For Lori Bandt, who works as a medical technician and an EMT in a suburb of Madison, Wis., the print on vials of medication has become so difficult to read that if she forgets her reading glasses she has to resort to having a younger EMT worker read the directions. The 45-year-old says: "I'm just stuck."
And she's hardly alone: 1 in 5 Americans needs reading glasses or bifocals because of presbyopia. With age, the formerly pliable lens of the eye starts to harden.