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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2022 - 04 - 09 - ID#u014hh
18
Fellow Blind software engineers, can we compare experiences? (self.Blind)
submitted by synthpopolis
I’ve had a lifelong love of computer programming and I’m mostly self taught, though I did complete some community college computer science coursework and a full stack boot camp. I’ve been doing software development in one form or another for about six years but landed my first official software engineer role just shy of a year ago. I’m starting to think about making a move pretty soon and I’m trying to think of what I need to do to get myself to the next level, especially knowing I’m going to have to explain my blindness and convince people that that isn’t a barrier for me. Anyone else out there in the field who can share some wisdom? frankly I think I kind of lucked out at my current place. It’s a small start up with a really open minded culture so I never felt like my vision impairment was a major issue. That said, it does restrict the types of projects I can get heavily involved in. For example, I can write react but I can’t see what the results of my code actually looks like visually, limiting my capability to do front end work.
Criferald 3 points 1y ago
I do understand you, and to some extent feel the same way, but have been exploring ways to compensate for my shortcomings as a blind programmer before beginning applying to jobs, so and because I haven't worked since I lost my sight, my comment is worth what it is.

I do develop front-end stuff as part of the mobile and desktop projects that I'm working on all by myself totally blind, and have even developed a game with 3D graphics without any sight at all. I find that on devices with a touch interface, such as all smartphones these days, some PCs, and Macs with trackpads, it is not too difficult for me to get a feel of what the layout of a 2D user interface looks like, and with positional audio it is also possible to have a feel of the location of objects in a 3D world.

I do ask for sighted input sometimes in order to ensure that what I intend the user to see is actually what is on the screen. For example: while developing my game I had to ask for input to know for sure that my math was really sizing things so that the blocks would occupy as much screen as possible without clipping and taking perspective distortion into account, that the light source's specular reflection was exactly the size that I intended it to be, and that the animations were playing the way I intended them to. Since I was asking non-technical people I had to present overlays on the screen to make answering my questions easier by demonstrating my intent in a less error prone way, which obviously slowed me down but didn't stop me completely. I could have also used unit tests for some of these things, but at the time I was in a hurry to show as much progress as possible in the shortest amount of time so I took the easiest route.

I'm also working on a portfolio of things developed totally blind which will include both back-end and front-end stuff so that I can actually prove that I'm worth hiring, will be leveraging my 25 years of experience as well as experience as a screen-reader user in interviews, and am considering either asking for a lower salary or contract a freelance designer to work with me in order to offset my limitations.
mdizak 2 points 1y ago

I do strictly back-end development, and I'm completely blind as in screen reader only. Not sure if it helps, but blockchain work is booming and very accessible. Whether that's developing node software in Rust, smart contracts in Solidity, or Web3 stuff in Javascript, it's all very accessible and pays well.

I somehow lucked out, and for the time being at least, am the personal developer to a biologist and helping develop out a modeling pipeline for different types of DNA analysis. I don't quite understand it all myself, but find it fascinating and very cool work.

My baby is Apex at https://apexpl.io/, which I got developed out totally blind. Still not 100% there, but very close. Training program is under heavy development, and if it interests you at all, first Youtube vid just dropped few mins ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSnt4AU0N7A

Few more vids with the web pages to back them up will be up in four or 5 days.
csloth 2 points 1y ago
Can you focus more on backend, databases, sysadmin, networking, things without such a reliance on pretty UI?
synthpopolis [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Yep, and that’s exactly what I primarily focus on. I just worry it will limit me as I try to advance my career
heathcliff81 2 points 1y ago
Are you a screen reader user? Have you worked out a development setup that you are comfortable with VS Code/others? Are you willing to move away from front end projects?
synthpopolis [OP] 2 points 1y ago
Yes I am a screen reader user exclusively. I don’t have enough vision to use a screen magnifier and I’m not a braille reader. To be clear, I mostly due back end work because of my limitations with front end work. I realize now my original post could’ve made that clearer. I mostly work in the .net stack so I use visual studio, the full-blown IDE version, but I also have experience using VS code. Thanks for the reply
[deleted] -2 points 1y ago
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synthpopolis [OP] 8 points 1y ago
#inspirationporn
[deleted] 1 points 1y ago
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