[nfbcs] Screen Reader & Coding

[Ida B]

Hello Everyone,

I am new to this group, and would love some advice. I am a 21 year old university senior studying computer science. I am extremely excited to begin my career in the field. Up until now, I’ve mostly programmed with screen magnification software. However, as my vision deteriorates, I am starting to transition to screen reader software like JAWS.

How long do you think it takes for someone to become an advanced JAWS user? I feel frustrated because I feel like it takes me a long time to navigate the computer using just the keyboard and my ears. Does this frustration ever go away? Will I ever become as fast at using the computer as my sighted peers?

For those of you who code, how do you do it? Especially in languages like Python that are super finicky about things like white space or punctuation. How do you get up to speed on a large code base with many different layers of code from front-end, to the database layer? What IDE or environment do you use?

I’d appreciate any advice, wisdom, and insight.

Thank you so much,
Ida B