Countywide : Scanners, Tapes Help the Disabled

Partially blind since she was 3 years old, Linda Hiraoka is thankful for the things she still can do--like reading a Christmas card.

With the aid of a hand-held camera connected to her television set, she can scan the card and read the message as it flashes, magnified, on the screen.

“It’s like I’m looking through cobwebs, “ said Hiraoka, 50, who as a child suffered encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that often leads to loss of sight. “This device helps. I can sit on the couch and read comfortably.”

When “scanning” becomes too tiring, she turns to “talking books” provided by the Braille Institute in Anaheim--one of the many services offered by the agency to the blind and learning disabled.

About 2,500 other visually impaired Orange County residents use the library, a branch of the Southern California Regional Library and Machine Lending Agency in Los Angeles, which has provided books, magazines and other reading materials in both Braille and on cassette.

The library recently added a full-time coordinator and expanded its collection of cassettes, and now offers telephone reference services and can send materials directly to patrons through the mail.

Also available are catalogues, cassette players and visual and sensory aid devices, including closed-circuit television and a Kurzweil print reader, according to library coordinator John Tyrrell.

The institute carries the New York Times on Braille, the Braille Mirror, a compilation of articles of general interest and a children’s magazine, Expectation, which allows a blind parent to read to a child.

“Whatever the Los Angeles library has, we can access from here,” said Tyrrell, who has plans for more expansion next year, including doubling the size of the present facility to accommodate at least 5,000 books on cassettes.

Tyrrell, a graduate student at Cal State-Long Beach, said most of the library users are blind or partially blind, but some have learning disabilities, some are students and some simply want to enjoy the available “talking books.”

Mark Wakefield, who is studying radiology at Cypress College, borrows “talking books” on anatomy, mathematics and higher sciences. A former graphic artist, he has been on disability for the past two years but is going back to school to upgrade his skills.

He has also been diagnosed as dyslexic and needs the aid of the “talking books” for his lessons. He said he can only read 25 words per minute, just one tenth the amount he can comprehend when using talking books.

Wakefield has a cassette recorder, which the library lends free of charge, as long as the patron borrows one book or magazine a year.

For Hiraoka, the Braille Institute offered a new beginning. Born and reared in Downey, she was married in her 20s and moved to Missouri, but came back to California after being divorced. In 1983, she became a student at the Braille Institute and met her current husband, Jan, a diabetic, who is also blind.

She took some typing and computer classes at Cerritos and Cypress colleges and was hired as receptionist at the Braille Institute two years ago, after a one-year internship.

“I didn’t have much confidence in myself. Blind people don’t have much confidence in themselves . . . but here I am now,” she said.