After a 15-year quest that included losing most of her eyesight, Paulette Foss will soon receive her doctoral degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Foss, 53, and her guide dog Aries will attend the May 12 commencement ceremony at CU-Boulder. After successfully defending her thesis in April, she will officially receive her doctorate in anthropology in August.
She began her work toward a doctorate in history in 1991, and after four years decided to switch to anthropology. Then, two years into her anthropology work her eyesight deteriorated, and she changed her thesis topic to focus on late-life sight loss.
Reading is very difficult for Foss, so she uses a computer that displays words 16-times the size of normal print. She also uses a book-scanning program that allows her to listen to books. The CU-Boulder Adaptive Technology Lab located in Willard Hall was essential to her degree work, she said.
"It's been very difficult," Foss said. "My left eye now has light perception only, so I am trying to train my right eye to read."
Foss has always had poor vision stemming from a condition called retinopathy of prematurity, which refers to damage to her retinas caused by being born prematurely and then spending time in an incubator with too much oxygen.
While growing up, her vision was poor but correctable, said Foss, who had glasses by the age of 2 and two eye surgeries by 16. Then when she was about 25 she experienced more complications, and the doctor told her that she would most likely end up losing her eyesight.
Until about 10 years ago she could see well enough to drive. Then within a five-month period her sight deteriorated to a point where she had to use a powerful magnifying glass to read. It remained that way for several years. Over the past year, she lost another 50 percent of her sight and is now at about 3 percent of normal vision, she said.
Foss lives in Boulder and says getting around the city is easy, albeit time-consuming. She and Aries take buses everywhere they need to go, sometimes as many as 12 in a day.
For her doctoral thesis, Foss investigated whether senior citizens who have become visually impaired slowly over time could have a better quality of life if they would use tools available to the blind community. Typically these tools include guide dogs, white canes, Braille and products specially designed for the blind or visually impaired.
"The real issue is the agencies that provide blind rehabilitation have traditionally assumed all blind people are alike, and I really wanted to determine if this group -- seniors -- was different from younger people who lose their sight," Foss said.
Older people often lose their sight gradually, while most young people lose their sight catastrophically, according to Foss.
She found that seniors who are visually impaired don't think of themselves as blind. As a result, they tend to reject a lot of the tools and training offered by rehabilitative organizations.
"They may not see, but they are not blind," Foss said. "And that's because being blind to them really means helpless, hopeless and pitiable. Those words were repeated over and over again, and these people are none of these things."
If they really need to do something, they find a way on their own. "They will use aides to get their work done, but they don't want to be associated with blindness," she said.
Much of the disparity is due to how different generations view the blind, she found. People born before 1930 tend to think of the blind as helpless beggars, according to Foss. Those born between 1930 and 1960 envision blind people doing one of the traditional "blind chores," including selling brooms door-to-door. And those born after 1960 usually think of people with a white cane or guide dog.
"This is good, because we've gone from an image of total helplessness to someone who can be out and about on his or her own," she said.
Foss' future plans include working with seniors, teaching or working as a trainer in the blind community.