Couverture de Dining With Donna Podcast: Interview with Debra Erickson, Founder, The Blind Kitchen

Dining With Donna Podcast: Interview with Debra Erickson, Founder, The Blind Kitchen

Dining With Donna Podcast: Interview with Debra Erickson, Founder, The Blind Kitchen

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 🎙️ Dining With Donna Podcast: Interview with Debra Erickson, Founder, The Blind Kitchen | Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA https://donnajodhan.com/dwd-02-17-2026/ In this inspiring episode of Dining With Donna, Donna J. Jodhan welcomes Debra Erickson, founder of The Blind Kitchen, for a candid conversation about vision loss, resilience, and reclaiming confidence in the kitchen. Debra shares her journey from a shocking diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa at age 28 to learning essential blindness skills and fully embracing her identity, while Donna connects through her own experience of having to re-learn cooking without relying on sight. Together, they explore Debra's core message: vision loss does not have to end your love of cooking, and with the right support, techniques, and mindset, fear can be replaced with competence and joy. Debra explains how her frustrations with inaccessible online cooking content, especially videos that offered no useful description, pushed her to build The Blind Kitchen as a structured, one-stop teaching hub with extensive audio-described instructional resources. She and Donna dig into practical, immediately usable strategies: setting up a clean, predictable work area (trays, a scraps bowl, and a "parked" spot for sharp tools), preventing cross-contamination with warm soapy sink water, and adopting family-friendly safety systems like a dedicated sharps basket. Debra highlights favorite tools that replace visual cues with sound and touch (like a boil-alert disc and auto-measuring spout), plus methods for labeling and identification from low-tech (rubber bands) to higher-tech options (Be My Eyes, Aira, Meta smart glasses). The episode closes with a forward-looking note as Debra shares her hope to build more community and connection through cook-alongs and shared learning, so no one has to navigate blind cooking alone. TRANSCRIPT Advertisement: This podcast brought to you by Pneuma Solutions. Advertisement: I can't see it. Advertisement: ADA Title II has a real compliance deadline. April 2026. Public entities are required to make their digital content accessible, including websites, PDFs, reports, applications, and public records. If a document cannot be read with a screen reader, it is not compliant and if it is not compliant, blind people are still being denied equal access. For a clear explanation of what the rule requires, visit www.title2.info. It's one of the leading resources explaining what agencies must do and when. This message is brought to you by Pneuma Solutions, we have remediated hundreds of thousands of pages in days, not months or years, aligned with WCAG 2 AA guidelines at a fraction of traditional costs. Accessibility isn't a privilege, it's a right. Now that you know, ask your agencies a simple question, are your documents actually accessible? Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Dining with Donna, the podcast where we make cooking approachable, enjoyable, and accessible to everyone. I'm your host, Donna Jordan, and I am inviting you into my kitchen today to explore step by step recipes, smart kitchen hacks, and more meal ideas that fit real life. Whether you are cooking on a budget, planning a busy weeknight dinner, or preparing something special for family and friends, will focus on cooking with confidence without relying on sight, using sound, touch, aroma and simple tools that keep you safe and in control. So grab your apron, bring your curiosity, and let's get cooking. Debra Ericksen it is my privilege and my pleasure to welcome you to my podcast. Debra Erickson: Well, thank you for the kind introduction. I'm very excited to be here and to have this conversation with you. Donna J. Jodhan, LLB, ACSP, MBA: Great. So let's get started, Debra, for listeners who are meeting you for the very first time, can you share your story of vision loss when you first notice symptoms when you were diagnosed and what that transition was like for you personally and professionally. Debra Erickson: Well, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when I was 28, and I had just gone to the eye doctor to get a pair of glasses because I had astigmatism, a mild one since I was a child. Yeah. And when he looked in my eyes and said, I think you have an eye disease, and I want you to see a specialist, I couldn't have been more shocked. There was no history of vision loss in either side of my family. And I'm one of 12 children and there was absolutely no, no history. So I ended up going and it was confirmed. So my parents were recessive gene carriers, but I had no symptoms that I was aware of. Of course I had decreased peripheral vision and I had I knew I couldn't see very well in the dark, but how much can another person see in the dark? So I had no suspicion at all that I had a serious eye disease. And so, like many people who have RP, some people call it resistant people. That's what RP stands for. I tried to fake it as long as I ...
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