I was born with 10% of sight in my right eye only due to glaucoma and lived with that until 6 years ago when I went totally blind.

My first job was as a technical support call center operator for an Internet services provider. It started as a part-time job when I was 17 but eventually ended up dropping out of high school to work full-time. Following that I worked as a programmer for 11 years until I began losing contrast perception and resigned from my last job in late-2011. Nowadays I don't work anymore as my disability benefits are more than enough to support me and I'm still getting to know my limitations as a totally blind software developer.

Personally I've never been a target of discrimination neither in school nor at work, at least to my knowledge. Companies have always been eager to work with me despite my disability AND lack of formal education, and I was actually the one cautioning them about my limitation which at the time was only my inability to drive.. I've also never had to search for a job; my first job was offered to me after helping someone with a technical question on IRC, and the following two jobs happened as a byproduct of having personal open source projects published online at the time. I consider myself extremely lucky because of this.

I worked when I was a kid in school but I could see then. Post sight loss, I did a very small amount of guitar and vocal work (I'm not really a singer) before I went to college, and in college summer breaks. It wasn't much but it was something. That was always with people I knew. My first real job was in a photographic darkroom and yes, they hired a lot of blind people. I hated it because I hated the company. Lots of people who were born blind and didn't get me, but I did get to claim I worked in the movie industry, because I did! That lasted less than a year, then I moved jobs within that organisation to an office job where I ended up managing 8 people which was more boring but less hateful.

I started having a life when I quit that to be a starving artist.

At no point have I ever once felt like anyone was out to get me because I couldn't see. At college a bit yes, but never at work.

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