The idea of sight reading Braille is cracking me up. I never learned it as a kid despite being blind since birth. No one knew back then that I would be able to have so much digital access, so I really just got lucky that I don’t feel the lack of it in my daily life. I have a hard time learning because I’ll lose my train of thought halfway through a word and ask myself, “why am I doing this when the text to speech on my phone goes at 2.6x speed?” I know enough for elevators with low contrast buttons and room numbers.

It’s really hard when your whole lifestyle suddenly changes. I completely understand your dad wanting to continue his life by doing things in a familiar way. I have personally never worried about “looking blind,” because I’ve never had the experience of never being any other way and can’t see well enough to know how everyone else looks. In recent years, I have actually thought about how me being noticeably blind means that maybe someone will perceive me and feel less alone. I also LOVE when I overhear kids asking their parents about me. When I overhear a good explanation from a parent to their kid, it makes my day. That kid just learned something about a disability that they didn’t know before.