Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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Communities of low vision/blind programmers? Resources? Tips? (self.Blind)
submitted by krzysz00
I'm posting here to find out what corners of the internet other low vision/blind programmers hang out in and where I can find any resources, tips, or tricks.
For context, I work as a programmer and my vision has been wandering from it's initial not very great (20/70 in the good eye, fuzzy colored blobs in the bad one) to the upper edge or legally blind over the last few years during college and grad school
Historically, I've handled programming by increasing font sizes and display scaling factors, but now that's becoming more difficult and involves much more shoving my face into the monitor then my back would like.
Since May (when I finally accepted I was losing more sight), I've been trying to integrate NVDA into my computing, and I've started the process of learning Braille in case things get worse (and to make it easier to read precisely). And even though I have a general plan for how to adapt to things, I'm wondering if there's any small adjustments I should make.
For context, I work as a programmer and my vision has been wandering from it's initial not very great (20/70 in the good eye, fuzzy colored blobs in the bad one) to the upper edge or legally blind over the last few years during college and grad school
Historically, I've handled programming by increasing font sizes and display scaling factors, but now that's becoming more difficult and involves much more shoving my face into the monitor then my back would like.
Since May (when I finally accepted I was losing more sight), I've been trying to integrate NVDA into my computing, and I've started the process of learning Braille in case things get worse (and to make it easier to read precisely). And even though I have a general plan for how to adapt to things, I'm wondering if there's any small adjustments I should make.
codeplaysleep 4 points 1y ago
I make liberal use of the screen magnifier and large fonts, plus a 27in monitor. I feel you on the "too much leaning in" part and would highly suggest talking to a low vision specialist about finding an ergonomic setup and tools that work for you.
Having not followed that advice for myself over the years, I have two discs in my neck that are just deteriorated to the point that they effectively no longer exist. So that's fun.
Some editors are more screen-reader friendly than others. IntelliJ is pretty good, I think, as is Jet Brains. RubyMine is good from what I've seen/tried. I'm sure there are others, but I don't use a screen reader often enough to have really researched it.
Take them to script/automate as much as you can, make liberal use of keyboard shortcuts and bash aliases if you don't already, etc. The less you have to use the mouse, the easier it is to navigate around quickly and efficiently.
Having not followed that advice for myself over the years, I have two discs in my neck that are just deteriorated to the point that they effectively no longer exist. So that's fun.
Some editors are more screen-reader friendly than others. IntelliJ is pretty good, I think, as is Jet Brains. RubyMine is good from what I've seen/tried. I'm sure there are others, but I don't use a screen reader often enough to have really researched it.
Take them to script/automate as much as you can, make liberal use of keyboard shortcuts and bash aliases if you don't already, etc. The less you have to use the mouse, the easier it is to navigate around quickly and efficiently.
krzysz00 [OP] 2 points 1y ago
Back before I needed to get at a good screen reader, I used to be an Xmonad person, so I'm aware of the keyboard shortcut thing, but I need to relearn how to make Windows more keyboard-centric.
My current tooling is VS Code at work (since it was able to navigate the "Docker container on a dev server" setup and I didn't want to deal with Emacs on Windows, and either VS code or Emacspeak (which I've done some hacking on) on the personal machine.
($Dayjob is all in C++)
Sorry to hear about the neck.
My current tooling is VS Code at work (since it was able to navigate the "Docker container on a dev server" setup and I didn't want to deal with Emacs on Windows, and either VS code or Emacspeak (which I've done some hacking on) on the personal machine.
($Dayjob is all in C++)
Sorry to hear about the neck.
Davidbrcz 1 points 1y ago
How is c++ wall of errors in case of error handable ?
krzysz00 [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Fumbling around for a filename you recognize or hoping the error highlighting squiggle goes to the right place
CloudsOfMagellan 3 points 1y ago
TDSR is a really nice screen reader for the terminal and is cross platform.
Emacspeak is awesome once it's configured to the way you like
Emacspeak is awesome once it's configured to the way you like
Additional-Cicada267 3 points 1y ago
Check out the $1 on freelists.org
It is pretty active.
It is pretty active.
Fridux 3 points 1y ago
I don't think there are many blind programmer communities out there. I know of an attempt to create /r/BlindDevelopers here on reddit but that's essentially dead, and the $1 at audiogames.net. I'm a programmer myself, though I don't do it professionally anymore since I'm still trying to find my niche as a blind programmer.
Right now I find comfort with TextMate 2 and the Terminal on MacOS, as well as Xcode for iOS and MacOS development. Despite being totally blind I don't use Braille, relying entirely on the speech synthesizer instead, as I struggle reading Braille to the point that it is a lot more functional to just move the caret and make the screen-reader read character by character. However this is one subject on which there doesn't seem to exist a consensus in the blind community, because adapting to new environments is so difficult and requires such an investment of time that people tend to stick to what they already feel comfortable with.
Regarding Docker I use it in the command-line and work on a bind mount so that I can use TextMate 2 and git on the host for development while installing all the dependencies that I need inside disposable containers.
Right now I find comfort with TextMate 2 and the Terminal on MacOS, as well as Xcode for iOS and MacOS development. Despite being totally blind I don't use Braille, relying entirely on the speech synthesizer instead, as I struggle reading Braille to the point that it is a lot more functional to just move the caret and make the screen-reader read character by character. However this is one subject on which there doesn't seem to exist a consensus in the blind community, because adapting to new environments is so difficult and requires such an investment of time that people tend to stick to what they already feel comfortable with.
Regarding Docker I use it in the command-line and work on a bind mount so that I can use TextMate 2 and git on the host for development while installing all the dependencies that I need inside disposable containers.
bannable0ffense 1 points 1y ago
I'm a VI programmer headed towards blindness. If you don't mind me asking what do you do now? Are you on full time disability while you figure out your niche?
Fridux 1 points 1y ago
Yes, I am and have been on disability for 8 years now. I filed for my benefits after 2 years of vision deterioration when I realized that it wouldn't recover. A year later I had a surgery to remove a cataract which left me with extremely blurry vision rendering me unable to read and thought it was over for me. For 5 years I refused to even attempt to code since I couldn't figure out a way to make it comfortable and all I wanted was to die. Then two years ago I decided to buy a new Mac and attempt to write a graphical iOS game and exceeded all my expectations, however as fun as that was, it wasn't something that I could do professionally given how dependent I was from the sighted to check whether the game was working as intended, so I began searching for a niche where I can actually contribute positively and be independent as a blind developer.
Before going blind I was a jack of all trades, which due to my long time experience made me decent at a lot of things but not a master of any. My versatility used to be my selling point, but blindness took that away from me so now I'm mediocre at everything and am trying to find something to focus on, which is very hard for me since I like almost everything related to software development.
Some people suggest working on back-ends, but I find it hard to be limited to that and not be able to complete tasks independently end to end, especially since at the moment I'm limited to working solo because I find reading other people's code with this condition to be extremely hard and uncomfortable.
Before going blind I was a jack of all trades, which due to my long time experience made me decent at a lot of things but not a master of any. My versatility used to be my selling point, but blindness took that away from me so now I'm mediocre at everything and am trying to find something to focus on, which is very hard for me since I like almost everything related to software development.
Some people suggest working on back-ends, but I find it hard to be limited to that and not be able to complete tasks independently end to end, especially since at the moment I'm limited to working solo because I find reading other people's code with this condition to be extremely hard and uncomfortable.
Nighthawk321 2 points 1y ago
There's /r/BlindDevelopers. It's a fairly new community, so it could use some dedicated people posting.
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