Technology continues improving life for the blind
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Dennis James lost his vision in a car wreck in 2000. If something startles him, he might see a burst of starlight in his right eye.
He has 43 years of vision to rely on, a resource he uses all the time. But he has had to relearn how to do almost everything.
Thanks to swift advances in technology, there have never been so many options for the blind and visually impaired to live independently. Mr. James didn’t find it necessary to learn Braille in midlife because he has software that prompts his computer to talk to him.
“The joke that there’s an app for that is true,” said Art Rizzino, an instructor of technology at Blind & Vision Rehabilitation Services in Uptown. “And they’re constantly improving.”
Each year, 75,000 more people will swell the ranks of an estimated 10 million who are legally blind or vision impaired in the United States, according to the National Federation of the Blind.
BVRS works with 1,200 each year. Eleven residential units on site give newly blind people eight to 12 weeks of supervision while adjusting their living skills to become independent. Besides learning how to use technology, they get a battery of instruction and therapy in every aspect of movement and function, learning techniques that call on other senses.
Clients include young people born blind, older people with vision in decline and people who lost vision due to events, such as Mr. James’ accident and Sharlene Hayes’ strokes.
Ms. Hayes, of Wilkinsburg, was a cook at Carnegie Mellon University before a series of strokes in 2015.
“I have what they call an optical cut,” she said. “I see things in pieces, like a Picasso painting.”
The letters on most consumer items are too small, so with instructor Martha Burgoon, she is getting a feel for the variety of labels to choose from.
In the year and two months between her vision loss and her first session at BVRS in November, she said, “I sat in my house afraid to come out. My doctors advised me to come here, but it took that long. Oh yeah, I was in denial, suicidal, depressed.”
Some days, she thought her vision might be coming back. “The sun would hit something” and the reflection would put the pieces of the Picasso painting together for a moment. “The