2021 has arrived and will be better! Nine months of semi-isolation, voices muffled by masks, and fewer offers of assistance in public has been particularly tough on people living with loss of vision. Hopefully the pandemic is in the departure lounge and better times will come.

Over the next few months I will interview three guests who show how vision loss can be only a part of a full life:

Doug Rose lives in northern California and has retired from the business he and his wife started; making water gardens, fish ponds and waterfalls for customers. He hosts two support groups by phone and is a wonderful resource for exact information about appliances and devices that work well for people who can’t read screens or control panels. I will be posting many of his suggestions starting next week.

Amy Oswald is a vision rehab therapist in North Dakota teaching everything from cleaning the kitchen floor to managing VoiceOver on iPhones. She and the North Dakota School for the Blind have lots of short videos on home and personal management on YouTube, and I will post links to the videos with the interview.

Michael Nye is the author of My Heart Is Not Blind: On Blindness and Perception NLS #db 94924, published in 2019. Michael who lives in Texas, is a photographer lecturing and exhibiting in many countries  often about under served populations . His introduction shows how perception and adaptation can deepen and sensory possibilities flower  when sight  has been lost. The book is a compilation of 45 profiles of people who live with blindness at all ages, stages and different circumstances.

Amy and Doug live with blindness themselves and constantly offer up-to-date information and support to their communities. Michael gives insight into blindness of a kind that is almost never mentioned let alone given the prominence it deserves.

I hope you will be interested and inspired and search for more ways to contribute your own skills once this terrible virus has been beaten.