Do You Need a Prescription For High Powered Readers?

Video Transcript:

Do you need a prescription? It's always a very interesting question because there is like no circumstance that a doctor does not feel like they should be involved in your life. And I tend to view, I tend to view the idea of prescription versus non-prescription as like, if I can get it on the internet, why do I need a prescription?

Now, which is not to say that doctors are not helpful. So if you view yourself as your own science experiment and you want to try to figure stuff out, the products are available and you can get them and you can experiment with them and say, okay, hey, what works for my condition and what works best for me?

And you can ultimately potentially figure that out on your own. Now, what a doctor will do, in the context of low vision rehabilitation, and it's not always doctors, it can be occupational therapists, sometimes it can be like low vision therapists. What they will do is look at your condition and help guide you way further down the road, and help you determine the path rather than you going it alone.

So that's, so technically you can get what you need to try to help your vision. And you don't need a prescription. That said, it's highly recommended that you would have somebody to consult with on your journey in low vision. Because there's a lot of stuff with low vision. Low vision is very complicated. And it's, well, it's simple and complicated and it's simultaneously so. It's simple in that you can't see well.

It's complicated in that there are so many solutions. There are so many potential ways to address a particular quality of life problem. And if a doctor has been doing low vision for a very long time, they might have an answer right off the bat that might be something it would take you months to figure out. So I would encourage you to go along your low vision journey with an optometrist, though you don't officially need a prescription to get a high-powered reader.