gopro

We are delighted to publish our latest article to our Photo Education & Accessibility.There are many photographers and artists with special needs, whether this relates to visual issues even bordering on blindness (yes it’s true), to deafness (something that I have) to many other difficulties that people experience, these include mental health issues, physical issues and more. We want to ensure that whatever your difficulty you can still enjoy photography and art, it’s so therapeutic.

Our Photo Education & Accessibility Editor, Luis Perez is an Apple Distinguished Educator whose work focuses on accessibility and inclusive design. He received his doctorate in special education from the University of South Florida in 2013 and is the author of Mobile Learning for All from Corwin Press. His work has appeared in THE Journal, The Loop Magazine, and the New York Times Bits Blog.

Luis is also partially sighted and ironically he turned to photography as a result of his vision loss. This is what we are embracing, we want to help you to enjoy photography and art and to ensure you are able to access it with all the knowledge we can provide.

This time Luis takes a look at the GoPro cameras for people with disabilities, it’s such an uplifting article, please enjoy…over to you Luis (foreword by Joanne Carter).

“As many of you who follow me online know, I am very passionate about photography and the possibilities it presents to us as people with disabilities to tell our own stories and exercise our creativity. I love to use my iPhone to take photos because it incorporates so many accessibility features that help me with my photography, such as Zoom, VoiceOver and Invert Colors. However, I am always looking for new options to expand my photographic horizons and the GoPro action camera is one such option that has fascinated me for some time. I believe that just because you have a disability it doesn’t mean you should not be able to ski, sky dive, or do anything else you set your mind to doing, and the GoPro has become the go-to camera when it comes to action sports and an active lifestyle.

I started out with the  least expensive option in the GoPro lineup, the new entry-level Hero which retails for $129.  However, after about a week with the camera, I returned it and opted for the older Hero 3 white model, which is think is a better fit for my needs. The new entry-level Hero has a number of shortcomings due to its low price and limited feature set. However, if you’re an educator looking for an inexpensive camera for recording classroom activities (science experiments, plays and performances, etc) this is a nice camera and there are ways to get around its limitations…”