In-home Independent Living Hacks for the Visually Impaired

hello everyone welcome back to legally blind sorry if i look a bit weird today um but that's because i'm using a wide-angle lens instead of my usual lens and the reason for this is that i'm going to give you a little bit of a tour of parts of my house today because i'm going to be talking to you about things i do around my house to make my life as someone with low vision easier but i want to start by saying this i love living independently um i love having my own space um i love setting up my living space the way i want and having that sort of little bit of control over my immediate environment let's say and as much as any of us have control over anything anyway without getting philosophical the point i'm trying to make is that it is completely possible for someone who has a disability to live independently of course i'm lucky and privileged to be able to do so of course it's not possible for everyone but some people have the impression or the attitude that people with disabilities cannot live independently and that they constantly need help all the time and this is not really true so apologies in advance for any shaking because this is a heavy camera that i'm using selfie style i'm going to show you a few things around my house that make my life easier um having said that also it is not really my house i am renting this apartment so some of the choices that have been made are not choices i would have personally made but nevertheless let me show you a few things that i did do first things first you will notice that in my house there is actually very little to no clutter this is actually how my kitchen looks at any time i didn't really change anything for this video the only thing i changed is i took out the dining chairs because they're really ugly but other than that this is pretty much how my kitchen looks all the time the reason for this is that clutter is very visually overwhelming and just doesn't feel good for me another very important thing for someone who is visually impaired even more importantly if they're completely blind is that things have to have their place at all times you can't keep changing the places of things because simply it is very difficult to look for things if you are visually impaired so you don't want to be constantly looking for your stuff which is why i have a pretty organized place not like obsessively organized but organized enough i have drawers that contain very specific things one drawer for stationery for example another drawer for chargers and cables etc batteries so on and very little clutter as you can see in my house you'll not find a lot of clutter you will just find adorable geriatric dogs and also adorable smaller fake dogs and unfortunately never ending cairo dust [Music] anyway let's get back to the kitchen where i'm gonna show you a few things i do that i actually didn't realize i was doing until someone else pointed it out to me and until i started thinking about this video basically um i have very specific rules about where certain things go um and one of them might seem a little bit silly but [Music] this here this cute little um rack uh is where i keep my mugs and i discovered that i have to put the see-through mugs up here the transparent glass ones up there and the ceramic mugs on the bottom and the reason for this is that if i switch this i will absolutely smash these very frequently i have a lot of trouble seeing uh transparent things on busy backgrounds um especially if the cup is empty and doesn't have like something dark in it um so if i know that this month this kind of mug is always in the top row and you see here i actually didn't realize i do this but i touch the peg first to know where it is before i put it down if i know that the see-through mugs are up there then i am much less likely to smash them yeah same thing actually goes for my drying rack over here i always have the see-through mugs on this end of the drying rack and everything else further in because again i'm much less likely to smash this or put something else on top of it if if i know where it is at all times man this camera is heavy ah another choice i've made in this apartment is i chose this see-through glass boiler because simply it is actually much easier for me to see when um when it needs to be cleaned if it is see-through just making my life easier but i definitely would not have chosen the busy granite countertops i would have gone for like plain black or plain white because this busy background is very difficult to see dirt on so i just have to kind of just regularly clean them or i sometimes just run my hand over them to know if they need cleaning but yeah not would not have been my first choice this neither would the busy floor if you can see the busy pattern on the floor there the that is a nightmare to find something on if if i drop a pill or anything small on the floor and then i have to look for it on this floor really really difficult guys i would not have chosen this back inside my room here i wanted to show you one more thing i've done that's a little bit funny actually ever since lockdown there's been a lot more video conferencing and teaching online and stuff so i wanted to be able to do that while using my big screen over here but i didn't have an external webcam and when i bought one it turns out it didn't fit on top of the monitor it kept falling off there was no way to really secure it up there so i ended up suspending this webcam using paracord and duct tape so that i can use my my big screen you know creative solutions another thing is i actually do not have any clocks anywhere on the walls because i've just given up on clocks guys i can't see them and so i just don't have any not even for decoration so if i want to know what time it is i just look at my phone or if i'm feeling extra lazy i just do this siri what time is it it's 11 27 thanks man so that's it from me today guys i hope this was a little bit interesting for some of you and might even give you some ideas for if you ever have any visually impaired friends over or something um thank you so much for watching and a special thanks to my patrons as always please like share subscribe all that good stuff and i'll see you guys soon would you do you like being in videos he's like no not really

Channel: Legally Blind

Views: 21,257

Keywords: visually impaired, low vision, blind, blindness, hack, life hack, accessibility, home accessibility, independent living, in-home hacks, house hacks

Id: 0iPosSZRVBU

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020