Comment by gcr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gcr | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Hey, awesome! I have vision impairment as a result of albinism too! (nystagmus; my corrected acuity is about 20/100 and 20/120-150 without glasses) Fellow red/blonde-haired pasty-white person unite~~!

For those running Linux, it's easy to change the font size of GTK+ and QT programs, which affect on all major apps on the system. That combined with browsers' zoomability makes it possible to get by... though yes, I do have to concede, it doesn't top Windows' magnifying glass. Maybe a nice Wayland WM will get there some day. We'll have to wait and see.

In the mean time, it is amusing to be working in the lab and have my coworkers be able to read the screen from halfway across the room...

For those of you who are curious, this is the font size that I'm comfortable at: http://i.imgur.com/O7tTskY.png

Agree with all your points. It's ironic that most of the coping/adjusting I do happens away from the computer. E.g. because I don't drive, I have to live in a city with reasonable public transport and have to depend on friends for shopping trips, etc. Maybe that's one reason why I like my job as a CS grad student: because I can adjust for my weaknesses to play to my strengths.

Wow it seems we have incredibly similar situations! Here's my current zoom level on HN, sitting upright with my face about 2 feet (rough guess, maybe half a meter?) on a 27" monitor http://i.imgur.com/oCU01L9.png

(Ignore all the noob tabs, I'm currently making a lesson plan to teach children PHP!)

I'll definitely give linux another try, although I'll still have to keep my Windows install for gaming at home, my laptop could benefit from a nice distro.

I also find it funny how people can read my screen from the other side of the room. Somewhat unrelated but funny anecdote is my friends staring in awe at my ability to use Visual Studio on a 14" ultrabook display - huge font size and lots of nice whitespace = not very many columns. A friend noted "your brain must have a huge code buffer"!

I do agree though that of all possible career options, there are far more which could be hindered greatly than development.

Edit: As a side note, I think the last figure I can remember for my vision was 6/36 - although that was years ago. I don't really bother with glasses now because the correction apparently just helps to "not tire my eyes so much from the nystagmus" - not an acuity correction unfortunately.

> "your brain must have a huge code buffer!"

Yeah, that's a great way of describing it. It's hard to code well and keep all that context in your head when you can only fit 21 lines on the screen... At least people still often stick with 80-character lines; it's awful when they spill over and begin to wrap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com