#actuallyblind

[teddybearworld]

Question for people who use screen readers or text to speech/audio

When a post on here has lots of emojis, special fonts/text or lots of keysmashes, what is a way to tag those posts so that you guys don't have to sit there listening to nonsense for a minute straight?

Thanks!

#disability #actually disabled #screen reader #screen readers #screen reader user #actually blind #blindness #visually impaired #AAC user #visual impairment #actuallyblind

[actingwithportals]

ALT TEXT ISSUE

So just a heads-up for folks who defer to using ALT text on their posts instead of plaintext IDs, if the ALT text is long enough clicking on the ALT button to visually read the text creates a problem, because as soon as you move your cursor away from the ALT button (like if you use a screen magnifier and are trying to scroll down the page to read the rest of the ALT text) the text WILL DISAPPEAR. It is not possible to continue reading the whole thing visually, which is a problem for blind/low vision users that rely on screen magnifiers or enlarged text.

I know that most people prefer ALT text because people hate having long IDs on their posts, and that generally ALT text is better for people who use screen readers, but it is continuously proving to be a problem for blind/low vision users that rely on screen magnifiers over screen readers. So please PLEASE consider including plaintext IDs so that we can read them too, especially if your IDs are long and likely to get cut off by the limitations of the screen size.

#blind #legally blind #low vision #visually impaired #actuallyblind #alt text #image descriptions #screen readers #screen magnifiers #accessibility

[theimaginatrix27]

To anyone in the position to edit future non-fandom wikis, from a blind fan

I have run up against this issue on the Star Trek Fandom wiki (I know Fandom is bad, if there's an alternative wiki for the Star Trek franchise please please point me to it), but I hope anyone else who edits/will edit any wikis for (particularly live-action) fandoms will hear my plea.

On behalf of all blind fans, I implore you:

When creating/editing a character's page, provide a physical description of them.

Yes, even if there are pictures. Blind people can't see those. Alt text for those pictures would also be nice because screen-readers can read alt text, and it's not always visible to a sighted person who just wants to check a thing real quick.

Yes, even if they basically look like the actor playing them. We also cannot see what actors look like, funnily enough.

Yes, even if you think some things are obvious. You never know what someone might have missed when watching the show/movie or playing the game/watching a let's play. Especially if they're blind/low-vision viewers.

Yes, even if you personally find it annoying. Wikis are an excellent reference if done well, and can be very helpful for reminding people of stuff, and for helping blind fans like myself know what something looks like, so long as the description is there. We find it annoying when there isn't all the information on a wiki page there could be.

Sincerely, a blind Treky who has looked up the pages for several characters on the Star Trek wiki this past week to try and find out for suresies what those characters looked like, only to find there was no physical description section. The races get them, which is great and mostly helpful (but why do they talk about Cardassians having grey skin most of the time instead of scales? I got tripped up by that—though not in anything I've posted yet thankfully!). But that only gets you so far for specific characters! I can't keep relying on fanfics and the kindness of sighted friends with lives who can't always be reached when I need the information to find out for certain what colour Miles O'Brien's eyes are, or Kira Nerys's hair, and sometimes fanfics aren't accurate about descriptions, and I could be basing my entire perception of a character on something I read in a fic once! And I won't know if I can't look it up!

#Star Trek #ST:DS9 #deep space 9 #Wikis #Wiki Info #Character Descriptions #Actuallyblind #Blind Fan

[thecoffeecrew404]

I want to make a rentry about screenreader accessibility!!

Why do you use a screenreader? Is it due to a disability?

What are common inaccessibility issues you come across?

What information would you like to see in an informational rentry or carrd about screenreaders, plaintext, and image descriptions?

Feel free to link to resources in your reblog for a resource masterlist as well!

Pings: @mightyoctopus @accessibleaesthetics @accessible-tumbling

#☕️tcc ;; resources #☕️tcc ;; talks #Disability #Actuallyblind #actually blind #Screenreader #Screenreader user #Screen reader #Screen reader user #Visual impairment #visually impaired #Accessibility #Screen reader accessible #actually disabled

[nonspeakingkiku]

Kiku doesn't remember if Kiku posted about Kiku's white cane here or not. But this is Angel. ☺️

Angel is a pink Ambutech graphite slimline folding cane with the handle covered in pink ducktape because Kiku couldn't handle the feeling of the foam handle and a rolling marshmallow tip. Kiku also has non-rolling marshmallow tips but prefers the rolling marshmallow tip. Kiku takes Kiku's cane when goes anywhere out of the house and it helps a lot.

Kiku also applied to the National federation of the blind's free white cane program so Kiku will have a backup but it hasn't arrived yet. It will be a rigid (non folding) plain white cane with a black handle and a metal glide tip.

Kiku eventually wants to get a regular (non slimline) version of Angel and a rigid version to see how they are different.

#CVI #white cane #actuallyblind #deafblind #actuallydeafblind

[albinohai]

Im a day late for white cane awareness day BUT look at these earrings i made 🦯🥰

#actuallyblind #legally blind #white cane #blind culture is #ndn tumblr #beading

[j0estrummer]

!!I was forced to use what money i had on food!!my white cane was broken after a faithful year of having it. and i'm in no place to afford a new one right now. me and my partner just moved into a new place and are getting by on scraps. if anyone could kick in a few bucks or boost this that'd be really great. i can't leave my home independently without a cane paypal/cashapp/venmo are all @ strawberryStrummer

0/55$

#disabled #actually disabled #disability #white cane #mobility aids #mobility aid #cripple punk #cpunk #boost #blind #actuallyblind #actually blind #anything helps #mutual aid #i was #forced to use the money i had on food #im so sorry i have to post this again

[varian-ross-horror-author]

If Earth Is Hell

If we are in hell, then it is hell with fine spring mornings and singing birds. “Earth is nothing but pain,” but I am assigning times to my talking watch, rolling my new cane along the sidewalk, and trying that new recipe I found with confidence. Hummingbirds startle away when my indicator says I’ve poured enough coffee, but my neighbors know that sound is not a call of distress, but of life. All battles of autonomy have been hard-fought and won. My home is adapted to my needs, even for days when I have to pull the curtains because .light is too much. My life is different than I imagined, but life—my life--while being almost blind—is still worth living.

#original post #hopepunk #poetry #blind community #disability #actuallyblind

[daydreamerdisease]

Is it better to do alt text or ID text on posts for tumblr? I swear I saw a post about this but I don’t remember.

#Jay speaks #alt text #I usually do alt text but idk should I be doing both or the other? #actually blind #actuallyblind

[cipher-the-sidhe]

Holy fuck. Holy Fuck!

If you work in a medical clinic, Please, for the love of god, learn how to engage with disabled people! The humiliation, frustration, and waste of time that was me trying to go through the plasma donation center today as a visually impaired person was ridiculous.

Spoiler alert: if you see someone wearing sunglasses indoors on a cloudy day, and carrying a white cane with a red tip, MAYBE DON’T ASK THEM TO READ TINY TEXT OFF A COMPUTER AND MAKE VAGUE GESTURES AS TO WHERE THEY NEED TO GO! I don’t know how to make it clearer that I cannot see than just saying it, which I did!

Assdfhggkdlid 💀

#cipher vents #visually impaired #vip #actuallyblind #disabilties #ableism

[actingwithportals]

Not giving a show results option because I don't want this poll to be 90% sighted users voting, but please do reblog for a larger sample size!!

#repost cuz i forgot to make it a week long lol #blind #blindness #actuallyblind #legal blindness #legally blind #low vision #visually impaired #screen magnifiers

[askablindperson]

Hello, I am a writer who wants to write about a character with Lebers Congenital Amaurosis, and I’ve been struggling to find resources or descriptions on what vision is like for people with that condition. If you’re okay with it, could you describe what vision is like for you? Thank you and have a wonderful day! And sorry if you’ve already been asked this a million times.

Hi! Thank you for asking, and I would be glad to answer. I know what you mean, too. LCA is still somewhat common in the blind community, but I have also found quite a lack of resources to explain how it works to other folks. LCA is rarely included in any of those blindness simulation filters, either, though those also aren’t perfect representations.

A quick disclaimer: most of what I will share here is based on my own personal experience as well as the other blind people with LCA I have personally met in the trends I have observed in the community. I’m not a medical professional though, and I really don’t know that much about how these things pan out statistically Speaking.

First, one thing you should know is that LCA is progressive. It tends to be very slow and steady about it, and it took me 10 years to notice that I had had a significant change in vision which I only fully noticed in the last few months, but it is progressive, so it will inevitably get worse over a person’s lifetime. It just might take its sweet time getting there, and you won’t notice any overnight changes. at least not in the folks I’ve known, or in myself, or in most of the literature I’ve seen discussing it. There may be outliers though that I am less aware of.

The other thing I will say is that most of the other blind folks I have known with LCA actually have significantly less vision than I do, usually being born with little more than light perception and often losing what’s left of that light perception within their first few years of childhood. so a lot of them are totally blind as adults, or still only have light and shadow perception.

As for mine, at least in my experience, I seem to be somewhat of an outlier in LCA, in that I’m quite a high partial case. I believe I’ve been at least legally blind since birth, meaning my visual acuity was at least 20/200 or worse with some visual field issues also, but I’ve always had quite a lot more residual vision than most of the other folks with LCA I have met personally. Not all of them though. When I was a young child, my visual acuity was probably around the 20/200 Marc, but now at 27, my better eye is at about 20/650 and the worst eye is somewhere in the ballpark of 20/5000. Don’t ask me how they can even measure it when it gets that severe lol.

In practical terms, the way I have always described my vision is that it’s a lot like looking through a fogged up mirror when you get out of the shower, a foggy window in the winter, or the super blurred out background in a movie. You can make out plenty of shapes and colors and lights, and you can get a vague sense of what a lot of objects might be, but there is no detail and it’s extremely blurred out. if you happen to wear glasses, I often say that it’s like a lot of folks without their glasses on, but amped up to 11, and that’s even WITH my glasses. Without them, it’s even blurrier, though I don’t really wear glasses much anymore.

That description is in reference to my better eye, mind you. The worst one is so much worse that I can rarely make out actual objects with it or even silhouettes of people. It’s still colorful and everything, but the blurriness is significantly worse to the point that the eye isn’t really useful.

For me personally, as I have gotten older, my central vision has actually deteriorated a little bit faster than my peripheral vision, so I can ironically see a little clearer out of the corners of my eyes then I can looking straight ahead. I don’t know how common this is amongst folks with LCA, especially since most of the folks I know only have light and shadow perception where it’s harder to measure that, But that’s how it is for mine. It wasn’t like that as a child, I would have considered my central and peripheral vision to be fairly similar most of my life, but in the last 10 years, my central vision is noticeably worse now than my peripheral. if I look at a ceiling light through the corner of my eye, and then shift my eye so I’m looking at that same ceiling light to the center of my eye, it is instantly blurrier, like a little foggy film was put over it.

Also, at least for me, I have quite a few blind spots in my vision that impact my overall visual field. Contrary to what those vision loss simulation filters will have you believe though, those are not represented by black spots or white spots in real life. They’re just gone. Think of it sort of like Photoshopping somebody out of a picture. If they are standing in your blind spot, it’s not that there’s a blob over top of them, it’s as if that section of the picture was just cut out, and the two halves around it smashed together as if that part was never there. It’s just missing.

In actuality, everybody has a blind spot, even people with no vision problems whatsoever, so you may be able to get a better understanding of this by researching the general Blindspot that everyone has. I just have more of them because pieces of my retina have completely deteriorated and died off from my disorder.

The discussion of central versus peripheral vision and the blind spots applies to both of my eyes, but like above, just a lot more severe in the eye that’s worse. It’s not quite to the point where it only has light and shadow perception, but it’ll probably get there in the next 10 years or so. I’ve never leaned very heavily on that eye because it’s always been the much weaker one, but these days it is a little bit funny to see just how wildly different the exam for my right eye is compared to my left eye nowadays.

Lastly though, that does finish up the description of what my vision actually looks like, but I do want to leave you with one final note of consideration, which is not to focus overly hard on exactly what your character sees when writing them. At the end of the day, most of us who have been blind our entire lives don’t really go about our days actively paying attention to exactly what we can see and what we can’t, or thinking about what things look like through our eyes at that moment in time. We’re just living our lives with the vision we have, because we were born this way so it’s our normal, and sometimes focusing on it too much in the writing can cloud the characterization more than it helps.

All of that said, I do hope that this provides a useful framework. Mostly, my vision is just ridiculously blurry and really only gets a tiny bit less blurry with glasses, with a few holes punched here and there for good measure lol. To be honest, when I’m spending time with other blind people, we don’t actually usually spend all that much time describing exactly what each other’s vision looks like to each other or anything—it’s usually not exactly the most interesting thing we want to talk about—so I don’t know how common my specific details are to others with LCA. But that’s pretty much the long and short of my personal experience, and hopefully it can be useful when understanding your character.

#ask a blind person #actually blind #ActuallyBlind #writing blind characters #Leber congenital amaurosis #blind #blindness #writing disabled characters

[magickalromance]

This is possibly a dumb question

I see that I can change the theme of my actual blog to something else, but is there a way to change the way posts appear on my dashboard? Or will whatever theme I pick do that for me automatically, and not just for my blog page itself? Basically, with a screen reader on the website, which is the most accessible way to use the app for me, I don't have a way to quickly scroll past stuff I don't want to read. (Like the fact that #eugenics is a tag Tumblr thinks I want to follow, which is a big fat no.) I'd love to be able to have each post indicated by a heading. Can I do that?

#accessibility #actuallyblind #screenreader #possibly this is super obvious and I'm just a n00b

[elliewallwork4]

Hello Tumblr Etc

So I finally got a Tumblr bc why not? Getting to grips with things so bare with me/sorry if I make mistakes.

I'm Ellie, a blind actor. You can find me on Twitter/Insta under the same username. I'm terrible at replying to messages/anything but I do my best.

Formatting is hard :(

#Blind #ActuallyBlind #ActuallyDisabled #Acting #Actor #FirstPost #IdkReally #ImTryingOkay #TumblrIsScary

[nonspeakingkiku]

Kiku is moving very soon. And it is scary but also exciting.

One of the things Kiku is planning on doing after Kiku loves is making a CVI friendly calendar/schedule. It's probably gonna be tactile as well as visual, but Kiku isn't exactly sure how Kiku is going to do it. Kiku is excited though. ☺️

#kiku squeaks #special interest #autism #actually autistic #autistic #nonverbal #nonspeaking #aac user #apraxia #dyspraxia #CVI #actuallyblind #cortical visual impairment #cortical vision impairment #cortical blindness #autism visual supports #visual supports

[albinohai]

Truly devastating how my two most beneficial mobility aids are in conflict 😭 when i use my forearm crutches at home (where i dont need my white cane) they are so so perfect for me but i cannot devise a way to use them with a white cane when im outside so i have to pick between aiding my vision or my joints when i head out

#hypermobility #ehlers danlos syndrome #actuallyblind #legally blind #using a regular support cane worsened my leg pain due to it being asymmetrical idk so forearm crutches are so ideal #unsure how to fix this problem #any advice lol