For 32 years, Tom M. served others as director of an employee assistant program for a major California hospital system. “I loved it,” he says. “It felt good that we were able to help people.” He retired in 2016 so he and his wife, Deb, could take a six-week trip to Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand—time off that they could never take when they were working. Deb had retired from Johnson & Johnson six weeks before he had, and when they returned from their trip, they settled into a life that involved enjoying outdoor activities, volunteering for a food bank and other nonprofits, and taking more trips.
In early 2025, Tom had two strokes, two weeks apart, and since then, he has faced an unexpected journey. Tom lost fine-motor skills on the left side of his body and was unable to walk. The strokes also affected his speech, his memory, and his vision. While Tom has received comprehensive physical therapy that is slowly helping him learn to walk again, he has also been working with Braille Institute since May 2025 to help him with reading and other visual skills.
An avid reader before the strokes, Tom currently sees only the right side of a page when he looks at a book or anything in print. There’s nothing wrong with his eyes, but the strokes damaged the visual pathway that transmits neural signals from the retina to the brain. And while he can read the top line of a paragraph, below that, the lines start to merge, resembling double vision.
Caitlin Covert, an occupational therapist and low vision specialist at Braille Institute, has deployed several techniques to help Tom overcome the vision hurdles he is facing. “Caitlin did a thorough assessment of his vision, depth of field, eye tracking, and more,” Deb says. “She taught him many ways to set up his iPad and cell phone to either use Siri, or some of the accessible settings to be able to do the things he wanted.
“She experimented with different fonts, line spacing, etc. to improve his ability to read,” shares Deb. “She selected two or three things to focus on and work with on his iPad, repeating the steps to get where he wanted to be until he could perform them alone.”
A simple card called a line blocker that’s the width of a letter-size page with a cutout that is the height of a line of text enables him to read one line at a time without seeing double. Caitlin also recognized that Tom is sensitive to visual clutter, so she increased the size of the icons on his iPad and removed nonessential ones so he could access the Internet. She suggested he use a stand to hold up reading material, since he has trouble reading pages that lay flat on a table. Through Braille Institute, he also signed up for library services, so he can read audiobooks. “Caitlin has been very helpful to me, as has the Braille Institute,” Tom says.
“Tom is leaps and bounds ahead of where he was a year ago,” Deb says. “His reading has definitely improved. We feel so fortunate to have Braille Institute in our community.”
Tom is currently living in a rehabilitation facility and hopes to be able to walk with a cane so he can return home. Deb and Tom are looking forward to their younger daughter’s wedding in the fall. “We’re getting there,” says Deb. “He’s got a daughter to walk down the aisle.”
