Sarah J. LaRosa is a 2013 graduate of the UAB Graduate Certificate in Low Vision Rehabilitation program. An employee of Brooks Rehabilitation in Jacksonville, Florida since 2009, she developed the outpatient vision rehabilitation occupational therapy program at the Brooks Rehabilitation Center for Low Vision in 2013.

While providing care as a home health occupational therapist many years ago, I worked with a woman who told me that she had the ‘macula’ and that because of it, she could no longer read or cut her meat. I was intrigued and puzzled as to what she meant.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Graduate Certificate in Low Vision Rehabilitation program has changed my life and my practice!

I graduated from the UAB Low Vision program in 2009. My reason for entering the program was two-fold.

I work as an occupational therapist in an acute hospital in Singapore. I first came to know about low vision rehabilitation when an expert, Beth Barstow, Ph.D., with the University of Alabama at Birmingham came to Singapore to teach about the subject in 2009.

I have spent the majority of life as an occupational therapist working with adults with neurologic injury. I spent the first eight years or so working in neuro inpatient rehab programs and then spent about five years teaching at the University of Utah.

Almost thirteen years ago, my husband took a new job, in a new city and I knew it meant starting over in a new job for me.

From the time I received my Bachelor’s of Science in Occupational Therapy from Western Michigan University in 1992, I repeated my mantra that I would never return to school again.

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
~Helen Keller

When I commenced the UAB Graduate Certificate in Low Vision Rehabilitation program in 2008, low vision rehabilitation as a practice area for occupational therapists was an unfamiliar concept to me – an Irish occupational therapist practicing in Ireland.

When I decided to work towards receiving my Graduate Certificate in Low Vision Rehabilitation from UAB, I had no idea what great opportunities this experience would afford.

Graduating from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Graduate Certificate in Low Vision Rehabilitation program has opened up so many doors for me. Since graduating, I have had several opportunities to advance myself as a clinician and educator in the field of low vision rehabilitation.

Karen is a low vision occupational therapist working at Envision Vision Rehabilitation Center in Wichita, Kansas, who has worked in the field of low vision for 11 years.