[nfbcs] Computer Science Career Questions

[John G Heim]

I'm thinking about what my blind friends do. One is a lawyer. One ownes 
a catering business, lots of them are unemployed. I would say that an IT 
career is probably easier for a blind person than most careers.

I think the one big thing you need to look out for if you are a blind IT 
guy is getting backwatered. That's my term for this phenomena where 
because you're blind and because the new stuff is almost always 
inaccessible at first, you don't get assigned to working on new 
projects. Gradually, the stuff you are doing gets older and older and 
pretty soon, you're only expertise is in obsolete systems. I personally 
know several blind IT professionals who lost their jobs that way. It 
almost happened to me but I recognized the problem in time and taught 
myself linux systems admin. IMO, the best way to avoid getting 
backwatered is to learn the new stuff on your own in your spare time.

To be fair, sighted people get backwatered too. And I know blind IT 
people who have done the same job for 20 years. I think those jobs are 
few and far between in IT though. I think you need to be prepared for 
having problems keeping up with the latest and greatest technology. But 
any career is going to have challenges for a blind person. The world is 
not designed for us.

I do linux support for the Math Department at the University of 
Wisconsin and I love it. I almost never have accessibility issues 
dealing with linux systems. It's a little bit of everything -- some 
hardware, soome programming, operating system installs on workstations 
and servers. I do a lot of math but you don't usually have to know any 
math to do linux systems support.

On 01/04/2016 01:49 PM, Robert Spangler via nfbcs wrote:
> Hello!
>
>   
>
> So I am considering going back to school.  Here in Dayton, at Wright State
> University, there are BA and BS programs in Computer Science.  I am
> considering the BA program as it seems to have less high level math
> requirements and I feel will allow me to focus more on computer-related
> material instead of becoming frustrated with difficult math concepts which I
> feel won't really help me anyways.
>
>   
>
> I'm basically looking for opinions.  I didn't study computer science my
> first time around in college because I was intimidated by the math and I
> kind of took the easy way out.  In regards to careers in computer science
> and being blind, is there any specific advice from which I could benefit?
> In what types of computer science careers are blind people employed?  I
> think my interests revolve more around networking, computer maintenance,
> installing operating systems-basic IT stuff-more than hardcore programming.
> Is there anything about which I should be aware relative to blindness when
> going into this field?  I've always just done what I wanted without even
> considering being blind but I just thought it would be best to ask.  A lot
> of IT jobs are using remote access solutions to help coworkers with
> computer-related issues.  I'm thinking that most of these are not accessible
> with screen reading technology.  What are the workarounds?  This is the main
> issue I can think of off the top of my head.
>
>   
>
> Thanks and I'm looking forward to your input!
>
>   
>
> Robert
>
>   
>
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