Living With Low Vision

How do you like to keep track of time?  Being able to manage your own schedule, reminders and appointments is an important way of staying independent. Did you know that there are several different ways your watch can communicate the time, provide you with an alarm, or tell you the day and date as well? […]

“I need your help. But please remember, there is a fine line between helping me help myself, and doing it for me, leaving me with a feeling of helplessness and dependency.  Sometimes, because everything seems so much more difficult, I just wish you would take care of it all for me.  But down deep, for […]

“I am a little worried as my eyes seem to be getting worse. I’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress the past month,” shared a patient with macular degeneration. Anyone with a degenerative eye disease can relate and knows about the anxiety and stress vision loss creates. For those with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) […]

A favorite app and website of mine that will quickly become one of your favorites too is LibriVox.  The app is free and can be downloaded to your mobile phone, iPod, or tablet.   These free public domain (in the United States)  audiobooks can be listened to on-line, downloaded to your iPod or phone, or burned […]

This week I met my niece for supper who ran her first Boston Marathon. A cross country runner in high school and college, running is one of her passions.  Although she is fully sighted, did you know that many visually impaired people run the Boston Marathon?  In fact this year’s 2017 Boston Marathon marks the […]

When preparing a home for a person with a visual impairment, it’s just as important to know what not to do as it is to know what to do. Sometimes in working to prepare a home, people make too many changes or over correct too much. The result can be too much lighting, too little […]

Ms. Ima Hapenow was devastated by the news that her ophthalmologist gave her last summer that she has macular degeneration and she is considered legally blind. In the past six months it has been such a disappointment to not be able to do all those things that she has always taken for granted. But today […]

You have a new roommate, who is visually impaired. Perhaps they have been so their entire life, or maybe his/her visual impairment occurred more recently, becoming a burden for them to face alone. It’s a good idea to take some time to try to understand what it’s like for this person as you accept them […]

Fluctuating vision is a common concern for those with chronic eye diseases.  One day your vision may be sharper and clearer than normal and the next it’s blurred and the clarity seems to have disappeared.  “My vision fluctuates from day to day” or “ I notice differences from day to day and some days my […]

Recently my husband and I decided to take an afternoon to explore a new housing development that included 11 model homes with the latest in home decorating from window treatments to flooring to light fixtures.  As we walked into any room the lights automatically turned on and when we left, they automatically turned off.  The […]