MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Macular Degeneration

aemi · 12-20-2012, 04:16 PM

My mom is near 90. She's one of my dearest friends and 'gets it' more than many of the senior business-people I work with. She misses reading desperately. She can only listen to the radio to learn of world events. Even watching television is difficult for her, because she can only see when there is high contrast (ie. black letters on a white background), and no glare. For example, she'll write notes to herself with a thick black marker on the back of a used white envelope, where the text she creates (or which someone else creates for her, because it's difficult for her to see what she is writing), is near three-inches high. She used to love reading -- primarily the newspaper, then she'd choose magazines, and lastly, books. She has one of those table-top computer screens with the magnifying lense that you direct towards text/numbers you're trying to read, but the thing is USELESS because as it magnifies to the size my Mom needs, you see the dot-matrix composition of the characters and lose the shape of what you're looking at. Furthermore, even with its 20" screen, the screen only allows you to see a few letters at once, not the entire word or phrase, so there's no way to infer the context of what you're trying to see. I want to buy my Mom the best pieces of technology -- multiple items if necessary -- which means I may need to acquire different items for her to read the news vs. magazine articles vs. books, and also to write. That would be fine. Price shouldn't be the determinant, because we're talking quality of life here. When making a recommendation, please keep in mind the size of the font I mentioned above. My Mom has an extreme reading-problem because she has both macular degeneration AND glaucoma.

12-20-2012, 04:16 PM	#6
aemi Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2012 Device: none	Macular degeneration and glaucoma My mom is near 90. She's one of my dearest friends and 'gets it' more than many of the senior business-people I work with. She misses reading desperately. She can only listen to the radio to learn of world events. Even watching television is difficult for her, because she can only see when there is high contrast (ie. black letters on a white background), and no glare. For example, she'll write notes to herself with a thick black marker on the back of a used white envelope, where the text she creates (or which someone else creates for her, because it's difficult for her to see what she is writing), is near three-inches high. She used to love reading -- primarily the newspaper, then she'd choose magazines, and lastly, books. She has one of those table-top computer screens with the magnifying lense that you direct towards text/numbers you're trying to read, but the thing is USELESS because as it magnifies to the size my Mom needs, you see the dot-matrix composition of the characters and lose the shape of what you're looking at. Furthermore, even with its 20" screen, the screen only allows you to see a few letters at once, not the entire word or phrase, so there's no way to infer the context of what you're trying to see. I want to buy my Mom the best pieces of technology -- multiple items if necessary -- which means I may need to acquire different items for her to read the news vs. magazine articles vs. books, and also to write. That would be fine. Price shouldn't be the determinant, because we're talking quality of life here. When making a recommendation, please keep in mind the size of the font I mentioned above. My Mom has an extreme reading-problem because she has both macular degeneration AND glaucoma.