Win prizes at How to Cope with Pain!
Do you ever say to yourself that you should write a book, an article or a blog?
81% of us do (according to this funny NY Times article by Joseph Epstein). However, few run with that thought and actually do so. Nickie Coby is the exception – she actually self-published Nickie’s Nook: Sharing the Journey. I recently asked to review her book, and I thought it was inspiring.
Nickie, a college student, is the author at Nickie’s Nook, a blog about her experience with pain, sight-impairment and living. I found her book really interesting and enjoyable to read. It talks about her pain condition (RSD), how she copes, and the challenges she experiences because of pain. Nickie is also blind, and she relates what that experience is like, too.
Having had severe pain myself, I’m always curious about someone else’s pain experience, seeing how they deal with the challenge of pain. My sight, at least with glasses, is fine, so reading about the challenges of sight-impairment was an eye-opener (no pun intended).
Nickie writes about the challenges of coping with pain and blindness and functioning fully in our society, attending college, working with her guide dog, independence and interdependence (great writing), and spirituality. As a physician and blogger, I was also interested in her chapters on access to both healthcare and the web for people with disabilities.
When someone is challenged in some way by disabilities, there’s a risk in describing the person’s story as “inspiring,” because it can seem condescending. So I hope that’s not what I’m communicating between the lines here. I was truly struck by Nickie’s courage and perseverance. And the book was a fun read – humorous and engaging.
I’d recommend the book to anyone interested in these topics (you can even download it). Stop over at her blog, too – lots of great reading there, as well. Thanks, Nickie, for writing your book as well as sharing it with How to Cope with Pain!
Nickie’s book is one of the prizes here at How to Cope with Pain!
2 responses so far ↓
Phil // Jun 23, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Hi — Having blind friends has sensitized me to issues of accessibility on web sites, and I see that your contact with Nickie has done the same. However, your blog post violates at least a few principles of accessibility that I think you could fix with a little bit of work. A good resource for this is at this Web site: http://wave.webaim.org/ You can enter the address of a page of your site, and the site returns a list of items — if there are any! — where your site could be made more accessible.
The two areas I notice are tags on the photos and tags on the links; as a sighted person, you would see “tooltips” when you hovered on such things. A blind person using a browser would be able to read the tag describing the photo (e.g., “Photograph of Nickie with her service dog”) or the link.
You may not be able to do anything about the ads that appear on your site, though you could be proactive and urge the agency you deal with to make sure their ads are accessible.
How to Cope with Pain // Jun 24, 2008 at 8:30 am
Thanks, Phil. I had read about putting descriptions of pictures, but haven’t known exactly where to do that. But instead of using that excuse, I should just find out! Does anyone know how to do this?
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