Brett Devoo has been unable to see since he was 16, and he takes prescribed medication every single day.<\/p>\n
High-tech glasses are supposed to help him find the right bottle. But they are not always working.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m kind of always finding that I have found my own way of making things accessible. When it came to different kinds of bottles of different pills, I used them like different kinds of tape. It\u2019s a hockey tape like stick tape, the kind of fabric stuff,\u201d he tells CityNews.<\/p>\n
Fifteen-year-old Elvin Nguyen has a friend with the same medication challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw one of the things he was struggling with most was medication adherence following his like disorder, so he wasn\u2019t able to really see the labels well,\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n
More than 70 per cent of Canadians with vision loss take prescribed medications on a weekly basis, and there are many digital ways to identify medications, even from your phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving these kinds of technologies will definitely be very helpful in guaranteeing independence,\u201d said Tommy Leung, spokesperson at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.<\/p>\n
At pharmacies, however, options can be limited.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s not accessible at all,\u201d Devoo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll give it to you in a bag. \u2018Here you go.\u2019 Like, obviously, if you ask, \u2018what is this and which one is which?\u2019 They\u2019ll be like, \u2018This bottle is this and this bottle is this.\u2019 Thanks, but they\u2019re shaped the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
20 per cent of Vancouver pharmacies offer talking labels through a system called \u2018Script Talk\u2019 that says label information when placed on a physical reader.<\/p>\n
Readers are free if you have vision loss. But awareness of the resource remains an issue.<\/p>\n
As of 2020, \u2018Script Talk\u2019 users account for only two per cent of prescription-taking individuals in Canada, and many have never heard of it.<\/p>\n
For the Science Fair Foundations Youth Innovation Showcase, Nguyen made something no Vancouver pharmacy is offering right now: 3D printed labels in Braille.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can see here, I just plugged in a bunch of words like \u2018Hi CityNews\u2019 as an example, and it would convert it into Braille,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Once a bottle is labeled in Braille, no other device is required, which Alvin hopes will make it accessible to anyone, anywhere, not just those with access to phones or high-tech devices.<\/p>\n
Learning Braille promotes independence. Do you want to take your phone every time you want to take a medication, or do you just want to drag your fingers across and take the medication?\u201d Nguyen said.<\/p>\n
When it comes to accessibility, Devoo has always done things for himself.<\/p>\n
With Nguyen\u2019s invention, he\u2019ll be able to keep doing just that the next time his high-tech glasses don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brett Devoo has been unable to see since he was 16, and he takes prescribed medication every single…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[163,85,46,482],"class_list":{"0":"post-115852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}