Chicago Lighthouse offers holiday gifts for visually impaired

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Sunday, December 11, 2016
Chicago Lighthouse offers Christmas gifts for visually impaired
The Chicago Lighthouse has a few gift options for those with vision challenges.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Have you gone over your list? Checked it twice? There are some gift options you may be overlooking.

There are 21 million people in the United States with non-correctable vision and one of them may be someone you love. The Chicago Lighthouse has a few gift options for those with vision challenges.

Talking clocks, programmable phones and even cooking utensils, all things that can be great gifts for those who are vision impaired.

"So a persons who have low vision often times can benefit from special devices they get at the doctor. But it's really the everyday devices for the everyday tasks that people can benefit from," said Tom Perski, the Senior Vice President of Rehabilitation Services at Chicago Lighthouse.

Perski went over a few items that could be great gifts.

"This is a ladies wallet that has special compartments so people who are visually impaired can separate their change and also there is a special way that blind and visually impaired people fold their bills so there are four special compartments in the wallet that help them keep it organized. So these are portable video magnifiers that charge overnight light a cell phone and a person can use this in a dark restaurant or a price tag in a store or they can use it to read their mail," he said.

Other items include lights for navigating at night and special keyboards for computers.

"So we have many, many devices. Over 900 in our tools for living store that can help somebody with everyday living as well has technology devices," Perski said.

If you want to check out any of these items, visit http://chicagolighthouse.org/shop/.