Dear friends, The English Longitudinal Study has found that people with poor eyesight are three to five times more likely than those with good eyesight to suffer from low quality of life, poor psychological health, and depression. When those inequalities are accounted for through Low vision aids, however, the impact of poor eyesight itself makes almost no difference. Low vision rehabilitation can help balance many inequalities by strengthening other senses that have lain dormant in deference to sight. By awakening those senses, most independent activities of daily living can be continued, and quality of life can be maintained.
If you are in the intermediate to late stage of vision loss, you may be considering making the transition from visual to nonvisual practices in some of your daily activities. Low vision rehabilitation is designed to address those challenges, but if such services are unavailable, a self-help guide might be useful. The MD list moderator, Dan Roberts, has put together such a helpful guide. "A Self-Help Guide to Nonvisual Skills" can be accessed in PDF format by selecting this link: http://www.mdsupport.org/guide.pdf The guide is designed for people who are wanting to learn of the many alternatives that exist to replace low vision. It could be just as useful, however, to people who still have functional vision, but who would find it easier to supplement with some nonvisual skills. It is screen-reader friendly and printed in large font. Your computer probably already has Acrobat Reader installed to open it, but if not, you can download it for free from: http://get.adobe.com/reader Twenty-one categories of daily activities are recognized as important to independent living, and nearly all of the activities can be accomplished using senses other than sight. By identifying those senses and learning how to use them, we can find encouragement in knowing that our quality of life does not have to lessen due to vision loss. All of those categories are listed in a self-evaluation contained in the guide, along with activities specific to them. You are encouraged to use the checklist to identify areas where you could personally benefit from learning about alternatives to eyesight. Following the checklist, brief lessons are printed that relate to each of the areas of activity. These lessons introduce helpful devices, technology, software, and procedures that can help us maintain our quality of life. The ideas in the lessons are compilations of many of the ideas we have shared on the Internet over the years, supplemented with information provided by our monthly presenters and other professional resources. As we know, learning new ways of doing things requires tenacity and adaptability. Maintaining a high quality of life, however, is worth every effort. I hope you'll find this guide to be beneficial. Dan Roberts MDList Owner [email protected] Get numbers right this time, help the census with correct disability info!
