When I had to order some more blindness canes (white canes) for college, I discovered that I could customize canes to include reflective tape in different colors that weren’t just white or red. I love anything purple, so I decided to order a white cane…

When I was in college, I found out that one of my friends had recently started using a white cane/blindness cane when I tripped over it while walking in the dining hall. Another time I helped a different friend look for their cane after they…

During the last few semesters of college, my disability and chronic illness made it difficult for me to walk to classes on my own. Even with the use of guides and mobility aids, I would often show up to class exhausted, since I had used…

When I first started high school, one of the first things I noticed was how spread out all of my classes were. In middle school, my classes were all within one specific hallway, and I could get from one class to another in two minutes…

When I visited Disney World and Disneyland as a college student, I wanted to check out the audio description devices at Disney Parks that provide visual descriptions of select attractions and an audio map for navigating the park. While there weren’t too many instances where…

When I was moving out of my dorm at the end of the school year and rearranging items inside a box, a staff member asked why I don’t take my blindness cane with me everywhere I go. They were wondering how I was able to…

Shortly before my second year of college, I received a few orientation and mobility lessons for learning how to navigate with low vision and a blindness cane. These lessons were helpful for learning general travel skills, but I noticed they didn’t get into specifics about…

When I first started using a blindness cane, I wasn’t sure what kind of cane tip to purchase for my first cane, and had just been told to buy something before I started college. I ended up buying a random pencil cane tip on Amazon…

When I interned for a major technology company in 2019, one of the most important “soft” skills I had to learn in my first few weeks was how to navigate my internship building and hallways independently with low vision. Like most corporate buildings, this building…

As a student with low vision who uses a blindness cane/white cane to navigate unfamiliar environments, I find it helpful to use either a human guide or a visual interpreter when I travel to conferences, walk around exhibit halls, or attend fairs and smaller events…

In March 2019, the Google homepage highlighted the 52nd anniversary of when tactile pavement was first installed in Okayama City, Japan, which literally paved the way for other cities and countries to incorporate brightly colored pavement with raised dots and lines into different environments to…

How to be a human guide for someone with low vision and avoid having them walk into a pole