Low Vision Occupational Therapy

Low vision occupational therapy can be extremely beneficial to your life after macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease, etc have affected your sight.

Speaking from personal experience, as I’ve lived with low vision for over 25 years, you’ll especially need the help of others early on in your diagnosis.

All of us with vision impairments can continue to live meaningful and independent lives and it’s all about learning how to rearrange our lives in terms of mindset and technology.

How Low Vision Occupational Therapy Can Help

The first thing a professional can do is evaluate your situation. How does your work or home situation need to be changed in order to best help you going forward?

One change your home may need is better lighting. There are areas that are dangerous. These areas could be small kitchens, hallways, stairways, and bathrooms. Through better lighting you improve your chances of avoiding potential accidents.

After the lighting has been checked into, clutter is another area to improve. Your occupational therapy specialist can help remove unnecessary items from floors, tables, and counters in order to help with this.

Contrast can make a huge difference in assisting your ability to remain independent. You use contrast, for example, when you use light colored glasses and dinnerware against dark counter top or tables, or vice versa.

You can also use contrast in your bathroom by using light colored towels, non-skid tub mats, etc against dark flooring, bathtubs, etc (or vice versa).

Technological Assistance

Since there are a variety of high tech gadgets you can use for low vision assistance, your therapist should evaluate and identify which technology can be used to best help you in your daily activities.

For example, when it comes to reading, there are several effective magnifers on the market you can use. You can use built-in computer software to better read your monitor, or use an add-on piece of software to improve an older computer.

As well, hand-held and video magnifers offer a wide range of options for help with reading books, medication bottle labels, or food labels at the supermarket.

Personally, I’ve extensively researched this technology and if you’d like to fill out the form below, I’ll send you exciting specifics that can help augment the help your occupational therapy specialist provides you.