Tools for the Job

I recently started working for the office of the Dean of Science. Officially my duties include scheduling appointments for the advisors, copying, filing, and mailing forms, and running the front desk of the College of Science. It’s mostly a lot of paperwork and requires interpreting the advisors’ handwriting, which is akin to interpreting that of doctors. How does this work for a VIP? Gadgetry. Yes, gadgetry. I have a host of different types of magnification aids and techniques that I use in various situations. The one I use the most at work is called a magnabrite. It’s a little dome-shaped blob of acrylic clear material that sort of looks like a paper-weight. You set it on top of the sheet of paper and it magnifies things like a giant glasses lens. It’s small, a little heavier than your average “detective-style” magnifier, and comes in many sizes. I have one that’s about an inche in diameter, and another that’s about two, two and a half inches. I use the larger one at work, and the other one rides around in my purse or sits on my desk for reading text messages. Magnabrites can be purchased thorugh almost any assistive technology catalog, and, strangely enough, at the Evergreen Aviation an dSpace Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, so I assume they are also available at other sciency-type museums. Your best bet for distributors, though, would be Humanware and Freedom Scientific.

My other favorite magnifier is called a Ruby. It’s part of a line of magnifiers put out by Freedom Scientific. I started with its predecessor, the Opal, but when that one died my Commission Counsellor purchased the upgrade model, Ruby, and sent it to me. The concept of the line of products is a small camera, light, mirrors, magnifying lenses, and a small screen that produces a digital image of whatever you set the device on top of. The image is larger, and often times the size and contrast of the image can be increased or decreased to user’s preference. The Ruby also has a “capture” feature that I can use to take freeze an image on the screen and then carry it with me to look at something else, as opposed to carrying the magnifier and whatever I’m looking at around. I use the Ruby mostly for schoolwork and reading. It’s an expensive little gadget but it really works well. It’s about three inches wide, five or six long, and stands about two inches thick, so very portable. It also comes with a protective case to carry it around in purses or bags, and a charger. The charger tends to have a host of little cover thingies so you can plug it into just about anything just about anywhere.