If you have a disability and want to bring your helper parrot, monkey or snake with you in public, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. starting today, March 15, 2011, only service dogs and trained miniature horses are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. These ADA revisions were drawn up after some disability advocates […]

I hired a young woman who is blind to teach me how to use social media.

Flo’s voice rang out from the phone early yesterday morning. “Your friend Jenny Fischer’s picture is on the front page of the Tribune! It’s a really big picture, too!” The photo in the Chicago Tribune accompanied a story about the success of some independent bookstores, and it opened describing the store where my longtime friend […]

Jessica and Julia, two grad students from IIT’s Institute of Design, are working on a class project to come up with a product that will help people who are blind. They contacted me as part of their research, and one of the many, many, many questions they asked during an interview was whether there is […]

I was lucky enough to be home this afternoon to hear Terry Gross play an excerpt from her 1986 Fresh Air interview with George Shearing. The jazz piano great died yesterday. He was 91. Shearing was born blind. When Terry Gross asked him if his piano teachers thought a blind person could learn to play, […]