Blind Foundation's appeal visionary

VISUAL AIDS: Colleen Pryce is partially-sighted and needs electronic help to carry on her work as administrator. Husband Ray uses a white paddle to show her where to aim when she plays bowls.PHOTO/ BEVAN CONLEY

Colleen Pryce can't read or cross the road by herself but she still enjoys playing bowls.

She's the part-time administrator of the Wanganui branch of the Blind Foundation, which has street collectors out for its annual appeal today and tomorrow.

Mrs Pryce wasn't blind when she started working for the foundation six years ago. But four years later her eyesight started deteriorating rapidly, due to macular degeneration. She's now partially-sighted.

She can't recognise faces and needs help to cross the street, but is enabled to carry on working by a screen magnifier that gets its picture from a closed circuit camera. She also has a device that reads documents, while she listens through a headpiece.

The Wanganui branch of the Blind Foundation helps people with vision problems in a large region that includes Taihape, Ohakune, Waverley and Marton. They first have their vision assessed and then get help to carry on their lives.

Mrs Pryce got help from an adaptive living instructor. She suggested the magnifying device and got raised bumps put on Mrs Pryce's microwave and washing machine, to tell her where certain buttons were.

The foundation also has a mobility co-ordinator who teaches people how to use a cane, and it arranges guide dogs. It has a craft group that meets twice a week, and it sells what the members make.

. Mrs Pryce has carried on playing bowls despite not being able to see to the end of the mat, and is a member of a Wanganui bowls club for blind and partially sighted people.

Her husband uses a white paddle as a guide for her when she is playing, and she gets verbal instructions about the target.

She got to semifinal level in the Blind Bowls Nationals in Wanganui at the weekend and said it was fun.

"You hear when it clunks, and you say "What did I do?"