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Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#291

Post by kolanos »

hutzlibu wrote: post #228
kolanos wrote: post #47

You can definitely continue as a software engineer. I'm living proof. It won't be easy, especially at first. For a while it will feel like you're working twice as hard just to keep up with your sighted peers. But eventually, the better you get with your tools, you'll find you have some superpowers over your sighted peers. For example, as you get better with a screen reader, you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.7…

"When you abandon this two dimensional representation, your non-visual mental map suffers no spatial limits. " My visual representation is definitely 3 dimensional and I am not sure what you mean by abandoning it? I mean, code is statement blocks and controll flow elements. It is data and connections between them at execution. I can imagine, not being visual gives you much more focus and fewer distractions on the men…

> My visual representation is definitely 3 dimensional and I am not sure what you mean by abandoning it? I mean, code is statement blocks and controll flow elements. It is data and connections between them at execution. I can imagine, not being visual gives you much more focus and fewer distractions on the mental map, but is it really different?

An earlier commenter described it like a directed graph. I think that's a pretty good way to describe it. As for whether it is different, I don't know how others think. But one thing I do know is that this is how my mind worked for non-analytical thought before I went blind and still does. I'm just more aware of it now that I don't visualize as much. I only really visualize things these days as a way to communicate ideas with sighted engineers.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#292

Post by neltnerb »

WalterBright wrote: post #280
avip wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any modestly "modern" elevator would have Braille indicators. And many also announce floors same way public transit does.

I've never been in an elevator that announced the floors with anything better than a ping. This is despite elevators being controlled by single board computers since around 1980. The buttons have had braille on them for a long time.

I haven't seen taking ones a ton, outside of hotels and fairly new conference centers and the like.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#293

Post by vharish »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #3

Please watch this video on the i3 desktop environment. The windows are managed and can be controlled by keystrokes. 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.

I would like to second this. Any tiling window manager could be of great help.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#294

Post by thepratt »

I don't have information to share on where to look, but some positions to consider relate to a11y. I've met and worked with some consultants in the past that their entire position was dedicated to making websites and apps more accessible - audits and on-going. He also did training for teams to bring them up on best-practice so the dev teams can do this proactively.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#295

Post by 1337shadow »

bad_user wrote: post #285
1337shadow wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak 3 languages on Dvorak-alt-intl layout which I have optimized for coding: https://blog.yourlabs.org/posts/2017-12-22-dvorak-intl-code-... Dvorak fixed my RSI problems, it is not possible that Qwerty have the same physical impact than Dvorak because physically a Qwerty typer has to "walk" a lot more distance with their fingers to type the same thing than a Dvorak typer that has all voyels on the home row. You c…

> " I can still touch type with Qwerty, but my hands hurt after 5 minutes. " That's not a good metric. In your case, you might be right, but for the general public it's like when picking up any new exercise or sport, like running or biking or anything really, when untrained you end up for the first few days with sore ligaments, joints and muscles. You get used to it. My hands never hurt, even though I love writing lo…

Indeed it's just my personal experience, but there's a fact that you seem to have missed: the distance that fingers must walk to type the same text is higher in qwerty than in dvorak, that's the whole point of dvorak and others such as bepo. So, typing in Qwerty is more physical work than typing Dvorak. There are ways to calculate that pretty accurately.

I don't have proof that less finger distance means less hand work means less pain, so maybe you're right, maybe it's just a coincidence.

Or maybe less finger distance means less work which means less tension accumulated in the muscles and then indeed less pain.

Nonetheless, I changed "fixed my RSI" by "fixed my RSI problems" thanks to your feedback, which should clear out the misunderstanding.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#296

Post by hutzlibu »

kolanos wrote: post #291
hutzlibu wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you abandon this two dimensional representation, your non-visual mental map suffers no spatial limits. " My visual representation is definitely 3 dimensional and I am not sure what you mean by abandoning it? I mean, code is statement blocks and controll flow elements. It is data and connections between them at execution. I can imagine, not being visual gives you much more focus and fewer distractions on the men…

> My visual representation is definitely 3 dimensional and I am not sure what you mean by abandoning it? I mean, code is statement blocks and controll flow elements. It is data and connections between them at execution. I can imagine, not being visual gives you much more focus and fewer distractions on the mental map, but is it really different? An earlier commenter described it like a directed graph. I think that's…

Hm, maybe the word "visualize" is distracting, from what I meant. When I programm, I also do not visualize it, in the meaning, that I have a graphical picture in my head. (At least not all the time )

I mean the mental graph and flow of the program in my head. And being a visual person, I can translate it to somehing graphical, but it does not neccesarily mean it is graphical. But thinking about it, gave some me interesting insights. ("insights" again, a word from a visual dominated world)

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#297

Post by vidarh »

WalterBright wrote: post #250
egd wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that was paging, but I think I'm actually going to do that at my next gig. Outside the land of software, engineers debug systems using sound all the time - I think we're underutilizing our senses and our pattern recognition.

I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do…

A fun demonstration of getting comprehensible sound via one bit sampling is that you can use a tight loop on a C64 to read from any number of input pins (such as the tape input) to sample sound, and play it back either by writing to any number of outputs and connect it to a speaker, or indirectly by using the signal to toggle the sound chip volume up and down.

So not only can you get comprehensible voices from a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, pretty much any CPU newer than the mid 70's will be powerful enough to drive it.

So I agree - there's not really any excuse other than that people haven't thought about the UI.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#298

Post by vidarh »

WalterBright wrote: post #280
avip wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any modestly "modern" elevator would have Braille indicators. And many also announce floors same way public transit does.

I've never been in an elevator that announced the floors with anything better than a ping. This is despite elevators being controlled by single board computers since around 1980. The buttons have had braille on them for a long time.

I know of at least a few in London office buildings that speak. Especially buildings with large banks of elevators that tends to have "fancier" control systems that manage all of the elevators.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#299

Post by benjamin21 »

Vincent Le Goff, the author of the excellent "Apprendre à programmer en Python" (in French) from the french side of OpenClassRooms is blind. There is a picture of him with the Braille reader and headsets in the book version. Maybe he would be of some help ? course: https://openclassrooms.com/fr/courses/235344-apprenez-a-prog... profile: https://openclassrooms.com/fr/membres/prolixe-27218

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#300

Post by jmiskovic »

Drakar1903 wrote: post #230
jedberg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.75-2X normal speech. You'll be the only one who can understand your screen reader Huh. I already listen to most podcasts and recorded presentations at 2x. Now you make me wonder if I could process information faster with a screen reader even though my sight works just fine...

As someone who also does this, I find that the problem becomes not processing the information, but retaining it, and I haven't found a solution to that yet.

Maybe retention is worse, but I'm still better off. Higher speeds are more engaging and enjoyable to me, as bad speakers and long pauses matter less. Therefore I benefit from watching more talks and lectures. For better retention it is preferable to occasionally re-watch good talks for spaced repetition.

The Video Speed Controller extension is indispensable part of my browsing experience, mostly for keyboard shortcuts to speed up/down and > videos.

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