Presentation of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards

Presented by Everette Bacon

From the Editor: Here is what President Riccobono said in introducing the first presentation of the last afternoon session on July 8, 2024:

This is the seventeenth Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards presentation. We have the chairman of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards Committee. He is the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Utah. He has served as a board member and secretary of the National Federation of the Blind, and he is our incoming Second Vice President. Here’s Everette Bacon.

EVERETTE: It’s always exciting to be able to do the Bolotin Awards. It’s one of the highlights of the general sessions. We really look forward to it. It’s something we work hard on throughout the year, and I’m so excited to be able to be here. This is our seventeenth year giving out this award.
We usually put together a video, so I’m going to have that video queued up now and be able to play it for you. So, you get a sneak peek at the winners and a little bit about them. Then I’ll go into our committee members, and then you get to meet all of the award winners.
So Will, if you’ll start the video, please.

[Music]

AD: During the following presentation, names and logos of organizations appear on screen as they are mentioned, and pictures of individuals appear as they speak.

NARRATOR: Federationists and guests:

The National Federation of the Blind is proud to introduce the recipients of our seventeenth annual Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards, made possible in part by the generous support of the Alfred and Rosalind Perlman Trust and the Santa Barbara Foundation.

These individuals and organizations have broken down barriers faced by blind people in innovative ways, changed negative perceptions of blindness and blind people, and pushed past existing boundaries to motivate blind people to achieve new heights.

The two individual winners are Deborah Kendrick and Donna Posont. Deborah is a blind writer whose body of work has informed and represented the blind and people with disabilities, including a syndicated newspaper column.

DEBORAH: The purpose of it as the purpose of probably all of the writing that I’ve done in one way or another is to connect people to people and let people understand in a visceral way that those of us who are blind or have other disabilities are more the same than we are different from others. The only real condition that matters is the human condition.

NARRATOR: Donna Posont, who leads the innovative Blind Birding and Beyond program at the Environmental Interpretive Center of the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

DONNA: When I started out, I wanted to learn nature as a blind person, and then I wanted to learn it in a way so that I could understand how to share it with other blind people. Through this, I see how much it helps improve skills of blindness. When children or adults learn how to identify a bird by hearing their sound, they get excited, and they gain confidence. When we go through the woods and we walk the trails and we show them that they don’t have to use sighted guide but can follow the edge of the trail, that makes a difference. They can hear the sound of the wind; they can hear where the birds are; they gain a lot of confidence from that because they often don’t have that opportunity to walk trails and walk in the woods, and it makes it better when they are walking out on the sidewalks in the cities because they gain that level of confidence for using their canes.

NARRATOR: The first of our two organizational winners is Handid Braille Services for providing quality Braille transcription in multiple languages. Here’s founder, Don Winiecki.

DON: The company as a nonprofit has grown quite a bit, and without really planning for it, I’ve become a provider of non-English Braille as well as Unified English Braille. I specialize in Braille for languages that don’t use the Latin symbol system in their print alphabet—Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Farsi, and on and on. I do a bunch of that stuff now, as well as the more common non-English languages like Spanish and French and German.

We hear over and over again "nothing about us without us." I’m very sensitive to that idea. I don’t want to claim that I’m doing things for other people in a sense that I’m trying to take care of them! No, I’m doing things for people so that they can achieve more, and being a background part of that is such a rewarding thought. The acknowledgment that the NFB provides is just further ratification of that.

NARRATOR: Living Blindfully, a global podcast about living your best life with blindness and low vision. Here’s producer and host, Jonathan Mosen.

JONATHAN: I interview a lot of movers and shakers for the podcast, and I take a long time before each interview to do my research. I ask the questions that I think listeners want me to ask. So I aim to be fair but also fearless. Another element of the show is that we have listeners who contribute from all over the world, and I’m proud that in an era where people do a lot of yelling at each other online, we’ve maintained a climate of respectful but robust debate.

To convey just how much receiving a Bolotin Award means to me, I have to be a bit vulnerable. Growing up as a blind teenager in New Zealand back in the eighties, I had so many big dreams, and I was confident that they were realistic dreams. But I quickly discovered that my biggest problem wasn’t my blindness. It was other people’s limiting perceptions of it.

I actually became very depressed about this when I was seventeen. So that was in 1986. I got a 1200 baud modem, and I started logging on to bulletin boards using technology called Fido Net. Ultimately I got onto an online service called the CompuServe Information Service, and it was from being online that I learned about the Federation, and it changed my life. Actually, if I’m being absolutely honest, I think knowing that there were other people out there who felt about blindness the way I feel about blindness saved my life. So to be recognized by the Federation with one of its most prestigious awards means more to me than I have the words to express, and it’s an honor I never expected.

These winners each will receive a trophy and a monetary prize to advance their work to help blind people live the lives we want.

Now the National Federation of the Blind proudly presents them with their Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards. [The end of the video is greeted with applause]

EVERETTE: All right, are you excited? Yeah, these are some outstanding winners, and we are excited to give them their award.

First and foremost, I want to thank the members of the committee who served this year. Mrs. Mary Ellen Jernigan, who has been serving on the committee since it started and has been guiding all of us. Thank you, Mrs. Jernigan. Thank you to Donald Porterfield of Arizona. Thank you to Steve Jacobson of Minnesota. Thank you to Dr. Natalie Shaheen of Illinois, and last but not least, Jessica Beecham of Colorado. Thanks to all of you for serving on the committee.

I also want to thank members of the National Federation of the Blind staff who have been so supportive. Yvette Castillo, Chris Danielsen, Beth Braun, and Suzanne Shaffer Schildwachter. They’re all wonderful supporters in making sure these awards are given out. Thank you to President Riccobono for having the faith in me to chair this committee.

Let’s get to the really great information about our award winners. You haven’t heard their monetary prize. I know you want to know that, right?

We have two individual awards. The first individual award is Deborah Kendrick. Deborah Kendrick was nominated by Judy Dickson. When personal computers were a new American phenomenon in the 1980s, she created a Braille only magazine called Tactic. This would enjoy worldwide readership and garnered numerous awards from the Society of Technical Communication and others. That publication was acquired by the American Foundation for the Blind, and you may know it now as Access World. Deborah serves as senior editor and continues to contribute articles to this day. I am excited to give the award of $5,000 to Deborah Kendrick. We’re going to have Deborah Kendrick say a few words. [Applause]

DEBORAH: When I was sixteen, I met my first blind grownup. He was a vocational rehabilitation counselor, and he held the key—in other words, the money—to my college education. He said a blind girl couldn’t be a writer. Years later, with a pile of awards from both journalism and advocacy organizations as evidence that I was not only a writer but a writer who got it right, I learned about Kenneth Jernigan, who was also discouraged from pursuing his chosen career. In my jobs, books, and elsewhere, I have told stories of people who are blind or have other disabilities about the work they do. Many, too many, have told me that they were first told that a blind boy or a blind girl could not do what they wanted to do, and they did it anyway.

[Applause] Then in 2007 I read the book The Blind Doctor. I learned about Dr. Jacob Bolotin, who not only did it anyway—became a doctor against the odds of his environment and swarms of naysayers—but became a truly gifted healer and dedicated physician. To be deemed worthy to be among those honored as following his example is both humbling and exhilarating.

One day several months ago, when a child asked me how many words I had written, I started playing with numbers in my head.

Now, I have no idea how many words I have written, but I added up articles and books and columns, and I figure that I have published about two million. [Applause] So that’s a lot of stories—true stories, and there are many more stories to tell, yours and mine. Thank you so much for this honor and for the encouragement it gives me to keep writing.

EVERETTE: Thank you, Deborah; what a wonderful award winner and wonderful story.
Donna Posont—Michigan is excited, Donna—.

These are some words from Donna herself in her application.

Through the years, I have had the pleasure of witnessing some people who always wanted to walk with a sighted guide turn into scientists taking off down paths using their canes. There have been times when someone afraid to touch new things would eventually shape bird beaks and feet using homemade play dough after being involved in its cooking. Those afraid to speak in front of others could eventually write Braille notes and increase confidence to share information.
If you don’t know anything about Donna, she has created a nature society in Michigan. She works with a university there and is doing such wonderful things to learn about birds and nature and so many things about our wilderness that we didn’t get a chance to use or become a part of as blind people. So I am excited, and it is my honor to give Donna Posont an award of $5,000.

[Cheers and applause]

[Sound of bird chirping]

DONNA: Hey, for those who don’t know, that’s the beautiful state bird of my beloved Michigan. Many of you have heard me say "It’s not about the birds." I will explain a little about how I came to that through my journey. Fifty years ago this summer, I graduated from high school.

I took off to college to get a degree in biology. About a week into that, I realized I had no skills and no way to learn biology. I had no skills of blindness, and I couldn’t do it. So I was redirected into social work—nothing against social work. I graduated in ‘77 and moved to Philadelphia and worked at the Upsale School for the Blind. It was there that I met the National Federation of the Blind, or more likely they got ahold of me.

Through the years, I worked in the vending program in three different states, and I served as vice president of the Blind Merchants Division until I married the president of the Merchants Division, and I moved to Michigan where I have lived ever since. There we raised five children, and that indeed was the greatest joy of my life. And you know what is so amazing about them that really makes them stand out? They gave me twelve grandchildren, which is really an honor.

In 2008, I decided to once again pursue my dream, and I went to the University of Michigan Dearborn. I didn’t know what you would call it, but I wanted to learn about nature so I could share it with others who were blind. It wasn’t about me so much anymore. I wanted to learn it, but I wanted to make it accessible to other blind people. Because through working at camps and so forth, I realized blind students often had been denied the opportunity to learn about the birds and the trees and the insects and the frogs, and I wanted to change that.

So, during that time, I started a program called Birding by Ear and Beyond, where we learned to identify birds by their sounds, and then we learned all about the birds. Then, in 2015, I graduated from the University of Michigan Dearborn with a degree in environmental studies, and just to show I could do it, I got a minor in biology.

At that time the director, Dr. David Susko, asked if I wanted to come on the staff and do what I had been loving to do—for money—and get paid to do the Birding by Ear and Beyond Program. So that’s what I have been doing ever since. COVID gave us a little slowdown, but we’re back in business now. It’s not about the birds; it’s about sharing with blind people and helping them gain the confidence they need to travel the trails of life. [Applause]

EVERETTE: I’m really excited about our next awards; they are our organizational awards. We had two individual awards; now we have two organizational awards.

Handid Braille Services. Don Winiecki. Don Winiecki was nominated or recommended by Tasnim Alshuli. As a gift for the blind Muslims of Ramadan, 2024, Don volunteered to produce a screen-reader accessible version of a new translation of the Quran in both English and Arabic. This is pretty exciting.

We are honored to give Handid Braille Services an award of $15,000. [Applause]

DON: Give me a minute here. [Cheers and applause]

Hello, Federation family. I’ve been a member of the Federation since 2016 when I joined the Treasure Valley Chapter in Idaho. Transformational is a word that comes out a lot when people talk about how the Federation has affected them. That word works for me too.

Transcribing text into Braille allows me to contribute to a world that I would want to live in, a world I want all of us to live in. I never imagined I would come to specialize in producing Braille for languages other than English, much less languages that don’t use the alphabet we’re familiar with in English. It was a chance meeting with a director of the NLS at this convention in this venue a number of years ago that pointed out the terrific gap there was in producing Braille for multiple languages. I and my nonprofit company now have clients on six of the seven continents. [Applause] I regularly produce Braille in Arabic and Chinese, in simplified and traditional Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, French, German, Vietnamese, Navajo, and others—lots of Unified English Braille, too. And sometimes even English Braille American Edition (EBAE).

As we know, Braille is a code and not a language. However, languages and their unique orthography are codes too—codes that allow one to package intricate concepts into deceptively simple marks and tactile patterns. There are few things more amazing and beautiful than that. I allowed that beauty and quality to pull me in to learn how to learn Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and more so that I could put that in Braille.

I type Arabic at a rate faster, I’m told, than most native speakers.

Learning to read these languages has changed my life. The knowledge that I am producing materials enabling independence is transformational.

And there’s more. To help spread this independence, I’m starting work on developing Braille instruction for adults in the same languages I transcribe today. [Applause] But I’ve got to tell you, it is immeasurably more meaningful to me that the National Federation of the Blind recognizes this and ratifies what I do with the Bolotin Award. There is no collection of individuals more able to assess the value of what I do than you, my Federation family. Thank you. [Applause]

EVERETTE: We have one last award to give—last but certainly not least. I am excited to give our last or second organizational award to Living Blindfully, Jonathan Mosen. [Applause]
An example of the podcast remaining true to its values is that Living Blindfully boasts a commitment that everyone working on the podcast will be blind. The podcast now employs a transcriber and an audio editor, both of whom are blind themselves. Living Blindfully is clear about its audience. It is not seeking to explain blindness to sighted people or to hold back on the important issues. Living Blindfully is unashamedly our place, our issues. I’m excited to give an award of $15,000 to my friend, Jonathan Mosen, Living Blindfully. [Applause]

JONATHAN: So at this point I’m waiting to wake up and realize I’ve been dreaming this. This is incredibly special. So thank you so much to the Bolotin Committee and the National Federation of the Blind in general for this award.

You know, media usually ignores us, and when it doesn’t, we often wish it did, because it frequently underestimates us, it misrepresents us, and far too often it would have people believe that you mustn’t say that dreaded B word—blind.

I was observing yesterday that living visually impairedly just doesn’t have the same ring to it, you know, does it? [Laughter] So Living Blindfully seeks to give you an oasis from all that.

Now, in humbly accepting this award on behalf of the members of our Living Blindfully team, I want to mention them by name.

It includes Hannah Mae Aldeza who produces our transcripts so that, in particular, deafblind people aren’t excluded from the conversation, because so often deafblind people are excluded from the conversation, and it’s not right.

Accessibility has benefits because it means that we also in that process build an extensive searchable repository of information and opinion on the issues of the day.

And also Derek Lane, our gifted and [Cheers]—got some Derek fans out there? Our gifted and brilliant audio engineer who speeds up the production of the show by editing some of the interviews. And, of course, my wife Bonnie, who is here with us today to see Living Blindfully get this award. I love you so much.

And finally, I accept this on behalf of our listeners in over 113 countries now, and some of whom—good to know some are out there—and some of you share your thoughts on the issues that we cover and the things that matter to us.

Thank you so much again for recognizing Living Blindfully, and I’ll conclude my acceptance with the way I conclude every episode.

Remember that when you are out there with your guide dog, you’ve harnessed success, and with your cane, you’re able. [Applause]

EVERETTE: Congratulations to all of these winners. As President Riccobono pointed out, when I said my friend, he’s everybody’s friend, that’s for sure. Jonathan Mosen is everyone’s friend. I’m just lucky to be one of them.

Let’s do one big round of applause for all of these winners. Let’s do it.

Every year we give these awards out. This is the seventeenth year of doing this, so that is pretty exciting. That means we’re going to have year eighteen in Louisiana next year. For year eighteen, if you want to know what we’re looking for, we’re looking for these types of dream makers who do innovative things in the field of blindness. This is your chance to apply. If you did apply and didn’t win this year, we keep all your applications. We review old applications each year, but if you want to apply again, we definitely encourage that. Please go to nfb.org/bolotin. You can also find it under awards and presentations. You can apply. We will open up the application process again on January 1, 2025, and we will have that open until April 15, 2025. These are awesome awards. We definitely want to hear what is going on out there in the field of blindness. Thank you, Mr. President. This is my report.