Surviving Technology

How Tech Both Empowers and Complicates Teaching, Learning, and Generally Existing

It is easy to recognize the dramatic ways technology has evolved and influenced how we interact with the world. Some of us grew up turning a dial to enter a single digit into the household’s shared telephone, now many of us have microcomputers in our pockets that not only allow us to dial telephone numbers with a single gesture, they provide instant access to a digital world that is designed to allow us to perform every function under the sun, from attending work meetings on the go, to buying last-minute party supplies, and everything in between.

One of the members of the research team of the American Foundation for the Blind’s Public Policy & Research Institute, Sarahelizabeth Baguhn, recently wrote an article that takes readers on a journey as she describes the roles that technology has played in every facet of her life. Featured in Part Two of the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB) 2025 special issue on technology, guest edited by Stacy Kelly, Northern Illinois University, Baguhn’s comment outlines how her use of technology has evolved in her many professional roles and how educators and researchers like her are rising to meet the challenges and opportunities that technology offers to students and colleagues who are blind or have low vision.

Because of the explosion in online learning platforms that emerged, in part, because of the global pandemic, Baguhn writes, “Despite everyone’s hopes and best intentions, blind students again struggled to access the same educational opportunities as their peers.” She continues, “If the technology will not stand still, neither can we, and our practice has to shape, adapt, and grow, keeping pace with the educational landscape around us.”

Baguhn describes how the blindness field rose to the challenge, by creating assistive technology instructional specialist certifications “to ensure professionals kept up with ever-changing technology….” Nevertheless, Baguhn explains that she is “astonished by how many new technologies my students are finding, using, training clients on, or discarding because they are suddenly outdated.”

In her work with the research team at AFB, Baguhn has been exploring how adults who are blind or have low vision confront the “substantial barriers to digital inclusion” and mentions how professionals in the field help “build capacity for people to live their fullest lives now, so they do not have to wait for the Americans with Disabilities Act updates to take effect and push more accessibility.”

Baguhn’s take-home point is clear: In a world where access to just about everything depends on technology, staying current is no longer professional development, it is a basic duty of care, a minimum business practice, and a means of survival in what can often be, especially for blind people, a digital hellscape.

Learn more by reading Constantly Evolving: Technology in Education and Instruction, by Sarahelizabeth Baguhn.

About the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB)

Funded by a generous gift from Marilyn and Francine Gruder, JVIB is the international, peer-reviewed journal of record in the field of blindness and low vision. JVIB delivers current research and best practice information, and commentary from authoritative experts on critical topics. Practitioners and researchers, policymakers and administrators, counselors and advocates rely on JVIB for its delivery of cutting-edge research and the most up-to-date practices in the field of blindness and low vision. Learn more at afb.org/jvib.