It has been a long and busy year so far, and the blog has mostly lain dormant. Or fallow—let’s say fallow. That sounds like there are things going on below the surface, which there are. I have some pieces coming in the next month that I have been working on for a while.

But until I’ve put the last bit of polish on them, here’s a quick update about some important happenings this summer.

This year, I was honored to receive scholarships From the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB), two of the premier support, advocacy, and education organizations for blind people, led exclusively by blind people.

 As part of each scholarship, I was invited to attend the annual national convention for each organization. So in late June I traveled to St. Louis to attend ACB.

Union Station Hotel, site of the 2018 ACB Convention

And went straight from there to Orlando for the NFB.

The 2018 NFB scholarship class(Credit: National Federation of the Blind)

Being in a conference hotel with 2000 other blind people is an experience that is hard to describe. On the one hand, it can be overwhelming. It’s loud. It’s chaotic. On the other hand, there is something comfortable about it. This space is governed by a completely different set of social norms. Sure, there’s a lot of bumping into people. There’s a lot of dueling canes. But it’s expected. No one got bent out of shape about it. No one felt like they had to look after me when I was trying to find my way. No one expected me to know who they are when they sat down next to me. It was a world where blind people were respected and blindness was not isolating.

And I met such fantastic people. I met people working in higher education, K-12, research, policy, law, computer science, robotics, writing and publishing—you name it, there are blind people doing it, and doing it well. 

I spent one delightful afternoon with a group of blind educators, sharing ideas on managing classrooms, developing curricula, and working productively with colleagues who don’t understand or sometimes even respect the blind people working beside them. We talked about everything from cell phone policies and managing the wriggly bodies of special needs children to using online learning management systems and dealing with institutional administrations and policies. It was a treasure trove of collective wisdom and the reassurance that others have already trod the roads that I am bound to travel. 

On another day I met with a small group of academic professionals and graduate students, and we talked about navigating higher education at all levels, from graduate study to tenure, and how to improve research done by and about disabled people in psychology, sociology, and the humanities. I am grateful for the insight, support, and vulnerability of these colleagues, who view success as a collective as well as a personal priority.

There were also groups for blind parents—especially important for me with the impending arrival of our second daughter in October! Blind parents have to do some things differently, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel when other blind people have already developed excellent techniques and successfully raised so many children, both blind and sighted.

The scholarship money I received this summer is great, and it will help me finish my Ph.D. strong (and hopefully in the next year, fingers crossed), but the true value of these scholarships comes from the people I was able to meet and the connections that will last for years.

If you are blind or going blind, I can’t recommend highly enough getting involved in a group of the organized blind. Blindness can be isolating, and inventing non-visual ways to do every little thing on your own in a visual world can be taxing and demoralizing. But many have come before, and built a foundation of knowledge and mastery that we all can learn from.

Here’s to many more years of collaboration and lives well lived!