I recently met someone in a writing forum and started to chat with them. They told me what their condition was and what they needed and didn't need when it came to writing to writing together . They've recently started to make blind jokes and I'm not sure how to respond. I generally do not respond well to self deprecation jokes, it puts me out of sorts, but I am aware that blind jokes are sometimes used as an icebreaker. I'm conflicted about how to respond.

Laughing seems rude or awkward, but at the same time they're aiming for a joke delivery so it seems appropriate. Normally I'd respond in kind relating to the situation but not being able to find something because their blind vs me not finding objects right in front of me because my anxiety makes me look at everything seems not well matched and possibly insecure?

What kind of reaction do folks look for and what reactions wouldn't you want?

I am coming to Reddit for help with this one. A bit of an SOS.

In the past four years of my living overseas, my older sister has lost all of her vision as a part of her disorder. She was an avid reader and since I have moved back she has been extremely depressed about losing this one joy of hers. I am a reader as well but I don’t use any of the audiobook apps for reading.

Her vision is not the only thing she has lost as it has caused early onset dementia as well. So, figuring out how to navigate this has been beyond her own means to say the least.

I have been looking around but have found it difficult to get any clean answers. I need to help her set up an account or multiple with different services for audiobooks, but the catcher is it needs to work well with visual impairment tech that exists natively on her phone. She has an iPhone 16, and most apps should work with the system but I have found some apps just cannot be navigated using it.

Does anyone here have experience using audiobook services on phones or iPads or experience with visually impaired services on audiobook apps? Or do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for taking the time to read and drop any suggestions. Just a desperate sister looking to help🙇🙇🙇

Hi, have you guys found any keyboard dictation app with voice over support ? I've tried Whisper and that doesn't work at all with Voice over. Also I'm unable to switch keyboards everytime I need to type manually as that feels frustrating since using a third party keyboard replaces your current keyboard on most apps.

Also for context I speak in German and English and the native dictation tool doesn't work well with my accent.

Thank you for the help

I bumped into a podcast that had a decent take on Audio Description for TV and movies. I was impressed with such spot on and interesting content on AD from a more mainstream perspective.

https://play.prx.org/listen?ge=prx_8376_ded13963-6552-4d31-b6f9-643f9ef8f2c7&uf=https%3A%2F%2Fpublicfeeds.net%2Ff%2F8376%2Fclickhere

I have Marcus Gunn syndrome (affects my right eye), which isn't supposed to have major complications, but for some reason it's causing me to lose the vision in my right eye. I have amblyopia/strabismus, astigmatism (in my right eye only), myopia (about 20/300 without glasses in my good/left eye), visual distortions (in both eyes), and more that I'm probably forgetting because I have too many conditions to keep track of. I think I have some sort of comorbid condition that is causing my vision problems because Marcus Gunn syndrome is not supposed to do all of this, especially with early intervention, which is what I had (I was seeing an ophthalmologist before I turned one).

For over a decade, I was seeing this one ophthalmologist. He wasn't really the best and ended up retiring me from his care, and he later ended up retiring himself. After he retired me from his care, I went to see an optometrist, and after two years of seeing the optometrist he told me that my brain was letting go of my right eye and that I needed to see an ophthalmologist again. He referred me to an ophthalmologist that was supposed to be really good and holistic (in my experience holistic equals one giant red flag) and he just dismissed all of my problems.

I'm just so frustrated, because I'm obviously losing vision in my right eye. Even with glasses, everything is blurry, no matter the distance, when before it was able to be correct corrected to 20/20 with glasses. And without glasses I was able to see with my right eye, I just had to be really really close to whatever I was trying to see (likes inches/centimeters away), but now even with glasses, I can't see anything clearly with my right eye.

When I was younger, I was very proficient at reading. I was above my grade level and could read for hours on end. Now, I'm 18 and have horrible, horrible, reading comprehension. When I look at a page of words, now it looks like the page is moving in the words are swirling, which was never a problem for me when I was younger. This new ophthalmologist I saw told me that I was just "focusing too much on the weird things everybody sees". I don't think when I look at something dark (including words on a page) then look away, there's supposed to be a flashing/strobing light for multiple seconds in the shape of the dark thing I looked at. I also don't think it's normal to see triple vision.

I'm just so frustrated. And isn't with just my eyesight, this is with literally everything. I once went into the doctor after an episode of severe shortness of breath (I was gasping for air, had chest pain when breathing all the way in, and I had to take breaks from breathing because it took too much energy), and she told me that I just wasn't eating/drinking/sleeping enough, and that I was just too stressed and anxious (I've had anxiety since birth, I think I know what anxiety feels like in my body).

I'm just so incredibly tired of doctors not listening to me. I (a broke college student with borderline medically neglectful parents) spend a crap ton of money just to get told that it's "my anxiety" or "it's probably nothing" or "it's all in my head". I'm just so done and don't know what to do. I finally found a good GP but I need specialists that take me seriously but they're so hard to find. When I pay money to go see a professional, I want to be taken seriously. That's my one fucking ask. It's just so fucking exhausting. I will go in with a list of symptoms, a list of conditions I might have (because if I don't go in with a list of conditions, they won't do any investigative work so I have to do the work for them), and/or try to politely fight them when they write me off as it "being nothing", but I never get what I need and it's so infuriating.

Is asking for a professional that will listen to me and take me seriously too much to ask? I feel like it's the bare fucking minimum.

If anyone has an ophthalmologist they see/know of that's in or near Seattle, please let me know. I'm at my wits end and desperately need an ophthalmologist before it's too late and my vision is gone.

Sorry about any mistakes or if my post was unclear. I'm on the verge of tears and I don't have the capacity to read it over a 3rd time.

For those of you that saw my previous post about Braille display recommendations I finally chose the BI 20X as the One I want.
A HumanWhere representative came to demonstrate it a few days ago, and I liked it a lot. It's just like my BI 40X but so much smaller. I could not believe it when I felt how small it really was. I was not expecting it to feel so portable. It's so small that you could put into a jacket pocket, especially when you take it out of the case.
I Thought I'd just tell all of you what I chose. I'm now just waiting to see wether the charity that I applied to will except it. hopefully, I get it.

Hi.
I am a 16 year old in high school. I am ashamed to say I still have my mom wake me up in the morning. I am wanting to to work on my independence to prepare to go off to college in a few years. I really want to start waking myself up in the morning but I can't really hear much at all when I take out my hearing aids. I have tried setting an alarm on my phone and I couldn't hear it. I also tried to use my apple watch wake me up but it didn't vibrate enough to wake me up. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. I wanted to know if any one had any ideas or advice?

Trying to find new hobbies since it's the summer holidays.

Really like the texture of seed beads so figured I could try beading.

Sighted folks pointed out how it might just be too fiddly for a blind person with no vision, so looking to hear from blind beaders before I move on

I am lucky to have a good friend group, and historically we have done lots of fun activities together on the regular. Things like Escape rooms, apple picking, cooking days, lots of board, game nights, etc.

Since losing my vision, I feel like a lot of these activities are not really as feasible anymore. We still do things like going out to eat, hanging out and chatting at home, going swimming, but I'm curious if you guys have any other ideas for things that we could do together that have the same Vibe as some of the stuff we used to do. I hate that this loss that I am facing also kind of changes, the whole dynamic of our group and how we tend to interact and hang out

Thanks for any ideas you might have.

my dad is blind and we have an old laptop at home and he wants to install a good OS on it so he could use it as his second PC to get things done at home

the problem is that we do not know what OS we should install so he can use is

the laptop is a dell inspiron 1545 with 4GB ram and a dual core intel CPU and im not sure about the GPU and to be honest i dont know if it has one

he is completely new to the linux world and he absolutely needs a screen reader like NVDA

thanks.