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Prime Times Weekly publication of the Mail Tribune , Medford, Oregon Photos by Steve Johnson Harriet Haly, who has failing eyesight that keeps her from reading, laughs while listening to "synthetic" computer voice read a medical journal to her via the Internet. A Rogue Valley Manor center offers computer technology to help visually impaired seniors reclaim their reading skills and ... SEE life ANEW By MARK FREEMAN A little corner of the Rogue Valley Manor is a site for sore -- and tired -- eyes. Lloyd West peruses newspapers there. Harriet Haly dissects the complex research in medical journals. And Doris Lassen reflects on the conflicts between Fletcher Christian and Captain William Bligh, one page at a time. All three have failing eyesight and none of them can read the words on this page. But with computer technology and help from friends at a Medford computer center all three have remained active readers despite near-blindness. West, Haly and Lassen all keep their reading ties alive at the Douglas New Vision Center. Optical scanners, magnifying screens, speakers Burt Henke and speech synthesizers -- all connected to old computers -- make print large enough for old eyes to see or translate the written word into speech. "This is a godsend," says Lassen, a 90-year-old former schoolteacher who uses a computer scanner that reads the pages from "Mutiny on the Bounty" to her through earphones. "Without it, my life would be very dull," Lassen says. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself. This way, I read a few hours a day -- until my back gets sore." Like West and Haly, Lassen suffers from age-related macular degeneration -- a breakdown of the center of the retina that prevents old eyes from focusing straight, but usually leaves some peripheral vision. When it hits, macular degeneration can steal vast caches of a senior's independence: everything from trimming fingernails to balancing a checkbook ... and reading. Without help, the written world is gone, says Haly, a former marketing official, whose sight is failing. A computer scans "Mutiny on the Bounty" and reads it to Doris Lassen, foreground, while Lloyd West reads a newspaper magnified by a computer. Both readers are at the Douglas New Vision Center at the Rogue Valley Manor. But Haly regularly goes to the Douglas New Vision Center to scan the World Wide Web, find articles on topics such as macular degeneration and "read" them by using computer software that reads the articles to her. "It's absolutely wonderful," Haly says. "It's so simple, even I can do it." The simplicity comes largely through the efforts of Burt Henke, a retired physics professor who has been legally blind for more than 55 years. Over the decades, Henke has built contraptions to help near-blind people keep reading. He brought one of those machines (one that magnifies type) with him when he moved to the Rogue Valley Manor in 1988. He immediately saw other residents who could use similar reading aids, and as a result of donations, the center was born. Now tucked into a corner room of the manor library, the center features several different systems for helping specific types of vision impairments. Some stations scan printed words and translate them to computer-generated "synthetic" speech. Others contain large magnifiers that scan books or newspapers and make the type as large as 6 inches. Lloyd West, 91, had a rapid attack of macular degeneration two years ago, which forced him to stop driving and ended his newspaper reading. But now he spends 90 minutes most days running two different newspapers through a magnifier that increases the type size enough for him to see it with his peripheral vision. "If I don't have this," West says, "I couldn't read at all." The center also has a system rigged to view 35-millimeter slides on a large television, a scanner that translates letters and postcards to synthetic speech and computers that allow even the most damaged eyes to surf the Internet. The center primarily uses 1970s-era computers. Henke says they work fine for text-only reading or powering scanners, magnifiers or text-to-speech software. Henke stresses that seniors should not wait until their eyes falter before dipping into these technologies. The center is open around the clock and is used primarily by Rogue Valley Manor residents. But it is open to all area seniors, and Henke encourages visually-impaired seniors to test-drive equipment before purchasing their own. For more information on the center, call Henke at 857-6684, or visit the Rogue Valley Manor Website at: http://www.retirement.org/rvm/activities Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA