Crifrald

Hey there!

I'm a standard 41 year old straight white male from Portugal with the exception that I've been totally blind for 9 years due to a congenital glaucoma. I'm also a high school drop-out with over two decades of experience as a programmer, used to work in software engineering but quit when my vision became unstable, haven't worked ever since, have been living off a disability income for the last 10 years, and am not very independent since my family is quite overprotective. I did attend a rehabilitation center shortly after going blind but didn't take much advantage of it since I was still in denial, so I'm planning on going back for orientation and mobility as well as cooking lessons. I live with my mother and, until two days ago, also with a small dog which had to be euthanized due to severe kidney failure and old age.

My only hobby is coding, and I like to test my limits by doing things that the blind aren't expected to do, like computer graphics programming, which is one of my favorite areas of software development along with embedded systems or kernel programming.

Besides attending a rehabilitation center again, my other plan for the near future is to enroll in college because I think that I'm ready to work again but am somewhat ashamed of the huge temporal gap in my resume. The idea is to strengthen the foundations of my knowledge and have some formal education to show to potential employers later on. To make that possible I'll hire a math teacher to prepare me for the math test that I'll have to do as part of the enrollment process next year as my algebra and calculus knowledge need refreshing, and I'll also take the opportunity to figure out the adaptations that I will ask for in college.

I found this community on reddit in 2016 and have been following it on multiple accounts since then, though I haven't contributed much to it since I myself am not very good at this being blind thing.