Until now, if you were blind in the US, the currency was indistinguishable from each other.  Coins were the only thing you could count on to know the difference. Changes are being made to make it blind friendly. Click here to read about those changes.

Click here to read about more news and events in the vision loss and blind community. 

Show Us the Money: Updated Currency for the Visually Impaired

Wordpress is known for its role in the blogging world, as well as a website builder.  Sometimes navigating a site can be tricky at best.  Here’s the first part of a series on a “how-to” to help you if you want to get into the Wordpress world.

Click here to read more articles about living independently. 

Wordpress For the Blind

There are plenty of hurdles to overcome when it comes to coverage of insurance services for much of the population, but anyone with an outstanding condition has more hoop jumping to deal with.  In a recent move changes have been in the form of a waiver for Medicaid recipients.  Click here to read about it and how it may affect you.  

New Medicaid Waiver Rules Set To Take Effect

Whether you have recently lost some or all of your vision or that’s all you’ve ever known, being able to enjoy books often require text to voice devices.  Here are 9 reasons why you should pick a high quality device for this task.  A good list to keep handy when browsing for your purchase. 

9 Reasons To Choose High Quality Text-to-Speech

It is that time of year and especially now with the “snowmageddon” that is hitting the States, that sunglasses are a must.  Having the reflective properties of the glaring white snow ahead of you can be worse than the glaring sun.  It’s important to protect your eyes/vision from those bright spots.  When your sight is limited already, extra precaution is high priority. Read here to learn the best ways to prevent snow blindness. 

Click here to read other ways to protect your eyesight. 

Preventing Snow Blindness

Most everyone is aware of privacy statues when it comes to sharing personal/medical information within the workplace.  It’s simply not allowed.  However, what happens when you WANT them to know so that accommodations can be made with that information? Read here to see how that can work. 

Mayberry Meets ADA

There is typically a lot of focus on the person WITH the disability, and rightly so.  They are the ones living with the disability and have struggles only others that suffer can understand.  However, there is another set within this group set that is also highly affected.  That other group is the caregivers.  Read here to see what this research has found.

Study Finds Autism More Challenging For Caregivers

When you can open an expansion to a world of someone with a disability, you’ve done a good thing.  Lighthouse is doing just that.  Not only are they bringing availability to the deaf/blind community they are changing lives. Click here to read about their deeds and feel your heart swell.

LightHouse Deaf-Blind Project Is Changing Lives

Around the corner lies the end of the year, and we’ve read many a book and need a new list.  Thanks to much advancement to help those with visual impairment or blindness, it just needed to be said.  Click here to read a letter than gives thanks for those efforts.

Praise for Accessible Books and Reading Technologies by Bookshare Mentor Teacher

In case you missed this when it was announced back in September, take another look at one way Walmart has made it easier to fill prescriptions for the visually impaired.  Here’s the run down for a reminder or to start taking advantage of this great new feature from now on.

Walmart Now Provides Talking Prescriptions

If you are blind or visually impaired, chances are you have some type of app that helps you in your daily tasks.  Apps have come a long way since they have included the braille world, but this here ladies and gentlemen is the latest and greatest.  Click here to read all about the wonderfulness of this new app! 

An App That Would Make Louis Braille Proud

There are so many ways that technology can help improve any disabilities one may have that when one comes up that doesn’t involve it in some way, it makes you really sit in awe.  The possibilities are endless when you can use other living things to help research how they heal themselves in ways we can’t.  All unharmed of course. Take a look at this new research that could help us restore vision.

A Sight-Saving ‘Fishing Expedition’

Once upon a time wearing glasses used to be considered a fashion faux pas.  They were grouped into nerdy/bookish genre.  Lately, they are trending in style so much so that people will even buy frames that have no lenses for the look alone.  So it stands to reason that new glass wearer Noah would be sporting style when he begins his journey with eyewear. A little apprehension at first, his mom shares how she was able to give him a new perspective on wearing glasses.  Click here to see how.

Glasses For Noah Reminds Us That Glasses Are Cool

The job hunt can be frustrating even in the best of times.  Limited positions make it even harder to find employments. Thanks to Kesller, finding a job with a disability may come a little easier now. Find out how here and how you can apply. 

Click here to read about other news bits and events. 

Kessler Foundation Grants to Help Increase Employment of People with Disabilities – Application Deadline February 7

When you feel like you’re fighting an unsurmountable battle for peer group to which you belong, it’s always nice to get a good piece of news that lets you know efforts are being heard and made.  This article gives you that bit of good news. 

Disability Advocates ‘Encouraged’ By Budget Deal

Finding employment can be trying even if a good job market, with no disability. Stack up a tough market and needing an accommodation within that task, and you’ve got quite the task ahead of you.  Here though, is a list of links that can help you find the right job for you, no matter what special circumstance with disability that you have to work with.  Click here to get some help in your job search. 

Click here to find more resources of news and events that can help you live your life with less stress. 

Disability.gov’s Guide to Employment

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just assume, as a person with a disability, that wherever we went, accommodations were in place for us? Sure, there are laws in place to ensure that things are in place, but it’s not always the case that its easily accessible.  What would help is knowing whether or not a place we intend to patronize is going to be difficult or easy to access.  The rules just say there has to be access, but not that they have to be easy.   With this new website, knowing this information beforehand is a good place to start.  Click here to read about AbleRoad and how it can help your decision of where to buy/visit. 

Click here to read more in our section of living independently for other ways to help make life a little easier. 

AbleRoad: Using Technology and Crowdsourcing to Help People with Disabilities

Sharing your ideas and thoughts through a blog is something a lot of people do regularly. It’s something that most people just decide to do, and then easily go about setting it up.  People with disabilities, especially where vision is concerned don’t have it so easy.  The directives for setting these sharing sites up are often done without regard to those with a disability.  This article is designed to help you get the instructions you need to set up your blog successfully and share it with the world.  

Click here to find more ways in our living independently section to help you in your journey with vision impairment.  

WordPress A to Z for the Blind and Visually Impaired

What is more annoying than going through the hoops to navigate your way to a website and right before you gain access to it, you’re hit with another final test to type of some construed string of letters and numbers. It’s hard enough to make it out when you have good vision, but imagine the difficulty of that magnified if you’re visually impaired or even blind.  Even with audio assistance it’s still quite difficult if not impossible.  Telstra has just made life a little easier in this regards. Read here to find out how that came about. 

Click here to read more about news of interest to you. 

Telstra bans CAPTCHA tests

The saying “dance like nobody’s watching” has a more intrinsic meaning to those who literally can’t watch the dancing being done.  It never occurred to me that dancing might be something a visually impaired or blind person wouldn’t attempt doing.  Apparently there’s more to just hearing the music and going with the flow.  A lot of people I have known often close their eyes and get lost in the music and just move as their body calls them to do.  Organized dancing is obviously not that lenient.  There are however, groups that do gather to do just that, that are specifically for those with limited or no eyesight. It can build more than your spirits. Read here to find out how.  

Click here to read about more news and events of interest to you. 

Confidance-Blind Dancing

As long as technology improves with each passing year, it keeps hope alive that ways will be found to help cure or reverse a lot of what can ail anyone with a sickness or disability.  This can be hugely important to someone at risk or are in the midst of losing their eyesight.  This article goes over some new potential technology that could but a clamp down on retinal degeneration. Click here to read all about this amazing stuff! 

Simulating New Treatment for Retinal Degeneration

One thing, aside from probably many many things that sighted people may take for granted about having their eyesight are books. Not just reading them, but in listening to them as well.  Years ago someone came up with the brilliant idea to read a book aloud and put it on tape so that you can multitask while enjoying a good book.  Whether the person narrating that book was blind or not would not be something we would even consider or maybe even care about. This writer certainly explains why that aspect can be so very meaningful when one of your peers is doing that narrating. Click here to have your mind say WOW that makes perfect sense.  

Blindness in Fiction 6: She Is Not Invisible

The holidays are usually a joyous time for everyone involved. Festive decorations and spirits abound.  If you have a friend or relative that has a vision impairment, there are a few things you can do to help them enjoy the holiday without their sight that much more.  Here is an article that goes over those things to help everyone celebrate without worry 

Click here to read about different ways to live independently. 

How to Make Holiday Season Brighter for Visually Impaired Relatives

Lenses can come in all shapes and sizes, but digitally?? Yes, folks you heard it here.  Here this article has done the research for you and compiled real life experience about people who got and are using digital lenses.  

Thinking about Digital Lenses? We did the research for you…

For those who are diagnosed with vision loss or blindness, braille is the most common form of reading.  Technology over the years has come so very far in reaching beyond the touch of braille.  While these books were designed with speech articulation in mind, they cross over the spectrum to help those with vision loss be able to hear the words on the page. Click here to read more about this new technology that does more than even the inventor probably imagined. 

Click here to find more resources to choose from. 

Flip Then Say Articulation Books