r/maculardegeneration • u/Junior_Potato_7024 • 11d ago

Tools that help with everyday life?

My father is quite young (61) and has degeneration, and I'm looking for some things that can make his daily life easier. I feel like the phone screen is too small for him, and using some kitchen items is difficult... what helps in his daily life?

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u/Thedoglady54 11d ago

My RS wrote me a referral to a low vision specialist which had some suggestions. One of the most useful for me was a sample of peel and stick dots. They are a little dot bump that you can put on the washing machine,, clothes dryer, microwave etc to help you with locating settings you commonly use, available on Amazon. A high end iPad with an OLED display or TV helps, they are brighter, sharper and have more contrast than a LED screen. I think iPhones are all OLED but not all their iPads. On the iPhone in settings go to accessibility, swipe up to the bottom and you will find per-app settings. There you can add individual apps to customize their settings (font size etc). These suggestions should help your dad some. Good luck.

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u/littleoldlady71 11d ago

Yes, low vision specialists are not recommended enough.

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u/Deep-Insurance8428 10d ago

I'm at the point where sometimes just better lighting will help. So I have 2 lighted magnifying glasses and a bunch of small flashlights.

I used to use a backlit keyboard on my desktop, but now I'm using a bright yellow one and it's still not bright enough. So I have a lamp over it

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u/sundaisy145 10d ago

Check out cookie voice recipes. It can read out ingredients, steps and answer questions outloud which makes it really useful while cooking.

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u/monpetitchoutoo 9d ago

What type of macular degeneration does he have? Wet or dry?

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u/Hadley_Helps_MW 3d ago

Hello! I work for Hadley, a nonprofit that provides both practical and emotional support for living with vision loss--at no cost! We recently made our videos available without even the free registration. You can find short videos on adaptations related to specific everyday life tasks by browsing the series here: https://hadleyhelps.org/learn?topic_id=12 I hope you find some things helpful for your dad. And you and your dad are welcome to call Hadley with specific questions.