 Hi there, welcome to the Orientation to Vision Loss at the John A. Moran Eye Center by the Patient Support Program. Please come in and take a seat. You're welcome to look at some of our low visionaries that we have out on display to sample, but we'll go ahead and get started. Okay, well my name is Cinnamon Nash. I am a social worker here at the Moran Eye Center. I have been working in the Patient Support Program for the better part of nine years and I love my job. I love working here with people who have a visual impairment. It's quite inspiring for me to work with you and so I'm certainly glad that all of you have joined us and tuned in to learn about resources, tips and tricks to using your vision well and we will get started just as soon as we go through another introduction. So I will introduce Karina next to me. We always start with introductions. Right. My name is Karina Trujillo-Tanner and I am a peer counselor in the program. I have been working at the Moran for about five years. I have a visual impairment myself and I am legally blind. I'm here to share my personal experience with vision loss and tools and tricks that I've learned for using my remaining vision well and for doing things non-visually when my vision isn't useful. There are ways to continue to live the life that you want in spite of the fact that you can't see well and we're gonna talk about some of those strategies. We're gonna give you a lot of information today and it can be overwhelming. I want you to think about maybe just solving one or two of the challenges or problems that you are having. It may be with reading the paper. It may be with driving and getting to the grocery store. It can feel overwhelming to think that you're going to solve all of the problems that vision loss causes all in one day but we are recording this so you can go back and revisit what we're teaching again and again at your convenience and as I said, pick one problem to solve, to start working on and you'll find that you feel very encouraged and that the world really starts opening up to you. I agree, thanks for mentioning that and also you will have access to the social workers at the Moran Eye Center, including the director of the program, Dr. Lisa Ord and Amy Henderson and our other social workers. So please don't feel like you are out of touch and out of reach from us because you can call us at any time. You do not have to be a Moran patient to call us to help us connect you with resources. So again, thank you for tuning in and finding us and let's get started. I think it's important to note why we do this and here at the Moran Eye Center, we have found that our patients have a great need once they may hear that there's little or nothing to do in terms of their eye globes and fixing them and it can be a very scary, a very depressing and a very unnerving time and we have found that we can connect with our patients and connect them to resources in the community and support them emotionally and we can help them find their path and find a new way to do this, to live the same life that they've always lived in a happy way. It may be a different way, but it can be a happy way. And again, when you are faced with vision loss, you need quick and accurate information and that is why I'm so pleased that all of you have joined us and that you have found your way here because that tells me that you're ready to accept some information and get going down that path to feeling better about this poor hand that you've been dealt with vision loss. So what we will do in the next few minutes is we are going to go over some tricks and tips to using your remaining vision optimally. We will go over four concepts and then we will discuss just a few resources in the community that you can research or you can connect with us and we will help you access those resources. So, unless I'm missing something, we'll just get going. I'm gonna stick to my notes so I don't forget anything. The first concept that I would like to discuss is lighting. Lighting is something that may or may not be thought of when you think, okay, well, I'm not seeing very well. How can I use lighting to benefit the level of vision that I have now? And if you'll follow me over to these different lights, I'd like to describe some of them for you. Scoot over here, cut this part out. Okay, here we have got an odd light and this is to show full spectrum lighting. This sort of lighting most closely resembles natural daylight. You can see it compared to a normal yellow incandescent light that it's a more full light and this has a more yellow hue. Some people find that the basic yellow incandescent light works well for them and you'll want to experiment. You'll want to experiment with what works well for you. This light here, much like the one next to it, has a solid shade on a goose neck, which is very important because when you're using light, you'll want to control where it goes and a solid shade will really reduce the amount of glare and light that comes back up into your eyes and the goose neck allows you to direct the light to where you need it to be. Let's see, so when you're comparing lights in the grocery store or at Home Depot or Walmart or wherever you find your light bulbs, please be experimental with your lighting and find a space in your home that you can try out a light bulb that a place that you do your reading or your bills or sorting pills or whatever it may be and create a reading space that has optimal light for you. Karina has some good examples of how she uses lighting well. So I'm going to turn the time over to Karina. It's an inexpensive solution. It's one that, as you said, it requires experimentation. What works for one person may not work well for another person. I'll share with you an example of how I created a workspace for myself in my home. I had an office area that was built in a hallway. So the hallway had no windows and it was kind of dimly lit. I would go from my computer monitor, which was very greatly lit, to maybe a written text, like a textbook or a paper. I'm a doctoral student right now, so I spent a lot of time at the computer going back and forth from that monitor to my written papers. We'll talk about magnification in a little bit, but my situation was complicated because I was also using magnification at the same time. My eyes were not adjusting well, going back from this dim paper to the bright monitor and it was feeling really frustrating. My eyesight was feeling like a bigger problem than it actually needed to be because when I started solving this problem using lighting, things got much better. The first thing I did was replaced the overhead bulbs with full spectrum light bulbs. For me, the full spectrum, that broad spectrum of light that most closely resembles daylight is the best. Now for someone else, a yellow incandescent light might be better. The full spectrum might create too much glare, but in my situation I replaced the light bulbs with full spectrum light bulbs and then I took a desk lamp, the kind that you just demonstrated that has the bending neck and the metal hood. Now for me, with my eye problem, which is Stargardt's macular degeneration, if I were to aim that hood at what I was reading, it would be far too bright. It would create too much glare and I wouldn't be able to see well. So what I did instead was I put a full spectrum light bulb in there and I aimed the hood away from me at the wall across from me. So this diffused the light generally throughout the area and it was better. My situation was better. It wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. So I took a second desk lamp, same thing, put in a full spectrum light bulb, turned that lamp shade away from me so it was kind of just diffusing off of the wall and now I had a workspace that was perfectly lit. It wasn't too bright, it wasn't too dark, I could control the lighting and it made my situation much better. So as Cinnamon suggested, we really recommend you may not be able to adjust the lighting in your whole entire house but perhaps you could pick just one area where the lighting is adjustable and you can make it optimal for you to do visual tasks like a little mending or reading your bills or other visual chores. Thank you. As Karina mentioned, being creative and experimenting with the lighting and finding something that works for you is very important and all of our good ideas and suggestions come from our patients and we had a patient recently who said that in her kitchen she had some long fluorescent tube lighting and she really liked it. It lit up her kitchen well enough that she could see to cut vegetables and cook and clean and everything just right. She said that after a while that fluorescent tube lighting really bothered her eyes and so what she did is she got her husband's baseball cap and she put on her husband's baseball cap while she was cooking so that her hands were well lit by the fluorescent tube lighting yet her eyes were shaded from that powerful fluorescent light and that's the sort of creativity that helps you accomplish the things that you want to do. Again, it may be in a different way but it's doing these things in a new way. Experimenting and problem solving. That's exactly right. So that is, that's a very brief summary of some tricks that you can keep in mind as you are experimenting with lighting. We know people who keep flashlights in their kitchen drawers, in their nightstands, in their pantries, even in the refrigerator. That's right. My husband's grandpa's so cute. We open up his fridge door and you find a flashlight in by the eggs so that when he needs something and the lighting is just not good enough in the fridge, he has a flashlight right there and that's a good thing to remember in those drawers that tend to be dark spaces. Keep a flashlight nearby and you can keep a flashlight on your keys so that as you're trying to get into your car or your home, that you have an extra little light right there. Yeah, I think that's a good summary of some, or at least to get you started down the path of using lighting to your advantage. So, okay. Let's move on to the second concept in using your vision optimally, which is magnification. And there are a couple of things to keep in mind within magnification and the first is the cheapest and the easiest to do and that is to simply move closer to the object that you're trying to see or read or whatever it may be. It may, you may feel silly moving something close to your face but really if you can see and it allows you to do that reading and I like the story you have about reading the bulletin board in your apartment complex. Sure, I mean I lived in an apartment complex where announcements were posted on a bulletin board beside the mailboxes. Now in order for me to see those announcements, I need to stand up and get very close to them, especially with my magnifying glasses on. Now this may make you feel a little self-conscious. You don't wanna stand out or appear different but for me it was more important to get the information than it was for me to appear just like everyone else and you know my neighbors were very friendly and they got used to me getting close to the announcements to see them and I got the job done. You do what you need to do to get the job done. That's exactly right. Thank you. Let's see. This is a good time to invest in a big screen TV while we're talking about it. With moving closer, you should never have to give up going to the games and plays and performances you might consider moving closer, spending more money to move closer to the screen or to the stage or whatever it may be and oftentimes you'll find that they may have a discount for someone with a visual impairment so you'll want to look into that. Again, don't give up being you just because you may not see as well as you have in the past. If you were to come to my house and saw me watching a movie or watching the news, you would see me sitting up very close to the screen and like we've said, contrary to what your mother told you, sitting close to the television will not hurt your eyes. It won't damage your eyes. I sit close to the screen and a little bit to the side just so that the people behind me can see without my big noggin in front of the screen and it really works. It works just fine. And same thing with the movie theater. I love to go to just that third row back. It's just the perfect distance for me to get up as close as I can. That's right. Okay, we've talked about moving closer which I think is really important and easy and for the most part, cheaper. The second thing I'd like to talk about within magnification is making things larger. And if you'll follow me over here, we have got some large print objects. In this day and age, you can get just about anything in large print from playing cards, sorry, from playing cards and recipe books, address books, and certainly books of every type. You can find just about anything you need in large print. Your local library and your library for the blind and visually impaired, which we will talk about later on, can help you connect with books and texts in large print braille and audio. And we will get into that a little bit later. But certainly be mindful that large print objects are readily accessible for you. There is a program out there called ZoomText which is a software program you can have installed onto your computer. And this is a wonderful program and Karina knows more about it because she uses it daily. So I'm gonna let Karina talk to you just a little bit about ZoomText. To magnify my screen. And they are working fine, but ZoomText does have some features that Windows 8 does not have that I would like to show you just briefly. One of them is called the blue wedge. Have you ever had the experience of looking for the cursor on the page and you cannot find it? ZoomText will allow you to put these arrows that point at it. So as you go forward in the document, you can always find where that cursor is. Another thing that it does that just a plain screen magnification like Windows 8 offers is do you see my arrow? Do you see how it's very large and Kermit the Frog green? That's pretty handy too. I've spent time and you may have to kind of wiggling the mouse to see where the arrow is. This makes it very easy to see and find. You also can change the contrast. You can change it from black on white to white on black to yellow. I won't do all of that now because we're short on time. Now you can see you gotta do a lot of scrolling to use a screen magnification system. Let me just say a word about that. I use these magnifying glasses. We'll talk about these in a minute. But in order for them to focus, I need to get very close to an object. So there was a time in my college years where I would literally type standing up so that I could get close enough to the screen to see it. A good friend of mine who is a low vision counselor said, Karina, why don't you use ZoomText? Well, as you can see, you can only see a small part of the page at a time while you're using a screen magnification system. And it drove me crazy. The scrolling back and forth to find what I was looking for drove me crazy. I finally broke down and tried using ZoomText. It was frustrating at first, but after about four weeks, I quickly developed a skill to zoom around the screen without any problem at all. It just took some practice and some patience and I adapted to it. It was learning a new skill. Now, some people can't watch me use the computer because it makes them seasick, but I'm able to use the computer to do what I need to do, whether it may be placing an order of something that I'm purchasing or doing my homework or emailing my kids. So it's very useful. So there's a little demo of ZoomText. Did you have anything else you wanted to mention about? Well, I've got my nine of fires. Yes, we're gonna get to nine of fires. And then I do have the iPad and the iPhone. Should I talk about that really quick? Let's see, so yeah, this is a good time. Okay, I'm gonna grab some things before you get started behind you. Okay. So that I am not walking in your shop. Another trick for using magnification is to use something like a Kindle or an iPad. You can download books electronically. You can control the contrast so I can put this on a background that doesn't have too much glare. And you can see that the pages, the words on the page are very magnified and I simply turn the page by scrolling with my finger like this. It's very useful. You can adjust the size of the font. I can receive text messages on here. And my text messages are enlarged. And so that's a very useful tool. I also use my iPhone. Same sort of thing. I can enlarge the text. Also, I can use my iPhone as a tool by utilizing the camera. For example, when I go into a restaurant and the menu may be up on the wall and I cannot get close enough to the menu to see it, I can simply take a picture of it with my phone and then magnify the picture to read the words. Same thing goes for shopping at the big warehouse shopping stores where the prices may be up high. You cannot get close to them to see them. Take a picture of it and enlarge the picture. Same with street signs or buildings. I may be looking for a building on a college campus or a doctor's office. I can't see the name of the building because it's too far away. I can simply, as I said, take a picture of it, magnify it on my phone. Magnification is a very handy tool. All right, the next thing I'd like to talk with you about in terms of magnification is using a tool to make something appear larger. And this is probably the thing we think of first when we lose our vision. We think, I need a magnifier. And that may or may not be true. And certainly you'll want to choose the right magnifier and have a little bit of training that goes into using that magnifier because there are so many things to remember when you do use that magnifier and to allow it to work for you the best it can. Okay, the first thing I want to talk about with magnifiers is, and these happen to have nice bright lights on them. I don't know how well that comes up on camera, but with magnifiers, you may think that the larger the magnifier, the more powerful it will be. When in actuality, the smaller the magnifier, the more powerful it is. And like I just mentioned, when you're using a magnifier, there is training that goes into optimizing the use of that magnifier. And for example, bringing your head close down to the magnifier to reduce the scanning, but being learned how to scan with a magnifier so you're not becoming sick when you're trying to use it. Okay, so the other thing I would like to talk about with magnifiers is beyond handheld magnifiers, there are head-borne magnifiers. And I'll show you a little bit of a few examples of those. And again, these are things that you can find anywhere, but being mindful of how you can use them. A very simple type of use of magnification is a pair of binoculars. I know Karina has used these for performances and plays and things like that. Reading subtitles and movies, going to plays, football games. That's right. Getting yourself a sturdy pair of binoculars can really do wonderful things for you in just using or getting around and seeing signs and street signs and whatever it may be. So keep that simple tool in mind with magnification. Some other head-borne sort of magnifiers might include. Karina demonstrated these earlier. You lovingly referred to them as your Harry Potter glasses. Harry Potter glasses, yeah. It's just simply a magnifying glass set into frames so your hand's free. And it's nice because then you have two hands to bring an object closer to you. That's right. And they're nice and lightweight and they're inexpensive. And they come in a variety of powers. So you can get them as strong as you may need. Right side, left side, both sides. That's right. So those are a wonderful tool as well. The next head-borne magnification system I'd like to show you are these mid-range. Glasses, they look a little bit like Star Trek which I think is neat. They have toggles on the side. You can toggle in to the kind of the sweet spot for your eyes and these sort of mid-range glasses would be very useful for watching television, working on the computer or something out just a ways. They're wonderful and you can get prices on these things. I don't have a good idea on how much they are but they're not as expensive as other sorts of head-borne magnifiers. And so that's something to try and to think about. These things. Yes. We were gonna talk about how in your state there's likely an optometrist or ophthalmologist who specializes in low vision. That's right. Also there are catalogs, low vision catalogs that you can order. You could Google or have a family member Google low vision tools or low vision glasses or magnifying glasses. And you're always welcome to call us here at the Moran Eye Center and we can send you out some information to get you started and get you going down the path that you need to access these tools. Another head-borne magnification system are these telescopic lensing. What are my trends? Telescopic lenses. Telescopic lenses. And much like the mid-range glasses you put these on and these are heavy and they're old and so they may not look as good but they're very heavy so when you're reading something they may tip down. So again you'll want to practice with these glasses but you toggle them in again so it's the sweet spot for your eyes. So those are like hands-free binoculars. That's right. So pretty handy. So I have here, these are custom made by a low vision specialist, a low vision optometrist and this is called a bioptic telescope. In most states you can extend your driving privileges by receiving special training to use a bioptic telescope while driving. That's not a possibility in our state of Utah. Although I did drive with this in Colorado, they have strict parameters. I use these now when I go see a play or a movie. I can, this is just a clear glass lens and I can just drop down into the telescopic lens to look through it to see things magnified. So those are pretty handy. Those are custom made but you can get those in your state. I also want to quickly show. I'm carrying a handheld magnifier with me. It's very handy. It goes in my pocket easily. I can use it at the grocery store for reading labels. I'm a mom so I'm always checking labels. How much sugar is in this? I can see my kids homework or letters from their teachers. I can read recipes and it just simply goes in my pocket. Comes with a light. I don't use the light, it's too bright for my eyes but I love this lightweight little magnifier. It's wonderful. Okay, if you'll follow me over to this section I'm going to talk for just a minute about something that's really cool. Nowadays we have got electronic magnifiers is what I call them. I think they're very cool. They range in size and in price and there are vendors out there. You can access low vision aids of all sorts including electronic magnifiers through your state and we can help you connect with these things if they appeal to you. They are very fun and very cool. They do require their own set of training but if you can come up close you might be able to see this a little bit better. Something small like this magnifier is as small as a credit card can fit right inside your pocket or your purse. This would be good for reading a receipt or even a menu. This would not be good for reading a book but these are very handy little tiny magnifiers electronic magnifiers. This one behind it is a little bit bigger has a few more doodads and options from changing color and font and size even has the ability to take a picture and you could hold it up and do your reading that way. They range in size again from something as small as this credit card to something as large as this CCTV. This is a closed circuit television and basically it's a projector screen up on that projects up onto this computer screen. Now this is an old CCTV. This is a bigger system and this is something that would sit on your desk or your table. This is something that you could do a lot of reading with. I've even heard of patients painting their fingernails and working under this sort of projections system for large tasks. I had a wonderful patient come in a few years ago who loved to carve and he wanted to know if this sort of system would work for him while he did his carving as a hobby. So he brought in a lovely mallard duck that he was working on and he came right over to the CCTV and pulled out his knife and that duck and started carving and he was pleasantly surprised to see that this system would work for him. So we connected him with a vendor and he got himself a CCTV. So again, and we'll emphasize this all throughout this presentation that it's so important to be mindful of your hobbies and even those things that are becoming frustrating for you and tackle those problems one at a time. Okay, so I think we're ready to move on. Oh, go for it. Using electronic magnification. Your computer, we talked about how you can magnify the monitor but you also can magnify Word documents. You can change the font size of your Word documents and print them out large and I'll share with you an example of a sheet cake with chocolate cinnamon frosting and this is a... Sounds great. This is a great recipe for my blindness classroom when I taught for the state but you can make your recipes as large as you need to and print your favorite ones. This goes for important phone numbers or other things, other documents that you might want enlarged. You can make them yourself using your computer, print them out and organize them at home. A few months ago, we had a patient sit here in the orientation of vision loss and when we were talking about recipes, she almost became emotional because she realized that she doesn't have to give up these recipes that she's loved and she's enjoyed cooking for so many years. She thought, I can have my daughter print them out in large print so that I can see them again and I think that's a very easy solution. Probably a solution. Yeah, absolutely. The third concept in using your vision optimally and which I believe is a forgotten concept is contrast and when you think of contrast, you may not think that it can help you use your vision well but I would like to share with you just a few examples to get you thinking about it. So right here, I have a cutting board. It has a black side and white side and and to demonstrate kind of how well contrast can be used, we've got a clear fork and a dark knife. You can imagine if you were sitting at a table with a white linen on it and you had a white plate or a clear glass plate and glass, it just simply disappears and so when you are clear on black is just as bad and black on black, so when you're using contrast, consider what those problem areas, when you have a glass cup with water in it that's virtually impossible to see to anyone and you've probably knocked it over a time or two. It may be a good time to invest in colored glasses or better yet plastic colored cups or plates or silverware so that when you, if you happen to knock it down, it doesn't break. There's some lovely things out there nowadays but consider using contrast as a way to help you just see things a little bit better. We had a patient some years ago who could only see hot pink and so consequently he went home and he taped up just about everything he could with hot pink duct tape and that's a wonderful use of a bright color against kind of a duller surface. There are cement tapes and paints out there that you can use on your steps and your curbs so that you are able to see those curbs and those rises a little bit easier and contrast is certainly something that you can, the yellow on black with large prints seems to help many people but using that sort of contrast can help you see things just a little bit better. When we're talking about contrast, I love to mention these UV shield glasses and these are wonderful glasses that you can connect with at your low vision department or in a catalog or whatever it may be but these fit right over your regular glasses so you don't even have to take them off and they cast just this sort of, this is an amber color hue across things it may or may not sharpen the image up for you and the amber color tends to be a popular one as does this yellow but again this is something where you want to experiment and try out for yourself to determine what works well for you and you'd slip these on again and it really changes just the whole image of what you're seeing so try those out and we can help you connect with somewhere where you can sample these to find the hue that works well for you the concept here is that they block out some of the light spectrum and increase contrast for some people I have an example of how I have used contrast I was just looking over here for my planner I found this great planner it was inexpensive it had the weeks laid out just how I wanted I like to see the whole week on one page and I loved it but I found myself every time I opened it I had to look for my magnifier where is it, get it out, what month is it, what day is it and I was finding myself feeling very frustrated because it was taking me forever to find my way through this planner and the reason is it was white with light tan writing there was like very little contrast the writing was either light tan or light blue so what I did one evening just sitting watching the news was I took a sharpie marker just a sharpie I love to use 20-20 pens that's a pen that you can order online but if you don't have a 20-20 pen you can use a sharpie and they have a bold dark stroke so it has a high contrast stroke and I just simply wrote the month in again right over the little tiny tan month and I wrote the days of the month in again right over the days it was easy to do it took about 15 minutes and now it just took the frustration out of using this planner I could easily open the page and I could see what month and what day I was looking at and it just took about 15 minutes now I'll also share that they have this little section in the back of the planner for phone numbers and again light blue on white so no contrast I just simply write the phone number out large I just pay very little mind to where the lines are and I just write out large and it stores it for me in a way that I can access it and see it and I just was able to just ignore the tiny little indications that other sighted people might use it's great I use it all the time I appreciate the creativity and problem-solving and we had a wonderful peer counselor some years ago who used that same creativity and she lived in a lovely historical home here in Salt Lake City that was three stories high and so her laundry was down in the basement and she found that as she went down the steep staircase that it was becoming dangerous for her and so she and her daughter problem-solved this scenario and they decided that they would go to Home Depot they would get some carpet samples and in contrasting colors and they would nail them to every other step and she ended up doing I think mauve green mauve green up her stairs so that as she looked down her stairs she could clearly see by contrast where each step was she went a step further and painted her handrail from white to a dark color so she had a dark handrail against a white wall and contrasting colored steps so that she could quickly see where she was going and where the handrail was and it's that sort of use of contrast that helped her problem-solve that scenario where she was tripping and falling so again be creative and problem-solve those things in your life that are bugging you the most let's see I think that we are ready for the fourth and final concept in using your vision optimally and that is using your other senses and Karina with your vision impairment you have really nice ideas and have problem-solved some things so I'm going to let you take this for a little bit I'm going to grab some things yep I'll grab them this is a powerful tool and it's a tool where you can use truly use your other senses to help you see we talked about stairs and marking stairs that are more safe I've been to the flights of stairs there's no contrast they may be all concrete or they may be all stone and from the top it looks like a ski slope so I have a collapsible cane that I take with me so when I need it, when I'm in an area that's unfamiliar or if it's gotten dark or if I find myself at the top of the staircase I can pull it out of my backpack I use a backpack because it allows me to be hands-free and I have all kinds of great gear in here I have my magnifiers, I have my phone I may have a laptop or a Braille display and I have a collapsible cane so you can take that out and you can use it to feel your way down the stairs feel how deep the curve is also I like to say, and it's true I have a lot less explaining to do when I find myself in the men's restroom people understand the white cane it's a universal symbol that you don't see well just by looking at me, I'm told people really can't tell that I have a severe visual impairment and that may be true for you as well so this lets other people around you know that you can't see well and then there's no confusion about your intentions or mistakes that you might make I'll share another example with you of a scenario that has happened to me before let's say I'm standing in line waiting for popcorn at a movie theater and movie theaters are kind of mysterious because they have lots of bright lights and shiny surfaces and yet it's dim and so it's a really difficult place for me to see and if I don't have my cane with me I'll be standing in line for popcorn and I cannot really see that a register's opened up and there's a long line behind me and somebody behind me says go, would you go? and they're frustrated because they may think that I'm just zoning out or something but if I have my cane with me it just lets others around me know oh the reason she's not going is because she doesn't see that the register's open they offer some more assistance maybe the person behind the register will wave larger or the person behind me will say the register to your right is open and so again it is a very powerful tool I also want to talk about reading how important it is to continue reading I loved to read before I lost my eyesight when I was 14 years old I still enjoy reading but I've had to do it more by ear and there are many great resources for reading with your ear now each one of us living in the United States has access to the library for the blind and physically disabled it is through the Library of Congress you can just Google library for the blind we can have these do we have a player? there's wonderful players come in the mail free of charge and the books or magazines come on these cartridges and again free of charge you can order as many as you want you really can keep them as long as you need to I have a subscription to a magazine called Choice Magazine it comes quarterly it is the top articles from the top magazines for that last quarter so it would be it would be Newsweek, The New Yorker what are some of the other Smithsonian National Geographic absolutely fabulous resource I remember the first time I ordered a book to listen to and it was so frustrating for me because I wasn't used to using my ears for reading and I would listen and then I would zone off and then I would have to listen rewind and listen again what did it say? and then I would zone off and I found myself feeling very frustrated but just like with using the screen magnification system I persisted I kept trying I worked on it every day and I'll be darned if I didn't develop the skill of reading with my ears it just took a little practice and pushing through that frustration this is a wonderful opportunity for you to learn new skills it's actually good for your brain to learn to do things in a new way and so in a way you have an advantage the other advantage I found with reading with my ears is that I can do mind-numbing tasks like sorting the socks doing the dishes sweeping the floor while I'm listening to a book and when my children need me or I need to answer the phone I just simply pause and the book holds its place it's just fabulous did you want to mention bump dots? I do bump dots are something that you can order online just google bump dots they come in a variety of shapes sizes and colors I can use these to mark my stove for example in the apartment where I used to live I had a beautiful white range with light gray writing again no contrast I couldn't see it and I would have to crawl across the range to look back at the back of the stove with my magnifier I often couldn't get back there it was just very very frustrating to use my eyesight to try and set my oven or set my range and so I learned a way to do it non-visually and that is simply to mark some of the key buttons with a bump dot so for example I rarely use any setting on my oven other than bake so I put a bump dot on bake and one bump dot on the up arrow who else has a digital stove? they're starting to go digital and even touch screen and so I know that if I push that up arrow one time it's set to 350 and every time I push it it goes up 5 degrees so I simply count to my desired temperature and I don't even use my eyes at all same goes for the microwave you would pick just a couple of the key buttons that you use for me that would be the one minute and the stop and the start now the mistake people make with bump dots is they may go in and they may mark every single button on the microwave with a bump dot that's not as helpful because then it's harder to orientate to where you are but just a couple of bump dots and key places on your washing machine dryer, microwave, oven, thermostat and even your home keys on your computer so you don't find yourself hunching down trying to find where those home keys are very useful, very inexpensive I love that I love being able to problem solve something and do things in a new way and I think we have and using your other senses to do that of course years ago we had a patient of ours who was blind and he invited somebody from the patient support program out to his home to say come look at my garden I have this lovely garden so out there he showed exactly how he did his gardening with no sight and he had lovely topiary trees out front and he said I just go at the tree carving it and shaping it that way and he said I do that by using my hearing there is a difference in the way the new growth and the old growth sounds as you're trimming it and he then could create these lovely designs or shapes from his trees just by using his sense of hearing in his backyard he had a large lovely garden and the rows of vegetables were straight and organized and he went on to explain that he used big long dowel sticks and he knew about how he knew how far each vegetable needed to be planted from each other so he would go along a dowel stick and carve out a little notch every couple of inches or however it may be and he would lay the dowel stick down and then he took his seeds and he would follow the dowel stick and when he felt that notch he would plant the seed right in there followed along, plant the seed and he did that for each vegetable and by the end of this year he had lovely straight rows with vegetables that were all organized and all this by touch and by using his sense of hearing and in terms of using other senses such as hearing there is an array of services and resources and assistive devices out there to help you to do that just couple quick examples are clocks and I have no idea if you'll be able to hear this but this is a nice talking watch and you can have the time told to you right there from your wrist and here's another sort of alarm clock so it's four twenty seven twice there are also tactile watches where the space pops open and you can just very discreetly feel the time that's right so using other senses is a very important concept to remember when you're using your vision optimally let's see do you have any other examples that we should share with you I don't but I do have a couple things to say sure seek out training rehabilitative training in your state it will help you to maintain your independence it will help you to live the life that you want to live it is important to get good training the other thing that getting good training does for you is it helps connect you with other people who have vision impairment and blindness we learn from each other we learn what's going on in town what are the resources what are the great new tools so I would definitely encourage you to seek out those resources also please don't be discouraged take it one day at a time I was able to navigate nursing school and my masters in nursing have children I have four wonderful children I was able to help them with their homework I was able to prepare their meals take care of our home without a driver's license and without use of my full vision it can be done it can be done safely it can be done well as we said today be creative problem solve get good training get connected with the good resources that you have and just take it one day at a time solve one problem and one challenge at a time it is respectable to be blind don't be ashamed don't be embarrassed hold your head up high and live the life that you want that's a good one yeah I love this one I'd like to share a good example again from one of our patients who had a visual impairment and it happened to be a woman who loved fried eggs every morning she wanted her fried egg and she found that with her visual impairment that she would crack the egg into the pan she couldn't keep track of the egg and the egg turned up to be scrambled eventually she didn't like that and so what she did and how she problem solved that was she first took a tuna can and she took the top and the bottom off with a can opener and she set it on her frying pan she sprayed it and she cracked her egg right into the tuna fish can she knew about how long it took to cook the fried egg and at that point she got a clothes pin put it right on the tin can put it off and she had a lovely fried egg sitting there in her pan and I love that example because it's problem solving it's being creative and moreover it's doing something that you love or in this case eating something that you love and continue to be that person that you are again it may take a new way and a new path to do that and I would like to give kudos to all of you who have tuned in again or who have joined us because it shows that you're on that path that you are on the path to problem solving and to getting your life back to getting your back again excuse me it shows that you're getting your life back from this loss that you've experienced which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes that I'd like to share with you and it is by Robert Louis Stevenson and he says life is not about a matter of holding good cards but of playing a poor hand well I think that vision loss is a poor hand but I think it can be played well and I appreciate all of you who have joined us because I think it shows that you are playing that hand well and you're starting and thank you for joining us and thanks to Karina for her good examples and for inspiring all of us and so if you have any questions any concerns or if you need some additional support or information please contact us at the information number that you'll see on your screen and we are here Monday through Friday to help connect you and support you so thank you so much for joining us thanks for joining us this is the orientation division packet that you would have received had you joined us in person some of these things may or may not be appropriate for you depending on where you live but I would like to highlight a few things that are general and that you'll be able to find something that's appropriate for you in your state or if you're here with us in Utah we can certainly connect you with these things or with a packet so the first thing I'd like to mention is that there are ophthalmologists specializing in low vision and we have a wonderful doctor here at the Moran who can help with that and can provide a lovely assessment and thorough assessment and help connect you with resources but these sorts of ophthalmologists specializing in low vision are available to you and we can help you find these doctors we have the National Federation of the Blind connecting with other people with a visual impairment is key to being current with the research and the community that may understand you and what you're struggling with or how you never know that you may be the person who may empower this person another person so please connect with the National Federation of the Blind or the American Council of the Blind we have that information for you on our screen let's see NFB, National Federation of the Blind Newsline is a program where you can connect and listen to your local newspaper it can be read to you over the phone and it's a great resource Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired is a wonderful general term for services for all services all low vision services training and adjustment services deaf blind services, vision screening vocational rehabilitation this is the hub for low vision and every state has a division for the visually impaired Utah's Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired their information will be on the screen and this is a wonderful resource for anyone who has a visual impairment as they can connect with trainers and therapists and teachers who can help you navigate this new world of vision loss these services are free okay, of course if you are a veteran there are many services and resources and support available to you at your VA and they are wonderful about connecting their patients with devices and helping pay for those things and so if you are a veteran please contact your VA for services and support let's see, in each state you have public transportation you have services for transportation through aging services you also have ride sharing programs such as Uber and Lyft that have been game changers for everybody really but people with a visual impairment specifically as it just makes things so much easier to get a ride and to get it quickly there is a little bit of training and some thought that needs to go into any program, any transportation program so please be mindful of that and again we can help you navigate that resource Karina had mentioned earlier the library for the Deaf and the Blind and Utah has an incredible library it's an immense library with talking books, braille and large print and these services are again free to you you can access a digital cartridge player along with the cartridges that are mailed to you you get to choose which books you would like how often you would like these books to be mailed to you you listen to them and once you're done with them you send them away in the mail for free and so you can get books and textbooks and cookbooks and all sorts of books through your digital cartridge player okay there are miscellaneous benefits and programs available to you with a visual impairment many times you'll need a doctor or a social worker to get a referral made up for you and we can help connect you with that and we can also help you find someone to help fill out these forms for you Free Directory Dialing Assistance is a wonderful resource that you may not know that you qualify for so that is the service when you pick up your phone and you push 411 you say please connect me to Movie Theater on State Street and they say yes we'll connect that call for you for $1.75 or whatever it may be with this service your account is flagged and that fee is waived and so that's a really nice perk to having a visual impairment and state and federal tax relief information the Utah Assistive Technology Foundation helps with low interest loans to help you get assistive devices let's see I think that one final thing I would love to mention to you is that there are support groups and there is support available to you and to your loved ones who have a visual impairment we can help with that and we can help connect you to those who can help you navigate this new world of vision loss and the difficult path that it can be and finally there are many support groups and there is support available to you and your loved ones with a visual impairment and you're welcome to call us at the number that will be on your screen so that we can help connect you and your family members to that support