I've been out of work coming up to six years. I had to look after my dad during the pandemic. I've been looking for work in London, UK, since January. During that time I've had a total of 2 interviews. Recruiters, who seem to do a keyword search only, message me from time-to-time on LinkedIn. I reply and they almost invariably never respond, presumably because they look more closely and see the large gap in employment.

What complicates things for me is being legally blind. I have enough vision to use a computer, but not much else and so I don't have the breadth of career options available to me that most people do. I need a way back in.

I keep reading, and I keep playing with code like I always have. I'm comfortable with C#, JavaScript and their respective ecosystems. It's like riding a bike. But convincing other people of that, recruiters especially, is proving to be a problem.

As for how I'm coping, I'm very up and down. It's hard not to feel that my career might be over. So when interviews have come up, I'm extremely nervous despite never having that problem in the past where I'd usually interview well.

Somehow, at least for now, I've kept going. Thanks for starting the thread.

FWIW I’m Hoping that the combination of AI and ridiculously powerful small devices will finally get us to the point where we can interact with computers primarily through voice. A limiting factor seems to be misunderstanding what’s actually required, and you likely have insight and can build experience there. So if you were able to on your own time, build some small systems and demonstrate effective voice interaction, that might lead to some interesting work, and benefit others. From C#, you might be able to transition easily to Swift and target the Apple ecosystem, which has an a lot more accessibility support, and also has the possibility of becoming an independent developer.

You looking at startups? I’ve seen a few started by people who turned their deafness or blindness into a new idea / product.

"I reply and they almost invariably never respond, presumably because they look more closely and see the large gap in employment."

Ive long thought about this problem. I think the issue is we dont have an objective mechanism to understand ones capability. Because thats really what matters.

Two people can have the same YOE, but how do you know which is more capable? Interviews are a terrible way to guage this, but is the present day mechanism thats used.