The readings for Easter Sunday are Is. 65:17-25, 1 Cor. 15:19-26, and Luke 24:1-12.

Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! That’s the joyful truth we share this Easter morning. Death is defeated because Christ Jesus who died has triumphed over the grave and now lives and reigns to all eternity. Because He is risen, we have certain hope that extends beyond today and our present circumstances. While things seem frustrating and amiss around us, we trust our Lord to deliver His new heavens and new earth on that Last Day even as He has purchased it for us by His shed blood on the cross. Now, Christ shares this victory with us.

It’s no secret that the blindness community as a whole is very sedentary. Maybe, that’s due to the fact many of us live in cities where public transit options are scarce and paratransit offices may be greatly understaffed. Safe walking routes are hard to find unless you live in a quiet suburb and or know the area where you live literally by the back of your hand. Certainly, the seventy percent unemployment rate among people who are blind or visually impaired contributes to our being sedentary.

As such, many of us face additional health concerns along with our vision loss-heart disease, chronic depression, diabetes, and obesity to name a few. So it’s tempting to think of physical fitness as better suited for someone else, someone more active than ourselves. Not everyone will be the next starter on the beep baseball or goalball team though we may know those who enjoy these sports. Yet, physical fitness doesn’t have to remain a distant goal or huge step even beyond the house or apartment where we live.

That’s why this week’s Fitness Friday features a website and app that any of us can use right in our living room. It’s called the ReVision Fitness App. Four-time para-Olympian, Tyler Merren, who competes in goalball and is a personal trainer created it back in 2020 for anyone but especially for us who can’t see. You don’t have to be an elite athlete yourself to use it. In fact, Tyler has included programs for the beginner who’s never exercised to those geared for the fitness focused gym rat.

You can view the website here or get the app from your Google app store. While there is a small fee after two weeks’ usage and membership, the initial stage allows you time to explore the various areas of the site from its virtual classrooms, planning rooms, to the actual fitness studios where you can put programs into action lasting from ten minutes to an hour or more.

Perhaps you’ve wanted to do more specific exercises than the basic push-up or sit-up we all learned in gym class but haven’t known the exact way of carrying them out. Maybe, you’ve tried getting into a steady workout regimen at home but let other factors hamper your efforts.

Tyler builds into the ReVision Fitness program a thorough and easy to grasp description of every exercise and body position the website’s programs include. Again, while you can incorporate ReVision Fitness’s programs at the gym, you can do many of them right in your living room provided that enough space is available to stretch out and have some movement. In addition to the website and app, Tyler posts discussions on a Facebook group for those of us who enjoy learning more about fitness in general and want to stay up to date with new programs he regularly adds to the site.

Well, as for me, I’m off to getting the rest of my day going with some quick ab stretching and good cardio exercise before my parents spend Easter weekend with me and my wife. So till next post, continue being boldly blind while navigating life’s contours.

Have you or someone you know gotten professional help relearning their kitchen’s layout after going blind? Maybe, someone’s come over to your friend’s house to teach them how to adjust their house’s lighting or texture contrasts to better distinguish one room from another. Have you known a relative who suffered some loss of sight to get retaught cooking skills?

The person who came to give such help might very well have been a certified vision rehabilitation therapist. Now it’s easy to get them confused with a general occupational therapist since the skills they teach overlap. But occupational therapists’ work involves dealing with people having any number of physical or cognitive difficulties. Vision rehabilitation therapists zero in on those who experience some amount of vision loss as their predominant disability.

Unless a CVRT works privately, he usually is part of a team based in a center for independent living, a Vocational Rehabilitation or Department of the Blind office or residential school. In that case, one may work with clients who are totally blind while another may help those who are adjusting to more gradual vision loss. Schools such as World Services for the Blind (Little Rock, AR) and St. Louis’s South Office of Missouri’s Rehabilitation Services for the Blind divide up work between several certified staff members who teach clients how to read braille, develop soft skills for job interviewing, and skills for organizing their home life. In this team approach, CVRT’s can rotate from one area of teaching to another so as to keep their skills fresh and resist the temptation to burn out amid a constantly changing caseload.

Because many offices of a State’s service department of the blind cover several counties, they contract with CVRT’s in the field who more readily reach their clientele to help with all the previously mentioned skills for adjusting to blindness. Rehabilitation teachers who are themselves blind partner with a sighted driver who brings them to several clients in a single day. This allows for someone’s whole family to get involved. Often when someone goes blind after being married or a parent for several years, the changes they must make can overwhelm those living with them. So a CVRT lends a hand to everyone to make the transition of vision loss as smooth a time as possible.

Have you ever thought of becoming a CVRT yourself? The field is always in need of new blood. After all, the technology today is much different than that which affected people who were blind twenty or thirty years ago. You may teach people to use a smart phone’s Free and low-cost apps like Be My Eyes or Seeing AI to perform many of the jobs like matching colors on clothing, money identification, and reading mail. A CVRT may teach someone going blind to organize things-to-do lists on an Alexa device or plan a daily workout on the Revision Fitness App.

Of course. Schools like Western Michigan and Salus universities offer Masters degrees in Blindness and Low Vision Studies. From there, you will become certified by the Academy for Certification of Vision Rehabilitation & Education Professionals (ACVREP). Through the Association of Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AERBVI), you will become part of a supportive network of blindness professionals who collaborate on research and share the latest teaching methods for helping people cope with their vision loss.

Shortly before I moved to Connecticut for an internship, the lady helping me with cooking skills brought me a lock-lid pan, a meat cutting guide and a few other gismos I could use when making dinner. From the one-cup coffee maker to the silicon grips on my elbow-length gloves, I gained confidence navigating my kitchen. When switching careers to work for the Federal government, I did attend World Services for the Blind and learned from the CVRT’s on staff who refreshed my approach to more efficiently do blindness. Now married and enjoying the life of advocacy, I can appreciate the time and effort CVRT’s put into helping us more fully participate in everything life has to offer.

So we say thank you to certified vision rehabilitation therapists and the service they give us.

I was in grad school when I began helping Pastor Dave Andrus get Lutheran Blind Mission and its affiliated outreach centers off the ground. In March 2000, Pastor called a few of us together for a conference to discuss the direction we planned to go. He knew I’d be traveling alone in Chicago’s Midway Airport and rendezvousing with someone I’d never met. So, his advice to me: Keep your cane unfolded where it can be seen.

What? As far back as I could remember, folks had tried telling me to make my blindness as unnoticeable as possible. Do things that made people think I’ve got it all figured out and am looking confident despite my lack of sight.

But Pastor’s suggestion made a lot of sense and, in the end, worked out perfectly. The skycap who was helping my friend, Harvey, find me knew who I was the moment she saw my unfolded cane. After Harvey and I met up, we only had to wait for the gate agent to come over and lead us to the plane when preboarding began.

That interaction has stuck with me ever since. When meeting with a paratransit driver who doesn’t know you or isn’t familiar with your neighborhood, let the dispatcher know something visible about yourself, perhaps the color of the shirt you’re wearing, that you will have your cane outstretched with you, or your guide dog will be sitting at your left side. This may alleviate those inevitable moments of miscommunication which could lead you to missing your ride. Of course, paratransit drivers are trained to know most of the areas of a city where they operate. Besides that, some transportation services allow for their dispatchers to call your number if the driver can’t find you. But what about riding Uber or a cab? Many of those services only communicate via text and are privately owned.

If you call an Uber, you have a smart phone or are with someone else who does. When the app lets you know who your driver will be and what he/she is driving, slide to the message icon, tap it, and type a brief description of yourself and any identifiers-cane, guide dog, the color of your coat or duffle. And request the driver say your name as he approaches you. Of course, the whole process of meeting someone who’s blind might be new to him. So, you may need to show how to do sighted guide or give specific directions-right, left, around front-so that he doesn’t give that less specific “over here” or “there” while pointing in the intended direction.

Making yourself noticeable says more than just “I’m here.” It tells whoever your meeting that you are comfortable in your own skin being blind. Having a confident posture facing the road or parking lot alert will convey a more welcoming message which says that the driver or friend or neighbor doesn’t have to tiptoe on egg shells when approaching you. Since you don’t see your blindness or low-vision as a hindrance, they don’t either. And if they do? The matter isn’t yours to rectify in the moment. After all, negative perceptions of us who have varying degrees of vision loss including total blindness are so endemic that many people don’t even know they hold them until we address them with gentleness and respect.

So be noticeable, not to cause a scene but to make yourself recognizable amid the scenery around you.

I know it’s not Fitness Friday yet. But, I couldn’t help but share this story that John DiMarco posted over at the Blind and Visually Impaired Friends group on Facebook. This mother and daughter duo are raising money in a national challenge sponsored by the National Braille Press and it’s not just the first or only running they do.

Besides encouraging our drive to get up and get moving in this post-pandemic world, the article shows two blind people litterally navigating life’s contours while bringing awareness to people who can see of their capabilities and the adaptations they continue to make.

Of course, not everyone is a Terri or Marley. We all have our own spin and nuances when doing blindness in public. We don’t have to achieve heroic feats to be boldly blind, but said feats and the people that accomplish them can certainly motivate each of us in our own life’s journey.

Are you blind and ever thought of getting a guide dog? Are you sighted and know someone who might benefit from owning one?

The decision to apply for training with a guide dog takes a lot of preparation. Gaining good mobility skills and a walking route for you and your new furry friend is a must. Add to that, how will your family react if they live with you? Are you in school, living in a dorm? Are you disciplined enough to regularly feed, groom, and relieve a dog? More importantly, do you have the heart and drive to gain those skills where you may be lacking?

On April 27 at 1:00 PM, , Guide Dogs Of America will host a webinar designed to help you think through these considerations and answer questions you may have. You can register for the Facebook Live event here.

Myth: Blind and visually impaired people do not live on their own. Fact: Many who are blind or visually impaired do live independently, work on their own, and navigate their town with the transportation available to them. On this episode of the Boldly Blind podcast, we explore why people continue to hold the myth under consideration. You can listen to it here.

For further resources about living boldly blind independently, you can go to Vision Aware’s page at http://www.afb.org and find out all kinds of tips and resources available to blind singles, married couples, and families.

We’ve heard the stats over the years fluctuate as to how accessible websites are for us who are blind or visually impaired. While users at various levels may agree based on their experience or opinions, some points of methodology will help us grasp a site’s usability regardless where we fall on the basic to advanced curb. Note that I discuss three basic questions here and you may already ask yourself more.

Before diving into the questions we will ask with a few examples, we do well to consider a couple factors. The first of these is what screen reading software we are using when we view a website. Someone who operates JAWS (that is, Job Access With Speech) will not always make the same assessments as someone using Zoom Text to enlarge or pan the screen’s visual components. Someone viewing a site with their cellphone using Voice Over will use different criteria than will someone reading with a refreshable braille display. In other words, these questions you can ask determine how a given website impacts yourself.

First and I dare say most important is whether I can get around the screen itself. Can I hit h (JAWS) repeatedly and catch the headings? Can I enter on links for more information or to go to another screen if necessary? Do the edit fields let me enter my name, address, payment information, or so forth on a site’s registration form? If not, why not? And for that matter, when I hit that submit button, do I get taken to the next screen?

If you’re using screen enlargement software, does your cursor go where your panning controls say it will go or is the website not jiving with how you’ve had to magnify text in order to read it?

Also, if you are using screen enlargement software or other adaptations to help you read as a partially sighted user, how do the colors contrast and do those contrasts help if I adjust the background to make the text and links stand out?

Secondly and closely related: Is the site’s information easy for me to follow or do I have to wander through extraneous ads and promotions that interrupt my reading an article? Don’t worry. Those ads and promotional hoopla drive any of us crazy whether we’re blind or sighted. I don’t need, for example, to know about the latest promo about the Chevy Equinox while I’m reading about last night’s baseball highlights.

If you’re panning a screen in Zoom Text are you able to read an article straight through or do the ads and other glossy images get in the way of your navigating experience?

 Thirdly, does the screen refresh without warning or stay static? Sometimes, a website will update visually and, at the same time, kick your invisible JAWS cursor away from a line of text just as your getting the information you need. This is particularly annoying when it comes to following minute-by-minute sports coverage on ESPN or election coverage where the stats change without warning. Of course, we can press the F5 key to refresh anything such as when the Facebook screen freezes instead of taking us to the notifications link. Sometimes, Facebook jumps you out of a particular conversation and you have to key in control-alt-f and type in the string of text to find your place again.

You may have some other questions you’ve developed as well and I’d like to hear from you on those. The more we can engage web designers with making their sites and apps more accessible, the narrower the usability gap will be for us and our sighted friends.

Did you know that blind and visually impaired students can learn graphs alongside their sighted classmates? It’s true as the attached article shows. Downloadable, tactile graphs enhance someone’s grasp of math, geography, scientific trends, and so much more.

It’s a far cry from the days when braille images in braille textbooks were omitted, replaced by the disclaimer: “Picture: Ask the teacher.” Or back in that day, atlases of the world, let alone individual States and countries were woefully out of date-being created in the 1960s but still in classroom use in the 1980s. As my high school’s teacher of history and geography observed at one point, said resources prove ineffective since “the map of Africa changes daily.”

As we study trends such as the progress, impact, and regression of COVID-19, students with print disabilities need not be left behind. Working with a school system’s itinerate teacher of the visually impaired (TVI), someone leading class need not wonder if graphs can be made accessible or if that part of a course must be checked off as exempt.

Students who are blind want to be included with their classmates’ activities. With the availability of graphs like the one presented, they can  keep them up to date provided a teacher stays ahead of the game when making classroom accommodations. That goes for all levels of education from kindergarten to college. By the time someone reaches junior high or high school, he does sit through annual IEP’s and other meetings with his parents, TVI’s, and regular classroom teachers. He or she needs made aware of these resources so that in later years, advocating for himself can prove much more doable in college-especially if a given disabled student services office is unaware of these adaptations.

For those visually impaired students whose employment goal is teaching, having these embossable tactile resources will make their transition to leading class much easier as their professors and then fellow colleagues will have less doubt as to their academic competency. This is important since the stigma still exists that, given the gravity and complexity of today’s classroom, someone’s visual impairment by default will hamper their ability to lead many class activities.

As school systems adapt to the changing technology that makes using graphs part of a blind student’s studies, the more aware itinerate teachers and special needs administrators need to be about current braille embossers and ready-to-use software packages. As has always been the case, providing such wrap-around services is not a fly-by-night or haphazard endeavor. Rather, they take consistent, careful planning so that everyone involved in a disabled student’s education can remain on the same page. The technology is here and improving. Let’s continue striving to make that assumed learning gap between blind and sighted students and blind and sighted teachers narrower by the day.

The readings for Palm/Passion Sunday are Deut. 32:36-39, Phil. 2:5-11, Luke 22:1-23:56, and John 12:20-43.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the crowds cried, “Hosanna!” which means: “God, save us.” They’d followed Jesus and heard his preaching, yet they still wondered what kind of kingdom or reign He was about to bring. They’d find out five to seven days later as Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised to death for us. It’s easy to fix our eyes on what’s in front of us-hoped-for resolution to our difficulties, anxieties and fears. The crowd following Jesus may have thought He was about to lead the way to kicking the Romans out of power. But He whose reign is not of this world came to conquer sin, death, and hell by crucifixion before opening His everlasting life to us by rising from death that first Easter morning.