NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO GO BLIND.
It is a road that can be strewn with boulders and jagged rocks. Failing retinas are the prominent cause of irreparable sight loss, often triggered by Macular Degeneration (MacD), Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), Glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.
I learned as a teenager that my vision did not have the same acuity as my buddies and friends. Pitching was easier than playing center field. Catching a basketball was easier than catching a baseball. I found that each succeeding year my vision loss was measurable. Print needed to be enlarged. A bus had to stop before I could read the sign. Later, I learned that recessive RP would cause total blindness. Losing your ability to read is like temporarily losing one of your best friends. Giving up your driver's license is frustrating.
Traveling the vision loss road filled my head with uncertainty and dismay. The challenge became how do you reacquire your ability to read and therefore to learn? The first step was finding help. Where to turn? Who can help? Entering a low vision and blind rehabilitation center in the mid 1990s gave me the opportunity to meet the challenges of blindness. My first class was Mobility, the effective indoor and outdoor use of a white cane. Learning Grade One Braille had me labeling CD’s and clothes to color coordinate them. The class that I enjoyed the most was called Techniques of Daily Living. We learned how to cook with our eyes shut on brailled ovens and stoves. My favorite meal was microwave meatloaf!
We were introduced to software/hardware equipment that could read aloud scanned documents of any type and size. Fonts, letters, and numbers could be enlarged to make them readable. The most important and critical course for me was keyboarding and computing. Having no remaining functional vision meant a “mouse” was useless. I had to learn how to type. Finally, after several weeks I worked my way up to a paltry twenty words per minute which was the lowest rate in the Center. All of the Vision Center computers were equipped with a speech software package called JAWS. It gave voice to what is displayed on the computer’s monitor. It employs combinations of two and three simultaneous key strokes that enabled the ability to read a single letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, an entire page. The braille “bumps” on my keyboard get a daily workout.
The four of us graduated within weeks of each other and celebrated with a lively party. The only employed colleague among us was provided a lap-top computer with speech by her company and I had purchased a desk computer and JAWS just prior to graduation. Two of my classmates were under the age of twenty-two and the third was a twenty-eight-year-old, unemployed single mother of a five-year-old. They did not have the means to purchase a computer with speech software. Their only resource the Vision Center’s computers available to students and graduates weekday afternoons and all day on Saturdays.
Blind and low vision individuals need assistive technologies to be able to pursue employment, hobbies, reading, learning, shopping, and banking. Through no fault of their own, many visually impaired do not have the means to purchase the assistive equipment that can make a big difference in their lives.
After several months of agonizing over the problem, my wife Jackie and I began to develop a plan that led to a nonprofit that would give assistive technologies to folks who could not afford them. The obvious questions were how do we fund it and find volunteers? So we established a nonprofit for blind and low vision individuals. Eighteen months of planning and development culminated for us in January 2000 and The Eye-Link Foundation was launched!
I learned as a teenager that my vision did not have the same acuity as my buddies and friends. Pitching was easier than playing center field. Catching a basketball was easier than catching a baseball. I found that each succeeding year my vision loss was measurable. Print needed to be enlarged. A bus had to stop before I could read the sign. Later, I learned that recessive RP would cause total blindness. Losing your ability to read is like temporarily losing one of your best friends. Giving up your driver's license is frustrating.
Traveling the vision loss road filled my head with uncertainty and dismay. The challenge became how do you reacquire your ability to read and therefore to learn? The first step was finding help. Where to turn? Who can help? Entering a low vision and blind rehabilitation center in the mid 1990s gave me the opportunity to meet the challenges of blindness. My first class was Mobility, the effective indoor and outdoor use of a white cane. Learning Grade One Braille had me labeling CD’s and clothes to color coordinate them. The class that I enjoyed the most was called Techniques of Daily Living. We learned how to cook with our eyes shut on brailled ovens and stoves. My favorite meal was microwave meatloaf!
We were introduced to software/hardware equipment that could read aloud scanned documents of any type and size. Fonts, letters, and numbers could be enlarged to make them readable. The most important and critical course for me was keyboarding and computing. Having no remaining functional vision meant a “mouse” was useless. I had to learn how to type. Finally, after several weeks I worked my way up to a paltry twenty words per minute which was the lowest rate in the Center. All of the Vision Center computers were equipped with a speech software package called JAWS. It gave voice to what is displayed on the computer’s monitor. It employs combinations of two and three simultaneous key strokes that enabled the ability to read a single letter, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, an entire page. The braille “bumps” on my keyboard get a daily workout.
The four of us graduated within weeks of each other and celebrated with a lively party. The only employed colleague among us was provided a lap-top computer with speech by her company and I had purchased a desk computer and JAWS just prior to graduation. Two of my classmates were under the age of twenty-two and the third was a twenty-eight-year-old, unemployed single mother of a five-year-old. They did not have the means to purchase a computer with speech software. Their only resource the Vision Center’s computers available to students and graduates weekday afternoons and all day on Saturdays.
Blind and low vision individuals need assistive technologies to be able to pursue employment, hobbies, reading, learning, shopping, and banking. Through no fault of their own, many visually impaired do not have the means to purchase the assistive equipment that can make a big difference in their lives.
After several months of agonizing over the problem, my wife Jackie and I began to develop a plan that led to a nonprofit that would give assistive technologies to folks who could not afford them. The obvious questions were how do we fund it and find volunteers? So we established a nonprofit for blind and low vision individuals. Eighteen months of planning and development culminated for us in January 2000 and The Eye-Link Foundation was launched!
Jim Justesen
Eye-Link Foundation Chairman
Eye-Link Foundation Chairman