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Ableton On Air is a member of the National Academy for Television Arts and Sciences Boston, New England Chapter. Hello and welcome to the sedition of Ableton On Air. The one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the definitely able. I've been your host, I've always been your host Lauren Seiler. I'm Lauren Seiler. And on this wonderful program today, we will talk about the services of the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont. But before that, we would like to say special thanks to our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many others, including the partnership of the partnerships of the Division for the Blind and of Vermont, and also the partnership of the Association for the Blind and Vermont, and many, many, many others, also including the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition. We would like to say welcome to Dan Norris, the Director of Adult Gage Services of the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Is the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired? The Vermont Association for the Blind. The Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, who is here today to discuss how to be independent in your apartment, house, or life if you are blind and low vision and Visually Impaired. Welcome to Able de la Nere, Mr. Norris. Happy to be here. Tell me the missions and goals of the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Sure. So as you know, the title is pretty long, so we shorten it to VABVI sometimes. So VABVI is dedicated to helping Vermonters of all ages to be able to be independent and to reach their goals and their aspirations as they live their lives as Visually Impaired individuals. Okay. I see that you brought a treasure trove of things that we're going to sell. Do you want to ask any questions right now, Harley? Yes. Since you said that, you can go ahead with your treasures that you had brought with us. Excellent. And as far as, you know, there's a lot of technology that's come out over the past several years that's still tried and true and there's new stuff. I'm going to show you a bit of everything here, but there are high and low tech solutions for people. And what is the difference, before you start showing things, what is the difference between high, just two questions wrapped around, what's the difference between high and low vision technology and is it expensive and how can we, how can, or how can, yes, how can we as people with special needs and who get services afford this stuff knowing that it is, it can be expensive. Absolutely. So I'll answer that question by first saying, when I say visual impairment, that's a huge spectrum. Some people, to drive in Vermont, you need to have a corrected visual acuity of 2040. And so if you cannot correct a 2040, technically, that does not meet the driving requirements. And there's some field requirements there too. But when we talk about vision loss, there's a wide spectrum from needing glasses that can correct the refraction so you can see better to maybe, like in my case, I'm legally blind, which means my visual acuity does not correct better than 2200 in either eye. And I have no central vision as well in either eye. So vision loss. I have peripheral, I have peripheral issues, so I can't see you on the side of me. Oh, so put us together and work where it's at. Yeah. So I don't have any central vision. You have some peripheral issues. Some people have spots of vision, cataracts, strokes, all those things can lead to different kinds of vision loss. And so there's a wide variety of visual impairments out there. And so if you have what sometimes are called functional vision, we call it low vision sometimes. And then you can be legally blind, which means you're beyond the 2200 correction, or you have less than 20 degrees field of vision. And then blindness, that term kind of covers a full spectrum of having very little vision to having no light perception. And so as I showed stuff today, I'm going to be talking about high tech solutions include technology, low tech solutions are simple day to day things that you can find that can help. And so hopefully I can show you a wide variety of those today. Okay. Open your treasure chest. So just to start off with, here I have a chart with lots of different tactile dots on it. This is a sampler that comes from a catalog called Maxiades. And as you look up and down the form, there are lots of different shapes, sizes and textures and colors of dots that can be affixed to things like your washer, your dryer, your microwave, your thermostat, your remote control. Whatever you can think of that could use a tactile locator button or dot, this can help. And they even make dots that are even smaller than this, if you need to have something very, very small, like on a cell phone. What about Braille oven knobs or things like that? Is that tactile situation? So depending on your appliance, sometimes you have knobs, sometimes you have buttons. You can add texture to the knobs. If you have knobs to help to point out where on and off is or a certain temperature, you could put it like on a turning knob for a stove, you could put one of these dots at say 350 degrees and 450 degrees. And so you'd be able to estimate in between where 400 is or 420 based on where the other dots are at. On more modern appliances, they don't have the knobs. And so you have to go with the dots on the buttons themselves so you can find where to touch them. And then also you can use puff paint to outline where you need to touch, if it's a touch screen or something like that. So there's lots of different ways you can adapt your appliances so that they could be you can be independent with them. One of my favorite ways to adapt a microwave is really not to mark up the whole microwave, but to mark the 32nd button. Because if you mark the 32nd button and you press it three times, you now got a minute and a half on your microwave. So you don't have to fiddle with it that much. You just go beep beep beep and you're warming up your cup of coffee or hot chocolate or whatever. Wow. And not burn. And I feel that if you're visually impaired in a kitchen, right, because I've also worked professionally in a kitchen, but you know, and you get things adapted to you, you're not going, with the knobs. And if you know the temperature, you won't have so many accidents. Exactly. It helps you stay safe. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Actually, since we're on the kitchen, I'm going to talk about kitchen. Yes, let's go to the kitchen area. Because we also do a TV show called Able to Cook. So this might fit into that as well. Oh, great. Okay. So this is something you're talking about being safe with the stove. This is called a push-pull stick. And so I'm going to describe it. It's a long metal bar that has at the end a notch that's kind of in the shape of a Z. And the idea here is that as you reach into your oven, you can hook the rack and pull the rack out with this push-pull stick so that you bring what's in your oven out so that you're not bending over so much and you're not burning yourself. Exactly. So your balance is better? That's what my husband needs. Okay. We can ask him for gifts later. Go ahead. The notch that's on the end of the Z here is faced so that you can put this notch against the rack and push it back in. So you have a pull and a push for the rack so that your balance is not off and you're not burning yourself on the edge of the rack and things like that. Of course you'd want to have oven mitts that go back past your elbows so you can be more safe as you're reaching in and out to pull the stuff off. But this push-pull stick, it's one of the easiest ways to stay more safe on the oven. This particular one has a metal rod on it. They also make it in wood as well. The wood one doesn't hold the heat so you're less likely to get burned on the push-pull stick too. What kind of other... Now we have a whole bunch of stuff here. Mr. Chef there. So the first thing I'm going to focus on here... Oh wait a minute. One thing I do not see... Is there a way like... knives? Yes. I don't have any with me but one of the things that we do at VAB is we teach people knife safety skills. And so we can help people to learn how to cut things more effectively. And there's a couple different ways of doing that. You can really use any knife and it's all in how you position your hands while doing the cutting. A lot of chefs will bend their knuckles back and place their knuckles onto what they're cutting and then cut in front of their knuckles and that prevents, with everything curved back, that prevents you from cutting your fingers. You can also use something called the bridge technique where you kind of act like you're holding a can of soda with your hand and that creates kind of a rainbow or a letter C with your hand. And as you place that over the top of what you're cutting you hold down what you're cutting and you bring the knife in with the spine of the knife up facing your hand and the sharp part facing down. And then you can cut between the the the the arc safely without having your fingers cut. I'd be happy to come back sometime. Oh you're more than welcome. Go ahead. Okay. And then the the the other thing that helps with cutting is contrast and so having a cutting board that maybe is black on one side and white on the other or having something like this you know a lunch tray. A lunch tray is a lunch tray is a beautiful thing. I know that's because it's tough from what I can. You've got a raised lip so anything that that's going to be on it isn't going to roll off the counter. You can use different cuts. Feel free you can take a look at that one. They come in different colors. They come in in different sizes. This is an orange one. That's a black one. So depending on what you're cutting or what you're working with you can choose the color that works best for you if you have low vision. And they also I don't know if you bought anything with you but like cups and bowls and has raised lips too. I've raised lips on them. Yeah I don't have any of those with me but but you can get bowls that have a raised lip around the inside so that as you're you're cutting things on your plate it's not going to roll off the end of it. And and then a couple other things you can do too. Here I have a fry chopper and so you can buy this fry chopper at any Walmart at any Ace hardware at any you know the thing that might be out there. If I may interject I've seen ones I've worked in kitchens where they have one that's like and you just push down the thing and the fries come out. Exactly the same concept same concept. So so here I have a potato that's inside the the chamber the chamber that's inside there. The catches you want to make sure the potato is smaller than the size of the the grate that's going to be cutting. And I'm going to turn this so that as I press down on the handle the fries are going to go towards. Can you use that for cheese too or just fries? So it's funny you mentioned that actually there I have a cheese cutter that that I bought it has a little wire cheese cutter and you can place the cheese along a line and you bring the wire down and it cuts it and and it's I can bring that another time to show you too. If you have hard enough cheese you could probably use this if it's too soft it might get a little cocky. But as I press down here on the handle it pushes the fries out the front. Wow and so now you have you know perfectly made fries here and one of the things that I've discovered recently that that works really well for people with wish of visual impairment is an air fryer. Why is that? Well the air fryer is really it's simple controls and it avoids having to use the the frying pan or something like that that has the oil popping and that kind of stuff. It's a little bit healthier and you know the air frying stuff is a little bit healthier than doing it on the stove and and what my wife and I love to do now is we run these through and we drop them into the air fryer you just kind of mix them with a little bit of oil before you drop it into the air fryer let it go and you know 10-15 minutes later you've got some a great batch of fries and it was very safe in the process very little chance of burning yourself. Okay. Another nice cutter that I've discovered at the hardware store and the reason I'm showing this to you is because it doesn't necessarily have to be something that's been designed for the visually impaired to help the visually impaired. I'm confused about that explained. Well no no you said it doesn't have to be customized. Yeah so so a lot of products are marketed directly to people with vision loss but one of the neat things that I found is that tools that are designed to help anybody can can help people who are visually impaired too. So that fry chopper wasn't designed for the visually impaired that was designed for chefs and kitchens and things like that but it's easily used by someone who's visually impaired and it reduces the chance of having errors when you're cutting with your knife. Does that make sense? Yes. And so this here this is a vegetable chopper. I got this actually a price chopper it was on the discount aisle and what it is is a it has a column in the middle with some blades that spin and the top goes over the top of it and as I pull the string it spins the blades inside the container to finally chop something up and so so what I have so you didn't modify that didn't modify it at all it's it is the way it came and um and so here we have a pepper and one of the things I love about peppers especially if you're chopping it up is you don't have to be very precise and you can actually just tear it with your hand. You don't need to have a knife to to desolate cut the pepper down into the smaller slices but what I'm going to do is I'm going to break this up and I'm going to drop it inside the chamber take one more piece here I love making salsa actually and oh yeah with the tomato tomato you can throw tomato in here you can throw onion in here you put the top I feel like I'm like I'm on one of those shows selling products on the shopping network um and I'm going to take away the it's only 1995 act now act now and that's all you and you get more exactly I feel like one popeal making the rest in peace so those are chunks of pepper in there yeah and I'm just going to take the string the handle here and pull on it five little pulls of the string and when you open it up inside it's the pepper wow and so you can is there a way since show that again is there a way for um well people with disabilities as people with special needs as well um like to modify the modified no modify the blade oh modify the blade because you know being the fact that person visually you don't want somebody hurting themselves right and and so um I'm just asking so when you reach in and pull up on the column there are two little blades there and so you do have to be a little bit careful of those blades um and so what you could do is um I have I'm thinking about safety here yeah actually that's a great question and in my box I just realized that it's in my box there's uh something called a no-cut glove and um and a no-cut glove uh it is uh you it has a material to it that's very resistant to cutting and and um and you can wash up the gloves just like anything else um you can buy them on amazon very inexpensive yeah when I used to work in a deli they gave us the no-cut no-cut gloves yeah exactly and so that's what I would suggest is using a no-cut glove um if you were concerned that you might cut yourself on the blades as you're pulling it out you can put the no-cut glove on reach in and pull that out um so yeah that would be my suggestion so what other kind of goodies did you bring all right some other goodies um so we we have um here it's okay if we go over okay here we've got uh different colored measuring cups and so if you had low vision and and you weren't sure which one was the quarter cup measure the half cup measure the full cup measure if you could identify the color which are this is these are bright rainbow colors you could do that they also make these with braille uh if you need to and you could read the braille to tell what it is and if if a person doesn't know braille and their vision doesn't work with the colors one of the things that I suggest doing is taking a serrated knife and and you could have someone help you if you had a challenge with it but you can notch the side of the cup if it's plastic with one two three or four notches which would be the same as you know reading braille but you know it rather than reading the number with the braille you'd be reading how many notches there are uh to know what the size cup measure was so lots lots of different ways to adapt those and uh here I've got pepper and uh and potato I'll set those to the side so here let's jump into uh medical management yes how do we deal with medical medicine so uh so they there's there's lots of different ways to deal with medical management there are large print uh pill bottles and pill boxes that you can use to organize your pills with but this is something that's come out relatively recently it's called script talk and um it's a a free service you see it's a machine it's a machine and they actually have an app on the phone now too um if you have a so if you download the the um the app you can put it onto your phone and the phone would act like this base but if you don't have a smartphone you can get this base for free as well and um this is a service through Envision America they partnered with Walmart and Rite Aid and Walgreens so if you have um uh I know Rutland Pharmacy here in Vermont has it as well so if you have one of them as your as your medical provider for pharmacy um you can have these bottles that turn it on script talk station ready so it's that script talk station ready and on this bottle is an RFID tag which identifies which means what a radio frequency identification tag and it and it's been programmed to have all the information on the label able to be scanned and so if I hit this button here it's beeping it'll read the entire bottle to you so that you can get all the information that's on the bottle um and if you have to go back to this previous rewind fast forward you can go back and forth in the message um and like I said the currently they they do have an app available as well for your phone so if you have an iPhone do apps usually work or do you need a physical machine the app works beautifully actually um I just don't have one of the RFID tags that I can use with a phone to demonstrate for you um if you're interested in the app or in this station uh you can talk to your pharmacy about script talk prescriptions that's the name of the service and it's completely free to you and uh walmart and and the pharmacies they have all the equipment they just might not know it because no one's ever asked them to use it and um and Envision America will work with the pharmacy if they don't have the equipment to make sure they get the equipment so that's a neat serve speaking about reading yeah for reading okay yeah reading and uh um recording notes or school or absolutely yeah we've got a couple of different devices here that can help with that um so first off uh if anybody has um it doesn't know about the national library service uh no is this is this with um yeah national so so is this with the braille library or the national library I'm confused between the two sure uh so so the vermont association for the blind works with the local uh office of the the library of congress which is called the national library service um and here in vermont that local office is called the abel library it's located in berry vermont and the abel library which stands for audio braille large print and electronic devices um will provide you with a player it's it's larger than this uh it's similar to this though where it's um maybe you know five inches across and and seven inches long and you'll get cartridges in the mail with books the audiobooks that you can listen to um you can also uh you know and that's a free service that you can get these audiobooks sent to you can you borrow one for like if you're in college online or can you borrow that with no cost you can request a specific title at no cost um and if you're in and uh they have lots of books that are used in college um there's another service called bookshare.org which I've heard of them yeah if you're a student that service is absolutely free and you can download electronic copies of the books uh in in in print format and you can make it as large or as small as you want whatever contrast you need they have uh apps that will read it to you um the library service also has books you can download and um so from the the abel library you can have something called a barred account and that stands for braille on audio reading devices um and you can download books on two players like this i'm going to turn it on here technical difficulty please stand back i tested it before i came here and it said it had a 70 battery okay all right that's no problem what i can do instead so this to explain how it works well and i can i can demonstrate um i can demonstrate on here too so so this this player which was charged i promise um it can read books from the talking book library it can take audio notes uh there's a button on the side here you can press to to record uh voice notes um you could uh i used to use this when i would leave appointments with clients i would record what i did with the client and then i go type up my notes later on after i'd listened to what i recorded um it can do text files uh the newer version of it can you i'm sorry can you plug in your phones to that it does have an earphone jack on the side and you can plug in an external microphone if you wanted to have a better microphone than what's on here yes um and uh and the newer version also has gps available so it can help you you can punch in where you want to go in town and as you're walking along it'll say turn right at the next intersection and so forth so it's a it's a very handy device um now i'm going to mention this um is so can that be given a discounted rate because you know a lot of we don't want people listening to this segment or this show today to be scared of getting services because they're going to think it's expensive so so if you get services from uh the the vermont association for the blind or the division for the blind and visually impaired um you know what both both are mindful of the fact that people are on fixed incomes um you know there's with the the services from the division for the blind and visually impaired um they have both services to help you on a vocational track and also services that can help you if you are currently not able to work um and and you need to be independent in your home um and if there's equipment that you need they might be able to help you i can't promise they can buy everything but if it fits into the plan that's going to help you to be independent with your work or with your your independent living goals um often they're able to help if if if not entirely in part um with our our services for older vermonters who are blind and visually impaired we do have a grant that can help purchase some of the equipment um to help people be independent in their homes we we always you know because because we're non-profit we say if you'd like to donate to it that helps stretch the grant dollars so more people can get things but if there's something that you need especially the lower tech stuff there shouldn't be a barrier to you being able to get it in some way and and we can help you figure out tracks for that to happen okay so what is what is that well i i wanted to demonstrate um and let me just increase the brightness on my phone here real quick um as much as possible um you want to ask any questions while we're talking here go ahead take your time uh devices helping the people that are visually impaired and blind absolutely yeah the it's it's funny because you know uh i i love my job i go when i work with people and i show them these things and they want to hug me when i'm leaving because because they they has and since we said that how has um now because you know being visually impaired or blind has been hasn't hasn't been easy uh hasn't been easy history wise oh no uh can you explain a little bit about the problems that problems and not because we have loads of solutions here yeah but what has been said that what has been the problems of people blind and visually impaired or you know because people with blind and visual impairment throughout time were put in institutions weren't treated well can you explain a little bit about some of the history and yeah and then we can go back to some of that sure sure um from a historical perspective um it was in the mid 1800s that um people who were blind and visually impaired started trying to to um better their situation and they would create societies of people with visual impairments this is started kind of over in the england england um there they um you know braille was something that had been uh you know put into production and there were braille there was braille by louis braille by louis braille exactly very limited though at the time um so societies would get together and try to purchase say the bible for people with visual impairments and and braille is expensive oh yeah and and and and they would you know get together and teach each other braille um and so from the 1850s to the 1900s these little organizations started gathering to try to improve situations and around the turn of the century you know you had institutions like the perkins school for the blind and and some other individuals who were starting to say you know we should actually formalize teachers to to help people to become independent um and and in the beginning it really was people who were blind helping people who were blind um and and that was the that was the origin of rehab services way back when um they called themselves home teachers they would go and work with each other um and then you know perkins and some other institutions started formalizing that's where you get the story of annie sullivan going to helen keller um she was one of the first teachers for the for the visually impaired um and and people got um so people people had gotten people had gotten sick from uh in terms of being blind from scarlet fever and other scarlet fever uh actually that that one of the most uh malaria maybe one of the most famous schools that teaches people how to read braille is the hadley school for the blind and uh the hadley which now at the hadley institute for the blind and that came from the 1918 flu epidemic uh mr hadley became blind because of the flu um and and so he realized there wasn't a lot of structure around teaching people braille and that's why he created his then through the mail braille service to teach people braille and then it's evolved over time how expensive is braille like to print like take for example taking a school textbook um and a history book for example right yeah and printing that is that expensive the what's expensive is the device that does the printing uh the embosser uh which embosses the braille onto paper is very expensive it's not like a regular printer it's not like a regular it's it's more like it sounds like those old dot matrix printers from the nineties you know that's kind of what it sounds like it's like a like a like a news like a news teletype like the feedback in the exactly and now the news that that yeah and and so this the embosser you know prints out that braille um and one page of print contracted in braille is three pages of braille so it's three pages of braille for every one page of print and so yeah and the paper's a lot thicker and so you end up with larger volumes but one of the neat things today the so the back to you to your question about what's the new technology out here right uh digital braille a braille recorder refreshable braille displays have little pins that pop up and down and rearrange themselves into the braille symbols as you're scrolling down a page of braille and again the national library service that is about to give a free refreshable braille display to anyone who needs it that qualifies for their services is there a course to know how to use it um yep there are courses to learn how to use it and um you know so the you know technology is becoming very much more available and through different avenues like the national library service and other means we're we're we're getting there and then things like universal design on an iphone or an ipad explain what universal design is so universal design is the idea that something should help everybody not just some people and so um repeat that one more time that that something should help everybody not just some people example websites since we're talking about your phone websites um should have by law under the adx correct um should have a icon you push it or you know with your mouse and it'll make things larger um but not all companies are doing that right now right so so yeah web design is is its own area and i'm not an expert by any means on web design but there's things that you can do to make your websites accessible to people that use screen magnification and screen readers and and if you don't do those things to your website like for example a picture if a picture doesn't have something called alternate text on it it's going to say jpeg or it's going to say photo one two one five five five two three five two two which means nothing you know it's but not me i don't mean to laugh yeah but if you put a description into that photograph that says uh you know a grandchild playing with their grandfather and their dog now someone who has a screen reader can see even videos uh white screen with flowers you know exactly audio description right for videos so so if you put that that's called universal design where you design something so that everybody's going to be able to access it now apple has done a really good job um with their their ios system on their iphones and their ipads they actually design accessibility software built into them so that you can have text to speech and you can have magnification so it has jaws built in it hasn't jaws built in it's called voiceover there's the name of its software and um and android is trying to do that too they have something called talk back they have a magnifier as well um and they have people who are hired to work for them who are blind they're helping design their software right now both apple and since you said that i see another recorder there um oh yep i'll talk about that in a second i just wanted to to to give context to this uh i'm sorry go ahead this was the book reader that didn't work um on my phone i have the barred app which you can download for free from the national library service and um and it has a display that looks like a player and when you press the green button you don't make front fighters out of kitchen boys better to recruit some of those well fed veins we saw or their sons so it has a book that i'm listening to on it right now and so that's the kind of audiobooks that you can download from the the talking library service and there's amazon or amazon has audiobooks uh but they cost money oh okay so i is or does the Vermont Association for the Blind you help companies like amazon with you know with things like that our mission is to work with clients directly um we don't work with amazon and those be it i i do you know if if if they ask for advice i'm happy to give advice but i but they're not going to contract us to go make their systems more accessible we don't do that we work with but i would i would work with you to teach you how to download that book onto the free barred app on your phone um and listen to that book i could teach you how to do that and that's that's that's what my my my job and that device is this device is called a talking label wand oh you mean it's not like star trek and it has three three buttons and a light when i turn it on at the top button here it's powered on yay versus the other one there's a red button and a green button that the red button will turn the volume down the green button turns the volume up um and then if you take one of these stickers here and you scan it this is a new label uh and these these stickers are tactile they have a little tactile circle around them i can record a tag onto this label start recording testing testing one two three recording completed and then when i scan that sticker that was a new label before it plays the recording that i did um and so this these stickers can be put onto anything uh you could put them onto your dvd collection you could put them on your um i there's a gentleman i worked with who um was having a hard time with his ratchets keeping them organized in his toolkit and so we labeled the toolkit using these these labels and so he could organize where he was putting his tools away to make sure they're in the right place um you could use it for your uh food you could use it for like spices spices out yeah you stick one of these stickers on top of a spice container and then you could swap the lid out container containing garlic or pepper or stuff like exactly as as as much as your imagination wants to work with um i i know a person that uses these stickers to organize their address book um so they've now put a sticker into their address book next to people's names and it has the name address phone number of the people i worked with a grandmother who put these stickers into a kid's book and she she prerecorded because she had a hard time reading the print with her grandkids on her lap and so she pre read the book recording each page of the book on a sticker put the sticker into the book and then she sticks her grandkids on her laps uh well lap she has one lap um holds the book out in front of her with her grandkids sitting there and she scans the sticker and she's reading to her grandkid with her voice even though she can't see the page from you know 18 inches away that kind of reminds me some years ago there was something called um i know it's like 1970s picture page yeah something similar to that where you can like you know read with the book you know that kind of thing absolutely absolutely any other before we end do you have any other goodies that well i i have lots more goodies um you know we we we teach people how to use magnifiers um this is a large 3x magnifier with uh has a led light inside of it to um to you know keep all that light in there and so this this is a what they call a stand magnifier the benefit to the stand magnifier is it's already the focal distance is set and it by the way the talking label on turns off its own battery so it saves the battery um the uh the the stand magnifier you don't have to worry about holding at the right distance it's already in focus because the stand holds it there so if you have tremors or something like that that keeps you from using a magnifier these kinds of devices work really well here we have a hand magnifier i've seen that before and they had nice bright led light on it um and these are great to to have in your backpack if you're checking the price at the store you want to make sure your husband is good for him oh that'd be good for him yeah exactly um so those those are those are magnifiers um if you have challenges with glare we've got um sunglasses now how yeah explain really quick how that works so this is um a company called cocoons and and uh i've seen those and and these are a variety of different colors and different frames so if i can pull one out sure um with the yellow thing so example my glasses i'm just gonna if it's okay yeah and that fits over the top of your glasses that layer of the glass is perfect because it it hard there's like no glare there there you go i'm gonna keep it off yeah yeah um and and so that what you just experienced is exactly what i want to see happen when i work with clients and and so you know everybody has a different color that works for them that helps to cut the glare and sharpen the contrast uh sometimes you need to have a pair for indoors if you have if you have a lot of glare problems and and you can have a pair for outdoors when it's even brighter outside can this so this is working can both work indoors and outdoors they can work them indoors and outdoors exactly yeah i've i've got people that wear a certain one in there in the kitchen and then and then they go outside and they use gray because it makes it more dark and things like that and and there's lots of different colors here and lots of different frame styles and you can keep wearing it that's fine you know it helps actually sorry um no they're helping they're helping um now with um are there any glasses within that case that can prevent headaches um any so if you could bring the case out yeah sure um i could bring the case back out um and um so as far as preventing headaches um there's there's lots of different ways so if you have macular degeneration which is what i have yes wearing uh tinted lenses outdoors helps to uh mitigate how fast the macular degeneration progresses what is macular degeneration uh macular degeneration is where in in the back of your eye there are color receptors called cones um and and black and white receptors called rods and in the center of your vision in the macula that's where the densest population of those cones and rods exist and with macular degeneration um because of genetics and other reasons um those cones and rods disintegrate and leave behind scar tissue and that means and that prevents the eyes from working in the center there which that's how i have no central vision it's because the cones and the rods have have scar tissue scatomas left behind um and the more light uv rays and so forth they get into your eyes the faster that progresses and so when you're outdoors you should stop headaches exactly and so if you wear the sunglasses um it reduces the progression it stops the headaches or reduces the headaches um you know the the more irritation to your eyes the faster you're going to get those those those vision related headaches um and so you can reduce those by wearing sunglasses um you know even if it's all year oh yeah absolutely i actually the winter time is the best time to wear sunglasses because here in vermont the snow reflects all the light coming down from above so even though you don't have a bright sun you might have more light coming into your eyes than normal because it's reflecting off everything and so i wear sunglasses in the in the winter time um and uh and it just it helps sunglasses help uh and um yeah because i know there's different colors here yeah there's different colors so if you want to uh now for some people if some people uh you know red uh really makes a difference um people with a vision condition called a chronotopsia i found that the red really really helps though those are people who are colorblind because they have no cones at all that's what a chronotopsia is um and and red really helps to sharpen vision with the lack of cones i i don't know how the science works but that's that's how it's worked um but if if things sometimes people when they have the visual impairment say everything got really dark so you can have a color a color with your sunglasses that reduces your headaches but actually kind of brightens the room too so yellows and and oranges uh those will help to brighten the the environment around you gray and green and and um uh plum and those kinds of colors darken the environment and and depending on your eye condition you might need it a little brighter a little darker but controlled by that that filter okay so um what other good uses you okay i i i understand yeah yeah um well i think the the last main thing i haven't shown you is this um and what this is is a little organizer and and uh this organizes in this case there's lots of different buttons on little safety pins and and the buttons uh have different shapes and colors there's flowers and triangles and squares and you know you could go to joann's and you could get a whole bunch of different buttons joann's is a place where you can get like um yarn yeah yarn and fabric and things like that so you know walmart has you know yep what was that sorry the hook rugs they used to do hook rugs oh yeah yeah yeah can we speak about hook rugs or needle point um pressing this visual impairment can something like this or like be you can organize your yarns and different stuff so so i'm gonna describe this box it kind of when i showed this to laurence earlier he said it looks like a tackle box and i agree it's a lot like a tackle box it's it has several little um square pockets um that run the length in the width yeah and um and the idea is that you can organize different hobbies you can organize different kits um this kit was designed for someone uh to be able to identify the color of their clothing and so you know if you if you're not able to identify the clothing by you know visually um you want to be you want to match your clothing you want to have the right top and the right bottom and things like that well when you run your when you put it on or take off your clothing you can have like a little dish on your on your dresser that has a safety pin and one of these buttons with the different shapes and you could safety pin that to your clothing so that when it goes through the wash and you pull it out and you're organizing it you can feel the the the um the the button that's on the safety pin to know what color or pattern that clothing might be um and uh you know and there's also devices that can scan your clothing you can tell you the color too yeah if people have problems if people have problems with that exactly so if you had neuropathy it can be like a uh uh you know a fashion designer device it all at once exactly like what goes with what yeah yeah there's a free app that you can download for your phones called Seeing AI and it can identify color and patterns and things too oh cool and um but but little kits like this can really help people because when you're visually impaired you need to make sure that you're extra organized and also thank you for coming today because this takes out the myths of being visually impaired or blind because you know okay well one of the things is like people can get scared like if they're first visually impaired if if they're first um having issues of being visually impaired this is to take out the scare things you know not to be scared of exactly yeah so yeah yeah there's a lot of myths and misconceptions about visual loss and since we said that what are the misconceptions of people or people that are visually impaired or blind well um so so there's there's been studies done that have have you know studies done to say you know what what do you feel about visual impairment blindness and what we find is that um a lot of people have misconceptions based on the way they were raised so um if their parents believed that people who are blind were helpless that was passed on to them if their grandma or grandpa when they went blind or visually impaired only sat in a rocker in the corner of the house for the rest of their life they thought that's what it meant to be blind and and that's not you know there's there's lots of you know with with the technology and the tools and the resources we have now um you know if you're blind or visually impaired you can still cook independently you can still clean your house you can live a life you can live your life you can be married you can have i've got a wife and three kids um and uh i i have no complaints about my life i i have every opportunity uh afforded to me um but it does take living your life a little different in terms of being a little bit more organized being a little bit more deliberate uh in the way we plan to do things um you know using the technology that's offered is is a big part if we resist the technology it can't help us um but you you know you you're you're not your life isn't over when you have a vision one parameter and um and so uh and with that said can um you tell us uh the number and address where people can reach you absolutely um if they have um if they want services so so our main office is located in uh Burlington Vermont and the address is 60 Kimball Avenue in Burlington South Burlington Vermont um i'm i'm based out of the Berlin office which is at 13 Overlook Drive it's in the AT&T building on route 302 there um and uh the number that you can reach is that if you have questions if you have needs of any kind you can call us at 1-800-639-5861 and the extension to talk to is 214 that's Andrea Hirschberg she'd be happy to answer any questions you have and um well we would like to also thank you for joining us on this edition of Able to Run It if you would like more information on the association for the blind and visually impaired of Vermont you can uh go to www v a b is it v a b b i d a b b i you got it b a v wait b a v b a i'm sorry w w w dot v a b v i dot org you got that uh the website once again is www dot v a b v i dot org and if you also would like information on um some of the things that you have seen here today please make sure to speak to mr dan Norris and um also if you would like more information on maxi aids and their uh services as well um you can go to www dot maxi aids dot com that's www dot maxi aids dot com well this puts an end and what is the um number again uh for for for v a b yes it's 1800 639 5861 okay that's um that's 802 800 800 that's 1800 669 639 i'm sorry 1800 639 586 5861 that's 1800 um 639 5861 um this puts an end to uh well before that we would like to say um special thanks to um the Vermont association for the blind and visually impaired of Vermont and many others including um the including sponsorship from um uh green mount support services washington caron and mental health and also partners um the uh division for the blind and visually impaired and Vermont association for the blind and visually impaired i'm ron syler i'm ron syler see you next time abledon on air is sponsored by green mountain support services empowering people with disabilities to be home in the community washington county mental health where hope and support comes together media sponsors for abledon on air include park test at times muslim community report w w w this is the bronx dot info associated press media editors new york parrot online newspaper us press corps domestic and international anchor fm and spotify partners for abledon on air include your hard new york and new england where everyone belongs the orthodox union the vermont division for the blind and visually impaired the vermont association for the blind and visually impaired the montpellier sustainable coalition central vermont habitat for humanity abledon on air has been seen in the following publications park test at times new york parrot online newspaper muslim community report w w w this is the bronx dot info and www.h.com abledon on air is a member of the national academy for television arts and sciences boston new england chapter