Penelope wrote:Wow.....Coffee.....
And there's me waffling about my bloody hair!!!!!
However...I am interested in how you cope with your condition.
How can you read the computer screen? Is there some kind of braille mechanism or a speech facility? Is the text written extra large?
How wonderful that you can do this.....
I hope you don't mind my asking.... but if you do mind.....please just ignore me.
Pen x
Oh of course I don't mind you asking! It's completely fine
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This may be long so brace yourself
I am not totally blind but am classified as being legally blind, meaning I fall into the category of having a severe visual impairment (I think there is a specific range of vision you need to fall into, but I am not sure of the numbers). So I still have some vision. My condition is stable and will only really deteriorate with old age, so it's not one of those conditions where you slowly go totally blind. I'm lucky in that respect.
As I still have some sight, I was never taught braille. They tend to make kids use their sight if they can, and will only teach someone braille if they are blind or going blind. I would like to learn, but I think as an adult it could be challenging.
For accessing computers I use zoomtext, which is a screen reader and magnification program. It can read to you out loud as well as magnify up to 30 x. These days you can get almost normal sounding voices (in fact I have one with an Aussie accent) to read to you. Here is a youtube video which gives a zoomtext demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmcUsd-eZ0Q
Reading a book is challenging for me at times. While I can physically read normal print, if I read it for too long I get eyestrain (sore eyes/headache which then leads to nausea). Audio books are okay but can be expensive at times and so can large print books (which is appalling by the way!). My main method is to buy a book, scan page by page with OCR software and then convert it all into a word or PDF document and have zoomtext read it out loud. This is time consuming, but worth it in the end.
It's wonderful having access to such wonderful technology, the unfortunate thing is that adaptive technology is often very pricey and there is not a lot of funding to help people. It takes a long time to save up when on disability benefits. I hope to go into a graduate entry social work degree next year (I will finish my undergrad degree in communications in november) so that I can work in the disability sector and hopefully advocate for more support for people with impairments.
Anyway, I am rambling! I hope you've found this helpful. Feel free to ask anything else if you think of it
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