Visually impaired Turkish man works at Amazon

ISTANBUL

A visually impaired Turkish man is working as a software engineer at Amazon’s London office, one of the world’s largest companies in the information technology industry.

Semih Budak, who is visually impaired from birth, has been deeply interested in computers since his childhood, which enabled him to start a career from the eastern province of Erzurum, where he was born and raised, to the U.K.

“My interest in computers started thanks to my uncle who is visually impaired like me,” Budak stated, adding that envying his uncle’s work on computers, he spent more and more time on the computer and formed his social circle there.

“I started a software course where I could attend classes from my computer. I learned programming with this course,” Budak pointed out.

“Though I studied English translation and interpretation at university, I always wanted the software to be a part of my life. So, I continued my work on the software,” he explained.

His first professional experience as a software specialist was in the Turkish office of an international company.

After working for about two and a half years, one of his friends said that he received a job offer from Amazon, but he could not attend the interviews and asked Budak if he would be interested in this job.

“Then, I attended the interviews instead. An offer came from the U.K. office for the position of a software engineer. I accepted the offer and moved to London last August with a backpack and a few belongings,” Budak explained.

Pointing out that his biggest goal is to make people’s lives easier with his computer programs, Budak currently works on an audio exploration game “three-dimensional exploration prototype,” which he calls the “love project.”

“For instance, when you put on your headphones and open the game, you can easily understand whether a helicopter passing over your character in the game is coming from the back or from the front, is rising or descending,” he explained.

“I have developed this game in about 15 different versions with seven different programming languages. The game will continue to develop, but it will not end just like a learning process,” he added.