Our journey began as a personal trek.

---

I learned as a teenager that my vision did not have the same acuity as my family and friends. Pitching was easier than playing center field. Catching a basketball was easier than catching a baseball, each succeeding year my vision loss was measurable. Print needed to be enlarged. A bus had to stop before I could read it's destination sign. Later, I learned that recessive RP would cause my total blindness.  

Traveling the vision loss road filled my head with uncertainty and dismay. The challenge became how do can I continue to read and thus learn? Help came from a low vision and blind rehabilitation center that taught me ways to meet the challenges of blindness. My very first class was Mobility, the effective indoor and outdoor use of a white cane. Grade One Braille had me labeling my clothes to color coordinate them. But Techniques of Daily Living was the class I enjoyed most. We learned how to cook with ovens and stoves labeled in Braille. Microwave meatloaf became my favorite.

We were introduced to software and hardware that scanned documents and read aloud the content. The most important and critical course for me was keyboarding and computing. Having no remaining functional vision meant a “mouse” was useless. I had to learn how to type. After several weeks of hunting and pecking, I worked my way up to a paltry twenty words per minute which was the lowest rate in the Center. All of the computers were equipped with a speech software package called JAWS. It gave voice to the digital content on my computer with just a few keystrokes.

Four of us graduated from the Center within weeks of each other and the only employed colleague among us was provided a laptop computer with speech capability by her company. I had purchased a desktop computer and JAWS for myself just prior to graduation. My fellow classmates did not have the means to purchase their own assistive equipment, two were under 22 and the third was a single, unemployed mother. Their only resource was the Vision Center’s computers for students and graduates available on weekday afternoons and Saturdays. Their dreams of self-sufficiency and employment became limited through no fault of their own.

In order to pursue employment opportunities, enjoy a hobby or pay bills, blind and low vision individuals need these assistive technologies. Many visually impaired individuals do not have the means to purchase the hardware and software that can make a big difference in their lives.

After long months of agonizing over the problem, my wife Jackie and I developed a plan that led to the creation of the Eye-Link Foundation in 2000, a nonprofit that gives assistive technologies to folks who can't afford them. This year, we celebrate 25 years, hundreds of equipment grants fulfilled and the joy of enriching the lives of low vision and blind Minnesotans, North Dakotans and Wisconsinites.