Welcome

I’m Hannah Fairbairn and this is my blog. I’m here to help you with questions you have about personal, home, and social life with vision loss. Comment on any post, email me, or subscribe to receive occasional email updates:

Hannah@VisionLossAndPersonalRecovery.com

When You Can’t Believe Your Eyes

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My book WHEN YOU CAN’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES: VISION LOSS & PERSONAL RECOVERY is available now in print and accessible versions. It is the first ever guide to coping with sight loss written directly for people dealing with vision impairment and blindness and their families.

Speak Up Skills

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The new Speak Up Skills page focuses on an essential issue for people who live with low vision or blindness: How to get your needs met when talking to people who see well and have never thought about not seeing.

Vision Loss and Personal Recovery

7 Tips for Spring Redecorating


How’s your bruise Collection? Do you bang into things even at home, and feel nervous approaching the top step?    Are you leaving everything the way it was before, or changing the décor to make best use of your remaining sight? Do you have little sight now or none, and wonder if there is a better […]

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Learning to Cook with Little or No Sight: Three Cooking Appliances to Start You on Your Way


It’s still winter here! We all want hot food. Maybe you’d love to make a nourishing soup or a big breakfast for yourself or your family. At the Carroll Center we have clients arriving every couple of weeks who haven’t cooked for several years. They feel – or their families feel – that cooking isn’t […]

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Growing Up Fisher


NBC has a new sit-com, Growing Up Fisher, which airs on Tuesdays at 9.30pm. EST. It’s great to have a central character in a network comedy show who is blind. Every time someone with vision loss is given an active, lively personality on TV or in a movie, it makes the public a little more […]

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The Other Side of the Blind


Last week’s post focused on the common misuse of the word blind to give negative punch to statements meaning ignorant or unaware. I got some push-back from my family as you will discover if you have a minute to check out the comments from last week. This post is focusing on the other side of […]

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The Word “Blind” Is Still Misused in Everyday Speech- Let’s Get Rid of It!


Blind is commonly misused by people to add negative punch to their speech. By blind they mean unaware or ignorant. This meaning is only positive in “blind justice”, otherwise  this  prejudiced use of blind can only adds to the sense of profiling that many blind people carry with them. Yet when you meet someone who […]

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