The Credit Crunch and Greetings Cards

The Credit Crunch and Greetings Cards.

There is so much economic gloom and doom about these days, one wonders how people with little or no sight will survive and of course we will.

I was born in 1940 in the West Midlands, UK with bombs falling by night and visiting the hospital several times each week. So, from my perspective, things have greatly improved. And its great to hear that individual spirit remains undeterred. Organisations serving our interests might cut back, re-organise and come up with new strategies but here below is an example of two great individuals bringing something rather special to our market. So please encourage them.

Thursday, 9/10/08, was World Sight Day which is this year dedicated to raising awareness of visual loss amongst older people. To coincide with this awareness raising event a visually impaired couple launched an innovative venture which hopes, in some way, to help partially sighted older people and younger ones too! Jim and Linda Lawson launched Easy2C, producing a very different type of greetings card which is, as it says on the tin, easy to see for anyone with a sight loss who can still read a little. Both the artwork and print size have been carefully designed to match the needs of those losing vision and those with conditions such as Macular Degeneration or Glaucoma.

The card designs are produced by a visually impaired artist qualified to degree level, Rachel Duerden, and the paper, envelopes and inserts are made from managed forests, thus environmentally friendly. 5% of the profits will go back to charities supporting and selling our work, commencing with Henshaws Society for Blind People who have very kindly offered their knowledge and assistance to get the venture off the ground and host the points of sale for Jim and Linda.

Easy2C was created because so many older people receive cards they cannot read and often have to ask others to read them for them or just guess the name of the sender. Of those who have seen these new cards, the reaction has been fantastic. The greetings can be tailor made for different occasions as well as buying the standard greetings off the shelf. For further information contact Easy2C on 01704 573199 or Henshaws in Liverpool on 0151 557 1226.

I don’t know how many hours I have spent with a powerful magnifying glass trying to puzzle out who our Christmas cards are from.

Our sales of scanning software and higher quality voices have certainly dropped off over the past month but we continue to receive requests for computer training. We don’t get grants from the Government and we have no contract work these days to lose. I would remind you that our free Thunder software will not further drop in price, however bad any recession might get and we won’t stop giving our time and energy to blind people needing their computer questions answered.

You can see from all this that I remain pretty up-beat about things and just admire ordinary people like Linda and Jim who keep having a go, coming up with something straightforward that meets a need.