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Ask HN: Webdev with poor/deteriorating vision. What can I pivot into?

• temptemptemp111 5y ago
  Post your email somewhere... I can help you heal your vision. Worth it imo
• mouzogu 5y ago
  In case anyone is curious the disease is called Keratoconus and it's very rare. I have had the CXL procedure but alas was too late to make any big difference.
  • soco 5y ago
    I have keratoconus too and I wear hard lenses as the OP. While they are indeed inconvenient (we could write an article only about that, right), I make the daily effort to support them - unless it's an allergy day then lol no way. I never heard of CXL until now, so I'll have to look into it, thank you for the hint! Maybe the docs never mentioned it to me also because my numbers are stable for the last fifteen years...
    • mouzogu 5y ago
      I had CXL 3 years ago. The idea is to prevent progression. But it depends on your age and overall stability/thickness of your cornea.
  • gdebel 5y ago
    Hi, I'm an ophthalmologist, corneal specialist (and regular HN reader). I just would like to draw your attention to the absolute necessity to avoid any eye rubbing. This point is very often ignored by some colleagues, for various reasons. CXL will never increase your visual acuity, it is aimed at stabilizing the evolution (it is a controversial procedure). The most effective thing to stabilize your pathology is to avoid any eye rubbing. Please inform yourself about scleral lenses, too. Write me if you need to.
    • kuroguro 5y ago
      Yeah, never rub. I also saw a study semi-recently about sleeping on stomach as a possible cause as it increases the pressure on eyes during sleep. Not sure how accurate the study is but I did used to do it a lot.
    • mouzogu 5y ago
      Thanks for your response. I had my CXL procedure 3 years ago and afaik I have avoided eye-rubbing completely since then. I also wear scleral lenses but I can only get 8 hours at best on a good day due to eye dryness. Even with lubricating eye drops. 8 hours but I would have to remove them once or twice a day, which is a whole other rigamarole.
    • cipher_system 5y ago
      Shit, I have keratoconus with rigid lenses and been constantly rubbing my eyes for more than 10 years now. Been to two ophthalmologist and a couple opticians and no one ever mentioned that. Thanks for the warning! I'll ask my ophthalmologist about scleral lenses or maybe hybrid or K-rose lenses as some other comments mentioned.
      • gdebel 5y ago
        This is infuriating. This is why I always comment when I see people talking about KC on HN (guess what? There is a lot. I won't do the research but I'm almost sure that this is the most frequent pathologie people here talk about. Lots of computers, lots of concentration, lots of eye dryness,lots of eye rubbing). There is more and more evidence to support the fact that KC is purely induced by eye rubbing. Don't rub your eyes !
  • jbverschoor 5y ago
    Rarity numbers I found: 1 in 2.000 (0.05%) 1 in 1.500 (0.06%) 50-230 in 100.000 (0.05% - 0.23%) That doesn't seem very rare tbh.
    • mouzogu 5y ago
      Yes, perhaps not very rare but still rare enough that I feel unlucky :(
  • dear_srik 5y ago
    Hey I have Keratoconus too.. I am using the K-Rose lenses RIgid Gas Peremable ones, they are quite comfortable after a week of use. The K-Rose lenses are engineered to exact curvature of the problematic cornea, so the fit is perfect and no accumulation of tears inderneath Overall, though bit expensive I would say they helped.
    • mouzogu 5y ago
      Thanks, I will look into that brand. The one I use now is from the UK. They're fairly comfortable but the issue comes from dryness mostly.
  • interestica 5y ago
    Keratoconus here too. CXL is more to stop any progression and best when performed early. For the longest time I unexpectedly got by with soft toric lenses. I'm currently doing well with "hybrid" lenses from Synergeyes. They're hard in the middle with a soft skirt. So, a bit more comfortable than other options. My biggest annoyance is the removal procedure. But, some days I have better than 20/20.
  • jimohalloranau 5y ago
    I’ve lived with Kerotoconus for the last 20 years, and professional developer for 25+ years. I’ve worn hard contact lenses for most of that time (various types), and had a corneal graft (transplant) in one eye about 4 years ago. I’m primarily a back end developer, and was contemplating a career change before surgery. Some thoughts based on my experience: * Hard contact lens wear takes some getting used to. Stay with it if you possibly can. * The difference between good and bad contacts is night and day. Subtle differences can make a world of difference in comfort. * Find an optometrist who has expertise in kerotoconus/fitting hard lenses, and who will try as many revisions as it takes to get it right. I can go 16 hours straight every day with my lenses, no worries. * Hydration can affect lens comfort. Drink plenty of fluid, especially in hot weather. * Ambient light levels also have a big effect, your room can be over lit without being obviously too bright. Too much light will leave your eyes feeling dry. * To reduce light/glare I would dare mode all the things. Including using Chrome extensions to invert colours in Google Docs. On bad days, for me, a white screen was like staring into the sun. Sounds like this is less of an issue for you though. * Good quality monitors are essential. I like IPS displays, they seem to make great colours and contrast without putting out a lot of light. Spend time setting them up to your liking. I like the brightness as low as I can get it without loosing too much contrast. Your employer should be buying these for you, but I would spend my own money if I had to. It’s that important to me. * A graft/transplant is pretty much the last option. The recovery takes a couple of months, but for me the difference in vision is dramatic. For professionals dependent on vision like ourselves the fact that the surgeon can’t give any indication of your vision afterwards is a bit scary. * If you’re in South Australia, I’m happy to give you the names of my optom and surgeon. Both are amazing. * After surgery I’ve deferred thoughts of a career change, my vision is good enough that I feel I can continue “hands on” development for a number of years yet. * “Hands on” above might give you a hint as to what I was thinking of in terms of alternate options. Look for things where your skills and experience can be utilised, but without full time screen work. Project Management, Team Leadership, etc might be worth considering. Teaching or Mentoring are other options to explore. * It never occurred to me, but accessibility consulting would be an excellent idea. * The degeneration in your vision slows down eventually. I was diagnosed in my early 20s and went downhill rapidly in my late 20s. My eyesight changed a somewhat through my 30s and has been pretty stable since I turned 40. From what I understand, this is pretty typical, but is scary AF when your young and “going blind” though. I was really struggling with vision prior to surgery. I was fortunate to be able to discuss my difficulties with my employer. He said something at the time that stuck with me. He said that he’d always valued the thought (design/architecture) that went into everything I built. And that the way that had been captured in the past was with fingers on keyboard doing the building. We just needed to find a different way to do that going forwards. Which might have meant working with the juniors on our team to build their skills instead. Think about what your strengths and experience are and other ways to harness those skills.
• ianpurton 5y ago
  DevSecOps? Use your coding skills to get apps from pull request to production.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    thanks, i'll look into that. i also have a lot of experience with SVN 10 years + and a few years with GIT.
• rognjen 5y ago
  Perhaps you could start a consultancy (or get a job) where you assess (and improve) accessibility of websites? Accessibility by itself is important but at the same time improving it often results in better SEO.
  • andix 5y ago
    That’s a great idea. In many countries accessibility is required by law for a lot of websites.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    That's definitely a good idea. I didn't think about that. Although it seems difficult to leverage my "disability" as a marketable asset - or at least how to frame it constructively.
    • bipson 5y ago
      Oh, I would argue that it is a marketable asset. Depends on your prospective employer. In e.g. Austria regional or communal government, or agencies working with them, would gladly pick you up, give you a protected workplace and enlist you to help make all the e-government sites and processes more accessible. I'm not simply claiming this. I used to work with a 100% blind developer, that had a degree from Uni Innsbruck in either Computer Science or Mathematics, I don't remember really. I could not understand how he managed to get a degree (in the 80ies or 90ies nonetheless), but even if he needed special tools, he was a very important asset in the whole e-government push, especially because he was apparently a very valuable software developer, albeit his challenges.
    • rognjen 5y ago
      > how to frame it constructively At the very least, you would need to run websites with an increased zoom which would give you an insight into what sites look like at non-standard sizes. You'd also understand better than most the difficulty with but also how to improve tap targets or set better contrast, etc. I think you can start just by making existing sites easier to use for yourself. You can follow that up with learning how to improve sites for users with ever more difficulty seeing and then branch into hearing.
• mduggles 5y ago
  DevOps as suggested before would be a decent fit but that will require quite a bit of training as you go. I don't know if you have the appetite for that or not. I have a coworker in a similar situation who pivoted to being really the accessibility expert, which has helped us quite a bit reach a broader market with our tools. There is a lot to making an app or site more accessible for people with vision issues and its a common requirement for government projects.
• tiborsaas 5y ago
  Backend has lots of diversity, you could get into devops, automation, databases, etc. Or you might want to transition to being an architect so most of your time you'll design the systems to be built / maintained.
• anewhnaccount2 5y ago
  This post is by a guy who is a blind and works as a backend web developer: https://www.vincit.fi/fi/software-development-450-words-per-minute/ https://www.vincit.fi/fi/software-development-450-words-per-...
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing.
• cik 5y ago
  It sounds like you're able to use bright screens, and for (potentially) lengthy periods of time still. Depending on your linguistic abilities you could look into tech writing, or copy writing. Your technical background could be quite useful here, in addition to the attention to detail that comes as a part of front-end development.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    I'm currently doing technical writing (documentation) at my current company but I've found it difficult to find jobs in that area.
• rubyist5eva 5y ago
  You don't need to change your career. I know a blind webdev, and he's just as competent as every other dev I've ever worked with and respected. He's even faster than I am zipping through codebases, the screenreader almost feels like he is cheating (joke). I know it's not really relevant to your disease, but you can't let your disability define you. Everyone has challenges they need to overcome. It will take some time to relearn habits, but it's possible.
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  3 - 4 hours well spent is more than you need to be productive. Pixel perfect work is not a requirement for the vast majority of applications. You'll be able to create better applications than you're doing right, as a lot of people totally ignore adjustable fontsizes, contrast, etc.
• fallat 5y ago
  Please see http://len.falken.ink/misc/text-to-speech.txt http://len.falken.ink/misc/text-to-speech.txt for good text to speech setup on Linux. You can easily continue coding, but yes for "pixel perfectness", you will have to give that up, as it's inherently visual. I have thought a few times of maybe something to remedy this, like a vibrating mouse, which vibrates more intensely as you move over pixels, based on its luminosity or something. High constract edge = vibration. Note I am not blind at all, actually don't even wear glasses after programming for 10+ years. I just think there are quality of life improvements that can come with using TTS!
• soco 5y ago
  If it's indeed keratoconus as other commented suggested, it can be fixed with a transplant or - news for me as well - with corneal cross-linking. Your decision of course, I preferred for myself to keep wearing the rigid lenses so I really know the fun of it...
  • fbourque 5y ago
    cross linking stops the progression but does not fix your vision. went through cornea transplant 20 years ago and it has been great since with a rather quick recovery. had a few episodes of rejection at the beginning but since I use Restasis, it never occurred again (coincidence or correlation? don't really want to know at this point). life expectancy of graft is about 30 years though I've been told... :( good luck
• kuroguro 5y ago
  > I can get 20/20 with rigid lenses but it's not very comfortable I'm guessing it's keratoconus? The lenses are uncomfortable but I got my doctor to tweak them so there's more space/less strain on the eye. Can go the full day in lenses most days, eyes are still red tho :/ > it requires near perfect vision due to the UI nature and dealing with things on a pixel level I do mostly back-end stuff, it might be something worth looking into. Can confirm, being color blind on top of KC makes me a pretty bad at front-end dev ^^; (still doable, but slower, as I have to use higher DPI/zoom more or ask someone else to look over my work every now and then).
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing. Yes, it's KC. I have had my lenses fitted to a degree. I'm wearing the third pair, after trying two others and getting them adjusted. I would prefer to do something, like back-end as you mentioned, that I could just manage with somewhat functional 20/40 vision with glasses. So that I would not have to depend on the lenses. I feel like the lenses are a psychological crutch at times, although they're amazing.
• kall 5y ago
  I don‘t have a good alternative for you, because my eyesight is roughly what you described and I do exactly that job, without much struggle. I have had this level of eyesight, or significantly worse, for all my life so It‘s maybe a different story. I find full screen magnification (following mouse and keyboard focus) extremely effective once you have gotten comfortable with it. I feel like I‘m barely disadvantaged as long as things are happening on screen. I can comfortably design pages and apps in sketch or figma and have not gotten much negative feedback on that. It‘s still possible these things wheren‘t up to standard, but good enough to ship at an agency and have happy clients. Now I am solo designing and developing my startup‘s app and we get positive anonymous feedback on the design. This sounds like I‘m bragging and I would edit it down but I‘m trying to show you that it is still very workable, if you want to keep doing it. I am no design savant: just put a little more thought into it, follow some rules on typography, spacing and color and zoom into the details to get them right. Also shamelessly follow some trends that seem nice to you. Since you‘ve been doing it for a while, you already know what to do. This is if you want to keep doing it. If you know your eyesight will keep getting worse, or you just feel uncomfortable working with screens this much, it‘s wise to look for the next thing. The DevOps suggestions in the thread seem good, as do the accessibility consulting ones. You could transition to text to speech and maybe braille displays in those positions. If you have questions, general or specific, about how to make it work, I‘m happy to talk. My twitter username is the same as here and you can DM me. Edit: I think I misread your vision numbers because i am not used to that format but a 0-100% one. My visus is hovering around 20%. I think 20/40 would be 50%?
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    I should clarify that keratonic 20/40 is not really comparable to myopic 20/40. I have a lot of ghosting and distortions in my vision. Also the glasses I use have extreme high power that contorts the image too. Appreciate that someone in the same boat is managing though.
    • kall 5y ago
      Yeah, that makes sense. If you don‘t feel you will be able to comfortably and effectively do the work, no point in forcing it. I really recommend you give mouse driven full screen zoom a good try. Whatever job you do, it will be a QoL improvement in computing. The key, imho, is to not move focus with your eyes much but instead move focus under your eyes with the mouse. Don‘t shy away from larger magnifications than you need to read text, but instead make it really comfortable for whatever field of vision you have. I also move the zoom level in and out almost as much as the focus, while reading/writing/interacting. This part may only work well with the smooth gesture zoom of macOS where you can do both at the same time and a laptop where you can access the trackpad with your thumbs from home row. I‘m sorry for going into unsolicited rant mode on this. I just see other visually impaired people struggle with their super large font settings and think they could work better. It may just be my specific kind of bad vision, idk.
• dear_srik 5y ago
  I am using RGP (Rigid Gas permeable ) lenses and they were comfortable. K-Rose lenses. Please check with your ophthalmologist
• lazypenguin 5y ago
  Have you tried a scleral lens? They are larger than RGP lens and sit on the white of the eye rather than touching the cornea. I have one that was custom made for my eye and I regularly wear it for 12+ hours without discomfort.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Yes, I currently wear scleral lenses. They're also custom made but the max I can get is 8 hours and that's with a lot of dryness and just general discomfort. Even with frequent lubrication.
• e12e 5y ago
  As already suggested by another commenter, continuing with web development, but with a focus on UX and accessability strikes me as the "shortest shift". It will potentially also give you a constructive outlet for the stress of loosing your vision (helping make sure others in a similar situation have a better experience with the product/sites you work on). I imagine working as a specialized a11y consultant is likely to be a safer and better compensated niche than as a "regular" designer/developer. Your personal experience and necessary adjustments would probably also allow you to work in similar fields, like working on native apps that need to be accessible to people with poor vision (ie: all of them, but especially those related to work functions, like logistics, cashier/bank, archiving/document management and probably lots I'm forgetting - where there might be regulations that must be passed in order to be able to deliver on bids).
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Thanks. Definitely had my fair share of accessibility issues. I will definitely look into it. Honestly, working as an accessibility consultant would be like a dream job for me. Such a long list of personal gripes :D
    • ok_coo 5y ago
      Our org has an accessibility consultant that we hire periodically to help us with aspects of our site and beyond (into other topics/things in the org). There's definitely a market and a need for this type of work. So, I hope it works out for you!
  • pimlottc 5y ago
    What’s “a10n”? Do you mean “a11y” (short for “accessibility”)?
    • e12e 5y ago
      Indeed, I guess I ended up half way between localization and accessability ;) Fixed.
• graiz 5y ago
  One of the best developers I know has a serious visual impairment. Don't say "I can't." Instead ask, "how can I?"
• BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I'm a web developer with an incurable neuro-visual disorder, which I soon discovered prevented me from doing UI stuff competently so I got into backend early on. No need to leave web development altogether if you don't want to, there's room to change your focus away from the UI side of things. Most of my current role is writing server-side software for web applications as well as dealing with some of the operational and database side of things too (small company; many hats!). I can't imagine the motivations for getting into UI stuff are exactly the same as getting into server-side stuff but personally I really like what I do.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    This would be the most logical option for me. I do work a lot with nodeJS, building command line tools and such but I have this fear of being a "JavaScript Engineer" and dealing with commercial/revenue related aspects of the business.
• CodeIsTheEnd 5y ago
  This Ask HN thread from someone in a similar position (“I’m a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?”) from last April may have some helpful advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22918980
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing.
• peanut_worm 5y ago
  I am confused, you cannot work with 20/40 vision? I don’t know much about vision but my doctor said my vision is 20/100, isn't that worse? I am able to do web dev just fine.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    Are you able to wear glasses to improve 20/100? That's my issue is that I'm stuck at 20/40 because glasses don't work for my condition. Also I should mention that 20/40 with my condition is a bit different because my vision is affected with distortion, halos, ghosting - think astigmatism but in every kind of random direction all at once. Basically, I can read the lines but its not really functional vision.
    • peanut_worm 5y ago
      I do not normally wear glasses on the computer but I do have to sit pretty close to my monitor. Having a large monitor also helps. I am sorry you have to deal with that, it sounds awful.
• JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  One thing you can do in the short term is to switch to a large television as a monitor. (They're cheaper than monitors, as a bonus.) I did so for comfort, rather than over need, but, it should help.
• thehappypm 5y ago
  Product Management perhaps? We spend most of our time talking, plus the type of reading/writing we do is much more human-readable than the eyestrain writing code creates.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    I'm not very strong socially and I tend to get bored quite easily so I think PM work would not work for me. I did consider it in the past but I don't think I have the temperament for it. And also taking calls from stakeholders is a nightmare for me....:D
• sdevonoes 5y ago
  > I've been working as a web dev for 15 years since graduation but I know my days I numbered in this field as it requires near perfect vision due to the UI nature and dealing with things on a pixel level. Web dev is more than just placing pixel on the screen (and, is pixel level perfection is even a thing?). You could focus more on JavaScript if you are a frontend developer; you could switch to backend as well. I have been working as a "full stack" web developer for some years and I have never had to deliver 'pixel perfect' UIs. Hell, I even consider 'pixel perfect' to be an anti-pattern in web design because it leads to CSS like "margin-top: 13.123px; margin-right: 9.847px" in order to comply with the design.
  • mouzogu 5y ago
    I wish I could do that. I actually had to leave my last job because I was having too many issues. Lots of UI issues being missed. This was before I was diagnosed so I wasn't aware that it was caused by my vision. In my current role as a contractor for faang company the work I do is very visually intensive marketing web design. There are so many subtle shades of gray and 1px borders that I often get QA tickets where I am literally unable to reproduce without visual correction. You're right though. It would be easier for me to move into some kind of back-end focused nodeJS role which I'm quite strong at. But I have a fear of working on back-end systems that are directly connected to revenue streams. Like I don't think I have the engineering nous to do that. Also I agree that pixel perfection is an outdated concept driven by the PSD to HTML era. These days layout should be determined by content (text, images) and not some arbitrary PSD comp. There has to be room for flexibility.