The Vision Rehab Podcast is a short monthly podcast about topics and issues related to vision rehabilitation therapists and vision rehab. You can also listen on your smart speaker, just ask for, “Vision Rehab Podcast.”
Listen Now to Diversity and Low Vision Awareness Month
Transcript:
February is Low Vision Awareness Month
Low Vision Awareness Month is a great time to talk about Diversity and Disability, right? After all, there are a wide range of people and their abilities in our country and communities. It is estimated one out of every 4 people has a disability. The CDC reports that low vision ranks in the top 10 disabilities and there are 7 million of us with low vision, including about 1 million with blindness. This number is expected to double in the next 25 years.
Low vision is a vision loss that can’t be corrected with glasses, contacts, or surgery and is most likely permanent, and in some cases may get worse. It can be caused by conditions like macular degeneration, diabetes, glaucoma and other medical conditions, including injury.
While there is no cure for low vision, many services are available to provide training in adapted daily living and workplace skills for those with low vision. These services are found through state vocational rehabilitation agencies and their departments on Aging. You can find yours by calling the APH Connect Center 800-232-5463 or their directory of services online at aphconnectcenter.org/directory. Both vocational rehabilitation and independent living funding come directly from the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA). The RSA is part of the U.S. Department of Education.
Chances are, you’ve never heard of Vocational rehabilitation services or independent living services, but they can play a vital role for those one out of four people who have a disability, that is when they know these services are available.
Let me share my own story briefly. Twenty five years ago while I was working at a job I loved and was paid a respectable income, my vision began to fail from myopic degeneration. I had difficulty seeing the computer screen—a large part of my job. As a result I was “laid off,” and became unemployed for the first time in my life. I also lost my driver’s license which limited my job opportunities to underemployment at odd jobs in the immediate community.
In a short period of time, I nearly lost my home, spent all my retirement savings, and relied on food stamps for my teenage son and I.
I learned of Maine’s Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired (DBVI) through sheer dumb luck. DBVI is where Maine’s Vocational Rehabilitation and Independent Living Services are located. They receive RSA funding through the U.S. Department of Education. With their services, I received the software, training, and adaptations I needed to continue using the computer, and get back to work. I went back to school to get a MA in vision rehabilitation to provide these same services to others with a vision loss. Although I’ve been “legally blind,” for many years, like most people with low vision or a disability, my vision loss is not really noticeable, unless of course you see me reading with a magnifying glass or with large print or speech on the computer.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with many people in a similar situation, needing retraining or tools to continue work or school. I can think of many people who benefitted from DBVI–the college student who lost his vision from a genetic disorder that went on to law school, the young man born with no vision, who went on to assist a major national retailer make their website accessible to others, the young man who lost his vision shortly after college who went on to work for a federal agency in Philadelphia with a high security clearance, the tenured college professor, the apartment complex owner, and the list goes on. Without these services we all might have been relying on social security disability, instead of returning to the workplace and paying taxes—taxes used to provide these services in the first place from the Department of Education and Vocational Rehab.
Many of the clients I worked with were elders and their goals were often just to remain independent in their homes, which they did, with some retraining and services from Independent Living and Vocational Rehabilitation. For those who are unable to find rehab training and forced to go to a nursing facility for services like meal prep and medication management, the cost is huge. It can cost well over $100K year on average. Millions of dollars of healthcare costs are saved every year by providing adapted daily living training and assistive technology like magnifiers at a fraction of the cost of skilled nursing. And, from my interaction with these clients, their quality of life, remaining in their own homes is much higher than it would be in a nursing care facility.
So, as part of low vision awareness month, I’d like to remind listeners about the vital role the Department of Education and Vocational Rehabilitation play in helping people with a disability, like low vision, return to work, paying taxes, and creating a huge cost savings to healthcare.