What are low vision aids?

Low vision aids are simply tools to help you use existing vision to its maximum. Many are magnifying aids, both lenses and electronic magnifiers. Another popular low vision aid is a directional light, something anyone would benefit from. Full spectrum lights that you can direct to what you are trying to see are the best. They are widely available in craft and lighting stores. There are other tools that offer contrast, such as colored cutting boards, so a person can cut an onion on a dark board and thereby see it better. An all time favorite is a dark-lined pen, but one that doesn’t gag you with the smell or stain your clothes or bleed through the paper you’re writing on. Perhaps a sign of the times, PaperMate now makes the 20/20 low vision pen.

I want a magnifier that will read the whole page. Can you help?

Everyone would like a full page magnifier because it sounds so easy. However, the technology for magnification lenses requires curvature of the lens to do a proper job. A full page-reading lens would be too heavy to hold, too cumbersome to move around, and too expensive. We have recently seen a "fair" version of a 3X full-page, acrylic magnifier. However, it distorts the image. So far, no one has liked the distortion, so we do not stock it. A far more satisfying result can be obtained by learning proper use of a hand held magnifier and, most importantly, investigating an electronic, desk magnifier. The latter is your "right arm" for active reading, independence, and satisfaction over the long haul.

I want a big magnifier that is stronger. Why is this so hard to find?

This is because such a magnifier would be huge and not practical to hold or use. It would also be extremely expensive to produce. Magnification with a lens is achieved with the correct curvature to create an enlarged image. Electronic magnifiers have been around for over 50 years. They were engineered because of the physical difficulty of delivering strong magnification with lenses.

What is the best way to hold a magnifier?

This is an important question. Everyone's eyes are different. Here is the way I teach magnifier use, and why doing this properly brings better results. The goal is to read and comprehend, as easily as possible, the material at hand. What I suggest is holding the magnifier up to your face. Touch the edge of the lens to your nose and anchor the magnifier that way. Rest your elbows against your torso or on a table. Then bring what you are reading up to the magnifier until you find focus. Adjust the distance between the object and the lens to find focus. The distance will be greater for low power magnifiers and smaller for strong ones.

Note also that lower power magnifiers are pretty forgiving. If you use a 3X magnifier you might get decent results when not holding the magnifier exactly as I suggest. With a 6X or stronger, however, it becomes important to hold the magnifiers right in front of your eye-- the eye that has the better vision. If you are wearing anything but single vision distance glasses, you might try taking them off as an experiment here. (Generally, the more complicated your glasses, the more they get in the way of using magnification aids successfully.)

Resting the edge of the magnifier on your nose not only helps to keep the magnifier in position but also keeps your hand steady. As you move the paper or object you want to see closer and closer to the lens, the image will come into focus. The distance may be closer than you expect, but holding a magnifier this way becomes second nature with some practice.

When you bring the lens up close to your eye, you attain the widest magnified view of what you're looking at-- the widest field of vision. Holding a magnifier down on the paper a foot away, you will see only a speck of the potential vision of what is magnified. It feels a little awkward to everyone at first, but you will become accustomed to using magnifiers in this way. Don't give up. When we learn to do things that work for us, we continue to enjoy things like doing a little newspaper reading at the coffee shop, newspaper folded like a subway passenger does.

By the way, if you are attempting to use a strong magnifier, say over 7x, the protocol we are suggesting is absolutely necessary. Focus through a 14x magnifier is right next to the lens, and the only way to get any field of view at all is if that lens is right next to your eye.

How come my magnifier shows the letters upside down?

Magnifiers are tools and as such need to be used correctly to be most effective. It sounds like you are holding the magnifier at the wrong distance from the paper and the wrong distance from your eye. Look further into this section to review how to hold a magnifier.

I get dizzy when trying to read on my CCTV. What am I doing wrong?

Chances are that you are looking up at your CCTV monitor. It is extremely important for multiple reasons that the table on which your CCTV is placed is not too high. Sometimes chairs can be raised. Ideally, we would want your table height to be just above your thighs, so you can still get your legs under the CCTV table. Drawers in the way only add unnecessary height to the table. Your eyes should fall at least to the mid-point on the screen-- the higher the better.

Do I need to turn my CCTV off when I am not using it, or can I leave it on all day?

We like to tell people about how Patty uses her CCTV. She has three of them, one in the office and two at home. One of her two CCTVs at home is dedicated to her artwork and lives in her studio room. There she makes jewelry under a small auto focus camera that sees middle distance as well as very close. Her goal is access to reading whenever she desires it. She does not worry about turning off her CCTVs during the day. If she is going from task to task she just leaves the machines on so she can go back to what she was doing on that device.

I am looking up at my CCTV monitor and my neck hurts. What should I do?

If you are looking up because you are looking through the bottom pat of your bi-focal glasses (which the optician sets for close vision), you should stop this practice at once. You should be looking at the CCTV through your distance correction, the top part of bi focal glasses (set by the optician for far distance). Now, the ideal correction is for you to use a Plus-2, clip-on adapter over your distance correction. We sell them for $25 and call them CCTV clip-on glasses. That would bring you the optimal vision for the distance of the monitor. There is further information on this site regarding prescription eye wear.

Back to your neck, you might have the CCTV on a table that is itself too high. The CCTV should be on a table top the height of which is slightly above your lap. Look into height-adjustable tables, or even a higher chair, so you can get the perfect alignment of your eyes to the screen. If you were to draw a line between your eyes and the screen, you would want your eyes lined up at least to the midway point on the screen, even higher. Once you are properly aligned, if you read at the bottom of the monitor, you are usually the most comfortable and your reading is the easiest. A great tip is to use the bottom of the monitor as a ruler line to help you keep your place. This should fix an achy neck.

Do you have any pointers to help me write using my CCTV?

Hand writing, even checks and mundane tasks, is one of Patty's favorite pleasures on her CCTV! She loves seeing on the screen the placing of ink to the page and says she always thinks of her 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Dal Bello, at Peabody School in Santa Barbara! So here are her tips:

1) Put the CCTV into its photo mode so things look realistic; 2) take magnification to its lowest level to start out; 3) use a pen with black ink (everyone finds "the perfect" pen and Patty likes the inking of roller ball pens for writing under the CCTV); 4)place pen under the CCTV camera and watch the screen, moving your hand until you see it on the screen; 5) touch the pen to paper until you feel it touching and keep watching the screen as you write. After ten minutes of practice writing a day, you will do this in no time, without even thinking about it.

What do you suggest I do to counteract the glare of bright light?

Absolutely get help with low vision filtered glasses. There are some that you wear by themselves or ones that fit over your existing prescription glasses. Either type, if you shop carefully, will give you complete protection from UV damage while you are outside and will help control the glare that is making it hard for you to see. Inside, we recommend removing Halogen lamps and bright incandescent bulbs in your lamps and try full-spectrum florescent light fixtures and bulbs. Many people blinded by glare wear lens filtration indoors as well as outdoors. There is more information on this website about your options with filters for glare.