Blind Travel Foundation

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Blind Travel Foundation

The 2026 application round is closed. https://www.blindtravel.org

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08/17/2026

🎥✈️ Follow along with Krista's journey!

Our 2026 Travel Grant winner, Krista Webb, is on the road working on her documentary project, Blindness & Art: Building Bridges Through Creativity and Community — meeting blind and visually impaired artists across the country to explore how art connects and empowers our community.

So far, she's met with:
🎨 John Bramblitt — acrylic painting, right in her own backyard of Denton, TX
🏺 Amy Sanders Del Melo — pottery, Tulsa, OK
🖌️ Rose Kamma Morrison - Visual Artist — alcohol ink, Vancouver Island
🖍️ Paul Castle from Matthew and Paul — illustration, Seattle, WA

Coming up:
🧵 Loni.friedmann — mixed media, Seattle, WA
🪵 John Furniss (The Blind Woodsman and Honeybee) — woodworking, Washougal, WA
🎨 Terry Adams — tattoo artist, Las Vegas, NV

She's been sharing behind-the-scenes moments from every stop on Instagram — you don't want to miss it. 👀 Link to her highlight reel in the comments — go give it a watch and show her some love! 💙

Photo Description:
This is a 1X1 photo collage titled “Krista’s BTF Journey Update.” Each panel shows a woman (Krista) with long brown hair and glasses posing with a different person: John Bramblitt (holding a wood burn sign for “Bramblitt’s Art Bar Gallery Yellow Dog”), Amy Sanders De Melo (in a gallery space with shelves of pottery), Rose Morrison (holding a colorful eye abstract alcohol ink painting), and Paul Castle (both wearing trucker hats, one reading “Blindness is a Spectrum” and the other with two penguins with rainbow bow ties).

07/23/2026

Blindness & Art: Building Bridges Through Creativity and Community

In August 2026, Krista Webb, a deafblind advocate and artist living with Usher syndrome, will embark on a journey across the United States and Canada. She will document eight blind and deafblind artists, each working in a unique medium including woodburning, acrylic painting, pottery, alcohol ink, illustration, mixed media, woodworking, and tattooing. In addition, Krista will participate in a live glassblowing event, trying the art form for the first time. Through real-time filmed interviews and live art creation, Krista will capture each artist’s process, personal story, and journey with vision loss, sharing short-form social media content including a unique giveaway from each artist along the way.

The project will culminate in a series of artist spotlights and a full-length documentary, weaving together intimate conversations about blindness, identity, and creativity. Together, these deliverables aim to empower the blind and low vision community to explore their own creative potential and see art as an accessible and meaningful part of life.

THANK YOU to Feeldom Life by FEELDOM for supporting our grant winners with gear designed for independence!

Also, thank you to Aira for equipping our grant winners with visual interpreter minutes to travel with more independence and confidence!

Video Description: Woman with long brown hair, sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor against a light gray wall. She wears glasses, a gray tank top with a rainbow heart graphic, and tie-dye pants. She has tattoos on both arms, a smartwatch, and beaded bracelets.

07/22/2026

Passport to the Pantry

Passport to the Pantry is a travel project in which two friends will produce an audio series bringing immersive cooking instruction to blind and visually impaired home cooks. Dr. Muhammad Abubakar, a clinical psychology post-doctoral fellow living with Retinitis Pigmentosa, will travel with his friend Khaleel Rahman, a journalist and podcast producer, to create the series together.

They will travel to Spain, Morocco, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, learning four traditional dishes: paella, tagine, baklava, and dolma. They will learn each recipe directly from local chefs in each country. The goal is to bring back the stories, sounds, and context behind each dish, giving the blind community a genuine taste of global cuisines.

The bigger goal of this project is helping blind individuals feel more confident and independent in the kitchen. The podcast episodes and written guides will be tailored specifically for a non-visual cooking experience, breaking down complex techniques and providing tips on accessible tools. Their aim with this project is to help blind home cooks try new recipes, build their skills, and explore new cultures.

Are you blind or visually impaired? We want to hear from you about the challenges you have faced while cooking. The link is in the comments. Your participation will help their project!

THANK YOU to Feeldom Life by FEELDOM for supporting our grant winners with gear designed for independence!

Also, thank you to Aira for equipping our grant winners with visual interpreter minutes to travel with more independence and confidence!

Video Description: Khaleel and Muhammad are sitting side by side on a couch

07/21/2026

Narrative Placemaking: How Words Can Welcome Blind Travelers

Father and daughter grant winners, Josh and Eileen Loebner, are currently traveling Ireland to experience from a blind person’s perspective the culture, camaraderie, castles and more of what the Emerald Isle has to offer

Ireland’s poets, authors and those sharing songs in pubs beckon global travelers, and our goal for this project is to document our explorations, and hear from people describing iconic Ireland, to develop a destination marketing playbook for how other destinations can go beyond photography, and gain a gift of gab welcoming blind travelers with sublime stories. For blind travelers, experiencing a destination, whether across the globe, or a nearby daytrip, evocative words have the potential to play a powerful role, replacing photos, video, and in-person sightseeing to create rich narrative placemaking.

Irish people have a renowned ability to speak with eloquence and persuasion, with legend noting it’s traditionally gained by kissing the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle near Cork, Ireland. Throughout our travels across Ireland we will capture in-the-moment audio and video and transform these insights into a playbook that any destination marketing team can access and learn from to create their own gift of gab and share their own stories to welcome more blind travelers.

THANK YOU to Feeldom Life by FEELDOM for supporting our grant winners with gear designed for independence!

Also, thank you to Aira for equipping our grant winners with visual interpreter minutes to travel with more independence and confidence!

Video Description: Father and daughter, Josh and Eileen Loebner excitedly smiling, talking, and sitting together on a couch with whimsical family artwork framed on the wall behind them.

07/16/2026

Congratulations to our 2026 $10,000 travel grant winners! Learn about them and their projects via their introduction videos posted on Instagram! Links are in the comments!

04/27/2026

At long last, we finally have a video to share with you all! 🎥 Even though this happened back in November 2025, the memories from the Blind Travel Summit are still fresh. From connecting with amazing people to trying our hands at axe throwing, it was an unforgettable experience filled with community and fun.

If you want to learn more about the Blind Travel Summit go to
BlindTravel.org/Blind-Travel-Summit

Thank you to the Blind Travel Summit 2025 sponsors!

Gold Sponsors: Uber and United
Silver Sponsor: Airbnb
Bronze Sponsors: AGIGA, Aira, Ambutech, Feeldom Life by FEELDOM, Open Doors Organization, Two Blind Brothers
Virtual: Seable Holidays
In-Kind: Glam Canes, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired

A special thank you to the Gordan and Llura Gund Foundation for their continued support of the Blind Travel Foundation!

A massive thank you to Jordan Allott of In Altum Productions for putting this amazing video together!

[Visual Description: A promotional montage video from the Blind Travel Summit. Various blind and visually impaired attendees, some using white canes or accompanied by guide dogs, are shown smiling, networking, and conversing together in a conference setting. The montage also features exciting footage of attendees participating in an indoor axe throwing activity. Several attendees are shown speaking directly to the camera during interviews. The video captures a supportive, fun, and uplifting community atmosphere, concluding with text on the screen that reads: 'To learn more about the Blind Travel Foundation, visit us at blindtravel.org'.]

04/21/2026

We are heading to Sicily — and we only have 3 spots left!

This September, the Blind Travel Foundation is partnering with Seable Holidays — an award-winning UK travel company featured in Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic — to launch WayFun Sicily, a one-of-a-kind sensory group trip designed specifically for blind and visually impaired travelers.

September 5–12, 2026. Seven nights in Catania. And an itinerary built around what you can taste, touch, hear, smell, and feel.

Think: Mount Etna by cable car and 4x4 Jeep. A tactile museum where you explore 3D models of historic architecture with your hands. Wine cellars on volcanic soil. A Sicilian donkey farm. Street food tours. A full beach day on the Mediterranean. And a Norman castle built from lava rock.

If the name WayFun sounds familiar — it should. WayFun trips were born out of Sendero Group, the pioneering accessible GPS company co-founded by Mike May. Mike — Blind Travel Foundation board member and one of the most accomplished blind travelers in the world with nearly 3 million flight miles across 35 countries — will be joining this trip personally. That tradition of independent exploration and community continues here, bigger and bolder than ever.

This is not a trip where someone holds your hand every second. Trained sighted guides from Seable are there when you need them — but the point is discovering on your own terms.

One of the most valuable parts of traveling together as a group of experienced blind and visually impaired travelers is what we learn from each other — packing hacks, navigation strategies, favorite apps and wayfinding tools, hard-won tips that don’t live in any guidebook. We will be capturing those exchanges throughout the trip so we can share them with the broader accessible travel community. That is a core part of our mission — making sure the knowledge from a trip like this does not stay with just the people in the room.

For details on pricing, logistics, and how to reserve your spot, email Mike Walsh at [email protected].
🔗 blindtravel.org | seable.co.uk

The photos are owned by Seable Holidays.

02/10/2026

A post from 2025 Blind Travel Foundation grant winner, Ignasi Cambra!
______________________________________

I recorded the first episode of “Blind Notes” walking through Central Park. No guest, no script — just me trying to explain why I wanted to make a podcast about blind musicians, while getting distracted by horses and squirrels.

It’s the starting point for a series of conversations I’ve been wanting to have for years. Best with headphones on — it was recorded in binaural, so you get the full NYC experience!

Link in the comments

02/01/2026

TODAY

11:59 PM ET

DEADLINE

$10,000

Where do you want to go?

What impact do you want to make?

The Application Page link is in the comments.

GIF Description: Jim Carrey sits at a desk and types furiously on a keyboard, his hands flying as he stares ahead with intense focus. The exaggerated speed and frantic motion are played for comedy, suggesting someone working extremely fast or rushing to get something done.

Address

New York, NY

Website

https://www.BlindTravel.org/

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