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Comment on How to program if you are blind

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Does anyone know the productivity level of a blind programmer compared with an average programmers? I'm pretty curious about this for a while now. If my sight suddenly gone, can I actually retain my current productivity level with rigorous training and suitable development tools?

As a blind programmer I would say that I can be every bit as productive as my sited peers with comparable experience levels for back end development although not nearly as productive for user interface work. If you suddenly lost your site I’m not sure how well you could program, the way I use a computer is significantly different from how I understand sited people to use a computer. I also assume the way I generate a mental model varies from most programmers and don’t know whether you could adapt existing mental models for use with our site or would have to start from scratch. If you lost your site you would want to focus on things like basic independent living skills and the ability to use a computer for general internet browsing before you attempted to learn to use screen reading software well enough to continue programming. While you could probably obtain a similar level of efficiency after losing your site it would be a process that would take several years at the least.

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