I Finally Started Using My Magnifier

At risk of devastating every vision teacher, CEA and O&M instructor I have ever worked with, I have to confess that I just started using a physical magnifier of my own free will for the first time in quite possibly more than a decade. Yes, I just started my third year of University. Yes, I am taking an extremely reading heavy program. Yes, I am almost twenty. But you know what? I still see this as a win.

With my low vision, as long as it is relatively bold and well spaced out, I can read regular size 12 font with just my contact lenses. Sometimes, if I try really hard, even a little smaller. However, reading like this takes me much longer than it does for a sighted person. Also, after a little while, my eyes get tired. I get headaches, it gets harder and harder to focus. Altogether, not a very sustainable study method.

Despite this, I managed to get through my first two years of University relying on a combination of the PDF read aloud function, Seeing AI scans of my textbook pages and sometimes just biting it and painstakingly sight-reading various inaccessible formats of online text. For some reason, despite having long ago come to terms with my vision and letting go of the highschool idea of making my difference as invisible as possible, I still carry around this notion that if I can do things the same way as a sighted person, I should.

And that’s just silly.

Fast forward to this year. I am taking a third year Shakespear class and suddenly have to read and reread eight different plays from a dictionary-esque collections book with some of the tiniest font I have ever dared purchase. I mean technically I can read it. But a page and a half (and more minutes than I’d like to admit) in, my eyes were already strained and hurting. About five minutes of robot voice stumbling over Shakespearean English told me that DIY audio format was not an option either. Thus I found myself digging into my drawer for the old glass dome. And when I say old, I mean there was still a sticky note attached to the box labeling it as belonging to my sixth grade classroom. I had mostly only brought my physical magnifiers to school with me to appease my parents, but Lo and Behold, it actually turned out to be like, really helpful.

I could read, and keep reading, still not as quickly or easily as a sighted person, but smoothly enough that I could actually really enjoy the text as well as just get through it. A few weeks ago I was more than stressed about how I was possibly going to keep up with the tight reading schedule, but now I feel confident.

Visually impaired girl discovers basic tools after an educational career of “well, if I squint I can almost read it” and “I’ll just use my phone,” groundbreaking, right? But I think sometimes, even as a supposedly self-actualized adult, I still get caught up in making myself the most like a sighted person I can be instead of making myself the best version of who I am. So, in conclusion,

to my former vision teachers, CEAs, ONM instructors, teachers, employers and probably also my parents, if one of you by chance stumbles upon this blog, please accept this as a formal apology. And that I guess, in this very specific topic at least, you might have been halfway right.

by Acacia