I was born in Iran in 1988 in a mid-income family. Until 1994 our family didn’t have any computers. I mostly spent my childhood playing outside with relatives, friends, and my sister. When we bought our first computer, I started to have a great interest in learning and playing video games. Back then, I could see like any other kids. Using computers though, only involved simple commands on DOS. I remember enjoy playing Tom & Jerry, Keen, or WOF on our first computer.

After Windows 95 and 98 came out, we upgraded our computer. My interest in learning and playing didn’t stop there but my vision started decreasing. I was diagnosed with Cone-Rod Dystrophy. I could still play video games, send E-mails and chat like any other twelve year-old kid but with difficulties. In 2002 when I was thirteen, our family immigrated to Ontario, Canada to start a new life in a country of opportunities. My vision was so low by then that I could only use our computer with large fonts with difficulty. I was starting to get disappointed and used the computer less often.

When I started going to school, I was first introduced to ZoomText by my vision teacher. It was very promising but I still couldn’t use it effectively because I had no access to the internet and I didn’t start using my laptop until the year after. During my stay in Ontario, I was also introduced to ADP. They provided me with low cost equipments such as ZoomText for home use. After I acquired ZoomText, my life instantly changed. It immediately opened a new door to the world of computers and windows XP. I started doing everything else that my sister and parents could do on the computer. ZoomText removed a barrier between limitations and the computer.

The year after, we moved to British “Columbia and I continued high school in a new environment. I requested to use ZoomText as my preferred software for school work, but I was denied and JAWS was what I had to use for writing exams and doing other tasks at school. At home however, I continued using ZoomText and learning more about the computers. I had great interest in every aspect of it. I started building web pages, websites, and later on a very popular community website. My website had over 20,000 members and it started to be a source of income. I did all this with the help of ZoomText. I learned how to program, I learned how to use different basic and professional software, and I still played video games like any other teenager in a more accessible way. I was still using ZoomText version seven until two years ago. There is no organization in British Columbia that would purchase or upgrade any of the software for home use. So I saved money and upgraded my ZoomText to version 9 and following that USB version. It all opened more doors toward accessibility.

I started attending college last year and I still use ZoomText in my daily life. I do 99% of my school work with the help of ZoomText and anything else I do on the computer relies on it. With the help of ZoomText, I recently built computers for myself and friends. Like many people who build their own computers, I could read the manuals and instructions in order to build or repair a PC.

My vision today is very low. I use ZoomText with 3X magnification and mostly with Speech. I think if ZoomText wasn’t here with me, I wouldn’t know anything about making websites, building computers, or using technology for school work. The doors that ZoomText opened for me, makes life more worthwhile living.

I spent 16 years as a licensed paramedic in Illinois. I loved my job so it was with a heavy heart that I gave it up when my vision deteriorated to a point that it could be dangerous for me, my partner, or a patient. After leaving the ambulance, I worked for a medical supply company as a technical support specialist for 2 1/2 years before being downsized out of that job.

It turns out that with a paramedic background and no college degree, one is not qualified for very much outside of the medical field. Because of my vision, I was unable to work as a phlebotomist or in a dialysis center - two jobs where retired medics can usually do quite well.

As I searched, I found the Department of Human Services in Illinois very helpful. They introduced meto books on tape and encouraged me to go back to school. Initially I used a CCTV, but there were no portable ones available at that time, so it was difficult to do much outside of the library or my own home.

Finally, I was introduced to Zoom Text! With a laptop computer, portable scanner, and Zoom Text, I was able to participate in all classroom activities, read all the handouts, and earnmy Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

Now, believe it or not, I am back in the medical field. With the help of Zoom Text, I am able to run a computer-based manikin to train Medical Students and Residents, as well as perform all the other office work needed. I also run the Clinical Skills Programs for the Medical Students and Residents.

It took a few minutes in the interview process to convince my new boss that even though I have Retinitis Pigmentosa, I have the resources to overcome any challenges that present themselves to me. With my portable Zoom Text USB device, I am able to go anywhere in the hospital or medical school and access the computer. I travel to conferences with my guide dog using my laptop and Zoom Text to participate in all the events. You’ll never catch me without them.

Zoom Text has allowed me to reenter the field that I love so much - maybe not working on real patients, but teaching others to the same is just as rewarding.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the beginning of WWII, I was raised and attended public school, college, and medical school in Arkansas. I was married in 1966 to Lynn Byars and we moved at the end of medical school to Phoenix, Arizona in 1968 where I had my internship and residency in the field of pathology. My residency training was interrupted by two years of active duty in the U.S. Army, with one of those spent in Vietnam. I worked as a hospital pathologist in various locations for the next 30 years, spending the last 17 in Shelby, North Carolina.

Physicians must use all of their senses in their work, and sight plays a large part in their lives since reading large volumes of material from texts and medical journals is a lifelong requirement. In addition, a pathologist spends much of his day either observing biopsies and organs macroscopically for abnormalities, but microscopically, as well, to determine the nature of disease that may have affected the patient.

So, when I developed sudden vision loss in 2005 due to anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (AION), I had an abrupt change in my life. Over a two week period I went from my usual good vision correctable with glasses to loss of almost all of my peripheral vision with patchy central vision with an area in one eye correctable to 20/40. I was evaluated by my hometown physicians and went to Duke Eye Center where there was agreement by everyone that I had AION of the type that is not caused by inflammation of medium sized arteries.

I retired from the hospital, applied for disability income through insurance companies with which I had policies, and from the state of North Carolina. Convincing everyone that I was not a malingerer and could no longer practice my specialty occupied a great deal of the time of my wife and I, and still does. I knew that the Lions Club had something to do with the blind and I called a local representative who put me in touch with a social worker with the Department of Social Services.

Being a veteran proved to be a great help. I became a patient in the Veterans Administration Hospital system and in the fall of 2006 I went to the Augusta Blind Rehab Center in Augusta, Georgia. I was extensively evaluated, had training in various skills of daily living, and received, among other prosthetics, a computer loaded with ZoomText.

Fortunately, I had worked with computers for a number of years in my work as a hospital pathologist, so my computer training went fairly quickly. I communicate by email, compose various types of documents, and use my computer for converting CDs from the local library to MP3 files that I can then listen to on my iPod. I have been an amateur photographer, and while composing a shot through the lens of a film camera is no longer possible, I still take photos with a digital camera by the “point and shoot” method that I later can look at on the computer, edit, and load into photo files to share with friends and family.

I was fortunate to have had many hobbies, many of which I had to abandon upon becoming visually impaired. Shooting skeet and bird watching both required good vision and the ability to drive, but I continue to make pottery in our local studio. Throwing a pot is largely a tactile process and I have been able to continue with this hobby. I was always an active reader and thanks to the local library and North Carolina Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, I have books on tape which occupy a lot of my time.

I serve on the board of the Cleveland County Arts Council, and am on the board of the Cleveland County Healthcare System. Special aids such as a CCTV and my computer have been invaluable to me. Given good health I look forward to many more years of community activity and service.

If you’re curious about your options for listening to digital audio books, magazines, and newspapers while on the move, read on.

While anyone can purchase and download audio books and magazines from websites such as audible.com or purchase audio books on CD from Amazon.com and rip these to a portable MP3 player, if you’re blind, visually impaired, or physically challenged, there are additional options. In the past, I’ve received books on cassette from my state’s Department of Libraries. The cassettes, prepared by the National Library Service, or NLS, are mailed and returned free of charge, and the cassette player is also provided on loan. However, in the very near future, this service will be upgraded to 21st century technology, adding much more flexibility. First, NLS will be providing its content digitally over the Internet, as well as on cartridges mailed to you, and will replace the bulky tape players with smaller digital audio players. This will revolutionize the service, and will allow any authorized member to download any of the thousands of digitized talking book recordings that the NLS has in its catalog including magazines, novels, biographies, non-fiction books, and many other talking book content. You’ll need to be an NLS member to access this content. For details on becoming a member, call the Department of Libraries in your state or your state agency for the blind and visually impaired.

Currently, due to budget cuts to NLS, it will still be a while before they are ready to provide digital players to all of their current customers. However, if you already have a HumanWare Victor Reader Stream, you may be in luck. The NLS is offering a pilot program for Stream users which allows you to download Talking book content now. In order to do this, you need to firstly, be a member of the NLS. Next, apply and be accepted as a part of the NLS pilot download program. Finally, activate your Victor Reader Stream for reading NLS content. If you want to know more about this pilot program, go to http://www.nlstalkingbooks.org/dtb.

I can’t say enough good things about the Victor Reader Stream. At $329, it is a real bargain for an AT product. It is masterfully designed for blind and visually impaired users to easily navigate audio recordings in any of the talking book formats, as well as play MP3 files, and even read text documents with a built in speech synthesizer. It is not going to read text files with the same eloquence as a human recording (as in the audio books from NLS and audible.com) or as well as ZoomText’s AppReader, but if your need is great enough to listen to text documents while away from your PC, then you will probably be quite pleased. You can even transfer and play your email messages, podcasts, RSS feeds, and audio-described movies if you subscribe to Serotek’s System Access services. Personally I don’t want my email to follow me, but I am loving the digital flexibility of having all my audio and text content on one portable device which is masterfully designed for blind and low vision users. If it’s quiet, I can dig into a good novel, or if I’m getting Arden interruptions (yes. that 4-year old little lady), I can switch to a lighter, humorous “100 Years, 100 Stories” by George Burns, for example. When feeling curious and scientific, I listen to Discover magazine or for that low point in my life when I might be interested in Brad and Angelina’s ski vacation, I switch to People magazine. I downloaded all of these from the NLS download pilot sight. The Stream can access the files from both an SD card and USB flash drive. The Stream is also getting better every day. Humanware will upgrade the Stream’s features, and it will support Windows Media files, WMAs, by June. In short, I liked the Stream so much that I decided to buy one, and not wait to get a free NLS player, which will not be as small and feature-rich as the Victor Reader Stream. To find out more about the Stream, go to www.humanware.com.

In addition to the NLS talking book content, if you’re lucky enough to live in the following states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, California, Colorado, Oregon, or Texas then you can also gain access to the “Unabridged Talking Books for the Blind” web site. This web site contains commercially recorded audio books that you can download and play on your PC or on a WMA-enabled portable playback device. The Victor Reader Stream, as previously mentioned, will become WMA compatible this summer via a free downloadable update.

If you live in one of the above 8 states and you are an NLS member, you can call your state’s Department of Libraries to receive a library card and pin number to access the audio downloads. The 8 states pay for this service yearly, so there’s no guarantee that your state will continue this service. To find out more about Unabridged, go to:

www.unabridged.info

In the education realm, Recordings for the Blind & Dyslexic has digitally recorded text books, for kindergartners, grad students, and everyone in between. Membership is $100 (your school might already be a member). For information, go to:

http://www.rfbd.org/

For books in text format (no audio), these two websites are available to the general public:

www.gutenberg.org

This web site has books that are in the public domain (published before 1923). For other public domain books, you can also check out
http://onlinebooks.library.upnn.edu/lists.html

Another electronic book source is www.bookshare.org. Membership is free for students and $50 per year for the blind, visually impaired, and otherwise print disabled individuals who are not students. You have the choice of downloading in DAISY BRF or HTML format. ZoomText’s AppReader can read these in either format. Or, you can download these files to the Victor Reader Stream and let it’s built-in text-to-speech synthesizer read it to you.

On a similar note, I recently tried out NFB-Newsline and was quite pleased. With this free service, you can listen to local and national newspapers as well as TV listings over the telephone. And yes, that means cell phones too. It’s quite easy to use and even remembers where you left off the last time you called. To sign up, call your state’s Department of Libraries or go to

http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Newspapers_by_Phone.asp

We have arrived! Reading a novel or newspaper in planes, trains, and automobiles or better yet, on the beach, is no longer a pipe dream.

The November ZoomNews survey polled our readers about portable video magnifiers. If you are interested in the results of this survey, you can view them here in a PDF file. The results are presented in both graphical and text form.

We’d like to congratulate the winners of the November survey drawing, Meyer Burgstein and Nick Truesdell. They each won a $50 VISA check card, just in time for the holidays!

This month poses a different contest - see “Digital Picture Contest”. Send us a picture and a quote and you could be the one to appear in the next ZoomNews. And don’t worry, our ZoomNews survey with prizes will be back!

Studying molecular and cell biology. Investigating the enzyme telomerase and its implications in cancer and aging. Pipetting radioactive materials. Running an undergraduate biochemistry lab. Impressed? It’s all in a day’s work for Tracy Niday, and she says none of it would be possible without the help of ZoomText.

Tracy is currently enrolled in the Biochemistry PhD program at Arizona State University (ASU), but it’s been a long road to get there. Although she was born with the rare disease plars planitis, Tracy’s vision didn’t really begin to deteriorate until junior high school. Plars planitis is an inflammation of the middle layer of the eye which causes floaters. By itself it doesn’t cause tremendous vision loss, but after multiple surgeries and medication attempting to correct it, Tracy developed glaucoma. This led to a sizable decrease in her vision - she lost all her peripheral vision and now can only see out of a small part of her eyes.

Growing up and going to school in a small town in Nebraska led to challenges with finding and using transportation and completing her school work. Always interested in the sciences, Tracy signed up for chemistry as a junior in high school. She was told to just find herself a lab partner who could help her complete the lab work. But when she went to college and majored in chemistry, the labs became much more intensive than they were in high school. She knew that she couldn’t rely on the other students to do the lab work for her anymore - nor did she want them to.

“In my freshman year, I had a professor who told me I had to find a way to do everything myself,” says Tracy. “I pushed myself to measure all the chemicals, and if I couldn’t see things properly, I came up with techniques that worked for me and thus became more independent.”

At first it was very hard for her to measure chemicals accurately with the glassware because the measurement marks on the glass blended in with the glass itself - there was just no contrast. However, she soon came across a company that made glassware with special markings that made things easier to see. Tracy also decided to switch her major to biochemistry. It turned out this improved her measurement skills; you tend to use much smaller quantities of the chemicals and there are automatic pipettes which fill with liquid for you at the turn of a dial! She also found different tips for the pipettes that allowed her to see the liquid rising much more clearly.

For her coursework, Tracy used a large CCTV that came with detachable glasses. They helped in certain arenas, but they were too bulky to use in the lab. Not long after, the Commission of the Blind in Nebraska introduced her to ZoomText, and she has been a user now for over five years.

“Before I got ZoomText, I would get extremely tired after only an hour of looking at the computer screen,” says Tracy. “Using a computer is critical for me - I have to read journals, develop laboratory protocols, and analyze data on a daily basis, and ZoomText makes everything large enough so that I can be effective in my research.”

Tracy then moved on to graduate school at ASU, where she is currently in her third year of a five year PhD program. She has essentially completed all her required coursework so she mainly focuses on her lab research and teaching classes. She runs the undergraduate biochemistry lab at the university, where she spends the first part of the class giving a lecture about the technique that the students will be performing in the second half of the class. After receiving her doctorate, Tracy hopes to go into the biotechnology industry, perhaps focusing on the biomedical applications in research.

“I don’t look at my eyesight as a downfall, I just don’t think of it in those terms,” says Tracy. “I try not to limit myself - if you want something enough in life you can find a way to do it. There might be some obstacles in the way, but there’s always a solution out there. It’s just a matter of finding it.”

As you might imagine, Tracy is quite busy! When she’s not in the lab analyzing data or keeping track of all her undergraduate students’ work, you might find her enjoying her love of the outdoors by running or hiking. All of us at Ai Squared would like to wish Tracy luck as she completes her PhD and are proud that ZoomText has played a part in furthering her scientific career!

Tango lessons for blind teens
Visually impaired kids learn dance,gain social skills and self-confidence at The Shimmy
Club.

Project Insight City program helps visually impaired gardeners develop an eye for vegetables.

Independent Travel for the Visually Impaired - Traveleyes offers the possibility of world travel to the visually impaired.Its founder, Amar Latif, recently won
The Stelios Disabled Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Blind bowlers in a league of their own The Lumberton Recreational Department in North Carolina set up a league for visually impaired bowlers.

The Braille Tattoo - Czech art student Klara Jirkova had a vision of a touchable tattoo for the blind.
You can also read heroriginal proposal which contains a digitally created photo of what it could look like.

Australian Electoral Commission trying an e-voting system- New voting machines will provide privacy to low vision and blind voters.

“Curb Cuts” is a TV show about assistive technology (AT) produced by the Central Coast Assistive Technology Center. Episode #5 deals with assistive technology for individuals with low vision. Brianna Barnett, Dorothy Erinakes, and Thomas Athanasian share how they use technology such as CCTVs and ZoomText screen magnification software to function as independently as possible at home, school, and work.