As an optometrist or optician, your responsibilities to your patients begin and end with preventing or ameliorating loss of vision, right? In the first part of this article, I have chosen to highlight just a few of the assistive technology advances that have allowed visually impaired people to make huge strides towards independent living.
Actually, I do not believe they do. For a large number of people in the UK, sight loss will become a fact of life. Do you not, as an eye care professional, also have a responsibility to this group of patients? Should you not be able to advise them on other ways of ‘seeing’ that can help them to maintain independent, fulfilled lives connected to their communities? It is not all about optical magnification – there is so much more now in the 21st century.
The developing role of assistive technologies
The recent growth in assistive technologies for people with visual impairments has been exponential. Technological advances have presented visually impaired people with formerly unimagined opportunities to retain their independence. The very pace of this change has inevitably created its own issues, and it remains a constant challenge to keep abreast of new developments, but it is a challenge that surely all eye care professionals have a responsibility to rise to if they are to provide their patients with the very best care.
Digital accessibility tools
The digital age revolutionised pretty much everything for everyone, including people with low vision and, nowadays, digital tools are increasingly being designed with visual impairment in mind. These tools not only offer bespoke magnification and text presentation options on every kind of screen, from iPhone, tablet to laptop and desktop, but also include ‘read text out loud’ functions. If you feel like doing some research of your own, check out Eye-Pal, Henshaws (figure 1) and OpenBook.
Out and about
There have been huge advances in navigational technology over the past decade, and many of these apps now have blind-aware adaptations for people with restricted vision. Check out The Seeing Eye GPS App, Soundscape and Nearby Explorer, which both announce locations and junction approaches.
Applying everyday technologies
Technologies used by the wider community can also have hugely positive impacts on the lives of people with restricted vision. Lifestyle gadgets such as Alexa, which provide remote access to technology via voice command, are incredibly useful tools for people with visual disabilities. Digital apps such as Uber also offer enormous mobility benefits for visually impaired people who are no longer able to drive.
The assistive technology frontier
Certain assistive technologies are necessarily designed with the specific needs of visually impaired people in mind. Often, this specificity means that the developing technology remains more expensive for longer, but some of the most exciting advances in assistive technology, such as Orcam (figure 2), Oxsight and smart-cane technology for example, have already become readily affordable.
Figure 2: OrCam is a spectacle mounted aid capable of facial and object recognition, bar reading, and audio interpretation of anything under view by the wearer
Orcam, an assistive technology device specifically designed for use by people with visual impairments, has functions including an ability to read text aloud and identify in-store products, and it also incorporates exciting facial recognition software.
Smart-cane technology has already successfully overcome many of the impediments associated with traditional probing canes, which are great for identifying curbs and large obstacles but often miss items suspended from above. The smart-cane device, attached to a traditional white cane, works by emitting vibrations when it detects obstacles of any kind in front of the user, at whatever height, alerting him or her to their presence.
What will the future hold?
No doubt, as technological progress continues, exciting new assistive technologies will continue to be developed; this may well end up improving upon, and replacing, many of the cutting-edge aids detailed in this article (figure 3).
Figure 3: Keeping up to date with the latest developments in technological aids for the visually impaired is essential if useful help is to be offered
As opticians and optometrists, I passionately believe you have a responsibility to keep yourself informed of these developments, so you are able to provide your patients with the most up to date advice on the very best assistive technology available.
A useful review of apps to help the visually impaired was published in Optician 8.6.18 (figure 4).
Figure 4: Useful apps, such as those shown here, appear with great regularity and are often free or a minimal cost to the user
Assistive technology changes lives for the better, and you are in the unique and privileged position to be able to drive that change.
Barking mad
Having discussed new technologies, let me now consider a more traditional approach to assistance for the visually impaired – the guide dog.
Owning a guide dog can be an empowering, life-changing experience and one that brings many rewards. But it is not always about straight walking. It can, on occasions, be a tasty bone of contention.
When you walk into a store, your faithful pooch trotting happily by your side, things can go surprisingly quiet. Suddenly, like the curtain being raised, you feel like you are on show with the audience glued. Aha, the performance has begun, bring on the ice lollies. As you begin walking around contentedly browsing, shoppers one by one, come up and talk. No, no, no, not to you…to your dog. You have vanished, whoosh, an invisible walk on part.
Me, me, me
Centre stage, spotlight full on. It is all about paws, claws and tails. And with anyone you might not have bumped into recently – conversation is not going to be about your work, hobbies, sport, or even your health. ‘Hey, how’s your handsome friend?’ You now feel like the unnamed actor…standing next to A-list Slobberchops.
It’s not fair play!
I do not want to sound too dogmatic (no pun intended), but most people, when concentrating on their job, do not like to be distracted. It usually means they do not concentrate quite as well and make mistakes. Your dog has just been told, by you, that he is now at work, donning his harness, his uniform, he must put away drooling thoughts of tearing round the park with his friends… but with all this star-studded attention, he is fighting the urge not to thump his tail and romp around the clock.
Hair of the dog
If you are wearing a suit, and are off to a business meeting or interview, your bold attempts to be taken seriously might get chewed up a bit… as your new boss studies the layer of fur you are wearing, even on a hot summer day… dog hair clinging to your clothing.
Ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog
You can never underestimate the intelligence of your hound…but no, it has no clue if it is safe to cross the road. It is you who makes the decision to proceed, giving the command to go, based on listening to the sounds of traffic. Your dog will disobey because it senses it is unsafe to cross.
Dog tired
Then come the times when you get asked if you are training your dog, or you find doors get opened for you without anyone saying a word. There will always be those who run away in fear at the sight of four furry legs. Now, let us be serious, if it is your own furry legs on display you might well understand why you get pushed out of the way on the Underground or priority seats are not given up to you, but…
Give a dog a bone
And the friendliest of taxi drivers might dig in their heels, bare their teeth and refuse to take your dog, no matter how much you growl on about the Equality Act. Honestly, you feel like a school teacher.
Now you see me, now you don’t
‘You don’t look blind!’ This is a baffling one. You are out and about enjoying yourself with friends, when a stranger pipes up, ‘It’s great that you’re out drinking!’ It is a doggone mystery, I still have not worked it out.
It is equally baffling how many extend their arm and secretly stroke your dog, assuming that having a guide dog means you cannot see anything. Aha, they have got away with it, they think you will never know. Silly secret strokers, guess what: I do.
Good boy!
Of course, there are great benefits in having a guide dog.
You get to meet some interesting people, whom you would never have met before. If they do not remember you, they will certainly remember your four-legged friend. Complete strangers can be so helpful.
I have also tripled my walking speed, because when he is excited, he walks quicker…leaving me doing the panting…
And I no longer have to worry so much about bumping into people and objects, my guide dog has certainly taken the lead (figure 5).
Figure 5: The author with his ‘A-list Slobberchops’
If you, or someone you know is considering becoming a guide dog owner, please use this link to find out more www.guidedogs.org.uk/services-we-provide/guide-dogs.
Happy walking!
Did you know?
- The domestication of dogs can be traced back as far as 150,000 years
- A first-century AD mural in the buried ruins of Roman Herculaneum depicts a dog leading a blind man
- The first systematic attempt to train dogs to aid blind people came around 1780 at Les Quinze-Vingts Hospital for the Blind in Paris
- In 1819, Johann Wilhelm Klein, founder of the Institute for the Education of the Blind (Blinden-Erziehungs-Institut) in Vienna, mentioned the concept of the guide dog in his book on educating blind people (Lehrbuch zum Unterricht der Blinden) and described his method for training dogs
- During World War I, a German doctor, Dr Gerhard Stalling, got the idea of training dogs to help the great many soldiers blinded in the conflict
- Dorothy Eustis established the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1929
- In 1931, the first four British guide dogs completed their training and three years later the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was founded in the UK
- Today, Guide Dogs is the world’s largest breeder and trainer of working dogs and its dedicated staff and volunteers have helped over 29,000 people to achieve independence
Daniel Williams is founder www.visualisetrainingandconsultancy.co.uk.
To join us on our mission to improve the lives of people with low vision, book on one of our Seeing Beyond the Eyes CET workshops here www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/visualise-training-and-consultancy-and-orbita-black-7994577028.