What do you see??

 I'm often asked, "Exactly what do you see?"  The answer is, "Not much!"   I'm in the advanced stages of macular  degeneration, and the central part of my vision is pretty much gone.  This means anything that I'm looking directly at I can't see.  Fortunately,I still have my peripheral vision, but unfortunately that peripheral vision is dim, blurry, distorted, and multiple vision.  It has turned my life upside down and taken away so many of the things that I love to do, blogging being one. 

There are two types of technology that I need  to try blogging again. The first is dictation.  I have three options for dictation:  MS Word and Gmail on the desktop, and Gmail on the phone.  Of the three options, my phone dictation works the best. After I have the post composed in my head, I dictate it to my phone and email it to myself so I can open it on the desktop

.  

I listen to it several times with Narrator text reader at this point.  Unfortunately, Narrator does not allow me to edit while it is running.  So when I want to make a change, I have to exit Narrator and use dictation, then turn Narrator back on to continue.  

Narrator is a complex program which has over 100 commands and the commands are different with each version of Windows.  I haven't found a tutorial that fits my needs.  Luckily, Vivian from the Lilac City Services for the Blind came to my house and helped me with the keyboard commands. 

   

Switching back and forth is a complicated and time-consuming process.  But in the process, I have improved  organizing my thoughts before dictating and also improved my dictating and listening skills.  Editing photos is the next challenge as the type is too small in the photo taskbar to navigate with Narrator.  Coming soon are posts about my dog, my garden, and how I cope with cooking for my ever patient husband who politely eats all I burn or ruin.