Last week, I had a conversation with a colleague whose daughter died by suicide. She shared with me that her daughter died by suicide due to bullying. Her daughter experienced bullying in middle school because she had a disability and it increased her anxiety and affected her mental health. Her daughter was only 11 years ..read more

In July 2023, I attended the VISION 2023 conference, which was an interdisciplinary conference focused on vision where I presented my research alongside other passionate professionals. The conference had 500 attendees from 30 countries and offered over 100 presentations. These presentations included biomedical, social, and psychological aspects of vision loss. My brain was both overwhelmed ..read more

Conferences are places where people can exchange knowledge and information and network with like-minded professionals. They are not accessible in nature for attendees who are blind and visually impaired. Over time, whenever I need to attend a conference, it’s a hassle of figuring out what accommodations will be provided by the conference and who is ..read more

I attended a session about accessibility and we watched a video by Imani Barbarin. The information shared in the video was around what do you lose, as a person with a disability, if you do not share your needs and request accommodations. That sentence brought me back to my experience and trigger some memories of ..read more

In my job as a researcher, I am part of different projects, which means I attend many meetings with different groups. I have attended a number of meetings where the agenda or a document is projected to organize the meeting and keep everyone on the same page. However, when this information is not read or ..read more

I started conducting my dissertation research a month ago. While I was conducting my interviews, I became curious to learn about social anxiety among people who are blind and visually impaired (BVI). Studies have shown that people who are blind and visually impaired have higher risk of social anxiety than sighted people because they cannot ..read more

By Roqayah Ajaj In this post, I am going to share with you one of my first real social outings since the pandemic started. I have not been out much since March of 2020, as I spend most of my time writing and working on my dissertation. I only go outside for urgent things, meaning ..read more

On August 12th, 2022, I passed my Ph.D. defense, which marks the passing of a major milestone in my life. I was proud, happy, and thrilled to share my accomplishment with my family, friends, and social media network after all the hard work I put into it. Not only my family were proud to celebrate ..read more

I am proud to share with you my amazing journey with the Misk fellowship program. The Misk fellowship program is “an ambitious program to refine the skills of Saudi youth showing high competencies and grand aspirations.” I saw the advertisement for the program inviting talented Saudi students studying in the top 100 universities to apply ..read more

Recently I interviewed Yousef who became a running coach for the blind by fate. Yousef earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and has been coaching cycling and running in Saudi Arabia for 2 years. His first blind trainee, Reem, is a 25-year-old woman, and is soon to be a lawyer. Reem is legally blind ..read more