SVGs are great ways of making content such as flow charts and architecture diagrams accessible. Tools such as PlantUML, dotviz, mermaidjs are helpful.
5. Statically typed languages make it much easier to work within a screen-reader environment. We were working with Go, and he had much better success with it than a language that was used in other parts of the company.
6. Emacs seems to have a lot of tooling to facilitate the use of screen-readers.
7. Open-office chatter (in-person and chat) can become overwhelming very quickly, so setting expectations ahead on how you'd plan to work helps your teammates.
8. Monitoring is hard (in a server-side environment) as the notion of "taking a look" at the graphs doesn't translate for someone who is not sighted. I wish there were better ways that are more accessible.
Losing sight is perhaps one of the most terrifying prospects anyone can face. However, seeing (see what I did there) my colleague also gives me hope that all is not futile. It is possible to live a fulfilled life. It is possible to have a successful career as a software developer. Being blind does not have to mean disabled but merely differently-abled.
I wish you the best of luck.
If your balance issues are manageable, perhaps start joining blind social or support groups in your area. Potentially you could help them with their technical issues, since maybe you would learn a lot by helping others, and there are always people that really need help with tech!
And a supremely left-field idea: Perhaps investigate changing states or countries if you find that your local systems are not helping you? Some places have better infrastructure for the blind or sight impaired - do you see pedestrian markings locally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving or are they dangerous: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/death-tactile-paving-... also it is rumoured that some wealthy countries with socialised health may help you more?
Good luck. PS: I’m not sight impaired.
Alter Aeon is a text-based online roleplaying game (a MUD). I believe that over half of their players are vision-impaired. Perhaps they could be a source of information as well as community.
And did you read majority of articles that cite this article? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Gene...
I can't tell you how many hours I wasted chasing parse errors in PHP code because I literally couldn't see the difference between a "." and "," anymore.
My solution ended up being transplant surgery to replace one of my corneas, which has largely restored vision in one eye. I still use a lot of large fonts, high contrast, etc, but I'm able to manage much easier on a day to day basis.
I had a wonderfully supportive employer, so when it was clear to me that unless something changed dramatically (i.e. surgery) I would no longer be able to do my current job we sat down (at my instigation) and discussed what this might look like in terms of both what sort of role I could continue to do, and what I wanted to do (not always the same thing, and the latter is important).
My manager at the time said something which has stuck with me. He said that (paraphrasing) the thing he really valued was the care, thought and attention I paid to the work I did. And that the way that had been expressed was through fingers on keyboard writing code. We just needed to find a way of capturing that thought and turning it into code a different way.
We never fully made the transition into a completely different role because my surgery meant I was able to continue (after 20 years I still love coding and didn't want to entirely give that up). But for me, that was going to mean spending more time with junior developers, coaching, mentoring, etc. I didn't want to manage people, so moving up the chain into management wasn't an option for me. But Project Management, might be an option that allows you to leverage some technical skills, but be less dependent on your vision.
So, if your employer is amenable, don't try to do this alone. See what changes can be made to accommodate your needs. Having a degenerative condition where you're not going blind overnight is an advantage, because it means you can work with your employer to adapt your role over time to suit you.
https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/17x/presentations/accid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvrQPdt1X30&feature=youtu.be
We hired another blind developer who occasionally does some frontend work. If any sort of visual layout is involved, that obviously needs review, but he's able to add on to existing pages. He's also trying selenium for testing the visual layout.
It will probably be more of a challenge for you since you're having to learn to deal with lack of vision as an adult rather than having been blind since a young age. In your position I'd seek out advice specifically from others who have gone through the same process.
I’m not sure how severe your hearing loss is but if podcasts are your style check out https://drunkenux.com/. The hosts have done a lot of episodes speaking from their backgrounds building education sites, where accessibility in development is required (also it’s funny and who doesn’t need a little levity).
More than anything, experiment with the suggestions here, different input methods, track your progress, Etc. For managing the anxiety especially, dedicating time weekly to work on your system can lead to some of the biggest rewards and occasionally, key insights.
Carpe Diem and keep us posted as you find the hacks that work for you!
If you haven't yet, get in contact with the local Braille Institute so they can help you.
An interesting thing about humans is that we get used to whatever life brings us. Problems that seemed impossible to accept and deal with when you are facing them will suddenly be very manageable once you have to deal with them directly.
Be strong and good luck!
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but front ends need to be usable by blind users so I would imagine a blind front end developer would be extremely useful in that case, at a minimum.
It can be tough some times being a younger person in the industry, but know that there is no reason anyone here should be rolling their eyes at this. I was working full time in software development at 17 myself.
> What kinds of software engineering lend themselves to someone with limited vision? Backend only?
There is a growing market for front end web accessibility. Especially for software that meets the needs of both sighted and non-sighted individuals. Not only do I think there is a place for non-sighted individuals in front end software development if that's something you are interested in, but I think it's vital to have these individuals having a role in developing front end software.
> Does your company employ blind engineers? How well does it work? What kind of engineer are they?
We do not currently employ any blind engineers, though we would be very happy to hire one. We have customers that require visual accessibility compliance and right now this compliance is largely being implemented by sighted people. I would consider this a non ideal situation.
With this said, I also don't want it to be felt like you have to specialize in your own disability either. I have known some really badass back end engineers that are entirely blind. With the right tools and some experience, they are able to consume content at the same speed as any sighted person. Hell, in some cases... significantly faster.
> I'm really trying to get ahead of this thing
I think this speaks for your character. It's easy to get caught up in denial and to hold out until the very last moment.
I can't personally speak to how it feels to deal with going blind, so I'll let those with much more experience in this area speak to that. One thing I can say though, is to start using the available tools now and full time, even if you don't require them yet. By the time you find yourself depending on them, you will already be accustomed to using them.
I'd be happy to speak about my own personal struggles with disability (I am rapidly becoming deaf), but honestly... I'll spare you that unless you actually want me to. It's obviously a very different experience and I don't want it to feel like I am diminishing the significance of what you are going through. :)
> Since my diagnosis I've slowly developed a crippling anxiety centered around a feeling that I need to figure out the rest of my life before it's too late.
This is a very reasonable and understandable reaction to what you are dealing with.
1. Emacspeak, a text-to-speech system developed by T.V. Raman (a developer at Google) who was blind since childhood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacspeak & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._V._Raman
2. How a completely blind dev/manager uses Emacs daily (talk at a recent Emacsconf) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8dBvssptP0 & https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-pro...
3. Google has an app called "Lookout" which they suggest using while wearing your phone attached to a lanyard around your neck, that uses ML (not fully perfect) to identify objects in front of you.
To the extent that you stay within some homogeneous environment and avoid fragmentation in your tools, you might be able to get good text-to-speech. (The quality of AI solutions will hopefully continue improving drastically over the next few years)
Also, probably experiment with and invest into one of the software ecosystems (Google/Apple/Amazon/etc) so they get comfortable with understanding your voice.
You probably want to avoid the mouse, and get comfortable with a fully keyboard based workflow. To that end, check out browsers like Qute and Next.
----
Beyond software and tools, would you want to relocate to some place where there is dependable public transport (or cab service)? Once you move, it might take a while to get familiar with the surroundings.
Good luck, and hope you manage to stay ahead of the curve. I'm sure finding community would help. Try reaching out to some of the people mentioned in this and other comments -- I'm sure they would love to help.
----
PS, HN'ers: It would be great to find a few interviews with accessibility-oriented guidance on "Usesthis". To that end, I've opened a Github issue with this request. Feel free to comment there and add suggestions of people to interview, or other recommendations https://github.com/waferbaby/usesthis/issues/97
My immediate advice to you as an engineer is to remember that your most powerful and valuable tool is your mind. The ability to solve software engineering problems starts with the cognitive aspects of your knowledge, intuition, experience and who you are. An engineer's cognitive ability to solve problems and guide outcomes is the most valuable thing that we bring to any project we join or undertake.
Look for a team or project that values critical thinking to drive execution over just banging out code. Don't sweat being hands on in the long run, i.e. writing code and pushing features. Make the most of the work you're doing now to start honing your skills to be able to drive things like architecture, implementation choices, etc. based on experience, lessons learned, people you enjoy working with etc.
Also, keep in mind that you have a unique albeit unfortunate set of circumstances that can bring a perspective as you're going through this to what works and doesn't for others in similar circumstances that want to have careers in software technology. Be open to an awareness for areas where you can help solve problems and be involved in building solutions for others in a similar circumstance as you're in. Look for ways to develop products, tools, advisory groups, training, etc. that can help engineers with similar disabilities.
I wish you the best and again, I'm very sorry you're facing this. I hope that my thoughts help in some way.
First, in college I knew a guy with RP. He was hands-down the most brilliant coder I knew at the time. Aside from blowing up the screen (screenreaders did not yet exist), he ended up simply memorizing his code. He held the whole thing in his head.
I also knew -- internet-only -- a woman with the more severe form of Usher's (born deaf, go blind) -- who was quite techy even in the early 1990s and now works doing tech stuff for libraries, last I checked. She, also, had it going on.
In short, I can tell you this: other people have done it, so you also have a shot at it.
Determined to finish his degree he developed the ability to listed to audiobooks ludicrously fast, way faster than reading, and it opened up a whole new world to him that was previously hidden.
Chumhumming around today I'm pretty sure the man's name is Isaac Lidsky. He's done TED talks and been interviewed on podcasts, written blogs posts, etc.
Go check him out and even try and contact him.
Good luck. I reckon you'll be strong enough, prepared enough, and with a little help from lots of people be able to thrive.
I do want to say one thing, though: It absolutely sucks at first but you'll adapt. One day at a time.
https://www.vincit.fi/en/software-development-450-words-per-...
One of the interesting things here is the mention of web frontend frameworks which may make the frontend work possible even without seeing the frontend.
Hope you'll get through the life change. Take care.
I'm the blind dev who refactored a huge chunk of the Rust compiler [0]. I'm at roughly 800 words a minute with a synth, with the proven ability to top out at 1219. 800 or so is the norm among programmers. In order to get it we normally end up using older synths which sound way less natural because modern synthesis techniques can't go that fast. There's a trade-off between natural sounding and 500+ words a minute, and the market now strongly prefers the former because hardware can now support i.e. concatenative synthesis.
You will need to file everything into a phonetically distinct structure for efficient navigation through your folder hierarchy. Nested directories in this case is not a bad idea.
I have seen this type of structure used very efficiently with a screen reader and Outlook in person.
I would look into positions at Microsoft. Since the current CEO Satya Nadella took over, there has been a big push to improve the accessibility of Microsoft products, and I know that there are quite a few blind developers working there.
Some excerpts:
There were the books, but I had to ask my friends the titles of them. I remembered a sentence from Rudolf Steiner, in his books on anthroposo phy, which was the name he gave to his theosophy. He said that when some thing ends, we must think that something begins. His advice is salutary, but the execution is difficult, for we only know what we have lost, not what we will gain. We have a very precise image-an image at times shameless-of what we have lost, but we are ignorant ofwhat may follow or replace it.
I made a decision. I said to myself: since I have lost the beloved world of appearances, I must create something else. At the time I was a professor of English at the university. What could I do to teach that almost infinite lit erature, that literature which exceeds the life of a man, and even generations of men? What could I do in four Argentine months of national holidays and strikes? I did what I could to teach the love of that literature, and I refrained as much as possible from dates and names.
1. JAWS screen reader. They all say this is the best 2. Programmable keys, such as https://xkeys.com/xk16.html 3. ABBY Finereader - to digitize images so they can be read by JAWS. 4. Large specialized monitors (I forget which model) that could help.
And yes, like someone already mentioned, you will be listening to your screen reader at lightning speed.
All the best!
> "I'm a 24 y/o full stack engineer (I know some of you are rolling your eyes right now..."
As a 35 year old full stack engineering manager I can say that anybody rolling their eyes at that statement needs to check themselves. Lately I've been getting smoked by a 21 year old software dev. She's constantly teaching me things and improving my code. Frameworks and technologies evolve so fast that age is a very poor metric of practical knowledge.
Spend time now to learn about accessibility features on different systems, iPhone, android, your PC. Look into how to navigate into them. Look up screen readers as you may use them to have them read content from the web for you. Be an advocate for accessibility features and their standardization as this is often forgotten with developers.
I've posted a link below to a video of my friend, if you'd like to reach out to him, PM me. It's a definitely challenging time. I've known him since before and after going blind so he may give some advice from his experience.
Also reach out to other blind communities now to hear perspectives from many other people if you can. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2108067789479904
I have zero experience in this area, and don't actually know any blind engineers, but I have two thoughts: 1. A lot of frontend development isn't necessarily tied to the UI itself. especially in more complicated apps, where a lot of the logic is in the frontend. 2. I think a blind developer has an advantage when it comes to building websites that are usable by other visually impaired people. Maybe consider looking into a11y development, if that interests you.
>Are there blind frontend engineers?
I don't think so. It's not that you can't do frontend at all, just that you can't do it completely. Something like copying the layout from a visual mockup doesn't really work unless someone describes the mockup to you, and even then it might not be 100 % correct, though i'd say your experience as a sighted frontend developer would definitely help there. Thankfully (in this case anyway) SPA's tend to be so complex these days that there is plenty of work to do without touching the actual layout. My frontend work has consisted mostly of refactoring and writing various integrations. Occasionally I've written some complete features where I've laid out a rough version of the UI and someone sighted in the team has finished it off for me. This strategy has worked out relatively well for me in the past. However I'd say doing solo frontend work is sadly a no-go.
> What kinds of software engineering lend themselves to someone with limited vision? Backend only?
Basically anything non-visual works out. Backend, yes, but also the business logic of SPA apps as well as devops work.
> Besides a screen reader, what are some of the best tools for building software with limited vision?
- A good editor which is accessible and has an extensive set of keyboard shortcuts. Visual Studio Code and Eclipse are the two editors that I use in my day to day work.
- Terminal. It's often much quicker to do things like text manipulation, version control and devops administration there, since you don't have to waste so much time going through information that you don't need. I've found git gui's to be particularly useless. Web browsers and editors/ide's are basically the only gui tools that I use.
Feel free to hit me up if I could be of any help.
Especially considering your age, I would really really urge you to do this. If you dont have anyone to go with you; just do it solo. I hope you consider my suggestion.
Contrary to your concerns, I think that being visually impaired and being a frontend developer will most likely open up opportunities rather than close them down.
They are (blind people) is very good in reading (listening) and also in speaking. I believe being a person who's easy to communicate is very importent in our industry and you will be a very good asset for your team.
You can email me if you'd like to hear more about that organization and maybe you can find something like that in your city as well.
fatiherikli@gmail.com
If you'll become totally blind (e.g. need to transition to a screen reader some day), I would advise you to leave the Mac platform. The built-in screen reader seems good at first, but falls down in complex work. Support for web browsing is suboptimal (Firefox is a no go) and the screen reader is only updated in the regular OS X release cycle. This means bugs will stick around a long time and it's totally unclear what the status of a bug is. Also, hackability of VoiceOver is limited. I find that a must for a tool that I am 100% reliant on.
I'm very sympathetic to Linux and run it in many places (Raspberry pi, home server, some stuff on VPSs), but I think Windows is a better accessible desktop experience now. Microsoft is trying tu push accessibility hard in most of their projects, this is often lacking in open source projects. Even if OS projects want to do a good job at accessibility, they usually miss the manpower of knowledge to do so. Especially given Docker and WSL (Windows subsystem for Linux), it is easy to run Linux-based development workloads on a Windows box.
My editor of choice these days is VS Code. That team is also very active on the accessibility of their editor. I use the free and open source NVDA screen reader. If something in NVDA is broken, I can at least look at their Github if any work is being done and if needs be throw in a few patches myself.
So, summing up I would say: find out a set of accessible tools to do your job, learn them before you get blind. Relying on vision until the very latest moment will give you an enormous productivity hit when the switch to 100% screen reader use comes (based on my experience training low vision and blind users in a previous job).
From what I've seen from the thread, others have already touched on some advantages of being a blind coder. You'll get a better mental model of your code out of necessity and depending on your team/employer you can be a more valuable team member because you also bring knowledge of software accessibility.
Hope this helps and good luck!
I can't imagine how you must be feeling, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.
Losing your sight is undoubtedly going to be one of the top five most important events in your life that will split everything into "before" and "after". Maybe it will be the most important. But it's still one of the top five. And right behind those five there will be another five that aren't quite as important, but still pretty close. Life has a way about it like that. (Some of us get dealt a better hand than others of course, but there are precious few for whom all top ten life events have smooth continuity and are all ecstatically positive).
I'm by no means telling you to take this lightly or not to prepare. It sounds like you're throwing yourself into this thing and doing the best you can to set yourself up for future success. That's great. But do take a long view on these things. You have fifty years ahead of you, and crazy shit will happen that will knock you off your horse maybe every decade or so.
It's not exactly that your anxiety is unwarranted, just that it's not telling you the whole story. This is (hopefully) going to be a long, long road. Aiming to have everything buttoned down at 24 (or 34, or 54) is not a reasonable expectation, blind or not.
Anyway, best of luck to you. If you want, I can put you in touch with a friend who's a developer with no sight. (Also happy to just talk to you for emotional support) My e-mail is in the profile.
- You can do frontend coding but certainly some assistance is needed for verifying the UI design. In any decent sized project, Personally I prefer my sighted colleague to handle look and feel (mainly the CSS part - though I know CSS) as I feel it's not a productive use of my time. It's always better to have a UI specialist anyway. FE devs have lot of other things to do especially when it is SPA based.
- Visual studio is good for development and debugging (for .net related languages at least). If you're on windows use autohotkey and setup shortcut keys and hotstrings to automate repetitive actions and text. For instance I prefer bash for using Git and have setup commands like 'gtcom' which expands to 'git add . (newline) git commit -am ''. I just have to type the comment then. Since you'd be working exclusively via keyboard it's important you do more with less hits to reduce strain on your wrists.
- Another important thing is to be able to find alternatives to UI tools your colleague are using but which could be highly inaccessible. Your programming skills and knowledge of system internals will help you with that. Do not settle with any tool which decreases your productivity considerably just because the team is using it, as you'll be judged based on your deliverable and not what tools you used.
I second what @kolanos has written. Programming is mostly a mental job (no pun intended) and everybody has to load a representation of the program in head before one can start fleshing out good code. PG has also written about it
My name is Isidor and I work on VS Code. Here's some hopefully useful advice:
* Join a screen reader mailing list and get to know the commnity: Program-L is the name of the general list and there is one list for Orca Screen Reader in case you are a Linux user
We try hard to make VS Code accessible so in case you decide to use VS Code:
* We have a gitter channel for accessibility which you can join https://gitter.im/Microsoft/vscode-a11y
* You can file issues and provide feedback as we try to improve continously https://github.com/microsoft/vscode
* Feel free to ping me @isidorn on either of those or on Twitter. And let me know if we can help more.
I wish you all the best
He is a SAP front end developer and uses normal laptop/ keyboard running Windows 10 with the addition of a screen reader called Jaws and an IPhone.
He lives close to work and lives on his own and walks to the office unassisted or uses uber further out ... the only issue is when there is a crowd and then we help him get to the canteen for example.
Obviously his audio acuity is way above the norm , his screen reader is probably set at over 300 words per minute.
Also another thing is we make sure the office layout remains the same as he has memorized the layout.
Please reach out to me on my website (https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/). I'd love to help.
However, I made a career shift a few years back due to my frustrations to inaccessible work tools, plus the company where I worked before is not that inclusive. I was disheartened, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the interesting world of digital accessibility opened up for me.
Just thinking.. maybe we can collaborate. From someone who was once sighted and became blind in a not so very young age, maybe we can collaborate. I am very willing to teach you the ropes. not being a software engineer of course. I believe you’re already an expert in that. But more of learning how to be comfortable with being blind while growing in the tech world.
Hope to chat with you soon.
https://ir.proqr.com/news-releases/news-release-details/proq...
ProQR is working on some -RNA based gene editing treatment for Usher's syndrome. Stay updated with its result,hope for best. They are recruiting new patients for trial if interested.
To this day, I'm amazed at how I could read code to him, and he's spot where the mistake was.
He coded with a screen reader. AFAIK, accessibility on Linux is pretty poor in general (I'm a fan of Linux, but I get the impression that's the truth), so you might want to consider well what you main OS will be.
Frontend might be tough -- but then, you're a perfect candidate to give feedback on website accessibility. There might be a career there if well-planned.
Thank you HN community.
- Others have mentioned touch typing. I was taught touch typing from an early age with the help of an educational support teacher. I can say that it's one of the most valuable skills I have and I'm really, really thankful to the special teachers that put in the effort with me over those years.
- I naturally gravitated to computers. I don't know what it was, but after seeing them in school, I had to have one! I never got into blind sports as a kid and couldn't play most regular sports at school, so my parents saw the opportunity of computers as something I could get into. Something else I'm really really grateful for (I've been incredibly, incredibly lucky). The rest is history.
- I'll stress again - if you love software engineering and computers, there is no reason at all that it can't be your profession.
- Tech-wise, I use a magnifier on my Android phone and I use the magnifier on OSX. On Windows, it's easier to sit close to the screen. If you're at the stage where you need screen magnification, I can say that I've found the OSX built-in magnifier along with the trackpad a stellar combination.
- I find it difficult to locate the mouse pointer, so I use an extension called Saka Keys in my browser, which allows me to follow links on pages without having to use the mouse. I primarily use the command line for things if I can, especially if I might be on another machine that I can't get as close to as I need (eg- helping a friend quickly). You get to a point with touch-typing where you can feel when you've made a typing mistake. You also get really good at memorizing stuff, as others have said.
- At work, don't be afraid to speak up about what you need. This is tough. For many years I was embarrassed about needing help. It's illogical, I know, but it happens. You want to be independent and prove that you can be 'just as capable' as everyone else. That's a double-edged sword though. People WILL forget you are vision-impaired. I had a friend that I've known for years ask me why I sit so close to the webcam a few days ago when we were video chatting. My webcam is on top of my monitor.
- Believe it or not, people WILL forget you are vision impaired or even blind. I have plenty of experience with the former. If you're fiercely independent, people won't think to offer you help. You need to get comfortable with asking for help when you need it. It's a long, long process and something I'm still not 100% on myself; it's difficult.
- A case in point: At work, for the longest time if somebody wanted to show me code or talk me through code, I'd feel too self-conscious and awkward to say anything as we sat there and they started talking through their code. You get really good at memorizing stuff and going off what they say along with the broad 'shape' of the code. It would only be when I needed something specific, like they were pointing to a value or something, where I would lean in and say "what was that value again?". Nowadays I'm much more comfortable in my own skin and I simply ask them to either enable the magnifier on their machine, show me code through a remote desktop connection or I go to my machine and I have them talk through the code while I'm sitting as close to the screen as I need to.
- On a more philosophical note about other people; you're going to come across some strange, but well-intentioned behaviour. I've had new co-workers ask me why I sit so close to the screen; people assume if you're wearing glasses that your vision must be fine. You'll get really annoyed at the "sitting close to screens ruins your eyes" crowd; yes, I've been told (with good intentions) that sitting so close might damage my eyes.
- The way I think of this is that people are generally good and I'm happy to answer questions from anyone, as long as they're made in good faith. Often I think that people are just uncomfortable with talking about disability. Being a kind of a taboo, they think it's better to 'not say anything', or they're afraid of being rude. I'd rather people ask and I've also become a lot better at being forthcoming about what I need.
- I'm still learning not to shy away from being a 'vision impaired' person. There are some YouTubers that I recommend which I find really inspiring and helpful in this regard:
- The Blind Life is a YouTuber (who if I recall correctly has RP) who focuses on assistive technology and gadgets.
- Molly Burke does some great stuff. She is also blind, RP I think.
- For disability more generally, I cannot recommend 'Special Books By Special Kids' highly enough. It will literally change the way that you react to people. It is utterly incredible.
I know it's very different when you haven't grown up with a disability and suddenly you have to deal with it vs it being "the way it's always been", but I hope some of this might help and I wish you all the best.
Definitely get a refreshable braille display, and learn it and set up your usual development workflow while you can still see.
I was amazed by how plug-and-play the braille display of my friend was. I plugged it via USB into my Ubuntu laptop with brltty and it worked out of the box: I could read my terminal output on it, and it even did the "blinking cursor" of where the cursor is on screen without any configuration.
Within 2 days, I learned basic Braille (we simulated learning it fully blindly, that is with closed eyes), could read things slowly, and also learned typing Braille with the 6-chord keys present on the refreshable braille display.
The blind friends that taught me can use both text-to-speech and the braille display at insane speeds.
They can give free-standing presentations, talking at high speed for an hour in perfectly sophisticated language while looking at the audience with the laptop apparently closed, when in fact they are just reading it off the braille device with a finger! Reading the braille device certainly has the chance to give you apparently-superhuman abilities. I found that so cool that I considered getting good at it already just for that purpose.
So, in summary:
1) I think you have very good chances of staying very proficient even if you go fully blind.
2) Play around with the tool set already now, and fix apparent pain points ahead of time that are easier to fix while still seeing.
A couple of folks mentioned this before - government contractors and federal agencies are required to be compliant with WCAG 2.0 A/AA standards.
I work at a financial institution in front end web. Accessibility is a big deal for us and I can tell you from experience that it is significant pain point for everyone (front end developers and testers). I would estimate that about 70% of the defects I work on are accessibility related. Also, my first job out of boot camp was doing only web accessibility work for a company that was trying to get their site WCAG compliant by 2017.
I toyed with the idea of starting my own accessibility consulting service, given how frustrating it can be. Its a challenge to get a UI to work visually consistent across browsers, operating systems, and devices. Add screen readers and focus placement to the mix, and the work becomes very annoying and time consuming.
I would speculate that accessibility becomes its own niche specialty, similar to how front end and back end work is often viewed as their own specialties. That's opportunity for you, my friend. I hope you can make the best of it. Good luck.
teamblind.com has forums on employers and hiring info.
Now, before I am tarred and feathered alive by pretty much everyone here in the HN community, please give me a moment to explain!
You see, most people spend their lives, their entire lives, searching for something which is outside of themselves, something which they believe will make them happy.
If they find it, it very well might, but unfortunately, it's only for relatively short periods of time, and then desire kicks in, and then there's a new set of goals, a new set of priorities. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing that grants happiness, even for many years -- will continue to do that for many more. Everything changes. (This is Buddhist philosophy incidentally).
What you're searching for, might very well be within -- rather than in the external world.
So how do you find this thing within?
Well, the first step is that you have to close down the external world.
You do this by closing your eyes (note that this is no different than blindness -- but it is less permanent), and relaxing, observing the mind and its flow of images.
If you see nothing but black... don't worry, I promise you, there's a ton of stuff in there -- more than you could ever imagine, more than 80 Zillion Internets' worth of data.
You'll see black for a fairly long time, maybe it will be months, maybe it will even be years, but eventually (with continued regular meditation) is that you'll start to see pinpricks of light, bits of sound, and you'll start to get intuitions and ideas from the higher mind, and you might see flashes of images. You might also drift off into lucid or semi-lucid dreams.
The trick is, don't try to use any force whatsoever to try do any of that, or those things will disappear. The harder you try, the less success you'll have (it's paradoxic in this respect), so a relaxed gentle focus is the key.
Becoming blind, at least the knowledge that that's going to happen to you -- could be compared to knowing that one day in the future you're going to be pushed into the ocean -- and you don't know how to swim.
Meditation, closing the eyes for at least 20 minutes a day, at a regular time every day, and relaxing, letting go, but maintaining a teensy bit of relaxed, gentle focus, gentle presence ("be here, now"), is not unlike learning to swim.
By the time you are pushed into the ocean... you want to be a champion swimmer, not someone who doesn't know how to swim.
Meditation then, is like learning how to swim, if the knowledge of future blindness is like being forced into an ocean...
Anyway, if you'd like, we can talk more about this. Shoot me an email at peter.d.sherman@gmail.com, and let's chat!
Oh, and here's a great song, by the way:
Billy Joel - In The Middle Of The Night (The River of Dreams) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9HFYNITCSs
OK, NOW the HN Community -- can tar (-xvf) and feather me! :-)
Learn braille. It's hard, resources are scarce, lots of people don't do it any more. This is why, with practice you can read braille off a computer braille display about as fast as sighted people read text. No screen reader can ever be intelligible that fast. Braille is also a much better way to read code syntax.
Thank you OP for asking and thank all of you helpful HN folks for sharing.
This was at a very large corporation, and he had been blind throughout his long career there. I believe the primary tools he used were JAWS and a device that would actually generate braille for text on screen. This was pretty incredible to me, as he would do most of his reading via this braille device.
I don't think you will be limited to a certain portion of the stack. In some ways, it may open up certain opportunities like working more on the Accessbility features for front-ends, which is a critical part of a front-end but often overlooked.
The shell is a pretty awesome place to be in if you asked me.
What's your timeline? Is this due to a generic issue like Retinitis pigmentosa, Choroideremia, Are you losing peripheral (10 degrees) or central (20/200)? (You can email me directly: faraz.y at iCloud
Different companies have various groups specifically for visually impaired. For example, at Aira.io (the entire engineering is working on software for blinds so they are very open) Ted Drake at Intuit (I personally know him. He is an amazing person and has so much connection specifically for visually impaired) Rio Akasaka at Google (His team is mostly focused on disability related projects)
Feel free to reach out to me on the email above..
I am also a coder in the professional world with Ushers. I have Type 2A. I have found some employers don't answer back if vision loss is mentioned. I try not to mention in during the interview process, but I made sure to discuss it before accepting an offer. You will likely have to quit driving at some point with Ushers. You'll still be able to stay active, but you may decide that you don't want to wield 2 tons of steel when you could easily miss a cyclist or jaywalking pedestrian. Driving is something you have to prepare for exception not the rule. Long term, you will likely have to look in cities with good public transportation or a walkable commute to work.
Besides learning to manipulate screen readers at a rapid pace. One skill to practice is reading braille. When I was receiving assistive training at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center, I met MANY instructors who had personal experience coding without much vision at all. While they themselves chose to transition to a career helping others of all skill levels improve their access to computers, they reassured me that I would be able to be productive in a work environment with the right tools. The reason why I encourage learning braille is that in place of or paired with a screen reader, you could use a braille display connected to your computer. This allows you to employ more rapid mobility parsing a document than you might with a screen reader. I have not gotten fast enough at reading braille that I have justified the expensive purchase of a braille display nor has the need arrived currently, however, that is part of my long term plans for dealing with the situation.
I highly suggest documenting your condition, its progression and your eventual disability, and getting your disability status recognized by the government as soon as you can. Navigating social services and the ADA is a skill in itself.
I was an animator and VFX artist and lost my vision suddenly in 2014 in the span of 30 minutes. I can no longer do that work, but started learning orientation & mobility white cane training from the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco and worked with the Dept. of Rehab to figure out life moving forwards. I received training in how to use a screen reader in iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. I learned about accessibility and dove into my background as a former QA engineer for animation software and my UX/UI experience from VFX and motion graphics and started learning development on my own time. Figured out Python using TextEdit and Terminal on my Mac, am in the process of learning JS, used Xcode to learn Swift, and I tend to code websites by hand, then share them with someone with sight to check out my CSS.
There are a lot of resources out there to help you adapt, but it will take baby steps. I highly recommend you learn braille as blind coders tend to use braille displays to quickly check through lines of code, although I primarily just use VoiceOver to listen to code line by line at a very fast speed. Braille will help you type a lot faster on your phone when you find a collaborative work experience to be inaccessible; we use Slack at work, but the desktop version is awful in terms of accessibility, so I only use the iOS app and can quickly and accurately type out very detailed messages using Apple's braille screen input.
It's all about adaptation and not being afraid to ask for help. Zoom and Google Meet work great, and Microsoft products have gotten much much better in terms of accessibility. Google Suite takes a lot of getting used to, but is doable and functional with enough practice.
If you are on Windows, Jaws and NVDA will be essential to learn, and I've heard that Visual Basic studio is very accessible. I haven't found Sublime, atom, or other text editors to be accessible on the Mac, but TextEdit and Xcode work just fine for all matter of filetypes, and of course emacsspeak and Vim work in Terminal or iTerm.
Check out the /r/Blind sub reddit, Applevis.com, and know that you'll have support. It's a huge transition but you'll make it through!
One little pointer: I know that edbrowse is developed by a blind programmer. It might take some time to adapt to, I guess.
1) educating other blind people in how to best utilize technology. She was always "legally blind", but has been 100% blind since the 90's so picking up technology has not been easy for her.
2) Accessibility QA. I know this probably could feel like a "step back" from being a developer, but I think the world (especially large companies who are becoming more and more dependent on their web presence) NEED more people who can help their teams understand the world from the perspective of a blind person. There are people in these positions obviously, but I was surprised to learn that most of them can see, so I don't put much faith in their ability to do justice to their jobs.
Finally, this sort of goes with #2 above, but I think there's opportunity and a market (think government subsidies) for people who want to build accessibility technology to make it easier for blind people to use technology. I think this probably should start from standardization. There are a lot of standards out there, but I think not enough.
PS. I think one of the best first steps will be to start to learn Braille. It likely will be easier to get started while you can still see.
Good luck !
Good luck !
1. Talon - Writing code by voice: https://www.blakewatson.com/journal/writing-and-coding-by-vo...
2. Gordon Gund - Blind later in life, conquered the market by speed listening. Quote: "Meanwhile his (acquired) blindness seemed to pour gasoline on the fire of his life, and he began to flourish in unexpected arenas." https://vimeo.com/296637627 (TED-style inspiring video, speed listening at ~8:45) https://n-magazine.com/blind-curing-blind/
3. CRISPR holds promise, never stop hoping for a cure. It's an amazing time to be alive, keep building amazing tech for the world, and perhaps even learn to program the big data tools used to find the solution. https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/methods/fullte... Unfortunately, can't link directly, but search for jobs at "Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard" with the title "Bioinformatics" or "Python" in the query.
http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/mahasit1.pdf
and/or listen to these talks
https://www.amaravati.org/series/the-collected-teachings-of-...
or anything from within this realm.
Personally I believe there is cure and way out of suffering only in meditation. But don't believe me - try it out.
Years down the road, if you need disability, it can be an arduous process and some of the doctor's visits and notes may be gone (health care companies come and go, have mergers, lose medical records due to old out of date systems, etc). If you need to show a history of decline over the years and don't have that all to submit, they will use it as a reason to reject you.
Getting disability in the US isn't easy- we joked it was "like trying to join the Jewish faith" because they reject everyone three times. Most of our patients would apply multiple times and end up having to hire attorneys to help them apply.
Keeping your records and building a trail of evidence will save you a lot of grief in the long run- even if you don't think you will need it- I would say start saving your documents just in case.
I'd interested to chat with you; you can drop me an email at (awwoof) (hotmail) (com) To be honest, I am not very up to date with assistive technologies. I think my plan is basically pick stuff up when I find it useful.
Also, on a lighter note, while it's impossible to tell what the future holds, in my experience many people retain good central vision into their 50s (although that might be a self selecting sample). RP is also a key research area (easy to administer things to the eyes) so it's always possible there will be a treatment at some point. Obviously you still have to prepare for the worst, but it's not necessarily an absolute. It's very que sera sera.
I know one frontend dev who is entirely blind from birth. He specializes on making websites accessible for blind people, and he's got a good reputation.
Regarding life itself... you can prepare in advance, I knew that I would become blind since I was 8 (I am 29), I still see a tiny bit, irrelevant to work or study but useful to figure light and some walls. I started to try to get around my room at night with no lights and I developed some confidence in myself during my teens. I also learned how to walk with the cane before I thought I needed it, it gives you extra security to know that you are prepared for the inevitable. And walking independently on your own is a requirement to have a guide dog.
I am an independent blind person now and, besides driving, I do everything I want. I play guitar, drums, go to the gym, hear the books I want with my screen reader and I've lived alone and cooked on my own for one year and I still have all my fingers. I know blind people that watch Netflix with audio descriptions, others that run marathons, play futsal...
My biggest challenge was when I wanted to change to software development and my first trial was a failure, and I lost hope of doing it. Since you have that part already, my suggestion is to be calm, believe that, like others, you are capable of overcoming the challenge and try to be yourself and believe in your problem solving capabilities, because in the en that is what life and blindness is about. And trying to prepare in advance and believing it is possible is a decisive first step, believe me!
Try to familiarize yourself with screen readers - NVDA on windows, Voiceover on all Apple things, Orca on Linux, talkback on Android. Know how to turn yours on and off and try to get familiarized with hearing things. There are other tools but I am not an expert on neither: braille displays, tactile printings, haptics also.
Also, try to have some mobility lessons (I don't know if it is the right English term), it is important to learn to feel and hear instead of seeing and to "activate" the capabilities you already have but never needed.
Sorry for the essay, but I wanted to assure you that you can live your own life and be independent despite being blind. If you need anything, diogopmelo@gmail.com
Good luck, and do reach out if you need anything; PVL is real and more people suffer from it than you'd realize at face value.
Thinking about it, this type communication might work in dark and soundless environments like when you dive in muddy water. Another target group is people in a coma. Just a suggestion. There are probably more use cases than people with Usher.
I've heard anecdotal evidence online that traditional health care system does FDA-approved gene edits for 1%ers costing somewhere in ballpark of ~$800,000.
I was wondering if you might have a LinkedIn profile so I can review your experience and skills. Maybe in the near future, we can use someone with your abilities in our company.
Do you have a LinkedIn page by any chance? I would like to review your resume and skills.
We will need some additional force in our company in the near future, and you might fit =)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!forum/blind-...
Blind since birth, writing code at Amazon since 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896236
Hope it can be useful, and alleviate a bit the anxiety you are feeling.
EMACS was originally written in TECO. Don't waste a lot of time reading about people remembering TECO today, you'll hear too much from all the people who talk only about LISP's parentheses and not about how perfect the people who love LISP find it. Better to spend your time seeing if you love TECO.
download it here https://github.com/blakemcbride/TECOC
read about it on wikipedia and check out the external links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TECO_(text_editor)
the guy who created it in the early 60's is still around http://www.opost.com/dlm/#teco
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