In this special episode, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson sit down for a conversation TJ has been holding back for months. She joined a gene therapy clinical trial for retinitis pigmentosa in February 2024 expecting a single injection. Instead the trial kept evolving, and somewhere along the way it started to work. Her central vision is clearer. Her field is starting to widen. She can see her hands beside her head, and she has stepped back into the hospital career it once crushed her to give up. She still walks into the occasional wall and says so herself. There is no guarantee the injections continue, no guarantee the vision stays, and no handbook for any of it.

Nobody warned her about the questions that come next. What do you tell Social Security when you no longer fit the box you fought so hard to get into? Which box do you fit in yourself when you are not fully sighted and no longer the blind person you learned to be? What happens to the services you let go of if you need them again in six months? Murray brings his own history of getting vision back and losing it again, and together they lay out what anyone considering a clinical trial needs to weigh before they sign, including the possibility that it works. TJ closes by asking the community how you cope with the highs and lows, because she could be back in those shoes in two months. They told me I can’t, so I’m proving them wrong.

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 1 of Season 2 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson are back from the summer break with a fresh format and a guest who was there before the hashtag had a podcast, original BlindTok creator Ruby Red. Ruby's story starts at seventeen, with a licence in her pocket, graduation weeks away and a diagnosis nobody could put a timeline on. What follows is not a story about losing sight. It is a story about what you do when the whole shape of your life changes at once, and about the moment a cane stops being something you carry and starts being something you trust.

That question, what happens if you go blind while everything around you keeps changing, runs through the entire episode. Murray, Tammy and Ruby trade hard-won lessons on mobility, on training that builds real confidence, and on why the road in your head matters as much as the one under your feet. Then the new season format opens the floor to the topics BlindTok can't stop talking about, from a taxi with no steering wheel to a ballot you can't read to the services you were promised and what it takes to get them back. Ruby has been away for a while, and her reasons for coming back may be the most honest thing in the episode. They told her she can't. She is proving them wrong.

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 15 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson close out Season 1 alongside Torbit, a former firefighter from Virginia who found the BlindTok community while learning to live with retinitis pigmentosa. His story runs from the firehouse he'd dreamed about since he was sixteen to the exam chair where one doctor delivered life-altering news with all the warmth of a parking ticket. What comes after is the part worth showing up for: the slow, stubborn, deeply human work of building a life that vision loss could not erase.

Expect real talk about acceptance arriving in stages, the freedom of a white cane and a very good yellow Lab, and all the careers and possibilities people are wrongly told are off the table. Expect plenty of laughs too, from firefighter flirting to a guide dog reveal worthy of a delivery room. Three people who refuse to shrink trade survival strategies, take a few friendly shots at each other, and land on a question that outlasts the episode: when life deals you a hand you didn't ask for, how are you going to play it?

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YX309dTSqdK3yuR5yrDEj?si=bcba7e7545614ef5
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blindtok-podcasts/id1896888033
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c8ac6bf4-9d3c-4fd0-afee-21d53483b734/blindtok-podcasts

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

n Episode 14 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson welcome Mark Slavin, the relentlessly upbeat creator behind BlindTok's Mr. Blue Skies. Mark's eyesight started slipping at twelve, but a tidy nearsightedness label sent everyone home happy and kept the real story buried for years. He caught footballs by sound, played every sport his school had, and trusted his body to quietly cover for him, right up until it couldn't. When the real diagnosis finally arrived, delivered with roughly the warmth of a parking ticket, he made a call plenty of us would understand: nobody was ever going to know. What follows is a long stretch of denial, a cure hunt that carried him much further than he ever expected, and a wake-up call you don't get to ignore twice.
From there it becomes a story about clawing back up, about the one thing that can haul you out of the dark at your lowest point, and about building a life out of music, mentorship, and good vibes shared a minute at a time. But the three of them go where most positivity accounts won't: the bad days, the grief that keeps no schedule, and the small wounds that sneak in from even the people who love you most. Expect a refreshingly honest take on faith, a neighbor who had no idea canes work indoors, and one disarmingly simple answer for anyone offering to fix Mark's eyes. It is funny, it is real, and it lands on something worth hearing more than once: you are never in this alone.

You can also stream this podcast on other platforms:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7I70Od8DprNx5nZXpJTyNM
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-blue-skies-journey-blindtok-e-14/id1896888033?i=1000773461316

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 13 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson welcome their first-ever international guest, Joe, joining from across the pond after a friendly squabble over whether a well-traveled American could fairly claim the title first. Joe takes the gang back to an inherited eye condition that showed up early and moved fast, a year-long misdiagnosis that landed harder on her family than on her, and the odd limbo of being a teenager stuck between the print world and the Braille world while fitting neatly into neither. There is real warmth and plenty of humour here, sitting right alongside a stretch so low that many listeners will recognise it from their own story.

Then the turning points arrive, and Joe's energy lifts right off the page, from the guide dog harness that finally made her feel unstoppable to a career spent meeting newly diagnosed patients on their hardest day and pointing them somewhere better. Expect spirited talk about masking, self-advocacy and a recent clash over her guide dog that lit a fire she has no plans to put out, plus a gloriously free glide across an empty ice rink, a partner forever shoving a phone at full brightness into her face, and Tammy and Murray swapping notes on cruises, nervous spouses and shocking luck at the baseball. By the end, Joe's take on sight loss, that it is not the end of the road but a different way of travelling it, lands with the quiet force of someone who is only just getting started.

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 12 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourn and Tammy Jackson sit down with Anna for one of the most candid journeys the show has hosted, beginning with a diagnosis nobody saw coming. Picture a fourteen-year-old soccer player who wears glasses only for the projector, until a routine eye appointment refuses to add up, no matter how many lenses get flipped in front of her. What followed was a Stargardt's diagnosis, a dad doing late-night research on a pre-TikTok internet that served up nothing but doom, and a teenager who decided this was firmly a tomorrow problem. Anna walks through years of quiet denial, a personal classroom TV monitor she insists was just a perk of being a gifted student, and parents who landed somewhere between bubble wrap and a plane ticket to Europe.

College comes next, with accommodations, a marketing degree, and a leap into the high-stakes world of corporate consulting, where the question of when, or whether, to tell an employer about vision loss gets very real. Anna shares the kind of first-day-on-the-job moment that makes your whole body cringe, the Mac versus Windows reckoning so many people hit the second they leave school, and the bigger question of what changes when you stop hiding and start asking for what you need. Murray and Tammy fold in genuinely useful ground too, from vocational rehabilitation agencies that quietly cover tuition and equipment to the assistive tech worth learning before you need it. There is laughter throughout, including a sideways-shirt situation the hosts are openly inviting you to roast. It is a story about denial, independence, and what it really costs, and gives back, to finally say the thing out loud.

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 11 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson sit down with special guest [Janelle's last name], a former collegiate softball pitcher and occupational therapist living with Stargardt's disease, for a conversation that moves between heartbreak and hard-won clarity in a way that only this community seems to pull off. Janelle takes the hosts back to the moment everything changed: a routine eye appointment, six yellow spots on her retinas, a diagnosis delivered at speed, and a drive home that ended with Google and a whole lot of fear. She walks through the four months that took her from 20/40 vision to legally blind, a well-intentioned trip to Arizona that made things significantly worse thanks to a treatment she had no reason to question, and the surreal experience of returning to her college campus for senior year knowing she couldn't drive anymore and figuring out, one neighbor at a time, how to keep going anyway.

What makes this episode land isn't just the story, it's the way Janelle tells it, with a warmth and self-awareness that makes even the toughest moments feel like something you can sit with. She talks about laying in center field staring at clouds, quietly counting down the sights she wasn't ready to lose, balancing a psychology degree with therapy sessions about fears she hadn't yet lived through, and eventually building a life that includes a husband of 14 years who tried to sell her on the word "chauffeur" and somehow got away with it. From the softball diamond to occupational therapy school to running five businesses, Janelle's story is a portrait of a person who kept making decisions under uncertainty and figuring out the rest on the fly, which turns out to be exactly what blindness and low vision sometimes demand.

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.

In Episode 10 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson welcome Joey [LAST NAME — unconfirmed], the show's first male guest, who happily jokes about finally evening out a panel that had left him pleasantly outnumbered. Joey takes us back to the early signs he couldn't yet explain, a high school stretch when the textbooks quietly slipped out of focus, and a driving test that asked far more of him than anyone in the room realized. When the diagnosis finally landed, it arrived in words no teenager wants to hear, and Joey speaks with disarming honesty about the anger that came next and the long season where giving up felt easier than holding on.

The heart of the episode lives in what carried him forward, from a best friend who quietly nudged the couch closer to the big screen to the slow, humbling practice of asking for help. Murray and Tammy fold in their own chapters too, weighing small town isolation against the independence a bigger city can hand back, and tracing the tender, complicated choices parents make when a condition might pass to a child. There's a golf cart, an electric scooter, a young son who reaches for his dad's hand at every crossing, and a real, hard won sense that the road ahead, with the technology now arriving, may be brighter than any of them once let themselves believe.

Other Resources
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murrayaelbourn/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@murrayamerability?_r=1&_t=ZP-97LlF79lgCN
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-elbourn-69576543?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Amerability Website: https: https://www.amerability.com/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Amerability

About Amerability:
Amerability was born from a simple but powerful idea: that blind and low vision individuals deserve more than support — they deserve the tools, mentorship, and real-world experiences to build lives on their own terms. Founded by CEO Murray Elbourn, a legally blind leader with more than 25 years of executive experience in disability sports and workforce development across two continents, Amerability combines lived experience with professional expertise to create programs that don't just prepare participants for the world — they prove the world is already theirs to conquer. Murray's journey from captaining Australia's national goalball team and leading Disability Sports Australia as CEO to founding Amerability in the United States gave him a firsthand understanding of what blind and low vision individuals truly need to succeed: not sympathy, but strategy, structure, and someone who has walked the path before them. That philosophy is woven into everything Amerability does, from the way programs are designed to the mentors who deliver them, ensuring that every participant is met with high expectations, practical guidance, and the unwavering belief that their goals are within reach.