Reading around your blind spot

By Sharon Siddique

MDS President

Some 25 hardy MDS members braved last Saturday afternoon’s downpour to venture out to the Alexandra Hospital Seminar Room for a talk on Eccentric Viewing by optometrist Mr Yap Tiong Peng, of the IGARD group. And it was certainly worth getting wet for!

Tiong Peng explained that eccentric viewing (reading around your blind spot) cannot “improve” your eyesight. But for MD sufferers (our membership), learning the technique means that you can read at a faster rate, in smaller font, and with greater accuracy. Not to mention more efficient mastery of other difficult tasks, like driving, reading bus numbers, cooking and so on.

He offered us lots of tips on how to identify your blind spot and how to see around it through the “steady eye strategy”. To paraphrase his message. If you were given a tennis racket and a ball, you would not assume that you could immediately play tennis. Similarly, if “given” the eccentric viewing technique, practice is necessary to “see better”.

Unfortunately there is no place in Singapore that offers MD sufferers an opportunity to learn and practice this technique. Several members were keen on exploring the possibility of meeting up with Tiong Peng at a future date to explore the possibility of providing such training for MDS members.

I think most of us who attended are convinced that this could certainly be a useful exercise. Tiong Peng has offered to provide slides of this presentation to MDS members via our website so those who did not attend can get a better idea of what his presentation was all about. So please do let us know if you are interested in participating.

Low-Vision Conference in KL

Feb 24, 2011

By Sharon Siddique

MDS President

in Kuala Lumpur

As I found on arrival at the 10th International Conference on Low-Vision, this is a biannual conference attended primarily by optometrists specializing in low vision – and there are hundreds of them.  The primary organizer is the ISLRR (International Society for Low-Vision Research and Rehabilitation). Country hosts were the Malaysian Association for the Blind and The Tun Hussein Onn National Hospital. The theme this year is Vision Rehabilitation – Towards Better Living.

It was really a packed programme! Each day was full of concurrent plenary sessions, workshops, and symposiums.  Not to mention a hall full of exhibitors, and over 80 poster displays over five days. Hard to take it all in!  And very frustrating that I was often left to choose between two or three presentations that were running simultaneously.

I’ll try to give you a flavour of what I found most useful from the perspective of a patient with macular degeneration.

•       Wow! So many countries have very well-developed national programmes to support low-vision training, rehabilitation, and research.  These run in hospitals, universities, and health research institutes.   There were practitioners from Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Australia, UK, India, USA, Spain, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Sweden, Ghana, Sudan, France, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, Belgium, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, China, Italy…. I’m sure I have left out some countries, but you get the idea!

•       Similarly, the topics of research represented so many areas of interest to us requiring low-vision training, counseling, and equipment.  Some topics which I found most informative were:

o   Depression & Vision Impairment
o   Accessing Low Vision Rehabilitation
o   Efficiency of Low-Vision Devices
o   Quality of Life & Functional Vision
o   Paediatric Vision Rehabilitation
o   Impact of Loss of Central Vision
o   Training & Rehabilitation Models
o   MD & Coping with Vision Loss
o   Vision Field Assessments
o   Enhancement of Reading Performance
o   Vision & the Brain
o   Use of Distance & Near Vision Aids
o   Vision Impairment & Daily Living
o   The Mind and Vision

There were dozens of presentations under all these topics and more.  If you want to keep track of what optometrists are thinking and doing, I would suggest you watch this space:  ISLRR. The next conference will be in Melbourne in 2014.  Some of you might like to plan on attending.

Yoga promotion for MDS members

Dear MDS members,

The kind people at All About Yoga recently held a free session for us at their studio. They are now offering a special package of yoga lessons. Please see details in this letter from All About Yoga below.

Special Package for MDS Members

10 sessions @ $80 Nett. (U.P. $200)

• Bookings must be made in advance.
• Can attend different classes.
• Expiry period of 2 months.
• Recommended class participation of at least twice per week.
• Payment by Cash only.

We hope more people will be exposed to yoga and experience the benefits that yoga can bring to their health. We are open to discussions. Do feel free to contact us if you require more information. We hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.

Warmest Regards:
Sharmaine Lee
Sales Associate
All About Yoga Pte Ltd
Website: www.allaboutyoga.com.sg
Contact Number: 6501-9380