A Ray of Hope : Life for Blind Easier with New Programs, Support Groups

Shortly after Aleda Collins moved to Ventura County 13 years ago, a longtime illness struck her blind.

But when the 39-year-old mother of two began seeking services for everything from reading to transportation to support groups, she was discouraged by what she found.

“There was no network; there was very little going on,” she said. “It was like if you were blind you had to figure everything out for yourself or you just didn’t do anything at all.”

Determined to change that, Collins and others who share her concerns started broadening existing programs and launching new ones to help the county’s estimated 1,700 residents who are legally blind.

The resulting patchwork of services is less comprehensive than the wide range available in neighboring counties, Collins said, and the county’s blind are still largely dependent on services provided by Braille Institute centers in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties.

But the Ventura County groups are strongly linked and readily dip into the richer resource pools across county lines. And programs for the blind in Ventura County have been increasing.

“We don’t have much,” Collins said. “So we have a strong incentive to share what we have.”

When Collins became blind in the early 1980s, she turned first to Ventura College, which at the time offered a class in Braille and also taught coping skills. The college since has expanded its services into its High Tech Center, one of the county’s service hubs for the blind and disabled.

Started with a few computers, a dozen eager students and a meager state grant five years ago, the bustling center has built a reputation throughout the blind community as a reliable resource and support center.

“We don’t just teach computers here,” said program coordinator Dee Konczal. “We help people cope and show them how to make the most of what’s available.”

The center, which now serves about 30 blind or visually impaired students, supplements the college’s Braille instruction and offers classes on how to handle such computer equipment as speech synthesizers, Braille monitors and embossers. The most recent device, a $7,200 scanner that reads type-written pages aloud, was donated by the Lions Club last week.

“It’s a great thing,” Konczal said with pleasure. “A page that seems blank to a blind person will come to life.”

Konczal’s students are equally enthusiastic.

Carla Myers, 23, has assumed responsibility for the scanner, collecting bus schedules, letters and flyers to demonstrate for other students how to run the machine.

“Each day I discover some new way to use the computers,” said Myers, who is nearly blind. “I don’t know how I would manage without them.”

Her classmate Bernhard Zamore, 65, who lost his sight six months after retiring from his job as an assembly worker, agreed. “After it happened I just gave up; I became a couch potato,” he said. “Then I heard about this program and I almost fell off my chair.”

Zamore didn’t know how to type, but with the help of classes at the center, he applied himself vigorously to the task. He is now a regular contributor to the center’s monthly newsletter. “It has given me a new life,” he said.

Helping people like Myers and Zamore was what Lions Club member Eldon Williams had in mind when he led the club’s fund-raising drive to buy the scanner.

Williams, 65, said a Braille class he took at the college several years ago inspired him to join the effort to improve services for the blind in Ventura County.

“I saw a lot of need that wasn’t being met,” he said. “Blind people tend to turn into recluses and become afraid of everything; each new program is an incentive for them to come out and be a part of things.”

Williams also helped found a countywide chapter of Retinitis Pigmentosa International based in Camarillo. He lost his sight to the hereditary eye disease 10 years ago.

The organization provides research and support and funds purchases of costly aids such as personal computers and Braille typewriters, Williams said.

The group is also considering offering line dancing classes, chapter president Collins said. “We want to be as creative as possible to encourage people to get involved.”

For many blind people in the county, getting involved would be a lot easier if getting around were not such a chore.

Transportation, a problem for anyone in the county who doesn’t have access to a car, can become an insurmountable obstacle for blind or low-vision people, said Nancy Smith, president of the 6-month-old local chapter of the National Federation for the Blind, also based in Camarillo.

Smith said she helped found the chapter to tackle the transportation problem.

“Just think of what it would be like if you lived in Camarillo, worked in Oxnard and had to depend on other people for a ride every single day,” Smith said. “That’s already a burden. What do you do when you want to go shopping, or to the movies or to the beach?”

Most cities in the county already provide some curbside services, where they will pick up blind or otherwise disabled people at their homes and take them to the nearest bus stop or to their destination. The federation is now working to get a similar program in place in Camarillo, Smith said.

In the meantime, the relatively small number of existing organizations for the blind usually arrange transportation to their own activities and also offer classes to help people learn how to use the limited bus services that are available.

Such instruction is an integral part of the job training program run in Ventura through the State Department of Rehabilitation, one of the oldest services for the blind in the county.

Since its inception in the 1960s, the program has trained and helped place about 2,000 blind and visually impaired county residents, said Douglas VanBogelen, senior vocational rehabilitation counselor.

“When someone loses their sight it doesn’t mean they have to give up working,” he said. “Many times they just need to learn to alter their approach to a familiar task.”

For the past two years, Sherry Maine has run a lesser-known branch of the state program in Ventura. Maine, who has been blind from birth, helps newly blind people or those who have recently moved learn how to get around in their homes.

“Becoming blind can be a real shock,” Maine said. “The simplest things can make a big difference.”

One of Maine’s clients, 89-year-old Ora Shaw of Oxnard, has steadily been losing her sight for several years.

Maine helped Shaw buy a walking stick, a talking watch and scale, and an easy-to-use coffee maker. She also glued “locater dots” on Shaw’s oven and computer keyboard to guide her toward specific temperatures and letters.

“It’s easy to feel bad when you can’t do simple things like take care of your rose garden anymore,” Shaw said. “Sherry showed me that there are many things I can do for myself.”

With Maine’s encouragement, Shaw recently dusted off the keys of the old upright piano in her living room and began relearning how to play it.

Shaw said she has also begun venturing out to attend classes and lectures sponsored by the Braille Institute of Santa Barbara, which regularly offers Braille, crafts and home management classes at senior citizens centers in west Ventura County.

The Braille Institute’s centers in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties send teachers to sites throughout Ventura County. The Santa Barbara center serves western Ventura County, holding classes at senior centers in Camarillo, Ojai, Oxnard and Ventura. The Los Angeles Center provides services in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley for residents in the eastern part of the county.

“This way we bring a few teachers to the students instead of trying to get 60 students from Ojai, Thousand Oaks and Oxnard all in one place,” assistant director Wayne Galler said.

Although many of the Braille Institute’s clients live in Ventura County, the institute has no plans to open a center here.

“People are so spread out here that it just doesn’t make sense to have one location,” said Galler.

Services offered by the institute are not limited to the elderly. The center is planning to hire a full-time youth coordinator in order to expand its youth program in the county, Galler said. More than half of the 27 children enrolled in the weekend camping and field trip program are Ventura residents, he said.

“We are committed to helping people throughout the area,” he said. “Ventura County included.”

Children are often referred to Galler by teachers through Ventura Unified School District’s Program for the Visually Impaired, which coordinates schooling and home visits for about 30 blind children in the county, said teacher Debbie Davenport.

“These are really bright kids who happen to need a lot of special attention,” Davenport said. “When they come to us, we try to bring out the natural talents that will help them excel.”

One of those children, 7-year-old second-grader Jesse White, attends class in a special room at Elmhurst Elementary School in Ventura. Braille monitors and speech synthesizers lie on the desks and Braille books line the shelves.

On a recent morning, Davenport timed Jesse, a precocious reader, as his fingers moved quickly across the raised dots on a white page.

“One wintry day when snow lay deep on the ground, Little Rabbit went out to look for food and he found two turnips,” Jesse read. “He gobbled up one of them and then he said, ‘It is snowing so hard and it is so bitterly cold. Perhaps Little Donkey has nothing to eat. I shall take him my other turnip.’ ”

The timer buzzed and, visibly pleased, Davenport rewarded Jesse with several pennies, which he jammed into an already full plastic carton.

Although technically the school districts are responsible for disabled children from birth through adulthood, Lackey and other teachers said the program has been unsuccessful in addressing the needs of infants.

“As far as school-age services go, I think we are doing a good job,” Lackey said. “But often babies don’t get a good start and we end up getting them in school at the age of 5 with five years to catch up on.”

A new program just for infants that is being planned by the school districts and the Braille Institute may change that.

“When parents call me and ask what we can do for their babies, I’ve had to turn them away,” Galler said. “Now I can tell them that help is on the way.” The program, which will provide care and counseling for babies and their parents, should be in place by the end of the summer, Galler said.

“We’re always looking for new ways to help people,” he said. “It’s just a matter of working together and stretching our resources to the limit.”

FYI

For more information on services for the blind, call: National Federation for the Blind, 484-9409; Retinitis Pigmentosa International, 647-9014; Santa Barbara Braille Institute, 682-6222; Los Angeles Braille Institute, (213) 663-1111; School District Program for the Visually Impaired, 654-1180; Ventura Community College High Tech Center, 654-6400, Ext. 1243; State Rehabilitation Services: 385-2400.