Since you mentioned ed, I know of a blind programmer who actually likes and uses ed (or did last time I heard from him). In fact, he wrote his own version of ed that also includes a web browser, and called it edbrowse. To be sure, he's in the minority even among blind programmers. But for what it's worth, you can find an article that he wrote about his approach here: http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html