Guest blog post from our partners at State Services for the Blind. This post has been lightly edited.
State Services for the Blind (SSB) is proud to join with the Minnesota Council on Disability to celebrate Low Vision Awareness Month. Many Minnesotans do not realize that most people we serve at SSB identify as having low vision. That means many Minnesotans who are experiencing vision loss may not know that SSB could help.
If you’re a senior and vision loss is making everyday tasks harder, give us a call. We can help. If vision loss is a barrier to getting a job, staying in your job, or advancing in your career, get in touch with us. We’re here for you. If you’re struggling to read print, SSB’s Communication Center might have a great solution for you.
Whether you have low vision, no vision, or some vision sometimes, what matters is not what you see, but what you can do. At SSB, we’re here to support Minnesotans who are blind, DeafBlind, have low vision, or are print-disabled in finding tools and resources to live their dreams. We are inspired by the Minnesota Council on Disability’s vision to create “a barrier-free Minnesota where every person with a disability has full access to all aspects of life.”
For Low Vision Awareness Month, let’s focus on living well with low vision. Here are some strategies, thoughts, and tips from staff and customers at SSB.
Tools and Strategies for Living Well with Low Vision
In her book, The Braille Encyclopedia, St. Paul poet Naomi Cohn writes about her journey with vision loss. “My life got a whole lot better when I focused less on medicine and more on how to adapt, including engaging in vocational rehabilitation, which I experienced as empowering me to live fully in the body I had.”
“Even over the course of writing and revising this book I’ve used a variety of strategies,” Naomi writes, “including combining magnification and the VoiceOver screen reader on my Mac and phone, making braille with slate and stylus, and using dictation and the braille screen input function on my phone. Since none of these methods or combinations works perfectly, and since all of them, one way or another, take a toll physically, my other constant companion is a timer, so I limit the increments in which I read or write to limit the wear and tear on my body.”
“With a smartphone,” says SSB Assistive Technology Specialist Jesse Anderson, “you have an amazing tool in the palm of your hand that gives you access to so much so quickly. You can use it to read, to identify something in your environment, to help you navigate, to read your mail, or buy your groceries. Smartphones are like the Swiss Army knife of accessibility, and they have truly been a game-changer.”
“You might be intimidated if you’re new to smartphones,” Jesse adds, “but you’ll find that you’ll learn quickly, and you’ll be able to do so many more things that you thought might not be possible.”
Learning Skills That Carry Over
SSB Director Natasha Jerde, when she began work at SSB as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, went through six weeks of adjustment to blindness training, which is a requirement for all of our counselors. To do this, she wore an eye mask so that she had to do all the activities nonvisually, or she wore goggles that simulated various low vision conditions. As a sighted person, Director Jerde finds herself drawing on these nonvisual techniques every day.
“I can reach into a drawer or a cabinet or my purse, and find what I need by touch,” she mentions. “Or, I’ll pour a glass of water and use a fingertip bent over the rim to tell me when the glass is full, so I don’t have to be looking at it.”
“When I’m making something in the kitchen, I use a lot of the techniques I learned in my training,” she adds. “I don’t have to be always looking at what I’m doing, and I manage to stay more organized.”
Low Vision Is Part of Minnesota’s Disability Community
Every day at SSB, we see Minnesotans who are blind, DeafBlind, and have low vision meeting life’s challenges with resilience, creativity, and perseverance. Minnesotans with low vision join the thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities who are living their lives, supporting their neighbors, breaking down barriers, and making our state more vibrant, more welcoming, and a better place for all of us.