Living with Vision Loss
Zora Natanblut has lived her entire life with vision loss. Although, she spent the first part of her childhood not knowing she had a visual impairment. It wasn’t until the third grade that she realized she lived with what she now recognizes as legal blindness due to an unspecified eye condition.
Zora Natanblut.
Zora first heard about eSight through reading a morning newspaper and soon after, she was trying it with an optometrist and experiencing enhanced vision for the first time in her life. Then, she found that she could read previously unrecognizable street signs and house numbers, and even the exact license plates on cars across the street from her. “It blew my mind,” she recalled, “I was shaking.”
Life with eSight
Ever since, she has been using eSight in her everyday life. She explained how she uses them in the grocery store to help her read any ingredient lists, and in the department store to read the size and laundry instructions for the clothing. “I have found them to be great assets,” she smiled. As well, Zora loves going to museums now, because she no longer requires her husband to whisper the artist’s descriptions into her ear as she can easily read the text on the placard herself. “They’ve changed my life, they’ve helped me in so many ways,” she said fondly.
“It was time for me to prove to myself that there were many things that I could do well. So, I gave myself a bunch of different challenges.” – Zora, on how eSight changed her outlook on life with vision loss
Finding Herself Again
Most importantly, eSight instilled a new sense of confidence and independence in Zora. She described how she was able to find out who she really was and that there were things she could excel in.
Her incredible achievements after her self-issued challenges include walking in Susan Komen’s Cancer half marathons (two laps around Central Park), participating in Susan Komen’s 60-mile 3 day walk, and swimming in the Senior Olympics winning medals of gold and silver. She even raised an astounding $5000 for cancer research.
Writing a Memoir
Over the course of the past 4 years, Zora has written a memoir that is slated to be coming out Fall 2020. She described her writing process, and how it was “very emotional writing the book. It took all these years to get the guts to write it out on paper.” She wrote the book from an angle of “dis”ing the “dis” in “disability”, and emphasized the importance of seeing the person rather than their disability. There is a chapter in her book detailing her challenges and accomplishments, as well as a chapter on the benefits of her eSight glasses.
Regardless of living with vision loss, Zora has unequivocally proved that she does not let it get in the way of achieving her ambitious and admirable goals.
Did you enjoy reading about Zora’s story? Read more about how eSight helped Zara, an 8-year-old girl, stop missing the beautiful details of life and see her family for the first time.