Sometime back, I worked with a colleague who was completely blind. As I was introduced to this new would-be-teammate, I instinctively tried to thrust my hand forward for a handshake, only to stop myself short with a horrifying realization that might not be an appropriate form. Fortunately, to my great relief, he was used to such situations and offered his hand first. This moment particularly struck me.
The experience of working with him was exciting and as challenging as it was enlightening, as I think I learnt a bit more about myself and all the things around me I took for granted.
Anyway, here are some of my observations
1. Navigating a busy open-layout office is possible, but hard. My colleague was really great at doing so without using his stick.
2. Often it is the sighted who would hesitate at water-cooler chat for fear of offending or saying something untoward, but the colleague took the initiative to put them at ease, so it was always fun. No one could slip out unnoticed by him. The puns were mortifyingly entertaining, which I think only a blind person can make.
3. The written form of communication goes great lengths in bridging the communication gap (This is applicable in general as well)
4. ASCII diagrams and SVGs are great ways of making content such as flow charts and architecture diagrams accessible. Tools such as PlantUML, dotviz, mermaidjs are helpful.
5. Statically typed languages make it much easier to work within a screen-reader environment. We were working with Go, and he had much better success with it than a language that was used in other parts of the company.
6. Emacs seems to have a lot of tooling to facilitate the use of screen-readers.
7. Open-office chatter (in-person and chat) can become overwhelming very quickly, so setting expectations ahead on how you'd plan to work helps your teammates.
8. Monitoring is hard (in a server-side environment) as the notion of "taking a look" at the graphs doesn't translate for someone who is not sighted. I wish there were better ways that are more accessible.
Losing sight is perhaps one of the most terrifying prospects anyone can face. However, seeing (see what I did there) my colleague also gives me hope that all is not futile. It is possible to live a fulfilled life. It is possible to have a successful career as a software developer. Being blind does not have to mean disabled but merely differently-abled.
The experience of working with him was exciting and as challenging as it was enlightening, as I think I learnt a bit more about myself and all the things around me I took for granted.
Anyway, here are some of my observations
1. Navigating a busy open-layout office is possible, but hard. My colleague was really great at doing so without using his stick.
2. Often it is the sighted who would hesitate at water-cooler chat for fear of offending or saying something untoward, but the colleague took the initiative to put them at ease, so it was always fun. No one could slip out unnoticed by him. The puns were mortifyingly entertaining, which I think only a blind person can make.
3. The written form of communication goes great lengths in bridging the communication gap (This is applicable in general as well)
4. ASCII diagrams and SVGs are great ways of making content such as flow charts and architecture diagrams accessible. Tools such as PlantUML, dotviz, mermaidjs are helpful.
5. Statically typed languages make it much easier to work within a screen-reader environment. We were working with Go, and he had much better success with it than a language that was used in other parts of the company.
6. Emacs seems to have a lot of tooling to facilitate the use of screen-readers.
7. Open-office chatter (in-person and chat) can become overwhelming very quickly, so setting expectations ahead on how you'd plan to work helps your teammates.
8. Monitoring is hard (in a server-side environment) as the notion of "taking a look" at the graphs doesn't translate for someone who is not sighted. I wish there were better ways that are more accessible.
Losing sight is perhaps one of the most terrifying prospects anyone can face. However, seeing (see what I did there) my colleague also gives me hope that all is not futile. It is possible to live a fulfilled life. It is possible to have a successful career as a software developer. Being blind does not have to mean disabled but merely differently-abled.
I wish you the best of luck.