Those are good clarifications, thanks for posting them.

Regarding a more accessible compiler, one option would be to use the Cygwin
package, which provides gcc, gdb, and make: command-line compilers,
debuggers, and project management. This may or may not meet your programming
needs. It's a more linux-like environment. If you need to use Microsoft
packages as part of your programming, then you should probably stick with
Visual Studio. You can use Microsoft's compilers from the command line:
There is nmake.exe for managing projects, and cl.exe is the compiler, etc.
But I don't recall a command line debugger. So if you need to do debugging,
I think Visual Studio is your only option.

Again, you might get more info by posting to the program-l mailing list. I'm
a newbie when it comes to developing software as a blind person (though I've
been doing it as a low vision person for years). Program-l has lots of blind
programming expertise.
-Paul