I'm visually impaired, not legally blind although not far off it. I'm also pretty photo-sensitive. Some things that have helped me in no particular order:
- Get a large (27" in my case) monitor so I can have the text large without having to constantly zoom in. High resolution + higher DPI is easier on the eyes than getting big text by lowering the resolution.
- Learn a terminal based text editor (Vim or EMacs) and get good at using the terminal. Many GUI based applications, particularly IDEs have limited options or don't work well with larger text sizes. Working within a terminal makes developing less "visual" while maximising the amount of information on screen. Now I spend 80% plus of my day in a terminal and my eyes are significantly less tired at the end of the day.
- Use a tiling window manager. On OSX I use Slate (https://github.com/jigish/slate), or on Nix you could use something like XMonad. The screen-snapping stuff in recent versions of Windows is helpful too. The idea here is to rely on the mouse as little as possible.
- use a dark color scheme. I like Solarized-dark but there are several other good options.
- pick an easy to read font. I use Menlo and have the size up around 32pt.
- use a terminal prompt that makes it very clear where the prompt is when scrolling back through history. I use this one https://gist.github.com/agnoster/3712874
- get an adjustable monitor arm so you can bring the screen closer to you without craning your neck. I've had the same one for 15+ years but am planning on buying one of the Ergotron ones in the next few weeks
- use f.lux to take the bright blue tint out of screen colors https://justgetflux.com/
- work in a room lit by lamps positioned so that they don't add any glare.
- if you often find yourself working at the same screen as other people, set up a second monitor in mirror-mode or investigate using TMux if you're both in terminal editors so that you can have your terminal configured so it's comfortable for you, and so can your partner.
I'm happy to provide more info on any of this.