Options for the Visually Impaired

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Welcome to Instruction Discussion, our weekly look at the latest
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topics and trends in education affecting schools here on Long
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Island and schools around the world. Whether you're a teacher, parent,
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or a student, listen for tips and strategies to help
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you navigate the educational landscape. There's a bell, it's time
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to start today's Instruction Discussion on the Voice of Nassau
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Community College ninety point three WHPC.
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Hello, I'm Kevin Boston Hill, and welcome to an Instruction
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Discussion where each week we will examine a recent trend
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of development and education and its impact on Long Island.
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When we normally think of vision loss, we imagine it
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to be a sign of aging as it builds gradually
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as a result of conditions like diabetes, glaucoma, or age
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related macula degeneration. However, there are a growing number of
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youth who are suffering from poor vision and vision loss.
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For one hundred years, the nonprofit Visions Services for the
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Blind and Visually Impaired has worked with children, working age, adults,
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and older New Yorkers across the spectrum of vision loss,
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reaching over eight thousand people a year. Along with operating
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the Vision Center on Blindness, one of only twelve residentialsion
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rehabilitation centers in the country, The nonprofit advocates for the
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rising need for vision rehabilitation. While visiting the classroom today
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to explain vision rehabilitation, what families should know when a
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loved one begins losing sight, and how assistive technology and
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mobility training are changing what is possible. We welcome Mali Egan,
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Chief Executive Officer of Visions MS Egan, Welcome to instruction
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discussion on ninety point three WHPC.
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No, it's a delight to be here. Thank you so
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much for having me.
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Thank you for taking some time out of your busy
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schedule to be with us today, especially to discuss this
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particular issue. As I mentioned, when we think of vision loss,
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we think of older people, We think of our parents,
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our grandparents, and so forth. But it seems to be
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a lot bigger problem or issue than we tend to
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think about.
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So explain.
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So it's just how common is vision loss in New
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York and who is most at risk?
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Oh, I'd be delighted. So you hit the nail on
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the head, which is it's so, so, so much more
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common than people realize. So in New York alone, when
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you ask folks if they are blind or if they
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have trouble seeing even with glasses or contacts, it's about
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a million New Yorkers, about half a million just in
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New York City alone, and upwards of eighty to ninety
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thousand in Long Island alone. Imagine filling up ubs Stadium
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nasau Colise, you still would need another venue to fill.
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How many people in Long Island experience vision loss? And
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as you said, the numbers are on the rise because
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the four leading causes of blindness, which are glaucoma, macular degeneration,
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diabetic retinopathy, and cataracts. And I'll say share with the
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listeners that I have macular degeneration myself. All of those
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four things are on the rise, partially as you mentioned,
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with the aging of Americans, but also with chronic diseases
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like diabetes, those populations are impacted. And then, of course,
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like with anything else in public health, which is my background,
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folks that have less access to healthcare and don't access
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regular eye exams experience greater issues because of lack of
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early detection. But the good news in all of this
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is the feel the vision rehabilitation is there and can
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be helpful to folks, So hopefully we can get it
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more into that as well.
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No, definitely, And I was guy going to ask you,
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are there some I guess early warning signs maybe or
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symptoms that someone may need be in need of those
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rehabilitation services for sure.
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And I think what people struggle with this topic is
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vision loss looks is scary and it's stigmatized, so people
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struggle with that, but they also have some misperceptions like
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somebody just wakes up one morning and the lights have
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been shut off, and it's for most disorders that we mentioned,
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it's a gradual, degenerative kind of thing, which sounds scary
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and can be very scary. And again, as somebody who
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suffers from this myself, I have a little bit of
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a window into that uncertainty and fear that people experience
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when they're losing their But what I would say is
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the hopeful thing for people listening and their loved ones
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is that earlier noticing of changes like loss of ability
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to distinguish people's faces, loss of ability in things like reading,
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driving distance, loss of peripheral vision where your central vision
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is very clear but your peripheral vision is off. All
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of those are signs certainly to get an eye exam,
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but many, many ophthalmologists and retinologists are less even themselves
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aware of vision rehabilitation. So they might say something like, well,
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you have this disorder or you're aging and you're just
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losing your vision. And what we would like people to
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know is there's a field of vision of rehabilitation that
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exists to help work with individuals and their homes to
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learn skills and use technology and ways to help keep
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them as independent as they want to be and help
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is available.
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Well, you know, let's get into that for a moment
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as far as explaining what vision rehabilitation is, because I'm
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sure that most people would think that the only way
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to I guess quote unquote cure their vision impairments would
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be either through surgery or some people may which is
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very risky, and some people may even say, well, I'm
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going to go the vitamin runt, I'm going to take
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extra vitamin ko whatever to improve my vision and so forth.
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So what is vision rehabilitation?
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Yeah, it's the question of the moment. So I've been
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so long, in more than three decades in nonprofit and
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it took me coming divisions even as somebody with vision
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loss to have even heard the phrase vision rehabilitation. That's
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how kind of underground it is. Abilitation in plain language
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is a discipline where master's level trained people who are
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either visionary abilitation therapists or some occupational therapists go into
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this work as well, but they're trained to come into
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the home and work in a very person centered way
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to understand what are the things that you used to
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be able to do in your home and you're struggling
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with so examples, maybe you were cooking all of the
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time and you're finding that you're worried about injuring yourself
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with a knife, or you know, during cooking, and there
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are all kinds of different tools that can be demonstrated
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and learned to help cook safely. It might be something
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as super super simple as putting a tactile dot, which
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is a little sticker or little raised dot on the
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thirty second thirty second marker on a microwave, so that
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somebody just needs to go and feel for that dot
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and press it as many times as they want to
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heat up their food. It could be use of a
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syste of technology, like they're having trouble reading their mail
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and feel like they have to get a volunteer to
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come into the home, when in fact the system technology
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can handle all that now in a way that it
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never could before. Could be all of those things. It
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could be also mobility. So a lot of folks that
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start losing their vision, they're so afraid to leave the
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home to venture out. And they're experts in orientation and
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mobility that help people use a white cane or use
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other kinds of assist of technology to safely travel from
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point A to point B. And a lot of folks
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just have no idea that those services are available.
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I don't know if this is something that you keep
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track of, but has visions itself seeing I guess a
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younger population come through these doors for services.
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Well for sure. So we have a where we see
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a lot of young people, So we do a lot
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of vision rehab. We just celebrated our centennial on June
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twenty first, and we had a gala where we celebrated
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a young man who we have a film, Leve I'll
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share it with you all, who worked with one of
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our vision rehab therapists on using lego Braille and knowing
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using a device that helps the young person pour you
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a drink for themselves and have a sensor go off
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when it's getting toward the top. All these kinds of
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little tools that can be taught to a young person.
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We see certainly children that we work with. And then
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our campus north of the city in Rockland County that
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serves people all across the state, has a number of
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services for kids, including a summer camp where children and
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their families come for a week at a time by
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different age groups, and they can be experiencing different kinds
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of training and rehabilitation to build their skills. But it's
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also just a really beautiful, fun summer camp with swimming
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and everything you think of of arts and crafts and
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riding bikes and walking trails, and the family members are
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able to connect with one another because it's pretty hard
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to find other people who are parents or caregivers of
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a young person who's blind, and this is a time
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where they can get together and connect with other families.
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So all of those things we see a rise in
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and we work with kids and families every day.
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Now, most children that I know of, I'm not that
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I know of, but most children we don't associate with
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glaucoma or age related maculate degenerations. So what would be
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some of the initial causes for children to experience that
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level of vision impairment.
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Yeah, so there's a lot of inherited retinal diseases. There's
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quite a number of them. So of course it's not
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age related macular degeneration, but kids have all kinds of
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inherited genetic disorders, and sometimes they're born with those disorders
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and sometimes they come a little bit later. We have
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a couple of board members who are blind. To one
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man is we just honitored in and our gala lost
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his vision at age ten. We had a wonderful keynote speaker,
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Eric Wyan Mayer, who lost his vision as a teenager.
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He's the first blind man to hike Mount Everest. He was,
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you know, he lost his vision as a teenager. So
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those are a lot of different kinds of genetic causes.
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Of course, there are tragedies like that would befall anybody,
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different kinds of accidents that can cause blindness, chemical issues
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or car accidents that would cause somebody to lose their
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vision at a young age as well.
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You are listening to instruction discussion on the Voice of
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Naslal Community College ninety point three w HPC. My name
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is Kevin Boston Hill, and I guess today is Molly Egan,
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chief executive officer of the nonprofit Visions Services for the
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Blind and visually impaired. Now, with the rise of students
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using cell phones and tablets and computers and things of
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that nature, is there maybe a correlation on the use
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of these technology devices on children's vision loss, especially younger children.
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Says is still developing.
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So you know, I'm not a doctor and I'm not
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aware of the correlations between cell phone use and vision loss.
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That's a good question. But what I would say is
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that technology has opened a whole world for young people
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who are blind and visually impaired. So I certainly know
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all of the debates and the concerns about overuse of
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cell phones and screen time, and I would have folks
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understand that there are some apps that are available on
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phones that can have a young person say, hey, I'm scanning,
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tell me what's in this room. Describe a room, or
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I'm looking to connect with this kind of person. They're
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you know, this heighten, they're wearing this colored shirt, or
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they're in a space restaurant, Describe a menu. And the
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apps that are available now bring information to all people,
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but children included in a way that was not available before.
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The other piece that's related but important to mention is
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that there's been a real explosion in the availability of
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AI empowered glasses that are wearable. Some of these, of
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course weren't even designed for the blind and visually impaired community,
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but it's incredibly empowering, and we train people of all
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ages how to use these glasses to be able to
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put on a pair of glasses and walk from point
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A to point B or even people give an example
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of I want to make I want to make a sandwich,
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and I've opened up my refrigerator, and you tell me
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where the peanut, butter and jelly is in the refrigerator.
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So I know you were asking about kind of the
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you know, if that use of cell phones was causing
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more vision problems, which I can't speak to, but I
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will say that if there's just a huge explosion in
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information that's available to people that have vision loss through
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the phone and through the wearable glasses that wasn't available before.
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Yeah, So I would imagine that's part of all of
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that assistive technology, because I think when some people hear
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that term assistive technology in relation to vision laws, they're
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thinking automatically, Oh, it's something that's going to speak to
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you as always just going to be a verbal type
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of assistance, but it may not be. It may be
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something additional to that as well. So I think having
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these apps and other devices at their disposal will definitely
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be a help going forward when we think about in
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terms of technology and Kevin.
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The other thing I would say about this is that,
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you know, as young people are deciding whether they will
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go into the workforce or whether they're going to be
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going into college, we do residential programs for even several
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months with young people to really train them on technology
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that enables them to do an enormous amount. A person
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that's blind and visually impaired can do almost any job,
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and the problem is is that the employers these days
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have a belief about vision loss that's about twenty years
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too old. So there's different devices and programs to help
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somebody work on spreadsheet who's blind and visually impaired put
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together presentations, you know, email and other things on the
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computer customer service. There's just so many different careers that
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somebody who's blind and visually impaired can have. And there
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are young people who are worried about going off to
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college and not being able to keep up with the
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platforms where a professor role assigned different work and really
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folks can get trained on that, and young people increasingly
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have doors open to them because of all of that
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different technology. So that's something I would throw in as well.
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No, I'm glad that you did, and you spoke a
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little bit about the residential options and so forth. I
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know you have the censor in the Hudson Valley in
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Rockland County. What happens there, So we have when a
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family or a student or somebody goes there, what happens there?
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Who is generally who is it generally for? And is
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there a cost involved to the patient who goes there?
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Great questions and a variety of answers. So the Vision
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Center on Blindness is a stunningly beautiful thirty seven acre
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campus in Rockland County and the town of Spring Valley
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and visions services for the blind and visual leading Pairroent
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has owned it for many, many decades. And what happens
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there is residential vision rehabilitation, which is nothing fancier than
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a more in depth kind of vision rehabilitation training skill
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building where people come and they do a deep dive.
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Some people might come for a tech week and they
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stay overnight with us for a week and they learn
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about different emerging assistive technologies. You can imagine even people
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that are used to using some technology. It's so rapidly
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evolving that some people want to common kind of get
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a refresher on what's available. And that could be young people,
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that could be later adults feeling like they need to
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get other skills to remain in a job or change careers.
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And then we have programs that are several months long,
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and those have to do with either a pre work
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focused program or programs that help young people get ready
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for college. We do other kinds of skill building with
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older adults that come and do group work as older adults,
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which really is not only about training them on how
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to adjust two vision loss, but also it's really key
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with the kind of social isolation that a lot of
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older adults are feeling, kind of put them in community
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with one another. Up there, I mentioned the camp that
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happens in the summer, but the programs I was talking
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about before up in all year round in terms of cost.
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It really depends some states. If you are legally blind,
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some states will cover the cost completely. We're beginning to
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offer a fee for service option where people can pay
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on a sliding scale who are coming from elsewhere, because
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I think you mentioned this, it's just very hard to
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find a place where you can come stay overnight. If
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you're anywhere east of Minnesota. There are only a few
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options available to you, and some of those can have
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wait lists, so it's difficult to find places that allow
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you to kind of do that deep dive.
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And I guess what I touched on this a little
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bit earlier as far as the things or the options
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that most people think of when they're trying to help
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there to improve their site, Well, what would you say
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to people who will think that, well, I'll just get
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the surgery maybe cataract surgery or something like that to
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help improvement, or take extra vitamins and things of that nature.
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What would you say to those people when it comes
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to the actually improvement of their site.
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Well, I can speak really personally actually to that because
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I had a couple of years ago, I had cataract surgery,
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so it helps immensely clear up vision. So I had
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a very pronounced improvement in vision after cataract surgery. Not
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everybody has the options. Depending on insurance coverage, it can
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be very costly to some folks. But I would say,
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in answer to your question, for me, it certainly helped.
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But my vision loss is macular degeneration, which is central
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vision loss. So certainly the cataract surgery will help folks.
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But if you have an underlying eye disease that either
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affects your central vision or some kinds affect your peripheral
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vision and narrow it from the outside in, cataract surgery
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is not going to fix that. It's going to help them,
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but it's not going to fix that. And again, on
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the vitamin question, that's really out of my out of
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my scope. I would want to ask one of our
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Physician I Expert board members to comment on vitamin use.
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I that's that's beyond what I would want to expect.
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Really, that's quite that's quite all right, It's quite all right.
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I just I said, that's one of those I guess
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the uh one of those urban myths is bordering on
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urban myth type of thing where people just want you
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well instead of doing all these other things. I'm just
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going to throw extra vitamins with something at it, and
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that'll be the cure role, but for sure. But I
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just wanted to get some of more of the facts
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out there to help our listeners out and so forth. Now,
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and I'm sure we know what the obvious answer to
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this question is, But what is the overall impact of
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poor vision on student learning? So this is something we
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really want students and our families to engage in getting
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those eye exams on a regular basis. So what is
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the impact on learning that they would have if they
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have poor vision?
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Well, I mean it. The issue is is that when people,
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when families don't identify vision impairment and kids, it can
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show up in all kinds of ways where the children
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are frustrated that they're not learning. The heartbreaking thing a
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parent can hear a kids say, well, I'm just I'm
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just stupid. I can't get this, and it might be
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an issue of them not seeing clearly, you can misdiagnose
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other kinds of learning issues when it's really related to vision.
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And so you just so much of vision impairment is
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corrected with certainly glasses and contacts, with other kinds of
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training that we've talked about today in vision rehabilitation that
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you really want to know what the issue is early on,
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because you don't you know something that can be corrected
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or helped. You want to just identify that early so
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a kid doesn't feel like, you know, I'm just not
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getting it, I don't belong here those kinds of issues,
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and then early on to connect children who do have
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vision loss that can't be corrected in community with other
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young people. So the incredible value of a residential program
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like I spoke of where we see young people at
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the campus, is just to reinforce you can do anything.
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We play a clip from I mentioned Eric wyan May.
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You can hike Mount Everest, you can kayak the length
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of the Colorado River, you can do almost any job.
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We have board members and supporters who are adult architects
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who work in tactile architecture to help people feel a
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plan around if they can't see it, like to try
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to give young people exposure to that message of it
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doesn't mean that you're going to be dependent on somebody
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your whole life. It doesn't mean that there are things
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that you won't be able to do. You can do anything,
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So that would be what I would say to families
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that are wondering what the benefits are to kind of
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early identification and intervention.
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Now you talk about through the vision rehabilitation that the
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paces can pretty much do anything. I'm going to push
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back just a little bit and maybe you can correct
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me if I'm wrong, because I know every state has
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a particular vision threshold when it comes to driving. So
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will the vision rehabilitation support visually impaired people in their
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driving efforts, so.
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That really varies by state. Most people are unaware of
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and I'll get the word wrong, I should know this,
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but the telescopic adapter in a car that somebody that
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has some vision can have set up and that they're
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able to drive with a certain telescopic lens. So folks
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don't realize that that's available. Of course, if somebody is
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fully blind with no perception they're they're not they're not driving.
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You know. Certainly, companies like with self driving cars, are
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aware that there's a need for people to have access
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to self driving cars, but it's more capability than people
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believe in most states using that telescopic lens.
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Great, thank you, I really appreciate that, and we would
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certainly like to thank our guest today, Molly Egan, chief
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executive officer of the nonprofit Visions Services, would have blind
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and visually impaired, but coming onto our show today.
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Thanks for having me Kevin.
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Once again, my name is Kevin Boston Hill, and thank
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you all for listening to instruction discussion right here on
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the Voice of National Community College ninety point three WHPC.