Mary Kozy has been blind since age 18, and for many years she has used the one-to-one reading service offered by the Blind Service Association at its downtown location.
Mail, professional journals, policy manuals and magazines are read to her by a volunteer reader. But when Kozy, who is now a social worker at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Center in Wheaton, moved from Chicago to Wheaton, the downtown reading service was no longer as convenient.
Dennis Bowling of Wheaton, a blind doctoral candidate at Loyola University, needs as much as 10 hours of reading each week. Because he`s busy working as well as going to school, he often needs reading done on the weekends, when the association`s downtown reading service is closed.
Now there is an alternative to the trek downtown for Kozy, Bowling and other visually impaired Du Page County residents.
The Blind Service Association and the Glen Ellyn Public Library have come together to offer a one-to-one reading service at the Glen Ellyn Public Library. The library has made a quiet conference room available and the association has supplied training materials and a tape recorder.
The association also supplied a Brailler; it looks like a chrome lunchbox with keys. With it, the listener can punch out notes in Braille. The Lions Club financed a phone line and an answering machine so users can leave a message directly for the reading service.
The visually impaired can set up a free reading session at their convenience. While there`s no limit on the number of sessions a person may have, each session is about two hours long.
”The Glen Ellyn location is ideal,” said Don Davia, a blind resident of Glen Ellyn and motivating force behind the project to locate the reading service in Du Page. ”It`s right across the street from the North Western train station. People can also get there by Pace or RTA pickup.”
Mazen Istanbouli lives in Chicago and works as a political science teacher at the College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn. Currently a heavy user of association reading services downtown, he plans to use the Glen Ellyn location, too.
”I`ll take the Pace bus from COD to the train station and walk from there.”
Istanbouli admits that the short walk from the train station to the library is daunting, with traffic thundering over the tracks and peeling off along Crescent Boulevard without stopping.
”I`ll do it anyway,” he said.
A rehabilitation counselor for the blind with the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, Davia sees the development of the reading program as another way to help the blind manage their lives.
”I`ve been with the state for 24 years, and I was well aware of BSA in the Loop. But with population changes, sometimes we have trouble getting both the blind and the readers to come to the Loop location.”
BSA executive director Anna Perlberg said, ”We`ve been doing reading for 68 years, and we`ve always been concerned about access. That`s why we`ve started to work with public libraries.”
While the Loop location caters to hundreds of blind professionals, Davia sees another group of blind who need the service.
”As many as 25 percent of our senior citizens are visually impaired, but many won`t admit it. They just say they`re getting old,” Davia said.
Having an accessible reading service is one more way to help the visually impaired keep their independence.
Dorothy Troyer, a rehabilitation teacher with the Deicke Visual Rehabilitation Center in Wheaton, said, ”One of the hardest things to read for people who have some vision and can use enlarging devices is mail. Handwriting just doesn`t keep its character when enlarged. And some people would rather have a stranger read their mail than have a neighbor or a friend know all their business. Legal papers are hard, too, because the print can be so small.”
Even though the service is badly needed, Davia said it`s difficult to get the word out and the consumers in.
”Because of my job, I know who the blind people are in Du Page County and where they live, and I know I`m going to have to call them all on the phone and let them know the service is available and encourage them to use it,” Davia said. ”If they have other problems-like they need mobility training-I can help with that, too.”
Davia estimates that there are perhaps 4,000 potential users in Du Page County. But, judging by the experience of the two already established suburban outposts of Blind Service Association services, the use rate will be much less. Both the Forest Park and Skokie libraries have a scant handful of blind consumers making use of their one-to-one reading services.
Pat Groh, coordinator of community services for the Skokie Library, said, ”It`s quite frightening, particularly for a person who`s lost their sight in later years, to get in a cab and come here. One of our users takes an RTA service, and the bus has to pick up a lot of other people and the bus is often quite late.”
What many people with visual impairments would really like is someone to come to their home.
”If they offered this service in the home, they`d probably see a lot more usage,” said Bowling. ”If I didn`t have a wife who drives me, I couldn`t use the Glen Ellyn service. Chicago is actually easier for me to get to from Wheaton than Glen Ellyn is.”
Kozy has a husband who can drive her, and he helps her prioritize and sort through her mail before she goes to a reader. At times, she has been able to arrange an in-home reader, which also meant she didn`t have to lug her stuff around.
But in-home service just presents too many problems, according to Davia.
”We have to protect the volunteers. To go into the home presents opportunities for situations to occur that the volunteer might be
uncomfortable with,” Davia said.
He says the user might ask the volunteer to do an errand or something around the house.
”It would be hard for the volunteer to say no,” said Davia.
Groh agrees, and while the Skokie Library will put the volunteers and users in touch with one another, any arrangements outside the library must be strictly between them. ”Otherwise the library would be just too liable,”
said Groh.
One thing that sets the Glen Ellyn service apart from the other suburban locations is that the volunteer coordinators themselves are visually impaired. Walter Campbell of Glen Ellyn and Judy McClarren of Wheaton, who together coordinate the volunteer readers, have only peripheral vision. And while the Forest Park and Skokie libraries rely heavily on word of mouth and informal networking to let people know of the service, Davia is more aggressive and has given Campbell and McClarren lists of visually impaired people to call directly.
The easy part is getting volunteer readers. Volunteering to read is sort of like volunteering to give blood: It`s a simple thing that means much to the recipient.
”I was struck by how many volunteers had blind fathers. They remembered how hard it was for their father to get work,” said Davia.
For volunteers, it means a gift of time and voice. BSA provides some reassuring guidelines about how to cope with such situations as entering a room with a blind person or offering help.
They caution against getting involved with a user`s personal problems. It`s not uncommon for a user to fall asleep while being read to; in that case, the reader is advised to take a short break and then resume.
”I`d thought about doing this before and even going into the city,”
said volunteer reader Patricia McDonald of Glen Ellyn. ”But then I thought, well this is right here in town. It`s very convenient for me.”
Volunteer reader Tom Happel of Glen Ellyn said that being laid off from his job made him realize how lucky he was to have as much as he does.
”When I visit friends in Chicago, I drive through Lower Wacker and see people eating out of dumpsters,” he said. ”I`ve been looking for a way to get involved.”
Happel, who now works part time, says he`ll volunteer even when he finds full-time work.
”I was serious about this when I volunteered and I`ll make time. It means so much to the blind person,” he said.
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For more information about reading and other services for the blind, contact The Blind Service Association Inc., 22 W. Monroe St., Chicago, 60603-2501; 312-236-0808.
To contact the Glen Ellyn blind reading service, call 708-469-4512.
