11/3/2022 0 Comments Usher daughterRebecca's parents won't always be at her side, and that's what drove her father to create BecDot. So we are constantly saying hi back to her so she knows we're right next to her." "When she's in a dark area, she says hi constantly just to get the feedback. "Her night vision is going now," Beth says. Her peripheral vision is already closing in, and eventually her sight will likely be reduced to a pinhole. Worst case, Rebecca will be completely blind by the time she's a teenager. "All my hopes and dreams for her came crashing down." I didn't want to leave the house," Beth says. When doctors fully diagnosed Rebecca with Usher syndrome a little over a year ago, the family was heartbroken. Rebecca tries on her mother's boots as her sister, Reagan, and mom, Beth Lacourse, look on. But her mother, Beth, suspected that something else was wrong with the baby. There were no immediate signs in infancy that her vision was also going. She wears a pink headband that keeps her cochlear implants in place. "We have people in our community who weren't diagnosed until they were 28 years old."īut Usher syndrome's symptoms came roaring at the Lacourse family from the start. "But only about 1 percent has been identified," says Corderman, whose two children were diagnosed with a type of Usher syndrome that doesn't develop until later in life. Usher syndrome affects just about 20,000 people in the United States and 400,000 around the world, says Nancy Corderman, co-founder of the Usher Syndrome Society. "It gives him an opportunity to do something besides just sit around and wait for the doctors or whoever to come up with a miracle cure," Presley says. "We knew the world was not going to adapt to her." Jake Lacourse, on his daughter Rebeccaīut there is still value to the work Lacourse is doing, he says. He cautions that it probably won't teach young kids the fine tactile skills they'll need to learn braille. Presley says Lacourse's BecDot is commendable and could help other children. The Optacon was a high-tech innovation at the time, and was widely used, says Ike Presley of the American Foundation for the Blind. The camera was connected to a box with an array of vibrating pins inside, and the pins would rearrange themselves into the shape of the corresponding letters as the camera moved forward.Ĭandy went on to receive a doctoral degree in psychology. The system used a small camera that users could roll across a line of print. In the early 1970s, a Stanford University engineer named John Linvill created the Optacon for his blind daughter Candy. It's not the first time a parent has built something for a child facing blindness. Lacourse wants to market the toy and sell it for about $100. The idea is to help young children learn early braille concepts, and get them ready for the long journey of adapting to a world that's built for people who can see. "What we love to see when she plays with it is that all she tries to do is take her finger and mash the dots back down," Lacourse says. When a toy - like a cow or a pig, each embedded with an electronic tag - is placed onto the tablet, the corresponding braille dots for a cow or pig pop up. Four large braille cells run across its front. The playing surface, made with a 3-D printer, is about the size of a tablet. By night, he worked at home developing the game for Rebecca. "My entire career has been about solving problems." "We knew the world was not going to adapt to her," Lacourse says. Rebecca has Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that can cause profound deafness and progressive blindness. It's designed to help his 2-year-old daughter, Rebecca, learn pre-braille concepts. Jake Lacourse of Middleborough, Massachusetts, was honored Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for creating a game he calls BecDot. Statistics like that, which shed light on the long list of challenges people with vision impairment face, were a driving force behind one father's attempt to help his young daughter adapt to a devastating diagnosis. The jobless rate is close to 60 percent, according to the National Federation of the Blind. The majority of adults with a visual disability in the U.S. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR) This article is more than 4 years old. Jake Lacourse and his daughter Rebecca play with the BecDot.
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