Keeping Up With the Cool Kids (and Technology)

It is rough hanging with the cool kids when you are visually impaired!

Texts, emojis, and emoticons

All my friends text. They use those emoticons and emojis that you can find “under” the smiley face key. They punctuate all of their statements with little hearts and expressive faces.

That is great for them. I want to be a cool kid and use them too. The problem is the icon things are so small! Half of the time I am trying for a friendly, smiling face and I get something totally different.

I don’t want people to think I am laughing in derision 🤣 or I find them so amusing I have tears running down my face 😂. Just the same, those might be the emojis sent. They are right next to the warm, friendly guys and I have been known to make mistakes.

My mascot

My personal mascot is this guy: 🤓 I find him nerdy, goofy, and maybe a little lovable. In my mind, just like me. He also has vision problems. Just like me. He is good for poking fun at myself.

Bitmojis

The problem is my little mascot is not good enough to communicate with my friends anymore. Several months back, all my friends started using Bitmojis. For the uninformed - like me - Bitmojis are caricatures of yourself. They are little, cartoon avatars that you attach to texts and emails. They do all sorts of cool things like drive convertibles and decorate Christmas trees. They are cool toys for cool kids.

After months of resisting my desire to be a cool kid, too, I finally gave in. I decided I would try to make a little, cartoon Sue to go in my messages.

Easier said than done

Unfortunately, it is easier to say you want to be a cool kid with your own Bitmoji than to actually BE a cool kid with your own Bitmoji. It seems doing this is something else that takes good vision.

I found the app in the App Store. I downloaded it, So far, so good.

Creating my avatar

The next step was creating my avatar to resemble me. This is where I ran into problems... Skin tone, hair length, hairstyle... I had a dozen or more options for each and they were SMALL. I really could not see them well enough to be sure I had picked a good one even though I have a pretty good idea about those things about me.

Other things were harder. What does my nose look like? What is the shape of my eyebrows? I don’t know!

I don’t make a habit of looking at my nose. Or my eyebrows, for that matter. Even going to the mirror to look would not be that helpful. I just don’t see the noses on the nose menu very well. And how are the eyebrows on the eyebrow menu different? They are hard to make out.

Visual impairments and staying in the cool crowd

This trying to be a cool kid IS rough! I have a Bitmoji Sue put together, but I am not sure she looks muck like me. The whole idea is to have a mini-me that other cool kids will recognize as you; you know. I might ask my husband for help, but I am half afraid to see what he would put together. (Also, he would probably laugh at me. He never wanted to be a cool kid.)

Visual impairment can make hanging with the cool kids really rough, but I don’t want to be left out.