5 A co-rating conversation with Erica - Interview only

Erica Tandori is a visual artist with two kids, a cat, a hole in the backyard, a doctorate, a university job, and Stargardt’s Disease. This juvenile form of macular degeneration means that Erica has trouble seeing what she is looking at directly, but her peripheral vision is still useful. Erica describes it as colourful, soft and blurry like “living in a Monet painting,” with the occasional visual hallucination to keep her guessing. Erica has not had orientation and mobility training, but she was interested in doing a VROOM and OMO assessment via interview. We discussed the environments where Erica typically travels, choosing to compare Level 3 on the O&M Environmental Complexity Scale – the area around her home – with Level 6 – bus and train travel to work, with uncontrolled road crossings and navigating bus bays at uni. Erica scored OMO 39/50 for her functional orientation and mobility skills and VROOM 29/50 for functional vision during travel.