A couple of years ago, I walked into a classroom kitchen off of De la Vina Street and watched a group of elderly, mostly blind people whip up a batch of delicious beef sopes. It was a brief but memorable taste of the Santa Barbara Braille Institute’s Kitchen Confidence program, which teaches visually impaired people — including many who’ve been able to see most of their lives but lost vision due to diabetes or other conditions — how to continue cooking for themselves. The class, which started up again this month, is both effective and beloved. As one man told me, “This is the beautiful world for blind people.”
The institute’s director, Michael Lazarovits, recently answered a few questions about the program. See brailleinstitute.org for more details.
Why is this program important? Often people think that if they are losing their sight, the kitchen is no longer a place where they can function safely. This dispels that myth. It uses a state-of-the-art kitchen to help people who are blind or visually impaired gain the ability and skills necessary to maintain a healthy diet, prepare nutritious meals, shop for groceries, organize and manage a kitchen, safely use knives, ovens, and other appliances while also learning how to handle kitchen emergencies to avoid injury.