Blind.

[hawke86]

I am slowly going blind. I am already legally Blind. I can no longer see to the sides anymore. I can only see things striaght in front of me. For a couple of day I lost my eyesight completely. For most people that would scare them. It didn't scare me. I don't know if any of you are going blind.

[Chatter-box]

Be smart and look ahead. Get your skills in order, then you can move into accepting the identity of a being a blind person without the anxiety you will find, otherwise. My grandfather, his brother, my brother, and my son are blind. They all became totally blind by age 20, so they all had several years to learn good cane technique, Braille, and other skills of blindness. There are certainly a lot more adaptions, especially in the area of technology, than there used to be. You can keep on posting here with a screen reader and you will find other blindness adaptions useful to you as you learn about them from your new blind friends. You are very, very lucky to be in Texas. The National Federation of the Blind, the very top group of blind people, are having their national convention in Dallas this summer. Go to their web site, NFB.org to see the dates and I can't stress to you the importance of making that convention!! Here, you find a community of friends who have accepted the identity of Epileptics. There, you will find the information and the community you will need to accept the identity of being a blind man as a fact and learn that is OK to be blind. You can look on this as a challenge, and see that there is a whole world of blind people just waiting to show you how to "do it right". But you need your skills ready and you need to be proud of your identity as blind. Don't let people use cute words like "visually impaired" or "visually challenged".. Your identity is blind no matter to what degree, and it is an identity of pride. Go to that convention, I'm not kidding! You'll learn all you need to be successful.

[RobinN]

I know you have had a rough go of things lately Hawke. Keep the chin up

Chatter-box, you have given him some great suggestions.

[Chatter-box]

My son is real computer whiz and real passionate about adaptive technology. He was frustrated that he could buy a box of, say mashed potatoes, but not be able to read the directions on the box. He wrote a program to take a hand-held scanner and scan the bar code on an item and have his Braille notetaker (sort of like a Braille laptop, but not really) pull up the directions and read them to him. He is still a teenager at heart and named the program BARF. Hawke, if you decide you need to BARF I'll get an autographed copy for you!
I'll bet you never thought about it Hawke, but blindness can provide a bit of humor, too. Like the time he had to go sign up for the draft. He was offended to find the form was not Brailled or printed in accessable format, yet he was expected to read and sign it! You'll find them, too. Have fun.

(By the way, is there a spell checker on this thing? I keep getting these words spelled wrong ).

[hawke86]

How can blindness provide humor???

[Crystal11]

Hello Hawke, sorry to hear you're having a hard time with adjusting to a vision change. I also am blind and also have a hearing loss of 80%. Having a visual impairment can be tough in the begining especially when you're an adult adjusting to blindness or low-vision for the first time. Sounds like you have tunnel vision, as I do- not being able to see on the sides. One of my eyes is gone, but my right eyes still works some.
Anyways, look into voc. rehab some services for the blind in Texas. They are wonderful and very willing to help. Texas has a lot of services available for the blind or deaf-blind. As far as identifying yourself a specific way it all depends on what you're comfortable with- if you're able to see some, you mainly say low-vision or visually impaired. The word blind is used a lot in general or for people with no usuable vision- but it all depends on the person.
I hope things go well for you in the future. If you ever need any advice, help, suggestions, etc I am here. I have been deaf-blind since the age of 12 and have had a lot of experience, good and bad hehehe.

Please take care and be safe,
Crystal and her guide dog Umbro (barks)

[hawke86]

Thanks Crystal. I'm still adjusting to it. How long did it take you to adjust? It already feels like summer here. I'll regret it when summer gets here. How was your weekend? I hope everyone had a good weekend.

[Shelley]

My son is real computer whiz and real passionate about adaptive technology. He was frustrated that he could buy a box of, say mashed potatoes, but not be able to read the directions on the box. He wrote a program to take a hand-held scanner and scan the bar code on an item and have his Braille notetaker (sort of like a Braille laptop, but not really) pull up the directions and read them to him. He is still a teenager at heart and named the program BARF. Hawke, if you decide you need to BARF I'll get an autographed copy for you!
I'll bet you never thought about it Hawke, but blindness can provide a bit of humor, too. Like the time he had to go sign up for the draft. He was offended to find the form was not Brailled or printed in accesable format, yet he was expected to read and sign it! You'll find them, too. Have fun.

(By the way, is there a spell checker on this thing? I keep getting these words spelled wrong ).

Has your son copyrighted his wonderful sounding program? There are plenty of people who are blind where I work. Many of them are geeks that work with adaptive technologies. I bet you that they would like to get hold of this program to check it out.
There is also Harvey, who runs our cafeteria, and is the cashier from time to time.

[hawke86]

I agree. Blindness is not stupid. Today I lost my eyesight for several hours. Talk about scarey. My eyes have become more sensitive to light. Sometimes I have to where sunglasses indoors. This morning everything was blurry. Today I also lost my eyesight while walking home from the bus stop. When that haapens I have to rely on my hearing. My hearing isn't very good either. I'm about 50% deaf. I hope everyone is having a good week.

[Chatter-box]

Shelley, I told him he should but he said he wanted it to be public information so all the rest of the blind community could share it. He's just like that. He's working on an improoved version but I don't know when it will be ready or just what the differences will be. And if he told me, I imagine I still would not know! He is quite a kid and loves to laugh at himself and the situations he gets in, not all of them blindness related. Our road is not paved and it had been raining the night before. He got splashed by a coal truck and really got wet! He asked me if there was such a thing as battery by mudpuddle. I told him to go get a towel!

[Shelley]

At least get it protected under creative commons, before some software giant gets a hold of it to sell for their own profit. (please)

[Chatter-box]

What is "creative commons"? How do you protect it under that?

[Shelley]

http://creativecommons.org/
Something that most geeks and artists use to share ideas, while protecting their work from mega-corporations, and the profiteering from the work of another. You can also get a regular copyright for the same reason, and freely distribute it to whomever and whenever.
Do you have a legal referral service in your town? They can answer a good many questions.

[hawke86]

I was having more trouble seeing cause light was hurting my eyes extremely bad. It felt like my eyes were on fire.

[majormana]

ur not alone on this hawke