Helping Hands: Seniors with Low Vision Find Help

By Sally Rummel

In the corner of Joyce McAllister’s dining room, there is a great armoire filled top to bottom with cookbooks. Post-It notes stick out of many of them, marking the time-tested, well-used recipes. The 77-year-old can’t use many of the recipes that fill the cabinet anymore, but it’s not that she doesn’t want to. She simply can’t make out the print anymore.

“There are so many things that are affected when you’re sight impaired, you don’t even realize it until you can’t see,” McAllister said. “I used to peruse (cookbooks) all the time. Now it’s very hard.”

Since being diagnosed with macular degeneration in 1985, McAllister’s eyesight has gotten steadily worse. She later developed Fuchs dystrophy, leading to a cornea replacement and a macular hole, which also required surgery. Now, though not legally blind, her sight is severely impaired.

“The most difficult for me is the reading,” she said. “I’m a poet and a prolific reader, and it is so frustrating not to be able to see.”

Help came to McAllister when she was referred to the Association for Vision Rehabilitation and Employment, a Binghamton not-for-profit that serves a number of area counties. The group connected the Tompkins county senior with the Community Senior Vision Rehabilitation Program, designed specifically to help seniors with low vision maintain a safe and independent life.

“It helps a great deal,” she said.

The program helps individuals over 55 cope with the frustrations and struggles that accompany low vision. By using light, magnification and color contrast techniques, the program allows seniors to best utilize what residual sight they have left.

“We sit down and find out in what areas of their life their vision limits their function; then we teach strategies to reduce or eliminate those barriers,” said Rick McCarthy, director of program services for the Association for Vision Rehabilitation and Employment. “We’re not actually improving their vision, but their function,” he said.

The program is unique in that it provides services to those not yet considered legally blind, which is defined as having vision of 20/200 or worse.

“Before this program existed, if you weren’t legally blind, you weren’t able to get services,” McCarthy said. “There’s a large population out there who have degenerative eye disease, but they haven’t reached that threshold of legal blindness, and it’s really unfortunate that their quality of life and potential safety should have to suffer until they become legally blind.”

By enrolling in the program, users like McAllister receive a free low-vision examination by an optometrist or ophthalmologist with special training in low vision who consider lighting and magnification as possible options to improve function. Clients then visit with a vision rehabilitation therapist who helps them outfit aspects of their life to better cope with their impairment.

“(My rehabilitation therapist) told me about the services they offer and the kinds of things they could do for me. He arranged to have my (large print) pill labels printed, and he arranged for my magnifying glasses,” McAllister said. “It’s helped a great deal.”

McAllister’s therapist, Ralph Gedeon, said that it is not only items like magnifying glasses that help seniors manage daily with low vision. Providing them with strategies to adjust to a more limited lifestyle can be invaluable.

“Individuals have great difficulty getting used to the fact that they’re losing their vision,” he said. “Depending on the level of difficulty the person has (adjusting), sometimes we refer them to therapists to help them cope and provide solutions by just talking to them.”

The Community Senior Vision Rehabilitation Program began two years ago with a grant from the Reader’s Digest Partners for Sight Foundation. An additional grant through the Helen Thomas Howland along with another year of funding pledged by Reader’s Digest has helped the program serve Tompkins County seniors.

Soon, McCarthy said, the program will have to start searching for another means for support.

“We’re coming to a close on the grant funding we’ve been able to secure,” he said.

The state may soon start aiding services for people who do not qualify as legally blind. While the certainty of service funding is not concrete, it is something agencies like the Association for Vision Rehabilitation are watching very closely.

“The legislation was passed, but we haven’t been able to get enough information out of this year’s state budget to see if any funding has been put forward to move that out of the gate,” McCarthy said. Securing such funds would allow the Community Senior Vision Rehabilitation Program to help the estimated 1,500 seniors with low vision in Tompkins county who may not even know they can benefit from such services.

“One of the biggest challenges many of our consumers express to us it that they didn’t know that this type of service existed,” McCarthy said. “It’s still not front and center in people’s minds to reach out to us when they realize that they have a vision loss.”

McAllister appreciates the quality of life the program brings to her.

“People should know of them before (they become) legally blind,” she said. “I really think it would be wonderful if more people would know about this organization because they are just so willing to help.”

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