Blogging

The question was asked, how do I blog?   I invite other readers  who are blind to PLEASE share -- as many of them are so much more of an expert than me.  I will preface this with saying, that my way is not the most efficient.  Fellow blind bloggers may be rolling their eyes at how I do it.  I look forward to reading your tips! There are requests for sharing how you put the descriptive link on pictures -- please share.  I am at a place in my blindness journey where I need to slow down and take some further technology training.   Many friends who are blind, tell me that I could speed up my process by utilizing speech further.  I'm getting there - one step at a time.  I have a date scheduled with a friend/mentor in November to continue on with my learning.    It has not been something that I have grasped easily.  I have learned that when my process doesn't work, I embrace the next stage.  

I have a program called ZoomText on my computer as well as a touch screen computer.  With a pinhole of vision, keeping track of that silly little curser is extremely challenging.   So, being able to touch the screen and have a big large cursor appear at that place is helpful.  It also has speech technology.  With Retinitis Pigmentosa, larger print is not necessarily helpful as my visual field is SO small.  I have a very small watch and scan to see the hands -- I can't see the 10 and 2 at the same time.  Basically think of a coin - perhaps a quarter and that is the amount of vision that I can see except not at the same time.  It  is a snippet of vision that is fuzzy.  I can tell colors, generally except two that are close as in black or blue.  With this small peephole of vision, at times I can get an overall picture better on the small camera than in real life, does that make sense?  I may simply be able to see the silhouette of it on the camera and in real life it is lost in the samll amount of vision.   

My daughter and I have been known to have conversations such as -- me: how do I put a link on my blog?  Mom go to the tool bar and she talks me through to where it is located or teaches me the command to type in.  I sometimes may forget what I had for breakfast, but phone #'s, keyboard commands, are memorable. 

I usually have Steve or someone else take a peek at my picture to make sure it is an okay picture before posting it.   There is a way to describe pictures in the caption, that I hope someone will leave the instructions or a link in the comment section.  I find this helpful on other blogs.  I love posting pictures even though on someone else's blog, I am reading the content and the description more than the pictures.  Inspite blindness, I am a very visual learner and think visually.  I learned braille visually in my mind before I learned how to read by touch.   I can tell you what the braille alphabet looks like even though I still struggle to read Grade 2 braille.  I am a fabulous reader of 'woman' on the restroom or other necessary words.   I recently had someone ask me if I knew what my office looked like.  I smiled - indeed, I decorated it and have blogged about that and so much more.

It also helps to have a sweet little foot warmer, Cricket by my feet while I blog. My blog isn't fancy, but an enjoyable way for me to express my heart. Thank you for reading and sharing your heart.