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Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

A few years back I started buying disability insurance, in addition to paying more attention to my ergonomics.

My greatest economic asset is the years left in my career. For ~$1500/year I insure that. It's not cheap, but it would pay out until I was 65 at some reasonable percentage of my normal salary in the case I was severely injured, or otherwise unable to work. Anywhere from an ergonomics caused hand/arm injury, a bike-riding caused head injury, a wood-shop caused eye damage, etc.

Consider grabbing it while you're young and working in a lucrative career.

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Not sure how old you are but I imagine over the next couple of decades we’ll eventually get more advanced computer interfaces.

Gestures, voice, eye tracking, ...

Being a software developer could be a job for those who physically can’t do other jobs.

Subtle input gestures with Soli would be interesting.

https://atap.google.com/soli/

Assuming physical injury (like RSI or trauma), yes, it's getting easier and easier.

But there are many other ways you could be injured and unable to work. My straw-man injury when I bought the policy was: "I'm a new skier, which is famous for major head trauma". Similarly, cancer, which directly or via treatment, causes exhaustion is another example of disability that is not solved with "if only I could just input text easier".

I'm glad there's so much work in accessibility going on, and that hardware, machine learning, and social awareness has gotten widespread enough to let non-huge companies dive in and make real progress. It's important to open the field to as many people who we can.

I just want to be sure people don't rely on technology being advanced enough at the exact time you may need it. You can easily get unlucky, and insurance exists to pay somebody else to take the risk.

Yes, that makes sense. However, the older I get the more I think society should provide some sort of safety net for the unlucky.

It’s inefficient for everyone to do this and many cannot.

The premiums could jump 50% in a decade, for example. I’ve known situations somewhat like yours where premiums went up a lot.

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