Category: News and Views
Anne Davis, Dallas office manager at the American Foundation for the Blind,
demonstrates a device that will display the text from newspapers and books
on
a television monitor at the blind model home in Dallas.
Dallas model home helps people live with vision loss
By JAMIE STENGLE
Associated Press
DALLAS — For Martha Templeton, a tour through a model home designed to make
life easier for those losing their vision gave her a “wish list” of ideas on
how to cope with her own failing vision.
“I want a talking thermometer for sure,” said the 84-year-old Dallas woman
who has been losing her vision to macular degeneration for three years.
“There’s
just so many things over there. I would take them all if I could.”
While there are magazines showing gadgets that can help people like herself,
she said seeing and touching the items in the model gave her a better idea
of what would work for her.
The model home — which includes a living room, dining area, kitchen,
bedroom, closet and bathroom — offers ideas on how to make daily life more
manageable
for those who are blind or losing their vision.
Lights are placed inside kitchen cabinets to make the contents more visible,
a knife is affixed to a cutting board for safety and another device tells
you
when a cup is filled to capacity.
“It’s about giving people new ways to do very familiar tasks,” said Kelly
Parisi, vice president of communications for the American Foundation for the
Blind,
which operates the model. The Dallas home is the first of its kind sponsored
by the New York-based nonprofit foundation.
*
Offerings range from the simple — placing a light directly over a notepad —
to the high-tech — a device that tells you what color clothing you are
wearing.
The foundation doesn’t sell the various gadgets, but lets visitors know
where to purchase them.
One idea Templeton plans to implement is marking her back steps with tape in
anticipation of her eyesight degenerating further.
“All these little helps are so wonderful,” said Templeton, who can’t see to
read and has given up driving.
Since the model opened in March, visitors have included retirement center
administrators and architects hoping to make facilities friendlier to those
with
impaired vision, foundation officials said.
“The goal is to help people function as independently as possible,” said
Judy Scott, director of the foundation’s Center on Vision Loss in Dallas.
The model home, which has already had hundreds of visitors since opening for
tours, will hold it’s grand opening Oct. 27.
Scott said those who go through the model home are often heartened that many
of the changes they can make are simple, like changing the color of
placemats
on a dining table to contrast with the plate.
“People will say things like ’I can go home and make this change tonight,”’
Scott said.
Reasons for vision loss as people age include macular degeneration, which
affects central vision; glaucoma, which affects peripheral vision; diabetic
retinopathy,
which distorts vision; and cataracts, which makes vision cloudy.
There are currently about 10 million blind or visually impaired people in
the U.S., and foundation officials say those numbers are expected to soar as
the
population ages.
“The chief cause of eye problems is simply in one word: age,” said Dr. H.
Dwight Cavanagh, professor of ophthalmology at UT Southwestern who is also
on
the board of the American Foundation for the Blind.
Dr. Lylas Mogk, director of the visual rehabilitation and research center of
the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, said the visually impaired
population
has shifted over the past several decades. In the 1950s, injured soldiers
and children suffering from disease made up the bulk of cases, she said.
Today,
it is the elderly.
“All of the organizations are working on incorporating this group of people
into their whole dynamic,” Mogk said.
Mogk, chair of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s vision rehabilitation
committee, is part of the academy’s task force to get more information to
ophthalmologists
about helping patients deal with vision loss.
While touring the model home, Nancy Shugart discovered a simple item that
made her 90-year-old mother, whose vision has been damaged by glaucoma, more
independent:
a dome magnifier that allowed her to read mail.
“The first thing out of her mouth was ’I can’t believe how easy it is to
see,”’ said Shugart, 49, of Austin, who toured the center as a member of the
Texas
Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities.
Even Shugart, who has been visually impaired since she was 8, said she
learned a few things on her trip through the model.
“It was fun to see all the gadgets,” Shugart said.
Thanks for posting this Carla. I found it very interesting and wish more cities would have something like this. I copied and pasted the article into an e-mail which I sent to the director of the rehab agency I work for. You helped me score some brownie points. LOL