Reading and Writing

One of my favorite events to attend at the library as a child was the therapy dog reading programs that allowed participants to read books to a trained therapy dog. Therapy dog reading programs helped foster my love for reading and writing, as well as…

Why I prefer to receive digital accessible materials instead of print ones

When I was volunteering in an elementary school classroom, I had a student tell me how much they wished that they could read all of the different books that were in their classroom library. This student had a print disability that meant they were unable…

When I recently upgraded to the iPad Air 4th Generation (also known as the Model A2316), I decided to get the Apple Pencil 2nd Generation, as my friend had talked about how much they enjoyed using it. I immediately started using it and noticed a…

Over the last five years, I have had the opportunity to take two different online English classes and was able to earn high grades in both of them. While I naturally enjoy reading and writing, one of the challenges I had to overcome in taking…

As part of my work as the Microsoft Content Specialist for AIM-VA and as a Microsoft Certified Educator, I had the opportunity to present a short talk as part of the AT Lab at the I’m Determined Summit, a virtual conference for students with disabilities…

Over the years, I have had several awesome teachers and professors who have helped me learn how to write essays and research papers for my classes quickly and efficiently. Because of them, I have earned consistently high scores on all of my writing assignments and…

Over the years, I have had several awesome teachers and professors who have helped me learn how to write essays and research papers for my classes quickly and efficiently. Because of them, I have earned consistently high scores on all of my writing assignments and…

Everyone has different views on what language or words are appropriate to use at given times. Instead of changing or removing words, many writers choose to censor words using additional or alternative characters or symbols. A lot of these attempts at censorship are done without…

A picture says a thousand words, and there are times that images on social media require more than a thousand characters to create an adequate description for people that are blind or that have low vision. While I recommend keeping image descriptions as short as…

Earlier today, I received an email from a parent asking about using the Raz-Kids app with visual impairment and if the app could be used independently by an older elementary school-aged student with low vision. I’ve used this app in the past when helping students…

As a college student with low vision that fluctuates often, I love learning about new and unique ways that I can read titles from Bookshare. Even though I feel comfortable testing new apps and file formats, I’ve met many users who prefer to stick to…

Earlier tonight, a reader sent me a sweet Twitter thread trending about a young child who is working on a letter-writing project so that they can keep in touch with a variety of friends, family members, and pen-pals. The reader then asked me if I had…

A couple of days ago, a student messaged me saying that they needed to read information in large print on an iPad, and mentioned that they had trouble seeing the largest font size for Dynamic Text. While they are currently learning how to use screen…

For a lot of students with low vision, spending lots of time on the computer or brightly lit devices can easily cause eyestrain/eye fatigue, especially for those taking a lot of virtual classes. One of the ways that I help to reduce strain on my…