The View from Down Here

Where do you want to roll today? Accessible travel writer, explorer, and photographer Sylvia Longmire asks herself this question every day as she lives her very active life from the vantage point of a power wheelchair. Despite having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2005 and being completely unable to walk, she refuses to let that slow her down. With her sense of adventure and camera in hand, she and her electric scooter have set out to see what the world has to offer while her body still lets her. In most cases, it's impossible to truly walk in someone else's shoes. But in The View from Down Here, you can finally see the world through the eyes of a wheelchair user. From the glaciers of Iceland to the ancient ruins of Greece, you'll be amazed at what a person with a physical disability can observe and experience today, despite all the obstacles that still remain. She has captured all the raw emotion of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the soothing sounds of crashing waves in Crete, and the patience of an elderly accordion player waiting for tips in Ljubljana. After absorbing Sylvia's stunning images from across the globe, you'll want to know how you can get there, too. Sylvia became a full-time power wheelchair user in 2014, and while she traveled extensively prior to her diagnosis, she only started traveling internationally with her electric scooter in 2016. Refusing to wait for someone to be available to accompany her, Sylvia usually travels the world alone. She has documented several of her wheelchair accessible destinations in vivid photographic detail in The View from Down Here, and also writes about their wheelchair accessibility in her travel blog, Spin the Globe.