Yvonne Foong: Fighting NF

We went to Center for the Partially Sighted in Santa Monica again today and tested more video magnifiers.

At the reception area, two black and white photographs were printed on a wall with the phrase, “Vision Rehabilitation Brings Hope and Help”.

How true that is. My vision since the Gamma Knife Radiosurgery has improved, but it can still be better with assistance.

Education is important and gives me hope. Therefore, reading for the purpose of education is just as important.

But textbooks come in various sizes, fonts, and paper types. Some are okay to read, while others have texts that fade from my field of vision. Since these books are academic in nature, I can’t say, “Oh, I’ll skip this one and read something that I can see”. No, I can’t say that with textbooks. I must read them. If I can’t see then I must find a way.

That’s why I am getting the desktop video magnifier. Besides zooming in, it lets me inverse and change font colors too. Some, like the Freedom Scientific Topaz, can even make texts bold!

There were several units of desktop video magnifiers. I spent two hours shifting between them, reading a book I borrowed from Steve Otto.

Before I asked Steve Otto, I had asked Dan Freed by email. Dan’s a software engineer at House Ear Institute. He would have borrowed me a book about engineering lying around in his office. But Dan was in a teleconference and couldn’t leave his desk. Steve happened to pass by sp I asked him for a book instead.

Lucky me. Steve dug and found a hardcover textbook about Cochlear Implants, a stimulating topic.

I had to think a lot as I read this textbook, the same way I have to think a lot reading my own academic textbooks.

When our brains are working hard, we can only use our hands subconsciously. But if we have to think in order to use our hands as we read, then our focus on the reading material will be lost.

I realized this only when I got to test the video magnifiers with tbe book Steve borrowed me. Last Friday, I went there with a book on social science. It’s also academic, but written more leisurely.

To give you a better idea, it’s like between reading research reports and position papers.

One needs to be familiar with the subject of position papers in order to understand but they are written in a more direct manner. Something that can easily be presented at conference. With research reports, it is often necessary to read and re-read sentences.

The desktop magnifiers I tried today had a tray, or X-Y table, that could be moved smoothly so I did not have to think before I moved it. Just go on reading.

The nifty little Clarity Travelmate was tempting. It looked SO cute With a video camera that could be manually turned, Students may use it to view a distant whiteboard.

Being so small and light, one may carry it from home to school, and from K.L. to L.A.

Unfortunately, the way text appeared on the screen wasn’t very comfortable to me. Besides, my attention on reading was reduced whenever I needed to shift the book and read sentences that fell out of the camera viewfinder. The Clarity Travelmate has two or three screen color choices that I can select while reading, but it does not have black and white, and no bolding texts like what the Topaz can do.

Again, the small size and light weight sure was tempting. But after very serious and thorough consideration, I fgured that it was best to get something that would keep me reading continuously.

There is no point getting something nifty to carry around, if it makes me tired fast. Like I have explained above, I need to think a lot while reading my textbooks. I can’t afford to keep shifting the book and adjusting the camera direction every now and then.

That said, the Clarity Travelmate will make a good supplement when I already have a proper desktop video magnifier at home.

But for now, I am getting the Topaz by Freedom Scientific!

It was nice to ponder and consider my priorities,

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