Author Archives: Sally Hobart Alexander

When I became blind 50 years ago, I learned the term “sheltered workshop,” a workplace designed to provide a safe environment for disabled people. Many rehab agencies housed such a facility on their premises. I grew most familiar with one … Continue reading →

Regarding job barriers for the blind in the local Pittsburgh area, I hear often from groups and individuals with visual impairment that feel “unseen.” Healthcare and pharmacy retail companies, cable corporations, and large health networks in Pittsburgh employ very few … Continue reading →

To many blind people and those who work with the visually impaired, Frances Koestler’s 1976 book, The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in the United States is sacrosanct. In the beginning of her history, Koestler characterizes the blind … Continue reading →

For the past six months, as I walked my guide dog along Forbes Avenue, a main Pittsburgh thoroughfare, I heard the talk, laughter, even singing of people gliding past in the middle of the busy street. My guide, Dave, turned … Continue reading →

When I became blind 50 years ago, I learned the term “sheltered workshop,” a workplace designed to provide a safe environment for disabled people. Many rehab agencies housed such a facility on their premises. I grew most familiar with one … Continue reading →

Recently, the NPR program, “Science Friday,” ended with a soundscape of Iberian wolf songs. At first, I thought it was an orchestra imitating the melodies, but realized the howls, yips, yowls weren’t strings or woodwinds, but live wolves. Though I … Continue reading →

  Dr. Fauci suggest that the covid-19 just might be ending the era of the handshake. Should this come to pass, I understand completely and will comply. But as someone totally blind, I will grieve the loss. Some might ask … Continue reading →

    About a year ago, I blogged about a nasty attack on an innocent Braille cell. Turns out that President Trump banned workers in the Trump tower from installing Braille numbers on the elevators. Now I’ve been known to … Continue reading →

I just read that coal ash pollution is leaking into the ground water at nine power plants in Pennsylvania, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project. This pollution leaves arsenic and other chemicals behind. At one former … Continue reading →

The Uninhabitable Earth is a book to be published in April of this year and a book I’ll purchase in multiple copies, for multiple people. The author from the New Yorker Magazine, David Wallace-Wells writes that the goal of only … Continue reading →