Focus, as we all know, isn’t limited to just clearing your vision.   It covers a spectrum of categories.  When you’re faced with a great obstacle, you might be forced to redirect your “focus” on what is REALLY important to your goal and journey. Read here just how one woman did that as she was in the process of losing her vision.

What I Learned by Going Blind

It takes a lot to overcome some disabilities.  You can either let it over take you, or you can overtake it.  Depending on your particular disability, it may provide some extraordinary challenges to accomplish what you want to accomplish.  This young girl too that challenge head on and is achieving her passion and dreams.

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Swimming Blind: Paralympian Colleen Young's Story

We all have these internal clocks that tell us when we need to close our eyes and look at the back of our eyelids for a good while.  Some of us get more of that time than others, and we all know how much sleep one gets is crucial to our overall well –being.  What if, however, when you close your eyes, you see the exact same thing? Darkness.  Switching your circadian rhythm is not small or easy process, so how is that different for someone with blindness? Read here to see. 

Sleep Research in the Blind May Help Us All

You’re adventurous and love to travel.  Now, adding to the adventure, you have to travel with vision loss or blindness.  This doesn’t mean you have to stop, so don’t think that! You can still enjoy your travels, just keep some tips and tricks in your back pocket and you’ll be golden! Click here to read a few of those now. 

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Traveling By Air, Part 1

If you were a great cook before you lost your eyesight, there’s no reason you can’t still be. It will just take a little adjusting of your routine and techniques.  Here you can read about expert tips from a professional chef to help you navigate your way through the kitchen again.  Her personal story will give you proof and hope that all kitchen skills are not lost with your sight.

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Master Chef participant Christine Ha

Who doesn’t love a gadget or tool that helps make life a little easier?  Imagine a gadget that not only makes life easier, but possible to carry on your day to day tasks? If you’ve recently lost some or all of your vision, you may find this took especially helpful going forward. Check it out here!

Click here to find more articles about vision loss technology. 

Bluetooth Keyboard Keystrokes For iOS 7

Everyone loves a good road trip right? If not cruising down the open highway, pleasure travel is what most everyone enjoys.  That can take on a whole new dimension when you can’t exactly see everything you need to ( or not at ALL) on your travel adventures. This site is great for helping you navigate the things you need to help your trip pleasant and pleasurable!

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Travel Tools and Techniques of People Who are Blind or Who Have Low Vision

Trying to decide if a guide dog is the best route to take to help you continue your independent life? They aren’t for everyone, but can be highly beneficial if given a chance.  Here is a great article that lists some pros and cons about having a guide dog and whether or not it’s the right choice for you. 

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Guide Dogs for Visually Impaired and Blind People

Every new day of a new diagnosis comes with its own set of struggles.  Any way we can get through that day easier thanks to devices that help us then it brings a little help to an otherwise hard day. Here’s an article that goes over a few of those from a personal perspective, to give some real insight. 

Devices that help Blind or Visually Impaired person to get around

It may seem like using a white cane is pretty straight forward, but in fact, there is a learning curve to using it effectively.  Not only are you going forward in life with a new diagnosis, there are so many things you need to re learn for your everyday life.  Here’s a great resource to help you navigate using a white cane, going forward. 

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Teaching the Cane and Non Visual Skills

Most people know what a white cane is and is used for, but do you have any knowledge of them beyond that? Here’s a great article that gives us a little history lesson on just how the white cane came about for its present day usage.  I already feel a bit smarter!

The History of the White Cane

Are you a teacher of children who have vision loss or blindness and need some new ideas or tips on how to incorporate and teach them with and be successful? This page lists several resources and other articles to help you accumulate the things you need to help those children learn to the best of their ability. 

For Teachers of Children Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

When you think of toys, bright, colorful imagery probably comes to mind first. But, what if you couldn’t see the toy you were playing with? What characteristics would it need to have to make it worthy of play? This article lists some of the best toys for blind children and why they are hits.

Click here to read more about helping your child have independence in life and play.

Blind Babies, Toddlers, and Children
Activities For The Totally Blind

Many searches about vision loss are geared towards those that have been diagnosed themselves, but many don’t include things to do for when you have a child diagnosed with vision loss or who is blind.  Here is a great article about how to help your child when they are the one ones with blindness or vision loss.  Maybe you will find some of these thoughts helpful in your own journey with your child. 

Click here to read more about things to help someone in living independently as a blind person. 

Raising a Child Who is Blind and….

There could be an assumption floating around that those without sight aren’t able to use particular adjectives when they describe things because they would only be something a sighted person could ascertain.  In this article, you’ll see that, that just isn’t so.  A great perspective from this writer about how even “pretty” can be all encompassing, sight or not.

Defying Sense

Have you wondered how you will participate in your beloved sports now that you have vision loss? Losing your sight doesn’t mean you have to “lose sight” of the activities you enjoyed before.  Here’s a recount of one person’s take on the recent Olympics as well as info about how those with vision loss compete and/or play with their own loss. 

Click here to read more stories like this in our living independently section. 

Enjoying sports if you have vision loss

While you may already be at risk for certain eye disorders and/or loss conditions genetically, women are at risk for other things that you may not realize.  This article goes over five things that increase women’s eye health risks.  See if you fall into any of these habits/categories. 

5 Reasons Why Women are at Higher Risk of Eye Disease

So you’ve began a new journey in your life with a diagnosis of vision loss or blindness and you’re at the gate of navigating new ways of doing things as well as services available to you. The National Federation of the Blind is an organization you need to know beyond your local blind and vision loss communities. Click here to read up on them.

Click here to read about our services here in San Diego.

What is the National Federation of the Blind?

Maybe it’s a perfect assumption to think that the first thing that is impacted with a new diagnosis of vision loss/blindness is that it will take an extra huge toll on your emotional state of being.  Maybe it’s secondary to the thought of the fear of never being able to see completely again.  Both are huge issues that are faced once you begin your new journey. Here’s an account of the emotional impact made on this author’s life.

THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF VISION LOSS:
A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Everyone deals with situations differently, even when they are the same or similar in nature.  One thing though, about the similar aspects of a situation is that its highly likely that you will experience many of the same feelings as those having gone through or are going through the same thing(s) that you are.  Being able to share those thoughts and feelings with others is a way to bond you in a way you can’t with others who don’t have that experience.  It’s more often than not very helpful and a surprising source of support when you need it most. Read here about how others have coped with a new diagnosis of vision loss or blindness and see how much you relate.

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Adjustment, Losses and Positive Attitude: Dealing With Vision Impairment and Blindness

We go through a lot of training aspects in our lives, but usually by the time we’re adults most of the basic training we’ve learned as children is pretty ingrained.  That’s not always the case when circumstances occur and we have to re learn a very important function.  When you’re newly blind, there are programs that are available to help retrain those standards.  Read about that experience here.

Adjustment to Blindness Training

Even when you know that eventual blindness is in your future, but you just don’t know when, it doesn’t stop the emotions from falling down like a monsoon.  Every aspect of your life is affected and somehow you have to decide how you deal best with the world that will be new again to you, without sight.  Read here how one woman honestly tells about her roller coaster once her vision loss diagnosis raged in like a bull, and very quickly.  Perhaps you’ve gone through the same thing. 

Could YOU cope if you went blind mid-life?

So many advances today help those with vision loss or blindness do so many of the same things as the sighted.  One such thing is reading.  With voice enabled or books read aloud, its easier to enjoy a good book still.  This article, though talks about the important of still going a little “old school” when it comes to this for vision loss, and learning and using Braille is it. 

Starting over-learning to live with blindness

Nothing can help a soul more than hearing of the same struggle and success of someone else.  That’s one reason it’s so important to share your own story. You never know who you might help with just a few words. Click here to read about how this woman didn’t let her vision loss stop her!

Click here to read more about living independently with vision loss or blindness.

Macular Degeneration Hasn’t Stop My Life

Everyone has been holed into some category of a stereotype at one point in their lives.  Maybe even more than one at a time.  Cliques are hard to avoid on our journey in life, but because we fit a few characteristics doesn’t mean we have to fall into the entire stereotype.  This article addresses some of the most common ones low vision/blind people deal with.  Have you been shoved into any of these?

Opening eyes on being blind – Common myths exposed