Jan 7, 2009 1:01 pm US/Pacific
Putting Print in Focus for the "Hard of Seeing"
Jefferson Award Winner: Dr. Lorraine Marchi
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
Ninety-three-year-old Yolanda Cashman can't read without telesensory equipment that magnifies words up to fifty times.
"It does a beautiful job for me," she says. "I couldn't get along without it."
Yolanda found the tool through the National Association for the Visually Handicapped, better known as NAVH, in San Francisco. NAVH is the brainchild of Dr. Lorraine Marchi.
For more than half a century, her non-profit organization has provided equipment and large-print books for those she calls "hard of seeing," people who still have a hard time seeing even with corrective lenses. It all started in the 1950s.
"The eldest of my four children was born with a vision problem," Dr. Marchi explains. "When he was in first grade, children like Gene could not get an education. He had no books."
So she churned out large-print books herself using donated equipment.
"I worked every night and weekend as a volunteer learning to use the printing press and I perfected large print," she says.
Volunteers shared her vision, she says: "Every Tuesday our seniors would come work around three six-foot tables and hand-collate the books."
For more than twenty years, they signed off on hundreds of books, the print at least twice as large as normal.
"We made our own tabs, set our own type, our own spirals," she says.
Today, professional publishers have taken over the actual printing. They get the "seal of approval" if the large print meets NAVH standards.
"In that area, we are pioneers for large print," Dr. Marchi says proudly.
She now has offices in San Francisco and New York. Her group offers more than nine thousand titles in its free nationwide lending library and educates the public about living with low vision.
She says, "A lot of the work we do is help people understand what they can do, not what they can't do."
NAVH sells a sea of equipment like magnifying glasses to help the "hard of seeing." There's even equipment here that you've probably never thought about: large-print playing cards, bingo cards, and a talking calculator.
Even after 55 years, the 85-year-old native San Franciscan still works seven days a week with a clear focus.
She says to Yolanda, "The most important thing is we're helping more people like you to learn you can use what you have and your life's more meaningful right?"
"Right," answers Yolanda.
For setting a worldwide standard for large-print books and giving thousands of people the gift of reading, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Dr. Lorraine Marchi.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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