CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) – February is Low Vision Awareness Month and a Chicago-area nonprofit has been getting the word out that there's help for those with diminishing eyesight.
Joan Jaeger, chief marketing officer for Winnetka-based Hadley, which was founded as a correspondence school in 1920 providing braille lessons by mail and now uses virtual reality, live support, podcasts, and more, to help low vision people across the world.
"Low vision is a term used to describe a range of conditions where your eyesight is so compromised that it's not correctable by lenses, medication, or surgery,” Jaeger told WBBM Newsradio.
And Jaeger said it's more and more common.
"In the United States as a whole, 20 million people are facing low vision, and that's expected to double by the year 2050,” she said.
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Jaeger said the most important thing is that diminished eyesight doesn't mean a less-fulfilling life.
"The good thing is there are ways around these tasks (such as reading), you might think, 'Oh my gosh, if I don't have any central vision I would never be able to read again.' You can. You can figure out ways to do things that bring you joy even if your eyesight isn't that great any more,” she assured.
Jaeger said Low Vision Awareness Month was created to help people realize that many of their friends and neighbors may be facing a disease or an eye condition that they were aware of.
“Just be conscious of the fact that many of us are facing these kinds of conditions but also that there is help out there and it really is important for people to realize the help is there,” she said.
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