There is life after loss of sight, finds STEPHEN LEWIS.

IT must be horrible suffering from age-related macular degeneration. I can say that because for a few brief moments I experienced it myself.

Scott Smith handed me a pair of "sim specs" which had patterns of dark dots clustered around the centre of each lens. The effect was to blot out the centre of my vision, leaving me with just peripheral vision around the edges.

It left me disorientated and unable to focus, my visual world obscured by great cloudy blobs wherever I was looking. For me, Scott said sternly, this was just a little taster. For the thousands of mainly elderly people who suffer from the condition, it is for life.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common form of visual impairment. It affects mainly older people, and grows gradually worse.

It occurs when cells in the macula - the part of the back wall of your eyes responsible for sight in the central part of your field of vision - break down. The focus of your gaze will gradually become blurred, then continue to deteriorate, until in the later stages of the condition, it may be blotted out almost completely, making it difficult to read, write, drive and even recognise faces.

There are ways of learning to live with this condition, however. Which is where Scott comes in. He's the recently-appointed visual impairment rehabilitation worker at the York Blind and Partially Sighted Society. It's his job to help people make the most of what vision they have left.

For people with AMD, that can mean re-learning how they assess the visual information they still receive. Scott calls it "eccentric viewing". "Instead of looking at something straight on, we teach them to turn their heads to an appropriate angle so they are using some of the remaining residual perceptual vision," he says.

"If you can teach Mrs Nibs, let's call her, so that she is able to tilt her head a certain way, she may be able to still make a cup of tea, or see her grandchildren again."

AMD is just one of many visual impairments Scott helps people to live with. Others include tunnel vision - where you lose all your peripheral vision and are only able to see in a very narrow 'tunnel' straight before you - and cataracts, where your lens is clouded, leaving you looking out into a hazy, milky world where nothing can be distinguished.

Scott's job begins where medicine ends. Medical staff at York Hospital can do a great job with many eye conditions such as cataracts, he says, for which a simple operation can often make a huge difference. But once there is nothing more they can do, it is Scott's turn.

He attends five clinics a week at the hospital, where he picks up on patients for whom further medical improvement is not possible.

The way in which he helps them will depend partly on their condition.

For people suffering from tunnel vision, for example, one of the greatest frustratiions is constantly losing things such as house keys. When you have such a narrow range of vision, it is almost impossible to find something once you have put it down. The solution can be as simple as making sure your life is more ordered, so that you always keep keys and the like in the same place and know where they will be.

Another problem with tunnel vision is bumping into things. Scott can help people to be more aware of their body, so that they are not constantly banging into door jambs or other people, for example. And something as simple as carrying a "symbol cane" - a short, retractable white cane that acts as a sign to other people - can ensure you are given a bit more room.

The help Scott can offer will not depend simply on your condition, but also upon your own individual needs. For an elderly pensioner living on her own, it may be most important simply to be able to read letters from her grandchildren and make herself and her friends a cup of tea, he says.

The Blind and Partially Sighted Society's resources centre at 61 Bootham has a host of simple, low cost gadgets that can help her to do just that. They range from gadgets that clip on to the side of a mug and "beep" when the cup is filled, to "bump ons" - small sticky bumps that can be attached to the knobs on cookers and allow vision impaired people to switch the cooker on and off using their sense of touch rather than sight.

If, on the other hand, you are a young student starting out at university, you may have different needs. The resource centre has a range of vision aids, from magnifiers up to sophisticated hi-tech CCTV systems, which can help with reading a whole range of material.

And a week today, from noon to 3pm, it will be hosting an exhibition of the very latest hi-tech visual aid technology designed to help visually impaired people access computers, email and the Internet.

The York Blind and Partially Sighted Society's resource centre at 61 Bootham is open from 10-2 Monday to Friday. Simply drop in or call 01904 636269 to make an appointment.

Updated: 09:50 Monday, December 01, 2003