211–220 of 497 posts
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> discovering I'd be going blind in the parking lot post appointment That is devastating. Did you get a second opinion?
Yes this was 2 years ago, I ended up at Columbia Ophthalmology in NYC and they were able to get me DNA tested after another local doctor failed to assist me in doing so. USH2A is the name of the specific condition if you're curious.
I’m not sure if you’re willing to consider a change of employer, but when I worked at Apple, their accessibility team never ceased to amaze me. They have several blind, as well as deaf and paralyzed engineers on their A11Y team. I’d argue that’s a large part of why the accessibility story on iOS is as good as it is. Having engineers that have various disabilities work on the accessibility of their products helps ensu…
Apple definitely has blind employees both working in accessibility and in other groups. I only mention that to say don't discount yourself even if you're blind (or deaf, etc). There are plenty of engineering teams at Apple that would be happy to have you.
One of the strongest programmers I've ever met was blind, and they were working on security software, not accessibility issues.
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…
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.
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…
> 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...
I just put some news interview on YouTube at 2x.
It is fun how even the accents are easily recognizable.
Anyway, this is in Spanish. My guess by reading the comments is Spanish is a much easier language to listen at a faster speed.
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> He had to stop working on languages like Python where a screen reader is of little help. i find this interesting. is it due to the space significance thingy?
Python is totally possible with a screen reader; the screen reader just needs to read out punctuation. It's easier with a self voicing application like emacs.