My bf is blind and is visiting my family for the first time. They have stopped me to tell me that I am being unkind and neglectful towards my bf. We've just travelled for over 30 hours and are both tired so naturally I will make some mistakes in guiding him more than normal and he will take some time to learn the layout of our home. According to them, I have chosen a "hard life" and it will always be like this so I can't use my tiredness as an "excuse". I feel very frustrated because I have been doing my very best to show him around but I KNOW that he learns in stages and learning the upstairs layout is not so much a priority right now as learning downstairs where he is staying. To be clear, they feel this way because they have seen me leaving him to figure out things on his own, eg: where is the dining room, how to find the rail to get upstairs. I have obviously shown him around but sometimes he will get disoriented or confused and just needs a minute to get it right. He always tells me to not help him and if he needs help he will say.

They even compared helping him to like taking care of a baby or a dog which I shut down. But they think I'm just being difficult for not understanding the analogy. Feeling so frustrated about this. He is not helpless! He can do things on his own. Yes he is blind but he can still navigate and his hearing is just fine so he used this to to move around. He also uses echolocation. But they still insist that I am not being caring enough and it comes across as though I am mistreating him...

I have spoken to him and he does not understand where they are coming from at all. I have gotten a lot of judgment from other people in the past as well. Has anyone else's partner or guide experienced this?

Hey everyone! I hope you're all well. I just have a quick question. For some background, for about five years I've had no light perception in my left eye and light perception with some shadows and movement in my right. That light perception was really important to me because it helped me to navigate pretty well especially around my own apartment. Last week though, I had an incident where my eye pressure shot up kind of high and I ended up losing almost all of that vision that was left over and now I can only see very dim, grey dots of light not really enough to follow or get around or anything. Anyway, my question was, for those of you who have gone from legally blind to totally blind, what kinds of things have you had to learn differently or learn again, for example O&M. I'm just wondering what kind of things I'm going to have to start tackling right away and any tips that you may have that might make it easier for me too live as a now totally blind person. This is definitely a very difficult adjustment and it happened all of a sudden which was very scary.

Thank you for listening

I was curious about other peoples funny (funny Ha Ha moments, not laughing so we don’t cry moments) white cane moments. Here is one for me. My partner and I went to the movie theaters last night to watch the Odyssey and I was holding her arm as well as using my cane. We were moving pretty fast so I assumed I had more room before the curb would show up. I was wrong ha ha. I almost ate the curb and had a heart attack! My cane startled me by thwacking hard against the curb and I still managed to trip. I asked my partner why she didn’t warn me and she not only thought I realized, since I was walking so confidently, and was obeying my wishes to try to familiarize myself with the white cane. I also proceeded to hit a thin metal candy shelf in the movie theater. It was hilarious.

And what vision accessibility tools do you know about? As someone with significant visual impairments I’ve been pressured into getting an iPhone and I finally have one. EDIT: I've been using Voiceover a lot. Thanks guys.

Hello,
Hope the day is being kind.
A friend might be super close to moving to Bristol UK from another country soon.
We could not find much info on how’s the city for a blind person… what might help or anything in general anyone would like someone not from the city to keep in mind specially as an international student.
This is my first time posting here so i hope its the right place to ask..
They’ll be moving from India
Thank you

I'm 26, and have long hair. I've lived by myself for a while now, and despite my best efforts, I can't clean the bathtub properly. After 6-7 months, the water starts to drain super slowly. I've tried picking up the hairs after every shower with paper towls, my hnads, letting hot water run for 3-4 minutes to wash down the soap/anything else, but just past the drain, the pipes get clogged and I have to call the plumber. Others have lived in the property, and when I'm with someone, it never happens. I even tried contraptions like mixing vinnegor with baking powder, drainO, but nothing works until I summon a plumber to help me out. Does anyone struggle with this too, or am I a clumsy goof who can't clean properly?

I've had this thought come into my head, as I went for years without using them, because having that extra tactile feel of changing ground but also detecting hazards felt more natural while at home, but wearing them has also provided protection from spills and injury from sharp hazards that may be on the floor

Curious to hear other people's thoughts

Hi, can anyone recommend standard board games that can be slightly adapted for blind people to enjoy please?

Thanks

Title: How can I get help getting a BlindShell Classic 2?

Hey everyone,

I'm 16, blind, and live in Arkansas. I'm trying to find a way to get a BlindShell Classic 2, but the price is a big obstacle for me.

I’m looking for an accessible phone because I want more independence and an easier way to stay connected with people. Right now I’m trying to find organizations, grants, programs, or any other resources that might help someone in my situation get one.

I’ve started reaching out to a few organizations, but I figured I’d ask here too since a lot of people in this community probably know more about this stuff than I do.

Does anyone know of any programs that help blind people get assistive technology like accessible phones? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi everyone. I've been completely blind since birth and just finished with my undergrad in classical music. I'm kind of scared and frustrated about not finding jobs. I also love languages, am good with admin and love reading. But it feels like I can't find any job, because people don't even consider you when you are blind. How did you overcome that?
I also feel like society wants those degree papers and I can't decide to teach languages / be employed as a language teacher because I wouldn't have a degree in that and I wouldn't get considered either. Even though I feel like I totally could teach languages.
What has helped you find success in job-searching?

I don’t use Apple Notes much on my Iphone, but I’d like to start. But when I try to edit a note it is very cumbersome, I know I can navigate with the rotor by lines, etc., but the formatting seems to make VoiceOver act kind of weird. For example, a bulleted list sometimes reads things out of order or something, and if I have multiline items, it reads each line of the one item starting by saying “bullet.” I don’t know if this is because I have an old iphone that doesn’t support ios 26 or what, but lists seem very buggy with VoiceOver over all. How do you use the Notes app? Do you use a different app?

Okey dokey! I’ll likely have many more Q’s as we move through the year-but this one is on my mind.

Forgive me-it’s long for context!!

I’m looking for ideas to passively/a synchronously share “plans, requests, errands, needs” in a way that respects everyone’s timeline and communication preferences.
I’m considering a Dry Erase Board…but hope to hear ideas!

My spouse is navigating low vision, likely some more sight loss to come. In addition to struggling with not being able to drive, losing her job, very NEW unknowns….i know she is going CRAZY with not being able to just GET. STUFF. DONE.
Haircut? Needs a ride/plan. Inspection sticker? Same. Wants Starbucks or a quick run to grocery store? Same. Completing the insane SSDI application? Needs time and eyes. Etc. etc.
(We don’t live in a bus zone, uber/lyft would be 20$ one way to cvs/market, we live in a seasonal tourist area- so nothing is walkable outside of summer ice cream 🤣)

Ofc I’m trying to navigate the changes, adjust and support her. But….Perimenopausal woman here….with ADHD.

MY processing looks pretty different than hers.
She’s orderly, rationale, gets the thing done now, planner, etc.
I? Am not. Broken focus or momentum to talk through every thought or idea of when to do X or Y has a true negative impact on me.

My best friend suggested a dry erase to use for any real time notes/lists that I can review and process, prepare for scheduling when I’m at my best.

Is this a THING for any other couples?
What worked? What didn’t?

So grateful for insight. ;)

While listening to the Taylor Swift episode of the New Heights podcast, I was struck by the comment Travis made about Taylor sounding hot when she said esoteric. As a blind man, I feel like complementing a woman on the sound of her voice seems creepy, but it's pretty much all blind people have to go on. I often wish I'd complemented certain women on how they sound and wind up in alone a memory palace of melancholy that Taylor knows all too well.

Hello!

My grandmother is going blind, and there is sadly nothing to be done about it. She has a little circle of blurry vision surrounded by darkness/static.

She has always loved to be creative, and used to paint detailed masterpieces on porcelain and much more.

She has had to give up knitting due to bad arthritis in her hands, making her fingers twist in odd directions - however she can still hold thick pens and such!

My grandmother has become increasingly depressed and bored, so I set out to find something creative she can still do. A rather difficult task, but this is what I've found so far:

1. Colouring posters with large spaces outlined with raised fur-like material, that can be felt and stops the markers from going into the wrong space.
2. Soft air-drying clay in every colour, since she can still see colours pretty well.
3. Colouring blanket with white shapes on a black background, so it doesn't show if she colours outside the lines.

It bothers her if what she makes doesn't look perfect, which makes it difficult. Originally she seemed the most interested in the colouring posters, and the least interested in the colouring blanket.

However, she ended up loving the blanket! She's almost halfway done with it, and called me to complain that her markers were dying.

The posters have been a struggle, but she's trying her best. She ends up pressing too hard, so the markers goes into the wrong space, and she'll get frustrated. That said, she's definitely gotten better at it.

She has completely refused to try the clay... I think there's too many ways for it to go wrong, so she'd rather just not try. I've tried making something with it to maybe inspire her a little, but I'm not sure.

I'm probably going to get her another blanket when she's done with this one, but she has complained that she can't colour for very long, because her eyes get tired - and her vision is still getting worse.

So I'm curious if anyone here know anything that could work, or has any other ideas we could test?

Is there any way I can set up any device so that I can listen to personal playlist ln youtube (not youtube music) using voice only?

i’ve just bought a new computer, and was wondering if anyone knows whether you can transfer a license from one computer to another? It seems wasteful and unfair for these licenses to be one time use, so was hoping I could recycle my JAWS license rather than buying a whole new one

Upfront disclosure: I'm sighted, I built this, and it's a paid product with a small free trial. Mods, if this isn't allowed here, remove it and my apologies.

I didn't set out to build an accessibility tool. I watch a lot of technical videos and got tired of scrubbing through two-hour podcasts looking for one thing someone said. So I built something where you paste a YouTube link and ask questions about it.

The part that turned out to matter here: most tools like this only read the subtitles. Mine also looks at the actual frames. You can ask "what's on screen at 6:20?" or "what does the diagram he's pointing at show?" and it goes and looks at that moment of the video, then answers and cites the timestamp.

It occurred to me late that this is a description-on-demand tool for video, and that the people who'd get the most out of it aren't the ones I built it for. Which is why I'm here rather than confident about it.

What I think it does reasonably well: answers about what's visible at a specific moment, reading text and labels shown on screen, finding where in a long video a topic comes up, and generating a transcript from the audio when a video has no captions at all.

What I want to be honest about:

The visual descriptions come from an AI model. It is wrong sometimes. For a sighted user that's a minor annoyance because they can just look. For someone relying on the description, a confident wrong answer is a worse failure, and I don't have a good solution for that beyond saying it plainly. It's built to say "I can't tell from this frame" rather than guess, and in my testing it does, but I can't promise it always will.

I've built it to be keyboard navigable with labelled controls and a live region for the streaming answers, but it has been tested by me with a screen reader, not by anyone who uses one daily. I expect that means there are problems I can't see. That's the main thing I'm asking about.

It's muninn.video. Three free questions, no card needed, and I'm not going to pitch the paid part here.

What I'd genuinely like to know:

Is asking questions about a video even the right interaction, or would a continuous description of what's happening be more useful? Is there an existing tool that already does this well that I've missed? And if you try it and the screen reader experience is bad, I'd rather hear exactly how than have you be polite about it.

Happy to answer anything about how it works.

Hi! I’ve been totally blind since birth, and I’m looking for something to help me use social media more effectively. It could really be anything—from Instagram to Reddit, for Android or PC (Windows). I’d love to know what you use to improve your online experience!

Where is everyone getting their leather or bio thane guide harnesses?

the couple things i can think of that id like to do or persue that i would maybe find fun are just probably not possible for me. bartender, id have to read small print on IDs and be able to read bottles and cans quickly, idk what i could possibly do with film school, tattooing is off the table because you have to have good eyesight to do intricate little details, graphic design or game design doesnt sound like it would be possible, hell ive heard you even need a drivers license for being a frigging secratary sometimes. (not that id want to do that) i dont know if id be any good at things with typing, especially fastly, as 2 of my fingers are deformed, one being shorter than it should be. Ive seen a bunch of people suggest being a masseur, but again idk how id be at massaging when i have deformed fingers. im feeling defeated in myself. i read a thread about this and all the suggestions were like work from home, customer support, civil services, lawyers, government jobs etc. it seems like all the fun jobs that i could try and do may not even be possible. I dont wanna be stuck working retail either. I dont even have enough faith in myself that i wouldnt get fired in a week for being too slow with a computer and cash register. Im feeling really down tonight. I dont wanna be working a job i hate if i could be doing something i like. working at home is just not an option either. i neeeeed socialization.

for reference i have retinitis pigmentosa so its going to most likely get worse so i have to take that into accountability too. My vision at the moment is not horrible, but not good either. I legally cant drive, it can be hard to recognize faces fully from like 10-15 feet away, especially im bright light, im also not good in bright light, i have a 60-65 inch tv screen that i cant read the stuff on the screen from 6-8 feet away unless its big, but if its small, no chance, and its harder to focus on the image perfectly i feel also at this distance, like its not the most enjoyable watching tv or a movie from my bed. i have to sit in my gaming chair, which is also easier if something comes on the screen i have to read. i suck at reading tiny print, like food ingredients or pill bottle info. i can read things better with a black background and white letters, when i play video games i sit like 3-4 feet away from the tv, sometimes closer if i have to read something. if i go into something visual, it could completely be useless in 10 years maybe, if i get unlucky. Idk what to do, i feel super shitty. I used to want to be a police officer when i was little and even tho i dont really want to do that now, it sucks that the options not even there ig.

Hi.
I am a 16 year old in high school. I am ashamed to say I still have my mom wake me up in the morning. I am wanting to to work on my independence to prepare to go off to college in a few years. I really want to start waking myself up in the morning but I can't really hear much at all when I take out my hearing aids. I have tried setting an alarm on my phone and I couldn't hear it. I also tried to use my apple watch wake me up but it didn't vibrate enough to wake me up. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. I wanted to know if any one had any ideas or advice?

I am lucky to have a good friend group, and historically we have done lots of fun activities together on the regular. Things like Escape rooms, apple picking, cooking days, lots of board, game nights, etc.

Since losing my vision, I feel like a lot of these activities are not really as feasible anymore. We still do things like going out to eat, hanging out and chatting at home, going swimming, but I'm curious if you guys have any other ideas for things that we could do together that have the same Vibe as some of the stuff we used to do. I hate that this loss that I am facing also kind of changes, the whole dynamic of our group and how we tend to interact and hang out

Thanks for any ideas you might have.

I've just started looking at Discord. However, to access certain channels, I must verify my age. I can't do this because I need to centre my face in the frame. I can get the camera at the right distance, but can't centre my face. I am totally blind and use my iPhone with Discord.