My 99-year-old mother has just been diagnosed with a recurrence of macular degeneration. Her symptoms are pointing to Geographic Atrophy and ultimate blindness. Needless to say she didn’t take it well, and is basically in denial. She still lives completely alone. My 60-year-old brother is her “caretaker”, but frankly just does as she tells him. He wouldn’t think of planning ahead for this in any way. That’s my rant coming out. Anyway, what have others done to prepare for an elderly person about to lose their sight?
I wound up buying lots of Velcro dots and putting them on her CD player controls, the TV remote, and on the Microwave. She was able to feel the dots to control the items. They taught her how to do this at the school.
The state assigned her a Caseworker. The Caseworker was able to sign her up for The National Library for the Blind and she received digital books in the mail along with a digital book reader for free.
We lived in a few different states while this was all going on. Each state provided some type of support for the blind. (Not financial or money to her, as she was not on Medicaid - but services - like talking clocks, a talking scale, a very large cooking timer, etc.)
I had to do most things for her, but the school's training provided her with some independence which made her happy. My Mom could never live alone due to her extreme low vision and other medical problems. She eventually had strokes, etc and wound up bed bound. But, that was unrelated to her vision problems. She is gone now, but I still use her talking alarm clock everyday.
Wishing you well in finding the right facility for her.
And I'm guessing that her eye sight is already pretty poor, so she will gradually adjust as she loses more and more of her sight.