On January 4, 2023 something new was revealed; the World Blind Herald went live, choosing that date because that is Louis Braille’s birthday. This week on Outlook we speak with its founder, publisher, and editor in chief Chris Hofstader.

We begin with Chris sharing about his life including the early days when he was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) as a child, sharing all the things he was into just like all the other boys. He also shares his time as the vocalist in a punk rock band, lining up stories of his youth with the early, unknown years of the AIDS crisis in New York. From punk to computer sciences, the first half of this week’s Outlook Chris leads us through the years when his RP continued, he searched to find his place in the working and blindness world, seeing adaptive technology evolved from its earliest days.

With his background in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) , writing was a natural next step for Chris who, on the second half of the show, tells us about some of the topics and articles published on WBH since its inception and prototype days through to its publication at the beginning of the year. On the World Blind Herald’s site, find weekly Blindness Briefs with news stories about what blind people are up too all over, featured stories and other resources provided by blind people of all types, and a list of impressive bios of all those advisors and contributing writers on the team and involved in the project in some way.

And we can’t complete this conversation without hearing from our guest about the policy of WBH on politics, specifically blindness politics which is something we’ve experienced ourselves since getting involved in advocacy in our thirties. Editor in chief Chris Hofstader is with us, sharing the publication’s mission, which is to include as many diverse perspectives from blind people globally; this being Outlook’s main mission as well.

Things like sports, advocacy, business, and crime are just some of the topics you can find. So go here to check out the World Blind Herald and give them a read because they want to support the space for other blind creators and entrepreneurers as they’re just getting started publishing the perspectives of as many blind people as possible:

https://www.worldblindherald.com/

And, if you’re blind, consider advertising with them or writing for them.