> helpful apps

##VoiceOver
Text to speech / screen reader for the iPhone

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph3e2e415f/ios

##Seeing AI
A collection of smart image to speech utilities,
- quickly reads any text you point the camera at
- reads pages of text you scan
- recognises currency notes
- describes a scene
- describes and recognises faces

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai

##SoundScape
Identifies landmarks in your surroundings using binaural sound through your headphones so the description comes from the direction of the landmark.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/product/soundscape/

##BlindSquare
An accessible navigation app. I have no direct experience of this but RNIB like it.

https://www.rnib.org.uk/connect-community/connect-technology/five-apps-getting-out-and-about-spring

https://www.blindsquare.com/

##Advice

I strongly recommend you get all these apps and learn to use them yourself. You then become your wife's coach and trainer and your learn the benefits and challenges of these apps yourself.

VoiceOver completely changes the interaction part of the iOS user interface and adds many more interactions. You go from basically "touch" and "swipe" as the principal gestures to having to remember the difference between many different gestures such as two finger swipe down and three finger treble tap. A lot of learning but immensely useful and empowering.

VoiceOver is particularly important for you to learn so that you can assist with your wife's phone (with her permission of course :-) and help her with learning how to do things like turning off notifications during meetings.

I wanted to chime in here that even if you're not reading it, braille screen input for typing on the phone is so worth learning to use. It is much faster than trying to use the on screen qwerty keyboard, and is better than VTT in so many ways.

I'm a high school teacher with no sight, which may also be encouraging. :) Persistence in the face of technological frustration is probably going to be a big thing too, things are almost certain to take their time.

It is definitely not the end of the world. I have traveled to 6 different states by myself and to a city in another country. I didn’t just stay in my hotel room but had a packed and busy schedule especially with the 6 states for 2 weeks. I went alone as a single blind woman.

I’ve also traveled around my city quite a bit. Use to do a lot of yelping. Enjoy going to the beach. I am studying for a computer science degree and more or less have been working odd jobs but mostly helping out in information technology for 10 years or so. Life doesn’t end, and it’s possible to work and live a fulfilled life.

If you are in the UK it's the RNIB.

I live in the us also and the us isn’t nearly as bad as they say. Depends where you are. If you live in the bigger cities it’s alright the bay area and new york city for instance and philly or chicago is better. They can be quite good.

Quite I am a primary mac user and its very very very usable and extremely good. She will have to learn the mac voice over way but its quite good. I actually prefer voice over over any of the windows screen readers. It also works nicely with the iphone.

Good to know. I only have experience with apple eco system since that is what my partner uses. She is the blind one and I’m the tech support. MacOS seems to be really good to with voice over. It is included as well. Windows has Jaws or NVDA. Jaws is expensive but seems to have more features and compatibility. Linux has Orca which seems to be about the same as NVDA for windows. Both of those options are free.

Thank you, I've saved the website.

No problem.

I’m sorry to hear that. It’s doubtless going to be a huge change for both of you. There’s already been a tremendous amount of advice given, but I’ll throw in mine for what it’s worth. I was born blind, have a sighted child at school and, as I said in an earlier comment, teach as a day job.

I’d consider technology to be high on the list of things to adapt. Without it, the blind as a community are far more isolated than we need to be. Many countries are “going digital”, after all, so this can only be a positive step. I won’t get into the Mac versus Windows situation – it’s contentious and inflammatory. If you do go the Windows route though, some of the cheapest yet most impressive training materials are books from NVAccess. Even if you don’t use the NVDA screen reader, their basic training material guides you through accessing Windows and some basic apps from the keyboard. Personally I think NVDA is brilliant, but I’m biased by many years of screen reading experience. It may well be that a more expensive package, like JAWS and a bundle of training, or a Mac is the easier path in your circumstances. Mobile is similarly split, iOS tends to be covered more comprehensively but blind people successfully manage both that and Android. There are other options too, such as a Blind Shell phone which still uses a tactile number pad. I suppose it’ll come down to what you’re comfortable with if you help teach, what she’s already used to using and the level of support you get as things go along.

Braille is very useful, but also can take a while to learn. I’ve had experience teaching it from primary school students right up to pensioners. My favourite method of assessing how well it will go is to take playing cards or scrabble tiles,assuming the student has a reasonable level of tactile response. This gives us both a feel – for their part, of how actual “real” braille feels, and on mine, for how well they can adapt to the braille cell structure, their ability to learn and retain etc. Obviously all the braille reading programmes are designed to start off at the basics and build up, but many are designed for children and adults lose interest rather quickly. Setting up a bespoke package of study isn’t too difficult with modern tech; I’ve had great success in teaching with poetry, magazine and newspaper articles converted into Braille at an appropriate level, something impossible only a few decades ago.

It's really hard to know specifics of things to look out for without a wider understanding of your household balance. Did she do the cooking? Laundry? Grocery shopping? Family finances? What was the division of labour and how do you see that changing is something I guess would be important to know before offering wider specifics.

In terms of housing, I wouldn’t worry too much about the details. It’ll be far more important that you feel comfortable, that you can access the resources you want (either by walking, public transport, with taxis within your budget for the foreseeable future etc). Whether you want a home close to all the amenities or something further out with more of your own space is as much a matter of taste and lifestyle as blindness. I’ve moved home 5 or 6 times in the last 15 years or so, the one thing I did find handy was an external identifier as I walk up to my house (windchimes, temporarily; a bright porch light, a strip of tape on a drain pipe or similar) until I was able to identify my own house with certitude.

I look forward to many more questions here. I am in England and happy to message here or via some more real time platform with either or both of you as circumstances warrant