Independent Living

Smartphone Apps For Orientation and Mobility

Smartphone Apps For Orientation and Mobility

My favorite tool for O&M and independent navigation as a person with low vision isn’t my blindness cane— it’s my Android smartphone. While I love my blindness cane and all of the ways that it helps me to navigate my community on my own or…

How I Use The Stylebook App With Low Vision

How I Use The Stylebook App With Low Vision

I started using the Stylebook app during my freshman year of college to keep my clothes organized and put together outfits inspired by Pinterest without having to take several items out of my tiny dorm closet or creating a mess in my dorm room. While…

Tips for Going To Movie Theaters With Low Vision

Tips for Going To Movie Theaters With Low Vision

Tips and strategies I have used when going to the movies and visiting movie theaters with low vision and light sensitivity (photophobia and/or photosensitivity)

Baking Banana Bread With Assistive Technology

Baking Banana Bread With Assistive Technology

It’s National Banana Bread Day (February 23rd), and what better way to celebrate than baking with assistive technology for low vision? While I have had a strong love for assistive technology for many years now, my love for banana bread is much more recent. I…

How To Create A Custom Dorm Skill With Amazon Alexa

How To Create A Custom Dorm Skill With Amazon Alexa

When I first moved into my new dorm in undergrad, I felt super overwhelmed as I tried to keep track of a ton of information while living on my own. By the time I would get back from classes, my visual fatigue and cognitive fatigue…

Create An Accessible Digital Cookbook With Microsoft Products

Create An Accessible Digital Cookbook With Microsoft Products

A few years ago, my friends and I wanted to share our favorite recipes in a digital one-page document, and I outlined this process in a post on how to create a cookbook in Microsoft Sway. When I went back to update this post, I…

How I Use Microsoft Seeing AI With Low Vision

How I Use Microsoft Seeing AI With Low Vision

Living with low vision, I often use smart cameras and visual assistance tools to provide additional context or clarification about something I am looking at, especially if it is something ambiguous or hard to see. I started using the Microsoft Seeing AI app with low…

Ten Information Technology Skills Every College Student Needs

Ten Information Technology Skills Every College Student Needs

Since I was in a tech-related major during undergrad, I became the default IT specialist and device troubleshooter for friends, family members, people who lived in my dorm building, and other students who had trouble using their computer or other mobile devices. Practical information technology…

My Experience With Disability Law Center of Virginia

My Experience With Disability Law Center of Virginia

My experiences with my state Protection and Advocacy organization, and why every student with a disability should know about them

Dorm Room Disability Hacks For Chronically Ill Students

Dorm Room Disability Hacks For Chronically Ill Students

Even though I didn’t live in a mobility access/wheelchair accessible dorm on campus during undergrad, I still used several dorm room disability hacks to make it easier and more comfortable to move around my dorm. As a student diagnosed with Chiari Malformation and then-undiagnosed POTS,…

Low Vision Assistive Technology For The Bathroom

Low Vision Assistive Technology For The Bathroom

Ever wonder “how does a blind person use the bathroom?” or “how does someone who is visually impaired take a shower?” I’ve had many people ask me these questions, including children, teachers, friends, and even people I shared a bathroom with in student housing. Like…

College Mailrooms and Low Vision

College Mailrooms and Low Vision

While living on campus, I would typically order items online and have them delivered to me instead of going to physical stores. Since I have low vision and an unpredictable chronic illness, ordering items online in college required less energy than making an off-campus trip,…