Pittsburgh native here. It depends on what you want in a city. I like Pittsburgh because the city isn't sprawling. It's pretty quick to get from downtown to the country, which is nice. That being said, public transportation can be limited depending on what neighborhood you live in. I live in the North Hills, and the traffic engineer seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to put crosswalks across uncontrolled 4 lane highways with Jersey barriers in the middle to get to the only bus stop for a half mile. It ticks me off every time I see it. Other neighborhoods like Lawrenceville, the South Side, Millvske, and Moneoeville have much better transportation. We only have buses. No real train or subway system to anything of interest. There are also no plans to put anything like that in, though they are talking about upgrading the buses.
Regarding services for the blind, what are you looking for? I work for an organization, but things are pretty slow right now because OVR mismanaged money and now the whole state of PA has to follow extra rules until they can get set straight. That means OVR isn't paying for much of anything for anyone right now.
Our company has classes you might be interested in, but we don't have many clients right now because OVR is who normally sends us people.
What else would you like to know?

Hi! I am a Philly Native [lived there my whole life--I am 31 years old]. I moved out about 6 months ago. So, my review of Philly is going to be scathing and bluntly honest. It is a part of being a Philadelphian to be that way. But, a lot of Philadelphians are used to the way things are and have been there forever, so they don't realize how fucked up it is there. My vision went after I moved out of there 6 months ago, and thank god. My time there I had some vision loss and I use a power wheelchair.

Affordability and accessibility wise, you are not going to have a lot of luck. Accessible housing in any way, shape or form is going to be extremely expensive, especially if you want to be in a semi-safe area with a door/desk person who will make sure your packages and mail aren't stolen constantly. I am talking $2,000-$3,000 easily a month, which I don't consider affordable, and that doesn't count utilities most times. Even then, that tends to only cover something like having an elevator, MAYBE you can convince them to put in grab bars, [I've never seen them put in the right places, I've viewed multiple apartments for accessibility and my apartment put them random places so I couldn't use them], but most apartments are not aware that there accessibility features that blind folx need and will fight that pretty hard or just ignore your requests for stuff. Maintenance in any Philly apartment building can be a huge problem. My building was supposedly accessible, they marketed the apartments on the first floor to disabled people, and they moved me in telling me they were putting in central A/C, when I had already signed the lease and moved my shit in I realized the A/C did not work. The place was a studio with no window, and with no A/C, I got really sick a lot. My apartment shared a wall with the laundry room, which had old machines that put out a lot of heat. They turned the A/C off in that room year round, and also the ventilation system to be cheap, so the heat from that room just seeped through the thin walls. It was 100+ degrees daily in my apartment. They flat out refused to fix my A/C or the laundry room issues, even though that was in my lease. I could not do my own laundry, I am a faint risk, and I even had an able-bodied friend do my laundry once and he said he couldn't handle it in there. Most landlords in Philly, especially in apartment buildings, do some dangerous and illegal stuff, as if them price gouging accessibility is not enough! There is also no such thing as subsidized housing from the government--our wait lists at a minimum are 10 years, maximum 15-20 years, and new construction for affordable housing is not happening at all.

Crime: Philly has a huge crime problem. There are shootings and stabbings all day and all night, it's not just that stuff happens after 12am. We had a mass shooting in 2019. In the richest area of the city, Center City, people keep stabbing each other at Wawa and other random businesses. Teenagers cause a lot of damage, the school system is shitty so a lot of kids travel in packs of 30-40 and harass people walking by, and when school lets out there are a lot of stabbings caused by school teenagers on SEPTA. I've experienced just dudes threatening to stab each other on SEPTA. ATVs are a huge problem, and there can be 50-100 of people on them driving crazy through the streets, and they don't pay attention to if you are disabled or not. [This tends to be a summer thing]

It's not just ATV drivers, but regular drivers can be dangerous. I've had a few disabled friends get hit by cars while crossing the street.

Our tap water was just pegged by the EPA as having a lot of dangerous stuff in it. We had a sulphur plant that was open forever. Last summer, it exploded, letting stuff into the air. The plant people knew it could explode because they weren't following the right standards. After it exploded, they still wanted to run it, but then a journalist dug up that they were made aware by an environmental agency that it could explode in a way that would annihilate the city and everyone in it. They kept it running until a minor explosion, then they were shut down.

Government wise: very corrupt, we were missing $900 million in tax dollars recently. None of the money the city pulls in goes towards anything to make the city better. The sidewalks are dangerous, crime, and trash everywhere. We all tend to joke about trash-nados when it rains and is windy [a small trash tornado]. I should also mention that when it snows no one freaking shovels, so that can get really awful.

Philly also is home to a HUGE opoiod problem. It such an issue that Philly PD ignores the area known as Kensington, and this is where the open air heroin market is. I mean, you can get any drugs there, but now heroin is the big seller and it is used and sold openly without reprecussions from the police. They have taken a hands off approach. The problem is, it's not contained to that area. Everywhere you go, especially on public transit, you will see people shooting up heroin, lots of people in various states of highs, nodding out, falling out on the streets, walking around with clothes off, lots of weird stuff. There is an instagram called Kensington Beach that is geared towards showcasing how fucked up things are. That area and some others have a huge problem with addicted people pooping outside, on sidewalks, on people's steps and porches, on the street, and then they touch it and spread it to doorknobs of businesses or SEPTA. It caused a Hep A outbreak and a huge public health crisis, and the health department had to step in to hand out free vaccinations from a mobile van to try and curb it. People who had families in those areas even contracted Hep A, it is spreading so rapidly.

Public transit: our services are called SEPTA, to give you the name of it. Can you get a wheelchair on the trains and buses? Buses are all wheelchair accessible, some of the train stations are. We have an elevated train system [Blue Line or the EL] that has a few elevators at stations, a lot of the time they are down and broken and then the option is 3-4 flights of stairs to the train. Our Orange or Broad Street Line is underground, none of that is wheelchair accessible.

On top of stuff not being mobility accessible, we have no accessibility features on our transit for blind or visually impaired riders. None of the buses, trains, or stations have the feature where they have speakers telling you what is coming next. The trains and buses themselves rarely tell you what stop is coming next. They are supposed to announce it, but as things break, SEPTA doesn't repair them so every train and bus I've been on had that feature turned off because the drivers get annoyed with it saying stuff that's incorrect. Even if the speaker system on the train or bus is on, I've only heard them read the stops incorrectly, generally backwards from the way we were going. SEPTA drivers are lazy and rude, as well as horrible with accessibility, so they don't change the voice sign thing when they shift routes or directions, so most of the time the bus is just calling out random shit.

None of the SEPTA stations have any kind of speaker system, either, saying when the train or bus was coming next. Bus stop wise, we don't have all bus stops marked with signs, some of them are just common knowledge if you are from the area. None of the bus stop signs have Braille, and even if they did, they are up in the air, maybe 6-7 feet, so you couldn't even reach to feel for Braille if you tried. Unless you are sighted, you aren't going to see the signs for the buses. The train systems are pretty similar, very few things are marked in Braille, or anything other than just for people who know where things are. The other thing that is really unsafe, is that the driver doesn't give someone with a disability time to find a seat, they just take off, and people tend to lose their footing and fall.

SEPTA's website might claim accessibility features, but as someone who took the bus daily, it wasn't a thing.

Businesses are shit with any kind of accessibility. I fought hard my last 3 years to get people to change things, but I was mostly fighting alone. I am a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and I tried to convince businesses and organizations to make things accessible. There was a queer owned bar down the street that had literally 2 stairs. I used to go, when I used a wheelchair it wasn't possible. I learned they had spent $10,000 to make their kitchen vegan, but when I asked them to put in a portable ramp, there was no money for it.

The LGBTQ+ community is particularly horrible with accessibility, all of their events somehow end up being up 3 flights of steep stairs, and if you ask them to change it, they can't. If you manage to find somewhere remotely accessible, the community tends to ostrasize disabled people, i've had a lot of comments from gay men about me being "Gross" and asking why I was there in the first place.

Other businesses are the same, coffee shops, restaurants, etc, all claim something called "grandfathering" when you bug them about accessibility. There will be a coffee shop, for example, with two stairs that couldn't had a portable ramp or Braille signs or any number of things. When I ask them what they are doing to make things accessible, or if they would, I get the same response everywhere--they were "Grandfathered" in from having to follow the ADA or make it even remotely accessible for anyone. It was my understanding this is not a thing. I say that, because if you want a social life, it may be hard to find.

So, if you are desperate to live there, Center City has a few blind organizations, and the community there is bigger.

There is an area of Philly that is historic called Old City that has no curb cuts and cobblestones everywhere, it's awful so I tell people.