Airport Travel Tips for Blind Travelers: How to Navigate Airports with Confidence
As an Orientation and Mobility Specialist, my job is to prepare my students for travel in both familiar and unfamiliar spaces. While some routes can be memorized with repetition, airports change frequently, making memorization impractical. However, with the right strategies, you can be a confident and independent traveler. Here are my top tips for navigating airports as a blind traveler.
1. Book Your Ticket with Wheelchair Assistance
If the airport is unfamiliar, consider booking your ticket with wheelchair or cart transport assistance. This service helps you get from the check-in counter to your gate with ease. If this option isn’t available at booking, call the airline to request it. Some travelers choose to give a cash tip to the airport personnel for their assistance.
2. Pack Light and Stay Organized
Carry-on bags can be costly and cumbersome. If possible, check your bag or gate-check it to simplify your travel experience. I personally prefer traveling with just a backpack, as most destinations have stores where I can buy any forgotten items. Keep your bags organized to quickly locate what you need.
3. Take Advantage of Priority Boarding
As a traveler with a disability, you are entitled to priority boarding. This allows you to get settled in your seat and stow your bags without the stress of large crowds. Some of my clients hesitate to use this service, especially if they have low vision but still function independently. However, boarding early can make the experience much smoother and less overwhelming.
4. Carry a White Cane for Identification
Even if you don’t typically use a white cane for mobility, having one at the airport can be incredibly helpful. It signals to others that you have a vision impairment, making it easier for airport personnel and fellow travelers to offer assistance when needed. It can also help clear a path in busy areas.
5. Familiarize Yourself with Travel Apps and Print Boarding Passes
Before traveling, practice using your airline’s app to access your boarding pass. Some airlines charge a fee (as high as $40) for printing boarding passes at the counter. Avoid unexpected costs by ensuring you can retrieve your pass digitally or print it at home in advance.
Essential Travel Tools for Blind Travelers
These products can help make airport travel smoother:
White cane for identification in airports – Purchase here
Carry-on bag with smooth rollers for one-handed use – Purchase here
Tile Tag to locate your suitcase on the carousel – Purchase here
Custom luggage strap for increased visibility – Purchase here
Diaper bag backpack with multiple compartments, including an insulated pocket – Purchase here
Any purchases made through these links help fund Access Your Mobility.
Share Your Experience
Have you traveled through an airport as a blind traveler? What strategies have worked best for you? Share your tips with us below!
Lighting and Vision Loss
If you’re experiencing vision loss, you may also be in need of different lighting in your home! From LEDs to Incandescents, Daylight, to Bright White, where do you start?!
I suggest getting your very basic needs met first: a nice work lamp. You might already own the perfect lamp but just need a brighter bulb, or you may need to start from scratch.
Many people find that a task lamp directed down at the paper you’re reading, or the knitting project you’re completing is the best choice. These can be found easily online, and often have varying levels of intensity. Some plug into the wall, some are rechargeable, so consider how and where you might use this lamp. I like this Gooseneck Floor Lamp by Verilux or this Clamp Desk Lamp with adjustable Warmth and Brightness.
When it comes to over head lights, I would take your time and consider how you use each light. Maybe the chandelier with 4 bulbs requires less intensity than the pot lights in the ceiling.
Last thing to consider as you buy bulbs- LED lightbulbs really last forever. I’ve had the same bulbs over my kitchen island for the last 8 years. It’s incredible. That being said, they’re also pricier. This is why I really think about what kind of lighting I want in my fixtures before I bring them home. I’m not great at returning things, so we have a rejected lightbulb box we use for the garage or other places where I am less opinionated on the lighting.
After you have your basic bulbs installed and have a great work lamp, you will notice all sorts of areas of your house where more lighting would be helpful. Under your cabinets, your walkway to the car, your hallway, your purse, or how about one for your plate at a dimly lit restaurant?- the list will grow, and there is a product for everything online. Comment your favorite lighting hack for people with vision loss!
As an Amazon Associate I earn a small percentage from qualifying purchases made through the links above and listed below.
Gooseneck Floor Lamp by Verilux
Clamp Desk Lamp with adjustable Warmth and Brightness.
Keep Christmas Inclusive!
Image of woman with white hair and festive glasses hugging child with festive sparkly glasses. Both are smiling and laughing.
The holidays are here, bring on the customs and traditions, and time with family!
Vision loss can feel like the great divide in families, and no matter the age of your loved one with vision loss, you might feel at a loss on how to include them in all the festivities.
But how can you include Grandma in baking cookies if she can’t see? Why would Grandpa enjoy settling in to watch your traditional holiday movie if he can’t see it anymore?
There are always ways to include people. Maybe Grandma can help with baking cookies by mixing the dough, or prepping the ingredients! In our house our Grandma who has vision loss prepares, bakes, cools and divvies up the cookies. We just eat them!
What about Grandpa who used to enjoy sitting on the sofa and watching a holiday movie? If you’re streaming movies you can check out the closed captioning options- sometimes there is the option of Audio Described. This replaces the original audio to include movement and details in the film that you would miss if you couldn’t see it. You might learn more about your beloved movie by adding description!
Don’t halt your traditions when family is experiencing vision loss- these are the things that ground us and solidify our connections with each other and form our sense of self.
How have you morphed traditions in your home to include family with vision loss?
Blinded Veterans
Before moving to Florida, I finished up my degree through Northern Illinois University. Part of my degree required two internships, and I completed both of them at Hines VA Hospital Blind Rehab Center.
Hines VA Hospital is a very important place historically in the field of Blind Rehab, and I was honored to be an intern! Hines is the birthplace of the modern Orientation and Mobility training. It was also a primary place of advocacy for blind veterans after World War II, a time where services were few. Check it out here.
Today, veterans can receive services through your nearest Blind Rehab Center, there are 11 nationwide. Veterans get training in mobility, technology, low vision, recreation, independent living, and of course they get their training among other veterans.
As a mom and wife in a military family, I often reflect on the sacrifice service members make. Modern service members often incur issues with hearing, joints, lungs, back, and other physical disabilities. These show up quickly as a direct result. Vision loss can be a slow degenerative process, and many clients I’ve worked with in the past chalk it up to age, and don’t seek services through the VA.
I encourage veterans with vision loss to connect with Blind Rehab Centers to get comprehensive services, as well as any technological items they may need. Unfortunately civilians receiving services through the state won’t be offered phones, computers, or magnification devices. However, Blind Rehab Centers are an amazing resource for these items, as well as the training to use them at no cost!
If you’re a veteran and looking for more information visit here: https://www.prosthetics.va.gov/blindrehab/index.asp
For services contact your closest VIST (Visual Impairment Services Team) Coordinator here: https://www.prosthetics.va.gov/blindrehab/VIST_Coordinators.asp
Happy White Cane Day
Why do we celebrate White Cane Day? Maybe celebrate isn’t the right word, it’s more bringing an invisible and often ignored community to the forefront.
Often when people experience vision loss they tuck away in their comfortable environment. It might be as limited as staying behind their front door.
Orientation and Mobility, and use of a white cane, is basically exposure therapy to the world outside the front door. It’s navigating using senses other than eyes to maneuver in spaces you used to be completely comfortable in. Orientation and Mobility isn’t meant to teach you every route you’ll ever take, instead it’s meant to expose you to a variety of situations so when you encounter similar ones in the future you can confidently problem solve.
It’s not, “how do I cross these specific intersections.” It’s “what information do I need to cross (or not cross) any intersection"?”
By the time you’ve completed training you have faced so many fears and placed yourself outside of your comfort zone, but usually it’s alone or one-on-one with an instructor.
White Cane Day is a day to congregate in public spaces with white canes. In Bradenton they meet at the courthouse and walk down main street, then to the riverwalk, ending at a restaurant.
People with vision loss are important to our society. They can effect how our streets are built and maintained, how our transit runs, and where funding is allocated for which services. The caviat is, they have to show up, and White Cane Day is a great way to amplify these voices.
Happy White Cane Day!
Mobility in the Eye of The Storm
Do you have a plan during catastrophic events like hurricanes? This week may serve as your wakeup call to put something in place. If you’re experiencing vision loss there are services built into county services that exist for you!
Manatee County offers shelters, and for those who need it, door to door service to these shelters. Just like anything else you can’t wait until the last minute. Consider registering on the Special Needs Register before you need it here: Special Needs Registry Manatee County
Who is appropriate to register? I think better to be registered than not! They will also do phone calls to check in as well as provide important information regarding the storm. Plus it doesn’t cost you anything out of pocket.
If your emergency plan is always relying 100% on others for transportation please consider this option, and consider it a contingency plan!