Katie is my daughter, nearly 13 years old. She was born 3 months prematurely (at 28 weeks gestation, if you want to get technical) and was diagnosed with severe retinopathy of prematurity (R.O.P.) when 6 weeks old.
In spite of various surgeries such as cryoabulation, open sky vitrectomies, and a scleral buckle, both of her retinas remain detached and she has no vision except for light perception (ability to see light) and light projection (ability to tell where the light is coming from).
After a couple years in the preschool program at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown Massachusetts, she was been mainstreamed for 4.5 years in the public school system in Needham Massachusetts where we live. She now attends Perkins School for the Blind's lower school program, which uses an ungraded system (i.e. there is no "3rd grade", "4th grade", per se). Ever resilient, Katie handled the transition well and now has time to master concepts, learn more experientially, develop independent living skills and have more opportunities for socialization than could be accommodated in the public school system. It was with great reluctance that I decided to switch her placement, because the teachers and specialists in Needham are superb professionals. The quality of the school system in Needham is often the reason people move here. It's certainly why we did.
Katie is a terrific kid with a great sense of humor, a deep love of people and music, and is my primary motivation in life. She uses or is learning to use a ever-widening variety of assistive technology, such as a Perkins Brailler, abacus, Braille and Speak, Braille Blazer embosser, scanner and OCR software. I and her teachers are students of assistive technology too, in the hope to (a) stay on top of things, (b) stay ahead of her, and (c) use technology to make our adaptation of materials quicker and easier. Katie has a flair for mimicry and foreign languages (my words do come back to haunt me!). She is also quite musical: she has perfect pitch; takes lessons on the guitar, piano and handbells; and sings in the Lower School Chorus at Perkins.
Click here to view more photographs of Katie.
One of the objectives of this site is to learn about what makes web sites accessible for individuals who have low vision or who are blind. That's why it avoids the use of tables, frames and image maps as much as possible, uses ALT= tags on all images, and offers a textual way of navigating in addition to any graphical button images. Sites designed for accessibility of this nature are typically referred to as "speech friendly sites", e.g. capable of being read by a screen reader or web browser designed specifically for use by the visually impaired.
I hope this web site in conjunction with the dozen or so e-mail mailing lists to which I subscribe and The Blind and Visually Impaired Net Ring of which I am the ringmaster will enable me to learn even more about what's ahead for her and allow me to share what I learn with others.
We parents and our visually impaired children have a big job ahead of us, but everything is possible if you're persistent and resourceful!
Sincerely,
Katie's Mom (a.k.a. Betsy Walker)