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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?

#441

Post by wlohsen »

anonytrary wrote: post #242
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…

> you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.75-2X normal speech Try 5-6x. I've met some blind people who listen to audio so fast, it sounds like noise to me. As someone who isn't blind, I regularly listen to lectures and audiobooks on 1.75-2.5x (depending on the base rate) without issues, but 6x is just something else entirely. > Typos will be easily spotted as they just won't "sound right". Really good way to descri…

i'm sighted and super adhd. i run my kindle at 4x. its super annoying because they speed the words but not the spaces. half a god damn sentence could go by during their spaces

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

#442

Post by pnathan »

kendallpark wrote: post #190
vidanay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment about proof reading and errors not sounding right reminds me of the "proper/best" way to learn Morse code for ham radio. Most everyone is familiar with the charts that show A=.- B=-... etc. Lots of beginners try to actually interpret the sounds in their ears and convert that to a letter and then convert a bunch of those to a word. Obviously, that is very processor intensive and has a high failure rate. T…

A while back I worked for a team that had wired up Jenkins to a speaker in the office. Each type of event would trigger a different Zelda sound effect. Victory music for successful deployments, game over music for breaking the build, etc. Notably, dev server exceptions were connected to sword clashing sounds. It led to debugging situations like this: "Okay, so that's two clanks when we click on this button, but if we…

That is technically termed sonification, FYI.

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

#443

Post by StandardFuture »

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…

This makes me wonder if we would benefit from forcing children to occasionally train their brains via partial sensory deprivation. Maybe there are aspects of the human brain that go unexercised because we strive to constantly and always use all of our senses for everything simultaneously as much as we possibly can.

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

#444

Post by vekker »

quintushoratius wrote: post #420
vekker wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For context, I am completely unable to “see” anything in my mind. I do not dream either. If I close my eyes and think of something, nothing happens visually Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect a lot of self-diagnosed cases of aphantasia are due to the ambiguity of language (specifically, English)... Qualia lost in translation. I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something, in a…

> I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something, I suspect that you may have some degree of aphantasia. Visualizing something encumbers the same visual processing as sight does. Personally I have a hard time visualizing something and looking at something at the same time. I can only pay close attention to inside or outside, not both simultaneously. (Casual attention, like half-list…

Perhaps... what I mean is this: close your eyes and visualize a tree. Do you literally see the tree in the darkness of your closed eyelids in front of you, visually? Even just vaguely? If not, then imho that's not really visual. I "see" the tree, but it's a different kind of seeing. Perhaps that's a degree of aphantasia, but how would I know? ;)

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

#445

Post by vekker »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #435
vekker wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For context, I am completely unable to “see” anything in my mind. I do not dream either. If I close my eyes and think of something, nothing happens visually Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect a lot of self-diagnosed cases of aphantasia are due to the ambiguity of language (specifically, English)... Qualia lost in translation. I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something, in a…

When I visualize some thing I don't literally see it in my field of view but I can still 'see' it. It's similar to audition(hearing in your mind). Read something out loud in your mind or play a song in your head. Its the same thing you don't literally hear it but you do 'hear' it.

Yes but that was my point: I suspect (I can't be sure of course) that this is a limit of the English language. We call it "seeing", but it's not. If it would be real seeing, you would visually see the thing you are visualizing in your field of view, as if it were literally there (like in a dream).

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

#446

Post by randycupertino »

I used to work at a healthcare navigation (insurance contractor) company. My biggest advice to you is to start acquiring copies of and saving all of your medical records, and keep them filed and organized.

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.

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

#447

Post by vekker »

shele wrote: post #408
vekker wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For context, I am completely unable to “see” anything in my mind. I do not dream either. If I close my eyes and think of something, nothing happens visually Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect a lot of self-diagnosed cases of aphantasia are due to the ambiguity of language (specifically, English)... Qualia lost in translation. I suspect nobody really sees something visually when thinking/imagining something, in a…

Hehe, perhaps no and this is the moment when you figure out that you have mild aphantasia. When people say they "count sheep jumping over a fence" it's not a metaphor.

That's kind of what I've been trying to figure out: when people say they count sheep, do they close their eyes and literally see sheep jumping over a fence as if watching a movie or wearing a VR headset? Even in low resolution... That would be pretty impressive... why would we still need movies and games then? ;)

Of course I can imagine sheep jumping over a fence, even in vivid detail, but this imagining is not really seeing visually like in real life, not even like in a dream. As I said, I would describe seeing things that aren't there (with closed eyelids or not) as hallucinating. Perhaps not being able to do that at will is aphantasia, I don't know, but it would blow my mind if it were

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