I ask my sister

Hello! I'm a seamstress who is low vision / colorblind. I tend to use a color converter (or ask whomever I am making the item for to confirm from swatches). I use a large magnifier that can swivel around as needed as well as a wrist pincushion + magnet picker upper. I tend to have a hard time shopping due to being mixed (asian white) so making my own clothes is actually easier for me. Also, zippers & magnet closers are AMAZING. Buttons are too hard.

I have a low vision (legally blind) 13 year old to whom clothes and shopping are VERY important, and shopping for clothes with her has been a big experience in slowing down. She has some vision, and she likes to look at clothes online where she can adjust the screen size, brightness, color and angle and take all the time she needs so that she can get a better look at things than if she was in a store where she cannot change those factors. She has nystagmus (eye wiggles) and is completely blind in one eye, so taking her time is really important. Recently I've taught her how to use the "available in store" search features on websites for department stores, so she can preview things before we go to the store (back in the day when we could actually LEAVE the house to go to the store!) because trying to look for clothes she liked in a busy store was much harder than scrolling through them on a screen. She does use descriptions pretty well, but it would be amazing to be able to have better clothing descriptions in online shops. Look at what you're selling and tell someone about it as if it's your grandma on the phone who can't see whats on your screen and tell her all the details you would want to know.

When we just go to the store without having several options picked out first, I've found I have to be very methodical, going up and down each aisle, taking her time to look at things and touch things and ask questions. I have to be very careful to be impartial in how I describe things. A blind teenager is still a teenager and she's going to hate anything her parent likes lol!

But because "how it looks" is only part of the process, she ALWAYS goes to the store to try it on and feel it. Sometimes she just needs to touch the fabric for a second to go from loving something to absolutely hating it because of how it feels. Sometimes a sighted person's advice is helpful (I hope), like in 'you can't wear yellow plaid with orange gradient stripes, no' and more importantly in 'maybe you should wear a tank top under that' situations.

As far as making clothes, the only thing she has made have been finger knitted scarves (and according to her, finger knitting is great for blind/low vision people). I think she learned that at summer camp for blind kids, if I remember correctly. I think my best advice for teaching people that kind of thing is, if you're doing a video, to make sure it's well lit and high contrast (make sure the person's fingers, needles, yarn, and the background are all very distinct). With your video, text, and audio components, try to make them all independent of each other, so that if someone is reading, watching, OR listening to the instructions, they are clear, independent of each other, so someone with a hearing impairment can get the instructions just as well as someone with a visual impairment.

I'm lucky in the sense that clothes and fashion aren't very important to me. Of course I want to look decent but I won't go shopping for clothes or shoes any more than absolutely necessary (most of my clothes are over 5 years old). This also pairs well with my environmentalism and my relatively small budget.

When I do need new clothes, say a new pair of pants, I usually ask my wife and we go shopping together. She helps me find the right stuff both in terms of what's comfortable and what looks good on me. If it's something that I don't necessarily need to try on, say socks or underwear, she might also just buy it without me being present. I generally don't like online shopping too much despite being a young person because I find it very difficult to judge whether something will be good or not when I can't even see the photo on the screen. Besides, I don't like this concept with clothes being sent to my door and me sending them back later if I don't like them. I'm honestly just way too lazy to put these things back into the box and bring the box to the post office again. That's why physical stores work better for me. Ironically, I mind it less in terms of laziness to go downtown to a physical clothing store.

You might be interested in $1 by Molly Burke where she customizes a pair of shoes online. She does a ton of try-on hauls from various online stores, too. Long story short, the site accessibility and layout is the BIGGEST annoyance, but there are other things to consider, like:

- Detailed color descriptions (is the "tie-dye" a pastel, a neon, or just two colors? What is "early sunrise"? Is the "blue" light, dark, desaturated, etc?)

- Detailed material and texture descriptions

- Size guides with measurements

- General description of fit and major features of the garment, rather than vague trendy names (what is a "strappy scuba dress"? Is that the material, the pattern...?). Flavorful titles are nice, as long as it also gives a detailed description.

I am visually impaired and also love fashion! I usually touch the pieces with my hand and take pictures and zoom in on things I think might be interesting. I never leave a store without trying the piece on, so I don’t really shop online at all.