
Ask HN: Is anyone here visually disabled? - lessthanseventy
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&#x27;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&#x27;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.
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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](http://youtube.com/watch?v=G1r55efei5c)

Text copied from this page:
[http://bangbangcon.com/2016/speakers.html](http://bangbangcon.com/2016/speakers.html)

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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](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.

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DoreenMichele
Possibly of interest:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819482)

I co-own a very low traffic Google Groups called Blind Dev Works. The other
admin is a blind developer.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/blind-dev-
works](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/blind-dev-works)

The topic of blind coders comes up periodically on HN. Here are a few:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=blind%20dev%20works&sort=byPop...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=blind%20dev%20works&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

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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.

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gus_massa
Old thread that may be useful " _Ask HN: How do blind people code and work
with terminals?_ "
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352608)
(52 points | Mar 10, 2013 | 21 comments)

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lessthanseventy
Thank you I really appreciate it.

