THE confidence to live in your own home seems like a simple goal but it’s been missing from Adam Smith’s life since he lost his sight in an accident 11 years ago.
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But that’s all about to change after he was yesterday presented with a handheld barcode scanner at the annual Adaptive Technology Texpo at Albury’s Vision Australia office.
“This will make a huge difference to my life,” Mr Smith said.
“I’m sick of asking people what things are and it will give me a lot of independence back.”
Albury’s occupational therapist for Vision Australia Dominica Maloney has seen technology impact upon the lives of the vision impaired, since she joined the organisation 10 years ago.
“The quality of products is better and the prices are lower,” she said.
“They are mostly electronic too so they don’t need someone to manually adjust equipment for them.”
Mrs Maloney said the technologies gave the vision impaired more independence and choice.
Mr Smith can now go grocery shopping and pick out his own clothing.
More than two million food and clothing barcodes are stored in the device and when an item is scanned, he is told what it is.
Mr Smith can also enter his DVD and CD collections.
“This will stop me playing a movie I’ve seen before,” he said.
“I kick back on the couch and it starts to play and I think ‘uh oh, I watched this yesterday’.”
