Blind scuba diving

As I started to review my upcoming presentation next week at #CSUNATC2025, I was thinking why presenting always feels so hard. Then, my daughter reminded me that earlier this week I did something much harder (for me at least). I completed my first ever scuba dive in Hawaii. I was excited to do this, but I was also very unsure if I was going to be able to do it.
First, it was hard to find a company that would take a blind person for a scuba dive. Several companies declined, including one that initially agreed but had cold feet the evening before the day of the dive. I got to talk to Jake who is a dive instructor at Reef Pirates diving. Jake said that he had done many dives with people with various motor disabilities but not with someone who is blind. He said that he was willing to learn with me and was confident that we will be safe in the water.
Jake and Loren were the amazing instructors for my 10 y/o daughter and I. They gave us a long safety briefing. Jake came up with tactile hand signals for us to communicate under water since you obviously cannot speak down there. We geared up and went into the water. I have to admit I was scared the whole time until we came back on the boat and was shaking for quite some time after that, probably because the adrenalin rush left me. Below is a picture of me and my daughter under the sea surrounded by lots of colorful fish.

If you are at CSUN and want to chat accessible outdoors or anything accessibility, come find me at the IAccessible booth 214. My, “not so scary anymore”, talk about how to adopt AI for accessibility is on Tuesday at 11:20 in Elite 1-3.