Zoom Text Goes to Grad School

ZoomNews

Tracy is currently enrolled in the Biochemistry PhD program at Arizona State University (ASU), but it’s been a long road to get there. Although she was born with the rare disease plars planitis, Tracy’s vision didn’t really begin to deteriorate until junior high school. Plars planitis is an inflammation of the middle layer of the eye which causes floaters. By itself it doesn’t cause tremendous vision loss, but after multiple surgeries and medication attempting to correct it, Tracy developed glaucoma. This led to a sizable decrease in her vision - she lost all her peripheral vision and now can only see out of a small part of her eyes.

Growing up and going to school in a small town in Nebraska led to challenges with finding and using transportation and completing her school work. Always interested in the sciences, Tracy signed up for chemistry as a junior in high school. She was told to just find herself a lab partner who could help her complete the lab work. But when she went to college and majored in chemistry, the labs became much more intensive than they were in high school. She knew that she couldn’t rely on the other students to do the lab work for her anymore - nor did she want them to.

“In my freshman year, I had a professor who told me I had to find a way to do everything myself,” says Tracy. “I pushed myself to measure all the chemicals, and if I couldn’t see things properly, I came up with techniques that worked for me and thus became more independent.”

For her coursework, Tracy used a large CCTV that came with detachable glasses. They helped in certain arenas, but they were too bulky to use in the lab. Not long after, the Commission of the Blind in Nebraska introduced her to ZoomText, and she has been a user now for over five years.

“Before I got ZoomText, I would get extremely tired after only an hour of looking at the computer screen,” says Tracy. “Using a computer is critical for me - I have to read journals, develop laboratory protocols, and analyze data on a daily basis, and ZoomText makes everything large enough so that I can be effective in my research.”

For more on Tracy and Zoom visit www.aisquared.com/News/index.php