2024 looks to be a big year in addressing medical devices when it comes to their accessibility for us who are blind or low-vision. Currently, HR 1328 has been taken up by the U.S. Senate with the aim of directing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make at home medical devices better able to be used by us without assistance. Medical devices in the doctor’s office such as adjustable tables, diolysis machines, etc. are being addressed for their accessibility by people having any physical disability.
But here’s the catch. What if there are offices where no one is trained to explain such accessibility to patients? What if there are no one in your area who can show you how to use that at-home medical equipment in a way that best accommodates you? Said equipment would lie dormant and, in time, forgotten. The solution lies in the training and encouraged schoolinbg of vision or low-vision rehabilitation therapists.
Yes, I know, says the ACVREP, we can smack a unit or two of continuing education for those occupation therapists already in the field. We may pat them on the back with a tiny raise and say, “Go to it.”
That’s not an adequate response. Instead, we need to recruit people to schools like Salus University, Western Michigan, Florida State, or Northern Illinois where schools for blind and low-vision studies teach students how to teach people who are blind or low-vision in the terms that best suits them. The same goes for instruction in orientation and mobility or assistive technology.
Said students can be low-vision or blind themselves or can be fully sighted. In any case, where the needs are, we need people who will rightly meet those needs with the appropriate expertise.
With that said, as bills mandating the FDA or the DOJ to enforce the accessibility for medical devices progress through Congress, our schools where blind and low-vision specialists are trained need to ramp up the recruitment efforts. Yes, all said schools have online options. Yes, all of them incorporate 400 hours of internship that goes toward licensure. That is all fine and good as far as training goes. Yet, there needs to be a further advocacy component as well that engages VA hospitals, centers for independent living (CIL’s), Vocation Rehabilitation, and State departments for the blind to employ graduates who are specifically trained and vetted for fostering voice, choice, and independence in the blindness community.
In short, vision rehabilitation therapists (VRT’s), certified orientation and mobility specialists (COMS), and certified assistive technology instruction specialists (CATIS) are in high demand and for a very good reason. They can go into teritory where the average home healthcare worker or CNA may not be able to navigate when dealing with patients who are blind, deaf, quadriplegic, or any combination thereof.
Thus, as we pour our passions toward advocating for legislation upholding the rights and dignity of people who are physically disabled, we encourage the training of workers in the blindness and low-vision field with just as much fervor.
Boldly Blind 