I'm a totally blind software developer who was born in the mid 80's. From my experience and limited discussion with other blind individuals I was born at the beginning of when life became a lot easier as a blind programmer as well as a blind person in general. When I started to learn programming in the early 2000's electronic versions of a decent number of programming books were available. I don't know how I would have learned C from a print copy of the K&R book in the late 80's. By the time I entered college I had GPS to help me get around campus. PRetty much everything but math was also available in fully accessible electronic format. Ten years earlier it would have been a lot more dificult.