It’s that period between Christmas and going back to work when the days have no meaning, and time slows down to a crawl.

This morning, full of a cold, William has declared he is going on a record-breaking movie marathon and aims to watch eight movies. I suspect he’s not really bothered how many films he watches – it is more a way to monopolise the remote control and to avoid leaving the house to walk the dogs.

In the past, I’d use this time to pick up one of the many books that were in my Christmas Stocking but sadly that’s not an option for me anymore. Even the large-print Ladybird books for grown-ups in the downstairs loo are a struggle now. I’ve embraced the world of audiobooks and am partial to a podcast or two – there’s a great one called Blind Man with a Backpack in conversation with (haha!) – but do still dearly miss being able to curl up on the sofa and escape the world around me.

We all absorb information differently and for me I’ve always been a visual learner so having to adapt to the other senses still has its challenges four years on. I tried learning Braille not long after becoming registered Sight Impaired and this has proven invaluable to help me select the decaf teabags or distinguish between the thyme and the sage, not to mention selecting the correct floor in a lift but I’m struggling with tactile reading. Braille has two grades. To read properly, you really need to grasp Grade Two which introduces word signs and contractions to simplify the prose and reduce the size of a book by up to 20% compared to Grade One. Much like learning a new language, if you don’t keep it up the knowledge slips to the back of the mind and that is exactly what’s happened to me.

Now this tactile sense doesn’t start and stop at reading. Oh no, in unfamiliar places I’ll walk around with my arms held slightly wide to feel for obstacles and even my feet are essential for finding the edge of things like steps. People often assume that we are permanently attached to our mobility aids but this really isn’t practical and so this surfing is my way of becoming accustomed to a new environment without having to rely on others.

If touch is one pillar of how I navigate the world, the central lynchpin (and definitely the loudest) is sound. This is what I have had to adapt to the most. It’s not just the talking alarm clocks and beeping liquid level indicators, it’s learning to listen to the description on the telly, hearing text messages and emails being read aloud at a hundred miles per hour and even listening out to the metal rattle in the saucepan to tell me when the water is boiling. As well as all this, I’ve had to adapt to spreadsheets and presentations being read out.

In the working world, we spend hours making informative presentations to show important data in meetings but rarely do we think about how these slides will be viewed by somebody using a screen reader. Much like a website or application, just because a screen reader technically works with something doesn’t mean it is actually useful. All it takes is for a segment of data to be out of sequence and the page becomes complete gobbledygook. This is where my Access Assistant comes into his own because he takes these presentations and translates them into something useful.

It’s not just his ability to translate inaccessible documents that makes him invaluable, it’s so many other areas. Imagine being sat in a meeting surrounded by developers, analysts and senior managers and up on the screen is a detailed presentation. Now this is standard meeting territory but now imagine that the key fact being discussed is obscured by a colleague’s laptop screen. This can be easily rectified by moving your head slightly or politely asking them to move their screen but what if that isn’t an option? Even if I’m sat in the boardroom with a presentation on a massive 90-inch UHD display I’m still not going to be able to decipher a word and very rarely does the deck get shared beforehand so what do I do?

This is where Dan steps in and he pings me a little note on Teams which I have read out to me via my bone-conduction headphones (much like a translator at the UN General Assembly). Unlike an AI assistant that needs prompting, he has learned exactly what data is important and what to disregard without needing to be asked. Essential that this is, it can be confusing if I’m being fed information simultaneously with the presenter talking so he has to time his input to be most valuable. It’s much like the audio description on the telly which has to be timed so it doesn’t distract from the dialogue. Essentially, timing is key.

With so much auditory stimuli, my world becomes extremely loud at times and I just need some peace and quiet which is why I have now escaped the main house and am hiding out in Kath’s garden counselling room with just a comfy armchair, my notepad, a cuppa and Gary Numan playing on the Bluetooth speaker to block it all out.

Without all these technological advances, the world would be a much harder place to live in. I likely wouldn’t be able to cook unaided, watch the new series of Slow Horses, enjoy a good book or earn a decent wage so I don’t begrudge the world I find myself in, but sometimes this constant sensory bombardment is simply too much and I need to retreat for a while.

Sometimes, though, it all gets a little too loud.

And with that it’s time to turn the laptop on, wake up JAWS and attempt to decipher my thick black scrawl into something that resembles a blog – I hope it’s worth it!

Happy New Year, all

Chris – Blind Man with a Backpack