Before I talk about myself, I want to give a shout out to David Steele aka. “The Blind Poet”. He has inspired me to use my disability and talents to help others like he has with his poetry. If you haven’t heard his poetry, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand the sight-impaired community at a deeper level.
Thanks David. https://theblindpoet.net/
I won’t pretend to be the only blind developer, nor the most blind developer, but I am here as “The Blind Developer” to help present my experience as a professional developer with the added bonus of being blind.
My name is….well that isn’t important, but I have been developing software as a professional (someone who gets paid for their craft) for ~10yrs. Before becoming a developer I was a high-school physics teacher in Texas, I thought I could change the world through my passion of physics and love for teaching…it nearly killed me.
Here we are 10 yrs. later, and I have developed many skills as a software developer (software engineer, I’ll get into this on one of my posts later on). I also have been dealing with an eyesight disability known as RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa)…well since I was born, but it has only recently (1-2 yrs.) gotten to the point where I would be defined as legally blind.
As with many disabilities, there are many challenges that make normal tasks difficult. My hope with this blog is to not only talk about what technical, management, and architecture problems I’ve encountered and solved, but to also weave in my additional challenges of being sight-impaired and how it has changed how I have worked to become the best software developer I can be.