[optacon-l] Older People and the Optacon
- From: Catherine Thomas <braille@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:05:47 -0400 (EDT)
It's very dangerous to generalize concerning any group of people. Vision
loss relating to macular degeneration, cancer, accident, cataracts that
went wrong, glaucoma or 100 other causes does not necessarily have
accompanying neurological sensitivity loss. That's the first thing.
The second thig is that recent scientific neurological studies indicate
that when people lack sight and they do things like read braille or use
Optacon, the brain area that accommodates these activities is the visual
cortex. I was at a conference last year where a neurologist gave a lecture
on this precise subject. One of his patients that he told about had a
stroke which hit his visual cortex only. Everybody thought he would be
fine because he was already blind. As it happened, they discovered that he
could no longer read braille, or perhaps he was able to relearn it but he
couldn't at first anyway. This was the reason why some groups of
scientists are exploring this very seriously. I've heard of other cases
too where stroke or other neurological accident has had this effect.
The next fact is that many people find it difficult if not impossible to
listen to sound alone. They can WATCH tv and/or video and listen to the
accompanying dialog but when it comes to sound such as an audio book on
which they must concentrate, they can't. Many schools now offer children
courses in paying attention to audio stimulus because they simply don't
know how.
The last factor which I think is the most important is motivation. Many
people who are avid users of the printed word are going to be ready to
fight like hell to keep it available to themselves. They also already know
what printed letters look like and are familiar with most of the common
layout of printed text even if they don't realize it and could never
articulate that knowledge.
After saying all of this, let me remind you that what I said in the first
place was that the group who experience sight loss fairly early in life
given today's life expetancy might still have half a reading lifetime to
live. I said that a new market for the Optacon might be this group and I
still hold to that. I think it will be worth exploring in the future and
it might even be a way of rasing capital for our Optacon development as a
way of providing access to the actual printed word to those who don't want
to give it up, and possibly also to those whose hearing is not the best
and who might not benefit from audio.
Catherine
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-Catherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx /
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