Hi, Have you tried some of the O'riley books from Bookshare? They used to be available free on the site. The way I got into it was just looking at the various public discussion lists for products like Exchange, Windows, SQL etc, then getting trial systems to play with. Having some hardware which isn't your main desktop is king here. Thanks. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ibraam Wahib Sent: 27 February 2009 19:15 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] help me? hello members: please I'm a blind man from a development country. I'm from Egypt, I need a guide to be a system administrator. what I need to be study? courses? certification? how about accessibility in this field? I'm studying now in CAVI, in semester 2 in ITE and CCNA discovery. my dream to be professional in computer, and find a job in a place who not believe that blind can do such things. thanks. any help well be appreciated. ibraam. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

I'm not sure my experiences will be relevant to your situation, Ibrahim. But I was talking about this with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. It is difficult to say if it is better to have some skills that in high demand but that a lot of people have or if it's better to have some skills that few people have but aren't in such great demand. Specifically, is it better to be an expert in Windows or linux? My department at the University of Wisconsin hired me as a linux systems administrator about 4 years ago. then about 6 months later they hired a Windows systems administrator. My boss said they found far fewer people qualified as a linux systems administrator compared to the number of qualified applicants for the Windows job. That meant that when I applied for the linux job, there was far less competition for me. On the other hand, there are far fewer jobs in linux administration than in Windows. My opinion is that for a blind person, your chances are better if you are one of only a few applicants for a job even if that means there are fewer jobs available to you. That's because I think that as a blind person, you have to really impress them in order to get them to hire you. If you're way more qualified than anyone else who is applying for a job, they're more likely to give you a chance even though you are blind. So you might consider learning linux/unix networking and linux/unix systems administration. Another thing you might look into is the area of computer security. That's a growing field. There is something called CISSP certification. I'm not sure if it is offered in Egypt but I do know it's offered internationally. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ibraam Wahib" <ibraam.wahib@gmail.com> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 1:15 PM Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] help me?

hello members: please I'm a blind man from a development country. I'm from Egypt, I need a guide to be a system administrator. what I need to be study? courses? certification? how about accessibility in this field? I'm studying now in CAVI, in semester 2 in ITE and CCNA discovery. my dream to be professional in computer, and find a job in a place who not believe that blind can do such things. thanks. any help well be appreciated. ibraam. _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-sysadmins