How charity Sight Scotland helps keep life fulfilling for people dealing with vision loss

dailyrecord.co.uk:

LOSING your eyesight may be devastating but it needn’t mean the end of a fulfilling life.Sight Scotland is there to listen and offer practical advice to help people without their sight face the future.For Christine Lloyd, from Edinburgh, losing her sight after a stroke in 2020 was upsetting and shocking, not least because it came after the death of her beloved husband Eric the year before.Former teacher Christine, 83, is naturally inquisitive, and reading and writing has always been fundamental in her life, so the prospect of being unable to do either was almost too much to bear.Thankfully Sight Scotland was able to offer her practical solutions to help her negotiate a new way of living with sight loss.“In 2020 my friend had taken me out, and when I came back into my flat I couldn’t see anything – and I couldn’t understand why,” Christine recalls.An ambulance took Christine to hospital where doctors confirmed a stroke had caused homonymous hemianopia, a condition where a person sees only one side – right or left – of the visual field of each eye.When Christine left hospital 10 days later, she was registered as visually impaired.

But she has been able to adapt and find new ways of doing things.An occupational therapist has shown her a reading technique, using strips of brightly coloured paper that attract her eye to the words on a page, allowing her to follow the text more easily.“Because my vision impairment is at the sides, I can see straight ahead,” Christine says. “So if I hold a book right in front of me, I can see that.” And Sight Scotland also stepped in to give a helping hand.“Sight Scotland has been very good,” reveals Christine, “visiting often and giving me useful gadgets, including a magnifying glass with a