Cooking while blind isn’t impossible — it just takes patience and practice, said Tracy May, a former client of the Sight Center of Northwest Ohio.
“About nine years ago I went blind,” Ms. May said. “I went blind within 10 months. … I thought my life was over.”
Someone mentioned the Sight Center’s work to Ms. May, and soon after she started utilizing its programs and services, she said, which are designed to help people with low vision or blindness live more independently.
The former client said she spent much of her life as a chef and running restaurants, with cooking being something very important to her.
“I’m still a chef,” Ms. May said. “I teach people how to cook. … I do a support group that I started about eight and a half years ago. … My group is about being proactive, going out to eat, going out to the movies, not being ashamed of who you are.”
When she teaches people with impaired vision to cook, Ms. May advises to start simple with things like dips, homemade iced tea, and recipes with few ingredients.
Andrea Marley, a certified vision rehabilitation therapist at the Sight Center, said she teaches her clients the same thing as Ms. May — starting small and growing from there. Ms. Marley is legally blind, and said she was originally a client at The Sight Center before joining the team at the non-profit.
Grilled cheeses and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are great starts, she said, because they work with skills like scooping and spreading.
“When a client first comes to us, they usually start off with an evaluation,” she said. “We take this rating scale, on a checklist of all of these items in different categories, to see how individuals are able to do things, such as manage their time, do their finances, cook in the kitchen, do their laundry, all those kind of things.”
Cooking is typically saved for last, Ms. Marley said, because it’s often the biggest area that clients have questions about.
Helpful tools
“We might recommend some different smartphone applications that are accessible, where they can read printed information to the client,” she explained. “Or use something called bump dots, which are a method of tactile labeling.”
The raised dots can label anything from ovens and stove-top burner dials to coffee pots and air fryers to help individuals with low vision and blindness identify items more easily.
A spot ’n line labeling pen is another device that comes in a variety colors and is used to draw dots, arrows, or other symbols on appliances or items.
Braille labelers are also great for identifying different food items and appliances, Ms. Marley added. For those that can’t read braille, a PenFriend voice labeling system is another tool on the market that can be used for this.
“It’s kind of like a labeling wand where you can put little adhesive stickers on it,” she said of the pen. “You press a button, record what the item is, then you touch it to the sticker, and it records what the item is using your own voice or whoever’s helping you record.”
In Ms. May's home, she said she uses an Alexa with a camera to help identify certain food items. She also recommends the application, Be My Eyes, that can assist in recognizing specific objects in great detail by using artificial intelligence. The application can even read expiration dates.
“We’ve got a lot of different adaptive tools, like double-sided spatulas and lock-lid pots that you can strain water out of,” Ms. Marley explained.
A cafeteria tray is another incredibly useful item, she said, especially for sorting ingredients, measuring items, containing spills, and more. Measuring cups with enlarged sizes (¼ cup, ½ cup, etc.) on the cups are also helpful for individuals with impaired vision.
A liquid level indicator is a tool that clips to the side of a cup and helps you to not over pour liquids into cups, Ms. Marley said. When the liquid gets close to the top, the indicator will vibrate or play a sound depending on the type you have.
Ms. May said listening to her food sizzling and paying attention to smells are some ways her other senses compensate in the kitchen. Utilizing smell when it comes to evaluating if food is expired or not good anymore can be helpful, too.
“You may not believe this, but if you were to ever close your eyes while meat is cooking, you can definitely tell if it’s cooked or not,” Ms. Marley added. “We do have talking food thermometers that are nice, where if you’re cooking chicken or something … you can stick the probe inside of it, then press a button, and it’ll tell you out loud what the internal temperature is.”
Safety precautions
“As far as safety, I always like to use a knife block at my house because it keeps the serrated knives downward,” the rehab service provider said.
When keeping sharp knives in a drawer, Ms. Marley suggested people have a blade cover on their knives, so when they’re reaching in and out of the drawer they can avoid accidental cuts.
“One thing that we’ve always been taught to do is to take [a] knife and kind of rub it against either a cutting board or the edge of your plate,” she added. “With a serrated knife, you can kind of hear the knife on the edge of it, whereas if it’s the smooth edge, it’s not going to make a noise.”
The Sight Center’s kitchen has a cutting board with a serrated knife attached, which Ms. Marley said can also be helpful while prepping in the kitchen.
She said she also teaches her clients to start cooking with a “cold start,” which means placing your food in the oven or on the stovetop when the heat is off so they can get used to the motions without the risk of burning themselves.
A push-pull oven ruler is another tool Ms. Marley explained can be used to open the oven, and push and pull out the rack to avoid burning yourself. There are also oven mitts made to go up to your elbows, which she said can be useful as well.
Ms. May said adjusting to cooking while blind was hard at first, but reiterated that you cannot learn a skill without both patience and practice.
“Your life is not over,” she said. “You may have to do things in a different way and learn things in a different way, but you can still do it.”
First Published February 23, 2025, 5:00 a.m.
