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Welcome to the October 2008 issue of ZoomNews In this Issue
Tips and Tricks For writing down items to read later on without magnification, one ZoomText user suggested using a high contrast pen/marker, such as the 20/20 pen from Sanford, which has a thick, black tip. They allow him to be the scorekeeper in games, make his own to-do lists, and remain independent.
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August Contest Winner Last issue, we asked you to send us your tips and tricks that you use to assist you in your daily life. We got so many great suggestions and you’ll see many of them appear in this issue of ZoomNews as well as future issues. Kathy Kalaluhi’s name was chosen from the entries and she won a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate. She sent in a whole list of suggestions, all written with a great sense of humor. One of my favorite suggestions of hers was the following: “My primary aids for functioning in life are my CCTV and my computer which has the latest version of ZoomText. My husband and I converted one of our spare bedrooms in our two story house into an office that houses two computers and my CCTV. It is necessary to inform you of these details to understand why this set up is not conducive to cooking on our first floor. I keep several recipes on my computer and have a ton of cookbooks. Soooo….. I was running up and down the stairs several times in the course of preparing one meal. While it helps keep me in shape, it was discouraging to even want to prepare any new recipe rather than one I was so familiar with that I could do it blind folded. I have an old laptop computer that I transferred recipes from my desk top to the laptop and keep that computer on the first floor. However, I was not going to waste my life typing recipes into my computer and was still running up and down the stairs to read cookbooks under my CCTV to prepare something new and different. My son suggested that I buy a small voice recorder to read ingredients, cooking time and oven temperatures and playing it back in the kitchen as I added each ingredient. Although we all hate listening to ourselves on a tape recorder, it sure beat running up and down the stairs and taking twice as long as needed to make dinner.” She had so many other suggestions which I’ll share in upcoming newsletters, but for now, let’s learn a little bit more about Kathy. Kathy was diagnosed with Juvenile Macular Degeneration and since that time, her condition has been called several things, retinal dystrophy being the most recent. When word spread about her deteriorating vision, people were telling her left and right all the things she’d never do – make it through high school, attend college, get married, and have children. She made it through high school, graduated from La Roche College summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and headed back to La Roche to pursue a Master’s Degree in Human Resource Management. She got married, has 2 children, and is now a grandmother twice over with another grandson on the way. Kathy has worked several jobs throughout the years including teaching classes online for the Master’s program in Internet Recruitment, and teaching Human Resource Management in a traditional undergraduate classroom. She now lives in the Pittsburgh area with her husband and considers herself retired. She has many hobbies when she’s not babysitting her grandkids, including reading (her favorites include David Sedaris, James Patterson, Robert B. Parker, and David Baldacci), listening to music, cooking, and last but not least, shopping. She doesn’t let her impairment get in her way and has dabbled in skiing, golfing, and bowling. “There were only my parents and one ophthalmologist who gave me the confidence to accomplish what I did,” says Kathy. “I proved their predictions true as they instilled in me that the only things I could not do was to become a surgeon or a truck driver. But who knows, with technology going the way it is, I just might take on the truck driver role.” New Contest 
This month, we’re curious what magazines you subscribe to and what websites you visit to learn information about your eye condition, or what’s new in assistive technology, or just about eye health in general. It could be something entirely focused on vision, such as the website for the National Eye Institute, or indirectly, like Reader’s Digest Large-Print Edition. Email your entries to Becca at by October 17th and you’ll be entered in our contest for a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate. It’ll just take a minute or two – good luck in the raffle! Setting Sail with ZoomText 
Right now, Scott Duncan and his sailing partner, Pam Habek are somewhere around Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean. And they arrived there with the help of ZoomText. On October 11, 2004, Scott and Pam began their mission to become the first legally blind people to circumnavigate the globe independently in a sailboat. They are almost four years into their voyage that they originally estimated would take two and a half to three years to complete. While they won’t win any speed records, they are more determined than ever to complete this epic quest and are well aware that the true adventure is in the voyage and not the final destination. Scott was born with bilateral congenital Colaboma, which is a condition that prevents parts of the eye from developing prenatally. As a result of this condition, Scott has blind spots throughout his visual field, with almost complete blindness in his right eye. In his 30s, he was also diagnosed with cataracts and currently, his overall visual acuity is roughly 5% of the total vision experienced by a normally sighted individual. Growing up, Scott was exposed to a wide variety of resources and became familiar with the latest advances in adaptive technology from an early age. This gave him a comfort level with technology that has really empowered him to adapt to his vision loss throughout his life. It was at the age of thirteen that Scott really became interested in sailing. It was exhilarating to have control of driving something and from then on, he took every opportunity he could to be on the water. When he wasn’t sailing in the water, Scott was busy receiving dual Bachelor degrees in Human Development and Sociology from the University of California at Riverside, then furthering his education by achieving a Masters degree in Special Education and Rehabilitation Teaching. He’s worked in the vision loss field for nearly 25 years, and eventually started his own company, AccessAbility Inc, in 1997, specializing in adaptive worksite development and training. This company grew from a one man operation to one with 36 employees that was Ai Squared’s largest dealer! In 2002, he took his first steps toward Blind Circumnavigation when he purchased “Tournesol”, a Valiant 32, cutter rigged cruising boat. He began seriously training in the San Francisco Bay and eventually completed training to the highest level of US Sailing coursework available. Training Workshop 
Along with the New England Assistive Technology (NEAT) Center at Oak Hill, we are running a two day training for professional development on November 5-6, 2008 in Hartford, Connecticut. This comprehensive workshop is designed for trainers and professionals who use ZoomText and/or support others who use ZoomText. Attendees will learn tips and tricks, and delve into advanced workings of ZoomText, enabling them to use ZoomText most effectively and share this knowledge with other ZoomText users. This training will be lead by Maurie Hill, one of our long-time product support technicians, and also an expert ZoomText user herself. She has supported thousands of ZoomText users for over seven years, and is an outspoken ZoomText advocate who has helped design many of the features that exist in ZoomText today. The course fee is $500 per student (includes lunch). Seats are limited so please call Shawn Warren at (802) 362 3612 x109 or email us at to register today! Save The Date
The ATIA Leadership Forum on Accessibility 
The 2009 ATIA Leadership Forum on Accessibility is an exciting two day forum which explores best practices and benefits for building system-wide accessibility within corporations, government agencies, or educational institutions – both for customers and employees. Ai Squared will be there, and Scott Moore, Director of Marketing, will be one of the speakers for the discussion on “The Aging Workforce – Technology for Addressing Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), Eye Fatigue, and Vision Loss”. For more in-depth information about the Forum, visit www.atia.org/leadershipforum. You can sign-up on the website to be added to their e-mailing list to get updates as they become available. Hope to see you there! Visions 2008 Report By Maurie Hill
The opening luncheon was emotional, humorous, and inspiring with great keynote speakers. It was kicked off by Bill Schmidt, the impressive CEO of FFB, followed by three people who had at least one family member afflicted by an RDD – Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, actor David Chisum, and Olympic skating champion, Nancy Kerrigan. All three of these speeches were touching, inspiring, and humorous. They all spoke emotionally about how having a close family member that is blind or legally blind impacts the entire family. Lastly, author and motivational speaker Estelle Condra, who has RP, gave a wildly humorous and motivational talk. I was laughing from start to finish.
But they saved the best for last. The closing session was “Direct from the Clinic: Physicians and a Patient Share their Clinical Trial Experience”. To hear both researchers and patients speak enthusiastically about the surprising success of a small clinical trial that was simply meant to be a safety trial was awe-inspiring. For more information about this trial, go to FFB’s web site, www.blindness.org, and click on the article about the LCA study. And better yet, I would highly recommend calling Mitsy Palmer at the FFB, 1-800-683-5555 and ordering some or all of the CDs that were created for each session. I can’t wait to find out when and where the FFB will hold its next Visions conference.
In The News 
Visually impaired Irish sprinter wins gold in the Paralympics – Jason Smyth broke his own record twice in one day – for more information on the Paralympics in general, click here Tradeshow schedule 
The year is winding down but we don't slow up for a minute. If you are planning to attend any of these shows, be sure to stop by our booth and see what's new! |
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The Visions 2008 conference I attended in Washington, DC this past August was a winner. This conference was sponsored by the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB), an organization whose mission is to drive research for prevention, treatments, and cures for retinal degenerative diseases. The event included updates on the latest research being done in gene, stem-cell, and drug therapies in relation to retinal degenerative diseases (RDD). Some of the diseases that were specifically discussed were Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Stargardt’s, Cone-Rod Dystrophy, Best Disease, Usher Syndrome, Choroideremia, Retinoschisis, and Bardet-Biedl Syndrome. Thought you were alone? This conference was also a great opportunity to talk to others in the same boat. |
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