[Ohio-Talk] adjusting to blindness experience

[Dave Bertsch]

Ohio, our newest member in Akron Jamie, attended the Adjusting to Blindness workshop in Cleveland a few weeks ago. She was ill this past weekend and missed our meeting, so could not share her experience with our chapter, but she has told me about her day at the event. It sounds like a tremendous and valuable experience for her and her husband Curt, one that I hope we see again soon. I asked her if I could share what she told me about it with our members and here are her comments:

Dave, absolutely, it was so much information I needed a night and the day to rest. We were able to download an app NVDA onto my laptop and I'm currently using it now. However, my fingers type faster than it says the letters I type. LOL. It reads everything, even Facebook. This app was recommended by Eric Duffy. I met Eric and his wife Shelly, I also met Richard Payne, Suzanne Turner, and many others. We began with information about the NFB, introduced ourselves and said how long we were blind, what we expected to get out of the day in 60 seconds. There was quite a bit of joking and laughing, but also lots of learning experiences. After lunch we broke up into groups.

For O & M I was with Jackson and Shelly who worked with me on the correct way of holding and using the cane inside a building and outside. He explained about clicking your fingers or tongue to listen to sounds. They went over going up and down steps and how Curt is to help me correctly if I need the help because of balance.

Our 2nd group was computers which Eric and I spoke about NVDA, JAWS, OOD, and my current SSD case. Just in these short 50 minute sessions I still couldn't believe how much I learned. But they all repeated how you have to practice, which I left encouraged especially after hearing their individual stories and how they went through denial, anger, etc, the grief process as I was taught when I when working as a nurse.

Our 3rd group was about assistive devices and a little on cell phones, we did a bit research and got my phone to talk and annoy me, but they all said it will take time to get used to.

My last session was braille. I was very interested in this since I always learned you should have a back up plan cause you never know when you may not have electronics available to you. I can't wait to see what is in the Columbus agenda for the convention. Thanks for everything.

End