South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
It’s hard to distance when you can’t see 6 feet
Visually impaired facing new hurdles in pandemic world
LOS ANGELES — Will Butler breezed through the entrance of the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s, bypassing a small line of shoppers waiting to get in. An employee monitoring access said nothing as Butler swept a red-tipped white cane to find his way inside.
Butler had no idea he’d cut in front.
“How would I find the line?” the legally blind 31-year-old asked.
This time, there were no problems, but that’s not always the case. On Sundays, “when the line is super long and everyone’s like really scared and grumpy, no one will offer any help,” he said. On those days, Butler makes his way to the back of the queue, trying to maintain a socially distanced space without being able to see it.
Like so many challenges wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, grocery store lines are just one of the new impediments thrown, literally, into the way of the visually impaired.
Those in the blind and low-vision community have long faced challenges now synonymous with the pandemic: social isolation, mobility limitations, classroom dynamics that are less than ideal. But the crisis has exacerbated those problems.
Friends aren’t volunteering as many favors. Sighted strangers who may have previously lent a hand are more skittish to approach. Visually impaired children who learned daily tasks with a hand to guide their own are now relying on exhaustive verbal descriptions over video chats. And public transportation and ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft — lifelines for those who can’t drive or live alone — now pose potential health risks.
“Everybody’s feeling kind of shut in right now and out of touch with people, but we already have that isolation. So for us, it just has deepened even more,” said Diane Wilkinson, 56, who has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative retinal disease.
Visual cues during the pandemic are difficult to navigate for those who can’t see. It is impossible to tell whether someone is 6 feet away or wearing a mask.
And masks present other obstacles. Butler helps orient himself with the sound of voices, which can be muffled behind cloth or plastic barriers.
Wilkinson still has some peripheral vision, and masks can obscure the limited sight she has.
She sometimes bumps into people. In prepandemic times, most were understanding. Now, she said, they’re scared.
The access and administration of coronavirus tests can be a challenge too. Many of the testing sites are drive-thru. The visually impaired could hail
a ride to a testing facility, but many are financially disadvantaged and can’t afford the extra trip. Mail order tests are an option, but many can’t read the instructions.
For those living on their own, like Butler, getting COVID-19 “is kind of your worst nightmare,” said Butler, who began losing his vision when he was 19 from a retinal detachment.
“You can’t see already, but what COVID does is, if it’s bad, it’ll disengage your ability to speak,” he said. “So if you can’t write and you can’t speak and you can’t see the FaceTime call, you can’t do anything but listen. It’s like torture.”
An app called Be My Eyes, for which Butler works, allows volunteers to assist visually impaired people by describing what the user points at with their phone camera.
It has partnered with Accessible Pharmacy, a home-delivery pharmacy based in Philadelphia that specializes in services for the blind and low-vision community. Users can order medications with Braille labels or have
COVID-19 test instructions read to them.
But many in the blind community don’t know about that option, Butler said, noting he wished bigger pharmacies would provide such services.
The Braille Institute — a nonprofit organization that serves nearly 12,900 adults and children across the county — offers three times as many support group sessions to students in Southern California as it did a year ago, when the coronavirus was first detected in the U.S., according to Sergio Oliva, associate vice president of the institute’s programs and services. Because of
COVID-19 restrictions, all sessions are provided over the phone or online.
“Just close your eyes and imagine all you can do is hear what is going on,” Oliva said. “It brings a lot of anxiety. It brings a lot of depression.”
Troubleshooting a video session — a messy room showing up in the frame or the web camera being too close to your face — is awkward enough for those who can see. For those who can’t, it can be a daunting task, especially for young children who have to face sometimes less-than-sensitive classmates.
“Video meeting, it’s a very visual medium,” said Matthew Beckwith, the youth programs manager at the Braille Institute. “So for kids who have visual impairments, it’s a matter of how do you actually engage?”
The Braille Institute offers specialized supplemental classes and now sends young students a “distance-learning kit” with tools such as a smartphone or a tablet stand, Beckwith said.
But not all teachers are convinced that distance learning is feasible for the visually impaired.
Krista Bulger, a teacher in Vancouver, Washington, who works exclusively with visually impaired children, says the kind of hands-on education offered inside a classroom to students with disabilities “can’t be replicated in the same way. It just can’t.”
Many with visual impairments who’ve been forced to become tech savvy during the pandemic aren’t digital natives.
“It is a technology hill to climb — to learn, but it feels good to be on that,” said Annette Nickerson, 81, who learned to use video meeting software through the Braille Institute. Nickerson has macular degeneration, one of the most common causes of vision loss for older people.
Coronavirus restrictions have led to the loss of gym access and in-person classes, which can be isolating, Nickerson said. But with the ability to make video calls from her computer and phone, she can meet friends and family more safely.
And technology also has adapted to COVID19 protocols. Sunu, an armband that uses echolocation-like technology to help guide the visually impaired, now offers a setting to alert users when someone or something is 6 feet away.