(soothing music)
Welcome to "Hadley Presents".
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back,
relax, and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, we explore options for reading
after vision loss
and our guest is Hadley learning expert, Steve Kelley.
Welcome to the show, Steve.
Hey Ricky, thanks for having me.
Yeah, great to have you back,
and for those of you that don't know you,
maybe this is their first episode,
why don't you just give a quick intro
and tell us a bit about yourself?
You know, people may have heard me on one of
three discussion groups that I'm a part of.
"Get Up and Go" is one, "Crafting Circle", and "Book Nook".
And I'd love to see anybody who hasn't
already heard those join in.
And then, you know, my day job is working with you
in the tech group, which I absolutely love.
Yeah, we have a fantastic time
and I think it's interesting that
you are a co-host on "Book Nook"
and I think that experience will certainly come in handy
for our topic today.
And I know that you've done some work in the field
with people who have experienced vision loss
and you have some personal experience with that too.
So just really looking forward to diving into this topic,
'cause there's a lot here to cover.
So what we're talking about today is
reading after vision loss,
which is a pretty broad topic
and there are so many different things that we can cover,
because, you know, there are lots of different ways
even to think about reading.
Are you reading for pleasure?
Are you reading because you have to?
Once you decide that, then
how are you reading? What's available?
What techniques can people use?
And I think a lot of people just don't know
what's available,
so that's why we wanted to have this discussion.
So I guess we'll start with what happens
when someone is starting to lose their vision.
Or maybe it's gradual or maybe it's very sudden,
but in either case,
there's probably some change in how they're reading.
Maybe they're trying to read in the same way
they always have, but it's not as easy as it once was,
so there's this adjustment period.
What kinds of things do people try
when they're in that period of figuring out,
hey, I still want to read, but I'm kind of struggling?
Oftentimes, when I was working
as a vision rehab therapist, I would often show up
and somebody would pull out grandpa or grandma's
handheld magnifier from the 1930s or something like that.
They oftentimes were not having a whole lot of success
with it and just weren't sure why.
I've just seen all kinds of other things like that,
you know, and sometimes there's stuff on the TV
that we see or, you know, you walk into a box store
and there are some handheld magnifiers there
and unfortunately a lot of times they don't work
as well as people think they're going to.
The reason is because one size doesn't fit all.
There's just all kinds of different things out there
and a handheld magnifier is a great device.
Don't get me wrong.
But you want one that fits where your vision happens to be.
That's kind of where I saw the failure in
that method happening was people just weren't really having
an assessment and figuring out which one
was going to be the best one.
Well then, how do people know?
And I'm sure this too is not a one size fits all.
I think there's this feeling that,
if I just try hard enough, I can make this work
and maybe I'm the problem or I'm not using it right
or maybe this will just get better if I keep at it.
So how do people know then when it's time
to investigate some other technique
that might be a little more successful?
One of the things that I've
observed both personally
and with clients in the past is that
none of us likes change.
And maybe I should just speak for myself.
I certainly don't like change.
So those of us who have spent most of our lives reading
with our vision, that's what we want to hang onto
and we are going to hang onto it tooth and nail,
no matter what happens.
Let me just give you a quick story.
When I started a master's degree about 18 years ago,
you know, I showed up on campus
and we had done some reading beforehand
and I was woefully behind in my reading
and that's not really who I am, you know,
but at the time, I was doing my reading
with a handheld magnifying glass,
because I had always read visually, and highlighting,
and putting notes in the textbook, the printed textbook,
which by the way was just in regular print,
and it wasn't working and I knew it wasn't working,
but I wasn't willing to do anything differently,
'cause that's the way I had always done it.
One of the students who was blind in the the workshop,
she seemed like she was all caught up
and knew all of the answers and everything,
so I finally said to her, "How are you doing this?"
And she said, "Well, I went to the office
for students with disabilities and I got the text
on a CD and I'm just using my computer
to do the reading text-to-speech."
Which is where the computer or whatever device
you happen to be using is just reading everything
that's on the screen out loud to you.
And I'm like, "Oh, the office for students
with disabilities." (Steve laughs)
So, you know, and here's the thing.
I mean, I did not see myself as somebody
with a disability, but because of the frustration
and also, you know, being concerned about my grades
and all of that other stuff,
that's where I was the very following morning
at, like, eight o'clock filling out the paperwork
and getting my CD with it,
and then I put it on my computer
and I started using the text-to-speech,
which I had some familiarity with.
It wasn't smooth and it wasn't seamless
and I didn't get it at first.
I mean, it was a bit of a struggle,
but it was a heck of a lot better than what I was doing
with the handheld magnifier
and I just kept at it, because that's what I needed to do
in order to succeed in those classes, you know,
and I don't think that I'm
that much different than a lot of other people.
I still find, you know, I have to remind myself
to be mindful about efficiency
and trying things differently when things aren't working.
Yeah, and I guess it really does take some
kind of motivator, because change really is hard
and perhaps you have to have something
that you're trying to accomplish
that's just become too frustrating to ignore that may,
you know, get you to that point.
Perhaps you're proactive and you're learning things
before you necessarily need them,
which may also make that transition easier.
I guess it's different for everybody.
You know, you bring up a really good point,
and I should say, you know,
I just spoke to somebody on the phone within this last week
who was being extraordinarily proactive.
She's an 85-year-old writer.
She has things that she needs to write
and she was checking in with vocational rehab
and learning how to use the iPhone
and voiceover on it so that she could master it,
because she wanted to continue doing those things
and, you know, she still had some functional vision,
so she was being very proactive
and I just really applauded that personality type.
It's just not mine.
But you know, there are people out there who do that
and that's wonderful.
So I guess there are, well, I guess at least two
types of reading.
There's reading because you want to, you know,
curling up with a good book, reading for pleasure,
and then there's reading because you have to.
I want to know which mail is junk mail
or how do I cook this thing
or what medication is this?
Why don't we talk about ways that
people can do that necessary reading?
Are there devices or products that are available
that are really well-suited to that kind of reading?
This is a great distinction that you bring up,
because, you know, that piece of mail that just came in
or that quick short note or label that you need to read,
a lot of those things can be quickly and easily done
with a good handheld magnifier for sure.
And in fact, you know,
my go-to magnifier is just a 5x Bausch and Lomb magnifier
that I have in my right pocket every single day.
It's really not a great magnifier,
'cause there's no light on it.
In most situations, I can do what's called
spot reading with it.
You know, I can see enough of it to know what's going on.
That's kind of the low-tech approach.
The other go-to thing is I've always got my phone on me.
It's a smartphone and oftentimes I open up the camera,
you know, use the magnification gesture on that
and make things a little bit larger,
again, for spot reading.
You're not going to read a magazine article
or anything like that.
You know, then when you have something that
you really want to read for pleasure,
like a magazine article or a book or something,
then, you know, you have a whole new set of tools
perhaps in your toolbox
and I always think of it in terms of a toolbox,
because there's not just one device
that's going to do this stuff.
You might have a pair of reading glasses.
You might have that handheld magnifier,
you know, or maybe you've got a desktop video magnifier
where you've got a platform and you put your cookbook
or other reading material right on the platform
and above that is a camera and it takes a picture
of the text and puts it up on the screen,
so then you can zoom in or magnify however you want to
and it makes it easier to read.
Again for me, like, if I'm doing research,
then I completely switch to text-to-speech almost entirely.
You know, I just use something on the iPhone
or my computer that reads the text on the computer screen,
because I can always pause it and go back
and that sort of thing.
So I too make a real distinction between
what I'm reading, say, for pleasure
or what I'm just reading real quickly, like, you know,
the mail or something like that
and it's something that's a little bit more
complicated or more in depth.
I know that you read in different ways too
and I suspect that you too have a way that you'd prefer
to read something that's a little bit more in depth versus,
say, you know, casual or pleasure reading, right?
Yeah, definitely.
So, and I have no vision, so if I'm reading something
that's the equivalent of spot reading,
I too am going to use a tool on my smartphone,
whether it is something like an app called Seeing AI,
and hey, we have information on the Hadley website
about that.
So there's Seeing AI. There's an app called Envision.
These are apps that allow you to get just a quick
and not always super accurate,
but accurate enough idea of that text,
enough to figure out, oh, this is junk mail,
oh, this is that business card that, you know,
I wanted to call the person back to
come mow my lawn or whatever.
Those are the kinds of things that I would use
for spot reading.
Either that or I would get some visual assistance.
Now, that could be someone in my home
or, more often than that, I will choose to
use a visual interpreting service.
So this is a thing where you can call somebody up
using your phone with a camera.
Generally, they're smartphones,
but there are a couple of less smartphones
that also have this capability, where you can, again,
call the person, they can see what's happening
through your camera, give just that quick spot reading
for you, and then off you go about your day.
So that's what I do for spot reading.
And then, for something that's a little more involved,
whether it's, you know, pleasure reading
or something that's going to take a lot longer to read,
then I'm probably on my computer
or perhaps I'm reading it in braille.
Lots of different ways to go about reading
that longer text,
so why don't we talk then about that?
How do you approach, if you're doing some research
or you're reading a long article,
or again, if you're curling up with that good book
for pleasure, what do you tend to use?
If I'm pleasure reading,
I will probably get something
that is narrated by a human being.
These days, if I'm pleasure reading, I am going to go
to Audible where, you know, you've got a human-narrated
book, or actually I'm first going to check to see
if it's on Talking Books, and if it is,
then I'm going to download it,
because that's a human-narrated book.
It's enjoyable.
I just really love reading that way for pleasure.
Although, oftentimes, I'm not reading for pleasure
and, in that case, then I'm going to download the book
as a digital text.
Usually, I'll use something like Bookshare, but not always.
I might just download something off
the internet or whatever,
and then I'm going to use text-to-speech.
I'm going to have, it's usually my iPad.
I'm either going to have voiceover read it to me
or I'm going to use Voice Dream Reader
or one of the other apps that will read it,
because I want to be able to go back
to reread certain sections.
I want to be able to put a bookmark in.
I still like to highlight and I like to add notes
and you can do that with all of those different apps.
So, you know, that's definitely the distinction
between the two for the most part
and I definitely have a preference for sure.
Yeah, and I'm much like you in that
there are those same tools in my toolbox.
So we mentioned Talking Books. That's the NLS Bard service
and we'll have information about that in our show notes
of course.
Bookshare, another service that allows you
to download texts, but in all these cases,
we're reading them either using, in your case,
you could use magnification on your computer screen
or, again, text-to-speech.
It just feels more efficient,
especially if you have a situation where
you have vision that is only good for so many hours, right?
So if your eyes are getting tired,
you want to use that vision for something that
you don't have an alternative for.
So reading in text-to-speech could be a lot easier
on your eyes, whether or not you can still see
that large print.
So I think it's interesting that we do, again,
have the same tools in our toolbox.
It's audio, whether it's text-to-speech
or whether it's a human narrator.
Did you have any techniques that got you more accustomed
to not looking at that text as it was being read?
Yes and no, and again, it wasn't really anything
that I can take any kind of credit for.
It's one of those things where it came down to efficiency.
When you start realizing that your efficiency
using your vision is really slow,
it becomes a lot more appealing to listen to it
and, you know, that's part of that transition
where maybe you might be kind of frustrated at the time
and gosh knows I was and still am sometimes.
As you start making progress with some of these
other alternatives and you start realizing, oh,
my efficiency with this is getting much higher if I,
you know, turn on text-to-speech
or if I, you know, get that narrated book
to keep up in my book club or something like that.
That, I think, is kind of what moves us along,
is just recognizing that this new path
is a little bit easier and is a little less frustrating
and we're actually getting the things done
that we want to get done.
So I think that's part of the process for those of us
who aren't a little more proactive.
The proactive people are going to figure this out logically
and make steps in that direction.
Well, I guess it's no surprise that
braille is going to come up on a Hadley podcast.
I think it's the first thing that people think about
when they start losing their vision.
In some cases, it's the only thing they think.
So there's probably this huge sense of overwhelm, like,
okay, I am struggling to read print,
so I have to learn braille.
I have to learn it now and it is going to be the only
method by which I'm ever able to read anything forever.
It's a little more complex than that, right?
So is there a way that braille can fit in
and have a logical place,
and yet there are some other techniques as well?
So are there reasons that people might learn braille
that don't involve reading everything
in braille forevermore?
When I first realized that what was going on
with my vision was progressive
and that I would get perhaps to a point
where I was having trouble reading print
the way I normally did, it was like the very first course
I took at Hadley, once I'd figured out my way,
and it was bumpy, but I got a braille course,
because I assumed exactly what you said.
Oh gosh, you know, my only opportunity
is going to be braille.
I was actually pleasantly surprised, you know,
when I took the the braille course,
which was just the alphabet in braille.
It was actually simpler than what I thought
and, at the same time, I thought,
now how am I going to read a book in this?
Because, you know, that piece of it was quite challenging.
I think where braille fits in really well
for somebody with low vision is for labeling,
putting a quick label on something and, you know,
a letter or two that you just touch
and right away you know, oh, this is the Advil
or this is, you know, the cleaner that I want
or whatever, you know, especially in places
where, you know, it's dark underneath the cupboard
or maybe in the freezer.
So there are plenty of places that braille can be used
on a regular basis for somebody with low vision.
They're probably not going to be literary braille readers,
but if that's something that they wanted to pursue,
of course, yeah.
The other thing that people don't realize is
you've got a whole world of braille with braille displays,
you know, connected to the computer.
So you know, a lot of folks who are, like, real readers
or real literary people may actually,
even with low vision, want to learn, get to that place
where they're literary braille readers
with their braille displays, because again,
it might be more efficient or more enjoyable for them.
Wow, I love that.
Just a whole spectrum of ways to use braille
and we do have courses for learning braille,
both visually and tactile braille,
that still can involve some of your vision,
if you still have it.
Those initial lessons will engage both your eyes
and your fingers.
So if you're looking to learn braille,
you know, you've come to the right place
and Hadley's got you covered for that.
But we have talked about not just braille,
but magnifiers, text-to-speech, smartphones,
Talking Books, digital books, this huge list
of things and all the different types of magnifiers,
and if somebody's sitting there going,
I heard a lot of information
and some of it might apply to me,
but I'm feeling really overwhelmed just thinking about this.
Where am I even supposed to start and what do I do?
So how can someone figure out where to start?
How do they try some of these options
without just shutting down and feeling like it's too much?
I think the very first thing that I would do,
and we'll put this in the resources, I'm sure,
I would get a hold of the National Library Service
Talking Book Program and here's why.
The reason I'm suggesting the National Library Service is,
one, it's free.
Two, the Talking Book player is probably
one of the easiest machines that you will ever
learn how to use.
You can literally pick it up
and use it the minute you get it.
There's no charge for it.
You can get library books. You can get magazines
and here's the plug for Hadley too.
Of course you can also get many of our workshops
right on the Talking Book cartridges
that play in the machine.
So the reason that I'm suggesting that
as priority number one is because it will take you
to the next steps, whatever those next steps happen to be.
You know, you may not use it later on,
but it will help you get to those next steps.
So that would be priority one.
The second thing, Ricky, I would suggest is
I would suggest people get in touch
with their state vocational rehab agency
or their department on aging, and every state's got one,
and those are the places where you're going to find
some additional training, maybe some demonstrations
for some of these devices,
and the quickest and easiest way I can think of to do that
is to call me, and I do this on a regular basis,
and I'll look it up for you
and give you that information as well.
But the reason I'm saying that is you want to get
an assessment for some of these things.
So many people, as I mentioned before,
have that magnifier that's not working.
It's in the top drawer.
They don't use it and they don't use it
because it was the wrong one.
Get someone from one of those agencies to come out.
There's usually no charge for it.
Have an assessment.
Figure out what it is that's going to work best for you,
and also find out about that broad spectrum of stuff
that's out there that will keep you reading.
There's a bunch of it and they know more about it
than you do, so you can learn something from them.
That's really well said.
It's great to know that there are so many resources,
'cause I think that's one thing that people struggle with
is they know that they're having trouble with something,
but now what?
Where am I supposed to go?
What questions do I even ask?
I don't know what I don't know.
I think half the battle is just figuring out
what some of the options are and knowing
that you do have options.
Well Steve, thank you so much for
sharing your experience
and just the ideas that you have about things
that people might try.
The show notes are going to have a ton of information
for you to check out, if you're wondering where to start.
If all that is maybe a little bit much,
Hadley's always here to point you to the right things.
We'd love to have a conversation with you,
so do give us a call and, again,
happy to point you in the right direction.
Well, it's always great chatting with you, Ricky.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Steve.
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