Yea. I agree. He does have RP. Isn't that part of Usher's Syndrome? His peripheral vision seems to be gone. He tells me his vision will never decrease- just that it will maintain where it is right now. He's also very sensitive to light (like when I'm standing outside his door he has to wear sunglasses to talk) and bright colors even are a bother.
Isn't that really a scary/dangerous thing to have tunnel vision and still be driving a car?
How are you able to access information online when you're deaf/blind? I ask out of curiosity, please don't be offended.
Yes, RP is a part of Ushers Syndrome.
There are 3 types of Ushers Syndrome:
Type I: Individuals with Ushers Syndrome Type I are typically born completely deaf or lose most of their hearing within the first year of life. Progressive vision loss caused by RP becomes apparent sometime during childhood.
Type II: Ushers Syndrome Type II is characterized by hearing loss from birth and progressive vision loss that begins in adolescence or adulthood. The hearing loss associated with this form of Ushers ranges from mild to severe and mainy affects the high frequencies. The degree of hearing loss varies among families.
Type III: People with Ushers Syndrome Type III experience progressive hearing loss and vision loss beginning in the first few decades of life. Unlike Ushers Syndrome Type I and II, infants born with Type III Ushers are usually born with normal hearing. By middle age, most individuals are profoundly deaf. Vision loss caused by RP develops in late childhood or adolescence.
I agree with you about the dangers of driving if one has tunnel vision. Personally, I'm of the opinion that anyone with legal blindness should not drive.
I'm more than happy to answer your question about how I use the Internet.
I use a screen reader (called Window-Eyes) which sends information that appears on the computer screen to a Braille display where it can be read by me. This information can also be spoken aloud by a synthetic voice. (Since I have bilateral CIs, I use both speech and Braille.) I'm able to move up, down, left, right, character by character, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph and page by page by issuing keyboard commands to the screen reader. I can read a variety of documents (except those that contain graphical information since screen readers can't recognize them) including MS Word documents, text files, websites and e-mail.
I've been using computers since 1984. The first computer I ever used was an Apple IIe. I'm now using a Dell with Windows Premium Home Edition.
I consider myself fortunate to be living in a day and age when all of this amazing technology is possible!
