Lack of vision.

My vision sucks. (For the few that read my blog and don't know, I'm blind in my right eye since shortly after birth, and the vision in my left eye is deteriorating, probably 20/300 or so now.) Thankfully, computers nowadays help out with a lot of these issues. Since I'm so light-sensitive, I use white-on-black colors (like I should have set up here in my blog) for just about everything.

It seems Windows Vista has taken this a step further. Though I have things set up as white-on-black, it seems to override some of my other desired settings, such as checking out the colors and layouts of pages in Internet Explorer. Tried removing the overrides, no dice.

On the other hand, the old build of Firefox wouldn't respect it's user settings for me either. I had to upgrade to a test build of Firefox 3.0 to get popups to cooperate; otherwise, in 2.0 and prior, they show up transparent. Trying to read text on top of other text doesn't work very well.

Anyhoo, this leads to problems. Until you see it for yourself (like Kacy mentioned a few days back), you don't realize how inaccessible things can be sometimes. Whether it's having to change my settings to read something that uses black text rather than default text (black-on-black isn't easy to read, if you couldn't guess), games that use a pretty light/white background and dark text, trying to read regular school textbooks, or maneuvering down unmarked steps in the real world (the marble steps at Grand Ave. Mall in particular)... it gets frustrating sometimes. (The steps are a double evil, with the whole lack of depth perception... but that's a different story.)


Next week I have an appointment with DVR (Dept. of Vocational Rehab) as part of my long-term disability requirements. I'm actually looking forward to getting help from them. Though I do know how to take care of some things on my own (I've got a magnifier for when I really need to read something & Kacy's not around), it'll be nice to get some help, especially from someone who deals with the blind/nearly-blind on a regular basis. (My ...case worker?... is geeky and has a geek hubby too, so that's an extra plus for helping in the geek job market.)

I'm kinda curious about cane training. Though I don't need it as badly as my mom did, it's nice to have the option, especially before it gets too bad. It also shows that I can't see well; rather than being an asshole that just ran into you without flinching, you'd realize you just completely blindsided me. I also wouldn't feel as bad having to stop different bus routes where they share a common stop if they know I can't see the route numbers.. which would be an issue if/when I eventually find a job downtown somewhere.


I guess we'll see what happens. It's not something I care to think about more than needed, but comes up way too often of late. *sigh* I suppose I can look on the bright side- at least I still have some vision. I suppose being nearly blind doesn't make that point easy to see, though.