My favorite ways to leverage ChatGPT as a blind person

Since my vision loss in high school, I’ve had to learn a lot of new technology. It’s a frustrating process since assistive tech is hard to learn, and there are many accessibility barriers in the digital world. However, it has made me passionate about technology.

So, last year when ChatGPT was soaring in popularity, it was incredibly refreshing to find that it was quite accessible and usable. It helped me overcome many barriers I face with other technologies.

I wanted to share with you some of my most common use cases of ChatGPT that have truly empowered me in my career, creativity, and personal life.

Learning

Most people know that ChatGPT can replace many Google searches, but for me, that is a dramatic swap. Using a screen reader for Google searches and then going through web pages in the search results is a rough process. Most websites aren’t accessible, and it takes a lot of time. Here are some ways ChatGPT helps me learn and replaces Google.?

• Research: Most of the time, instead of going to Google, I ask ChatGPT my question and can get to the answer I am looking for much faster, plus I'm able to ask follow-up questions to learn more.
• Books: Instead of reading an entire book, or to remember a book I read in the past, or see if I want to read a book, I just ask ChatGPT to tell me the main points, then follow up by asking more info on certain points.
• Reading Links: With GPT-4, I paste links to articles I don’t want to read in their entirety and ask it for the main points.
• YouTube Videos: I use a Chrome extension that copies the transcript into ChatGPT, and then I ask it to summarize the video. This is especially helpful for long videos.
• Assistive Tech Tips: When I don’t know a certain shortcut key on my screen reader or how to perform a certain action on my computer, I can troubleshoot much faster with ChatGPT.

Tasks

There are many tasks where I use ChatGPT to significantly cut down the time it would normally take, plus it's less stressful.

• Recipes: I like to tell ChatGPT an idea of what I want to make and the ingredients I want to use. It’s fun to make simple, high-protein foods and make things taste good. Plus, recipe websites are a terrible user experience with a screen reader.
• Shopping: This is something I’d use Google Bard for, but it’s the same idea as ChatGPT. Bard gives me links when I ask for certain gift ideas, helping me more quickly research gifts.
• Documents: I often have to make documents for work that require templates or formatting. I don’t always know the right formatting for certain marketing strategy documents, for example, so I tell ChatGPT the project and ask for an outline and even have it fill it in to get me started.

Content Creation

No, I am not writing this just with ChatGPT…but it is helping me out!

• Editing: I find that editing spelling, grammar, and formatting can be annoying and not super smooth with my assistive tech. I love letting ChatGPT do the first run-through of spell and grammar check.
• Feedback: I find that ChatGPT is quite knowledgeable and kind when giving feedback on content. I can then ask it to make an updated version of my content with my feedback, which is really helpful.
• Generating: Depending on how specific I get with the prompt, sometimes I can get a good rough draft start from ChatGPT, then refine. Getting title ideas is also super helpful. But for most of the content I share, I first do the rough draft.

CustomGPTs

Although ChatGPT knows a lot of stuff, it still has limitations and can’t read your mind. With CustomGPT, you can create different versions of ChatGPT to perform certain actions, know more about certain tasks based on information you give it, and more. This will make more sense with these examples.

• Specific Projects: For certain projects, I will make a CustomGPT and tell it the task I want it to help me with. I’ll give it information about the project or company, if applicable, and provide key links, documents, or text that it needs. So then when I use this GPT, I don’t have to remind it of the context of the task/project. This helps save a lot of time and improves the performance of ChatGPT.
• Other Use Cases: I enjoy the creative writing GPT, accessibility GPTs that can answer technical accessibility questions, assistive tech GPTs for tips and shortcuts, and I continue to explore and build more.

I’m sure I am forgetting some of my favorite ways to use ChatGPT since I am constantly stopping myself before doing an activity and asking myself “how could ChatGPT help here?”.?

All risks of AI aside, there are profound impacts it has had on my life and can have on lives of people with disabilities. I am curious to see what the future will bring to provide even better access to the digital world.?

Let me know if you have any questions or would like to connect about AI’s impact on the disability community and how it could better be developed.?