Comment by kall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kall | Hacker News Reader

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%?

I should clarify that keratonic 20/40 is not really comparable to myopic 20/40. I have a lot of ghosting and distortions in my vision.

Also the glasses I use have extreme high power that contorts the image too.

Appreciate that someone in the same boat is managing though.

Yeah, that makes sense. If you don‘t feel you will be able to comfortably and effectively do the work, no point in forcing it.

I really recommend you give mouse driven full screen zoom a good try. Whatever job you do, it will be a QoL improvement in computing. The key, imho, is to not move focus with your eyes much but instead move focus under your eyes with the mouse. Don‘t shy away from larger magnifications than you need to read text, but instead make it really comfortable for whatever field of vision you have. I also move the zoom level in and out almost as much as the focus, while reading/writing/interacting. This part may only work well with the smooth gesture zoom of macOS where you can do both at the same time and a laptop where you can access the trackpad with your thumbs from home row.

I‘m sorry for going into unsolicited rant mode on this. I just see other visually impaired people struggle with their super large font settings and think they could work better. It may just be my specific kind of bad vision, idk.

Thanks for the advice. I use 120% scaling on my windows machine but I find MacOS lacks fine tuned display scaling outside of the zoom option and 3-4 resolutions.

TBH I'm also a bit self conscious about using a massive zoom at work. I've already had some comments in the past which is why I just try to get through the day with the uncomfortable lenses. Some days are bad with headaches.

The main issue I find with glass/scaling/zoom vs lenses is that I am much much slower which just makes me feel depressed. My job in UI dev is quite demanding with long hours and overtime which is why I'm trying to move into something less visually demanding overall.

I have a condition called juvenile retinoschisis. It's very similar to macular degeneration. My overall vision varies between 20/80ish and 20/120ish depending on the day. After having around ten different surgeries to correct a few retinal detachments I'm left with double vision, ghosting, distortions in my visual field, floaters, near constant pain, and extreme light sensitivity. My last job was front end developer in a React codebase, and I'm currently working as a full stack dev in Elixir/Phoenix. It can be done. You will find new ways to adapt.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope you're able to improve your vision somewhat with lenses or glasses?

You're right that it can be done, but it's mentally challenging, especially when you become aware how much slower you are vs with 20/20 - I mean its frustrating. Something we have to adapt to as you said.

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