Luke, I have a bachelors in computer science, but since I'm sighted I don't think I can be of much help.  Just chiming in before the rest of our computer science comrades do. 

Hello,

I'm glad that another fellow blind person is deciding to stick with Computer Science as a major. I am totally blind, and getting degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering with minor in Math. Just FYI, Computer Science is more theoretical with respect to software, whereas Computer Engineering deals with hardware. At least, that is a super simplified comparison. I also want to go ahead and emphasize that Computer Science is a bit more than mere computer programming. A large part of the field involves problem solving and optimizing solutions. This means that, academically, you'll have to have a decent grasp of beginner Calculus concepts to understand things like asymptotic analysis of algorithms and such. Obviously, those courses are bound to be included in the degree requirements, but it would still be wise to keep this in mind. Anyway, regarding Braille displays, I use a Brailliant BI 40. I must admit though, I don't really use it for writing programs. I usually have NVDA's eSpeak TTS set to really high speed with punctuation mode set to all. This usually allows me to write my programs with ease. I'm not one to make assumptions, but if you are in the US, it seems like the most popular programming languages are Java and C++ in the academic field. Therefore, I would recommend you get somewhat familiar with programming concepts to facilitate the rest of the learning process that occurs in a lecture setting. This reply might be a bit too technical if you're just beginning, but I want to make sure that you know as much about what you are getting yourself into as possible so you don't get discouraged. In particular, one thing that I always recommend to totally blind students of STEM fields is to learn LaTeX or some form of it. As you know, Braille is not as readily available in higher education settings as it might be in the traditional K-12 public school system. Therefore, LaTeX provides a method for creating, editing, and reviewing science and math materials. The main reason I recommend this is because I've noticed that professors typically generate electronic documents from this so-called .tex file that transforms all the written commands into corresponding symbols. This is especially useful when handling quizzes, exams, etc that the instructor might assign which may contain characters that a screen-reader has a hard time recognizing. I'd like to think of it like a powerful editing system using raw text. In fact, MS Word does this exact thing, but it uses XML and transformation rules. Anyway, I digress. This post is probably too technical and a little long. But I would be happy to talk to you if you need any guidance or tips. I think my contact information is at the bottom of my reply.

HTH

My own experience was that a screen reader was fine for the majority of the work, but that a braille display can be very helpful for debugging. Particularly true when you're looking for a missing parenthesis, or brace or bracket.

You can get by with a 40 cell, 80 cell is nice if you can get the state or school to pay for it.

Good luck!

Hi, this is a great question!

I got my Bachelor's in Computer Science in 2014. The thing about Computer Science is that it's not a programming degree. If you want a programming degree, you should go for a different major, and not Computer Science. In fact, at my university, Computer Science used to be a branch of the Math department until they separated it out into its own college.

With this in mind, yes a Braille display will help with programming, but honestly programming is only 10% of your coursework. You'll need some way to represent Math properly. I went to a public university and started out with audio books, but eventually commissioned my university to deliver material in Braille. You'll be looking at *A LOT* of diagrams (state diagrams, identity diagrams, UML diagrams, etc) so you'll need a way to efficiently interpret the information. The best option for me was Braille, and my grades went up significantly once I started getting material in Braille versus audio.

I'd say programming is the easiest part of Computer Science. It's the rest you have to worry about, like the Calculus, logic courses and (in the case of my university) some hardware courses as well, because this is where you will start to see accessibility challenges.

So, you'll be interpreting a lot of graphs and diagrams and doing a lot of problem solving, just be aware of that. The display will only help with the programming part, but eventually they assume you know how to program and your purely programming courses will taper off. I never took an actual programming course after my second term at university.

I go to university. I am honestly pleased with it because I am not just learning to program, I am learning also how to make algorithms. In probably many applications perhaps performance doesn't matter but there are applications where performance is key. Also the degre I am getting is math and Computer Science

I'm curious. Since every university, college, etc classifies Computer Programming as Computer Science, what would be a suitable major to go into to program?
I'm guessing there are none, since my college says I *have* to be a computer science major to do any kind of Computer Programming. Perhaps they're only just telling me that because CS courses are the only courses they offer within the field. Even when I tell them I'd like to be a Software Engineer, I guess that still means CS.
I'm interested in programming, not really interested in everything else that goes with CS. Am I interested in CS concepts? Sure. It's not for everyone though, and my college has been pushing it on me because they know I am interested in programming. They keep saying CS is the best option though lol. I'm sure it has, probably has the best jobs in the field, but IDK--IT's so broad it's hard to choose.

A degree in computer science covers the same as one in computer programming, plus a few extra things.  I am not aware of anything the "programming" degree covers that is not covered in the "science" degree.  This means the computer science degree is going to be a bit harder to get, but would still give you everything you would have received from just the programming one.

After looking into what the university I will be attending requires, it is clearly evident programming isn't the only thing involved.  "Science" outlines a general system of how computers work through purely a software standpoint.  I was curious about the engineering side of things, but it's more hardware driven than software.  Software engineering is covered in CE (at least at this university), but nothing programming intensive.

How were your experiences with the calculus courses?  I'm required to take Calc1 and 2 with discrete mathematics and differential equations.

Thanks,

Luke

I, myself, wish I brought this up before I attempted computer science. If I had, I might had found ways to not fell at it. LOL. It was mostly the math that drug me down. That plus a touch of putting off hard things until I could no longer do so, and the fact that I did not demand the major stuff be in braille among other reasons. I am not too sure that the adaptive tech center where I went to university knew how best to braille some of that out.  The result is that I know some tiny bit of programming, could possibly  maybe recognize it if I see it, know that looking math up on the net is useless at times, that the computer does a lot for us in the back ground, having other people write stuff down that you tell them that you wish to remember for scratch does not always work out if you depend on looking at it at that time visually(scratch as in math and yes I had one that wished to see my work), that some teach with a vary visual way, accessing a linux machine via putty is not good enough at times, and that I made a few mistakes that cost me. I hope that made some sort of sense there. To say that I crashed and burned is sort of a understatement on my part.