I think the worst thing about wearing glasses is that they get dirty really easily. I’ve gotten into the habit of cleaning them a lot, but it is frustrating how dirty they get even if you don’t touch them. Sometimes I wish I could wear contacts, but those are probably frustrating as well. Still they are very helpful and as I’ve gotten older I’ve really seen how much they help and how much my left eye really does for my vision, but even so they are still frustrating sometimes. I’ve also gotten better at not dropping them like I used to.
Category Archives: Independance
Useful tips to help with independence
The “perks” of vision loss.
One thing I heard this week while waiting for class was a few girls talking about things such as their vision (due to one of them not having their contacts). Though I didn’t listen to their conversation fully one thing that struck me was that one of them was saying that they wouldn’t mind being visually impaired because then they could get a guide dog. I didn’t mention to them that it takes more than being visually impaired to get a guide dog, but I wasn’t going to. I mentioned before about how sometimes things that other people have because of disability are somehow “cool”. I suppose people don’t think of the downside to it. My girlfriend has a similar probably with her diabetes when she was in high school. Normally food wasn’t allowed in classrooms, but given her situation she was allowed and everyone wasn’t too happy about it because they wanted to be able to eat. I suppose that’s similar with people who see people who are visually impaired or blind walking around with a guide dog and being able to take it everywhere. There are some benefits to not being able to see well I suppose, but personally I’d much rather b able to see normally, be able to get around and drive where I wish. Be able to not have to worry about all the downsides than whatever “perks” I may gain from having this disability, but that’s just me.
Discovering the Area
Over the past few weeks I’ve been meeting with my mobility specialist at the CNIB once i a while in order to find new places that I may want to go. Places like the super market and mall, but also interesting places that are along the way or around. I had her help first year to learn my way around campus and also to learn where the bank was and other such things, but after that I kind of fell out of doing it. Now I’m learning about all sorts of fun places. It started with me needing to find my way to the CNIB building for something, and just went from there It’s always good to have someone help you find places and find the place you’re thinking about. Sometimes the hardest thing about Google Maps is that if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for or what it might be called it’s harder to find, and if you don’t know it’s there (like she told me about a really neat cafe that I would never have known about had I not been told) there is no reason to find out. It’s pretty fun and I have to do it more especially since I plan on living here.
Pasta or Fries
One thing I love about being on campus is the cafeteria staff know me very well. I got into the habit during my first year of always asking them what they had (because the online menu could change and it was hard to read the printed out ones because the text was small). So now they’ve gotten used to just telling me without me asking, and it’s a good thing too because apparently my eyes confuse pasta and fries. Now the pasta was with meat sauce mixed in so it was around the same colour as fries in general, but it certainly would have tasted different had I thought it was fries.
I used to feel silly at fast food places asking what they had because the menus are up on the walls, but it’s a very useful habit to get into and usually the people are very nice about telling you what’s there.
Why I don’t trust elevators
This is a more silly thing that happened to me once. Well it happened to a good friend of mine, but I was actually the only other person there ate the time. So we were at a conference for visually impaired and blind people of New Jersey with a program we were in. We were at the hotel we all were staying at going to go to supper. We’d gotten to the elevator earlier than the others (I can’t remember why we were so early actually). So we went into the elevator, but were going to hold the door open. Still his cane got stuck in the gap between where the door closes. He tried to pull it back out, but it slipped out of his hand. Perhaps it was because his tip was worn down, but somehow the cane managed to slide through the hole and fall down the elevator. We stood there in stunned silence for a while listening as the cane clattered down the shaft. Needless to say that cne wasn’t recovered. We laughed about it afterwards. I would have lent him my cane, but I was rushing and forgot it at home. Still it’s an interesting moment and I always think of it when I go into an elevator.
Interesting or not?
Sorry for not posting in a while. I think I’m going to keep thse to one post a week because I had a lot of school work this week so I didn’t have a lot of time to write.
One thing I’ve found in life is that things are very interesting to people who don’t have to deal with them. What I mean by that is is that people will find some of the technology I have very interesting and cool. Though I agree that some of it is amazing, most of the time it’s more hassle than it’s worth. Still, it’s a conversation starter because a lot of people want to know what it is and how it works. Especially when you’re in school. I suppose it goes off the idea that things are so natural to us that we take them for granted, but when something else comes into the mix we pay attention to it. We take things almost for granted that they’re the way we thin they are. If someone constantly gets coffee from the coffee machine at their work, but suddenly their office bought a new machine they would notice.
My point is that with some of the things I have it’s so unusual to other people that they’re interested in what it is and how it works. They want to test it out and play with it for a bit It’s not that I mid that, but that I don’t see why they’d be so interested in something that for me is a normal thing.
I’ve had plenty of “toys” in the past including computers with cameras so I could see the board or machines that could read the text on the page and make it bigger. So many people wanted to play with them and explore them.
I also had one time a young girl ask what my cane was to her mother while I was walking past them one day. her mother told her and I showed her a bit how it worked.
It’s also interesting to think how sometimes you take tings for granted. I had a program during high school that was set up for blind and visually impaired students and at one point my high school had four blind students (including me), but my girlfriend when she first met me was very curious because she’d never met a person who was visually impaired before.
So I guess we really just assume things are mainstream that we’re used to, but when something is common to us it might not be so common to others.
Zoomtext: Three versions in one?
When I got my new computer I had to get a new version of Zoomtext since my old one was out of date. The price was lower given a few very helpful discounts (me having own a copy before and just a general discount they were doing at the time) so I got a new version of Zoomtext they created last year called Zoomtext Fusion. It’s an interesting version which is meant to help people with progressive vision loss so I thought I would try it out ((despite my vision being stable). I had it for a while and was struggling with a few bugs that were causing me trouble. One e-mail to their sales office to see what their policy on returning or trading in a version yielded something interesting. Apparently a feature I didn’t know was that you can switch between all three versions of Zoomtext (magnifier, magnifier/reader and fusion) not only is this really awesome, but switching to one of the other versions solved my issues. Fusion is a rather new program so it’s not perfect by any means. They’re still working on bug fixes and such, but for now I’m quite happy using my Zoomtext in one of the other versions. The fact that thsi feature exists is quite exciting. it means that if you thought you only needed magnifier, but find you need a reader as well you’re not stuck with not being able to have it. Or if you find the reader annoying and jst want the magnifier you don’t have to put up with having the reader there at all.
pronunciation and spelling
So today in one of my classes my teacher was talking about words. It came up that most of the time we read a lot of words, but we don’t know how to pronounce them because we’ve never had to say them out loud so we have to figure out how they’re pronounced. That stuck with me because in my experience it’s completely the opposite. Since I spend most of my time reading by listening to books (because it’s very hard for me to read actual text) I tend to know how to pronounce words I have no idea how to spell. It does lead to some bad spelling and me struggling with certain words. That’s not to say I’ve never seen a word written and not known how it’s pronounced, but my main experience is the opposite to others.
Dorm room living
Well I’ve been living in dorm for the past years of university (and I’ve had the same room for all but the first year, and technically last year because I switched rooms, but I was originally in this room). Still it’s interesting living in a residence because you’re surrounded by people, but at the same time you have your own space [or a space shared with one other person, or a few if you have roommate(s)]. Still, you have a space out of your parent’s house to call your own, while at the same time having other people who are around to help you out if you need them. Also a bunch of people who are in the same boat as you are in regards to being new. Well there are people like me who have been here for more years, but most students in residence are in their first year as well. It also means that you are close the university so finding and getting to classes is much easier.
The need for (no) light
One thing I’ve gotten used to being visually impaired is not having lights on. Sometimes I’ll go around in the dark and do things because I know where things are and I don’t have to see everything to understand it. I’ll also feel around for things instead of looking, but that’s a different thing all together. I’ll sometimes go around the house with no lights on. I mean who needs light when you know where everything is? Of course if people move things around that can be a problem, but hey, that’s part of the fun!