aces4all00, The Blind SysAdmin

IT Automator, Problem Solver, Solution Builder, and Advisor with strong focuses on Operations and DevOps…that happens to be blind.

You may wonder how someone blind can be a systems administrator. It is a reasonable concern and one that I would have had myself as little as 5 years ago. It all comes down to the difference between what we assume being blind means and what it really does.

So, what does being blind really mean?

The most basic definition of blind is to not see. Most people seem to assume that is an absolute statement, as in to not see anything, rather than a simple one, such as to not see the the dog at their feet or the person standing to their left. Most people are wrong.

To be blind means to need to use nonvisual techniques to perform basic life tasks people usually use sight to perform. Let’s use me as an example. There is enough that I do not see that I have to use nonvisual techniques to:

  • Cook
  • Clean
  • Bathe
  • Groom myself
  • Safely walk from place to place

What does all this mean for being a SysAdmin?

Not much, really. My mind still works, and I have a substantial amount of knowledge and experience to draw from as I continue to do the work I enjoy so much.

  • I have always preferred using shell commands and scripting over GUI alternatives so losing the ability to track the mouse pointer accross the screen has little impact

  • When it comes to reading and writing documents (email, reports, articles, etc.) in formats I can no longer see screen readers like, (Windows) Nararrator, (Windows) NVDA, (Windows) JAWS, (MacOS) VoiceOver, and (Linux) Orca, among others enable me to do so

  • I can even write documents using Voice To Text (VTT) tools built into later versions of Android OS and IOS to write core parts of documents and edit them on a computer when necessary. (VTT on mobile device operating systems seems to work much better than what is available on desktop operating systems)

Like I said, becoming blind has had little effect on my ability to be a good systems administrator. Some of the techniques and tools I use to do my work may have changed, but I am at least as good at what I do as I have always been.

In Closing

I am Aces4all00, the Blind SysAdmin.

I am an IT Automator, Problem Solver, Solution Builder, and Advisor with strong focuses on Operations and DevOps…that happens to be blind.

find me on Mastodon