VIBRANT: Assistive Technology Program

Meet the VIBRANT Program: Visually Impaired and Blind Recipients Accessing New Technology.

Feeling left behind by technology? VIBRANT can help.

Technology connects, empowers, and provides a path to freedom: From being able to hail a ride using Uber, to apps to keep you organized and pay bills on time, to software that narrates navigation while you’re walking, and even being able to tell the color of a piece of clothing or denomination of money without human assistance – technology can be a game-changer. VIBRANT will help you find the tools that allow you to do what you want to do when you want to do it and live on your terms. We are committed to helping people with vision loss find new ways to access technology that helps you meet your goals – customized for your life.

VIBRANT can teach you to use assistive technology to:

• Access, enlarge and read print information, hard-copy or digital
• Better manage your time via note-taking, organization, paying bills, and banking
• Navigate your world via transportation information and apps
• Participate in leisure and recreational activities
• Accomplish daily tasks, such as shopping, reading, social media, email, travel planning, handling money, and obtaining information about a visual task

An app that interfaces with a camera and sends images back to a sighted agent on the other end; gestures that enable an iPhone to work without being able to see any of the icons on the home screen, programs for reading or walking without a sighted guide were just some of the many tools a consumer in the new VIBRANT assistive technology program may learn.

A standing-room only crowd listened intently as Sassy Outwater, director of the new program VIBRANT (Visually Impaired and Blind Recipients Accessing New Technology) explained the purpose of the program:

“Access to information is a right,” Outwater said. “Whether you want to read something, figure out online dating, tell what color your clothes are, or answer an e-mail, it is about being able to access that information using these technologies, and know which technologies are right for you.”

To do that, Outwater said, the first step is coming in for an assessment, so that program organizers can help you find the right tools to help you to do what you want to do when you want to do it.

We are committed to helping people with vision loss find new ways to access technology that helps you meet your goals – customized for your life.

Video: Program helping people with vision loss learn to use technology

As Paul Saner, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind put it: “This program is truly a collaboration of local and state agencies coming together for a common goal.”

With locations at the Brookline Senior Center, Worcester Senior Center, Worcester Public Library, and Brookes Free Library (Harwich), this FREE program is possible because of partnerships with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, Massachusetts Association of Councils on Aging, Executive Office of Elder Affairs, Highland Street Foundation, Boston Foundation, Memorial Foundation for the Blind in Worcester County, and BNY Mellon.

Contact us for an assistive technology assessment and to ask us about how we can help you. To find a program near you, or to become a volunteer trainer for this program, please contact 617-879-0771 or ATCenter@mabcommunity.org