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Ask HN: Is anyone here visually disabled?

14 points by lessthanseventy ↗ HN
I have a visual disability that is causing me to slowly lose my sight. I would like to talk with someone working in industry that is blind or visually disabled about how I can enter the field myself. I have a family to take care of and limited time to make something happen. I'm willing to learn whatever I need to, move wherever I have to, and do whatever has to be done to ensure that they are cared for. I'm fairly competent with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but would like some direction as to where to continue my education as far as real world skills are concerned.

6 comments

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ksaj
If you search YouTube for "blind coder" you'll find a number of people who have worked out different solutions.

It actually gets interesting because there are blind and visually impaired coders all over the world represented in the first bunch of links that show up.

I have chronic Central Serus Retinopathy in my dominant eye that seems to get worse year by year and leaves me night blind on one side. It's not as bad as what you're dealing with, but I do very much sympathize with you.

jolmg
I don't have a visual disability, and don't really have experience with accessibility features for the blind. However, in case it's helpful, I can tell you that I'm very productive with the keyboard and linux terminals, and it seems to me that terminals would be an ideal user interface to use for the blind. It's like a chat window where you're conversing with your computer. I imagine it shouldn't be that hard to modify or extend a terminal so it passes all its output through a text-to-speech program. This would work best with CLI programs, but I imagine it would also be somewhat fine with TUI programs. I think both `ed` and `ex` are fine CLI text editors, for example. Here's a little showcase I did on `ed` on a StackExchange question a while back:

https://askubuntu.com/a/954841/607795

It might look a little confusing. By default, ed doesn't have a prompt for user input and its error messages are limited to "?". However, more helpful error messages can be activated with the command `H` and a prompt can be set with `-p`. `ex` is an improved version of `ed`, and comes with a prompt and more helpful error messages by default.

I've been wanting to try making that terminal configuration partly just for kicks and partly to not strain my eyes so much and work with my eyes closed, but this is pretty low on my priorities list. This would be my first attempt if I ever start to go blind, though.

yesenadam
Hopefully this will be helpful: I found Sina Bahram's talk at !!Con 2016 How I Code and Use a Computer at 1,000 WPM!! inspiring and incredible. He's blind and has his computer read everything out ridiculously quickly, and apparently gets input that way much faster than sighted people can read! Amazing.

I use a computer very differently than most people, because I’m blind. When I’m surfing the web, tweeting, checking email, reading the news, and writing code, I’m doing so because a program called a screen reader is reading me what’s on the screen. I happen to listen to it read me this text at a thousand words per minute! Join me in listening to how I experience some common user interfaces. Yes, I’ll slow it down for you. I also have a challenge for everyone in the audience. Can you get through a day only using the keyboard? What about not looking at your screen?

Sina Bahram is an accessibility consultant, researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Prime Access Consulting (PAC), an accessibility firm whose clients include high-tech startups, fortune 1000 companies, and both private and nationally-funded museums.

Talk: http://youtube.com/watch?v=G1r55efei5c

Text copied from this page: http://bangbangcon.com/2016/speakers.html