Visually impaired dating

Learning how to interact, make friends and date can be very different when you have a visual impairment. For example, commuting to the location for the date.
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I lost my vision in my early 20s. So you know when you are sighted, you can see the person you are dating, have eye contact, look at them across the room. Body language plays a big part. You can check somebody out, that kind of thing. Back in the day, we could exchange numbers on paper. Now you can do things with your cellphone and things like that. But a guy could write his number down and give it to you.

Well, if you are visually-impaired or blind then that doesn't quite work so well. But a lot of visual things that happen when you are interacting that someone who has limited vision issues can miss out on. So you have to kind of figure out another way to kind of work around some of that stuff.

And it can be a little tricky. Plus, there's a lot of social ideas, societal ideals about dating someone with a disability, positive and negative or otherwise. You have to kind of have to deal with I didn't want to interrupt but I completely agree. I couldn't agree more on that. There's some misnomers on things that you may have to navigate around that people may make assumptions about you because you have a disability that you have to tackle when you are looking at dating someone.

Online Dating Service for the Blind?

Yeah, so just to kind of piggy back on that. I really couldn't agree more. I mean as a person with a disability, I think I've encountered those in romantic settings that think that maybe it's not quite as much of an equal partnership because I'm coming at it with a disability versus you know being with somebody but you know what, everybody has something going on. So you know, I can definitely relate to what you're saying on that and I think probably most of our listeners can as well. Empish, for our listening audience, can you take a minute and kind of tell folks what you do for a career and why we called you.

There's a reason we called you.

I'm in the Atlanta area and I work at a vision rehabilitation center here in Atlanta. So I do work helping people who are visually-impaired, newly blind and visually-impaired and what I do is public education and community outreach. So I kind of do like PR and marketing in a sense. I work with the website. I help out with the newsletter. I work with our blog and I also do presentations and public speaking. I also do vendor fairs. I'll be doing one tomorrow for Foundation for Fighting Blindness. I'll be doing a vendor table there and handing out literature, talking about the organization that I work for, getting the word out about what we do and how we can help people who just lost their vision and how they can be more independent, get their life back, get back on their feet.

That kind of thing. On the side, I volunteer for VisionAware. That's where you guys saw the blog post where I'm a peer adviser. So a bunch of us get together and we come up with different ideas on topics and things to put on Vision Aware.

We are all visually impaired all over the country and also international. We have some peer advisers that are in Australia and other places. And we get together once a month on a conference call to kind of come up with topics, ideas, and things that we think people would want to know about.

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It's been a really rewarding experience because it adds to resources and information and that personal objective of finding information for someone who is visually impaired but hearing these stories that are written by people who are also visually impaired and about their day to day life. So I do that on a volunteer aside from my regular job. Laughs Ya, that's what everybody says. But that's how you meet people too. You know, we had touched on a little bit briefly about how you get into it.

Disabled Mate.com

But it's a kind of how you put yourself out there. And I think to bridge on that a little bit, you had mentioned that you had lost your sight when you were about So are you completely blind, partially sighted? So how do you feel dating before the age of 25 versus dating after the age of 25 where you had sight compared to when you had no sight? What are some of the differences that you have really noticed and what are some things that you can tell our listeners about that maybe you found successful and some helpful tips. I'm trying to remember what did I do back then when I was in college and so dating in college is totally different than dating as an adult.

You're more mature, you know. You have a career. You know when you're in college your kinda broke laughs and a lot of different things. And when you're older, you're more confident about how you are as a person. In college, you are still trying to figure yourself out, what your major is gonna be. There's a lot of different things that have to nothing to do with vision impairment that's going on.

Online Dating Service for the Blind? - Message Boards - American Foundation for the Blind

The confidence can be a big factor and really feeling comfortable in your skin and who you really are as a person can be a big factor in dating. If you don't feel comfortable in your skin as a person with a vision impairment, if you are still maybe grappling with your sight loss or maybe haven't quite dealt with that, that's gonna come out in your romantic life. And I think dating even as sighted people, I think the same thing applies. So far everything that you've said about the confidence part is really important.

Ya, and I think just being really understanding or at least in my experience it has always been the more you understand about who you are and are good with who you are going into a relationship, the better the relationship will be. And with that we will head into a commercial break.

We are joined in studio with Harley Thomas as always and me, pretending to be the real host, Cara Catton. And our guest today is Empish Thomas who is a lifestyle blogger. And you are listening to Blind Living Radio. Blind Living Radio will be right back after these messages. Blind Living Radio is supported by industries supporting the blind in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, creating employment opportunties for the blind, visually impaired, from coast to coast.

From industries with the blind providing employment opportunities for blind professionals since Welcome back to Blind Living Radio. I think Cara's trying to replace me. And we are joined on the phone with Empish Thomas from Atlanta, Georgia. She's a lifestyle blogger.

You should probably talk to Empish. I'm a little bit of a Debbie Downer around Valentine's Day. So let's talk to Empish. During the break, you had a great idea that you and Empish should talk about. So, Empish, you and I were chatting a little bit and I think our audience would really be interested about what are some of the best tips and ways that you found to be successful in the dating world after you lost your sight. Well, you know, it's interesting that you ask me that question. Some things I realized I didn't have to reinvent the wheel all over again.