Congrats on your new job. I’m legally blind, and used to supervise an assistive technology and web accessibility shop. Best advice would be to communicate clearly and perform the job to your best ability. If your supervisor is competent, she or he will let you know what they need from you. Good luck. I’m sure you will do well.

Make sure you learn from them what degree of visual impairment they have. It varies a lot, they could have no sight at all or could see lots of stuff just very badly. I've not yet known anyone be offended by the question and it helps calibrate your behaviour around them.

Learn about the $1. In this model your supervisor is blind but may not be disabled until somebody sends them a picture of text in an email or paints the room with a grey floor matching grey walls and indistinguishable grey doors, etc.

Acquire some competence with assistive technologies like VoiceOver (iOS), Talkback (Android) or NVDA (MS-Windows). Be able to use devices without turning the assistive software off.

I think one of the hardest things as someone with vision is how to work with social cues and body language. We rely 100% on that stuff!

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For example just meeting and greeting and handshakes.

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Or, how to help, when to help, should you even try to help someone with a VI? For example VI person has walked into area with big promotional signs on easels and walls at angles, and is obviously not going where he/she wants to go... but is also a totally capable human being with great cane skills.

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From my perspective as someone with probably 5% field left... the whole world seems to operate on moving their hands out of my field and saying "over there!"

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Also, I can work on the computer very well (except for spreadsheets), but can be working for weeks without realizing a much needed feature is available, because I've never seen that part of the screen and didn't even know it. My focus is on my giant cursor. Not the fact that every time you arrive at a new screen maybe the sidebar has changed... or someone has decided to put a tiny message in the upper right-hand corner....

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Also, I'm constantly losing more vision and having to adapt. So I seem to always been in the space of "why can't I make this work because I have in the past!" But really, all that's happened is that I've lost more vision and must adapt.

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Hope this helps.

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