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

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).

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.

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.

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%?

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.

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-...

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

Please see 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!

> 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).

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the best developers I know has a serious visual impairment. Don't say "I can't." Instead ask, "how can I?"

I am using RGP (Rigid Gas permeable ) lenses and they were comfortable. K-Rose lenses. Please check with your ophthalmologist

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