Most be a good employer to publicly praise their employees like this! ;) Interesting read, glad he's doing well!
We Hired a Blind Coder
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#22When I was in high school, I had a part time job/internship doing QA and writing some software. I was recruited there by my friend, who was blind, a programmer, and also in high school.
He was a great programmer, and very adept at using his screen reader. As far as I know, it only ever gave him one serious complication: since he was a minor, it was set to safe-for-work mode, and it read his coworker's name, a Mr Livshits, as Livsugars.
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#23How do big companies that love doing white boarding interview blind people. I am guessing due to ADA they have to give them some other test?
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does this affect the bottom line? Is this a financially good practice? Or merely a socailly good practice?
http://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/ada_website_cases_filed_fe... http://www.fredlaw.com/internet_technology_trademark__advert...
For those that don't want to read two articles just to get the answer to the above question, both of these articles are cases where people are being sued for having websites that are inaccessible to those with disabilities -- the same way you could be sued for lacking a wheelchair-accessible entrance in a brick and mortar business.
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#25I started a new job and the sysops guys works remotely. I had been communicating with him for over a month via email and chat before a colleague told me that sysops guy was blind. He is quite brilliant.
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#26Nice story! One thing I have been thinking about, for completely blind (English isn't my native language, so sorry for not using the correct/polite terminology) users, (that have 0% vision on both eyes) it would be possible to use a laptop without a screen, I guess.
Essentially simulating the screen for the screen reader to work with, but not rendering the output anywhere (or even having the screen hardware to render it on). Just imagine how mind boggling it would be to see someone working at a coffeshop with just headphones on and the bottom part of a laptop, or at a desk with no screen on it!
I get that it probably don't make sense to manufacture a product like this, but still, would be really cool I think! :)
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#27I think it is totally reasonable that a blind person could code, but how does a blind person learn how to code initially? Did he become blind later on after learning how to code?
Same as anyone else, I assume. There was a completely blind student in the year below me at University, he did just as well as anyone else. His screen reader read at a ludicrous speed.
"Ludicrous speed? Sir we've never gone that fast before. I'm not sure the ship can take it!"
Sorry. I had to. :P
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#28Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#29One of my friends is a blind coder (and he sometimes comments here on HN), and he's had a very hard time getting regular work as a coder, even for things that seem obvious (like testing and fixing apps and sites for accessibility). He's bright and built his own screen reader for Android, among other things. But, I think that's a common experience for folks with disabilities; they begin to feel like they have to apolo…
Blind devs would be perfect for certain problem spaces, like security-sensitive work or expert-witness type research.
Re: We Hired a Blind Coder
#30I think most programmers don't realize how much vision holds them back. I've been coding blindfolded for over a month and I'm never going back. If you are a touch typist what do you need to see? Not looking at things helps me to focus.
I do take the blindfold off while checking my work an during some parts of debugging.