Store offers products for visually impaired

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  • Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:39:29 -0400

Post-Bulletin, MN, USA
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Store offers products for visually impaired 

By  Jeff Hansel

Eleanore Stoppel, 85, struggles to explain the vision problem that has taken 
root in her eyes. 

"You can see a coin on the floor, but by the time you bend over to pick it up, 
you can't see it," she says. 

Stoppel has macular degeneration, a progressive worsening of vision that 
eventually leads to an inability to see what's the middle of the person's line 
of site. Things around the periphery of vision remain visible. 

"I actually have a blank spot right where I look, and if I look straight at 
anything, it just plain disappears," said Grant Cocker, 74, of Rochester. 
Cocker, a retired long-time Marigold Foods machinery and refrigeration 
mechanic. 

Cocker, like Stoppel, used the Minnesota Low Vision Store to get equipment to 
help him read. 

He uses video magnifying equipment that makes the letters of words big enough 
that they cross his entire field of vision. He can see part of the image in his 
left field of vision and part in the right, and his mind allows him to read the 
whole word, supplying the missing letters on its own. 

Store operators Don and Carol Hint go out of their way to help address their 
customers' vision problems, customers said. Don Hint is a retired IRS 
accountant. 

Cocker, for example, is re-selling his video magnifier, which originally cost 
about $2,500, on consignment at the store. That's because he got new equipment 
from the Veterans Administration. 

"Don Hint, the operator of the store, is basically in basically the same boat 
as I am vision-wise. He doesn't see very well either. He has the same kind of 
vision problems I do, so he understands my situation," Cocker said. 

Hint, like many of his customers, has macular degeneration. But he said the Low 
Vision Store includes products for the visually impaired and blind who have a 
variety of vision problems. 

Products include binocular spectacles for watching TV; Braille pill boxes, 
watches and playing cards; and talking thermometers and scales. 

"I think my first purchase there was a talking watch that tells me what time it 
is," said Stoppel, who worked 30 years as a bookkeeper at Stoppel Feed and 
Seed. "And it's wonderful, because you can use it at night too."

Don and Carol Hint got the idea to open a store when they couldn't find the 
equipment in Rochester that he needed. 

The found the Rosedale Low Vision Store and shopped there. 

"We got to know the owner, and kind of talked him into opening the store here, 
and it's worked pretty well," Don Hint said. 

People with macular degeneration often struggle to read things like birthday 
cards or to see pictures of their grand kids, he said. 

Hint said that several years ago he couldn't see things right in front of him, 
yet he could see the leaves on trees outside the window. 

People with advanced macular degeneration can't recognize faces, even of 
long-time acquaintances. 

"If you see me walking down the street and you want to talk to me, you better 
say hi Don, or I'm going to keep right on walking," Hint said. 

"It's kind of hard to get used to using your peripheral vision. But that's what 
we'll have to do," Hint said. 

He reads using a video magnifier, and sometimes a compact hand-held magnifier 
with changeable background color that makes letters stand out better. So he 
keeps going, despite the change in his vision. 

"I guess I just decided I wasn't going to let this slow me down or stop me, 
because I really enjoyed reading," Hint said. 

Join the support group

To join the macular degeneration support group at the Rochester Senior Center 
or to request a presentation for your group from the Low Vision Store, call 
282-7512. The store is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays, or by appointment.


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