Bill who became blind at 55 tells us some of his experiences.
Bill:
I lost my sight very suddenly, this created a sort of sensation in a way and I had all departments coming into hospital to visit me. One of these was from the libraries and he brought in one of the first talking books and a cassette recorder, placed this on the locker at the side of the bed and showed me how it worked. I remember that quite clearly. It was David Niven's The Moon's a Balloon
and I was very impressed with this. If my wife is with me the wife can help me choose a book and I can read the braille labels on those books that are labelled. If the wife isn't able to come along with me and I go in with the dog, the dog is very clever but it can't read braille nor can it read the titles of books (laughs). I know when I go to my local GP the nurse backed me onto a chair and they don't seem to understand that when the chair hits the back of your knees you go down, and more than once I have banged my head on the wall behind it. All they need to do is to put your hand on the back of the chair and you can find where the chair is and you can sit down yourself.
