Accessible Nutrition Resources
Food preparation courses
The Hadley School for the Blind in the U.S. is a correspondence school for people who are blind or vision impaired. It offers five mini-courses on preparing healthy meals. The first four courses cover the main food groups—fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, grains and sweets, and eggs and dairy. The fifth course, “A Social Perspective on Food,” brings it all together—how to plan parties and entertain, and how to store and preserve foods. For more information, see hadley.edu.
The Hadley School also hosts online voice conferences on nutrition, exercise and other health topics. You can listen to these conferences even if you’re not currently enrolled in Hadley courses. For more information, see the archive of Hadley seminars.
Cookbooks
National Braille Press has a comprehensive collection of books on cooking, cleaning and other aspects of home and personal management. Originally available only in hard copy Braille versions, the files can now be purchased and downloaded in .brf Braille format. These files can be translated to standard text either by Duxbury Braille Translator or Kurzweil 1000 and then saved in formats like M.S. Word or DAISY.
Available titles include:
- Cooking With Feeling
- Diabetes Cookbook Desserts
- Dr. Atkins Carbohydrate Gram Counter
- Easy Vegetarian Dinners
Cooking shows and programs
Cooking in the Dark is a weekly online radio show produced by two vision-impaired folks with lots of experience in the kitchen. You can also listen to their past shows on demand.
American Council of the Blind Radio Mainstream has a wide range of talk and interview shows produced by and for people who are vision impaired.
For the People offers a voice chat room specifically for vision-impaired people who want to share information about cooking. It also hosts weekly seminars. The first time you enter the site, a small piece of software will download onto your computer. From there, plug in a microphone and use the control key as a “push to talk” button.
Additional food and nutrition resources
- Canada’s Food Guide
- Heart & Stroke Foundation
- The Diabetes Care Guide
- Canadian Dairy Information Centre
- Canadian Cancer Society
- Canadian Diabetes Association
- Whole Grains Bureau
- Canadian Celiac Association