Legally Blind – Shopping: The Sequel!

I’m not writing this to gain sympathy or anything like that. I’m fine. And this really isn’t about the shopping aspect at all, but something far flung I probably don’t even need to worry about. But I mentioned the difficulties of shopping when blind or low-vision in a blog a few months back, and it’s finally time for me to admit to myself – at least until I get my new glasses – I need help shopping. It’s not really an option anymore.

And that’s fine! It’s manageable. I have a cool mom who I’m with most the time when I’m out and about anyways, and she’s great about helping me. But long-term, I’m unsettled, and not really because of shopping.

But here’s the thing. Professionally, one of the most important aspects of my job is editing. I’ve never made anything remotely close to what I’d need to hire a professional editor, or even a halfway competent hack who slept through half their English courses in college (cough, me, cough). So far, my editing has been done by me, with the aid eventually of whatever beta readers I can wrangle into helping me out. I’ve been blessed to know many great creative minds, all of whom have terrific insight and have helped me clean up a lot of errors in my books. But by and large, the editing falls on my shoulders.

So, as my reading vision continues to deteriorate past the point where I can no longer actually read without the aid of super magnifiers and high contrast text and all that, what happens?

I don’t have an answer to this. I could pick up a lot of mistakes with a text to speech program, but that’s not a guarantee. And readers would expect quality, as I would in their shoes. So what happens? It bears researching. It’s the one aspect of this I don’t know I’ve ever thought about before. It’s not frightening, not exactly, but it’s something I need to plan for.

Anyways. World’s burning, so this all seems sort of petty. But it’s on my mind, and writing about it helps me think out loud. Hope everybody is well. Or as well as they can be. Just… give yourself a high five today.