A lot of people (are afraid to) ask me what I can see or how I use my phone and computer with a visual impairment, so I thought I would put some AI tokens to good use and create a few demos to share. Something about a picture being worth a thousand words?

I have [Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leber%27s_hereditary_optic_neuropathy) (LHON), which has taken away most of my central vision. I still have a lot of functional vision, but I (sometimes) carry a white identification cane when I'm out in public to help me avoid dangerous or awkward situations (like entering the wrong bathroom). I have a hard time recognizing people in public or out of context, but it's largely an invisible disability to others.

## What I see

A slider wipes across a single photo: normal vision on one side, mine on the other — soft,
low-contrast, with a dense grey blot parked over the middle of whatever I'm trying to look at.
Seven photos to switch between, all of them things you need central vision for: faces in
conversation, a page of newsprint, an airport departure board, a handwritten cafe menu, street
signs.

## At my desk

My home office setup revolves around a Macbook Pro with a dual-external monitor configuration, where the second screen is dedicated to a magnifier. I see well enough that I lean on magnification tools instead of screen readers or Braille, and the built-in accessibility features in Mac OS work great for my needs. The magnifier is usually at 8-10x zoom and follows my mouse or keyboard input. I prefer the dual-monitor approach because I like seeing notifications pop up and having a "normal" desktop experience. I have a portable second monitor for when I'm on the go, but I'll often just use a single zoomed screen on my Macbook too.

Two monitors side by side. On the left, my primary display: an ordinary Mac desktop with a code
editor open, a cursor wandering around it and a line of text being typed. On the right, the
magnifier — the same screen at 5x, pinned to whatever the cursor or the text caret is doing on
the left. The left screen stays a normal desktop. The right one is what I actually read.

## On my phone

Obviously, I don't have a second screen on my phone (yet?), but I can triple-tap and hold on my Google Pixel to zoom in and see whatever is under my thumb. It's an easy, one-hand-friendly gesture (unlike Apple's three-finger triple-tap) built into Android  that lets me maintain a "normal" phone experience. I set the system font size to be slightly larger than normal, but not enough to break layouts or cause truncation everywhere.

A Pixel showing a messages thread. It triple-taps and holds, the screen jumps to 4x under the
thumb, then pans along each line of the conversation to read it before zooming back out. The
desk setup's trick, minus the second screen.

I also use my phone a lot as a magnification tool. I'll pull it out at a restaurant to read the menu or use the camera zoom at a concert to get a better view.

## What it doesn't solve

I am very grateful to live with such amazing assistive technology, but that's not to say it solves everything. Magnification works great for allowing me to read my screen. The problem is that everyone behind me can see it too, so I have to take extra precautions when using my devices in public to maintain privacy.

Sometimes I don't have my phone and I'm left to play the low vision lottery...

As always, I'm an open book when it comes to my disability. Feel free to reach out and ask me anything you'd like to know.