Vision impaired can borrow and try out Yad Sarah monitors that magnify texts

The voluntary organization with over 100 branches around the country has 100 such units, which are lent out for up to three months in exchange for a deposit.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
An illustration of an eye (photo credit: COURTESY YAD SARAH)
An illustration of an eye
(photo credit: COURTESY YAD SARAH)
As part of World Sight Day this week, Yad Sarah reminds the vision-impaired public that they may borrow a TV monitor that enables them to read texts – books, newspapers or other printed material – that they ordinarily would not be able to see.
The voluntary organization with more than 100 branches around the country has 100 such units, which are lent out for up to three months in exchange for a deposit.
The equipment, which when new cost some NIS 15,000 apiece, makes it possible to produce larger fonts, different colors and backgrounds with better screen contrast and light according the needs of the user.
Applicants must first receive approval from outpatient vision institutes. Some 70 monitor systems were contributed by a Swedish donor with impaired vision, while the other 30 were purchased by Yad Sarah.
Some users will want to buy their own second-hand equipment later after finding that the borrowed systems have helped them. Some, however, will find they do not relieve their particular vision problem, so they will not waste their money purchasing such systems.
The organization said that while it has had the monitors for several years, their availability has not been well known and not all of them were in use.
Yad Sarah’s Jerusalem headquarters on Herzl Avenue has on its second floor a number of the monitors that can be used by people with vision problems, mornings from Sunday through Thursday, as part of its Da’at program.
People with vision problems who want to apply for borrowing the equipment should call Yad Sarah’s branch in Rishon Lezion at (03) 954-3350.