Evansville Courier & PressMonday, September 20, 1999

Areas Business Article


Electronic helping hands
Computers, other devices allow blind to perform many jobs
By MARY DEIBEL
Special
Scripps Howard News Service

Retired San Diego police officer Bill Darnaud is the first to say the irony
isn't lost on him that he's a legally blind private eye who has learned to
use computers to help track down missing people.
"I know the fundamentals of writing on my computer, surfing the Internet
and sending and getting e-mail to help me out, but I've enrolled at the
local Braille Institute to sharpen my skills," says Darnaud, who
specializes in serving legal documents for lawyers.
"I've been tracked down on the Internet myself by lawyers looking to hire
me so I know it works," he adds. "I just wish I'd known all about this a
long time ago."
Darnaud, 77, began losing his sight in 1990 to optic atrophy, a condition
caused by a lack of blood supply to the eyes that leaves a person legally
blind but able to see with the help of magnification.
He is one of more than 10 million Americans with vision problems
sufficiently serious that they can't be corrected with surgery or glasses
and who may benefit from what computers increasingly can see and do.
Charlene Lahaie of the Braille Institute says that the number will grow as
baby boomers age and their eyesight deteriorates due to a range of ailments
that include glaucoma and vision problems related to diabetes.
However, Lahaie is quick to stress that computers can assist people of all
ages with vision problems and that "our computer classes have proved quite
popular, not only for senior citizens but for younger people who need
career skills."
The institute, through its five campuses in Southern California, is the
nation's largest school providing computer training for the career-bound
and is affiliated with the Library of Congress's National Library for the
Blind and Physically Handicapped, known for distributing books on tape as
well as in Braille through libraries nationwide.
Now computers and what experts call adaptive technology are keeping people
with vision problems active on the job or in retirement through
developments that can give the user a choice of magnifying the words on a
computer screen or converting them to a mechanical voice.


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