r/Blind

Hi. I am a late 30s severe low vision individual who has been struggling with that affliction since 2001. My right retina is completely gone and my remaining vision is like looking at the world t hrough a thin pane of frosted glass: blurry, but I have shapes and colors. No facial definition without being inches away. No grasp of action happening more than a few feet from me. Print blind unless the magnification is 500% or so. I'm sure many of you get it.

Because of my disability and growing up in an area where it wasn't really known how to handle a disabled child, I'm only just coming into assistive aid and understanding the possibilties blind people still have at this stage of my life. My question, though, is that I feel like I'm a rather boring individual to my sighted husband. He's an energy vampire. Really thrives off of the energy people bring to the room. I'm a quiet, reserved, controlled-by-perfectionist-worries-because-of-trauma sort of individual that hasn't really learned how to put myself out there much yet. Between that and my limited intake of media, which largely boils down to listening to books and listening to YouTube on my one major hobby (tabletop games)—note: my husband isn't into those himself. He'll listen to me talk about it, and has a grasp of what I'm talking about through his own small exposure, but I often worry that I'll bore him without having a wider range of interests...—I'm still figuring that part out formyself, who I am, and I don't really have the stream-of-consciousness that comes with being chatty and energetic—nevermind the lack of passively osmosed observations that go into the average person's ability to process their way through conversation.

I know not all blind people are like me and I know some of you, even the ones who have never had sight, manage to be fine conversationalists who know how to pass a few hours with a good chat. How do I learn that skill? How do you make the world engaging enough to have commentary on it when so much of it passes us by and we're only able to listen to so much audio at a time—it's slower than the average reader, I feel.

I just feel like figuring this out should've been obvious to me after dealing with the blindness for so long, but I've only recently started to try to break out of a life on autopilot...

Thoughts would be lovely. Thank you.

I have a 7-year-old with limited vision. (Most significantly: vision is only in one eye, and he finds small or low-contrast print challenging.) He is very motivated to read and loves listening to audiobooks. We are looking at E-readers to help him progress towards more independent reading and listening. There are magnifiers and good lamps at home, but an optionally backlit device where you can adjust the font size and activate TTS (like on classic Kindles) would be great.

An obvious-seeming solution is to get an iPad. But I'm a bit of a tech person (of the "I keep a gun next to my printer so I can shoot it if it makes a sound I don't recognize" sort) and don't want to encourage unfettered Internet access, so I am not particularly inclined to that.

There are a few big names in the dedicated reader market (Kindle, Nook, Boox, Kobo, ...), and they are very similar in many respects. What has been your experience with dedicated reading devices? Has anything worked particularly well, or is there anything that you recommend avoiding?

Hello, my husband is going blind and should be 85%-90% blind in the next couple of months. What can we do to help support him through this transition? What can we do at home to start becoming more accessible? Also, any advice on dealing with disability services? Thanks in advance

Does anyone have tips for when your rideshare or delivery driver cannot understand or speak English? Sighted people tend to use lots of gestures in these situations, but I can't see the driver, let alone what they're doing, so that option is out. For example, I had an Uber driver drop me off at the wrong building. I tried to tell him, but I don't think he understood. Fortunately, a neighbor recognized me and helped me get where I was trying to go, but that's not always going to happen. How could I handle a similar situation on my own? Thanks for any input!

My brother (10) said he wanted to learn how to crochet so he could make a Venus fly trap. I rely heavily on my eyesight when I crochet so I don’t know how I should go about teaching him. He has some eyesight so I’m looking more for types of yarn or colors that would be most helpful. If there are any YouTube tutorials that are good for beginners that are descriptive and easy to see he could also use that. I was gonna start by showing him the basics and then work up to an actual pattern but if any plushie crocheters have any specific suggestions that would be helpful too because in the years I have been crocheting I have made 1 plushie.

so I have a condition called myopic choroidal neovascularization and the damage just keeps going seeing my vision deteriorate sucks. I try to stay goal oriented but I am depressed a lot and try not to cry but do... how do you cope?

Hi, I use Reddit with Dystopia, and don’t see a way to enter a profile picture / avatar. A question for the more experienced Reddit users: do people here have an avatar, what happens if you don’t have one, like in my case, and what do people usually put as their picture? I would like to become more active in different subreddits, and think that my account should look like any sighted persons account to blend in a bit more.

I am looking for heartwarming stories that basically leave you feeling happier about our world. This request is not for me but for my 85 year old mom who is mentally sharp but has lost her sight to glaucoma. Mom is becoming increasingly depressed listening to the news and the state of world politics, and I think an uplifting read would help her tremendously. She can listen to audible books.

If anyone has a favorite or two and would like to share, I’d really appreciate it.

I am recently considering buying my own computer, because right now I am just using the one I have at my job. It is a Lenovo Yoga and works but not amazingly with JAWS. I want to get one that works really well and does not glitch and crash so much. What are in your experience a good laptop for running JAWS? Also I have JAWS 2024, and I am not sure if it is worth it to get the update. Does anyone else also still have the old version?

Thinking of buying a pair, but curious, how actually helpful are they?

Say simple things. I'm cooking dinner and want to find the paprika, cayenne pepper, and cumin. If I show it a bunch of spices, is it actually good at helping me out? Or is it best if I stick with my "# and size of elastic bands around the spice bottle" method?

Or maybe I have a wallet full of cash, and all I really need to do is color coordinate it. Is it good and quick at telling me the color of each bill?

How about if I say, "take a look around the house, do you see any mold or water damage to the roof maybe?". Can it do that with any degree of accuracy?

If I'm walking down the street and ask it, "hey, can you direct me to the closest 7/11?" can it actually do it with accuracy?

Things of that nature. I'm very technically inclined so no worries there, but I am totally blind with no vision.

Is this something I'm going to think was worth ~$600 or am I just going to get frustrated because the AI simply doesn't work, shelve it, and develop my own deterministic devices and means of doing things?

NVDA 2026.1.1 is now available! This is a patch release to fix security issues. A bug fix is also included for an issue introduced in 2026.1 with how ctrl+f is handled in File Explorer. A change introduced in 2026.1 with how NVDA handles connection issues with Remote Access was removed.

Read more and download from https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2026-1-1/

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #News #NewVersion #Update

As blind people, we do things differently than sighted people. Sometimes, our methods might be considered super weird, to a sighted person. But really, it's just us surviving in a world not built for us.

What things do you do differently, that a sighted person might consider weird?

I'll start... I have my own toothpaste tube and rather than trying to put it on the toothbrush, I just squirt some in my mouth. No fuss. Also, since I don't look in the mirror to shave my face, I always shave in the shower instead.

How about you?

Like the title says, while I have a prescription of around 4.25, I have a hard time walking up and down steps. I’m always looking down at my feet. It’s easier to walk when the edges are brightly colored, but for the steps whose colors blend together or are designed, I always have to focus so that I don’t misstep. Additionally, at nighttime, even with my glasses on, I still struggle to navigate in my own house, relying on my hands outstretched if my phone isn’t with me. Would I benefit from obtaining a white cane? I’m 22F and I really hope I don’t get judged… Thank you to anyone who respond

My friends said that they got a prompt for screen reader stuff and I don’t see much about it online. My friends don’t know shit about accessibility stuff so “screen reader” could mean LITERALLY anything haha. Id love to play with them but dont wanna spend $70 on a game and be unable to play. So any thoughts?

Hello all. I posted a few days ago about access to food banks as a blind person. I appreciate all of you who responded. I am going to call my local food share organization and set up transport as suggested. Thank you all. I took the post down because I was so embarrassed. Have a good day.

Hello im partially blind person because of my diabetes, and right now im slowly accepting that this would be my life for good, im scared and confuse where to start, so im here to finally push my self forward and the first thing i want to resolve is about jobs. How and where can blind or low vision people gets jobs? Cause right now im looking so hard to find one but its been a month and i cant even find one.

Hey there. So I'm legally blind, but I don't have enough vision to really be usable in this type of setting. I'm 22 years old, and I still live with my mother, and we go to concerts together, and recently, last night, I went to a Searows concert. We usually go to classic rock shows, so this was quite different, and I'm pretty sure My mother was the oldest one there, lol.
This is the first time that the crowd mostly consisted of younger people, and I was hoping to make new friends at this concert, because I'm really trying to make new friends in real life, but it's extremely difficult. And whenever I'm with my mother, it's just really hard, because she can be judgmental of people's looks and everything, because she was last night, and whenever I asked her if there was anybody alone or whatever, or people I could just introduce myself to, she was like "it looks like everybody's with their friends" and then proceeded to not really help me any further.
This concert venue was standing room, with a few tables on either side. But I don't really know this place that well, and I wasn't about to just go off on my own and walking in random directions, trying to find people to talk to, although I'm not really sure if I should've just done it or not. I just didn't wanna look like an idiot.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Going to concerts alone, or with a guide, or something, and then meeting new people and making friends at that concert with strangers? I really feel like I blew it last night, because there were so many people there, but nobody really walked up to me because I was with my mother, so I'd probably looked like I wasn't available for hanging out or something.
It just gets really hard with visual cues, trying to figure out by sound alone is extremely difficult because I have no clue if people are wanting other people to just come up randomly and talk to them about the music or whatever, it's just so confusing and I need help with this.

What is your favorite headset/wearable for navigating outside paired with a phone while being aware of your surroundings?

I'm on the hunt for a new headset, as my old AirPods are on the way to a slow death.

Ideally I'd love something like the Bose Frames, a bone conduction headset or the Sony link buds, but figured I'd get some input from the community.

So I’m a 42m in the us and I’m supposed to meet a woman for drinks tomorrow for a first date. We just had this exchange and I’m not sure if I should move forward with the date or say thanks but no thanks.

Me:
OK I want to also get something out of the way which may or may not be a deal breaker. I do it before a date now because I’m tired of saying it and the date ending abruptly
in 2017 I was diagnosed with a rare genetic degenerative eye disorder that will one day leave me blind. I have 20-30 years of usable vision (whatever that means). The center is pretty good, but one reason I moved to the city is because I can’t drive anymore

her:
Wow that’s so sad

Me:
But is it a dealbreaker?
It’s fine if it is

her:
Honestly maybe ?
I don’t know

Edit: I cancelled the date. Also to answer some of you, I normally work it into the conversation but this was dropped like bomb because our communication was rather sparse. I also do it out of frustration because I’m sick of spending up to 100 dollars on drinks for a night out to have someone never contact me again and that’s if we split the bill.

2nd edit: I sent her my IG profile and I’m not secretive about it. Had she creeped on it she’d have seen the pinned post about me talking about my RP.