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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?

#461

Post by feminintendo »

vidanay wrote: post #68
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…

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…

I wonder if the same thing is possible with sight reading music.

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

#463

Post by benibela »

jedberg wrote: post #129
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. 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 do that, too.

Especially presentations. For most movies, I am only comfortable with 1.25x. In presentations people talk extra slowly. It is a classic advice when learning to give presentations, talk slower. After getting used to 2X speed, it becomes extremely frustrating to listen to a live presentation.

Although even 2x presentations still feels slower than my reading speed as kid. But I cannot speed read anymore since I need glasses

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

#465

Post by cmaury »

Hey, I'm a legally blind engineering manager (stargardt's macular degeneration). The accessibility community was hugely welcoming when I started to lose my vision at about the same age you are. I'm happy to talk through my experience and be helpful in anyway I can. chrmaury at gmail.

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

#466

Post by hollander »

zw123456 wrote: post #110

I started my career at Bell Labs in the 80's and one engineer there made a huge impact on me. I learned more from him that any other single person I have worked with since. He suffered from progressive myopia so he had a rig with a camera and a big screen and a huge monitor. He coded slower than everyone else, but in a way, that was his secret power because his code almost never failed in testing. Also, he was brilli…

That 80s guy sounds like a genius, but this guy is probably not, like most of us. He may be intelligent and hardworking, but a genius is on a different level. Another thing is that progressive myopia is something different than going completely blind and deaf. That is this guy's fate. How do you communicate then?

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

#467

Post by hollander »

How about focussing on communication methods for people who are (almost) blind and deaf, leaving all communication to touch. I don't know if you can make a living from that, but given your intelligence, your programming and tech knowledge, your determination, you may have what it takes to make this work.

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.

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

#468

Post by [deleted] »

ddevault wrote: post #324
innocentoldguy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which do you prefer, screen-readers or braille readers? Also, how long did it take you to be able to feel the braille effectively?

I don't like screen readers, but I liked teaching applications to speak themselves based on text commands. I like to combine this with a braille reader and use both in different contexts. For example, a braille reader is more unambiguous with punctuation, capitalization, etc, but speech synthesis is necessary to catch my attention for a notification from a non-active application, and is more comfortable for reading n…

[deleted]

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

#469

Post by jart »

Might be possible for you to not go deaf / blind if you get Gates' crispr thing from some greymarket source online for a few hundred bucks and do your own research. https://www.usher-syndrome.org/our-story/all-ush-news.html

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.

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

#470

Post by carapace »

cookiengineer wrote: post #438
carapace wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(BTW, stealth sounds awesome!)

Thank you :3 It’s still a ton of work. I heavily underestimated the networking and parsing part...and had to invent a testrunner that can test networking implementations with known buggy situations (e.g. simulate fragments like on 2g slow mobile situations). I totally switched my workflow to Test Driven Development due to the last 6 months parsing CSS and http1.1 responses. It’s amazing how much server infrastructure…

That sounds brutal!

Still, it seems like a very worthwhile project. I'm fed up with modern browsers myself (the "megabar" on Firefox 75 is, somehow, the last straw for me.)

I'm going to keep an eye on Stealth because it sounds like the perfect browser/proxy engine for an experimental UI I'm working on.

Cheers! Good work and good luck. :)

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