Published and distributed by the Iowa
Department for the Blind
Allen C. Harris, Director
Karen Keninger, Editor
Commission Board Members:
Julie Scurr, Chair, Coralville
Robert Martin, Davenport
Doug Elliott, Grinnell
Des Moines, Iowa
Table of
Contents:
A Note from the
Director
Vision
Loss Doesn’t Mean Job Loss for Jenny
Hy-Vee
Catalogs Available in Braille and E-Text
Recreation
Room/Lobby Renovation Project
Library Offers
Bookport on Loan
Bristow Girl
Reads Her Way to the Sky
Aloha
Protecting
Your Computer
Centenarian
Focuses on Today and Tomorrow
Descriptive
Story Time Participants Needed
Braille
Programs Available for the Des Moines Civic Center Broadway Series
Pathfinders Update
Simpler
Way to List Files & Folders in Windows with Your Screen Reader
Slates,
Styluses and Canes Needed for Blind African Children
Braillers
Donated to Needy Children
Free,
Comprehensive and Accessible Medical Information On-Line
Long
White Cane is a Joy and a Life Saver
By Allen C. Harris
The spring and summer
months have been busy for IDB, and as you will read in the White Cane Update, we
continue to find ways to get better at providing services to blind Iowans.
The Library has continued to strengthen our
traditional services while adding a number of new and interesting activities.
The Summer Reading Club, was quite successful and the winner got an
exceptional prize!! We have opened our Career Resource Center (CRC) in the
library, which will be dedicated to career exploration and employment success.
Library and Vocational Rehabilitation staff will support the Career
Resource Center. We have begun to
test software to convert Braille books into electronic files.
This has far-reaching implications for preservation, duplication, and
sharing on the Web. We have
some books, one of a kind and aging, that need to be preserved and Karen
Keninger is determining the most efficient process for this goal.
Curtis Chong and his staff continue to show creativity and a
dynamic understanding of the changing demands on our college students.
Among other activities, they hosted an outstanding College Days seminar
this summer. I want all to know how
proud I am of our commitment to this group of consumers.
In the last issue of the White Cane Update, I wrote about the
newest version of the Iowa Cane. We
have heard feedback from many users, and have placed a second order
incorporating many of your suggestions. Please
continue to let Dave Hauge know what you think.
We want to get it just right.
I am very sorry to report that on August 13th, Julie Scurr,
Chair of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, had a stroke and is currently
recovering at home. We will be
happy to forward any cards and well wishes to Julie if you send them to her in
care of the Department.
By mid September, IDB will bid the recreation room and first
floor renovation, which we hope to begin in December and perhaps complete in the
spring of 2005. The recreation room
will get a complete face-lift, along with updates to mechanical systems.
The Fourth Street entrance will be refurbished to reflect its original
attractive space. We will also move the reception area and central switchboard
as part of the first floor makeover. When
completed, the changes will showcase our building to all visitors as they enter
the Department. We have an appropriation from tobacco funds to complete this
project. Mike Hicklin and our
maintenance staff continue to keep the building "sparkling," and
everything in working order.
As you read this White Cane Update, we will are actively
participating in the budget process. Over
the last four lean years, IDB has seen its appropriations reduced by more than
25 percent. We are working to
address that in the appropriation for Fiscal Year 2006.
I am hopeful, believing that we can sell the programs and services
provided to the citizens of Iowa. It is our responsibility to make our needs
known and to garner the support from both the Governor and Legislature.
Jenny Repplinger of Indianola is losing her vision, but she's not losing
her job with Principal. Jenny has
worked for Principal Financial Group for the past 17 years and is currently a
Senior Information Technology (IT) Applications Analyst. She plans to continue in this job indefinitely, despite the
fact that she is now legally blind.
Referring to her blindness, Jenny says, "I don't like
it, but it doesn't control me. It
doesn't ruin my life. At first the
emotional drag is tremendous. I was
lucky. I know it's coming, and I
intend to use what I have to do what I want to do."
Jenny's success is due to a three-way partnership between
Jenny, herself, Principal, and the Iowa Department for the Blind.
The key players in this partnership are Jenny; Cathy Campbell, a Human
Performance and Development Manager for the Retirement and Investor Services
Business Systems section where Jenny works; and Brenda Criswell, Jenny's
Vocational rehabilitation counselor at the Department for the Blind.
To celebrate Jenny's success, and to share their story,
Jenny, Cathy and Brenda showcased Jenny's experience at the National Employment
Conference sponsored jointly by the Rehabilitation Services Administration, the
Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR), the
National Organization of Rehabilitation Partners (NORP), and George Washington
University in Washington D.C. August 16-18.
"I love my job," Jenny says.
"I love what I do, and I love the people I work with.
I wanted to figure out a way to keep my job and still do my job
well." As an applications
performance expert, Jenny helps programmers optimize their software and find
ways to reduce costs while achieving required performance. In addition, she
says, "When the system goes down, I help bring it back up."
She also trains new employees.
"Jenny is a great resource to all of the IT
employees," Cathy says, "because she has the background and knowledge
of the system, and communicates very well with people."
Three years ago, Jenny's diabetes began to cause problems
with her vision. For the first two
years, she struggled privately, trying to cope on her own.
"Last year, it got to the point where it was getting tough to do my
job," she remembers. I could
still do it, but it was tough." Reading
printed materials and taking notes became more and more difficult. She could still read the computer screen but began to worry
about accuracy and found herself needing to double-check everything.
"Jenny is a long-standing employee who fills a very
valuable role with us," Cathy says. "We
don't want to lose her as an employee. At
first she didn't want to 'come out of the closet'–she didn't want the whole
workplace to know she was working her way towards blindness.
She didn't want people to see her as different, and she didn't want to
lose opportunities.”
"Jenny came to me as her first contact with the company.
She said she had to face reality. She
was having more surgery, and at some point she was afraid she would not be able
to see well enough to do her job. As
a company we wanted to do everything we could to keep Jenny, and I let her know
she is a highly valued employee. I
also let her know that no one had reported any change in her performance."
When Jenny decided to talk to Cathy about the problems, the
two of them set to work finding solutions.
Neither Jenny nor Cathy knew what would work, but research and a referral
from Jenny's ophthalmologist led them to the Iowa Department for the Blind.
The solution has involved a partnership with Brenda Criswell,
Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor at the Department for the Blind.
Brenda put Jenny in touch with a successful blind IT professional.
"He gave me insight which was very helpful," Jenny recalls.
Convinced she could keep her job, Jenny took on the challenge
of learning the skills and tools she needed.
She started with the assistive technology she needs at her desk--a screen
reader to speak the text on her computer screen, a scanner to convert printed
material to computer text, and Braille to label everything from files to
conference rooms. She spends half a day each week in the Department's Adult
Orientation Center learning alternative skills of blindness while she continues
full time on her job. Her plan is
to master the job essentials first, and then to move on to travel with the long
white cane, home ec and wood shop, the other major core classes at the
Orientation Center.
The accommodations Jenny needs to do her job have been a
joint effort between the Department and Principal. Jenny's employer supplied new hardware, and the Department
provided specialized software and training.
Jenny provided the will to learn it all.
"We wanted to comply with the law," Cathy says,
"but more than that, we wanted to keep Jenny as an employee.
Jenny is an outstanding performer, and adds too much to the workplace.
This experience has been very cost effective for Principal.
It would have been virtually impossible to replace Jenny.
We could bring in someone new, but they wouldn't know Principal, and they
wouldn't know our systems. We would
have had a huge cost in loss of productivity and retraining."
By working with Jenny and the Department for the Blind, Cathy says, they
have experienced very little interruption in service.
Judd Kirklin of Home
Town Grocers and the Iowa Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped have
collaborated to make the Hy-Vee catalog available in Braille and electronic
text. Catalog information includes the item name, brand, size, and
category. For example: "Hy-Vee
Mozzarella Cheese 8 OZ Chunk," or "El Paso Enchilada Sauce Hot, 10
OZ."
The catalog contains over 9,300 items carried by Hy-Vee
Grocery Stores. You can
browse the catalog to see just how many kinds of salsa you can buy, or you can
use it to make a specific grocery list, complete with brand and size.
If you are interested in receiving a copy either in
electronic format or in Braille, contact Laura Williams at 800-362-2587, Ext.
11292.
By Mike Hicklin
The recreation room
is to receive a general remodeling/modernization that will retain the original
character of the building.
The carpet and stone flooring will be removed and replaced
with ceramic tile with a pattern to mirror wood beams in the ceiling.
Existing wood paneling will be removed and replaced with
gypsum board and oak wainscot.
A direct vent fireplace will be installed.
Directional lighting will be used to highlight the fireplace.
The ceiling will be removed and replaced with a gypsum board
ceiling with wood beams at a height that will allow the arched windows to be
once again exposed to the interior of the room. The wood beams are to be revealed on the underside to create
shadow and depth. The windows will
be trimmed in oak. The
ceiling will have floating wood panels in coffered areas with indirect
fluorescent strip lighting above. Pendant
lights will hang from the floating wood panel areas of the ceiling.
Recessed wall wash can lighting will be provided at the entry corridor to
attract attention to the recreation room from the main entry.
All existing doors, frames and hardware are to be replaced,
with the exception of the southwest fire door.
A new lockable coat storage area will be provided in the
northwest corner of the room.
A new kitchenette will be created in the south end of the
room. New base and wall cabinets,
counter top and sink with disposal, will be provided. The kitchenette will be equipped with an electric range,
microwave, exhaust hood, and refrigerator.
A wood accordion type folding partition will be used to conceal the
kitchenette from the remainder of the space when not in use.
The partition will fold into a pocketed area when the kitchenette is in
use. A new storage area will be
created to store stereo and PA system equipment.
The existing heating/cooling wall units will be removed from
the recreation room and staff offices connected to the recreation room and
replaced with a forced air system. A
new larger air handler system will be added to the industrial arts shop ceiling
area and will be ducted up to the first floor recreation room/office area.
This will improve indoor air quality and remove some mold/mildew issues.
The existing kitchen and storage area (107) will be renovated
to create a new office space. New
carpet, wall finishes, high efficiency lighting and a suspended acoustical
ceiling will be provided.
The middle office (106) will receive new carpet, wall
finishes, high efficiency lighting and a suspended acoustical ceiling.
The south "log cabin" office (105) will receive new
carpet. The existing ceiling will
be repainted and new light fixtures will be provided. Walls are to remain the existing log veneer.
The northeast office (103) will receive a new higher ceiling
to allow opening up the arched window, high efficiency lighting, new carpet and
wall finishes.
The recreation room corridor will have new lighting, wall and
floor finishes.
The Fourth Street entrance doors will be repainted and the
old oak fire doors at the top of the steps will be refinished and restored.
Administrative office (139) will be renovated into a new
reception area with curved counter open to the 1st floor lobby on two sides.
Cabinets and lockable storage will be provided.
The first floor lobby will receive new gypsum board
walls and acoustical ceiling.
The existing reception/switchboard area will be opened up and
a small waiting area created. A new
east entrance will be created for the Aids and Devices showroom area.
The north wall will be opened up to create a six-foot wide passage area
that will be in addition to the present entrance.
Traffic flow into the north and west sections of first floor will be
greatly improved.
The vinyl wall finishes will be replaced on the north hallway
leading to the assembly room.
This project will be worked in phases to minimize disruption.
When it is complete, several building code issues will be resolved.
Funds for the remodeling come from a special
appropriation from the legislature of Tobacco Funds.
The Bookport is a
small electronic device about the size of a remote control unit, which is
designed to play digital files. The
user can listen to the new Daisy format files, MP3 files, electronic text files,
and digital Braille files. Electronic
text files and digital Braille files are read with a synthesized voice, while
Daisy audio files and MP3 files sound like tape recordings.
The Library will begin a short-term loan program to introduce
patrons to the BookPort as an option for listening to digital books. This pilot
program will be limited to five BookPort units with a loan period of eight
weeks. Each unit will be loaded
with examples of Daisy audio files and an MP3-format radio show.
The borrower will choose from a list of text files of public-domain books
and also a book from the NLS WebBraille collection.
The BookPort will be shipped with headphones, a cassette copy
of the user's manual and fresh batteries.
If you are interested in trying out this reading option,
please contact your reader advisor.
Miranda Snyder, 14, of Bristow, won the
grand prize of her first plane ride in the Summer Reading Club sponsored by the
Iowa Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
Miranda and her father Kevin Snyder joined Library Director Karen
Keninger and pilot Donald Wood at the Hampton airport on Saturday, August 14 to
fly over their acreage in Bristow in a four-passenger Cessna.
The pilot, Donald Wood of Des Moines donated the flight time.
Miranda, a freshman this fall at North Butler Senior High
School, won the prize by reading Talking Books from the Library's collection.
Her favorite, she says, were the Harry Potter books.
Forty-four other blind and reading disabled students
statewide participated in the club this summer. Using "Trail Cards" for each week, which focused on
topics such as "Trails West," "Trail Blazers" and "Into
the Woods,” children "discovered new trails at the library."
They read books on Talking Book, in Braille, and in large print, and
turned in completed "Trail Cards" for each week.
They also drew pictures, wrote stories, and participated in related
activities with family and friends. All
club members who turned in their "trail cards" won prizes.
Miranda won two additional prizes for a horse-drawing contest and a story
she wrote.
The purpose of the summer reading club is to encourage
students of all ages to read during the summer months.
This year's members read over 625 hours.
Sponsors of the Summer Reading Club were: Devin Rowling, Cosi
Cucina's Restaurant; Jackie Ackerman, The Iowa State Fair; Jack Krantz and Molly
Vincent, Adventureland; Rick Long, Coca-Cola Bottling Co.; Plaza Lanes Bowling
of Des Moines; and Betsy Watson, Anderson Erickson Dairy Co.
By Dr. Sandy Tigges
On Saturday, October
2, the Adult Orientation and Adjustment Center will be holding its annual
Orientation Alumni Day. Our
festivities will have a Hawaiian theme this year in honor of the many staff from
Hawaii's agency for the blind that have received training at our Center.
For only $12.00, you can participate in the luncheon from 11:00 a.m. to
1:00 p.m., afternoon programs, the banquet at 6:00 p.m., and a dance afterwards
at the Renaissance Savery Hotel.
For more information or to purchase tickets, contact
Rebecca Swainey at 515-281-1254 or 800-362-2587.
Family and friends are also welcome.
Remember, you don't have to be a grad of the Orientation Center to
attend. See you there!
By Curtis Chong
The Iowa Department
for the Blind is pleased to announce the second in our continuing series of
technology seminars for the blind of Iowa.
This seminar will focus on protecting your computer from the dangers
running wild on the Internet and the strategies used by experience blind
computer users to protect their individual systems.
Our team of technology experts will discuss such topics as computer
viruses, unsolicited e-mail (spam), spyware, unsolicited pop-up ads, and the use
of nonvisual access technology to defend your precious data.
Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 6, 10:00 a.m.
There will be two hours of lecture, lunch (on your own) and more time to
obtain hands-on experience with some of the strategies recommended by our
technology experts. The seminar
will be held at the central office of the Iowa Department for the Blind, 524
Fourth Street, Des Moines Iowa 50309.
If you are interested in attending the seminar, please
contact Curtis Chong, Director of Field Operations, by phone at 515-281-1361 or
via e-mail at chong.curtis@blind.state.ia.us.
Dorothy Bryant
has much more interesting things to talk about than her loss of vision. At the
age of 100, she is planning for tomorrow. Sitting comfortably in her apartment in Story City, where she
still does her own cleaning and cooks two meals a day, she discusses packing to
move the treasures she keeps in her display cabinet. She'll be moving to a new apartment in Perry in October and
wants to be sure everything makes the trip safely. She is looking forward to
more space and a second bedroom where she can put her desk. She apologizes for
boasting, but tells me about her twin granddaughters who have just graduated
magna cum laude and summa cum laude from their college.
She reminds me of the importance of family, and talks about three
generations of her own family as well as her own genealogy.
She talks about her trivia games and her plans to organize new trivia
groups when she moves to Perry. She
attends tai chi classes several times a week and continues her aerobics in her
apartment. She chuckles as she tells me that sometimes she and another
lady who is a year younger than her are often the only ones at the tai chi
classes. "We say those other
people just don't want to get as old as we are.
Some people just sit in their rooms.
That's sad. Why not try to
keep motivated about something and do more to make life more pleasant?
Keep active both physically and mentally, and do everything you can to
retain the memories you have and make some new memories worth preserving."
When coaxed to talk about her vision loss, she said,
"Now that I'm losing my sight, which is very poor now, it has been much
easier to adjust because I know what the blind can do."
Dorothy first learned about blindness when she accepted a job
in the fledgling Iowa Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in 1961.
Working for Kenneth Jernigan and Florence Grannis, she helped build the
biggest and most patron-centered library for the blind in the country.
She worked as a talking book librarian until her retirement in 1969.
Dorothy has always loved to read. When she graduated from grade school, her parents gave her
first book–an anthology of Longfellow's poems.
She still has it, although the cover has worn off and she has sent it to
be rebound.
The books she reads now are talking books from the library
she helped to build in the 1960s. Instead
of the heavy records she used to ship, she receives the little green boxes in
the mail with cassette tapes containing her books.
"I really hope I get the book by Helen Thomas that was listed in the
last catalog," she says it is satirical, and I would love that."
"When I first started working there, we were open
at night until 9:00," she recalls. "One night a Lions Club was
visiting. One of the men
[Orientation Center students] who had not been here very long was conducting the
tour. He came into the talking book
area, and I told him I knew it was hard to learn Braille.
‘You've done wonderfully well, and it's already helping you," I
told him. ‘Well,' he said, ‘it
was either that or be illiterate. I wouldn't want to live that way.'"
The library, which Dorothy helped build and now uses
regularly, serves 23 patrons over 100 years old, the oldest of who will be 107
this year.
By Dan Bakke
The Library would
like to start a descriptive story time using the Internet and the telephone.
The Story Time will be aimed at children ages 3 through 6.
If you are interested please contact the library and give us the
following information: E-mail
address, telephone number, child's name and age and which day and times of the
week would be best for you. Please
respond by Monday, October 11, 2004.
Once we have compiled a list we will contact you and let you
know the schedule. If you have
Internet access we will send you a link where you will be able to enter our Iowa
Library virtual room. We will then
have a Storyteller reading the story from our Braille copy and another volunteer
describing the pictures as we continue through the storybook.
You will need to have speakers on your computer to hear the story and if
you have a microphone you will also be able to interact with us over the
computer. We will also set this up
on a teleconference, so if you don't have access to a computer you will be able
to follow the story and actively participate over the telephone.
The library and the
Civic Center of Greater Des Moines are combining efforts to provide Braille
programs for the 2004-2005 Broadway series. Braille programs will be available
at the west coat check window upon request.
You can also rent binoculars for $5 per show, or receive an assistive
hearing device at no charge at the coat check station.
If you would benefit from sitting close to the stage because of visual
impairment or mobility impairments, call the Civic Center ticket office at
515-246-2320 to make arrangements.
The Civic Center is located at Third and Walnut in
downtown Des Moines. The Broadway series includes:
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, October 12-17; Def Poetry
Jam, November 16; Chicago, November 23-28; The Producers, December 7-12; Mamma
Mia!, January 25-30; Peter Pan, February 15-20; Movin' Out, March 8-13; and Miss
Saigon, April 19-24.
By Keri Nuzum
This summer, I have
been traveling throughout Iowa to meet with potential mentors and mentees to
participate in the Department's new Pathfinders Mentoring Program.
During my travels, I have met many interesting people with fascinating
careers and goals. For example, I
have met with pathfinders who want to own their own bakery business, have their
own daycare, become a social worker, a psychologist, work for a newspaper, law
office, or hospital, and others who are interested in the sciences, specifically
in the fields of animal, computer, occupational and physical therapy, and
mortuary science. I have conversed
with students who want to go into the workforce immediately, and some who are
interested in going on to college. I
have had applications from students across the entire state, from the far
southwest, to the northeast. I have
met with students here in the Polk county area, as well as some living very
close to our neighboring states. I
am looking forward to meeting with even more pathfinders and mentors in the near
future.
I am still accepting applications for both mentors and
pathfinders--the young people ages 16-26 who can benefit from contact with
successful and confident blind adults who can help them achieve their goals.
I am still looking for potential mentors who are pursuing careers in
these or related areas: teaching,
journalism, culinary arts, auto repair, physical and occupational therapy,
social work, mortuary science, and veterinary science.
Remember, as a mentor, you could have a positive effect on a young
person's life.
The first of our five workshops will be held in
October. At that time, our mentors
and pathfinders will be introduced to each other.
They will learn about the program's goals, expectations, and plans, as
well as their individual roles in the mentoring process.
For more information about the Transition Mentoring
Program and how to apply, please contact Keri Nuzum, Transition Mentoring
Specialist at the Iowa Department for the Blind.
I can be reached at 800-362-2587 or 515-281-1322. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
By Curtis Chong
As I work with blind
friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to master nonvisual access to the Windows
operating system, it has become apparent to me that many people have not been
shown convenient ways to list the valuable files and folders stored on their
computer's hard drive, CD's, and floppy disks.
I thought, therefore, that it would be appropriate to describe one method
that seems to work for me to list files and folders on my computer.
I have found that you do not need to use "My
Computer" or "Windows Explorer" to bring up a list of files and
folders on a given drive. Instead,
simply use the "Run" dialog, and specify which drive you want.
I will discuss the "Run" dialog box in just a bit, but I will
say at this point that it presents a display which is much simpler to work with
than the one you get using Windows Explorer or My Computer.
What is a drive, you may ask? The term "drive" simply refers to a physical device
that stores and retrieves data. There
is your "hard drive," which is sometimes called the "hard
disk;" this is where just about everything you work with on the computer is
kept. There is your floppy disk
drive, which is used to read and write to floppy disks, a storage medium that is
beginning to fall out of use. Then,
there is your CD drive, which (as you might expect) reads and (under the right
circumstances) writes data to compact disks.
To make matters more complicated, there are network drives and removable
drives, but these are typically not found on your average home computer.
Each drive is given a letter designation followed by a colon (:).
For instance, your hard drive is designated as "c:," your
floppy drive is called "a:," and your CD drive is usually
"d:."
Each drive contains a collection of folders and files.
While files cannot contain folders, folders can contain files and (yes)
other folders. Every drive has a
great big folder called backslash (\) which holds everything that is stored on
the drive. Think of the drive as a
file cabinet, backslash as the master folder for the file cabinet, and
everything else as being stored inside of a folder called backslash.
If I haven't lost you yet, let's now return to the Run dialog box.
The easiest way to open the Run dialog box is to press and
hold down the Windows key then press and release "r."
If your computer lacks a Windows key, open the Start Menu by pressing
Control plus Escape, arrow up to the "run" selection, and press Enter.
A dialog box will appear.
Don't worry about what is in the dialog box.
At this point, you have to make a decision--that is, what drive do you
want to manage. Most often, you will want to look at files on your hard
drive, but at other times, you may want to look at the contents of a CD or
floppy disk. Remember the drive
designations discussed earlier? Well,
these become important at this point. For
now, type "c:" and press Enter.
What next appears is a simplified view of your hard drive.
In the first window is a list of folders followed by a list of files.
These are folders and files contained at the "top" of your hard
drive--the first layer, if you will. You
can move through the list using your up and down arrow keys, and you can
manipulate these folders and files the same way you would if you were using My
Computer or Windows Explorer. (For
those of you who want to get to "My Computer" from this point, all you
have to do is to press the Backspace key.)
In the second window, there is an "address box,"
which you can use to change the focus to a different drive or drive/folder
combination. You can move between
the first and second windows by pressing the Tab key. When you are in this second window, you can type another
drive designation (e.g., "a:") and press Enter to go to that drive.
Alternatively, you can type something like "c:\windows" and
press Enter. If you then press Tab
or Shift+Tab, your focus will move to the new list of folders and files.
The Pacelli School for Blind Children in Lagos, Nigeria is in desperate need of white canes, Braille slates and styluses and other supplies for the children at the school. At one time, says Bitrus Gwamna, an alumnus of the Pacelli School and now an assistant professor at Iowa Wesleyan in Mount Pleasant, the government of Nigeria operated the school. However, the government ceased to fund the school, and now the Catholic Church has taken on the responsibility. If you have slates and styluses, or extra white canes, either long canes or folding canes, and wish to donate them to the school, please contact Bitrus Gwamna at 319-385-2114, or mail them to him at 1134 S Linden Lane, Mount Pleasant IA 52641
The Department is donating four refurbished Perkins Braillers to the
School for Blind Children in Merlo Norte, Argentina.
The school serves approximately 100 blind and visually impaired students
from 45 days old to adults and has only three working Braille writers.
The Rotary Club of Merlo Norte has taken on the challenge of securing ten
much-needed Braille writers for the school.
The Braillers the Department is donating were used for many
years by volunteer Braillists to transcribe print books into Braille.
With the advent of computer Braille, the transcribers have left the
Perkins behind for the faster, easier, and more flexible computer format. Alan
Ackley, a library staff member and long-time expert in reconditioning Perkins
Braillers, completed the reconditioning work to make these sturdy machines ready
for their new job. The Library
still has an abundance of Braillers available for new transcribers.
New transcribers use the Perkins for the first several
lessons of the Library of Congress Braille Transcribers' curriculum before
graduating to computer input.
MedlinePlus at www.medlineplus.gov is a good place to start looking for
information on medical issues, and pharmaceutical drugs.
Sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, MedlinePlus is a
government web site, which is free to all users. Page design follows
guidelines for accessible websites. Links,
graphics and buttons are properly tagged, layout is consistent, and the design
is simple and straightforward. No
advertising, pop-up windows, Java scripting or complex frames complicate the
page. The Skip Navigation link
works consistently.
MedlinePlus serves both as a source of consumer data on 650
medical conditions and as a gateway to a plethora of other resources.
All other resources are carefully chosen on the basis of quality,
authority and accuracy along with several other criteria.
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June Svec Heitland of
Ackley will be 85 soon, and she's just begun learning Braille and how to use a
long white cane. "I have taken
every opportunity I have ever had to be a student," she says, "I love
to learn.
June has just completed a week-long training program for
older Iowans who are losing their vision. Known
as Senior Orientation, this training program is held at the Iowa Department for
the Blind in Des Moines. June's
class includes eight students, and focuses on personal adjustment to blindness.
Students learn to cook, use a computer, travel with a long white cane,
read a little Braille, thread a needle and do some hand sewing, all without
using any of their remaining vision.
Before she came to Senior Orientation, June used a standard
wooden cane to help her navigate Ackley' streets. When she arrived in Des Moines, her teacher, Jen Hutson, gave
her a long white cane to use. "From
the time I got it, it has brought me so much joy, because I can tell distance
now," June says." I can measure the depth of something.
When I'm going to step down a curb, I can tell when it goes way down.
Without my cane I would have tripped."
June began losing her vision four years ago due to macular
degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss in older Americans.
June, like the other students in Senior Orientation, is not totally
blind. In fact, she regained some
vision through surgery last spring, but she still cannot see at night.
"When people asked me to go places at night," June says, "I
wouldn't go, but now I will go with my new cane."
June walks at least two miles every day and is excited about the prospect
of using her long cane when she returns home.
"My cane is going to be my life saver."
Another milestone for June has been learning that she can
cook and use the oven safely. "I
made a beautiful chocolate cake with icing," she says.
June used to bake and decorate cakes for weddings, but has been afraid to
use the oven for the past four years. "I
found out that wearing big long oven mitts I don't get burned and don't catch
anything on fire." During
class, she also cut up vegetables, and baked bread. "This is a wonderful
accomplishment for me."
During classes, June and the other students wore sleep
shades, which blocked all remaining vision. "When I put the shades on at
first, I got a little panicky. I was afraid I would get vertigo, and I took
little bitty steps. I got over that
by the second day," she says. "The blinders [sleep shades] have taught
me a lot, too, because now I won't be afraid to go out at night.
Now I have much more confidence."
According to June's teacher, Jen Hutson, the purpose of the
sleep shades is two-fold. First,
and most importantly, students understand that the techniques they are learning
will work regardless of how much vision they have.
They learn that the successes they achieve are due to their use of
alternative techniques and not their remaining vision.
The sleep shades also prevent the need for further training if more
vision is lost.
In addition to skills training, June and her classmates along
with teaching staff addressed their personal attitude toward blindness.
It is often the misconceptions held toward blindness by the general
public and by many blind people themselves that limit the person the most when
attempting to maintain their independence after vision loss.
Each day throughout the week, June's class held a "business
class" They discussed topics such as the use of a white cane and public
reactions to it; family acceptance of their vision loss; and their own personal
stories and achievements.
When June returns to Ackley, she intends
to continue her routines, including walking to coffee everyday, exercise class
twice a week, and around town for her daily constitutional.
She'll take her long white cane with her when she leaves for her annual
trip to winter in Florida. She'll
also continue her study of Braille.
WHITE CANE UPDATE is published by the Iowa Department for the Blind. Please direct questions and suggestions to the Iowa Department for the Blind, 524 Fourth Street, Des Moines, IA 50309-2364, 515-281-1333.