Moving to a New Home

I have begun a move to WordPress and a new host for my website and blogs. I am merging my photography blog with Large Print Ideas at the new site, tim o'brien photos. You can find all new and old Large Print Ideas here. I will be customizing this page a bit in the future.

See you there!

Low Vision Gadgets: Amazon Listmania

I am creating an Amazon Listmania list, Lov Vision Gadgets, for all those nifty little things that I fund unexpectedly helpful as a visually-impaired person. This is not a list for those expensive low vision aids. Instead, I want to highlight items not marketed for the visually impaired, but are still quite useful. The first item on the list is the LED headlamp about which I recently posted.

Suggestions are welcome!

Spelunking Your Books

Inspired by a fellow visually-impaired photographer on Flickr (see the image of Sandra on the right), I went to my local outdoors store and bought an LED headlamp, the Tikka Plus, from Petzl. The headlamp is great for reading! I have been using booklights to supplement ambient room lighting for a while now, but have never been satisfied. My eyesight forces me to hold the book quite close, so these booklights are often obstructed by my own forehead. While the headlamp is not perfect, it is a significant advance in convenience and quality.

Personally, I would prefer a more diffuse light and one with more low intensity options. The light is designed to throw a wide beam outdoors or in caves, so the light hitting a page a few inches a way works more like a spotlight. I will experiment with some ways to diffuse the light a bit, possible some opaque paper, bu tI already look geeky enough with it on.

Hopefully, someone will come out with a headlamp designed specifically for the visually impaired, or at least for home honnyists whose need for close up lighting is similar. I have contacted Petzl with the suggestion.

Addendum: I have found a web site that has a headlamp specifically for the visually impaired। I can not say anything more about the lamp or the site as I have had no experience with either. Leave a comment if have any thoughts.

Stanza - Accessible E-Book Reader for the iPhone

Scanning through the Personal Tech section of the Times, I bumped into an interesting tidbit, "Tip of the Week - Turn Your iPhone Into an e-Book - NYTimes.com". I have an iPod Touch (the iPhone sans phone), so I ws intrigued, though remaining skeptical, by this tip. I just downloaded the app, Stanza, to my iPod and fell in love. On a technical level, it is a perfect application of accessibility for a visually impaired user. The font sizes can be adjusted with a very wide range. You can select font and background colors with a wide selection of choices, not just a simple reverse color scheme option. The screen rotates with the iPod, so you can read it landscape with the larger text. Pages can be turned with a simple flick on the screen. Best of all, it retains your choice of settings. I could not be happier with the accessibility.

Now I have to download the desktop version and hope that there are interesting e-books to read . . .