Good news, and advice needed, please :)

[LollipopViolet]

OK, the good news is, I'm finally starting to accept my sight problems. Which is great, I know there's stuff I can't do and mostly, I'm fine with that.

Bad news is, my sight is starting to stay the same now, and I'm starting to worry about when it starts to get worse, how worse will it get. I'm scared

And the advice I need is this: I've always got the offer of a note taker at uni should I want it. It's my second semester of first year and there are a lot more things to remember, make note of from boards etc. But the whiteboards are filthy, and my personal tutor is all about independence, but I have NO note taking skills, so what do I do???? I'm also worried about what others would say if I did have in-lecture support.

i would accept the note taker to be honest. what can the others say- you cant see the board so need a bit of extra help. to be quite fair, they would expect the same were they in your position. as far as the sight problems go i have no idea, but wanted to post so you got a bit of support. hope this helps xx

I have given wannabe a yell as she might be able to advise

hiya

Part of accepting your sight loss is not worrying about what other people think. At the end of the day, independence doesn't mean not using any kind of adaptive technology or assistance, independence means utilising the technology and assistance available in order to achieve the same end result.

Accepting help doesn't mean forfitting your independence, it really doesn't. If you can't see the white boards then you need to go with the alternative which is a notetaker, or maybe even a laptop. Fwiw I am totally blind and have been since birth, and I am fiercely independent. So I know only too well how hard it can be accepting help from other people. But it's important to remember that the reason the help is offered is so that you can achieve your full potential.

A lot of how people react depends on how you react. So if you are confident, and appear confident, nobody will ever think to question, iyswim?

Can I ask what sight condition you have? Is deterioration a certainty? or is it just something thatis an unknown possibillity?

Please let me know if I can help in any way .

Thank you both

I should point out what I'm scared of, is losing sight to blurry/nothing! I don't know how I'd cope if that happened.

Anyway, am off to bed now as have a 9am lecture and sitting here at this time probably does me no good either!

You will cope. I promise you that.

I have no sight. none. I am married with a child. Before I had him I held down a full-time job as a finance manager. Now I am heavily involved in my ds' school. I am on the PTA (people actually request my cakes at cake sales), I spend three mornings a week listening to children read, I am a governor and from March I will be chair of governors.

Of course it is a scary prospect going from having sight to having none. But it is doable.

my friend does this sort of work (as student support worker) - people need help for all sorts of reasons - sometimes mental health, sometimes for orthopaedic problems, and sometimes for sight problems. my friend is always very discreet - you will probably find whoever is doing the job is relatively young, and could easily pass for being a fellow student.

Definitely book some assistance. I have to use an autism adviser and an advocate a lot of the time, and I couldn't manage without them (nor without my assistance dog and family, friends, business colleagues etc). If help is there, go for it.

Thank you everyone xx

I don't know for definate if complete sight loss will happen, it's just that everyone says things get worse as you age...I'm 19 now, I was told developement slows at 18-21 so it's starting to nag. I have a lot of things going on:

I suffer from a range of visual problems, including optic atrophy, left hemanopia (loss of visual field on left side), Nystagmus (involuntary jerky movement of eyes), hypermetropia (Long sighted), Restricted distance vision, but good near vision.

That's something some professional bod gave me for job forms, college and uni applications etc. I've been speaking to one of my lecturers and he used to be a note taker and fully advocates using one, although he's going to give me copies of his lecture notes too, so maybe a strategy like that would be good too

Thanks again

yeah, was going to say it would be good if lecturers were using word processed notes; that way they could email them to you and you could print them off in your preferred size.

another possibility is a dictaphone; you could record the lecture and make your own notes at night. however, this would be a problem if your course involves diagrams, etc from the whiteboard.

if you were really keen not to use a notetaker, then a cctv camera like this one might be useful and could be paid for using the technology element of your DSA. setting it up in your lecture room might be a bit of a faff though!

having said all that, i think a notetaker is a great idea. it would cover all the bases and should be fairly unobtrusive. i know a few non-signing deaf students who have used a notetaker and found it very helpful.