Focus by Ingrid Ricks -- A Book Review

A Book Review of Focus by Ingrid Ricks

How might it feel to go to get glasses, pick out your favorite frames on the way in to the ophthalmologists’ office, and then to find out that your field of vision is so small that you are legally blind?  To learn that glasses won’t help? To learn it is a progressive disease?

Find out how Ingrid Ricks felt when she received this devastating news. Find out how she got her positive perspective back. Find out what life is like with Retinitis Pigmentosa…and what she is doing about it.

Ingrid Ricks tells it like it is, making it all so real you feel like you are right there. At times, we might go down to the depths with her but, as always, she brings us back up to the positive, optimistic place that characterizes her writing.

As a mother with two sons who had sudden vision losses, I remember looking for books – any books - on the subject of vision loss, and coming up short. At that time, there was basically nothing I could find. I wasn’t looking for a book that explained the technical details or for a book specific to my sons’ condition. I just wanted something, anything on the subject. Finally, someone wrote one of those books I had been looking for.

But even if you don’t know anyone with vision loss, or maybe even more so in that case, this book can help you to see life through someone else’s eyes. 

You can get the book through Amazon here. 

Accessible Books for Visually Impaired Students

As my visually impaired son - who reads print with magnification - applied for college, the director of disability services gave us two great resources for listening to books...if he desires to rest from using magnification, or if it makes it easier for him to keep up with the volume of reading. We could have joined these memberships years ago; they are for students of all ages, but at the time I was looking for free resources. Now, the good news for my readers: Through grants, these memberships have become free of charge to eligible students!

BOOKSHARE:
"Bookshare® is free for all U.S. students with qualifying disabilities, thanks to an award from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs."

"Bookshare offers approximately 90,000 digital books, textbooks, teacher-recommended reading, periodicals and assistive technology tools."

LEARNING ALLY
"Formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic®"

"Titles from major publishers for K-12, college and professionals."

"DAISY format offers figure descriptions for subjects like math & science."

*****

You can read, on their websites, who qualifies and how to document the disability. If your student is already signed up to borrow free digital books from the Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind, you won't need new documentation for either of these organizations.

P.S. If you are receiving this as an email, you can read this post in a blog format, or read past posts, at: http://viphs.blogspot.com/

Homeschool Planning

This morning I wrote a blog post at my main blog, Margaret Mary Myers, about our homeschooling plans for the coming year. You are welcome to read it...by clicking on the link below this post.

Before you rush over to read it, I need to let you know that my son Peter is only legally blind and does do a lot of visual learning: using ZoomText (computer magnification), CCTV (video magnifier), and t.v. and movies. He uses a lot of different learning modes, knows Braille (if slowly), and scored high on auditory comprehension. But if we were pushed into a corner to say what his primary reading medium would be, we would have to say "print".

With all this in mind, if you are interested, you are most welcome to read about our plans for the coming year. :)

http://margmary.blogspot.com/2009/07/plan-next-years-homeschooling-check.html



P.S. If you are receiving this as an email, you can read this post in a blog format, or read past posts, at: http://viphs.blogspot.com/