My first experience with someone in your position was Geordi LaForge. I found it so inspiring how he overcame - though technology - his blindness and how his innovation became central to fulfilling his craft's mission and often securing the safety of its crew. I often wondered what would have become of him had he been born in an earlier age, without the technology to provide him with an alternative high-bandwidth, low-latency sense.
I am blessed that I have all my senses and so do my children, but I absolutely believe that the 9999 other traits that you have to share should not be lost just because of a single non-optimal trait.
> My first experience with someone in your position was Geordi LaForge. I found it so inspiring [...]
To be clear, that's a fictional character in a fictional future that may or may not ever come. Sure, we can use assistive technology, e.g. screen readers, to enable us to work. But with our current technology, that requires cooperation from developers of platforms, applications, websites, etc., and as I said in another comment, advocating for that sometimes seems futile. We do sometimes make progress though.
> I absolutely believe that the 9999 other traits that you have to share should not be lost just because of a single non-optimal trait.
Yes, Roddenberry used his fictional future to show us what our future could be. That was the point that I was trying to make without being too explicit - that could in fact be our future. If we choose it.
Maybe I'm succumbing to the cynical zeitgeist, but I figure the future will be primarily whatever the wealthy minority wants. If that's so, then maybe the best hope for people like me is a future like the one portrayed in the opening of Ready Player Two (generally not a very good book), where a VR-obsessed multi-billionaire funds work on neural interfaces, starting with implants for disabled people and culminating in the OASIS Neural Interface headset. Yes, it would feel wrong to be used as a means to an end, but it would answer the question of how a world-dominating VR as depicted in those books could be made accessible.
I am blessed that I have all my senses and so do my children, but I absolutely believe that the 9999 other traits that you have to share should not be lost just because of a single non-optimal trait.