Our presentation at Joseph Sears Elementary School yesterday started with me reading out loud from the Braille version of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound, and then I explained three rules the kids should keep in mind if they happen to see a guide dog with a harness on: don’t pet the dog, don’t feed […]

Remember my last post, the one where I wrote about all the young people in my 2010 Seeing Eye class using talking iPhones? Eliza Cooper was one of those young Seeing Eye classmates, and the very day I published that post last week she was featured in a story on Marketplace from American Public Media. […]

One of the many, many reasons I decided to buy an iPhone two years ago was to support the idea of universal design: the iPhone 3GS was the first touch-screen device that blind people like me could take out of the box and use right away.  It comes with speech software called VoiceOver — built-in screen […]

After our fun visit to Dewey Elementary School in Evanston, Ill. last month, six-and-a-half-year-Katya Karpeyev told her Papa she felt special. “It was really neat to be up front assisting Beth with the other kids’ questions.” Katya’s big sister was at the assembly with her third-grade classmates, too, and Sasha agreed to write a guest […]

Spending an overnight with my 96-year-old mother is like staying at a spa. Flo keeps the thermostat in her apartment at sauna-high temperatures. She rarely drinks coffee or alcohol and offers green tea to guests. She doesn’t have a computer or wi-fi at her place, and there’s no T.V. in the living room. She creates […]