Last year I did a course on learning braille, run by two blind friends. Definitely get a refreshable braille display, and learn it and set up your usual develo

Last year I did a course on learning braille, run by two blind friends. Definitely get a refreshable braille display, and learn it and set up your usual development workflow while you can still see. I was amazed by how plug-and-play the braille display of my friend was. I plugged it via USB into my Ubuntu laptop with brltty and it worked out of the box: I could read my terminal output on it, and it even did the "blinking cursor" of where the cursor is on screen without any configuration. Within 2 days, I learned basic Braille (we simulated learning it fully blindly, that is with closed eyes), could read things slowly, and also learned typing Braille with the 6-chord keys present on the refreshable braille display. The blind friends that taught me can use both text-to-speech and the braille display at insane speeds. They can give free-standing presentations, talking at high speed for an hour in perfectly sophisticated language while looking at the audience with the laptop apparently closed, when in fact they are just reading it off the braille device with a finger! Reading the braille device certainly has the chance to give you apparently-superhuman abilities. I found that so cool that I considered getting good at it already just for that purpose. So, in summary: 1) I think you have very good chances of staying very proficient even if you go fully blind. 2) Play around with the tool set already now, and fix apparent pain points ahead of time that are easier to fix while still seeing.