Diana G. has always been a striver and an achiever. After graduating from Arizona State University, where she met her husband, she launched a successful career in the garment industry. As a member of the research and development team of St. John Knits, a luxury women’s fashion brand, she often travelled to New York and France sourcing materials. After taking a break to start a family, she returned to the company as a production manager in its sports division, visiting a factory in Mexico once a week to check quality and to make sure that orders could be filled on time.
As a self-described “rip-the-band-aid-off kind of person,” Diana dives into challenges. When diagnosed in her 30s with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a genetic eye disease that often progresses slowly, she continued to drive her two children to school, attend PTA meetings, and run three miles daily while her vision declined. She carried on a normal life until her retina detached in her right eye in her late 30s, eventually losing her vision in that eye.
“I started having pressure issues in 2023, and in January 2024, doctors talked me into a procedure to relieve the blood pressure,” she says. “I woke up with no vision in either eye. I contacted Braille Institute four months after the operation, because of the drastic nature of my condition,” she says.
With a can-do spirit, she says she first focused on learning adaptive technology. Diana took both group classes and one-on-one training, learning how to use Seeing AI, an app that uses her mobile device camera, helping her distinguish the colors of her clothes. She also learned VoiceOver, a phone feature that narrates screen content, so she could read emails from her two children’s teachers. She’s now learning keyboarding, so she can adapt what she learned on her phone to her computer. She also connected with the Braille Institute Library so that she could read audio books, and says she now reads more than she ever did.
Diana continues running her household, including cooking and making school lunches for her kids and cleaning the house, even with her visual impairment. “I figured out things for myself,” she says. “I count the clicks on the oven, the washing machine, and dryer so I can cook and do the laundry,” she says. “I can crack eggs and I make sourdough bread. There’s nothing I can’t do. Obviously, I can’t drive to the grocery store, but I can Instacart like it’s nobody’s business.”
An athlete in high school, Diana was an expert skier and ran half marathons as an adult. After losing her vision, she knew she’d need orientation and mobility training if she wanted to walk her dog or get exercise, and signed up for training from Braille Institute. She picked it up quickly, and in February, she was asked to teach a class on climbing and descending stairs with a white cane. “I’m young enough where I’m not afraid of stairs,” she says. “It was fun.
“My goal is to be much better in the next three years,” Diana says. “By then, I’m hoping I will be more confident in doing normal things in life. If I want to go back to work, I will. Even if the company you work for helps you, you should be able to help yourself, so I’m trying to learn braille. I just want to get by so I can use an elevator. Just enough to be dangerous.
“I think Braille Institute is great,” Diana says. “It offers so much more than probably most people get in other places. My dad is in Phoenix. He has RP, and it took three years for someone to come to his home to provide white cane training. It was a constant fight. And he only learned a couple of basic things. You don’t know how good Braille Institute is until you see what other places offer.”
