r/Blind

Hello. I am visually impaired. I have an eye condition called Optic Nerve Hypoplasia, ONH for short. I have very limited vision in my right eye and my left eye is completely useless. When I was a child, I was given a therapy bear created for blind children. It was a brown bear with a cassette player inside. I know there was a knob on his stomach/chest that you could turn to adjust the volume.

I was trying to find it since I’ve been through a lot these past few years. I loved the spare and he really helped me as a child. I lost most of my childhood belongings a few years ago. If someone would be able to help me track down one of these teddy bears I would really appreciate it. I think the one I had was specifically created for blind children.

I think it’s called Spanoza Bear. What’s confusing me a bit is there seems to be a few different versions of this teddy bear. Mine had a shirt with his name on it and a carrying bag. It also had a lot of cassette tapes that you could put into the cassette player, depending on what you needed at the time.

I would really like to find one! I don’t know where to begin looking. I don’t know how to find the version of the bear I had. I’m not sure if I’m just getting confused and all versions of the bear are the same. If anyone is aware of the spare or the different versions or history of the bear, I would really appreciate any help.

I apologize if I’ve made any spelling or grammatical issues in my post.

EDIT: I was born in 1998. I got the best when I was three or four!

I’d like to be a lawyer, but worry about my ability to succeed given my vision. I’m 20/150 in my left eye, 20/200 in my right, with mild color blindness and very little depth perception.

I’m wondering if any visually impaired people who have followed this path could share their experiences with law, either the schooling or the practice.

How are the accommodations? Does the environment allow you to succeed? How bad is prejudice in the field?

Really just any insight you want to give could be helpful.

Hello community,

What were the things that worked for you, or for your older parents - to get it how iphone "swipe to home" works, and to get the gesture reliably?

I'm having a trouble teaching my heavily visually impaired, elder parent how swipe to home screen works on modern iphones (those without home button). He has a difficult combo of very bad touch sensitivity (20 years at factory), worsened hearing and kinda stuck mentally - it is rather difficult to teach him what sensor screen gestures is.

When he does a swipe from bottom of iphone to go to home gesture - he has difficulty understanding that his finger swiped the screen, and how far (yes, I had trouble realizing that too), iphone vibration is too low for him to understand it happens and sound cue is too quiet for him to register it. I think that he can't build this mental image of action -> result, which is why it is so problematic.

Is it possible to make iphone audio cues very loud? If yes, how so?

Does anyone have any recommendations about which Braille display I should get?
I would Ideally like it to be small and easy to carry around.
I do not like the orbit reader 20, the last time I had one, it stopped working without warning.
I only want to read what is on my iPhone screen, and rite text.

Hello!

I drive rideshare on the weekends. Today I drove a blind gentleman (completely blind, did not ask if acquired or congenital) who plays board games. I too play board games, so we got to talking about them. I told him I play Warhammer and other Games Workshop tabletop games. He expressed the desire to play them sometime, so we got to talking about accessibility options. Blood Bowl, which is fantasy (elves and trolls fantasy) American NFL football played on a grid seems the most viable option.

I'm thinking of him having a 3D printed version of the gridiron with grid notation on the sides and both players can call out moves (touching someone else's models is a faux pas in the hobby), and he can move figures on his grid. The dice are touch readable, and rolling in a dice box/dice tower is the standard already in the hobby, so that does not present an obstacle.

Does anyone have any accessibility ideas/options that might be of use in this situation? I did email Games Workshop as well, but I'm unsure how helpful they will be on ideas.

I don’t know if this is the right place for this, but I’ve been noticing more and more strange audio in accessibility services, more specifically, I’ve noticed a lot of voice acting in audio description tracks as sounding very strange and just generally off. Was wondering if anyone else had noticed similar things. Most recently I noticed it in X-Men 97 on Disney+. Specifically season two. I don’t know enough about the companies that produce audio description tracks to reliably find the answer myself.

Do you ever just get tired snd emotionally exhausted by life and your condition? Just trying to keep things together... I'm tired. Mostly of myself and my limitatuons and the economy... And my disability/low vision. You? How do you cope?

hey blind and low vision community. I am posting to ask if there are any blind/low vision that work as an administrative assistant. I am also curious to know if there are any employers that have employees with visual impairmenta if so what advice would you give me.

I am low vision and starting a new job as an administrative assistant for an electrical contractors. Some of my responsibilities will be data entry such as invoices and credit card information, employe onboarding, ordering office supplies and some future duties will be payroll

yes the employers are aware I am low vision and said as long as I care about my job they see no problem with continuing the hiring process and will provide accommodations if needed.

I used to work as a medical admin assistant just basic front desk stuff. I am used to healthcare duties not buisness duties. I am excited because I get to learn new skills and it will be beneficial to me in the future if I decide to go back into the healthcare admin path. I AM SCARED SHITLESS of starting this new job and failing or not being good enough. I have a degree in medical billing and coding and this will be a new experience for me. I always dreamed of a job like this and fear keeps taking over. if you are low vision and have a similar job please let me know any advise of how you managed the job and responsibilities.

Hi all, my sister and I both have albinism and low vision, and we're currently trying to optimize our tech setups to stop getting massive headaches from eye strain. Dark mode only does so much. What magnification tools or screen settings are saving your eyes lately?

So I’ve been stuck on this for a couple days now, but I swear it feels like we will be the last group of disabled people to be able to drive.

This is sort of gonna be a vent, but I swear it feels like all the other disability groups can drive. I was talking to a friend who'd lost her leg in an accident, and you know what? She still has the ability to drive.

Obviously, I am not mad at her and I think that it is cool that she has the ability to drive even with one leg.

The question that has been lingering in my mind though, is Why still not me? Why still not us? I know that it’s not true, and I also know plenty of cited disabled people online and off-line who can’t drive, but still. It feels like we were all just left in the dark, no pun intended, and the universe was like we’ll punish you more by making literally everyone else able to do it, including other disabled people.

I'm not sure about you, but it just seems so unfair. well, if I have anything positive to say about it, at least I can hang out with my loved ones and my caregivers as they drive me around, but that’s pretty much the only positive thing I can think about it.

Hi, because of my grandmother’s deteriorating health and and worsening eyesight (she is legally blind) I’m thinking about buying her a mutlicooker or a crockpot, so she can cook pasta, potatoes, rice, make a soup or a stew or other dishes without standing by the stove and don’t have to worry about burning something, so which mentioned device is worth to get?

How are low vision people expected to approach the current job market?

At 18 I dropped out of community college during the pandemic, now as a 24yo male with no skills, low vision, little job experience and a high school diploma, I'm thinking about going back to college after I complete some IT training (I'm doing IT training because it's free and I'll get free room and board during the program and I'm already kinda decent with technology).

But with a horrendous economy and with more and more jobs hiring less and less people with higher and higher standards and requests, how is a low vision person supposed to stand out and succeed in an environment where able bodied people with a lot more qualifications, opportunities and experimce with less accomodations are already struggling in?

I already have to deal with struggles when it comes to finding volunteer work and STEM summer programs, so what kind of chance do I have in the cirrent job market?

Some people tell me to go to a trade school but I've never been interested in learning a trade.

More and more frequently, the people, communities and projects I'm interested in, are on Discord. I do not really know how to do Discord, but I am willing to learn. To me, the screen is a nonsensical mess. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to a fully sighted person, but I'm not one of those people.

So... How do you use it? Do you use the application, or the web site? Do you use hotkeys? Which hotkeys? NVDA / Talkback. Are there companion apps that help with this stuff, like there are for Reddit? Suggestions very welcome.

Hi just wondering if anyone completely blind is taking any of these weight management shots? If so how do you manage to inject the right dose?

I've heard that BBC Radio 5 has the best descriptions in English, but I haven't been able to properly do the VPN dance to make it work. Apparently they are already blocking all the IP addresses I have access to through my VPN.

I live in the States, and all we get here is the audio from the TV stream, which is useless as they assume you're watching. This in spite of the fact that it's being streamed on SiriusXM.

Related question: why are my friends who might be willing to run a proxy for me all from the Americas? I guess I'm just not that good at networking (pun intended).

To make a long story short, for most of my life, I have been interested in the so-called blind trades, both for pleasure and as genuine crafts. These include chair caning, mat making, basketry, broom making, rug weaving, yarn weaving, bookbinding, soap making, pottery, etc. I didn't include brush making because that requires a real workshop and can be dangerous from what I've heard. Likewise, piano tuning takes many years to learn, though i believe there is a school for that. I wrote to many blind schools asking for assistance, guidance, or even some general advice, but none wrote back to me. I contacted a mainstream basket weaver, but although she was nice, she couldn't help me. I found a very good series on broom-making on Youtube, though I must check to see if it's still there. The problem with many videos is that they explain things in a visual way i.e. "look at the diagram", "follow what you see me doing here", or the hosts talk while they're doing an important step that they're not describing, etc. Regardless, I started learning chair caning, but the place was far from my home, and I kept having issues with paratransit, so I had to stop. I have, however, made soap using the melt and pour method several times, and I've worked on both a lap loom (made of cardboard many times), an inkle loom once, and used a potholder kit at least once. I've also taken several pottery classes, but to go beyond air-dry clay or the type that can be baked in a home oven, it's necessary to have a kiln, which is prohibitively expensive.

Having said all of that, has anyone here ever been involved with any of these, or perhaps something I didn't mention? If so, was/is it as a hobby or to sell crafts? Where were you taught and how i.e. all hands-on, or with books, manuals, etc? If you sold/sell them, how did/do you do so i.e. through a workshop or factory, at a traditional flee market or craft fair, online via Etsy or Ebay, or do you have your own site? Would you be able to give me any general tips or advice regarding your craft?

Anybody know of any good beat making software that has vocal recording capabilities as well that’s accessible on the Microsoft store with NVDA. I can’t use reaper that well because it’s not meant for beat making

Hi

I randomly noticed my VoiceOver's voice started to sound very high pitched
I use the Voices rotor and every voice I used (Alex, Reed, Bells) etc never fixed the issue. It'd just use whatever the voice had and apply it to them
I decided to reset my VoiceOver settings
It reset but I'm getting a new problem
I notice this in settings, but on my Braille Display, I'll read a > when I know Settings never had a > anywhere for Item labels. Adding rotor voices for English caused the label for English to appear as "Right Arrow"
Going to the bottom of the menu does not play the end sound. It just says Back and the rest of the time, everything is moved one space to the right and Selecting anything in the sense of Rotor items, gets the following
Characters, = Menu, Sswitch button, On
I know this is srandom. It just happened and restarting my iPhone never fixed it
I'm on iOS 26.5.2 on an iphone 17E
Does anyone know how to help or what to do?