Ask HN: Resources for blind developers and sysadmins?
Blind software engineer here.
Sorry to hear about your eyesight issues, dealing with that is always hard, but the good news is that there is life here. I&#x27;ve been working on a bunch of open source projects and recently I found a full time job as developer. I know almost a dozen blind software developers working in big IT companies.
Let me introduce you to the tools you can use. There are basically two types of tools: screen magnifiers for those with low vision and screenreaders for those who don&#x27;t have any usable vision. Judging by your description, you might want to start with a magnifier. In the unfortunate case if your vision keeps getting worse, you can consider switching to a screenereader. Magnifiers are obviously easier to learn, but you can write code and do all the good stuff with screenreaders too.
I am not that familiar with Magnifiers, but I&#x27;ve heard that the most popular one is called ZoomText and it is for Windows. Macs have their own magnifier, not sure about Linux.
In the world of screenreaders you have NVDA and JAWS for Windows, VoiceOver for Mac, ORCA for Linux and also EmacsSpeak, which is an accessibility extension for Emacs. You can also use phones with screenreader: there is VoiceOver for iPhone and TalkBack for android.
One suggestion is try to find an organisation in your country that deals with blind and low-vision people - ask your eye doctor if he knows any - they might be very useful in your situation as they can recommend a lot of tools and resources specific for your country, such as white cane trainig, if you need it, guide dogs, braille training, they can also probably teach you how to use screenreaders and magnifiers.
Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions: anton &lt;dot&gt; malykh &lt;at&gt; gmail. And good luck!