我是个盲人，在过去的12年里一直是一名程序员。目前，我是一名高级架构师，在Sapient公司(一家总部位于剑桥的咨询公司，创建基于web和基于厚客户端的企业解决方案)工作。 我使用了几个屏幕阅读器，但大多数情况下都坚持使用Jaws用于窗口和NVDA。

I have mostly worked on the Microsoft platform and visual studio as my environment. I also use tools like the MS Sql enterprise studio and others for DB access, network monitoring etc. I tried to spend some time with emacspeak but since my work was mostly based on the MS platform, never really spent a lot of time there. I have also spent a couple of years working on C++ on linux - mostly used notepad or visual studio on windows for all the coding and then samba to share files with the linux environment. Also used borland C for some experimental stuff. Have recently been playing around with python, which as other people have noted above is particularly unfriendly for a blind user because it is written using indentation as the nesting mechanism. Having said that, NVDA, the most popular open source screen reader is written completely using python and some of the commiters on that project are themself blind. A particularly interesting question I get frequently asked as an architect is how do I deal with diagrams - UML and visio and rational rose etc. Visio is probably the most accessible diagraming tool out there. I was able to write jaws scripts to read rational rose diagrams for me. I've used a tool called T-dub (technical diagram understanding for the blind) developed by some german university for accessing UML 2.0 diagrams. Have used a java-based ugly tool called magic draw for doing model-driven development and was a commiter on the androMDA project and helped develop the .Net code generator from a UML model.

In general, I find that I thrive most in a team environment where I can work on my strengths. For example, while a diagram is extremely useful to communicate/document a design, the actual design process involves a lot of thinking and brainstorming and when the design has been thought out, one of your team mates can help you quickly put together a neatly drawn picture out of it. People incorrectly mis-construe the above to be lack of independence or ability while I see this as pure inter-dependence -- as in I am sure that the team mate alone could never have come up with that design on his/her own and in-turn, if I depend on him to document the design, so be it. Most hurdles I face are tool-based inaccessibility. For example all oracle products have been progressively declining in accessibility over the years (shame on them) and a team environment basically allows me an extra layer of defense against these over and above my screen readers and custom scripts.

请记住，“失明”是一系列的情况——有一些人在法律上是盲人，他们可以阅读一个非常大的显示器或在放大设备的帮助下，还有一些人根本没有视力。我记得大学时的一个同学有一种可以放大书本的特殊设备，还有一种可以放大屏幕一部分的特殊软件。她正在努力完成大学学业，因为她的视力越来越差，几乎要完全消失了。

编程也有一系列的需求——有些人擅长写出大量的代码，有些人更擅长看大局和架构。我可以想象，考虑到屏幕界面所施加的难度，失明可能会增强你获得大局的能力……

I'm a postgraduate student in Beijing,China. I major in computer science and a lot of my work is programming. I am born with low sight, I need to use magnifying tools to see fonts on screen clearly. I use microsoft's mgnify tools on windows and use compiz's magnify plug in if on linux. I usally set the tool to magnify as three times many as the original font size. For me maginify tools is ok, the main problem is the speed,I have to move mouse to keep cursors follow the text I'm looking at, microsoft's magnify provides a option of "auto follow the text edit points",that set me from continuously mouse movement when editting or coding. But it doesn't always works because of the edit software or IDE may not support that. Magnifying tools on linux are hard to use. The KMag come with KDE has a terrible refresh rate which make my eyes unconfortable, compiz's magnifying plugs which I'm using now is OK,but has no function of auto focus(focus auto following). iOS provides quite perfect solution for me with full screen magnifying, especially on ipad's 9.7 inches screen. there auto focus is not necessary because I hardly use them to code or do other edit stuff. Android provides very little accessibility functions, only like shake feedback, which is useless for me. there is no any kind of good magnifying tools on android , not to mention advance function like full screen magnify on iOS. I used to study Qt, want to build a useful magnify tools on linux, even on android. But hardly have some progress.

我认为这在使用结对编程原理的极限编程中会很有效。如果你是为盲人开发软件，那么谁会比那些真正了解业务需求的人更适合做这个软件呢，所以我认为这一点都不牵强。

至于写代码，除非有某种反馈，否则我认为一个人可能会在语法上挣扎。音频反馈可能会有所帮助。

NVDA是一个很好的开源屏幕阅读器。

有各种各样的工具来帮助盲人或部分视力的人，包括语音反馈和盲文键盘。http://www.rnib.org.uk/Pages/Home.aspx是一个在这些问题上提供帮助和建议的好网站。