I agree with Tom Fowle's recommendation about the importance of low
vision services before purchasing any optical aids.  You can locate a
low vision service in your area by going to the website of the American
Foundation for the Blind and clicking on Directory of Services.  That
will get you to a search engine.  In the Services box, click on Low
Vision Evaluation and Follow-up.  Or use this to go right to the search
engine.  http://www.afb.org/Results.asp

Opinions of other people with low vision must be taken with a grain of
sald.  Everyone's vision is different  Even people with the same
disgnosis and visual acuity respond differently to different optical
aids.  .  What is helpful to one person may not be helpful at all to
another.

Good luck.

Janice L. Knuth

-----Original Message-----
From: VICUG-L: Visually Impaired Computer Users' Group List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fowle
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2003 10:28 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Jordy


Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>

I have no experience of, or opinions about those devices, but before you
invest in such things, you need to see a true low vision specialist.
This is an opthalmologist or optometrist who actually specializes in
dealing with reduced vision.  There are low vision clinics in some
places, and this is even better as they may have lenses, and other gear
you can try without buying.

Unfortunately the only such clinic I know of is at the U.C. Berkeley
dept of Optometry, but I am sure there are many others.

Never depend on opinions of general practice ophthalmolgists and or
other eye care professionals about how to deal with your low vision
problems, just like total blindness issues, most of them know worse than
nothing about coping with problems once they have done what they can
medically.

If your doc can't or won't send you to a low vision specialist, then
call the nearest medical school with a dept of ophthalmology and ask if
they have a low vision clinic.  go there!

No matter how hard it is.

Never depend on sales literature, or opinions of nonprofessionals to
find you the correct help!

Low vision is so complex, and specialized knowledge is so absolutely
necessary to deal with  it correctly, that not finding a specialist with
lots of real world experience in low vision is leaving your self out of
ideas and technologies that may really do good things.

getting bad advice from inexperienced people is sometimes worse than
nothing at all.

End diatribe

Good luck
tom Fowle


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[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
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