 |
| How Do You Improve Your Vision |
Optical devices
These low-vision aids can help you use your remaining vision more effectively. They're frequently used in conjunction with regular prescription glasses. They include magnifiers for close-up work and telescopes for distance vision.
Magnifying eyeglasses. In magnifying eyeglasses a magnifying lens stronger than your regular prescription glasses is mounted in your eyeglass frames along with your regular lens, or it's mounted on a special headband. These glasses allow you to use both hands for close-up tasks, such as reading. You need to hold the reading material close to your eyes, which may be tiring. It may also be difficult to illuminate the page sufficiently. Plenty of light and a reading stand can help make you more comfortable and be easier on your posture.
Hand-held and stand magnifiers. Hand-held and stand magnifiers allow you to read print or work with objects positioned at a normal distance from your eyes. A hand-held magnifier is useful for reading price tags, labels and restaurant menus. The device is less practical for activities such as continuous reading because you have to hold the lens at a steady distance from the reading material, which can be exhausting. Stand magnifiers can be adjusted at a fixed distance directly above the object you're looking at. Hand-held and stand magnifiers are available with built-in light sources.
A low-vision specialist can help you choose the right type of magnifier with the correct strength or power for your particular vision problem. And remember, a magnifier is most effective when it's held at the correct distance. This requires testing at different positions to find the one that best serves your specific need.
Telescopes. Conventional magnifying lenses don't help people with low vision see objects better at a distance, even objects that are just across the room. A telescope magnifies objects in the distance, but at the expense of a greatly narrowed field of vision. Telescopes may be held in the hand or mounted on eyeglasses. Hand-held telescopes are best used for short-term viewing, such as reading bus numbers or street signs. An eyeglass-mounted system is better for long-term viewing, for example, when you're watching television or an outdoor sporting event, or for when you need to use your hands for a close-up task.
Adaptive technology
Devices such as televisions or computers can be adapted to suit the special needs of people who otherwise may not be able to use them.
Closed-circuit televisions. Closed-circuit televisions, also known as CCTVs, help many people with low vision read books and newspapers, manage their checkbooks, read prescription bottles or look at photos. They provide much greater magnification than standard optical devices. There are many options to choose from.
A CCTV basically consists of a camera and a 12- or 19-inch monitor. You pass the material you want to read under the camera, which magnifies the print and displays it on the monitor. You can adlust the magnification to a type size that you can read comfortably. You can also adjust the color, brightness, contrast and background lighting of the screen to suit your needs.
Certain CCTVs can be connected to your computer. You only need one monitor because the computer and the CCTV can share the screen - one part of it shows computer files, the other displays CCTV material. Another type of CCTV allows you to scan large amounts of text that can be stored in the device and read on the monitor at a later time.
Portable CCTVs have a hand-held camera that you pass over materials to enlarge what you wish to see. You can view the enlarged material on a standard CCTV monitor, a small portable monitor or on the screen of your television set or computer monitor, depending on which option you choose.
Personal reading machines. A personal reading machine is formally referred to as an optical character recognition (OCR) system. It's a type of read-aloud device. The OCR operates something like a small photocopier - an internal camera scans print and then reads it aloud with a synthetic voice. OCRs can read almost anything that's printed, but they don't work with handwritten material.
You can use an OCR by itself or connect it to your computer. When it's linked to a computer, the scanned material can be converted into various forms, such as Braille, large print, voice or computer files.
 |
| How Do You Improve Your Vision |
Computer equipment and programs. Computer equipment and programs that enlarge text and images displayed on a computer monitor are available. These enable you to word process, use spreadsheets or browse the Internet - whatever you need to do on a computer at home or work.
A new, sophisticated and relatively expensive option involves installing a synthetic voice device on your computer. You can either use a synthesizer device or install a synthesizer program that uses your computer's existing sound system if it has one. Whichever synthesizer you have reads the text on your monitor using a computer-generated voice. It also tells you what's occurring on the screen: where the cursor is, what text is highlighted and other essential computer activities. To find out more, you can check out How Do You Improve Your Vision.