[jareds]

As a totally blind software developer everything he has in the article is accurate. There are two things he did not do though which I do on a regular basis and assume most other blind users do as well. First is using the feature of screen readers that allow you to view all links on a page as one giant list. While this isn’t helpful when initially browsing a page if you use a site on a regular basis and know where you need to go it’s easy to bring up a list of links and start typing to use first letter navigation to jump to the link you need out of the 150 that may be on the page. An example of this is typing “pri” to bring up the print link in order to view stories on a single page. Second is the ability to use a find feature of a screen reader to search for specific text on the page. Once again this is not useful for general browsing but if you visit a site on a regular basis and need to repeatedly access a section of the page that isn’t easily findable by links or headings searching for a text string you know will be there is a god send.

[chewxy]

I don't mean to be insensitive, but I am morbidly curious about your condition (mainly because 23andme said I am prone to macular degeneration, a thought that terrifies me).

How does one program without sight? I have done something similar to OP on my latest project (I tried to use my product blindfolded + screenreader), and I found that it was a terrible experience. My site was absolute shite. It was only through my own familiarity with it that I was able to navigate it.

I would imagine trying to develop sightless itself would be a feat, so my question is: how? were you sighted before you lost your vision? Tactile feedback from the keyboard or voice commands?

[jareds]

I was born blind so have never known any different and have always done everything on the computer with speech and brail. From talking to people who have lost their vision later in life it generally seems the older you are when you lose your vision the harder it is to adapt and live a normal life after vision loss. Since you know it may be a possibility though I assume may have some time to at least cope with the fact that you could lose your vision and have a longer time to acclimate yourself to this fact rather than losing it all in a hunting accident. If you have a MAC play with voiceover which is built into the OS, it has a nice getting started tutorial. As for how I program see the following stackoverflow question. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-progra...

[DigitalJack]

Have you found some programming languages to be easier to work with due to their syntax?

For example, I was thinking I would have an easier time hearing Python vs hearing Clojure. I think that even if it were brail, something like Clojure would be more difficult to track.

Although giving it some more thought, I suppose the indentation of python might be the more difficult thing to deal with.

[jareds]

I haven't used Clojure yet although have been meaning to give it a try at some point. indentation is the reason I've never seriously looked at Python, although I know there are blind programmers who use it effectively. What matters more to me then the actual language is the variable names. If the variable names read more like English or at least follow a standard it's much easier to just listen to the code. The shorter the variable names the more likely I am to read a lot of code using my braille display instead of listening to it.

[rogerbinns]

One thing I am curious about is what screen sizes you use. As a sighted developer having as much visible at once is most productive. I use two large screens and the only reason I don't have a third is lack of desk space.

The laptop being used in one of the Youtube links on the page looks to be at least 14 inches.

Does screen size affect your productivity? Do you care about resolution? Do you get the smallest screen size phones and laptops?

[jareds]

On a laptop screen size doesn't matter. In College when living space was limited I used a 13 inch 9 pound laptop that I'd lug everywhere since I needed the portability and performance. I then switched to a desktop with 6 cores and 8 gigs of ram as my main machine with a cheap netbook that I use when I'm traveling or want to do basic browsing or email from the couch. When I give into gadget lust or get a big enough raise that I don't feel so guilty spending $1500 when I still have two working computers I may get an 11 inch MacBook air with 8 gigs of ram. Ideally I'd prefer the 11 inch form factor but until recently I couldn't find an 11 inch laptop with good enough specs to be used as a main machine. As far as the phone goes the only touch screen phone I’ve ever had is an iPhone 4 so don’t know how screen size on phones would matter to me. I do know that on touch screen devices too much space can cause me issues since it’s hard to remember where things are. After playing with an iPad I decided to stick with an iPhone since it can do pretty much everything the iPad can without having so much screen space that I spend most of my time trying to find icons instead of the space separating them. I have heard of blind developers using iPads to get a spatial layout of web pages when they are doing web development. For that purpose I could see the bigger screen being an asset but since I don’t do much web development it’s not something I care about.

[lesterbuck]

Jared, I have a few projects that target blind and low vision users, and I'd like your feedback. My email is in my profile.