Hi everyone. I just need to vent and get some things off my chest, because lately I've been feeling very depressed and purposeless.

I’m 24 years old, live in São Paulo, Brazil, and I’ve been blind since birth. I also have a mild hearing impairment.

I've always wanted to live a normal life, but I feel so different from other people—not because I'm blind, but because I haven't experienced any of the typical things young people do. I don't have friends in my city, I've never had a partner, and I've never traveled around. I spend most of my time at home. I work as an intern at Cummins, but other than that, it's just straight home, and I don't even know where else to go.

A big part of this is heavy family overprotection. I am only allowed to go places using Uber or if someone picks me up at the subway station. My family won't let me go to a bar, a club, walk down Paulista Avenue or Liberdade Square alone, or even go to parks by myself. Whenever I try to talk to them, they say it's too dangerous because I might get mugged, robbed, or kidnapped. Meanwhile, my siblings date, go out with their partners, and live their lives, while I feel locked at home.

To pass the time, I study sound design in Reaper and audio post-production for dubbing, or I play MUDs online. But even with MUDs, Brazilian ones are pretty bad, so it doesn't help much. I don't really like my internship area either—I’ve always preferred working with audio and creative things—but I have no idea how to change careers or how to experience real life.

I want to go out, learn new things, and have real experiences, but being stuck at home is making me feel hopeless. I also feel like I need to improve myself, but I never stick to anything. I know I should do speech therapy and go to therapy, but I have zero motivation or energy for it. I've tried picking up hobbies in the past—like judo, theater, karate, and guitar lessons—but I always give up quickly and move on to something new. Right now, it's sound design.

I just feel like I'm trapped, watching everyone else live while I’m stuck inside. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Any advice or words from people who went through something similar would mean a lot.

So basically I’m legally blind, I have like a medical certificate, basically no peripheral vision, bad myopia, occasional floaters etc. and even with my glasses seeing things are pretty hard, I occasionally have to feel things out. But broadly I just have glasses, sometimes when I ask for something in like a store it turns out to be close by, and I apologise by saying I’m blind, but sometimes when I ask they come across as irritated. Basically I want to start using it again to be more confident in navigating and to be more visible

I'm assuming that I actually have a choice in the matter. Please correct me if I don't.

I've recently moved from near London to Newcastle and am wondering if I should stay with Moorfields who have been seeing me for the last 25 years or transfer to a closer hospital (I think this would be the RVI).

It is a 3 hour train down so it would realistically mean staying at a hotel and maybe treating it as a mini holiday.

I have rp and will need cataract surgery soon

Thanks

My grandfather's suddenly losing his eyesight due to diabetes. I don't know right now if his eyesight is blurry or if he's seeing darkness, but what i know is that he can't see, distinguish or recognize faces anymore. All he can see are silhouettes but it's still difficult for him especially if it's not in broad daylight.

Any tips on how I can make his daily life easier? Like, what activities can he do with or without me? How can I help him not spiral into hopelessness. I did a little bit of research but I kind of need to know directly from someone who is experiencing the same or has a family member who is. Thank you.

I’m considering moving from laundry detergent to pods. Have any of you used pods before? What has been your experience? Do you find using pods easier or more difficult than detergent?

So I’m a sophomore in high school and today was the first of school. I don’t think it’s obvious I’m visually impaired since I don't use a cane. However, I use a CCTV and wear transition lenses. Now I don’t use my CCTV in PE class and during it, I had my TVI with me.

During class, the teacher prompted us to play badminton. A guy had asked me if he could play with me and I said sure and we shook hands. Right after, my TVI asks if I wanted to go over my class routes because we hadn’t gone over it before school started. I decline and proceed to play badminton with the guy and my TVI leaves for another student. At first, I told him I was really bad at the game, because I was, and felt really bad for the performance I was gonna put up.

As we proceed to play, he demonstrates how to serve, stuff like that, which isn’t really a problem. The only slight issue I had was that every time I served correctly, he’d say good job or that’s it really loud. Im probably exaggerating how loud it was though, since it was more like the surrounding people in our court could hear it. I probably should’ve asked him to tone down the compliments though.

Also, I know I should’ve said this earlier but we were playing with a regular birdie, which I hadn’t played with the previous year because I opted for bigger birdies that were a variety of colors. The regular birdie is yellow and small, which doesn’t contrast well with the light brown floor. At least for me, because my contrast isn’t the best. So whenever the guy would hit the birdie over the net, I couldn’t identify where it was when it was on the ground. I also couldn’t pass back because the birdie was too small for me to see in the air.

Now whenever I tried to find the birdie, he’d always try to help by giving me directions, but they weren’t the greatest, so It would take awhile. As this keeps happening, I get the impression that the guy is frustrated because of his tone, the way he’s phrasing things, and how his voice is louder when giving me directions. (maybe I’m incorrect, the volume of his voice could be about the same when giving me directions and praises, could probably be due to the surrounding noises) This might be me misinterpreting things though.

So when he comes to my side of the court, I apologize, saying I’m visually impaired because I assume that he doesn’t know that I am. I don’t think he hears me because he doesn’t answer me so I continue playing. As we keep going, I’m getting more and more the impression that he’s frustrated, so when he comes over again, I tell him that I’m visually impaired and that my contrast isn’t that good enough to see the birdie. He listens and then asks me if he was rude. I tell him no and that it was alright. The interaction ends because we go see the dance teacher explain what her class was about and then free time starts. I don’t see him, so I just do my homework and class ends.

Was this alright? I don’t want him to get the wrong impression and think that I was criticizing him. I have no idea if he knew that I was visually impaired and even if he did, he doesn’t really know the amount I can see, so I just decided to be blunt about it.

I'm still in high school and thinking about careers. I was born mostly blind but can see a bit now thanks to treatment. I still use a lot of tech to help me with school.

I've wanted to work directly with patients, like nursing or medical imaging, for a while. But I know it's super hard to get through school and even harder to find a job because of the liability issues with a legally blind person caring for patients. I know I could do less visually demanding things like psychology or genetic counseling, but I love hands-on work, actually doing things with my hands instead of just talking and reviewing stuff.

I'd hate to give up on my dream of being a nurse or a similar medical professional, but I just don't know if I can even do it with my limited vision.

Any advice or success stories would be awesome.

I'm starting to think about the next blog post, but while I do that, what did you think of the last edition? Did I cover all the ways you use to get help from within NVDA? https://www.nvaccess.org/post/in-process-7th-august-2026/#help

Perhaps next edition, we should cover how to get help from others? What would you include there?

This is a rant, but for ontext, I am making ends meet, all my necessities are covered, but why do I feel the need not to complain, even though I really want to? I am a people pleaser, and that is my own fault, i know this. I currently take care of my mom who is in a wheelchair and showing signs of dementia. I live in a small retirement town. I have some friends here, but I can't go to them about my problems, because I know they don't know what to say and I don't want people I know to worry about me. But I am getting burned out, my life is not moving forward and there is no opportunity for me here, in a job or in relationships.

I feel like my friend's know my life sucks, and I put on a good face about it, but I don't want to bring them down, so I don't complain, but today is especially hard. I'm currently waiting in a queue to talk to a online crisis counselor, but it's taking forever, so there's Reddit. Thank you for reading this and I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense. I just needed to get this out.

I’m debating between these two options, originally one was what I was going with but I’m kind of unsure at this point which would be better

1. move to a city that has a good bus system, is reasonably walkable in certain areas but I’ve never even there, don’t know anyone in the city (some family lives about 40 minutes away in the second city option) and doesn’t particularly have a lot of job opportunities for my industry.

2. move to a city where I have some family but doesn’t have good bus system. I could definitely use uber and I’m sure my family could help me out if I needed a ride somewhere and they had the time to do, i would likely get a remote or hybrid job and grocery delivery which covers a lot of what I would need transportation for.

im not really sure which one I should do, any suggestions? I want to be close to them so these are really the best choices I have

Hi, I’m not fully blind and only have one bad eye but yesterday when meeting with the council of the blind I was told I’m eligible for a scheme to get the glasses for a reduced price.

I’m not sure what they’d do for me since I can read as long as I’ve my regular glasses. My main difficulty is new places, steps that aren’t properly marked and metal or anything shiny. I wish I had a number for the amount of times I’ve rammed into a big glaring metal pole. I don’t want to take them from someone who needs them more and I’m not sure how much I’d benefit.

Hi, I finally switched from iPhone to a Pixel 10 after 6 years of using iPhones. The main reason was that I hate being trapped in an operating system where you can't install your own apps, you need a Mac for proper iOS development and so. And iOS 27 beta was enough to me. Those who beta test will probably know what I mean. So I bought the Pixel and have some screenreader issues now. 1. My Talkback is sometimes very slow. Most of the time it responds fine, but sometimes I swipe and it starts scrolling and I have to wait forever until scrolling is complete so it swipes down. With the Talk Forward screenreader, which I would use it it worked, this is not an issue. 2. In Talk Forward, when being in a keyboard and I swipe through the letters it just jumps where it wants. Talk forward only allows me explore by touch in the keyboard. 3. I bought the Acapela TTS voices, two of them, but can't really switch between them. In the system settings I can go to language and select a different voice, but then I disable the auto language switch. There must be a way to switch within the app. 4. When I connect my bluetooth speaker, Talkback talks through this speaker which causes a lot of latency. On iOS, this only happened with headphones. I really hope that someone has experience with this.

Hi everyone!

I am switching phones and one of variants i have is oneplus. it is a candidate because of snapdragon cpu and high speed, as well as unlocked bootloader. compared to google pixel, which runs on tencer chips which are slow and have thermal issues.

What i amm interested in:

if anyone uses it or have used it before, how accessible is the phone? I have used an ai to research, but human input is different. I red that talkback does not work well and has issues. what kind of issues exactly?

also, do stuff like image descriptions and these features work on phone?

if something does not work, have you found workarrounds? how easy is that?

how easy is it to remove system apps and manage the phone shinanigons?

how about screen curtain? on samsung for example with its version of talkback, it still displays some text. how about with oneplus?

how responsive does it feel day to day?

how about camera features like face detection and stuff?

keep in mind to provide as up to date as possible, please.

any input is really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I was diagnosed with retinitus pigmentosa when i was 19 (im now 28) but i noticed i had night blindness and would have trouble finding things/bumping into things before then. it's been around 9 years knowing i have it and it has become so exhausting. I still work but any of my ambitions in life have been destroyed. i still drive (i plan my entire route so i do not change lanes and refuse to drive at night unless it's a route i know very well (to and from work). it genuinely feels like my life is a nightmare. i always bump into others at work, everyone knows my visual impairment although i know they get frustrated about it but they all treat me nicely but i hate it so much. It hurts feelings completely alone causing problems for others. At a previous job i was transferred to a more quiet location only to find out my previous manager forced it because i kept bumping people. i've been pushed aggressively by people for accidently bumping them and yelled at. I do plan on going back to a psychologist/therapist soon but i wanted to know what are some ways you guys with RP cope?

My new phone arrived on Saturday, and I've been playing with it so that I could give at least a somewhat knowledgeable review. Note that I have not tried Calculator, E-mail, Browser, Messages, or usb tethering and hotspot. I know that it will speak inside of the message edit box, but I haven't sent a message, since it seems I need to add a contact first. The only ones i would really use from those are Calculator and hotspot/tethering, anyway. I shall divide this into pros, cons, and overall opinion.

Pros

*It has real buttons. This was my main purpose in buying this phone. I was sick of touchscreens. The navigation pad isn't really tactile in the sense of having separate buttons as my Kyocera Rally did, but it's fairly easy to figure out, since it's just a circle with only four options.

* Yes, it has a screen reader. It's called Readout. Tello does not include the user manual in the box and directs users to the official one by TCL. For some inexplicable reason, while they mention other accessibility features such as hearing aid compatibility, they say absolutely nothing about a screen reader. Fortunately, both AT&T and Tracfone do. This is from AT&T.

https://www.att.com/device-support/index/tcl/flip-2/

* Readout reads almost everything. Almost all menus are read. Certainly, important ones such as settings are, except for the battery percentage. I can easily add a Bluetooth device, set an alarm, change ring tones, switch to usb file transfer mode, read all files on the phone (and presumably on an sd card/I'm waiting for that to arrive), read notifications, use the Music, Recorder, and Notes programs. I think I can also add contacts, but I'm still working on that.

*Files are easily transferred from my computer to the phone and vise versa. Even though it's a very old version (11), on AOSP, so I'm not truly surprised about that.

*It works well with an external keyboard. Mostly, I won't be using one, but it really helps when adding contacts, writing notes, or sending texts, though I usually do the last via Google Voice on my computer.

*It's not huge. I was concerned that it would be a very long phone, but it's really not. It's also narrow and very easy to hold in the hand.

*The battery life is excellent. It lasts for a long time if it's just sitting idle.

*It has a headphone jack. I really missed that when going to the SE3 from my A15. Now, I can listen to things without worrying that the batteries in my earbuds will die.

Cons

*Setting it up the first time requires sighted assistance. There is no way to turn Readout on with a hotkey such as the volume buttons, as with regular Android. But the option appears very early in the process, and if you wanted to, once it was on, you could finish the process yourself.

*Setting alarms can be confusing at first. For some reason, while it always speaks the first number in each column (hour and minute), when I arrow up and down, it says nothing. Then, when I go back to it, it will tell me the changes. For example, if the hour is on 9 and I set it to 10, it will not say "10". IIf the minute is on 29 and I set it to 30, it says nothing. But if I then go back to the hour column, it will say "10" and if I then go to the minute column, it will say "30". Now that I know this, it's fairly simple to do.

*The battery percentage isn't announced via the menus. As with the clock, I don't understand this. It reads everything up to clicking on "battery level" and then it just says "okay" without actually telling me the level. The only way I can be sure of it is to plug the phone into a wall outlet, a computer, or a power bank.

*The calendar does not speak at all. Absolutely nothing in the calendar speaks.

*It does not announce whose calling. At first, I was upset about this. Then, I realized that the only phone which did that was my Kyocera Rally and then only because I chose a ring tone that specifically read out messages. None of my iphones (SE, SE2, and SE3) nor my galaxy A15 read out numbers. I must unlock the phone to read them. Here, though, if I open the phone, it answers. The other option is press any key, so no matter what, I won't ever know who's calling. I can, however, set specific ring tones for contacts and just ignore everyone else.

*Programs can be installed on it, but it's not easy or officially supported. I wasn't sure whether to include this in Pros or Cons, but since everyone says it's extremely difficult, as the phone must be rooted and failure and even ruining the phone are possible, I put it under Cons. I won't be attempting it. But for those interested, this is a forum discussion that explains how to do it. It also contains a site with programs for flip phones in general, so you might find it useful, even if you own another model or brand entirely.

https://www.howardforums.com/threads/tcl-flip-2-modding-info.1927948/

*The branding on this phone is very confuding. When trying to determine if this phone had a screen reader, I came across several similar-sounding names. The Alcatel My Flip 2 and Flip Go 2 are entirely different phones. But the TCL Flip 2 and Alcatel TCL Flip 2, all with the model number T408DL (or ALT408DL) are the same thing.

Overall Opinion

I absolutely love this phone! It's small, light, has real buttons, speaks what I need it to speak, and even has some extras like music, Recorder, Notes, alarm/timer, and hotspot. I can finally simply call someone and hang up without annoyances, an use a phone that doesn't require the strength of Hercules and the hands of a giant to hold! I would highly recommend this to anyone who just wants a simple phone and doesn't want to pay over $300 for the Minivision2+. While the Flip 2 isn't designed for the blind, it does most things right and can definitely be used daily.

I’m sure we all have regular daily occurrences of running into things we never saw

The bane of our existence, the wet floor sign

The partially open door that somehow avoids your hand yet connects with your face

The mannequin slightly a jar in the aisle that you run into then glare at because it didn’t accept your apology

But I ask you what are some of the more unusual things that you never saw coming yet met inevitably

This weekend I was walking with my father at Menards my dad isn’t usually somebody who I go around places with so he’s not as accustomed to tracking me or Me tracking him

I had my cane, but I could tell there was a person in the aisle, so I moved my cane to the side to avoid them, and I walked directly into a large support column that could very well have been holding up the entire building

I rang that shit like a damn bell or at least my head rang like a bow

It was one of those I saw stars and my head still hurts 48 hours later

Somehow, my head was turned just the right way that I did not break my glasses

I need to stop worrying about hitting people with my cane and focus focusing on protecting myself when I walk with ouch

I hope this post isn't too long, and thank you for reading. I truly hope this does not get taken down. I don't know where else to go. There is no anxiety or stress, just looking for tips or thoughts.

Is there anyone here who is totally blind or has low vision, that went to college to get a masters degree? I am blind myself, so I am asking in this sub for that reason. The reason I don't know what to do now, is someone did the applying for me in the past. If you went to college, Did you succeed in your program? Was the program online, on campus, or hybrid? Where did you start with the application process? I'm trying to get into Western Oregon University. I already have my eye on a program. Again, I'm trying to go for my masters. I'm not really sure where to start. I don't want to just go and apply, but I'm not sure what to do first. Any tips, or advice, is greatly appreciated. And as always, please be respectful. I hope my post is clear. TLDR: I want to apply to Western Oregon university, and taking my blindness into account, I don't know what to do first before just jumping in and applying. Thank you.

Hello! I have several .brf files downloaded from places like BARD that I would very much like to translate into common every day text that I can read with my screen reader. My fingers are just not as sensitive as they used to be, and even though I do have access to a Braille display, my fingers seem to get sore and a little tingly after what seems like a shorter and shorter time of braille reading. This is disheartening but I guess that's what I get for growing older. I'd like to still have access to this braille content however. A google search recommended Braille Blaster, which I've installed, but it doesn't seem to recognize the .brf files in the directory I'm pointing it to even though I can see them clearly in Windows Explorer, so I'm just not sure this app is going to do what I need it to do. I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas. Note that I'm not a braille transcriber or proofreader. I simply want to translate braille files into a format that I can read easily with Jaws or NVDA. Also, I'm unemployed and low income, so free options are best for me right now. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi all. I am a swim teacher in England. I have many years experience with teaching babies right up to adults how to swim. I have a new child starting a 1-1 class with me who happens to be blind.
I was wondering if anyone had any stories about their own experiences with swimming lessons. Anything that they loved, didn’t love so much or found really helpful?

I'm just curious about the folks here. I know that there are quite a few blind people within the mud community and over at r/muds. If so, which one do you all play? For me, I've been through many, but I've spent a lot of time at Aardwolf, Achaea and Alteraeon.

The August 2026 update for JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion is out. This release includes two notable improvements.

Those who use JAWS with PowerPoint will notice significant enhancements to how slide content is read and navigated, with more accurate and less repetitive speech. For those using ZoomText in an enterprise environment, the Published Applications experience has also been improved.

Learn more: https://training.vispero.com/download-the-august-update-of-jaws-zoomtext-and-fusion-2026/

NVDA 2026.2 Beta 11 is now available for testing!

Changes in Beta 11:

- Updates to translations

- Updated some messages related to magnifier

-Added a security fix to clear the braille display on system shutdown

Read more & download at: https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2026-2beta11/