[optacon-l] Re: Older People and the Optacon
- From: "H & C Arnold" <4carolyna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:45:24 -0400
Catherine, you state your points elegantly. What a grand spokesman you are
for us.
In God We Trust,
Carolyn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine Thomas" <braille@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 12:05 AM
Subject: [optacon-l] Older People and the Optacon
> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -Catherine Thomas
> braille@xxxxxxxxx /
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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