We are parents supporting other parents.
These are a few resources that we have found helpful:
Blind/Low Vision:
Empowering Youth with Visual Impairment (Empower VI)
The goal of EMPOWER is to equip transition-aged students with visual impairment living in rural communities, their families, and the transition professionals who serve them with the virtual supports to improve postsecondary education and employment outcomes.
Deaf/Hard of Hearing:
The mission of TN Hands & Voices is to support families and their children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, as well as professionals serving them, without bias around communication modes or methodology. TN Hands & Voices is led by parents who have firsthand experience with raising children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Specifically, they aim to ensure that children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing have every opportunity to achieve their full potential and have access to all services appropriate to their needs.
Follow them on Facebook for more information: https://www.facebook.com/tnhandsandvoices/
Bridges for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing
Bridges for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing was founded in 1927 by Margaret Lane Washington. After learning she was losing her hearing, this young, Middle Tennessee mother, with no services available to her locally, moved to Washington, D.C. where she became a certified lip reading teacher. In 1927, she taught her first speech reading class at the Watkins Institute in downtown Nashville. That first class of thirteen students was the genesis of Bridges for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and Ms. Washington remained involved with BridgesDHH until her death in 1991, seeing the organization evolve through different names and services. Today, we are a comprehensive service organization with programs and services for birth through senior years.
With three offices, BridgesTN (Nashville), BridgesEAST (Johnson City), and BridgesWEST (Memphis), BridgesDHH serves Tennessee, northern Alabama, southern Kentucky, and parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Virginia, and North Carolina. We serve D/deaf, Deaf-Blind, and hard of hearing individuals and hearing families and allies in these areas, providing education, outreach, case management, interpreting services, and more–always striving for a vibrant community of equality, access, opportunity, and self realization, a community in which all are welcomed and valued.
Library Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Library Services for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing is a statewide special library dedicated to meeting the information and accessibility needs of the deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind communities, as well as meeting the information needs about hearing loss to all Tennesseans.
We have also added additional pages of resources organized by benefit programs, education, Katie Beckett, and the Tennessee Disability Pathfinder program.