Volume 41, Number 3 Convention 2022
A magazine for parents and teachers of blind children published by
the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults in partnership
with the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children.
Deborah Kent Stein, Editor
ISSN-0883-3419
Copyright © 2022 American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
For more information
about blindness and children contact:
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place, Baltimore, MD 21230 • 410-659-9314
https://nfb.org/nopbc • [email protected] • [email protected]
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
All Together Again
by Deborah Kent Stein
NOPBC CONFERENCE
Sharing Our CORE Values: Creating Opportunities, Raising Expectations
by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
Ambitious Interdependence
by Chancey Fleet
Entering a World of Opportunity
by Josh Okulanni, Lauren Altman, and Tameria Brooks
2022 As the Twig Is Bent Awards
Presented by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
NOPBC WORKSHOPS
Cortical Visual Impairment: Toward a Deeper Understanding
by Cindy Champagne
Stepping Back and Letting Go: Preparing Our Blind Children to Live in the World
by Carol Castellano
NOPBC BOARD MEETING
Getting into That Rhythm
by Scott McCallum, 2022 Distinguished Educator of Blind Students
Announcing the 2022-2023 NOPBC Board
by Carla Keirns
GENERAL SESSIONS
Living the Life She Wants: Staying Grounded and Shooting for the Moon
by Deena Lambert
Living the Life He Wants: Stoking Employment Opportunities through Movies, Sports, and Achievement
by Jack Chen
Sharing Our Stories
by Peggy Chong
AWARDS
2022 Blind Educator of the Year
Presented by Robin House
2022 NFB Scholarship Awards
Presented by Cayte Mendez
2022 Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards
Presented by Everette Bacon
PERSPECTIVES
Allyship and Inclusivity
by Rishika Kartik
ANNOUNCEMENTS
We Make a Difference by Supplying Free White Canes and Instilling Confidence
What's Happening?
Are you the parent of a blind/low-vision child? Don’t know where to turn? Have you ever wondered what your child will be capable of when he or she grows up? Are you concerned that your child’s future will be limited by blindness or low vision? Do you have questions about how to parent a blind child? We are here for you.
Founded in 1983, the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a proud division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), is a membership organization of families, friends, and educators of blind children. We have thousands of members in all fifty states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
We have a very inclusive definition of blindness which includes children who have some usable vision. Instead of focusing on what the child can or cannot see, we focus on the child and what she or he wants to be.
NOPBC is for families, educators, and friends of blind children, including those who have some usable vision. We welcome all families of blind children, and many of our children have both blindness and other disabilities.
We help families and blind children themselves maximize the child’s abilities and opportunities; we hold high expectations for all of our children, regardless of any additional disabilities they may have.
As a division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the largest and most influential organization of blind people in the world, the NOPBC is well informed about the societal, legislative, and technological issues that affect blind people. We enjoy the resources, support, and expertise of fifty thousand blind people who can serve as mentors and role models for us and our children. When we as parents join the NOPBC, our children belong to the Federation family.
The NOPBC:
Most states have an NOPBC affiliate chapter. You can find your state chapter at http://www.nopbc.org. If your state does not have a chapter and you would like to start one, please contact us. We may be able to offer training and other assistance to start a state NOPBC chapter.
We have been where you are, and we want to support you and your blind child. We know that blindness does not define your child's future. We can connect you with other families and blind adults who can serve as positive mentors and role models. They can teach you the attitudes and techniques that will enable your child to become independent and to succeed in life.
The NOPBC offers hope, encouragement, information, and resources for parents, families, and educators of blind children. NOPBC provides:
We offer a wide variety of programs, activities, and training to families, children, and youth. One of our most exciting activities is our annual conference. Every year since it was established, the NOPBC has conducted an annual conference for parents and teachers of blind children as part of the national convention of the NFB. This conference has grown to include five exciting days of workshops, training sessions, activities for all family members, including sighted siblings, and countless opportunities to meet blind adults and other families and children from around the country.
Contact Us:
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
[email protected]
www.nopbc.org
Letter from the Editor
by Deborah Kent Stein
The check-in line at the New Orleans Marriott was long and confusing. For a while the line didn't seem to be moving at all. Yet most of us didn't mind. People laughed and greeted one another, asked questions, and shared stories. I felt as though we were gathered for a gigantic family reunion. The fun was underway even before we managed to get checked in.
The vast lobby of the New Orleans Marriott echoed with a sound I hadn't heard in nearly three years—the tapping of hundreds of long white canes. This was the convention of the National Federation of the Blind. We were all together again!
Due to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 NFB conventions were held virtually. Virtual convention had some distinct advantages; people from all over the world could attend. From Zimbabwe to Taiwan, people bridged time zones to listen to speeches and take part in convention workshops. With more than 10,000 people registered, the 2020 NFB National Convention was the largest gathering of blind people in history.
Our virtual conventions were outstanding events, but most of us longed for the camaraderie of gathering face to face. This year in New Orleans we had that opportunity at last, and the good times rolled!
This issue of Future Reflections attempts to capture some of the substance and spirit of the 2022 NFB National Convention, which was held from July 5 through July 10. Convention began on July 5 with the annual conference of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC). The day started with opening remarks by NOPBC President Carlton Anne Cook Walker, followed by a keynote address by longtime Federationist Chancey Fleet. Later, while the children played in Kids Camp or took part in Youth Track activities, parents and teachers participated in a variety of workshops.
Carla McQuillan announced the recipient of this year's Distinguished Educator of Blind Children Award at the annual NFB board meeting. Later at the board meeting the 2022 National Scholarship finalists introduced themselves.
Robert McCallum, the Distinguished Educator, spoke about his life and work at the meeting of the NOPBC board. The meeting closed with the election of a new slate of NOPBC officers and board members who will carry forward the work of this proud division of the NFB.
General Sessions were held during the last three days of convention. This issue of Future Reflections includes a small selection of the presentations that were delivered.
The annual banquet was the grand finale of Convention. After convention-goers enjoyed a delicious New Orleans dinner, NFB President Mark Riccobono delivered a stirring banquet address, “Spirit, Togetherness, and Service: The Signature of the Blind People's Movement.” You can read it at https://nfb.org//images/nfb/publications/bm/bm22/bm2208/bm220810.htm or hear the full address at https://nfb.org/images/nfb/audio/braille_monitor/2022/augsept/12_spirit_togetherness_and_service_
the_signature_of_the_blind_peoples_movement.mp3.
As generations of Federationists have discovered, much of the important work of Convention takes place outside meetings and presentations. People share ideas over lunch, get inspired in the Art Room, and talk at impromptu gatherings late into the night. Even waiting for an elevator is a chance for people to connect. “Hi, where are you from? Hey, do you happen to know . . .”
I hope this issue of Future Reflections helps you understand why Convention is such a core feature of participation in and commitment to the National Federation of the Blind. Please join us in Houston in 2023!
NOPBC Conference
by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
From the Editor: Since 2007 Carlton Anne Cook Walker has worked tirelessly to promote the Federation's positive message about blindness to parents and colleagues throughout the nation. Below is the presentation she delivered at the opening session of the NOPBC Conference at the 2022 Convention of the National Federation of the Blind in New Orleans.
Welcome to the opening General Session of the 2022 National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC) Conference here at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Annual Convention.
This conference would not be possible without support from the NFB and volunteers from around the country (including our NOPBC board members) who are dedicated to providing our children with what they need to thrive: blindness skills, role models, high expectations, and a commitment to nurture and support our children throughout their lives.
The theme of our conference this year is "Sharing Our CORE Values—Creating Opportunities, Raising Expectations." We are excited to embark with you on a week of exploration, learning, and relationship-building.
I am Carlton Anne Cook Walker, president of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a proud division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). That's a real mouthful, so please feel free to call me Carlton, president of the NOPBC, and a member of the NFB. Also, please note that I will refer to "blind children" in this address. This reference is not meant to divide us or to delve into the academic and functional implications of a child's degree of vision. When I use the word blind, I mean it as an inclusive term. I use the word blind to describe any individual whose vision (or ability to use vision) poses obstacles for them that individuals with typical vision do not face. In fact, my own child is legally blind, but she identifies as blind because blindness skills and tools help eliminate those obstacles for her.
I attended my first NOPBC Conference and NFB Convention in Dallas, Texas, in 2006. At that time I was an attorney in South Central Pennsylvania, trying to rebuild my law firm. My firm concentrated in the areas of estate planning and administration, real estate, and municipal law. Little did I know that my husband, our five-year-old child, Anna Catherine, and I were about to embark on an incredible journey.
We learned so much at that NOPBC conference in 2006! I met so many amazing people, including many who are here with us today. While my family went to Dallas focusing on the NOPBC and other parents of blind/low-vision children, we discovered so much more! We discovered blind adult NFB members, people who had never met us or our child before, who cared for and mentored us as if we were family. Over the years these relationships have grown and blossomed. These individuals have served as aunts and uncles to Anna Catherine, helping her and us find and unlock doors to new opportunities. They showed us, as parents, how to escape the mindset that blindness has an adverse impact on personal fulfillment.
As president of the NOPBC, I have the privilege of sharing with each of you our CORE values. Remember, I'm an attorney, so I must start by referencing our founding document. According to the NOPBC Constitution, "The purpose of this organization shall be to:
These are our CORE values. We have focused on these values since our founding in 1983, and that's what we continue to strive to do. Through COVID we hosted online workshops, open houses, and informal online chats. Throughout the year we host an active Facebook group with more than five thousand members. We have an email listserv, we support the quarterly magazine Future Reflections, and we maintain a treasure trove of information on our NOPBC.ORG website. Our seasoned members spend countless hours on the phone and in person with parents and families, sharing the opportunities that exist for our blind children. They strive to instill the confidence that it is both acceptable and proper to keep our expectations high—regardless of what society or educators or even family members might tell us about blindness and low vision. For my family, this support was invaluable.
The year after we went to Dallas, we attended an Early Childhood Conference called "Beginnings and Blueprints" at the NFB's headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. When we went home we started making plans for Anna Catherine to get training in some blindness skills. AnnaCat could see some, but her opportunities were limited by her vision loss. At the "Beginnings and Blueprints" Conference we learned that, even with some usable vision, our child could benefit from learning blindness skills.
But we were met with resistance. School personnel dismissed our concerns. They told us, "Anna sees too well to learn Braille," and "Anna doesn't need a cane." Our families offered no greater support. You see, no one in my family or my husband's family had any experience with blindness or low vision. While most members wore glasses from young ages, their vision was fully corrected. The idea of blindness was not only foreign; it was scary. It was emotionally safer to ignore the impact of Anna Catherine's vision loss than it was to dig into an unknown world connected with a word they feared: blindness.
Without the support of the NFB and of NOPBC leaders, we never could have found the strength to advocate for our child's right to have access to all opportunities—to maximize our child, not our child's vision. Through meaningful and authentic relationships with blind peers and adults, Anna Catherine learned to advocate for these opportunities. Now, at age twenty-one, she still does! Over time school staff and family members learned that skills, not vision, dictated Anna Catherine's potential to succeed, and their expectations rose—not as high as ours, but higher than theirs had ever been before.
Today is jam-packed with panels and concurrent sessions. This conference will help you gain the knowledge and resources you want and will allow you to make the connections and relationships you need to support your blind child, your family, and yourself in the years to come.
But please note these words of caution: Sometimes, in my zeal to increase Anna Catherine's opportunities, I ended up curtailing them. This is an easy trap to fall into—replacing negative stereotypes with positive ones. Positive stereotypes are still stereotypes, and they obscure the individual within. I was determined to free Anna Catherine from stereotypes based on disability, gender, etc. I did not want anything to restrict my incredible child! I wanted Anna Catherine to engage in every opportunity that arose, and I wanted the entire world to be open to my child. While this, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, it went too far. Sometimes I focused more on breaking negative stereotypes than I did on my child's particular wants and needs.
The funny thing is that my parents did the exact same thing to me. They didn't want me to limit my goals to traditional "female" roles, and they nurtured my interests in math, science, and advocacy. Unfortunately, they also actively discouraged my interest in teaching—even as an additional major in college. When I got my law degree and my MBA, I had fulfilled their dreams. But for me, something was still missing. I found that something a decade later when, with my husband's full support, I finally pursued a teaching degree and began teaching blind and low-vision students. Please don't misunderstand—I love the law! I would not give up my legal and business-school education for anything. I am who I am because of the path I took, and now I have the perfect job for me: educational consultant and advocate.
Though I have no regrets, and I am fulfilled now, I spent a lot of years feeling like an outsider in my own life. I had pursued new opportunities and had successfully broken traditional societal stereotypes. But by rushing through those newly opened doors, I found others slammed shut. After all, how common is it for an attorney with a successful law practice to go into classroom teaching? Even now, many people are shocked that I became a lawyer first and then became a teacher.
And then I did the same thing to my Anna Catherine. I fought off negative blindness stereotypes by focusing on what I considered a positive path of high expectations, encouraging her to pursue a four-year degree immediately after high school. I was substituting a negative stereotype for a positive one. By focusing my efforts on changing societal prejudices about blindness, I failed to provide the supportive environment needed to nourish my child's personal aspirations based on her individual wants and needs.
Only recently have I stopped fighting obstacles and started listening to the young adult in my life. I'm so glad I did! The more I stepped back, the more we moved forward together.
I am still a staunch and steadfast advocate for my blind child and for all individuals with disabilities. I also recognize that people are far, far more interesting, creative, and valuable than any stereotype—even a positive one.
Please don't make the mistakes I made. I focused on the CORE—creating opportunities and raising expectations—but I assumed that the CORE had to be an apple core. All apples have cores, so shouldn't all cores be apple cores? And, after all, there are many varieties of apples: Fiji, Golden and Red Delicious, Rome, Granny Smith. All this variety provides enough space for individuality, doesn't it? If not, let's look at other fruit with cores, such as pears and quince. Shouldn't that be enough?
Instead of focusing on the core, we must focus on the reason for the core. In fruit, the core performs two main functions. It provides the structure that allows the fruit to grow and mature, and it provides seeds containing DNA, the blueprint for the future.
Our CORE values do the same. We raise expectations by sharing the accessible, nonvisual tools and techniques that enable blind individuals to build their futures, unhampered by the low expectations of our vision-centric world. Our philosophy provides the structure, the framework for individuals to pursue their own goals. Like DNA, our core values serve as building blocks that bring forth new life and set the stage for the transformation of the world as we know it. Our CORE values provide the foundation for growth and ensure that the ecosystem of blindness need not define individuals or limit their lives.
Focusing on the purpose, the reason that a core is important, I began to embrace this analogy in new ways. CORE values need not be limited, at least not in any way that interferes with the purpose of the CORE value. Now we can move beyond apples and pears to all fruit, including oranges, blackberries, and plums. While they do not have actual cores, they have inner architectures that provide foundations upon which the fruit may grow; they provide resources for the future.
Then I wondered: Can the analogy stretch to vegetables, too? I think so. Some vegetables, such as cabbages, grow above ground in layers. Others flourish when hidden from view, like potatoes and onions. No matter what path they take, they can thrive only when they have a structure in which to grow and the nourishment they need to move ahead.
Similarly, our CORE values can embrace all individuals, without regard to additional disabilities, race, gender, or other societal prejudices. We reject societal prejudices against blind individuals, and we can reject them for all individuals. Every living thing needs a core, and we wholeheartedly offer you our CORE values and ourselves.
We welcome you to the NOPBC Conference and to our NFB family.
The National Federation of the Blind is our garden. Here you will find the soil, the sun, and the water of life. Here we do not practice container gardening; we do not judge or define you. Here we welcome new shoots and unknown seeds. We cannot wait to share our garden with you so that each of us may support one another in our diverse and bountiful harvest. We look forward to sharing with you our CORE values—creating opportunities and raising expectations—throughout this week and throughout our lives. Welcome!
by Chancey Fleet
Introduction by Carlton Anne Cook Walker: I'm pleased to introduce you to an incredible young woman. I love hearing her! I love knowing that her brain is on this earth! She serves as assistive technology coordinator for the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in New York, and she also serves as president of the NFB Assistive Technology Trainers Division. She freely shares her heart and her knowledge, and she has important information for us as parents and supporters of blind children. With her we will enter a world of opportunity.
Chancey Fleet: Good morning, everyone! My role at the New York Public Library Andrew Heiskell Talking Book Library (a very small branch with a very long name) is to curate the accessible technology that is available in the branch. I coach and run a team of volunteers who do one-on-one free coaching for any library patron who has a print-reading disability. I collaborate across the system to make things more accessible. I also created the Dimensions Lab, which is a free and open tactile graphics laboratory.
Today I want to talk about what binds my reasons for being here at the National Federation of the Blind Convention to the reasons why I'm at the library. I chose both paths for the same reason, and maybe it's a reason you'll find in yourselves as well.
I'm at the library because it's a place where I can cultivate and be part of a community of ambitious interdependence. We all know that independence is the watchword. Independence is important so we can express ourselves, so we can move through the world, so we can do what we want on our own schedules, direct our own futures—whatever that looks like for each individual. If you're here, you're probably on board with the fundamental fact that independence is key.
We all know that in reality we live in an ecosystem of interdependence. However you got to this floor today, you did not put in the elevators or the escalators that got you here. You did not provide the chairs. You didn't walk from your home town to get here. Interdependence is always happening. You're always contributing—one hopes—and always receiving the contributions of other people's labor, time, expertise, and perspective.
I'm here, in the Federation and in my library work, to support the ambitious interdependence of our community. To me that means that we give each other, intentionally, consciously, the space, the tools, the ideas, and the time to ensure that each of us can rise to our potential. For a lot of us, for maybe some of the teens and tweens here, and for newly blind adults and newly ambitious adults, when we fill up a lobby like this we are giving each other space. We are taking it back from everyday business. This is now a new space where anyone can practice cane travel and get lots of tips and information, knowing they're not alone. We can do a microcosm of that in a lot of ways in the National Federation of the Blind and in other communities of mutual support. I think that's a beautiful thing.
For me, ambitious interdependence started early on in my family. My parents weren't expecting a blind kid, but they were really prepared for it. They advocated for me from early on. I have Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, and I can read print—at five words a minute. That was the plan my school system had for me! That was not my family's plan. Their plan was that I would have an early intervention specialist and start learning Braille at my kitchen table at age three. That's what we did.
My parents advocated for Braille. They sent me a couple of blocks along the little dirt road in our town (town is a strong word, it was mostly soybean fields) to the store. We dealt with whatever the people at the store had to say about the seven-year-old blind kid reaching for the milk.
I got a laptop in first grade. By the way, I'm turning forty, so a laptop in first grade was really a lot back then! I realized early on that having technology in the classroom meant that I could get my thoughts straight to my teacher without an intermediary. That was huge!
My parents split up when I was little, and they didn't always get along. But somehow they always got it together at IEP time. They got it together when it was time to discuss why I would get Braille and technology services every single day. They helped me find my first allies.
When I was nine my father used to drive me up to the library at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University). They had an accessibility tech office in the back. There were no college kids, because it was a Saturday. Dad would say, "Have fun, sweetie! I'll be back in four hours." I would walk up to the college library desk and say, "Hello, may I please have the key to the accessibility lab?" For some reason they handed it to me. I would go in and get books. I could sit there and read Lois Lowry for four hours!
I don't know how my parents figured out that such a resource was there. They figured out that the staff was friendly and they would be my allies. They figured out it was a safe place where I could explore technology that we didn't have and couldn't afford.
That is one of my earliest memories of finding community and finding resources. We didn't have those resources in the family, and I certainly didn't have them within myself.
Shortly after I started college I went to my first Washington Seminar. I knew I was going to have a good time when I called Saville Allen, who was my mentor. I was used to people being very concerned about my travel, wondering if I would be okay and whether I would need a whole long list of things. Saville just said, "All right, you get off the Amtrak train and you go find the Green Line. Then you'll transfer, and we'll meet you at the station." The dignity of risk there was a form of care. Interdependence involves knowing what to give and what to empower the person to do on their own.
I was trusted at that Washington Seminar and from then on. I think the biggest reason I stayed in the movement is that folks trusted me to get stuff done. This morning for the keynote I came in five minutes before my scheduled time. Nobody was blowing up my phone to make sure I'd get here. It's understood in the Federation that you will in fact get where you need to be. I was trusted at Washington Seminar to learn the issues and speak to members of Congress. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I assure you, no one else in my college life or my work life trusted me to speak with any authority on anything!
Giving each other space to see how much we can handle and what we're capable of doing is a form of care that we exercise toward each other. It can happen in your circles of support at home. You can look for the people who do that.
Back in 2010 I was working at a traditional vocational rehabilitation agency job, teaching technology. We had a lot of cookie-cutter contract situations. We couldn't serve people who were undocumented; we couldn't answer questions about social media. Basically, I wanted to do improv, and they wanted me to be on a script. That started to get uncomfortable.
At the same time, the National Federation of the Blind of New York heard a rumor that the Braille books at the New York Public Library, which had always been on shelves where anyone could grab them, were being packed up to go to a warehouse in New Jersey. Moving the Braille books would make room for administrative purposes. We did what the NFB does: we showed up to meetings, not always having been invited; we called reporters; we started a petition. The books came back on the trucks and back onto the shelves! At the end of that saga the chief librarian said, "Congratulations! And thank you for preserving the collection. However, if you guys don't start coming into the library and using the space, they will go back to the warehouse."
I started thinking about my frustrations at work, and I started thinking about this big, beautiful space at the library that apparently was underutilized. I started thinking about the joy I find in helping other people in this community solve their tech problems. I thought, This is the way I want to be in the tech education field.
We approached the library and said, "Can we start a tech coaching clinic on Saturdays as volunteers?" That was a new form of interdependence. The library gave us space, and we brought patrons to the library. That created the synergy that got me where I am now. I joined the library staff in 2014, and it has been my greatest adventure so far.
Shortly after I got hired, they hired two other former volunteers. We're gearing up this summer to hire our fourth staff member, which is amazing to me. It all happened because we had the nerve to ask for what we needed and to identify a need that the library had. We're able to accomplish something that's bigger than any one of us.
We do about one hundred and fifty hours of one-on-one coaching every month now. Due to the pandemic a lot of what we do is group work on Zoom, and anybody can come and check us out.
At first I was operating within my comfort zone, but not for long! In 2017 Kirk Adams, who was the CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind, reached out to me and said, "Hey, I'm moving to New York City. I would like to get a five-borough map that's tactile." I admitted to myself that I didn't know where Kirk could get such a thing. I started to reflect, and I grew angry thinking about it.
Sighted people have the technology to print images, and so do we. Sighted people are born curious and unafraid to draw, able to find beauty and clarity in lines on a page, and so are we. What didn't we have? I realized that we didn't have the means of production.
Most tactile graphics embossers belong to educational institutions. Graphics are made for us. Most of the time we don't select what's going to be made. There's seldom a straightforward path between our curiosity and a particular image that we want to experience. More than that, many of us don't have an ecosystem of ambitious interdependence to figure out how we can acquire images and end the image poverty in our community.
I started our Dimensions Lab, which we believe is the world's only free and open tactile graphics lab. It's a place where anyone, blind or sighted, can come to make embossed swell-form graphics, 3D printed thermoforms, or accessible hand-drawn graphics. Blind people can download pre-existing images, draw by hand, scan things in, and collaborate with a sighted person who's using Illustrator. We can learn to code using 2D and 3D designs, using what's called SPG. We can do it with code, we can do it together, or we can do it by hand.
I had to reckon at this point with an uncomfortable truth. I had never had enough access to tactile graphics over the years to be as fluent as I wanted to be. My drawing skills were and are pretty shaky. Ambitious interdependence isn't about finding yourself on a pinnacle of achievement where people congratulate you. There is no such thing as a pinnacle if you're doing this correctly! I learned to draw in 2017 because of this project. I draw like a five-year-old because it's been five years. My drawing is joyful, it's legible, and sometimes it's shaky. It is not normative. I ask library patrons and Federationists to trust me to guide them through their early drawing and tactile literacy experiences, which means that I need to be vulnerable as well. I have to trust myself to use the tools I say I believe in and see how far I can go with them.
One of the most vulnerable moments, and one of the most freeing for me, was walking into a session at a mainstream, sighted-people conference for art and design educators. I took a drawing class with a partner who was a stranger. I walked in, the teacher looked at me and looked at my guide dog, and it was, "How's this gonna work out?" I pulled out my Sensational Blackboard and a couple of other tools, and I just did the thing without a lot of comment.
Ambitious interdependence means figuring out where the safe spaces are and showing up where you can do a thing, even if you're not polished. It means being honest with yourself about where your skills are not as big as your hopes. It means having the sense of self-worth to put some work into cultivating those skills, even if it's embarrassing, and asking for what you need.
I arrived in New York right after college, and I lived with roommates for years and years. Then I met my husband. He's a wonderful cook, and just wonderful in general.
I was so busy excelling at technology that somehow I didn't cook for fifteen years. Oops! My parents look back and say, "Oh, we're so sorry we didn't teach you to cook." The fact is, you as parents cannot do it all. You will miss things, and your child may not figure out what they are until they're forty. The question is, can they—can anyone—find the circle of support they need when it's time to level up.
When the pandemic hit I received the gift of an empty kitchen. My husband is an essential worker, and I was a Zoom worker. I enjoy learning things while not being watched by my sighted husband. I could have struggled alone and figured out all the things I wanted to learn to cook. I had to make the choice to come out about my big skill gap to a bunch of blind people who I knew respected me. Nobody judged me. I got recipes, and I got commonsense tips. People walked me through things.
I'll give you one tip that's super obvious to me right now, but if I hadn't asked I would not know. When you think about using a spatula, you want one that's metal and rigid like a cane. You do not want one that's silicone, because from a sensory feedback perspective you may as well have a pool noodle. If I hadn't asked, I wouldn't know.
I'd been meaning to try lathe-turning woodworking, for six or seven years. A few weeks ago a blind friend said, "Hey, I'm going to Tennessee, I'm going in two weeks." I thought, power tools are scary! And then I thought, This guy has taught about a hundred blind people, and they're all still reading Braille, which means that their fingers are all still present.
I went to Tennessee, and it was not scary. It was therapeutic and beautiful and not what I had imagined. I put myself in what I knew were capable hands. I trusted that I would learn something and that I would be safe. That was huge!
Wherever you are on your journey, whether you're working on tying shoes or doing a first drawing or learning a sport or taking an internship—whatever it is, ambitious interdependence means we're always in an ecosystem of support. We should always be looking out to see where we can help, and also looking out and seeing who is a safe ally. Where is a great space to practice? Where can you trade skills—hey, I can help you with Braille if you can help me with cooking.
I love solving other people's puzzles with them. I don't want to hear them say, "I'm slow, I'm done, I'm bad." The beginner's mind is a beautiful thing. I'm no longer afraid to show people when I'm feeling stuck. Sometimes learning can be awkward. Sometimes I have to pipe up and say, "Hey, I'm not computing this, and I have to hear it and be supported in a different way." I am never actually stuck. I'm just working on it.
That's my ask to all of you. Look around you. See who your supports are. Look within yourself, see where your skill gaps are. See if they don't match up with what you hope for yourself. Bearing that in mind, get out and do the thing. Do it this week. We are here to work on ourselves together.
by Joshua Olukanni, Lauren Altman, and Tameria Brooks
From the Editor: At the NOPBC Conference parents heard from three blind postsecondary students. Responding to questions from NOPBC President Carlton Anne Cook Walker, the panelists described the journeys that led them to seek training in blindness skills.
CARLTON ANNE COOK WALKER: Before we get started, I'd like each of you to briefly introduce yourselves.
JOSH OKULANNI: My name is Joshua Okulanni. I currently go to the University of Minnesota, and I love playing goalball.
LAUREN ALTMAN: Hi, my name is Lauren Altman. I'm from New Jersey, and I'm eighteen. I love art and reading and all things creative, and I'm going to be starting at Ramapo College in the fall.
TAMERIA BROOKS: My name is Tameria Brooks. I am nineteen, and I am going to be starting at Dalton State in the fall.
CARLTON: Could each of you tell us a bit about your childhood and your school experiences? We'll start with Lauren.
LAUREN: When I was a baby I had bilateral retinoblastoma. Growing up I had 20/160 vision in my left eye, and I was totally blind in my right eye. I did the stereotypical thing where I had a disability, but I didn't really disclose it to anyone. I read large print, and I did not use a cane. I used magnification devices, and for the most part everyone was good about accommodating me with large print. Then in my junior year in high school I lost my remaining vision very suddenly and unexpectedly. At school I mostly asked for things in digital format, and my teachers were pretty good about accommodating me with that.
TAMERIA: I didn't start losing my vision until I was in sixth grade. At that point I kind of shut myself off from everything because of my vision loss. I was very hesitant to use magnifiers or Braille because of how I thought people would look at me. I didn't start using a cane until I was a senior in high school.
JOSH: I currently have 20/200 vision in my left eye and 20/400 in my right eye. That's what I grew up with. I went through high school trying to pretend I could see, and it didn't go too well the majority of the time. I would try to go out for sports, and inevitably I would embarrass myself. People would be like, "How are you so bad when you're so tall?" I kind of brushed it off and said, "I guess I need glasses." I really didn't get any formal training when I was a kid, because my TVI and my classroom teachers thought I had too much vision for Braille or cane travel. I didn't start learning those skills until I went to the CCB [Colorado Center for the Blind] summer program and then the adult program at BLIND, Inc.
CARLTON: Each of these young people is a graduate or soon-to-be graduate of one of our NFB training centers. Each of them will talk about the center they went to and how it transformed the path they were on.
TAMERIA: I went to the Colorado Center for the Blind. Honestly, before I got there I was a little iffy on being blind. I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself, and my family didn't let me do much stuff. Once I got to the center I learned to cook and clean and all those basic things.
LAUREN: I'm a proud graduate of the Louisiana Center for the Blind. Independence was always super important to me growing up. Losing my vision when I was sixteen and not being able to have that same level of independence was really difficult for me. I knew right away I wanted my independence back. One of the biggest areas where I saw that was in mobility. At first I was afraid to walk beyond my driveway. At the center one of the graduation requirements is an out-of-town trip, so I traveled to Chicago by myself. That was a very empowering experience!
JOSH: I'm a graduate of BLIND, Inc., in Minnesota. I realized I really needed to go for training, because I couldn't cook or do anything in the kitchen by myself. Man, I couldn't even crack an egg! I thought, I really need to fix this! I got in touch with vocational rehabilitation. People in Georgia like Derrick Scott and Jackie Anderson talked to me about the training centers. I loved the fact that BLIND, Inc., was in Minneapolis and it had everything I wanted.
CARLTON: We have parents and teachers here. Please share how you got to a center and what you got out of it.
JOSH: This is a long story, but I'll shorten it. Before I knew anything about blindness or the NFB, my TVI started talking to me and my brother about an agency called VR that helps blind people do different things. VR put us in touch with Garrick Scott and Jackie Anderson. They were running the program called [NFB] BELL®, so my brother and I went out to help them. Garrick and Jackie said, "You need training." We said, "No, we don't need training! What is that anyway?" We were kind of iffy about college at that time, because our skills weren't up to par. Finally, though, I realized I did need to go to college and I needed training first. I decided on BLIND, Inc. We had to start the stereotypical battle with the VR counselor. She said, "You can go to Center for the Visually Impaired (CVI)." That's the training program in Georgia. Spoiler alert: It's not that good. I said, "I don't want to do that. I want to go to BLIND, Inc." She was adamant that I should go to CVI.
That's when my connections started to come into play. I reached out to people in the NFB to push the process along. No lie, it took a solid nine months to get me to this training program! The span it takes for a baby to be born! It took me that long! But finally I ended up at BLIND, Inc., and I've become a new person with the skills I've learned there.
LAUREN: Likewise, I definitely had to do some convincing of my state VR. I might have had a slightly easier time than Josh. When I was sixteen one of my mentors was a graduate of the Louisiana Tech program, which has a major connection with LCB (Louisiana Center for the Blind). She asked me if I had considered training. She said I might be able to learn a lot of skills in the year and a half before I graduated from high school, but I might need some extra time to work on them. LCB gave me the opportunity to focus on myself. It was the best investment I could have made in my future!
I love to read. Losing my vision and no longer being able to read was a very sad experience. I was learning Braille, but I kept seeing statistics that said if you didn't start learning when you were five years old you would never be fluent. But from Day One, my Braille instructor at LCB said, "You're going to build your reading speed, and you're going to read these full-length books. You're not just going to use Braille for elevator signs." Now I'm reading full-length novels, and that's really exciting!
TAMERIA: My Braille teacher in high school talked to me about what I was going to do after I graduated. We talked about college and how I'd need skills like cooking and travel. We talked about the training centers, and I got to pick among the three. I knew I wanted to go somewhere with sleepshade training. I decided to go to the Colorado Center for the Blind. Honestly, before that, I didn't even like to go outside by myself because what if I ran into something. I definitely think that when you go to a training center there is a transformation. It's awesome to see that in everybody! It's awesome to see it in yourself!
CARLTON: Thank you, all! Thank you for your willingness to share your experiences. You have enriched all of us. Thank you!
Presented by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
Introduction by Carlton Anne Cook Walker: Alexander Pope wrote, "As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined." These words of Alexander Pope are the inspiration behind the title of the "Twig Award." The National Organization of Parents of Blind Children initiated the Twig Awards on our 25th anniversary in 2008. These are not annual awards; we bestow them to honor those whose work has influenced the direction in which our children grow.
The award itself is a medallion engraved with a tree and the words "As the twig is bent award" and "NOPBC since 1983," with the word NOPBC in Braille and print. On the back of the medallion is the recipient's name and the year.
In 2020, we presented two Twig awards. One, to NFB President Mark Riccobono and one to his wife, NOPBC Board Member and Conference Director Melissa Riccobono. Each of these individuals has worked tirelessly and supported blind children and their families and educators steadfastly for more than two decades. Each has shared insight, knowledge, and compassion with families struggling to ensure that their children receive a meaningful education that would prepare their children for the future. In other words, both Mark and Melissa have bent countless twigs to incline many, many trees toward the upward trajectory of achieving their dreams.
Even with all of the technological advances we have made, I still have not figured out how to present medals via Zoom. So I had to wait until we were back in person again. I take this opportunity to give Mark his Twig medal. We miss Melissa today, so Mark, would you take Melissa's medal to her? Thank you! Mark and Melissa, please know how much your work has enriched everyone in this virtual conference and so many more. Thank you.
But there's more! At my first NFB Convention, in 2006, I had the opportunity to meet the author of some incredible books: The Bridge to Braille: Reading and School Success for the Young Blind Child; Because Books Matter; Making It Work: Educating the Blind/Visually Impaired Student in the Regular School; and Getting Ready for College Begins in Third Grade: Working Toward an Independent Future for Your Young Blind Child. This person was my hero, and I assumed that she'd never know—or even be interested in knowing—about my child and my family.
I was so wrong! I found out that this parent-leader willingly and selflessly shared her experience and knowledge regarding the parenting of a blind child and truly wanted to know, understand, and support my blind child and my family. Over time, this person became my colleague and, to my great honor, a trusted and devoted friend—Carol Castellano. For more than three decades, she has epitomized the love, care, and concern you will find here in our organization.
Carol was one of twenty-five individuals who received our first Twig awards at our twenty-fifth anniversary in 2008. Sadly, Carol's family suffered a frightening and destructive house fire. That fire consumed the Twig medal she received in 2008. I am honored and privileged to give Carol this Twig medal, engraved with her name and with the year 2008.
CAROL CASTELLANO: Wow! I'm stunned! I had no idea this was coming! This award means so much to me! Thank you so very much for your incredible thoughtfulness!
NOPBC Workshop
by Cindy Champagne
From the Editor: Cindy Champagne is a teacher of blind students (TBS) in Louisiana. In this workshop at the NOPBC Conference, she shares basic information about cortical visual impairment and points the way toward the interventions that are needed.
I'm a graduate of the Teacher of Blind Students program at Louisiana Tech University. My son Justin has retinitis pigmentosa, which is an ocular impairment. Through my son I got involved with the NFB. Ever since I made a career switch to teach blind students, I feel I'm walking the path that was intended for me.
During my training the prevailing thought in the field of blindness was that most students with cortical visual impairment (CVI) have additional disabilities, and that they were incapable of learning. People often made comments such as, "Blindness is the least of their problems."
Such thinking runs contrary to the philosophy of the NFB. Regardless of the type or extent of a student's disabilities, we have to assume capacity and competence. Our job as educators and parents is to work hard to remove barriers and give these kids the tools that will help them learn and communicate.
The American Association of Ophthalmology and Strabismus defines CVI as a decreased visual response due to a neurological problem affecting the visual pathways in the brain. CVI is a brain-based impairment. Typically in these children the ocular structures are fine. There's nothing wrong with the eyeball; there's nothing wrong with the optic nerve. But when visual information reaches the brain, the brain has trouble interpreting what the child sees. When we work with these students it's important to remember that looking is not always seeing.
Like low vision caused by an ocular impairment, CVI is a permanent condition. It never goes away. The brain has sustained permanent damage to the visual pathways. CVI is a disability of visual access, and it's defined by deficits in typical visual function. We have to look at how the child's vision functions, just as we do when we conduct a functional vision assessment on a child with an ocular visual impairment.
Unlike children with ocular impairments, our students with CVI can improve their visual functioning by learning to use their sight. The term neuroplasticity means that the brain is capable of rewiring and healing itself. The more children with CVI use their vision, the more their functional vision will improve. They still have a visual impairment, but they can learn how their vision functions in order to use it more effectively.
CVI is now the leading cause of visual impairment in the industrialized countries. According to the 2021 Babies Count data, CVI is the leading cause of visual impairment in the birth to five population. Thirty per cent of children identified as having a visual impairment in this age group have been diagnosed with CVI. The National Institutes of Health website published a study demonstrating that CVI occurs in 10.5 percent of all children with developmental disabilities.
Scotland has one of the world's most sophisticated systems for reporting health information on children. Approximately 0.7 percent of all the children in Scotland have been diagnosed with CVI. One study looked at a group of children who had been red-flagged as having learning disabilities. These kids struggled in school and were going through the intervention process. The education team tried various strategies and modifications to build in the scaffolding that would help the children learn. It turned out that 31 percent of these children had CVI-related visual behaviors. The children in the study never had been identified before as having a visual impairment.
Here in the States we are very careful to screen children for visual acuity. However, we miss issues around visual processing. Screening for visual processing issues is critical for our kids who have multiple disabilities. Often they're not verbal, so they can't tell us what they see.
In one study, among children who were admitted to the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] at birth, 51.6 percent were found to have CVI related visual behaviors. A small study of kids with autism found that 100 percent of them had optic ataxia. It's being misdiagnosed as a fine-motor issue. A 2021 study of kids with Down syndrome showed that 38.3 percent of them had undiagnosed CVI. These studies give an idea how widespread our undiagnosed population of kids with CVI really is.
Anything that causes an insult to the brain can damage the visual pathways. Asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain); periventricular leukomalasia (PLM), which has to do with white matter degeneration in the brain, often found among premies; cerebrovascular accidents; and trauma, including shaken baby syndrome—all of these conditions can damage the brain's visual pathways.
Many children with CVI had seizures and infantile spasms. Some who have had severe seizures present as functionally blind. Kids whose seizures were controlled at an early age generally have higher visual functioning. CVI may not be noticed in these children until they begin to struggle in school.
CVI is not always related to brain trauma. Kids with congenital brain abnormalities such as septo-optic dysplasia (SOD) and optic-nerve hyperplasia (ONH) have a wide spectrum of visual disabilities that may include CVI. CVI also occurs in children with certain chromosomal diagnoses. It can be part of the way the brain is formed.
To make a diagnosis, most doctors want to see the place in the brain where things aren't working properly. However, the causes of CVI don't always appear on an MRI. Medical professionals can make a diagnosis of CVI if the patient meets these four criteria:
Dr. Christine Roman quantified a set of behaviors that are typical of children with CVI. She was a COMS with both TVI and orientation and mobility training, and she felt called to work with kids with multiple disabilities and health impairments. She began to notice a pattern of visual behaviors in these children, and she was able to quantify it through her studies.
Color Preferences: The first thing Dr. Roman noted was color preference. Typically, kids with CVI are drawn to red or yellow. They prefer highly saturated, very bright colors, especially when they're presented with contrast. Right now twelve kids on my roster have CVI. Some of them prefer green. They don't visually orient to red or yellow; they orient to green right now. It's important for me to know that! I'm not going to put a red Mardi Gras curtain on a light box to try to get them to use their vision right now. I'm going to use green Mardi Gras beads and green pompoms.
Visual Latency: The visual responses of children with CVI tend to be delayed. If you don't give them time, you might assume that the child sees nothing. The child needs a chance to notice that an object is there. Eventually the child will attend to the object, if the object is appropriate.
A Need for Movement: Children with CVI have a huge need for movement. They may be attracted to moving objects such as ceiling fans.
Two of my students are developing typically, apart from their vision. When they started to crawl, they'd be looking for a particular toy. They knew it was there, but they couldn't pick it out from the background. They'd get on all fours and start to rock. In that way they gave the property of movement to a stationary object. They stopped rocking as soon as they picked up the toy. In these children rocking is not a stimming behavior as we might suspect. It's a matter of the way their vision functions.
The Challenge of Complexity: Complexity is a big issue for kids with CVI. Kids with CVI have trouble using their auditory and tactile channels at the same time as their visual channel because using their vision is a difficult process. They have to work at seeing.
Visual Field Preferences: All children with CVI have visual field preferences. A typically sighted person has central vision straight ahead, left peripheral and right peripheral fields, and upper and lower fields. Kids who appear to be functionally blind typically don't do well in the central field. Typically they prefer far left or far right. Occupational therapists and physical therapists tend to present objects in the central field, where the child can't see them. It's important to tease out which field works best, left or right.
Eventually the upper field may start to resolve, but for most kids with CVI, the lower field never resolves. Issues with the lower field present challenges for orientation and mobility. These kids trip because they can't see changes in height. It's especially difficult when they're in a complex sensory environment.
A Need for Light: A lot of kids with CVI will gaze out windows and stare at overhead lights. Even when their functional vision begins to resolve a bit, they stare at lights when they're tired or sick. They engage their visual system through this behavior.
Ophthalmologists and optometrists work in a clinical setting with perfect lighting. They look at acuity and refractive error, trying to determine whether a child needs glasses. They tend to miss the kids with CVI who function with usable vision and don't present as blind.
Parents often face dismissal from the medical community. Ophthalmologists say, "There's nothing wrong with your child's eyes." This is the attitude we're trying to change. Often, related service providers are some of the first to notice that their patient is not using their vision in a functional way. Then they come to us, the educational community, and say, "Hey, can you help my child/student? My kid can't see!"
Currently the only ICD.10 [International Classification of Diagnoses] code that doctors can use for a diagnosis of cerebral cortical visual impairment is cortical blindness. Cortical blindness is a very old term. It was developed for soldiers coming back after World War I and World War II who were functionally blind due to traumatic brain injury. That's the code that is still being used! If your child is using their vision for some functions such as reaching and touching, but they can't interpret what they see, it's understandable that a doctor might not say they're blind. They will use the term "low vision," but it is very hard to get them to put "legally blind" on an eye report, especially when they don't see damage in the visual pathway on the MRI. We need to educate the professionals.
As a TVI I work closely with several ophthalmologists in town. I go to appointments with kids and their families, saying, "Okay, Doctor, this is what I'm seeing." The doctors are starting to understand that we're seeing things from a functional visual standpoint, not necessarily an acuity standpoint.
As TVIs we can do a better job of building bridges between families and eye doctors. If you build a personal relationship with a doctor, they will trust what you say. With a couple of doctors I'm now able to send in a functional vision assessment. I can say, "I'm not seeing any sign of an ocular impairment, but this is what I'm seeing." Unless we identify the child as being visually impaired, they can't get the help they need when they get to school. We need the doctor to say, "Okay, here's your diagnosis, put them on the registry as a student with a visual impairment." We can provide a lot of help to families, but we can't do anything without a diagnosis!
CVI is a visual impairment, which means it is covered under IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Any impairment in vision that adversely affects a child's educational performance meets the criterion for the exceptionality of visual impairment. It doesn't matter that it's not an ocular impairment. Kids with CVI are unable to access typical materials in a typical classroom. CVI is a disability of visual access just like ocular low vision and blindness.
We are missing many of the kids we should be serving. Visual impairment may not be their primary exceptionality. We know about the neuroplasticity of the brain—the more a child uses their vision, the more they teach their brain, and their functional vision improves. However, it may not improve enough for the child to keep up with sighted peers in a typical classroom.
Under IDEA Braille instruction is required for a child with a visual impairment unless the IEP determines that it's inappropriate for that particular child. Braille may not be appropriate for some kids, but we need to keep the tools of blindness on the table.
Because kids with CVI have a visual impairment, they are entitled to instruction from a qualified TVI, and to instruction in all nine areas of the expanded core curriculum (ECC) to enhance their quality of life. The days are over for us to say, "We can't teach them the skills of blindness! Blindness is the least of their problems!"
For about half of the kids with CVI whom I work with, tactile learning is not an option. They don't have independent use of their hands. When we learn how they use their vision we may be able to make it possible for them to communicate. Maybe they can use an eye gaze device. We can adapt augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices so they can access them visually. Such a device can allow them to express their needs and wants independently. We have to do whatever we can to unlock the potential in these kids.
As TVIs we have an ethical responsibility to be the experts in vision on our teams. The service delivery model may look different for kids with CVI, but we can't say these kids are not our problem. It is unfair to say that helping these kids takes time away from our academic Braille readers. All of our students deserve the best help we can give them. Kids with severe and profound disabilities have the potential to learn, to have some degree of independence and communication.
It breaks my heart to hear stories of parents who have a TVI on their team as a "consult." The TVI pops into the profound/severe classroom for fifteen minutes and says, "How're you doing? Anything I can do for you?" Sometimes the TVI comes during nap time and never sees the child interacting in the classroom.
I know it's overwhelming to think about the population we could be serving. But if we don't identify the true need, we won't know how many more people we need in the profession. We won't be able to go to the people who control the funds and say, "This is what these kids need and deserve."
I urge us as TVIs to keep advocating along with parents for a proper diagnosis. It is a lot easier to get services with a diagnosis! Request a functional vision assessment if CVI is suspected. You should expect a report. The assessment tool should be CVI geared and CVI informed. Our standard functional vision assessments for kids with ocular impairments are not appropriate for our students with CVI. We have to understand how these kids use their vision.
A major reason we're seeing more kids diagnosed with CVI is the research being conducted by dedicated, informed parents. As members of the NFB we should give these parents our empathy and support. In the NFB we fight for Braille for our blind kids. We fight for accommodations and modifications, and we fight to ensure there are certified, qualified TVIs to serve them. We need to fight just as hard to get help for our kids with CVI. I'll say it again and again: we're better together, not apart. We must not see helping kids with CVI as a threat to our kids who have ocular impairments. We can serve all of our kids! We don't need to limit our services and concerns to kids with ocular impairment!
As TVIs we need to perform ongoing functional vision and learning media assessments. We know that functional vision improves. If we only evaluate the functional vision of these kids every three years, when they come up for their re-evaluation, we'll miss the changes. If we see no improvement, we need to evaluate how we're accommodating and modifying to support visual access. All of our tools need to be available to these kids—the tactile, the auditory, and the visual tools. It's our responsibility to be the expert on the team who can help the child develop those tools and also support their IEP team.
It's also our responsibility to give these students an orientation and mobility screening and make a referral for O&M training. The child's lower visual field will remain atypical for life. In a complex sensory environment people with CVI have a hard time orienting and navigating. They cannot access the visual channel in those situations, so they may need to be situational cane users.
We have to do ongoing assessment of needs under the Expanded Core Curriculum. We should do it annually, prior to the new IEP. Once we've done these assessments and know what the child's needs are, we need to do a data-driven analysis to determine our service-level recommendations. We can't say, "I only have time to give fifteen minutes a month." We should ask, "What does this child need?" I highly recommend the Visual Impairment Scale of Service Intensity from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. You do the needs assessment and plug in your data to find out the child's needs for direct instruction and what the team needs to do in each area.
Each child is different, and we need to do a lot of collaborative instruction. I do a lot of training with the team that works with my students who have additional disabilities. I work with the occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech therapists. Every member of the team must be aware of CVI and how each individual child uses their vision. I find that other professionals are starting to call us in to do vision assessments on some of the kids they work with when they suspect that CVI may be an issue. We can't work in silos. We all need to work together.
https://www.perkins.org/cvi-now/ by The CVI Center at Perkins
https://pcvis.vision/ This is the website of the Pediatric Cortical Visual Impairment Society, started by parents, ophthalmologists, and optometrists
https://littlebearsees.org/ An organization begun by one of the first families that brought awareness and attention to CVI.
by Carol Castellano
From the Editor: Carol Castellano is a past president of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC) and the founder of New Jersey Parents of Blind Children (NJPBC). Her commitment to blind children has been unflagging for four decades. She is the author of four books, including Making It Work and Getting Ready for College Begins in Third Grade. This article is based on a workshop she led at the 2022 NOPBC Conference.
I find that parents of blind children have pretty much the same hopes and dreams as any other parents. They hope their children will have satisfying relationships, and that they will have meaningful work that they enjoy. They hope their kids will be happy, contributing members of society. But with blind kids there is a real difference. The difference is that our kids have a few barriers in front of them in order to have the future their parents hope for.
I'm not sure that our next-door neighbor or our mail carrier would think we're being realistic when we talk about our hopes for our blind children. Out in the world the expectations for blind kids are pretty low. When people see a blind person they automatically think, If I were blind it would be so scary! They don't understand that our kids practice being blind every day, and it isn't scary to them.
Years ago I visited a preschool to enroll my daughter, and they told me they couldn't meet her needs. The teacher said, "She needs to go . . . she needs to go . . . where the blind people go!" In the NFB and the NOPBC we're trying hard to make a world where blind people fit in, where they don't have to go to some special place. There's room for everybody. We still have a way to go.
When they were trying to decide which reading group my daughter would go into in first grade, the principal told me, "We'll put her in the lowest group." She was a good Braille reader at that point. I said, "Why would you put her in the lowest group?" He said, "Because in the middle group we expect the kids to understand what they read."
I once went to a doctor who knew that my daughter was looking for a job in social work. I commented that a lot of people have prejudice against hiring a blind person. The doctor said, "I don't understand why any employer would hire someone who has a disability, when they can hire someone who has all their parts working." After that he was no longer my doctor!
I think that sometimes we as parents, being part of society, have these ideas inside us, too. I've met a lot of parents who secretly, or maybe not so secretly, feel sorry for their blind children. Sometimes it comes out as, "It's so hard for him, I'm not going to make him do chores." We want an independent future for our kids, but we have to cope with our own prejudices and uncertainties.
Think about these questions. Do you or others make decisions about your child's activities based on their blindness? For example, do you factor in blindness when you think about the chores they might do or the courses they might take? Have you thought, She can't take geometry, that's so visual! Is your child as independent as sighted children their age?
Asking yourself these questions is a way we can test how we're doing in preparing our kids for the future. Maybe we talk the talk of independence, but are we walking the walk?
Sometimes we parents can be seriously off base about our kids' abilities. I knew a family that had triplets, and one of them was blind. One day the mom called and said her child was really frustrated about his blindness. The child was five at the time. I went over to find out what was going on. It turned out there was a set of steps in the house. The sighted kids were allowed to go up and down the steps, but the blind child was not. The mother had put up a gate to keep him away from the stairs. It wasn't blindness that was frustrating this child; it was the restrictions his family had placed on him. His mother didn't understand that limiting him in this way caused him to feel frustrated. She assumed he was frustrated about his blindness.
I'm going to share stories about three blind people. The first one is Dr. Abraham Nemeth.
Dr. Abraham Nemeth: Dr. Nemeth was the creator of the Braille code for mathematics. Blind from birth, he grew up in New York City, where he traveled on the buses and subways. He studied at Columbia University and earned two doctoral degrees, one in psychology and one in mathematics. During his thirty years as a professor, Dr. Nemeth taught a variety of undergraduate mathematics courses. He also taught graduate courses in computer science, such as programming, automotive theory, and artificial intelligence. Until his death in 2013 at age ninety-four, Dr. Nemeth remained involved in research in computer technology.
Dr. Nemeth was discouraged from making mathematics his undergraduate major by his vocational counsellors because of his blindness and the lack of Braille materials. He acquiesced and switched to psychology. But as electives he chose analytic geometry, differential and integral calculus, modern geometry, and statistics—just about any math course he could get his hands on! He said later that his counsellors were correct—there were no Braille materials for mathematics at that level. What did he do? He created them himself.
The code that Dr. Nemeth invented in order to complete his courses on time became the code in which most mathematics is written for blind people in the United States and other countries. Dr. Nemeth wrote, "I hope my experience demonstrates how important are the early acquisitions of Braille skills, mobility, a knowledge of print practice, and good attitudes. Equipped with these skills, a blind person can progress as far as his motivation, ingenuity, and talent will permit. Without them, a blind person is restricted to semi-literacy and lack of independence."
Dr. Geerat Vermeij: My next story is about Dr. Geerat Vermeij. Dr. Vermeij, blind from age three, developed a love of nature as a young child. He knew by the age of ten that he wanted to become a biologist. He, too, was discouraged from his desired path by vocational rehabilitation counsellors. They felt that a science that depended so much on observation couldn't possibly be a fitting occupation for a blind person. These counsellors were acting on the mistaken belief that observation is solely a visual skill.
In spite of these warnings, Dr. Vermeij went on to study biology at Princeton and Yale, and he became a preeminent scientist in his field. His teaching and research interests include the coevolutionary reactions between predators and prey and their effects upon morphology, ecology, and evolution; and the paleobiogeography of the Arctic and its influence on the Atlantic and Pacific Cenozoic fauna. It's even hard to read that, let alone understand it!
Dr. Vermeij's life and work have been featured in magazines and a PBS special. He says, "There is nothing about my job that makes it unsuitable for a blind person. Of course there are inherent risks in the fieldwork. I have been stung by rays, bitten by crabs, and detained by police who mistook my partner and me for operatives trying to overthrow the government of their African country. I have slipped on rocks, scraped my hand on sharp oysters and pinnacles of coral, and suffered stomach cramps. There isn't a field scientist alive or dead who hasn't had similar experiences. Life without risk is life without challenge. One cannot hope to understand nature without experiencing it firsthand."
Erik Weihenmayer: Finally I'm going to tell you about Erik Weihenmayer. When Erik was an infant his parents took him to nearly a dozen eye doctors, trying to find the cause of his jittery eye movements. When they finally received the diagnosis, they were told that their son would be blind by the age of thirteen.
As his vision decreased, Erik went deeper and deeper into denial. He behaved terribly with his Braille teacher because he thought learning Braille would mean that he was blind. He even tossed his white cane off a bridge so it would get run over by oncoming traffic.
It took a while for Erik to adjust and realize that he could do things in alternative ways. When he did, he went big time! He became a world-class mountaineer and all-around athlete who climbed to the top of the world's tallest peaks, including Mount Everest. He kayaked solo down the Colorado River the whole length of the Grand Canyon, 277 miles. He went through fifteen-foot waves, twenty-six-foot waterfalls, giant whirlpools, and rapids with names like Upset and Specter and hundreds of others. One magazine said they could merit names such as Satan's Maw and Dead Man's Neck.
Before Erik became blind he had seen a photo of a person climbing a frozen waterfall. When he became blind he decided a blind person could learn to do that kind of climbing. An expert told him, "You can't just swing the tools that attach to the ice indiscriminately, because large chunks of ice could be knocked off and hit you." Erik found through trial and error that he could tap his tools very lightly against the ice face and listen for a certain sound to know whether it was safe to hit or whether hitting would shatter the ice.
Though most people thought you have to be able to see to climb, Erik showed that there are other ways to do it. Erik says, "A summit isn't just a place on a mountain. A summit exists in our hearts and minds. It is a symbol that, with the force of our will and the power of our legs or backs and two hands, we can transform our lives into whatever we choose them to be, whatever our hands are strong enough to create."
Talking about a climb up a thousand-meter wall of ice in the Canadian Rockies, Erik says that halfway through the climb he took off his glove and ran his hands across the surface of the ice. "It was cold and smooth as a window on a winter's day. I had to take a deep breath because of the beauty I was feeling with my fingertips. Many sighted people believe that the eye is the only pathway to beauty, but we know that's just not true."
I love these stories! They make me feel good about people, about blind people, and about all our hopes. These people pushed the boundaries. They ignored the experts and found ways around obstacles. They persevered, and they followed their passions.
I have a kid who's never going to climb Mount Everest. Most of our kids are ordinary humans who aren't going to do fabulous things. But we can grab onto the ways Dr. Nemeth, Dr. Vermeij, and Erik Weihenmayer made their achievements. That's what we can teach our kids. We can encourage them to be determined, to persevere. We can make sure they've got the skills they need, and we can encourage them to be problem solvers.
Certainly our blind kids are going to face challenges in their lives. We all do! For our kids it might be anything from putting the sheets on a bed to navigating a college campus. We want our kids to feel that they can meet the challenges that come up. When they come upon a challenge, we want them to think, "Hmmm, what are some possible solutions to this problem." Give your child practice in brainstorming ideas. We parents get really good at teaching our kids, and it can be hard to step back and enable them to teach themselves. That's a big piece of becoming an adult, becoming an independent person. It's also critical for us to make sure that our kids are aware of the tools and techniques that are out there for accomplishing tasks. We have to make sure that our kids know how to get information when they need it. And we have to bring them up to use their network. Do they know they have a network? It consists of other blind people—peers and adults, almost always happy to share information—teachers and rehab professionals, perhaps OTs and PTs, and, of course, the internet and YouTube!
I want to talk a bit about what I call the skills vs accommodations approach to life. You probably hear a lot about accommodations at your IEP meetings. An accommodation is when someone thinks something is too hard and finds an easier way to do it. Lightening the student's workload is frequently offered as an accommodation. I think it should be erased from the books! How are you going to feel as confident as everybody else when you only do half the work? Looking at it another way, if half the work is good enough for you, why does everybody else have to do double?
I got a call one day from a mom who lived in a beach community. The family had a boat, and they belonged to a yacht club. This mom was irate because the yacht club refused to build a little fence along the dock. She felt that her daughter was in danger, and she believed she needed that accommodation under the ADA. I thought, okay, if they build that fence and your daughter safely gets onto your boat, what happens when you cross to the other side of the bay? They don't have a fence on the dock over there. There aren't going to be fences on all those docks!
Using a cane would be a good solution to walking along a dock. The lesson for that child to learn is how to keep herself safe on a dock or a subway platform, wherever there might be an edge. It would be very limiting always to depend on having a fence or having a sighted person along to help!
If you think that maybe your child needs an accommodation, usually there's a skill your child can learn so the accommodation won't be needed. For instance, the school might say, "The halls get very crowded. We'll let your child leave class five minutes early to avoid the congestion." That's a very common accommodation. But maybe someday your child will work in a big office building with crowded halls. Will they know how to navigate a crowded hallway? They won't know, because they've been accommodated.
Instead of letting the child leave class early, the school could let them out into the hall with everybody else so they learn to get where they need to go. Maybe the child needs some travel instruction. Give them instruction and practice time. Let them become competent and confident. Confidence brings respect. One thing builds upon another. And your child won't lose the last five minutes of every class!
When my daughter was in college, there was a fire at a college down the road. Suddenly at her school there was a big emphasis on fire safety. Serena called me one day and said, "If there's a fire they want me to wait in my room till Security comes to help me."
We chatted a bit about that. What does a person need to know about getting out of a building when there's a fire? You need to know the closest way out, and maybe a couple of alternative ways out, too. Did you ever notice that exit doors are different from interior doors? Exit doors have a bar across them.
We went through the hallways in Serena's dorm and made sure she knew where all the doors were. She could easily recognize an exit door because of the bar. That was a skill she learned. It wasn't an accommodation that would have left her in harm's way.
Sometimes accommodations can be critically important. I'm not against them in general. However, I suggest that you ask first, "Is there a skill my child can learn?" If learning a skill won't help, fine. Maybe an accommodation is necessary in that particular case. But you can bring up your kid with the sense, "I can do this!" Maybe they can even help think about the skills they might need.
In New Jersey I teach a course for parents of blind high school kids. I've made a list of the concerns that come up most often in our discussions. Here are the ones I hear most often.
Creating Barriers: Am I, as a parent, going to create barriers for my child? Am I going to let my worries and fears limit my kid? Am I going to think it's too dangerous for a blind person to do this or that?
Think about things that sighted kids your child's age are doing. Do you let your blind child handle sharp knives in the kitchen? Have you let your child turn on the gas? Have they walked to the school bus on their own, if it's within walking distance? Have they crossed streets independently?
I find these to be filter questions. If you say no to any of them, take a look at your own fears. It's likely that your fears are holding your child back. Think about what your child can do to be able to cross that street or use that knife. Those are skills your child can acquire.
What can be the antidote for your fears as a parent? You can educate yourself. You can call upon your network. If you have no idea how a blind person safely holds a knife, call someone in this organization, and they'll tell you. Think about what will happen if you continue to hold your child back. Raise your expectations and empower your child with skills.
Facing the Real World: What will happen in the future, out in the real world? Who will assist my child when I'm not there? What if someone takes advantage of them?
What are some ways to get our children to the point where we don't have to have these fears? We can teach them to self-advocate. We can teach them to speak up. Think about how we educate our sighted children and prepare them for the future. We can do the same things for our blind kids. Sometimes we look at things differently for our blind kids. Maybe we get a little protective. If we put it all together— higher expectations, skills, techniques, awareness, problem solving, networking—we can make it all happen.
Independence in Daily Life: How will your child cook? How will they shop? How will they organize themselves? Can they ever spend a week alone?
There are summer programs where they teach our kids how to manage many basic tasks on their own. If you're considering a program, check it out carefully. Some programs have pretty low expectations, and some are very strong on teaching skills and self-advocacy.
Public Attitudes: Parents are concerned about a lack of understanding and lack of acceptance on the part of the public. These attitudes can make it hard for our kids to show their abilities and get a place at the table.
One answer is joining an advocacy organization like ours where we work to change public attitudes. Another is again for our children to learn skills and be able to self-advocate. When they know how to do things, they can show the public what they can do. If we get these basics in place, we can give a wonderful gift to our kids.
One blind friend told me she wanted to volunteer in a soup kitchen with her church group. When she got to the kitchen, everybody started fussing at her, "Here's a seat! Sit down, sit down!" She walked over to the counter and said, "Where are the vegetables? I'm here to cut vegetables." People started freaking out: "Aaaaa! A knife!" But she knew the jobs that would be required in that kitchen, and she knew she had the skills to do them. She was able to say, "I can do this," and show that it was true.
Going to College: What happens when our kids go off to college? We won't be there to help!
Actually, we don't want our kids to need much help from us when they get to college. Think about the things a blind college kid might need help with—getting accessible materials, navigating the campus. Let's problem solve. We're worried about getting access to materials. Encourage your child to be involved in getting their materials while they're still in high school. Suppose the student needs something for a course that simply isn't available in an accessible format. Suppose they got a PDF file that was supposed to be accessible, but JAWS simply won't read it. What's a possible work-around?
One solution isn't talked about much anymore, but it's very important. Our kids need to know how to use human readers! There will be any number of times when they need to direct a human being to read what they have to have read. A reader is the ultimate, bottom-line work-around! Make sure your kid gets experience in directing a human reader. If you need more information, see my article, "Using Readers—The Human Variety," https://nfb.org/sites/default/files/images/nfb/publications/fr/fr35/1/fr350105.htm. For help with things like avoiding alcohol and drugs, this is no different than for any kid. We pass along our values as best we can.
Lack of Confidence: What can we do if a kid lacks confidence? What can we do when kids limit themselves? We can bring them to a convention or put them in some other situation where blind kids are being active and involved. This exposure can help your child raise their own expectations. Then we can make sure they get the skills training they need to accomplish tasks. Once you're competent, it's much easier to feel confident.
Through all of these discussions, we keep circling back to the idea that we need to have high expectations, to make sure our kids know how to do things, and to bring them up to be problem-solvers.
The world is waiting for your child to go out and conquer it. Get them the skills and then step back with a big smile on your face. Thank you!
NOPBC Board Meeting
by Scott McCallum
2022 Distinguished Educator of Blind Children
From the Editor: At the board meeting of the National Federation of the Blind during the 2022 NFB National Convention, Carla McQuillan presented the Distinguished Educator of Blind Children Award to Scott McCallum, Superintendent of the Washington State School for the Blind (WSSB). Mr. McCallum received a check for $1,000 and a plaque that read,
"For your skill in teaching Braille and other alternative techniques of blindness, for graciously dedicating extra time to meet the needs of your students, and for empowering them to exceed all expectations. You champion our movement, you strengthen our hopes, you share our dreams." At the annual meeting of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC); Mr. McCallum gave the following address.
I'm so honored to be named this year's Distinguished Educator of Blind Students! I'm currently the superintendent of the Washington State School for the Blind, and lest I disappoint any of you, there is absolutely no connection between the title of my presentation and what I'm about to say. Carla reached out to me a couple of weeks ago and asked me, "What's the title of your speech?" Honestly, I had no idea! I really hadn't given it much thought. In addition to being superintendent of the Washington School for the Blind, I'm also working on a doctorate in educational leadership, and I'm nearing the dissertation phase of my program. So I've been kind of busy. I wanted to think about what I bring to the table, what I can offer all of you that might be helpful. With nearly twenty-five years in the field of education of blind children under my belt, what should I say?
Before I get to say anything helpful, I thought I should share my positionality with all of you. By that I mean I want to share where I'm coming from and what colors my perspective.
I want to start by acknowledging that I enter this space with a lot of unearned privilege. My parents met in college. My father was a little older than my mother and back from fighting in the Vietnam War. They both earned teaching degrees; my father never actually taught, but my mother did. My father started his own business.
I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a teacher like my mother. I earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education with a minor in special education. Intrigued by the opportunity to learn Braille, I enrolled in a graduate school program to learn to teach blind children. I'd only learned about the program months before. I honestly had no idea what I was getting into! For whatever reason it felt like an opportunity I couldn't pass up. The truth is, I had never actually met a blind person until I enrolled in that program.
I completed the program and moved to Colorado with a plan to spend a year there and establish residency so I could go back to school at the University of Northern Colorado and earn a master's degree in orientation and mobility. I fell in love with O&M with the intro to O&M class I had in my TVI program. But things didn't go quite as planned. A snowboarding accident resulted in a broken arm. It forced me to get a job and recalculate.
I moved to Eugene, Oregon, and became an itinerant teacher of blind children. We had a great crew of professionals there who were extremely committed to the students and families we served. We worked with children from birth to twenty-one in a variety of settings. My very first Braille student happened to enroll in a preschool at a local Montessori program owned and managed by Carla McQuillan. Some of you may know her through the National Federation of the Blind. Carla was the boss.
Though Carla wasn't directly involved with this student, she was a powerful role model for the parents and other family members, and for me as well. I have no doubt that this one fairly insignificant and somewhat peripheral detail in this young boy's life set a tone of possibility and hope that resulted in the high expectations through which he thrived and achieved.
The opportunity to continue teaching while taking summer and online classes to earn my master's degree in O&M came shortly into my teaching career. It wasn't long before I was working as an itinerant teacher and O&M specialist. The lens of O&M provided yet another perspective into the lives of my students, and I loved my job even more.
I continued teaching for many years, and I never expected to do anything different. Being a teacher and O&M specialist for such a range of students was complex and challenging work. I loved the continued learning that was required for the students and families I served.
My students, their families, and I enjoyed the benefits of a supportive administration and ample resources to pursue a variety of options and opportunities. We were able to address identified gaps in services and supports that our students and families experienced. The longer I taught the more opportunities I had to practice leadership at the regional and state levels.
One day my boss called me into her office to tell me two things. She said, "Scott, I plan to retire fairly soon, and I think you should consider earning your initial administrator license and following in my footsteps." I was pretty flattered, but honestly, I wasn't very excited about it. I loved being a teacher, and I'd never contemplated a move into administration. If any of you are involved in education, you know there's a bit of an us-versus-them mentality.
My wife was also a teacher at the time (she was a special-education teacher in a middle school). On the exact same day that I had that conversation with my boss, she was tapped by her boss for the exact same reason! And she was really excited about it!
I went home that day and told my wife what my boss had said, and she told me what her boss had said. We decided that it was probably in both of our best interests to go through the administrative program together and see what happened next.
In 2009 the Oregon legislature passed a bill that effectively closed the Oregon School for the Blind and created a fund to provide additional support services for blind children. In 2010 I was hired to lead the implementation of that bill. I led a team of teachers and O&M specialists serving blind students across a four-county region in northwest Oregon. By this time in my career I had a pretty good understanding of what it meant to be a strong service-providing entity, but I had no idea what I was getting into with the implementation of this bill language. It was a horrible situation! Our school had been around for well over a hundred years.
We made lemonade out of lemons. With the closing of the school for the blind, we expanded opportunities for blind and low-vision children in Oregon. We created a system through which the regional programs and school districts were provided access to additional funding. This funding helped provide and enhance supports and services available to blind children. I felt it was too much responsibility for me to figure all of this out, so I established an advisory committee. It included the NFB, the American Council of the Blind, and parents of blind children, as well as many other stakeholder representatives. All of your voices matter, and they should matter all the time. We increased the opportunities and options for blind and low-vision children in Oregon to include a statewide track meet, a state goalball tournament, and a Paralympic experience that was led by accomplished blind athletes. We offered regional summer programs that focused on those often neglected and marginalized components of the Expanded Core Curriculum, and we provided additional training and resources for teachers and other service providers.
One of our more significant efforts included being a part of our state's objective to create the nation's first online adapted state assessment that is accessible to Braille readers. Through that effort every student who was learning and/or reading Braille in Oregon was provided with a forty-cell refreshable Braille display, an updated JAWS screen reader, a tactile graphics embosser, and Braille translation software—and I mean every student! Our effort also led to an assessment system that was later adopted by the National Assessment Consortium and used in many states throughout the country.
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of standardized assessments. However, because of this effort connected to assessment, blind students in Oregon began to receive more technology-focused supports and services at an earlier age than ever before. All students, sighted or blind, were expected to take online assessments in language arts and math, beginning in the third grade. We made sure that every kid, including first-graders and kindergarteners, had access to that technology.
Another significant effort involved establishing a relationship with the Washington State School for the Blind as a placement option for Oregon students who could benefit from that intensive level of support. To this day WSSB programs welcome students from Oregon.
I loved this job! I got the nickname Santa Claus, because in many ways I was able to take the concern over cost completely off the table. When I started in that role I was provided $5.8 million from the legislature to meet all the needs of blind children in Oregon. This allowed the focus of IEP teams and school districts throughout Oregon to remain where it should be, on meeting the needs of the students and providing a free and appropriate public education.
I honestly had no plans for moving on. It's pretty nice when you're Santa Claus! But when the WSSB superintendent of thirty years announced his retirement, the recruiting firm that had been hired by the Washington Governor's Office included me in its outreach efforts. Emily Coleman is here, and Emily Coleman is superintendent of the Texas School for the Blind. She's partly responsible for getting me to the school. I was at the annual meeting of the American Printing House for the Blind, and Emily and the principal of the school came and tried to recruit me. One thing led to another, and I was ultimately selected from a national pool to be the eleventh superintendent of the Washington State School for the Blind since it was established in 1886.
In June 2016 I started in my role of superintendent at the Washington State School for the Blind. Once again I really didn't know what I was getting into! WSSB is both a state agency and a public school. Though our history is that of a residential school for the blind, we're so much more! We have a significant range of programs, services, and supports for blind children in Washington and beyond.
I didn't realize the full extent of this opportunity when I started in the role. When I first considered applying for the job and met with the former superintendent, he described the role as that of being a reality dreamer. He suggested that we, at WSSB, have the opportunity to identify and address barriers and challenges faced by the families we serve. While we have to deal with the bureaucracy of a government agency, we have access to extensive resources and supports. We've benefited from a very supportive governor and legislature.
In my new position I became part of a national group of, in most cases, like-minded individuals from across the country. On Tuesday, President Riccobono told this group, "We make a difference by working together." That couldn't be more true! That idea has served as a constant throughout my career. I often quote Helen Keller where she says, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." That has become something of a mantra for us at the Washington State School for the Blind. I alone as a teacher have not accomplished much, but through our many collaborative efforts I have been able to positively impact change. We have so many partners in this work! I just finished my sixth year at WSSB. We have an amazing staff and a wonderful and vast array of partners to do this work with us.
Why do I tell you all this? I suppose so you will trust me, and in other ways so that you will give my next point some attention and thought. When I think back on those twenty-something years I spent as an itinerant teacher, O&M instructor, regional coordinator, and state grant administrator, and now as superintendent, some things remain consistent. The power of high expectations, positive relationships and community, and access to a variety of options, opportunities, and information are critical. I've worked with a lot of students and families over the years, and I've noticed that one of the most impactful and important elements of success are high expectations. Obviously I emphasize this because it's important to all of you to maintain those high expectations for your children. But just as important as having high expectations for your child is the fact that you should have high expectations for others, those in the education community—your child's teachers and mentors and the options and opportunities that they provide or should be providing. To this end it's also important for you and your child to meet regularly and engage with blind role models. The fact that you are here says a lot.
Most of the professionals in this space are extremely committed to your child's success. I encourage you to build strong working relationships with your child's education service providers. Have open and honest conversations with them about the hopes and dreams that you and your child have for their future. Seek out a community of support.
NFB is a perfect example of one of those options, and I commend you all for being here. You, my friends, are the super-stars! You and your child will undoubtedly benefit from this wonderful opportunity, and I hope you will consider staying engaged at the local and national level.
If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I'd recommend that every family engage with an organization like the NFB. If you have the opportunity, please share the benefits you and your child realized through this opportunity with other parents. Not everybody has been fortunate enough to get here.
Blindness in children is considered a low-incidence disability, impacting fewer than 1 percent of the overall population. An unfortunate aspect of that fact is that it leads to what I call low-incidence awareness of appropriate options, opportunities, access, and information. This leads me to my final suggestion. I encourage all of you to connect with your state or regional school for the blind, regardless of whether your child has any interest in enrollment. Like WSSB, many if not most of these schools provide a significant range of options, opportunities, access, and information. Many of our programs and services are specifically designed to target the needs of children who don't attend our schools. Largely due to that low-incidence nature, keeping track of what's available for you and your child can be daunting, downright overwhelming. It's likely that the school for the blind is an entity that doesn't just provide a range of options; it is also aware of the many opportunities that are provided by other schools. Schools for the blind can be another option for you when you're seeking a community.
I always love observing the students and family members and other partners when they connect at our annual track and field events on campus. It's an incredibly empowering event! Finding that community where you feel like you belong, where you are respected, and where you can form relationships with others is important for your child and for you. A school for the blind may turn out to be that space.
The impact of having high expectations is undeniable. One of the best ways of informing your expectations, as President Riccobono said on Tuesday, is to surround yourself with that community. Organizations like NFB provide a rich and robust opportunity to surround yourself with this community. There are other options to consider adding to your toolbox, and one of those may be your local or regional school for the blind. Get to know them and learn what they have to offer. If nothing else, they may fill that space that serves as a hub of information and access. It takes a village, and I'm honored to be a contributing member of our community. Together we can change this world for the better and give everyone a chance to live their best life.
by Carla Keirns
The 2022 Annual Business Meeting of the NOPBC Board was held on Thursday, July 7, 2022. Two to three dozen NOPBC members were in attendance, but we did not take the time to verify accurate numbers because all of our votes (by voice) were unanimous.
This year several members left the board, and we are pleased to recognize them for all the work they contributed over the years. Our departing board members are Carlton Anne Cook Walker, Sarah Erb, Donna Genelin, and Melissa Riccobono. We thanked each of them, and let them know that we are grateful for their years of dedicated service. We reminded them that we are a family, and no one ever really leaves.
At the NOPBC's Annual Meeting, held July 7, 2022, the following individuals were elected to serve two-year terms on the Executive Board:
Carla Keirns, President
Penny Duffy, First Vice President
Casey West Robertson, Second Vice President
Carol Castellano, Secretary
Sandra Oliver, Treasurer
In addition, the following individuals were elected to one-year board positions:
Jackie Anderson
Amira Assad-Lucas
Cindy Champagne
Emily Gindlesperger
Jeanette Jones
Sarah Kassim
Maura Kutnyak
Cassie McKinney
Tabby Mitchell
Ashleigh Moon
General Sessions
by Deena Lambert
Introduction by Mark Riccobono: We have a member who has been building a career at NASA and also in her own life. She and I came into the Federation at a similar time, so it's been a joy to observe her journey and her strength in applying the Federation philosophy. She is truly an example of what thousands of blind people do in this movement on a daily basis. Here from Maryland to talk to us about her journey is Deena Lambert.
A few months back President Riccobono reached out to me and said, "Hey, are you interested in sharing part of your story?" I was like, "Who, me? What part of the story do you want me to share—the part where I have more gray hairs than I had three years ago? Or that story about my girls on New Year's Eve with a few mimosas in us decorating our vision boards, but failing to include a whole pandemic where we would be stretched and tested beyond our wildest dreams and fears? Or the part that says I would have to dig down deep in my soul for all the courage I would need to pursue my dreams of working in the aerospace industry and becoming a mom, even if it meant there was failure and that I would be walking much of that journey alone?" He said, "Yes, all of it." I said, "Okay, say less!"
Twenty years ago almost to the day I introduced myself at the 2002 Louisville Convention as an NFB scholarship finalist. I was excited, I was nervous, I was hopeful because I saw and heard so many things at that convention! I met businessmen and women, engineers, parents, and students. I went to the parties—all of the parties! Some of us are just waking up now from those parties! Basically, I experienced a microcosm of our society as a whole. Everyone was there.
As someone who is twenty years older, with a few more gray hairs and hopefully some wisdom to share, I'd like to take a few moments with you to have a conversation. Mark said talking to you would be like talking to family.
There's a saying: "Teach the young early what we have learned late." I hope that some of you will gain something that is helpful and challenging, but that will feel real, which is a part of my story. Even though I am the one standing here before you with this honor, hundreds, even thousands of our Federation family members are in the room and in our affiliates who can share wisdom and insight. That wisdom could positively shift the trajectory in your life as an individual toward living out the version of your life that you deeply desire, even if you haven't realized it yet. Two-and-a-half years of living in a pandemic have forced us to shorten our time horizon, meaning that we have to place more urgency on the decisions and actions we take.
I can only imagine what the original NFB founders and leaders faced when they formed this organization that would provide strength, unity, and community to blind people who were fighting just for the right simply to live and attain self-determination. I grew up in a home where there was absolutely no doubt that my mom and dad loved me deeply. But as a young adult, I realized a sense of urgency to finding that sense of confidence to pursue my dreams and make my own decisions. It wasn't just about going to college and picking a degree. It was something more basic, like choosing what I wanted to wear or doing my own hair as a sixteen-year-old. It was even about choosing to use a white cane without my mama's disapproval and fear or shame about what she would say. Building that confidence did not come from just one instance. It took understanding that, while I would survive and likely even earn a degree, I might not seize that gift of freedom and self-agency that you can observe in so many people here. I would likely end up living a life where others would make decisions for me.
Then I attended a voc rehab transitions seminar in Arkansas and met a ragtag bunch of staff from the Louisiana Center for the Blind (LCB). I was shook! A few weeks later Joanne Wilson, with all of her gusto, helped me navigate a conversation with my parents that led to me attending LCB. That simple phone call was the Federation in motion. The core values of the NFB leaders were fully alive in that conversation and in subsequent conversations during my brief time at LCB.
When you get that feeling in your gut that says there is more for you, don't wait! Don’t second-guess yourself! Do not short-change yourself or the process of training.
You may have noticed that I said I was a student at LCB for a short period of time. I left LCB after only eight weeks of training to go off to college. Later I realized that I had indeed short-changed the training and mentorship I needed. Even though attending a training center is not the only way to gain confidence and independence, there is something about the process and the method, the positive philosophy about blindness in structured discovery that is potent and well measured.
I went off to college as an electrical engineering student at the University of Arkansas. My head was full of knowledge but short on wisdom. For example, a few blind freshmen—we had our own little crew—found that the laundry facilities were not fully accessible. When we raised this issue to university leadership, the university offered for the university's housekeeping staff to do our laundry for us! Now, to the seventeen-year-old version of me, that seemed like a victory! But even my short time at LCB helped me identify the ugly, sinking feeling that this was perpetuating lower expectations of the blind, and that it needed to stop. I share this story with a bit of embarrassment—I haven't told it to anyone before.
We presented a tangible example of the power that can be wielded by a collection of blind people. But wisdom would have said, "Are you for real? Are you kidding me?" We had won the battle of making the university do something, anything. But we were well on our way to losing the war on misconceptions and poor beliefs about the capabilities of the blind.
What impression did that one housekeeping staff member have when she had to deliver multiple loads of laundry to the blind students? Maybe she would share with her family what she had to do to help the blind students. It wasn't right.
I did eventually learn to do my own laundry, and I went on to complete my degree. After graduation I encountered rejection after rejection when I applied for jobs. I had to shift gears and get creative. I started attending regional and national conferences of organizations such as the Society of Black Engineers, Microsoft, and others. I got assistance from voc rehab and a small grant from my university, and I used my own personal funds from work-study jobs. This was called self-investment. I broadened my mentor base, not only with academic advisors but with experienced professionals from my Greek organization, Delta Sigma Theta Incorporated, and my frat, Alpha Phi Alpha. I drew upon my local community of sighted and blind leaders who I could learn from.
Finally, almost a year after graduation, I received the call I had dreamed of. It was NASA calling!
Fast forward to today. I am now the DIA lead for NASA'S early-stage innovations and partnerships. It's a functional leadership position within a $350-million-dollar portfolio. We are tasked with identifying, promoting, and advancing the transformational space technology that helps NASA achieve its on-earth and long-duration missions. We are the widest and lowest entry point into NASAs space technology readiness level, or TRL. With over seven hundred funding opportunities, we are the most outward-facing technical component NASA has, with funding vehicles that reach small businesses, researchers, citizens, and students.
Fifteen years ago, probably more, I remember hearing hesitations as to why the NFB was funding and moving out on the Blind Driver Challenge. At the time it did seem a little farfetched. But as I review proposals and engage in topic-specific technology research opportunities outside of blindness, I realize that what the NFB has been doing is the first step toward radical innovation. We may not see all of the rewards and benefits right now. However, I am confident that we will see them in the near future with spinoff technology and techniques that we will advance with more innovation.
Right now I want to make you aware of a pilot program that we just started, targeting students, entrepreneurs, and researchers who have an idea and need some support to bring it to market. It's our Innovation Corps or I-Corps Pilot. We will provide ten thousand dollars to applicants coming in. We'll offer technical assistance in order to accelerate your idea, and we'll help you build the network you need to move on toward larger funding tiers, possibly to the tune of four hundred thousand dollars! I would like to see more people in this room and people on the scholarship winner list as applicants for our funding opportunities.
I want to close with a personal experience. Many of you may remember that I wanted to be a mom. After much thought, prayer, and skepticism, I landed on one question. Would I be happy with how I lived my life and the decisions that I made if I did not pursue this dream? With the support of my chosen community and my family within the NFB, I asked, "Can I choose to say yes to this life I want?"
This question was specific to my choice to become a single mom, but it has applications elsewhere. For you in the audience this question may hit home in other ways, whether it is about employment, education, relationships. Many people outside the adoption community, which is where I chose to pursue motherhood, may not know that in private adoption the expectant mom who is voluntarily choosing to place her child is offered an opportunity to choose the family she wants. The sixteen-year-old me would have said, "Why would she choose me? I am blind." The version of myself at that time didn't have many blindness or independence skills. Why would any expectant mom choose me for one of the biggest and most permanent decisions in her life? But the thirty-seven-year-old me was bold enough to say, "Why not?"
I've observed in myself over and over again, and sometimes in the blind community at large, that we can easily talk ourselves out of opportunities and choices. It happens when we listen to the lingering voices of doubts and misconceptions. I dare each of us to say, "Why not me?" and have the actions and decisions that reflect that energy. "Why not me?"
Let me go back to that ripple effect I mentioned earlier. Indeed, it came back full circle. To be approved to become an adoptive mom, I had to pass a home study test with a licensed social worker. Let's call it the white glove test. It covers all—and I mean all!—areas of your life. My fear of rejection drove me to sign up for courses that were above and beyond my agency's requirements for prospective families. After one frantic call the social worker said, "Deena, please stop! For one, you're causing too much paperwork. These courses are way too expensive. I know that you are quite capable of being a well-rounded and safe mother." After she completed her report (of course, she couldn't tell me what she was thinking while she was writing it), I said, "How did you know?" She shared that she had observed multiple blind people raising families, managing classrooms, and going about their lives with dignity, respectability, and grace. That was enough for her. So if you are one of those blind people she observed, I want to say thank you!
I leave you with the charge to feel empowered, knowing that you have influence in positively shifting not only your life as a blind person but the lives of others whose names you may never even know. Thank you so much!
by Jack Chen
Introduction by Mark Riccobono: The presenter for this item is a blind person who is using his life experience to raise expectations for all blind people. He is a blind person who is pursuing his dreams in many ways. One way he has raised expectations in his own life is by riding a bike from coast to coast. He has committed to using his story to bring attention to the underemployment issue that exists for the blind community and the low expectations that are at the root of our underemployment) We got to know him virtually during the pandemic, so it's great to have him here in person at this convention.
I first got to meet him in person a couple of months ago at our national office. I got to meet his whole family. Here to talk to us about his experience and the work we've done together is Jack Chen.
When I was growing up people didn't look at me like they do today. I am Chinese American, and my extended family lives in Taiwan. My brother and I both are visually impaired. When we were growing up our relatives in Taiwan wrote us off. They didn't know what to do with us. They had no experience with people who are blind or have low vision. I want to tell you a bit of my story, but it is really with the help of other people that I've been able to do what I have done in my life. I want to thank my wife and my four kids, and also my God whom I serve.
New Orleans is a city of resilience. You may not know, but there was a fire here in 1788 that threatened to wipe New Orleans off the map. They started to build the city back up, and then, six years later, in 1794, another fire came and threatened to wipe New Orleans off the map again.
During the Civil War political unrest and daily torchings again threatened the city. Then came Hurricane Betsy in the 1960s, Katrina in 2005, and most recently, Ida—that one-two punch! They thought they could take New Orleans down, but they couldn't. New Orleans is a cultural icon in our country. Everyone knows New Orleans for great music and great food.
New Orleans is a city of resilience, and for me this has been a powerful homecoming. I was here thirty-one years ago. I came to New Orleans for a cornea transplant. I went to Louisiana State University Eye and Ear Hospital, and as I flew here from New Jersey, I remember seeing the blue sky above and the white clouds below. I thought to myself, How much more will I see on the way back? They told me I would be able to read a newspaper! I would be able to go shopping and see the price on a box of cereal!
This happened during my sophomore year in high school. I had been to New Orleans many times in the past before 1991 for other cornea transplants that didn't go well. This time, though, they said they had developed DNA technology that would help them find a tissue donor that my body would not reject.
When I came out of the surgery they had put a big thick gauze patch over my eye and taped it up tight. I sat in my bed for a couple of days before I went to the examination room. I remember sitting on a big hard plastic chair. I remember the doctors coming over and peeling off one layer of bandages. My mom and the doctors were in the room. Nobody moved. I was puzzled; I wondered, What's going on? Impatient as I was, I touched my face, and when I felt the skin of my eyelid, I knew something was very wrong. I couldn't see anything. I had become totally blind.
Despite the sweltering weather outside I felt like someone took a bucket of ice and poured it to the deepest reaches of my soul. I was without hope. I was completely fearful about what the future was going to be. I imagined myself walking down a long hallway, and a door on the left was slamming, and a door on the right was closing, and there were closing doors behind me and above me and below me. What could I do but put one foot in front of the other? The alternative was terrifying—to sit down and do nothing.
So I put one foot in front of the other.
Before I went to New Orleans I was studying for my SATs. To block out the fear, I went back to study for my SATs when I returned home. I put one foot in front of the other, not knowing what was to come. I was a mediocre Braille reader at the time, I have to admit, but I dug hard into my studies. Does anyone here remember the 3,500-word Barron's SAT book? I decided to memorize the whole thing. (That's not a testament to my ability, but to my pigheadedness!) The SATs were in three months, and I was going to give it all I had.
I was frightened to go back to school. I had always gotten around with my limited eyesight, and navigating the school with a cane was frightening to me. Most of my friends wouldn't hang out with me anymore. Seeing another young person go through something so difficult was hard for them, and they didn't know how to react. Their fear left me alone.
I was on the wrestling team as a sophomore, and I jumped back into wrestling. If my record were to predict my future success, it would be one win and a whole lot of losses.
In December of that year my SAT results came back. My parents opened the envelope for me, and I was shocked. I had scored just ten points lower than my brother, who was off at his freshman year at Harvard. I could not believe what was happening!
At the end of the wrestling season, past results were not a predictor of future success. I wound up with a winning record for wrestling at Districts. But the biggest test of all was coming. My friend Oliver and my friend Ryan and I walked into the guidance counsellor's office for that fateful call to the college admissions office to find out whether you got in. Only one person from my school each year had ever gotten into Harvard. When Oliver got on the phone he whooped and hollered and said he had gotten in. I was so happy for him, but I was fearful for myself. Then I got on the phone and managed to stammer out my name. I heard, "Mr. Chen, you have been accepted to Harvard!"
I felt as though my whole future had been squeezed into a really tight package. I had cut off the zip tie, and it was exploding. My future had seemed really dark, but now it started to have some light and some life. It was kind of like what I said about New Orleans, how it rose from the ashes again and again.
Harvard wasn't easy. I only had about 20 percent of the reading materials I needed. Going to class was hard. It was like putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. I had some lectures and some readings, but that was the easy stuff. That was like the edge pieces and the corner pieces. But you had to extrapolate all the stuff in the middle. You had to guess. Sometimes you were right, and sometimes you were wrong. But I did get through, and I managed to graduate.
I graduated with a computer science degree, and I went to work for a startup building home automation technology, way before the internet was even a term. They asked me to manage the data center at the company, but the operating system for those sophisticated pieces of equipment wasn't accessible, and I couldn't read what was going on. I couldn't see the lights on the front of the machine to know whether I had to replace the hard drives.
At the same time they also asked me to help design the second generation of their product. In doing so I helped them build a patent portfolio. I emerged from the company a few years later with my name as a listed inventor on over forty patents.
I got a little tired of computers and jumped into law. I went to law school at night and graduated, and then I went to take the bar exam. The National Conference of Bar Examiners told me, "Mr. Chen, you're not going to be allowed to use a computer to take the test. We'll give you a cassette tape, and you can take the exam on tape." It was like taking a two-hundred-page exam on a one-line teleprompter! I did pass, in New York and New Jersey.
I've been blessed to work on so many things in my lifetime. I've had so many experiences! I have the most wonderful family ever. I've had the chance to work as product counsel for Google for over ten years. I worked as a member of the public policy team as a product manager for Chrome LS. For the past year and a half, I've had the opportunity to support the product team that builds the technology that supports 99 percent of Facebook's revenue. I've run marathons and Iron Mans, and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Do I share all these things to tell you how great I am, or to inspire you, to show you that blind people can do anything? No, not really.
Let me tell you a story. Five weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to my twenty-fifth college reunion at Harvard. I was standing in Harvard Yard having lunch one day, and my friend Edwin Lin came up to me. He told me, "Jack, I have one big regret from college. I couldn't help you more." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Remember, you and I were roommates for one summer. You had to take Differential Equations, a math class. I volunteered to go with you to class and help you understand what was going on on the board. I went with you that first day, and the teacher was going so fast and was putting so many things in the equations up on the board that I couldn't help you. It was impossible."
He watched me struggle and suffer for the next three years, but he did see me graduate with honors. Edwin is now a senior executive at City Group, and he told me this story. "I had the opportunity to interview a blind person for my group." He said that when he was about to extend the offer letter, his coworkers told him, "You must be crazy! Do you think a blind person can be successful at an organization like ours?" And Edwin said, "Yes, he can. I know, because I've seen it done before."
That sentiment inspired me and my cofounder, Dan Berlin, to create a movie about blindness and success. Here's the trailer.
[The trailer introduced the film "Surpassing Sight," with vignettes of Jack Chen, Dan Berlin, and other successful blind people. It presents the idea of a bike ride across America.]
Race Across America was a 3,100-mile cycling race from San Diego to Annapolis, crossing thirteen states and three mountain ranges and including 175,000 feet of elevation gain. Put forty people into two 400-square-foot RVs, give them no sleep, make them work sixteen hours a day, bring eight cyclists from one country to another—nothing can go wrong. Right? Actually that trip was the toughest thing I've ever done in my life by far!
On the second day of the race, I got a calf cramp. Who gets a calf cramp on the second day of a nine-day race? What was I going to do? If I dropped out, our chances of finishing would be less than 30 percent.
Then I got an infection in my toe. The crew chief had to go online to YouTube to watch a video on how to do minor surgery to lance somebody's toe. I got yelled at by a number of people on my team for something I said. We had to stop the race and have a come-to-Jesus moment because it threatened to tear the whole team apart!
Like I said, you work sixteen hours a day and shove people into a tight confined space, and nothing will go wrong . . .
In the movie my cofounder, Dan Berlin, said, "It's in the deepest struggles that you will find the vitality of life." My friend Edwin personally watched me struggle, and he watched me find victory and rise from the ashes. The thing that really impacted me and Dan was the fact that some statistics say that 70 percent of college-educated blind people in America can't find a job. Dan and I wouldn't stand for that! Dan was the CEO of his own corporation, a very successful vanilla extract company that produced 75 percent of the vanilla extract in our country. I was an attorney working for Google, having been transferred over to Facebook later on. The two of us said, "We have to do something about this."
When you think about Edwin, when you think about what other people see in us, when they see us becoming victorious and surmounting challenges, we tell our own stories. We wanted to tell our own story, but we could only do it on a one-on-one basis. I know each of you does that as well. We wanted to solve this problem at scale. We said, "We're going to take on the toughest cycling race in the world, and we're going to do it as blind professionals. We want to tell a story of success, both on and off the bike." We wanted every person, every hiring manager, and every chief executive of every corporation in America to see our story and have that Edwin experience. We wanted every fully sighted person in the world to say, "Yes, he can, because I know. I've seen it done before."
To close, I ask each of you to come on this journey with us, to partner with us. First of all, we're incredibly honored that the National Federation of the Blind has partnered with us as an executive producer of this film, and that we'll have the worldwide premier at this convention. Each of you is invited. It will be shown at an independent theater at 333 Canal Street, on the big screen.
I want each of you in this room and each of you online to tell people about this film. When the full release comes out, I want everybody to see it. Please help us spread the word!
For the folks in the room who are blind or have low vision, sometimes it feels like the doors are going to be slammed in your face. I've had that experience myself. You have no idea where things are going to go. But when we face those challenges together and we emerge victorious, you know you lift me up. I'll continue to do the same, battling through challenges; I hope I'll lift you up as well. Together let's create more Edwin Lins in this world, people who can say, "Yes they can, because I've seen it done before." Together we're going to take the 70 percent unemployment rate and knock it down to 7 percent or lower!
by Peggy Chong
Introduction by Mark Riccobono: Peggy Chong is a longtime Federationist. Some of you have worked alongside her in the movement for decades, while others may simply know her for the work she has done as the Blind History Lady. In 2018 we awarded her efforts with one of our Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards for her work to preserve the stories of people who have contributed to our shared movement.
Earlier in this convention I called each and every one of us to action around the museum of the blind people's movement. She has been helping us with the feasibility work and talking with us about how we collect stories. I am grateful to her for what she has done to champion and preserve the stories of blind people and how those blind people have come together to create a movement. Here to share the importance of our stories is the Blind History Lady, Peggy Chong!
To own our own story! To tell our own story! That is so powerful, and it is so rare.
If you go on the Internet, if you go to a library, if you go to a state archive and ask for the information on blindness, you get governmental reports, university studies, and home teacher reports. They tell just a small portion of the lives of blind people, and mostly they put it in a not favorable light.
The Jacobus tenBroek Library has a lot of information, but it's a lot of puzzle pieces. When you go to state archives and pull reports on the home for the blind or the asylum for the blind, you have a puzzle with corners and edges. Our history is a puzzle, and it has a lot of missing pieces. It's up to us to find those pieces. We are up to the task. We have old records in our files, in our basements, in our closets. We have the children of our blind ancestors who have gone on. They probably have books and letters, diaries and scrapbooks. We should gather them up and collect them. We might not really understand what is in those puzzle pieces that we're bringing to the Jacobus tenBroek Library, the basis for telling the story of our movement. But we will have other pieces to go with it.
Let me tell you some about my gathering of puzzle pieces. About forty years ago I got the opportunity to clean out the files at the home for the blind in Minnesota. It was a treasure trove of papers—news clippings, letters, meeting minutes, books. We were moving into much smaller spaces. Most of it had to go. I tell you, I regret today every piece of paper I threw away!
When I was going through those letters and artifacts, every once in a while I'd stop and read something. I read a letter that really made me say, "Whoa, what have we got here?" It talked about meeting with our blind congressman over the Robinsville. I didn't know what the Robinsville was, and I kept looking for that blind congressman, but he wasn't there. So I had a puzzle piece that needed a whole bunch of pieces to go around it. I took that puzzle piece and set it aside.
I found another puzzle piece from the 1920s, again regarding the Robinsville. They were reaching out to a blind man in Nebraska named F. Edgecombe, asking that he help, that he use his influence to help with the Robinsville. How did this blind guy, F. Edgecombe, have influence? Who was he? I set that puzzle piece aside.
I found out that the congressman was Thomas David Shaw, who went on to the US Senate and tried several times to introduce legislation that had to do with blindness. Frank Edgecombe was the blind man from Geneva, Nebraska. He set up a newspaper empire—and by the way, his great-grandchildren are still running it today. He left a long legacy.
The reason they asked Frank Edgecombe to help was because he was involved in the national Republican Party, and he had an opportunity to talk to Republicans across the country.
I'm digging around in the 1930s information, and I come across correspondence regarding the Pennsylvania affiliate, or what would become an affiliate soon. They had sent a blind man to Congress named Matthew Dunn. The blind people sent him to Congress because there were a lot of changes going on. The Social Security program was being developed, and it was going to impact blind people. They thought blind persons should have some say in how it was developed. The same was true with the federalization of rehabilitation. So I learned about Matthew Dunn. I set those puzzle pieces aside.
I took all my puzzle pieces, and I moved to Iowa. In Iowa I found a whole bunch of puzzle pieces. Those puzzle pieces were pretty well filled in from about 1860 to 1930. They highlighted how graduates of the Iowa College for the Blind could go to North Dakota, which was way out west at the time, and they could get teaching positions because no one wanted to go to North Dakota to teach. But as more people went to North Dakota, and it wasn't just prairie land anymore, and there were actually towns with houses and churches and schools, more sighted folks went who had qualifications to teach. Pretty soon the blind teachers' contracts were not renewed. They went off to other occupations. They owned their own businesses, built houses, became musicians. There was a graduate of the Iowa College for the Blind who went off to law school. She graduated in 1890 and became one of the first female attorneys in the country.
I picked up all my puzzle pieces, and I moved to New Mexico. I found a whole bunch of puzzle pieces surrounding Pauline Gomez and Albert Gonzales. Pauline Gomez graduated from college in the 1940s. She wanted to be a teacher. She was well qualified, but no one would hire her. Pauline decided if no one would hire her, she'd hire herself. Out of the back of her home, she opened the very first kindergarten in the state of New Mexico. Through her family connections she had the opportunity to educate young children from some of the most prominent families in Santa Fe.
When New Mexico wanted to have a kindergarten program for all of the five-year-olds in the state, they went to Pauline. Pauline pretty much wrote the curriculum for the first kindergarten classes that were ever taught in New Mexico. She had an impact on who would be hired, what the qualifications were for teachers, how the classrooms should be set up, and so on. Pauline built the framework for the kindergartens of New Mexico.
Albert Gonzales was blind from his youth. He served in the state legislature in the 1940s. He didn't really know any other blind guys, but he knew times were not good for blind guys in New Mexico. He tried to have legislation passed for a commission for the blind, even brought out Helen Keller, but it went nowhere.
Albert Gonzales was a lawyer, and he enjoyed being a lawyer. However, his children tell me that he didn't usually get paid in greenbacks. He got paid in chickens and chilies, fruits, vegetables, occasionally a piece of land, and lots of potatoes. When he did get paid he invested his money in land, buildings, and businesses that allowed his law practice to continue until his death.
Both Pauline Gomez and Albert Gonzales left correspondence, news articles, and a state newsletter. They left the state newsletter behind to tell us a lot more about themselves and the things they were doing. They also shared in those papers what some other blind folks were doing. Again, more puzzle pieces to find.
I picked up my puzzle pieces, and I moved to Colorado. In the basement of the CCB were all sorts of puzzle pieces. Unfortunately, a lot of them were handwritten, dating back to about 1915, so they were not very accessible. However, we're nearly finished with our preservation of historical documents, and we have had them digitized and transcribed into accessible files. Pretty soon any person who wants to go to internet libraries will be able to access the history of the movement of blind people in Colorado.
In those files there was a big push all across the state by five individuals who had put together a relief act for the blind. The act would provide for consistent funding for blind people who were on welfare, and it also set the foundation for the Commission for the Blind. The records told us more about two of those people, and I found that one of them was a state representative.
James Downing was in the legislature. He had been a very successful attorney working for the mining companies up in Aspen. He made a lot of money. He went blind around 1910, and all his money could not buy him any services, any training, any education on how to be a blind person. He decided he would go to the state legislature and create those laws. He didn't know what he was going to do, exactly, but then he met up with the United Workers for the Blind, which became an affiliate of the NFB in 1941, and he met Elias M. Ammons. I thought, that name sounds awfully familiar! There's Ammons Way and Ammons Drive, Ammons this and that all over Colorado! There's got to be a reason that man is famous.
When I checked him out, I found that Elias M. Ammons was governor of Colorado from 1913 to 1915. Was there a blind governor? More puzzle pieces!
In my research beyond our files I found that Elias M. Ammons served in the State House and in the State Senate. He didn't identify as a blind person. Back then if you were blind it meant that you didn't see anything. But he used a reader to conduct his business. When he was a senator he had a reader who was appointed by the senate. He had a secretary, and sometimes he used a human guide. He wasn't a very good traveler, but he found a lot of people who helped him get where he needed to go. Sometimes they gave him information about some of the legislation he was working on. He figured that striking out on his own and facing the possibility of getting lost could be an opportunity for him to find out more about the legislation he was supporting or not supporting.
Sorry, New York!—I believe Colorado had the first blind governor in the United States! His descendants tell me that by the time he was governor Elias Ammons did not recognize people who walked into the office until they spoke to him. He definitely did not have any reading vision for at least twenty years before he became governor. He had a huge funeral that was absolutely wonderful.
There are still more pieces of the puzzles missing. Our puzzle doesn't have corner pieces. It doesn't have edges. It's a multidimensional puzzle that keeps growing and growing and growing. We have heard this week about breaking the record for the fastest person driving blindfolded. Dan Parker has contributed a lot of audio and video and written documents and artifacts to the Jacobus tenBroek Library.
Who does not remember Erik Weihenmayer? He's a generation back. He was a blind man from Colorado who was supported by the NFB, and he became the first blind man to climb Mount Everest. We have audio and video and written documents, we have artifacts from that climb. They're going to be a great part of our museum.
We don't have that grandma who tells us every Thanksgiving about how she had to walk to school uphill both ways in a snowstorm for six months of the year. We don't have a family member to tell us that story over and over again. But now we have the opportunity to have this museum where we can tell our story our way, from our point of view. We need you to collect the pieces.
We've talked about Dr. Jacob Bolotin. He was one of three blind doctors at that time in Chicago, the other two being Robert Babcock and George Dobbins. Why were there three? Why are there no blind doctors in Chicago today? These stories need to be told, because as soon as our ancestors go away, as soon as we stop doing what we're doing, society forgets. People go back to the stereotypes and the fears.
Let's all collect our puzzle pieces and bring them to the Jacobus tenBroek Library. Let's contribute them to the history of the blind movement museum and tell our story our way. Even if you're not sure who a person is, we'll find another puzzle piece to go with it. Now is the time, and we have the place!
Awards
Presented by Robin House
Introduction by Robin House: I'm proud to announce the recipient of the Blind Educator Award. I wanted to let you know that this is a significant award, and it has been announced for many years. It began in the Blind Educators Division, and it continues to recognize blind educators for their hard work, dedication, and commitment in the difficult and challenging field of education.
I want to thank the Blind Educator of the Year Committee and those who served on it. This year's committee included Melissa Riccobono, Dr. Edward Bell, Cayte Mendez, Adelmo Vigil, and Vernon Humphreys. Thank you for serving on the committee.
I want to share a quote from Albert Einstein. He said that the supreme art of the teacher is to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. This award is given annually if a suitable candidate is recognized and selected by the committee. This year we have a person who has gone above and beyond in the field of education. I want to share a little bit about his background. It is said about him that the students that he works with light up when they see him and talk to him. He is always available to put the students' needs first and let them share who they are and become all that they can be. He encourages them to do that by listening, by sharing his experiences, by teaching them. He's there always to go above and beyond to meet their needs. He has compassion and love for his students, a trait that I think he shares with many of the previous recipients of this award.
I also want to share his credentials. He holds a bachelors degree in history and social studies. He also holds a graduate degree in orientation and mobility and teacher of the visually impaired. Currently he is the associate director of Transition and Residential Programs at the Washington State School for the Blind.
They have some wonderful educators there, right?
Corey is very active in the NFB in the state of Washington. He serves on their state scholarship committee as the chairperson. He also is president of the Clark County Chapter. I am presenting him with a plaque and a check for $1,000. Let me read the inscription on the plaque. It says:
Blind Educator of the Year
National Federation of the Blind
presented to Corey Grandstaff.
In recognition of outstanding accomplishments to the teaching profession.
You enhance the present.
You inspire your colleagues.
You build the future.
July 7, 2022.
Congratulations, Corey.
COREY GRANDSTAFF: I wasn't even this nervous when I went skydiving . . . But here we go.
I'd first like to say that it's an honor to receive this award. I'd be remiss if I did not thank a few individuals in my life that have made it possible for me to sit here with you all today. First I'd like to thank my state president, Marci Carpenter, who nominated me for this award. I'm honored to call Marci a friend and a mentor in my life. So thank you, Marci!
I currently work at the Washington State School for the Blind. Basically I'm the vice president during the evening time. I want to thank my wife, Arabia; there are many nights when I'm supposed to be home for dinner or we're supposed to go on a date or we're sitting down to watch our favorite TV show, and I get that call that says I need to come back to work. Or I need to stay late to handle a situation. And she handles that all in stride, supporting me to the end, listening when I come home and share those stories about the struggles my students are having or the successes they've had, and even volunteering for my students. They love when she comes and does their hair and nails for prom! Without Arabia, I would not be standing here today.
I want to share some stories about what make me who I am. I grew up on a horse-breeding farm in Ohio. Let me tell you, the conversations we had around the dinner table were interesting. Honestly, they were embarrassing if you had friends over, especially when you invited your first girlfriend over for dinner!
I have to thank both my brothers, my sister, and my parents for teaching me that "can't" was not a word in my home. I was never told I could not do something. In fact, when I said I couldn't do something, the response I got was, "You can. You just have to find a way to do it."
So I say the same thing to my students on a daily basis. "Can't" cannot be a word that is part of their vocabulary. The world already expects that, as blind people, we can't do things.
I'm a proud alum of the Ohio State School for the Blind, and I want to talk about some teachers that influenced me as an educator. Dan was one of my teachers and he taught me that blind people can do anything we want to do. There was nothing we couldn't do, nothing that could hold us back. Another teacher I had, Jeff, was one of my sighted teachers. He always taught me to take it to the limit and always give it 110 percent.
In tenth grade I had the opportunity to attend public high school part time. During my junior year, I decided to take AP English. I can't even tell you the teacher's name, but I remember the conversation we had. We sat down one day because I was getting an F in her class, the first F of my life. And she told me, "You can go back to regular English and you can get an A, or you can sit in my class. You're going to have to work very hard, and you may get a C." What I took away from her was that she held me to the same high expectations as my peers. It was the first time in my life I had a sighted teacher in a public school who held me to those same high expectations she held for her other students.
I have one more story. It's kind of negative, but I want to share it. In graduate school, I had a teacher, we'll call him Dennis, who taught me a valuable lesson. Right before I took his class, we had a meeting. We sat down and he said these exact words to me, "Corey, no matter how well you do in my class, no matter how great of a teacher you prove to be, I'm the one who approves student teaching. I will never approve you to student teach."
What he didn't know is that when you tell us we can't do something, you just triple motivate us! We're very determined individuals.
So while this was a negative experience, it taught me to encourage my students in whatever they want to do. I believe that blind people can do anything. I hope when I get on my plane tomorrow, my pilot walks into the cockpit with their white cane tapping.
So, again, this is an honor. What even makes it more of an honor is that some of my coworkers and some of my former and current students are in the audience today. And I've even had the honor of hiring some of those former students to work for me. That was a goal of mine when I took this job. Blind people need to be employed, and I have the ability to hire, in the privileged position that I'm in.
So, educators, do not allow your students to say they can't. Encourage them in whatever their future goal is. Hold your students to high expectations, no matter what. Push them to give 110 percent, and don't hold them back.
I'd like to thank you, National Federation of the Blind, for this great honor and for the ability to continue the life that I want to live.
Presented by Cayte Mendez
CAYTE MENDEZ: Good morning, President Riccobono and members of the board. There are so many wonderful parts of convention every year, but this is one of my favorites. I was a beneficiary of this scholarship program in 2001. It's a program that the board generously agrees to maintain and continue every year. This year the board voted to make some changes that I think will make the program more about mentorship, more about finding a home in the Federation and celebrating the folks that are honored by our named scholarships, rather than worrying about what digits are before the comma. This year the scholarship class is blazing trails with the new iteration of this program, and I hope that they're as excited as I am to be a part of this work.
This program honors academic aptitude, scholastic excellence, leadership, community service, creativity, mentorship, and all of the things that we value here in the Federation. It is my privilege to introduce these thirty finalists to all of you.
I'll announce the finalists by their first name, last name, their home state, and for some of these folks they've also asked that I identify a home country, so I'll do that as well. I'll announce their school state where they're going to school, and I'll also list their vocational goal. We have three folks in the class this year who are tenBroek Fellows. Dr. Jacobus tenBroek was a founder and renowned member of our organization. We honor his memory by awarding folks who are receiving their second scholarship with tenBroek Fellowships.
Our first finalist this year is Shawn Abraham, Maryland, United States diplomat.
SHAWN ABRAHAM: Hello, everyone. It's always been my goal to fight the limiting attitudes about disability in society, and I've done this through my intense passion for fashion, serving as a resident assistant on my campus, and competing in college wrestling at the national level. Mentoring youth and helping others has always been extremely important to me in the blind community and beyond. I have a love for learning languages, a deep belief in cultural inclusion, and a strong pride in my own South Asian identity. This is why I'm focusing my education on international relations, to fight, to continue to fight the stereotypes we all face across the globe and to build a better future for everyone. So thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Nancy Aguilera, Missouri, Missouri, researcher and professor of political science.
NANCY AGUILERA: Good morning, everybody. I would say that one of my defining characteristics is determination. Determination has led me to raise two wonderful people in my life! I earned my bachelor's degree in political science and another bachelor's in psychology. And I do the everyday mundane things that people think blind people can't do. You know, even things that are challenging, like traveling alone or riding trains. You know, crazy stuff like that, right? Why do you do it? And it's like, determination—I definitely believe that without this characteristic, I would totally be a different person. And I've enjoyed every minute of being so determined. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Tasnim Alshuli is one of our tenBroek fellows this year, Arizona, Arizona, professor and consultant.
TASNIM ALSHULI: Hello, everyone, it's such an honor to be given this opportunity a second time. I'm studying for my master's in education in technology and science, and STEM in general. My goals are always around diversity, equity, and inclusion for the blind and other intersectionalities. Also, I enjoy very much planning and organizing, and being involved, hence I'm involved in various advisory boards, committees, and so on in the Federation as well as in my community. And specifically, I'm the chair of the NFB Muslims, an active member in Arizona, and I was a scholarship recipient nationally in 2018, and the recipient of a state scholarship of Arizona in 2017. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Katelyn Beresic, West Virginia, West Virginia, social worker for LGBTQ youth and disabled individuals.
KATELYN BERESIC: Thank you, everybody. I'm going to go ahead and start off by saying my pronouns are she/they and I identify as nonbinary and bisexual. I'm also on the asexual spectrum. Yes, there are LGBTQ people in West Virginia! Very shocking! I will be an upcoming freshman this year at West Virginia University. I was newly diagnosed with RP about four years ago, and since then I have worked in combination with my TVI, Megan Hoover, who works in West Virginia and Maryland, to learn more about myself. She's the main reason why I am pursuing social work, as well as advocacy, for individuals with a range of disabilities, including but not limited to visual impairments, hearing impairments, and other mobility-related disabilities. One thing that I hope to do is learn sign language in the future, and I really, really want to work in combination with LGBTQ youth, as I do know that that is a large portion that kind of gets overlooked a lot, especially coming from West Virginia, where it's just not talked about at all.
CAYTE MENDEZ: All right, thank you. Jovan Campbell, New York, New York, community education.
JOVAN: Good morning, everyone. How is everyone doing? In 2007 I went from totally sighted to totally blind, and I was totally hopeless. And in 2011, I got sepsis and ended up as a partial wheelchair user. I say all of this to say, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to go back to school. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I just had this promise to myself. And in 2021, I figured it out. How to go back to school. My arduous journey with my health led me to my major in public health, my beloved major of public health, through which I want to educate my community how to not just live, but live a life of quality. Not just quantity, but quality. So I thank you for the opportunity to meet all of you guys, meet my class of scholarship winners, and I'm honored and encouraged to just keep going, and not just keep my promise to finish this degree, but go on and get another degree and another degree. Thank you so much, guys.
CAYTE MENDEZ: All right, Justin Champagne, Louisiana, Louisiana, professor of mathematics.
JUSTIN CHAMPAGNE: Laissez les bon temps rouler, New Orleans! I'm so excited to be here in my home state of Louisiana, and I'm sure that Pam [Allen] had many protests—no, I'm kidding, I love you Pam. I'm pursuing my PhD in mathematics from LSU. And my greatest passion is to make math accessible to everyone. So, you know, math is known to be inaccessible to blind people, but the truth is, it's inaccessible to everyone. And that's a problem that I want to help solve for everybody.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Jenn Doran, Virginia, Oregon. PhD to help vulnerable communities survive climate change.
JENN DORAN: Hi, everyone. So my academic research actually involves sediment flux in the boundary layer. This is a fancy way to say I play with ocean muds. I picked my PhD advisor because he has open access books with everything we would ever need to know about climate change, but it's [usually] not accessible. In fact, climate change data is not accessible. In 2020, I found myself in a very vulnerable position as Beachy Creek Fire was not too far from me, Holiday Fire was on the south of me, and Harrisburg just set on fire, and my husband was not home. So I called my local ADA office and my local mayor, councils, all of that to see what happens if I'm an independent person living by myself, not in a group home or assisted living home, and I need to evacuate and there's nobody. Let's just say what I found there left a lot to be desired. So my goal is to work with my PhD advisor to make this data accessible so that we can be empowered to advocate for policies to mitigate the dangers of climate change that we face so that no one in our community will perish because of climate change.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Abbie Duffy, New Hampshire, New Hampshire, psychology and criminal justice.
ABIGAIL DUFFY: Hello, fellow Federationists, I'm eighteen years old, and this is my eleventh convention. My first was when I was seven years old. I'm an Alpine ski racer, and I will be skiing collegiately, and I'm also the current women's champion in three different para-Alpine disciplines, so that's a fun fact. I've been a proud Federationist for most of my life, so I'm so happy to be here today. I'd like to thank everyone that I've met along the way for helping me to get to where I am now.
CAYTE MENDEZ: This class has representatives from several countries outside of the US. The first of these is coming up next, Teresa Fabre, currently residing in Illinois, but she's originally from Mexico and going to school in Illinois, vision rehab.
TERESA FABRE: Hello, my Federation family. When I graduated from college in culinary arts in 2013, I was definitely not planning to go back to school. Then in 2016, I moved to Chicago, and I had to find a new family there, so that was a lot of fun. And that helped me be aware of the importance of having a community. And then, three years later, I lost my vision, and I decided that I wanted to go back to school because I noticed there were a lot of things that needed to be done regarding our blind and visually impaired community, but also the disability community in general. So one of my personal goals is to generate awareness within the general public about us, so we can have a conversation with them and sit with them at the table. I want them to know us, know that we are people, that we have dreams, that we have goals, that we are not lesser people, and that we deserve equality and the same opportunities as they have. So that's my passion. Thank you all.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Ethan Fung, California, California, operations management and environmental sustainability.
ETHAN FUNG: Hi, everyone, I'm sure that many of you feel that many of the world's largest businesses and corporations are environmentally draining, self-serving, and cash-hungry cows. But rather than beating a dead cow, I would like to draw your attention to the progress we have made over the last few decades. Among our most innovative companies, we have those who are putting a new emphasis on environmentally sustainable practices, which is fostering not only economic, but social benefits as well. This is why I would like to dedicate my career to helping these forward-thinking companies achieve their goal of making this world more sustainable. And I implore you to help where you can and to join together and take responsibility of your future together. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Izzi Guzman, Florida, Florida, music educator, composer, entrepreneur.
IZZI GUZMAN: Hi, everyone, she/her. I'm diagnosed with albinism, I compose and play trombone music, but most importantly, I want to ensure that students from all cultures, backgrounds, and abilities have access to music education, that music education is accessible for everybody with jazz and popular music centered in the curriculum. Because when you think about it, what's the kind of music that you grew up with and you love? Songs that you listen to on the radio. Think about it. It's jazz and popular music. Songs from R&B, funk, and pop. Those are the songs that I want to incorporate for students to learn music and fall in love with music education. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Michael Hardin, Indiana, Indiana, social work.
MICHAEL HARDIN: Hello, everyone. It's truly an honor to be here. I'd like to start by saying I'm an active member in the NFB Circle City chapter in Indianapolis. I'm a proud father and role model to three children. Prior to blindness, I worked seven years as a diesel technician. Right now I'm transitioning into a new career where I plan to work as a generalist social worker upon graduation, with the ultimate goal of starting my own practice. And I would like to leave you guys with a famous quote from Helen Keller that says, "The only thing worse than being blind is being sighted with no vision." Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Renae Hemmings, who is residing in New Jersey but is originally from Jamaica, going to school in New Jersey, psychologist and therapist.
RENAE HEMMINGS: Hello, everyone, I will be majoring in psychology at university in the fall, and I hope to become a psychologist to help people achieve mental stability and be able to function in their daily lives and to heal from past traumas.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Natasha Ishaq, New Jersey, New Jersey, and she has the longest vocational goal—paleoanthropological studies ... or law.
NATASHA ISHAQ: Hi, everybody! If I've learned anything over the last several years, it's that blindness does not have to translate to living a life of low expectations and ambitions. I've been studying paleoanthropology since my sophomore year and will shortly be taking part in my first excavation. I'm also interested in law and am starting an internship in law to get some experience in the legal field to see if it's a direction I want to go in. I'm also involved in activities on and off campus and am very fortunate to hold leadership positions in almost all of them, including a disability, accessibility, and advocacy organization. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm eternally grateful.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Hunter Kuester, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, business—brewery and kitchen owner.
HUNTER KUESTER: Good afternoon, my Federation family. I'm studying hospitality management with a minor in real estate and business. I'm a board member of Wisconsin and newly elected board member of National Association of Blind Students. But the title I hold closest to my heart is five years ago I became a member of this National Federation of the Blind. And I look forward to seeing where I can go in this organization. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: We have a number of parents in this group, including our next, Maura Kutnyak, attorney.
MAURA KUTNYAK: Good afternoon! These are the lights of my life, three children, my husband, and friends. My expression in aerial dance, finishing my study at Buffalo School of Law, and being a teaching fellow with my constitutional law professor. And serving as president of New York Parents of Blind Children, secretary of my chapter, and NFB-NEWSLINE® outreach coordinator in New York, among other things. For all of this I am tremendously grateful. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Robert Lamm, Colorado, Colorado, environmental engineer.
ROBERT LAMM: Hello, everybody. Prior to my vision loss, I was one of the youngest certified master gardeners in Colorado. After my vision loss, that led me to deciding to become an environmental engineer, to scale up desalination processes, to try to fix the water crisis in the West. Secondarily, I want to work on pollution with microplastics. Besides giving back to the world, I look forward to giving back to the blind as well, so thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Katie Lester. I do want to say our Scholarship class comes from twenty-six states, large states, small states, states that would rattle if you shook them. The person from the farthest state is Katie Lester, student, social worker, and therapist. Alaska, Alaska.
KATIE LESTER: Hello, everyone, I lost my vision in 2018 in my thirties, and various personal experiences led me to my degree to be able to counsel others who have lost their vision or have another disability who are struggling or wanting to work through and live the lives that they want. So helping them to do that, and getting more access in the education arena on the college level, or any, if I can, are my goals. Personally, I am just amazed at how quickly, and being able to remind myself through the personal experiences of everyone's help, that I'm never alone and there's always someone willing to help you and support you. I am a board member of the Alaska division of the NFB, as well as a volunteer at the Alaska Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Thank you very much.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Casey Martin, North Dakota, North Dakota, speech and language therapist.
CASEY MARTIN: Hello! My current research topic is people with disabilities' experience in the speech health care profession, and I look forward to an externship in a school for the blind this upcoming spring, as well as a clinical fellowship starting next summer. Through a number of different social science courses, one of my main philosophies is that personal autonomy and independence or freedom comes from choice, and in order to exhibit choice, we need to work on enhancing and empowering communication.
CAYTE MENDEZ: This next finalist is another one of our tenBroek Fellows. Daniel Martinez, Texas, Texas, educator of blind students.
DANIEL MARTINEZ: I was entered into the Disability Hall of Fame from the National Disability Mentoring Coalition in 2019 because of my efforts in mentoring. I value peer mentoring. At this convention I'm mentoring students from the Texas Mentoring Program, the best program in the state, and in the nation, in the NFB, led by Norma Crosby. And, well, I'm looking for mentors. I'm a student, and I can help you, and I'm connected with all of you. But I'm a new parent, so I'm looking for parents to talk to. Thank you!
CAYTE MENDEZ: Sarah Menefee, Texas, Oklahoma, registered dietitian.
SARAH MENEFEE: Hi, everyone. I will be attending the University of Tulsa next year, majoring in biology. I was recruited to row on their division I team, and I'm very excited about that, because it was one of my more important goals in life. As a rower, I have achieved two national championships. And I enjoy hobbies such as ceramics, hiking, biking, swimming, just generally being outdoors, and I'm so excited to be here this week. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Selene Monjarez, Tennessee, Connecticut, mental health therapist.
SELENE MONJAREZ: I was the only student at my school to pass all my state dual credit exams. They're useless now because I'm studying out of state, so those credits don't matter. But less than 2 percent of people pass exams like the world history one, and I was one of that 2 percent in my state that did. So I learned that I'm smarter and more capable than I thought I was before. I had the honor of serving as vice president of our chapter of Special Olympics, I served in Key Club, Honor Society, and other organizations like that. And that taught me that I am capable of leading, and I shouldn't be afraid of that. I don't really have a goal right now. I'm in this weird place where I'm about to start college in the fall. So I've finished high school, about to start college. I just hope that whatever I do, I can serve the world around me, and that includes everyone in this room. You are part of the world, and I hope to serve as best I can.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Julia Murray, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, occupational therapist.
JULIA MURRAY: Good afternoon, Federation. Growing up, I've had many supports, such as my teacher of the Deaf and hard of hearing who has taught me how to advocate with the world around me. I also had the teacher of the visually impaired and an O&M teacher who taught me how to navigate the world around me, and also the director of the adapted sports program for the blind and visually impaired has given me so many different opportunities to play so many different sports, such as skiing, paddleboarding, and blind ice hockey. Because of these people, I want to be able to do the same they did for me for other people. So the reason I chose occupational therapy specifically is because their ultimate goal is to work with people with daily skills that they need every single day.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Finn Paynich, Washington, Washington, musical theater.
FINN PAYNICH: Hi, as stated, my name is Finn and my pronouns are they/them, and that's something that sometimes sets me apart from others. If it isn't my transness, then it's my blindness or my queer sexuality or my neuro divergence. I've been working on my pride in my intersectional identities, and safe spaces such as the theater community, Pride events, and this convention are really teaching me to take up space as a queer disabled person. In the presence of such great community, I often feel that I'm able to truly be myself. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to stand up here and take up that space, and for the opportunity to attend the arts school of my dreams. It will give me the skills I need to be a professional theater artist. I will use that platform as an artist to advocate for fellow disabled and LGBTQ people, as well as continue to be politically active.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Emily Schlenker, Kansas, Kansas, pharmacy.
EMILY SCHLENKER: Hello, everyone. We had such an amazing and dynamic NABS session last night, and one of the things that was talked about last night was building bridges. And I want to share something with all of you that happened to me in the last two years that really brought this home for me. In 2020, I received a very clear denial of my application to pharmacy school based specifically on my blindness. I was pretty much told in this letter that there were three things I could not do. I could not give vaccines. I could not look at prescriptions. And I could not find errors in those prescriptions. So I called the National Federation of the Blind, and as we talked about last night, we're always building bridges in one way or another. But what I would like to say to go along with that is that every bridge needs shoring up, and every person building bridges sometimes needs shoring up. And I was so privileged and honored to have a meeting that was basically between myself and the pharmacy school, and Scott LaBarre and Tom Page, and they shored me up, and I had a very rare opportunity to advocate for myself to the same people who had denied my entrance into the pharmacy program. And I can also say now that not only am I a proud student of the Kansas University School of Pharmacy, but I have in fact passed three of those milestones they said I could not pass. I have given an injection. I have drawn and dosed the vaccine. I have also checked prescriptions, and I have also found errors and corrected them. Thank you very much!
CAYTE MENDEZ: Carla Scroggins is also a tenBroek fellow, California, California. Global security analyst and diplomatic strategist.
CARLA SCROGGINS: Good morning, everybody. Board, thank you for this opportunity. I cannot tell you what it means for me to have the opportunity to once again be believed in by my Federation family and my tribe. I am just starting my master's program at Johns Hopkins University for a masters in global security, strategic studies. Some of the values we fight for so much in this organization come from our liberal values of equality, and that all comes from security to make it possible on a global scale, not just country or regionally specific. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Bhavya Shah, originally from India, California, data science.
BHAVYA SHAH: Hello. I'm a regular geek. I'm majoring in computational science at college, a bunch of cool buzzwords, and when I'm not obsessing about code, I participate in debate. Very cool. I won the world championship, so people don't like to get into arguments with me, except my mother, and she always wins! I care about giving back. I'm a long-time contributor to the NVDA screenreader project, and I also serve on my university's disability task force. And I also care about learning and growing and living my best life, which is why I moved halfway across the world from the corners of Mumbai to pursue studies at my dream school, Stanford University. Which is why I'm spending this summer acquiring blindness skills and confidence at the Louisiana Center for the Blind. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Katelyn Siple, Maryland, Pennsylvania, administrative leadership in not-for-profit ministries.
KATELYN SIPLE: One of my goals this year is to grow in confidence and be a better version of me, which includes making decisions and being decisive in what I want. My goal is to travel and do what I love. Hello, Federationists, it's great to be with you. I'm twenty-four years old, a recent graduate of the Louisiana Center for the Blind, a senior at Lancaster Bible College, and my goal is to help people in what they do in nonprofits and social work. I set up a platform on social media to be a positive role model, to encourage, and inspire, and—thank you very much for this opportunity.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Stephanie Valdez, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, interpreter and translating.
STEPHANIE VALDEZ: Good afternoon, Federation family. I want to start off by saying I was actually one of those sighted people at one point who thought that blind people couldn't do much. And when I lost my vision after graduating high school, I thought that my world had collapsed, and that was pretty much it for my life. I soon realized that was not it, and that blindness was not the characteristic that defined me. I am now majoring in French, I'm bilingual in English and Spanish, and I'm determined to break the barriers that are put in place by languages in society to give the opportunity for people to have a better quality of life and equality. At the same time, I strive to do that same thing for the blindness community with my everyday actions and changing people's perception of blind people one at a time, just by doing normal things like being a mother, being a wife, and attempting to launch my own business of self-care products. I hope to be an example, an inspiration to not only current generations but next generations, by simply living the life I want how I want to live it. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Last but not least, Colin Wong, Washington, Washington, adult education and blindness education researcher.
COLIN WONG: Thank you so much. I told myself I wasn't going back to school, but life has a way of doing that today. In fall I'll be pursuing a PhD in teaching and leadership with a concentration in adult education and professional development. My greatest accomplishment so far has always been my national orientation and mobility certification, because it has provided me with an opportunity to witness how a quality education can change the trajectory of a student's life. It also has taught me that there are many students who do not get the opportunity to get a quality education that they deserve, and that there are gaps in education that are not discussed outside of this room, including the gap of quality educators needed in rehabilitation education and nontraditional students who are adults with and without disabilities. So my goal is to become a university professor and develop research to improve the educational system in both of these concentrations. Thank you.
CAYTE MENDEZ: All right, Mr. President, members of the board, I present to you the scholarship class of 2022.
At the annual banquet of the National Federation of the Blind on July 10, 2022, Cayte Mendez presented the NFB Scholarship winners with their awards.
CAYTE MENDEZ: Good evening, fellow Federationists. President Riccobono earlier shared with us the story of who our organization has been, who we are, and who we will become. Such a large part of that last, the "who our future will let us be," is determined by our students. Every year it is the privilege of the Scholarship Committee to select, from our hundreds of outstanding students, thirty who will represent our organization as our scholarship class. We receive hundreds of applications every year. It's never an easy process to select those thirty. Those that we do select represent the highest academic excellence, the highest levels of leadership and community involvement. They are tremendously special individuals.
This year our scholarship program had some changes, which I'll address briefly in a moment. But the essentials of the program have not changed. We look for excellence. We expect success, and we look forward to the future that these folks will help bring to this organization.
As I said earlier, some aspects of our scholarship program have changed. As I give my presentation in the next few minutes, you will notice that the scholarship values will no longer be a part of the information I share about each finalist. For many reasons, we no longer have a tiered system of awards. The values of the awards have been flattened so that all scholarship finalists receive the same dollar amount. The true value of these scholarships is in what they represent and who they represent, not by the digits in front of the comma. Each of these students will receive a scholarship in the amount of $8,000.
This year we added a really exciting new element. The students had the opportunity, if they chose, to nominate a member of their class for the Kenneth Jernigan Scholarship. Their nominations were taken into account when the Scholarship Committee met last night and made its decisions. In this organization we choose our future, and that includes our future leaders. To give our scholarship finalists the opportunity to select the person they want to represent them, the person whose speech they want to signify the work and learning of their whole class, is a wonderful first step in making those choices that will help them make our movement stronger in the future. Now let's get started!
[Note: Cayte introduced each scholarship finalist by name, and listed their home state, school state, and career goal.]
CAYTE MENDEZ: I'm going to share with you the winners of the various scholarships that have been awarded this year. Each of our finalists will receive a scholarship, and, again, the winner of our most prestigious award, the Kenneth Jernigan Memorial Scholarship, will address the convention.
The winners of our National Federation of the Blind Scholarships are:
Nancy Aguilera, Missouri, Missouri
Katelyn Beresic, West Virginia, West Virginia
Jovan Campbell, New York, New York
Izzi Guzman, Florida, Florida
Michael Hardin, Indiana, Indiana
Renee Hemings, New Jersey, New Jersey
Robert Lamm, Colorado, Colorado
Casey Martin, North Dakota, North Dakota
Selene Monjarez, Tennessee, Connecticut
The next scholarships have been donated by various organizations and entities or are donated in memory of various individuals.
Our Edith R. and Alvin J. Domroe Scholarships will be awarded to Shawn Abraham, Maryland, Maryland; and Katie Lester, Alaska, Alaska.
The Jessie and Hertha Adams Scholarship is awarded to Natasha Ishaq, New Jersey, New Jersey.
Our three Charles and Melva T. Owens Scholarships will be awarded to Hunter Keister, Wisconsin, Wisconsin; Sarah Menefee, Texas, Oklahoma; and Katelyn Siple, Maryland, Pennsylvania.
Our two Lillian S. Edelstein Scholarships will be awarded to Jenn Doran, Virginia, Oregon; and Finn Paynich, Washington, Washington.
Our Mimi and Marvin Sandler Award will go to Stephanie Valdes, Massachusetts, Massachusetts.
The Pearson Education Award goes to Tasnim Alshuli, Arizona, Arizona.
Our Charles and Betty Allen Scholarship will go to Carla Scroggins, California, California. Carla is one of our three tenBroek recipients this year. I should add, with apologies, the previous winner, Tasnim Alshuli is also a tenBroek Fellow.
Our E. U. and Gene Parker scholarship will go to Ethan Fung, California, California.
The JAWS for Windows scholarship will go to Julia Murray, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.
Our NFB STEM scholarship, which is contributed by the members of the Computer Science Division, is going to Emily Schlenker, Kansas, Kansas.
Our Oracle Scholarship for Excellence in a STEM Field will go to Justin Champagne, Louisiana, Louisiana.
Our Oracle Scholarship for Excellence in Computer Science will go to Bhavya Shah, California, California.
The Jacqueline Billey Memorial Scholarship will go to Daniel Martinez, Texas, Texas.
Our Jeannette C. Eyerly Scholarship goes to Teresa Fabre, Illinois, Illinois.
The Adrienne Asch Memorial Scholarship will go to Maura Kutnyak, New York, New York.
There are two left, guys. Only two. Here we go...
Our American Action Fund Scholarship will go to Abigail Duffy, New Hampshire, New Hampshire.
And if you have been playing Scholarship Bingo, you know who is left.
Our most prestigious award, the award that honors one of our Federation's longtime leaders, the man who helped shape a generation in the organized blind movement, our Kenneth Jernigan Memorial Scholarship this year will go to Colin Wong, Washington, Washington. You can keep clapping while Colin makes his way up here to the podium.
COLIN WONG: Thank you so much for this tremendous honor. I am very blessed to be able to represent the Scholarship Class of 2022. Each of these individuals also deserves this prestigious award, and I am grateful to be here and accept this award today. I want to start off by thanking President Mark Riccobono, the National Board of Directors, the sponsors that made this possible, Cayte Mendez and the Scholarship Committee for all the support they have provided in making this scholarship a reality.
There are a couple of individuals I want to make sure to thank, because without their support and their ability to listen to all of my frustrations in this journey we call life, this Ph.D. definitely would not be possible. I want to start off by thanking Ashleigh Moon, Shawn Callaway, Marci Carpenter, Marco Carranza and Dr. Edward Bell. I want to thank my beautiful wife, Destiny Wong. Next week we will have been together for nine years. In this journey, as I'm sure we all have done, I have stumbled and made mistakes, and without her support and her love and dedication, I would have definitely fallen, but she has picked me back up every single time.
While I never met Dr. Kenneth Jernigan personally, his influence on me cannot be understated. It is an honor and I am humbled to accept an award in his name. His influence in my life has not only influenced my professional career but also my personal career. I started going to Louisiana Tech University, the Louisiana Center for the Blind, and I serve on the National Blindness Professional Certification Board, each of which involve the Structured Discovery methodology that Dr. Jernigan created. Without his influence in the area of adult rehabilitation and blindness, I can honestly say I would not have a career or a passion in order to shape the next generation of blind individuals.
I also want to note the impact that the National Federation of the Blind has on me. Dr. Kenneth Jernigan said that there has to be a day after civil rights, and that's the most powerful gift that the Federation has given me, an opportunity for dreaming and looking toward the future. It's so easy to focus on the present and the challenges we have to overcome, but it's a lot easier when we know what the future has to hold. I thank the Federation for the expectations that they have instilled in me and the opportunities that they have provided. The Federation is a place of support. It's a place of love, hope, and determination. The Federation has given me so much more than I have been able to give to it. Today it has given me an educational opportunity. Collectively it has given all of us standing on this stage a future. For that I am eternally grateful. Thank you so much. And let's go build the National Federation of the Blind!
CAYTE MENDEZ: Well, folks, I know it's late, but I think we have time for one more huge round of applause for the NFB scholarship class of 2022.
Presented by Everette Bacon
Reprinted from Braille Monitor, Volume 64, Number 8, August/September 2022
From the Editor: A high point of the Convention of the National Federation of the Blind each year is the presentation of the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards. This year Everette Bacon explained the background and purpose of the awards, and then introduced the 2022 winners.
EVERETTE BACON: Welcome, Federationists, to the fifteenth annual Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards! Are you excited? I know I am.
The Blind Doctor is a fabulous book about a man who faced much adversity in his life. Starting from birth, when he was first recognized as being blind, he faced bullying and discrimination. When he went on to public school, he faced tons of discrimination, and he was unable to get his materials. When he went on to college, he was kicked out and told he'd never make it. He had to fight his way through and get his materials. Then, when he got out of college, he announced that he wanted to become a medical doctor. He had to fight to get into medical school. He got denied, told he'd never get there, but he made sure he never lost that ambition, that tenacity. He got there eventually and became a medical doctor.
After he became a medical doctor, he tried to get hired. What does he get told? "No, we can't hire you. You're blind. We can't hire a blind doctor." Finally, he became a practicing medical doctor, and he ran a veterans services hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
This man was the epitome of what the National Federation of the Blind stood for before there was ever a National Federation of the Blind. I believe this man put the militant into NFB! He was militant before any of us were militant! This is an exciting book. It's an honor to be able to present these awards in Dr. Bolotin's name.
We are so excited about the honorees you're going to hear about in just a second. We have five outstanding honorees for the 2022 Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards. Will Schwatka will run the video.
Video
NARRATOR: Federationists and guests, the National Federation of the Blind is proud to introduce the 2022 recipients of our Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards, made possible in part by the generous support of the Alfred and Rosalyn 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 inspire blind people to achieve new heights.
The three individual winners are: Caroline Karbowski, founder of See3D.
CAROLINE: See3D is a 501c(3) nonprofit that I started back in 2017 when I was in high school, and we organized the printing and distribution of 3D printed models for blind people. We send them to people, mainly in the United States, but all over the world. We've sent them to people in seventeen countries and twenty-seven states. So I saw an article when I was in eighth grade about 3D printing telescope and microscope images so blind people could make their own scientific observations and not just have to rely on descriptions made by sighted people on the scientific data. They were 3D printing labels of the telescope and microscope images. When I saw those photos, I thought, Wow, I know Braille; I can use my Braille skills to add Braille to 3D models. Because in eighth grade a lot of people were asking me, "Why are you learning Braille? You're a sighted person; you don't need this." I was always looking to find some extra uses to apply my Braille skills, so seeing this article really inspired me to think about 3D printing. My high school had 3D printers, and I wanted people to use them. A lot of my friends wanted to use them, but we weren't sure what to make. They were just devices that we had.
So I thought, Well, why don't we make models for blind people, and I can add some Braille labels to them. We can submit the idea to our tech competition that happens for high schools each year in Cincinnati, Ohio. So I had my tech club work on having a website, and they made some models that they designed. I worked with my mom, who had some friends who are TVIs, and we gave models to their students. I met some blind people in Cincinnati just by chance. I happened to see them in the community. I told them about my project, and they connected me with the NFB. Some people wrote articles about See3D that really helped us gain more publicity so more people knew about our program. It all started out by us posting a website with a Google form where people could make requests for models and we'd print them at our high school. People would give us feedback on the models, and we've improved them since then.
Now, being at OSU, which is The Ohio State University, we got funding to become a nonprofit and really develop our program. Now we ship models all over the world and have a community of people who 3D print and distribute models.
NARRATOR: Tyler Merren, athlete, trainer, and founder of ReVision Fitness:
TYLER: It's extremely difficult for someone who is blind or visually impaired to get their hands on the knowledge and experience that they need for doing regular fitness. I knew this from my experience learning through classes, but I realized how much of a need there was out there. A few years ago, I started tumbling around this idea in my head, the idea of creating a fitness program specifically for people who were blind and visually impaired. I started talking to some people and doing some interviews of folks who had gone before me and made the same attempts, and I learned what worked and what didn't. Now I have a project up and running called ReVision Fitness. It's a fitness program specifically designed to help people who are blind and visually impaired step into the fitness world, and not just step into it but advance as well.
NARRATOR: Jeanetta Price, blind poet and founder of Blind Girl Magic:
JEANETTA: Blind Girl Magic is the type of magic that struts in the room with her white cane extended, her hips shifting like the motion of the eyes of the sighted. Who would have guessed that this blind girl possessed magic? Abracadabra!
Now that you're convinced that I have magical superpowers, would a supernatural add so much as well? That would, will be, a yes for success.
As I leap over obstacles in life, dodge negativity, slam misconceptions of society, slap "I can't" in the face with "I did that," is the fact that Blind Girl Magic goes back to Harriet Tubman.
Yes, way back to Harriet Tubman! She was born into slavery and escaped to freedom, but she did not stop. She went back and back and back to lead others to freedom. Blind Girl Magic is built on the shoulders of phenomenal women. Blind Girl Magic is the independent movement that is leading our blind sisters to freedom from depression, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, anger, bitterness, rejection. Then, abracadabra! You are set free. Blind Girl Magic lives within me.
NARRATOR: The first of our two organizational winners are 64 Ounce Games, for advancing inclusion in Braille literacy through accessible play. Here are the company cofounders, Richard and Emily Gibbs:
RICHARD: 64 Ounce Games is the campaign that designs what we've been calling accessibility kits. We do a lot of other things now, but that's where we started. An accessibility kit is used once you purchase a retail game, and then you purchase a copy of our accessibility kit. It has Braille stickers, 3D printed pieces, board overlays—anything that might be required for that particular game in order to play. These are board games; don't get them confused with video games. We don't do that; I don't know how to program enough to make that happen.
EMILY: So our accessibility kits take a board game off the shelf, and you put it together with our kit to make a completely accessible game.
RICHARD: We're firm believers in Braille. We believe that Braille gaming is Braille literacy. My wife is a teacher of blind students, I know the Braille code myself and have been using it for years. We are firm believers that Braille opens up opportunities, and by making these games accessible, we hope by extension that we are making people realize that Braille is useful and Braille is important, and Braille offers opportunities that you would not get otherwise.
EMILY: Absolutely. One of the major tenets of our company and what we want to do is support Braille literacy, and we firmly believe that through fun and through games is a great way to learn Braille.
NARRATOR: Our other organizational winner is Netflix, for excellence in audio description, accessibility, and disability representation. Here is dubbing and accessibility team member, Elisa Beniero.
ELISA: Since Daredevil launched in May 2015, our library has grown exponentially, not only in English but in other languages as well. We have started providing audio description in other languages, starting with Narcos, which had audio description in neutral Spanish, and then we had Marseilles, which was in French. The number of local audio description titles is constantly growing with the number of local productions. I don't know if you know this, but we have created at least one audio description in over fifty languages. Our latest addition was Pashto audio description, which we created for a short documentary, Three Songs for Benazir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Songs_for_Benazir#:~:text=Th)ree@
3p#bj;,s;gs@3p#bj;for@3p#bj;,b5azir@3p#bj7,@d#hb;,,af@d#h,@b#ab;,,db@3p#h;,c1,elizabeth%20
Mirzaei%20and%20Gulistan%20Mirzaei) and we're currently working on Punjabi audio description, which will be available later this year for a thriller that is going to launch about longtime gangs and their rivalries in the south of Punjab. So we're excited for all this growth that we have. I checked this morning and we have 18,000 hours of audio-described programming, and of these 11,728 are in English.
NARRATOR: These winners will each 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 2022 Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards.
EVERETTE BACON: What an outstanding group of award winners! We received over fifty applications for this year's awards. So if you did not get an award or the person or organization you nominated did not get one, you can apply again next year. The Rosalind and Alfred Perlman Trust is so awesome! It gives us the ability to give these awards each year, so again, please continue to send in those applications. We want to give them, both individual and organizational awards.
Now I want to recognize the committee members who helped me choose these award recipients. Mary Ellen Jernigan of Maryland, Dr. Natalie Shaheen of Illinois, Second Vice President Ron Brown of Indiana, Steve Jacobson of Minnesota, and new board member-elect Donald Porterfield of Arizona.
Before we go to the awards and how much each recipient is getting, let's read what is on their trophy.
BETH BRAUN: "Presented to" recipient "by the National Federation of the Blind and the Santa Barbara Foundation, July 2022." There's a medallion at the top of the award, and one side of that medallion reads: "Dr. Jacob Bolotin," and then there is his likeness, "1888-1924," and then the inscription below that reads: "Celebrating his life, the Alfred and Rosalind Perlman Trust." The back of the medallion says: "The Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award," then there's the NFB logo, and it says: "Celebrating Achievement, Creating Opportunity."
EVERETTE BACON: Thank you, Beth. We'll do the individual awards first. The first winner, winning the amount of $5,000, Caroline Karbowski! Eric Duffy, who nominated her, said this: "She does not ask if it is possible for a blind person to accomplish a specific task. Rather, instead, she asks, 'How can we make this task more accessible?'" Caroline, congratulations.
CAROLINE: Thank you so much.
EVERETTE BACON: Our next award winner, again, winning the amount of $5,000, Tyler Merren, ReVision Fitness. J.J. Meddaugh, who nominated Tyler, says this: "We've known blind people for many years who have mastered fitness, workouts, and athletics. That part isn't new. What Tyler has done, however, is create a platform that is usable and applicable to people at any level of fitness. Where previously you would need to find an existing fitness coach or someone willing to explain various workouts, Tyler has brought this information into an engaging and accessible app which can be used by virtually anyone at any time. Whether it's a simple exercise like a pushup, or a more advanced routine, the app likely has you covered." Tyler, here you go my friend, congratulations.
TYLER: Thank you, I really appreciate this. Thank you.
EVERETTE BACON: Our next and final individual award winner is Jeanetta Price of Blind Girl Magic. Jeanetta, we are giving a $15,000 award to you. Blind Girl Magic provides blind support groups, workshops, and retreats that tap into the magic of a world of out-of-sight possibilities. Her mission in life is to help others tap into their vision by utilizing writing as an instrument of healing. She volunteers by sharing her gift of poetry in person that inspires the blind community and beyond. Jeanetta Price, congratulations, my friend.
JEANETTA: Thank you.
EVERETTE BACON: Now we'll go on to our organizational winners. The first one is something that's been near and dear to my heart because I've been using their services since 2006—actually, no, sorry, let me take that back—since 2003, when a certain Blockbuster Video fired me. I immediately cut up my membership and joined Netflix. I've been a member ever since! And I've watched them bring audio description and all kinds of other accessibility to their platform. So I'm honored and excited to give them this award.
Netflix is an honorarium award. They told us they didn't want to take any funding, but they're excited to receive the award. They want to put the funding back into the National Federation of the Blind.
Not only does Netflix guarantee audio description (AD) for all its original content, but it listens to blind customers and is adding audio description to other popular series such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Netflix offers audio description in numerous languages and even offers AD in English for some of its foreign titles.
Whenever the organized blind have brought an issue to Netflix, such as making Squid Game accessible with English AD or offering guidance on screenplays featuring a blind character, Netflix has listened. Netflix even has an upcoming feature that will have an authentic blind person playing a blind character! How is that for authenticity!
Elisa and Shanta, it is such a pleasure to give this to you. Thank you.
Now, our final organizational award winner: 64 Ounce Games!
We are awarding 64 Ounce Games with our largest award, $20,000. Karen Anderson, who nominated them, said this:
"We in the National Federation of the Blind know that Braille and tactile literacy open endless possibilities, and for nearly a decade, 64 Ounce Games has worked to unlock that world of possibilities and fun by putting Braille and tactile graphics at the fingertips of more blind children and adults. To do so in a fun and engaging way, they created and sell accessibility kits that, when paired with a mainstream game sold at any retailer, make that game fully accessible!"
Unfortunately, Richard and Emily Gibbs, who are the owners of 64 Ounce Games, contracted COVID a couple of days ago and had to go home. Now, accepting their award and making sure that they'll get their award is Karen Anderson, who nominated them.
Thank you, Karen. Emily, are you there?
EMILY: Yes, we're here.
EVERETTE BACON: Would you like to say a few words, Emily?
RICHARD: I'm here as well, this is Richard Gibbs. Thank you so much for this honor. We're happy to be able to be here with you today virtually. We want to thank our family, especially both of our parents, who have supported us over the years. They've helped us to make more games for BELL Academy, they've been invaluable to help with our five kids, and despite being skeptical, they trusted us when we left two days after our wedding to start a new adventure in a small city. Perhaps you've heard of it—Ruston, Louisiana! There, Emily completed her TBS [Teacher of Blind Students)'. We made many blind friends, and we saw the need for accessible board games in this community. In particular, we'd like to thank Dr. Ruby Ryles, who is the reason that we both know Braille. From there we moved on to teaching, and eventually we found ourselves on a new mission—to help make the games that I love accessible.
EMILY: Our initial Kickstarter found support in the sighted board game community and the organized blind movement. So many people in this room have helped make our dream a reality. We have always had the support of our Federation family. Rachel Olivero and Karen Anderson have been there from the very beginning, supporting and playing our games. We would not be here today without their confidence in us. The Texas affiliate—especially Norma and Glenn Crosby—they have been our play testers and our advisors from the very start. We intend to use this award to continue to bring games to the blind community, to expand our Braille teaching tools, and to refine our tactile graphics. We have big plans for the future. Thank you again.
EVERETTE BACON: Let's give all of these winners a huge Federation cheer! Mr. President, these are the winners of the 2022 Bolotin Awards.
Perspectives
by Rishika Kartik
From the Editor: For the past several years Rishika Kartik has built strong connections with the blind community. She leads art activities as a volunteer at the Colorado Center for the Blind, and she conducts art workshops with blind and low-vision students from the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind (CSDB) and in school districts across the state. In 2019 she received a two-year grant to expand her work from Arts in Society, a Colorado foundation that supports arts programs in underserved communities. Rishika has the distinction of being the youngest person ever to receive an Arts in Society grant. At the time her grant was awarded she was fourteen years old!
Rishika and her father attended their first face-to-face National Federation of the Blind Convention in New Orleans. In this article Rishika reflects on her experiences.
Percussive cane taps accompany cheerful greetings and chatter. Braille dots adorn the pages of pamphlets, and enthusiastic "talking signs" guide people to their destinations. People of all ages, identities, and perspectives share stories, coming together from around the world.
In July I attended the National Federation of the Blind's National Convention, the largest gathering of blind people globally. Convention is an event that involves training, support, and information-sharing for the blind community. It facilitates human connection and inspires people to lead full, independent lives.
As a sighted person attending this convention, I grappled with how to support a community I care about as an ally. As an Indian American woman, I understand the value of affinity groups and identity-specific events. Being surrounded by people who share your identity allows you to be fully yourself and feel understood in a distinct way. I did not want to prevent others from having this experience by attending as a sighted person. I am grateful for the way the National Federation of the Blind has welcomed me with open arms.
Volunteering with the blind and visually-impaired community over the past four years has taught me that everyone must be involved in issues around accessibility and diversity. Just as men can amplify a feminist message of gender equality, sighted people can become part of the blindness movement and work to dismantle ableist narratives. The key is to speak out by listening, to maintain an open mind and hand the microphone to those around you. As allies we inevitably will make mistakes. But by learning from our mistakes and engaging in open dialogue with those around us, we can work together to build inclusive communities.
The National Convention emphasizes that blindness, while challenging, unlocks a unique way to live life. Rejecting the notion of conforming to societal expectations allows people to find creative ways of doing what they love, from cooking and playing an instrument to studying and traveling. Unfortunately, a lack of communication between sighted people and the blind community often leads to uninformed design.
Disability advocate and design strategist Liz Jackson describes uninformed design products as a "disability dongle": "a well-intended, elegant, yet useless solution to a problem we never knew we had." Technology, such as Voiceover and Braille displays, has been instrumental in promoting inclusion. However, designing expensive technology without spending time with the blind community creates products that blind people may not necessarily want or need.
A common example of misguided solutions is the movement to develop complex sensors to help blind people detect objects and obstacles. Designers often pursue these technologies "in order to eliminate the need for the white cane." "We don't need three-hundred-dollar gadgets to reinvent the wheel," staff members at the Colorado Center for the Blind say. "The cane has served as a valuable, affordable, and useful navigation tool for years."
Another instance of impractical technology is the development of artificial intelligence initiatives that transform 2D visual images into sound, with various tones representing objects in the picture. In-depth training is required before a person can interpret these sounds. The system is not intuitive for everyday use.
Disability dongles illustrate a broader societal issue. Sometimes would-be allies don't make enough effort to listen to the perspectives of blind people before they act. Sometimes, out of their fear of doing the wrong thing, they do not act at all.
Haben Girma, the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, affirms, "Disability drives innovation. When you think about new ways of accessing information, new ways for people to connect and engage with each other, you're going to find yourself designing the next best thing." By practicing authentic allyship people create accessible solutions that help everyone. SMS texting was invented by Finnish inventor Matti Makkonen and his team to help deaf people communicate. It now makes life more convenient for all of us. One of the first working typewriters, technology we use daily, was created by an Italian inventor, Turri; he wanted an easier way for his blind lover to send him letters.
Small changes, too, can create universally beneficial accessibility solutions. When designing the website where I post my blog, mentors of mine encouraged the use of high-contrast colors and hierarchical text for users with low vision and dyslexia. These changes made the site more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing for all visitors. Using alternative text to describe images optimizes Google's search engine, allowing people to find web pages much more quickly using keywords.
When I volunteered with the Educational Support Group at the NFB, we created tactile models to explain complex mathematical concepts. This work helped me realize that I, a sighted person, am not a visual learner. Now I often create 3D representations when I struggle in math, which helps me understand calculus concepts much more quickly. Unfortunately, the standard educational model still only accounts for visual learning, isolating many people from success.
My friends with low vision often express frustration with being forced to use their unreliable vision instead of being given accessible learning alternatives. In order to inspire creativity and build confidence, kids need the message that there is no single "right" way to do things. This message can start in the classroom. Providing Braille materials and embracing unique learning styles are imperative in ensuring that every person receives the education they deserve.
The NFB National Convention taught me that everyone is impacted by issues around accessibility, and everyone can take part in creating solutions. Rather than forcing "solutions" within an existing paradigm, disability inclusion is an opportunity to revolutionize current ideas. By abandoning conventional norms and exploring new ways of doing things, we unlock a new way of life.
https://blog.ai-media.tv/blog/why-designing-for-accessibility-helps-everyone
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/30/18523006/disabled-wheelchair-access-ramps-stair-climbing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bC7Mvy7Vn4
Announcements
As you probably know, the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults publishes this magazine. Future Reflections provides inspiration and information to parents and teachers of blind and low-vision children. Do you know that the American Action Fund also supplies free white canes, in partnership with the National Federation of the Blind? In 2021 the American Action Fund purchased 5,321 long white canes, which were distributed by the National Federation of the Blind.
"White canes are my key to independence," one recipient wrote. "I can't imagine traveling without mine. There are blind people who show me every day that one can use a cane with poise, grace, and confidence. Just knowing that there are good confident travelers and that I can get a cane regardless of ability to pay makes a real difference."
The work we do to encourage independent travel, excellence in education, and Braille literacy nationwide must be done. If you are in a position to do so, you can also make a difference by making a contribution. These programs are made possible through your support. Please help by giving a tax-deductible gift to the American Action Fund.
You can donate online by visiting our new webpage, https://actionfund.org or over the phone by calling 410-659-9315. You also can donate by sending a check made out to
American Action Fund
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230
There is another way you can help. Often the simplest and most significant way to make a charitable contribution is to plan a legacy gift. It is easier than you might think. You can plan to give all or part of a bank account, insurance proceeds, investment assets, real estate, or a retirement account. You can even give a required minimum distribution from your IRA directly to charity and avoid taxes on the distribution. After taking care of your loved ones, you could bequeath a specific dollar amount or percentage of your estate to an organization whose mission is important to you. Your bequest carries with it the values and ideals that have been important to you throughout your lifetime and supports an organization whose mission you hold dear. Additionally, planning for a legacy gift may reduce the total amount of your taxable estate, which can positively impact any funds you have designated for your heirs. The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults Legacy Society honors and recognizes the generosity and the vision of special friends who have chosen to leave a legacy through a will or other planned giving option.
If you wish to give part or all of an account, simply fill out a P.O.D. (payable on death) or T.O.D. (transfer on death) form. For pensions and insurance assets, designate a charity as a beneficiary. If you would like to leave a legacy to the Action Fund in your will, simply include the following language:
"I give, devise, and bequeath unto the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, 1800 Johnson Street, Suite 100, Baltimore, Maryland 21230, a Maryland nonprofit corporation, the sum of $______________ (or) _________ percent of my net estate" or "the following stocks and bonds: ____________________, to be used for its worthy purposes on behalf of blind persons."
If you have questions or would like more information, please reach out to Patti Chang at 410-659-9315. If you have included the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults in your will or have made some other provision for a future gift to us and would like to tell us about it, please contact Patti so we can recognize you as a member of our Legacy Society.
Legacy gifts provide for generations of blind children and adults. Please consider the American Action Fund in your future plans.
Lighthouse Guild
Contact: Bryan Dotson, [email protected]
917-796-8632
Lighthouse Guild announces that human-rights lawyer and disability-rights advocate Haben Girma is the first recipient of the Dr. Alan R. Morse Lecture in Advocacy for People with Visual Impairment. The Morse Lecture in Advocacy was established this year to honor those who have demonstrated leadership, raised awareness of low vision, addressed barriers, and are working to make a world where no person is limited by their sensory capacity. The award includes an honorarium of $25,000. Haben Girma was the first deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School. She teaches organizations the importance of inclusion and is the author of the memoir Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. She was named a White House Champion of Change by President Barack Obama and appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
Insights Art
American Printing House for the Blind
www.insights-art.org
On Friday, October 7, American Printing House for the Blind (APH) celebrated the artistic creations of blind and low-vision students and adults at its first in-person Insights Arts ceremony since the onset of the pandemic. Since 1992 APH has hosted the annual international art contest for artists of all ages who meet the definition of legal blindness. With approximately two hundred entries, the contest is broken into six categories based on student grade levels and three categories based on artistic medium (two-dimensional, sculpture, and craft) for adult artists. Entries include drawings, paintings, prints, and works in metal and wood.
Braille on Demand
https://www.loc.gov/nls
The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) has launched a two-year pilot for Braille readers of all ages. Braille on Demand allows NLS patrons to request hard copies of any Braille book currently available on BARD that they would like to keep permanently. All currently registered NLS patrons, including overseas patrons, will be able to order one book per month during the pilot. Materials will be mailed directly to the requesting patron. For more information, contact your network library.
Audiobooks on Bookshare
bookshare.org
Benetech recently released several enhancements to its Bookshare library program, including a suite of free reading apps for web iOS, Android, and Alexa, along with the addition of five thousand human-narrated audiobooks. Bookshare is available to individuals who have a qualifying reading or perceptual disability, a visual impairment, or a physical disability that affects their ability to read printed works. Membership is free for US students and costs $50 per year for non-students. Bookshare's library of books in accessible electronic formats includes more than a million titles in English and in thirty-three other languages.
Emoji Tactile Graphics
National Braille Press
https://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/EMOJI.html
If you want to know more about these popular, playful, shorthand ways of expressing human emotion, this is the book for you! In this one-of-a-kind publication you will learn the names and meanings of ninety-seven different Apple face emoji, as excerpted from emojipedia.org and explore each one in tactile graphic format.
National Federation of the Blind Surveys
https://nfb.org/legal/surveys
The National Federation of the Blind works to advance disability rights. One important way to do that is to learn about your stories. The NFB is conducting several surveys to gain more information in various areas of access. Please review our current survey categories and report your experiences. Links to these surveys can be found at the address above. Thank you for your time!
Rideshare Discrimination Survey
The National Federation of the Blind is seeking feedback from Uber and Lyft customers who have been discriminated against by either rideshare company because of disability, including but not limited to a rider's use of a service animal or white cane, or due to inaccessible rideshare app technology. Please take time to report all instances of discrimination through the Rideshare Discrimination Survey.
Education Technology Survey
The NFB is gathering information regarding the accessibility of educational technology used in our nation's schools (kindergarten through graduate level). If you are a student, parent, teacher, or administrator who uses screen access software or other accommodations to participate nonvisually in educational programs or services, or if you are the parent, teacher, or administrator of someone who does, please complete our Education Technology Survey once a semester and contribute to this important research.
Access to COVID 19 Vaccine and Testing Survey
The National Federation of the Blind is gathering data to monitor and challenge access barriers for blind people to COVID-19 vaccines and tests. It is vital that blind and low-vision Americans receive the same opportunities and tools to participate in ending this public-health threat as others do. Please complete a five- to fifteen-minute survey regarding your experience with COVID-19 vaccines and testing.
Access to Digital Library Services Survey
Equal access to digital library services is a priority for the National Federation of the Blind. Digital services provide additional opportunities to engage with libraries and increase the availability of information. Your feedback will help us advocate for improved access to digital library services in public and school libraries. Please complete our survey on access to digital library services.
Unemployment Benefits Survey
The National Federation of the Blind is investigating barriers or denials related to unemployment benefits. If you have been terminated or laid off from your job within the past two years, please complete this important survey.
Blind and Low-Vision English Learners from Spanish-Speaking Households
Contact: Conchita Hernandez Legorreta: [email protected]
Joan Kester: [email protected]
Metas is conducting research on the experiences of blind and low-vision high-school students who are English-language learners. Students will share their experiences through focus groups where they will respond to prompting questions.
American Printing House for the Blind
https://communities.nonprofitleadershipalliance.org/nsitecommunity/home
Contact: Judy Musa, 732-687-1556
[email protected]
The American Printing House for the Blind ConnectCenter and NSITE deliver resources and access to job opportunities to create a diverse and inclusive workforce for job seekers. Leaders in talent acquisition and sourcing collaborate to create on-demand job-seekers’ toolkit for career-ready blind and low-vision individuals. The job-seeker’s toolkit is an accessible, self-paced, free online training course that helps students and job seekers who are blind or have low vision develop career exploration and job-seeking skills. The course provides five sixty-minute sessions that cover self-awareness, career exploration tools and resources, the preliminary employment process, the interview, and maintaining employment. The toolkit also can be used by professionals to follow their students’ progress and provide feedback.
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