I’m Ben, a blind actor, theatre maker and accessibility consultant. I joined Extant, the UK’s leading professional performing arts company of visually impaired (VI) artists and theatre practitioners, in July 2023 as their first Trainee Artistic Director. Prior to that, I’d spent most of my career working in mainstream, non-disabled led organisations, where sometimes I felt like the odd one out. That’s why coming into Extant felt like a weight lifted had been lifted off my shoulders – here’s a UK theatre organisation that is completely inclusive of and celebrates the brilliance of VI people. Un ..read more

From the moment I met my husband John, also known as The Blind Woodsman in our online community, I knew I wanted to tell his story. He is a gifted woodworker. He is an all-around good human. He is the type of person that leaves an impression with everyone he comes across. I jokingly call him an angel, though he laughs it off. He has overcome unimaginable pain in his life, including a suicide attempt at age 16 that left him completely blind and without a sense of smell. He also almost lost his life to meth addiction and a life-threatening sinus infection that resulted in him getting a prostheti ..read more

We’re Lina and Juna, the hosts of Blind Girl Chat, where we talk all things blind and girl, no vision required. We met when we were 12 at a program held at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts. Ironically, we weren’t instant best friends. (Juna maintains that she always thought Lina was “too cool” for her, but Lina vehemently denies this.) Three years later, thanks to the powers at be, we were randomly paired up as roommates at a summer program at Perkins School for the Blind, and the rest is history. We bonded over our love for the TV show What I Like About You and our ob ..read more

Astronomy is often portrayed as a visual science. A quick search through popular and social media turns up countless stories accompanied by dazzling images of planets, stars, and galaxies. Of course, these images can be challenging or impossible to access for blind and low-vision (BLV) communities. However, nearly all of these astronomical images contain light that the human eye cannot detect. Most of NASA’s observatories in space, for example, look at many kinds of “invisible” light. The images are translations of the information captured by the observatories that then travel in a digital for ..read more

While I consider myself a champion user of my computer now, it wasn’t always this way. My combined hearing and vision loss made me feel isolated – and because I had limited access to technology to stay in touch with my family, friends and community, I felt even more alone. I’ve experienced significant hearing loss since childhood, and my vision has diminished over the past decade. As a result, I have frequent appointments at The John Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute. During one visit, my therapist encouraged me to apply to iCanConnect, the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program. The pr ..read more

My name is Kemal Gorey. I am a media composer, music industry professional, co-chair of the PR Committee at Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities (RAMPD) – and I am visually disabled, which means I am a natural problem solver, inventor, and out-of-the-box thinker. I was born in Istanbul in 1989: a city which is extremely chaotic, and definitely not designed well in terms of accessibility. Nevertheless, once you fall in love with that city, there is no way back. I come from a classical music education background. Scoring music for films, TV shows, animated series, video ga ..read more

The notion that we as blind people can have visual experiences that are radically different from, but analogous to, the visual experiences of sighted folks is just something that is not talked about in scientific research. We are often mistaken as speaking metaphorically of light or images, being poetic or perhaps delusional, but this is not the case. For me – who can non-optically see my hands typing on the keyboard now – such experiences are very real, affirmable in neuroscience studies and are not going away. The Vision In Blind Experiences Survey (VIBES) represents the first step along a b ..read more

I was born in New York, but grew up in the Midwest until I was 16. My mom got really sick with terminal cancer then, so we moved to Los Angeles to be with my sisters who lived out here. Entertainment runs in my family. My sisters originally came to California to be professional dancers. They danced with MC Hammer and Heavy D and established a life here. They were able to bring us to be with them and take care of us. I started my relationship with the arts through music. When I was in 8th grade, the coolest guy in class was a rapper – and you had to be good at rapping to hang. So, I learned to ..read more

It was a warm and breezy Monday afternoon in spring. I found myself filled with gratitude and joy, and I could feel my smile opening my heart as I relaxed into the beanbag poof I was sitting in. The radiant sunlight warmed the room, and all I could do was bask in it, sipping from the 3D monkey mug of coffee in my hands. This was so much better than the record label experience I had always heard about. My husband and team were settled in around me at the We Could Be Music house in Costa Rica, and we were all discussing strategy and promo for the music we were working on together. Our ideas flow ..read more

When I graduated from high school back in 2008, I was the only student at this particular school with total blindness and autism. Mind you, I lived near a desert, and in an area like Lancaster, California, it can seem kinda lonely. Luckily, about a year after graduation, I finally moved back to Los Angeles with my family. I’d signed up with the California Department of Rehabilitation and had a counselor named Carlos Amaral who’s now retired. When we met, he told me, “Either move out on your own, or go live with another friend or family member.” So that’s what I did, and the living situation wo ..read more