Blind to the World, Clear in Her Vision
Despite losing her eyesight at seventeen and living with multiple physical disabilities since infancy, Dr. Shirley Cheng became an award-winning author of ten books, a Bible teacher to students across the globe, and the founder of a ministry that serves both the spiritual and physical needs of people in eight countries - and counting.
There is a version of the inspirational figure the world trains us to expect: someone who overcomes a single obstacle, writes a book about it, and calls it a life. Dr. Shirley Cheng arrived from an entirely different direction. She came through years of childhood hospitalization that kept her from any schooling until age eleven, through the loss of her eyesight at seventeen, through the painstaking work of teaching herself to read, write, publish, and build a website - all without the ability to see a single character on the screen. The ministry she runs today, Ultra-Ability.com Ministry, is where every one of those threads converges into a single, purposeful whole.
The credentials behind that work are not decorative. Dr. Cheng is an ordained minister, a licensed chaplain, a Bible teacher, a motivational speaker, a poet, and an award-winning author of ten books that have collectively earned twenty-seven book awards. She has contributed to more than twenty-five additional books and edited another. She types at approximately sixty-five words per minute using only her two index fingers, guided by Jaws screen-reading software. She designed, formatted, and published her own manuscripts and built and maintains her own website, www.ShirleyCheng.com, entirely without eyesight. None of it was handed to her, and none of it was inevitable. It was built, one deliberate choice at a time, out of a conviction that her limitations were hers to limit.
Her platform, Ultra-Ability.com Ministry, is the structure through which she has organized that conviction. It operates on two tracks simultaneously: spiritually, she teaches the Bible in depth - from Genesis to Revelation - to anyone with an internet connection, and offers Christian counseling; physically, she directs Unite in Love, the humanitarian wing of her ministry, which she founded on May 21, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. What began as a short-term effort to help Bible students in developing countries weather the lockdowns has since grown into an ongoing operation that has served more than sixty families and individuals across eight countries.
The proudest achievement that is not on any certificate
In 2008, a reporter interviewing Dr. Cheng for a newspaper feature asked her what she was most proud of. The question sent a rapid inventory of accomplishments through her mind: mastering grade level after approximately 180 days of school attendance; earning "Student of the Year" in sixth grade and "Student of the Month" in seventh grade; receiving a standing ovation for a student body vice president platform speech in ninth grade; completing her GED - including mathematical calculations, graphs, and an essay - without eyesight or Braille and scoring an exceptional 3,280, for which she received a special recognition award; winning her twenty-seventh book award at age twenty-seven; earning her Doctor of Divinity; and being ordained as a Kingdom minister.
Her answer surprised the reporter, and it remains unchanged today. The achievement she is proudest of is not any of those things. It is simply this: that she is happy with her life. Being content, she has explained, does not mean she enjoys being unable to see or walk. She does not sugarcoat her challenges - she faces them every waking moment, and some are quite difficult to endure. But contentment, in her framing, is about making the most of what she has, counting her blessings, and looking past adversity to find happiness. It is a distinction she draws carefully and lives by deliberately.
The source of that contentment, she has said, is her relationship with Yahweh God. She describes it as her ultimate secret to joy: a sacred relationship with her Heavenly Father that she regards as the one possession no circumstance can remove. Her motto - "I'm not disabled, I'm ultra-abled through the power of God" - is not a slogan. It is the organizing principle of her entire life and ministry.
From no schooling at eleven to twenty-seven book awards
Dr. Cheng's formal education did not begin until age eleven, when years of hospitalization for severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis - which has affected her body since infancy - finally stabilized enough to allow it. At that point, she knew only her ABCs and very basic English, and she was placed in a special education class in elementary school. What happened next is a testament to the intensity of her self-directed drive: after approximately 180 days of attendance, she had mastered grade level and moved directly into regular sixth grade in middle school.
She absorbed everything taught in class and mostly taught herself to read, working through books with the hunger she later compared to Cookie Monster and chocolate chip cookies - always wanting more. The academic awards followed quickly: "Student of the Year" in sixth grade, "Student of the Month" in seventh grade, an excellence award for earning the highest grade of 97 in Earth science in eighth grade, and three wins in the National Reflections Program in the visual arts. She also contributed to her high school newspaper as an artist before losing her eyesight.
She became an author at age twenty, completing three books within her first year of writing. Since 2011, she has been teaching the Bible in depth, one-on-one, to students from around the world, and has written five volumes of expository lessons and tests over seven years. Her books have earned awards including a Gold from the 2010 Mom's Choice Awards in Religion/Spirituality for "Do You Love Jehovah?", a Silver from the 2009 Mom's Choice Awards in Inspirational/Motivational for "Waking Spirit," and the Avatar Award for Spiritual Excellence in Literature in 2008, among many others.
A pandemic pivot that became a permanent mission
When Dr. Cheng founded Unite in Love on May 21, 2020, she expected it to be a temporary response to the COVID-19 lockdowns - a way to help her brethren and Bible students in developing countries get through an acute crisis. As life gradually returned to normal, she found she could not walk away from what she had seen. The ongoing causes - education for school children and university students, business startups for single mothers, life-saving medical care for diseases from tuberculosis to malaria, sustainable home farming - were not temporary problems. They were structural ones that large international charities were not reaching.
Unite in Love fills a specific gap. The families it supports are not displaced by conflict or natural disaster - the populations served by large organizations like Samaritan's Purse or the World Food Program. They are average families struggling to survive due to health crises or poor economies, in regions with no government assistance, no unemployment benefits, and no food banks. A love gift of five to fifteen dollars, Dr. Cheng has noted, can provide life-saving malaria treatment. Approximately twenty-five dollars can supply a family with a month of basic food. Every gift goes directly to the family or individual, with no overhead costs such as staff salaries or advertising.
The impact to date includes funding a medical student's continued enrollment in college, keeping three children in primary school, preventing the eviction of several families with young children, funding the construction of a hut and a rain-harvesting tank system for a single mother and her children, and providing a wheelchair and a walker. Dr. Cheng is personally involved in every dimension of the work - teaching, counseling, fundraising, directing funds, and even reviewing hospital reports and communicating with doctors on behalf of the people she serves, using AI tools such as Gemini to read scanned documents that her screen reader cannot process.
A leadership philosophy rooted in love, values, and faith
Dr. Cheng's philosophy of leadership begins not with strategy but with personhood. She has argued that what comes before a successful businessperson, doctor, or teacher is a successful human being - and that building such a person requires three foundational elements: core values, gratitude, and faith. Values, in her framework, are not aspirational posters on a wall. They are the basis on which every decision is made, and they are the one possession that cannot be taken away unless a person surrenders them voluntarily.
On the question of what separates great leaders from average ones, her answer is equally direct: love. She points to the apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians - what she calls the "love chapter" - as the clearest articulation of what makes or breaks a life of service. Without love, she has said, no skill, talent, or knowledge can be put to its best use. A leader who possesses truth but delivers it without love may win an argument and lose the person. Building people up, she argues, is one essential purpose of leadership, and love is the only force that makes it possible.
Her advice to aspiring professionals draws directly from the Scriptures she teaches: seize every opportunity to learn without waiting for perfect conditions; be receptive to constructive criticism as a path to wisdom; take lessons from the diligence of nature; listen before speaking; embrace humility as the doorway to knowledge; learn from mistakes rather than repeating them; and seek the counsel of those with more experience. These are not abstract principles for Dr. Cheng - they are the rules she has applied to her own life as a blind author, Bible teacher, and humanitarian operating across eight countries from her home in New York.
What she is building next
Dr. Cheng's stated dream is to build a large nonprofit organization capable of helping people meet their needs so they can, in turn, meet the needs of others in their own communities. She has spoken of wanting to help people off the streets - boys out of gang life, girls out of exploitation - so they can become beacons to others around them. She describes this as a prayer she holds alongside her ongoing work.
In the nearer term, her goals through Unite in Love include sponsoring school children and university students for quality education, funding business startups so people can build up their communities, and covering life-saving medical procedures. She intends to continue teaching the Bible and offering biblical guidance as a chaplain and teacher, maintaining what she describes as a holistic ministry that serves both spirit and body. She defines true success not by awards or academic credentials - which she regards as paper and ink, able to be burned in minutes - but by what is permanent: longsuffering love, unconditional gratitude, unwavering faith, and godly values. These, she has said, are what enable a person to achieve true success and happiness while leaving a legacy.
What motivates her to keep growing, she has explained, is her desire to fulfill the purpose for which she believes her Heavenly Father created her. She does not want to live outside His will, because she is convinced that His will is the best for her and for the people she serves. Only within that sphere, she has said, can she realize her maximum potential and serve humanity as fully as possible.
This profile is reported from publicly available information and materials provided by Shirley Cheng. Nothing in this article is presented as a quotation unless it appears in quotation marks with attribution.