Learning To Self-Advocate With Low Vision

As a student with low vision preparing for college transition, many of my IEP goals in high school revolved around self-advocacy and learning to self-advocate. This is something I found incredibly unfair, but also something I found incredibly useful in the years during and after high school.

When members of my support team (parents, case manager, teachers, teacher of the visually impaired, etc.) first introduced the concept of self-advocacy to me, I had no idea what learning to self-advocate would entail and was frustrated I had to learn about it. Since all of the other students in my class had assignments and tests handed to them in a format they could read by default, why couldn’t I also get materials in accessible formats without having to ask for them? Isn’t that why I have an IEP anyway? Or a case manager, teacher of the visually impaired, or parents? I had assumed that having an IEP for low vision in high school meant that I would have to put in less work to make things accessible, not more work.

Whenever someone asked me about self-advocacy, I felt like they were really saying “no one can help you” and that maybe they wanted me to practice self-isolation instead, masking my disability and trying to solve everything on my own. I felt very comfortable with advocacy in other contexts, but the idea of talking about my visual impairment was not particularly exciting. For example, I was happy to talk about school band programs in front of an audience, but did not want to mention I used large print music or that I couldn’t see the people I was talking to.

Thankfully, this attitude changed as I got older and realized it was unfair and unrealistic to expect perfection or for everything to be accessible. My IEP did a great job at explaining how my disability impacted my classroom experience, but it could very easily be ignored or forgotten, and I didn’t have a case manager, teacher of the visually impaired, or parents in the classroom with me all the time. Also, once I graduated high school, I wouldn’t be taking any of these things to college with me, but my disability would still be there, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. I had to take the opportunity to learn how to talk about my disability and how it affects me, as well as learn strategies for how to make things accessible.

I would be learning to self-advocate.

Defining self-advocacy and what it means to self-advocate

Self-advocacy is defined as “the action of representing oneself or one’s views or interests.” In the context of disability and IEP goals, another definition that is frequently used is “the process by which a person controls their own life.”

As a student with a progressive low vision condition from both an eye condition and a (then-undiagnosed) brain condition, my support team placed a high emphasis on me developing self-advocacy skills because it would be detrimental to have people make assumptions about what I could see or what I was capable of, and I could not expect physical or digital environments to be accessible for me or my access needs. If I couldn’t see something or if an environmental trigger was affecting me, I was going to have to speak up about it, or deal with the consequences on my own— which could be a low assignment/test grade, missing instructional time, or missing out on other opportunities.

Examples of self-advocacy IEP goals for visual impairment

As a student, I thought “learning to self-advocate” was listed as one of my IEP goals, with no other information about what that meant or how I was expected to achieve it. In reality, my high school IEP for visual impairment included several goals related to self-advocacy, including:

Communicating an understanding of IEP goals and accommodations.
Explaining IEP goals and disability accommodations to teachers.
Developing an understanding of low vision and learning to communicate access needs/access preferences.
Participating in IEP meetings with support team.
Learning to explain IEP goals and accommodations, and how they relate to low vision access (e.g. using large print for reading).
Requesting accommodations and/or modifications in a classroom setting.
Identifying strategies or skills for accessing academic materials.
Learning how to troubleshoot technology or access barriers.

I did not have an IEP for most of middle school and experienced a significant vision decline prior to starting high school, so I struggled a lot with self-advocacy at the beginning of high school. It was challenging for me to adjust to a new environment, new level of usable vision, new classes, and higher visual demands. At one point, it felt like I was going to fail my first semester of ninth grade, but by the second semester I had gotten used to a lot of these changes and was back to making progress on self-advocacy skills.

Learning to request accommodations

Using telepathy (bad idea)

I remember one time when I had trouble reading an assignment in class, and I raised my hand to tell my teacher I couldn’t see it. I figured they would print off a larger print copy, read some of the lines that were more difficult for me to see, or draw larger symbols on the page.

Instead, the teacher responded by saying “I don’t know what you want from me. Figure it out.”

I was discouraged by this response and ended up not completing the assignment, choosing to read a book on my eReader instead. This meant I got a zero on the assignment and a low grade on the quiz and test that followed. My case manager, teacher of the visually impaired, and especially my parents were not amused.

Develop a list of helpful suggestions (good idea)

In the first example, I had a few ideas for how to make my assignment easier to read, and assumed that my teacher would come up with the same suggestions and help me without saying anything. I didn’t want to be the one to make the suggestions because I was worried that it would seem like I was telling the teacher what to do. Instead, I had to deal with the consequences of missed instructional time, something that stands out 10+ years later. My teacher was actually prompting me to tell them what to do and wanted me to share how they could help me— they did not know how to make something easier for me to see.

One of the strategies I tell students who are learning to self-advocate is to give suggestions for ways to make something accessible or easier to access. Some examples of this include:

“I can’t read what you’re writing with the faded blue marker. Can you use the black marker instead?”
“It’s hard to see exponents/subscripts on this assignment. Can you write them larger on the page?”
“Can you turn on captions so it’s easier to understand the video?”
“I’m having trouble copying down the notes. May I get a copy of yours?”
“The light above my desk keeps flickering. Can you turn it off?”

Another strategy I use is to ask “if you had a magic wand, how would you fix this?” While it’s worth noting that this isn’t a guarantee that the problem will be solved, brainstorming solutions, even in a silly way, is a great way to practice approaching different situations. In the examples I gave above, some examples of “magic spells” I’ve heard people come up with include:

“Marker darker”
“Make everything bigger!”
“Read what people are saying”
“Freeze time/get extra time to write things down”
“Off with the light!”

When it comes to figuring out accommodations/modifications that can work well, I recommend that students experiment on their own to figure out what tools or strategies work well for them. For example, I discovered there were certain dry-erase marker colors that were hard to read, or that having the front lights on in the classroom created a lot of glare on the whiteboard. It’s important that students also stay open to new ideas or ways of doing things— in another example, I discovered I could enlarge equations and subscripts/superscripts on my own in Microsoft Word and didn’t have to rely on someone else writing for me.

Developing an understanding of disability and disability accommodations

I attended two different high schools in two different school districts, and I discovered that I had to explain my disability and disability accommodations much more often at the second high school compared to the first. At my first high school, a lot of teachers and students were generally aware that I had trouble seeing since I had lived in the same town for many years. At my second high school, I had to explain things like how to create accessible materials, examples of how to configure classrooms for light sensitivity, and also re-learn how to navigate an unfamiliar school environment with low vision.

Explaining my disability and disability accommodations (such as an IEP or college accommodations) is something I have to do frequently, and I am glad I took the time to understand what accommodations I receive and why. This is helpful when a professor asks me how to configure presentation slides so I can see them, or when my manager asked me what computer and/or accessibility settings I would need for an internship. Being aware of my own accessibility needs and preferences makes it easier for me to do interesting things, instead of struggling to see something.

Identifying skills and troubleshooting barriers

While learning to self-advocate is awesome, it is incredibly important that students also take the time to develop compensatory skills and learn how to use assistive technology. Compensatory skills are techniques, tools, and strategies that enable students with visual impairments to access educational environments, and can include things like learning to use large print, concept development, using text-to-speech, developing study and organization skills, and much more. Even though I did not know the term “compensatory skills” until I was in college, learning these skills as well as developing an understanding of assistive technology helped me understand how to use self-advocacy skills in a practical and actionable way.

By learning how I could access visual materials more independently, I was able to develop a “self-advocacy toolbox” of things I could do or try on my own before asking for someone else to help. This also made it easier for others to help me. Some examples of strategies that I use to support self-advocacy include:

Learning how to adjust font sizes for documents or websites. This included the use of screen magnification, adjusting font sizes, and using built-in zoom functions.
Using screen magnification, video magnifiers, or CCTVs to support access to visual information.
Typing notes and assignments, as well as keeping them organized on my computer.
Learning how to troubleshoot my computer, tablet, or other devices if something is not working as expected, as well as identifying alternative strategies I can use to access information.
Using accessibility settings like large print or text-to-speech to access visual information.
Wearing non-polarized prescription tinted glasses to help with glare and make it easier to see the board (among other things).

After trying to solve a problem or address a barrier on my own, I feel much more confident asking for help, since I can share what I have tried so far and make suggestions about what might help. There are a few situations where I don’t try to troubleshoot things on my own and go straight to asking for help from someone else though, which include:

Issues with an exam or standardized test, as these typically cannot be modified by students and are also timed.
Any barrier that involves strobe lights or rapidly flickering lights/displays, which triggers a medical condition.
Modifying someone else’s technology.
Something that could lead to me or someone else getting hurt.

In these situations, I often have an idea of how to solve a particular problem or barrier, but cannot do it alone safely. For example, I remembered that I could adjust the contrast of a computer monitor to make it easier to see an exam question, but I was nervous to adjust the classroom computer and didn’t want to risk turning the computer off entirely during my exam.

Create a network of resources and support

Self-advocacy is not self-isolation, and another item to have in the “toolbox” of problem-solving skills is a network of people and things that can help if a situation is too difficult to be handled individually. At each school I have attended, I keep an informal list of people and resources both inside and outside of my school that I can turn to if I have a problem. This can include:

IEP case manager, who can provide additional strategies for students and help identify ways to meet IEP goals.
Guidance counselor, who can help with class schedules and planning for college transition
School administrators (e.g. principal) who can address accommodation violations and issues related to academic ableism
Teacher of the Visually Impaired and/or assistive technology specialist, who have additional training on vision and other disabilities and can provide information on compensatory skills and assistive technology use.
Parents, who attend IEP meetings and can support self-advocacy skills
State resources such as vocational rehabilitation, departments for the visually impaired, and protection and advocacy organizations that can provide state-based resources outside of the school district
Online resources such as those produced by disability organizations, schools for the blind, and other advocates with lived experience.
Friends that can provide moral support and informal assistance in the form of human guides, reading small print, etc.

Having to ask for help outside of the classroom is not a failure at self-advocacy. After all, a big part of self-advocacy is knowing when to ask for help, and independence does not mean doing everything alone.

Achieving goals of self-advocacy as a student with low vision: Epilogue

It has been over ten years since I had an IEP for visual impairment filled with goals related to learning to self-advocate. I am still a student with low vision, specifically a PhD student that has degrees in computational and data sciences as well as assistive technology. Some of the “core memories” that stand out in my self-advocacy journey have included:

Writing about my disability and how I use assistive technology. This includes sharing documents with my support team about how to make things accessible, as well as using writing to help me develop an understanding of my own lived experiences.
Researching different types of assistive technology and accessibility strategies.
Giving a presentation to my school district about apps I use in the classroom (this was not a specific IEP goal, though it certainly could be!)
Learning how to explain my usable vision and what makes it easier/harder for me to access visual information.
Remediating a document by enlarging the font size and changing the page layout so I could see it easily.
Discovering how to enlarge my own sheet music, which extended into enlarging other content.
Feeling excited as a teacher implemented strategies that I had recommended to them.

Self-advocacy alone does not help me overcome accessibility barriers or challenges that I face with low vision, but it does make it easier for me to help myself as well as to ask others for help when I need it. Developing self-advocacy skills has also helped me to become a better advocate for causes I am interested in, and to be ambitious in the goals that I set for myself.

More resources for learning to self-advocate

Self-advocacy goals aren’t just for college transition or high school, they can be implemented at any grade level and cover topics related to making choices and understanding access needs. One example of a choice I had to make was figuring out how to navigate school lunch periods— learn more in School Cafeterias and Low Vision
While it may seem odd for a student with visual impairment to refuse accommodations, this is something I experienced in high school. I share more in I Don’t Need An IEP!: Overcoming Internalized Ableism
Want more self-advocacy content for visual impairment? Browse Self Advocacy Archives | Veroniiiica

Published January 5, 2023. Updated September 2025

Reference

Lewis, Veronica. (2023). Learning to Self-Advocate With Low Vision. Veroniiiica. https://veroniiiica.com/learning-to-self-advocate/ (Accessed on December 20, 2025)

Learning to Self-Advocate With Low Vision

Defining self-advocacy and what it means to self-advocate

Related links

Examples of self-advocacy IEP goals for visual impairment

Related links

Learning to request accommodations

Using telepathy (bad idea)

Develop a list of helpful suggestions (good idea)

Related links

Developing an understanding of disability and disability accommodations

Related links

Identifying skills and troubleshooting barriers

Related links

Create a network of resources and support

Related links

Achieving goals of self-advocacy as a student with low vision: Epilogue

Related links

More resources for learning to self-advocate

Use of Website as Consent to Disclaimer