TRANSCRIPT - TSBVI Coffee Hour: Story time. A Former Blind Child. How Technology Saved My Life Š 11-01-21


>>Bill: Hey, everyone! Welcome. I just wanted to say thank you and I'm going to mute my speech right there. So, my name is Bill, and I am a fish and rehabilitation specialist and I currently work for department of defense and I am the director of rehab at Walter reed medical center and I work with our veterans. And IÕm really excited to be here. And so, before I get started, I just want to say a special thank you to the folks that help to put "Coffee hour" together for the Texas school for the blind. You have Kaycee and Kate and Brian and Nathan and Susan. Everyone that does all of this work to bring us together is doing an amazing job. And I just want to say thank you from all of us in the community. Texas school for the blind has helped to put together some amazing presentations and they have pretty much helped to save the field, right, because professionals are out there and theyÕre collecting credit and they're helping to maintain their certifications and, you know, be credentialed and be the best professional that they can be. And thatÕs very important to me because I am a former blind child. I was a kid that went to the New York City public school system. I'm a kid that learned Braille at a very early age. And I have got parents that are from another country, so English was not my first language. There were a lot of challenges there. And so, one of the things that I'm really happy to have had is early intervention with Braille from, you know, right about kindergarten is when I started learning it. What I will tell you is that my eye condition is retinitis pigmentosa and I was diagnose ad at a very early age and I went to a child development center that they had in New York and I -- I learned some skills early on in being able to explore. And I believe strongly in exploration. I think that kids should be allowed to explore and, you know, my parents being from a different country were kind of weird about me exploring as a blind kid. Like, you know, finding my way around, you know, checking out different things and how they work. They would kind of -- not necessarily distract me from doing it -- but they would attempt to stop me from exploring. And it took a while for them to get comfortable with some of the exploration and, you know, being able to figure my way around my environment. And now I -- as a professional -- I talk to people very often about, you know, letting people control as much of their environment as possible. So, I always tell people that, you know, going through school and learning Braille and learning orientation and mobility, learning scanning techniques -- I remember scanning techniques. My specialist, we'd walk down the hall and she would have had like numbers posted on different doorways and stuff. And my job was to find each number in order. And I had to use scanning techniques. I wasn't totally blind. I still had some usable vision, and she was going to teach me how to use as much of that usable vision as possible. It was basically using everything in your toolbox, right? So, I always -- like I said, I liked exploring. I liked exploring devices. I liked exploring technology. You know, old-school computers, if you guys remember or if you guys are old enough to remember Dos and to remember computers that were long before Windows and I always wanted to be able to make those things work just like anybody else did. Any sighted kid. I always wanted to play computer games, just like any other person does, just like any sighted kid did. And so that got me interested in technology as a whole, and I -- you know, I always wanted to figure out how stuff worked and how to try to make it work for me. The cool thing about games -- especially back then -- were sound effects. You would have games that most kids played, you know, sighted kids, and whenever an action took place in a game, it would be a sound effect associated with it. Well, I took that as a guide, and it allowed me to play games on a home video game system, using mostly sound, and then the residual vision that I had for some of the peripheral stuff. But I was using sound for everything. If a pitcher threw a ball and I needed to hit it with a bat, I would wait for the sound that the pitch would make, and when the bat hit the ball that would make a sound. And when the ball would be up in the air, that would make a sound. When the ball would bounce, that would make a sound. And my residual vision allowed me to run the bases in the video game. And so, there was always a hack -- right? There was always a work-around, always a way for me to do some of the things that I really wanted to do -- not everything -- but some of the things. And then, of course, with the rest of it, when it came to things like reading, writing, physical fitness, P.E., we had -- my TVIs that would step in and attempt to make it work for me, attempt --we had adapt for physical education and there were ways that kids could get into it who were blind, anywhere from having good usable vision to totally blind, we were all there and we participated in that type of stuff. And I really enjoyed it. So, my memories as a kid were of teachers like you, right? Teachers at the Texas school for the blind, and teachers in Arkansas and Virginia and Canada. I have seen all of you guys signing in. I have listened as you guys were putting in your name and where you were from. We've got people from all over the United States and Canada here today. And it's people like you that have helped me to become successful. Its teachers like you that have pushed me, that have given me the tools that I need. And one of the things that I want you guys to know is that your kids, whether they like you, whether they hate you, or anywhere in between, theyÕre going to remember you. They're going to remember your voice, they're going to remember the things you say, theyÕre going to remember how you say them, your tone, your attitude. And very often, itÕs going to play over and over in their head as they go through life as a grown adult. You're going to have kids or former kids like me who remember you better than you would ever think that somebody would remember the things that you say. The kids take that stuff with them. I took that stuff with me. I remember my teachers -- my TVIs, and even some of the mainstream Ed teachers at public school, I remember a lot of things that they said, a lot of the things that they gave me a hard time about. And some of the stuff was fair, because I needed to have somebody give me a hard time about it. And some of the stuff was not so far. And we'll talk about that in just a second. But I want to focus on the positive. I want to focus on the fact that the kids that you're working with are going to have all of the tools that you give them throughout life. The communication skills. The organizational skills. The labeling skills. The technology skills. And also, the attitude, the drive that you build into that to move forward and to become successful. ThatÕs a type of stuff that these kids are going to have throughout their entire life. So, you are building a foundation -- I know that a lot of you guys know this. A lot of you are like, Bill, we know that already. I think that sometimes it's really good to hear. And if we have parents in the audience, I think that it is good that parents hear that type of stuff. Because giving your kid -- setting standards, pushing them to meet those standards, is extremely important. And there were times when I was pushed very, very hard to meet those standards. And there were times when I was not pushed at all. There were times when the message was loud and clear that this kid isn't going to be able to do a whole lot because he's blind and we don't know how to work with him, and, you know, maybe he should go to a school for the blind or maybe go to a program -- you know -- and that kind of stuff very often was put out by what we call mainstream Ed teachers, like teachers who teach social studies, math, English, you know, stuff like that. What I will say is that the way that you support your kids is really important. The support that you give them when they feel that something has gone wrong is extremely important. And the reason that I say that it is important is because, again, they're going to take this with them for a long time. And the foundation that you build with these kids is going to be part of what makes them successful in the future. Right? It all starts here. So, let's talk a little bit about it, right. Let's talk about some of the challenges that I've had. So, my parents are from Greece, IÕm Greek, and my first language was Greek and I speed and read and write Greek. It's what I spoke throughout my life for the first several years until I actually got to school. Until I got to like a child development center. And I had a very thick accent when I was first learning to speak English. My parents did not speak English at home. My father didn't know how and he had only gotten to America a couple of years before I was born, you know, and had become a citizen, this was in the 1970s and he had become a U.S. citizen. You know, when I was born it was basically, you know, all Greek in the house. He didn't know any different. He didn't know how to help me as I moved forward, though I was now speaking English, working on assignments at school was very difficult because there wasn't a whole lot of technology. The stuff that I had in Braille would work, but there are things that didn't work. Whenever I needed an assignment read to me or a textbook or something like that, whenever it wasn't available, I was sitting there with my Greek father and he was basically spelling words or sounding them out and I had to make the best that I could with listening to that stuff. Well, now with technology, textbooks come a lot easier. It's not perfect, but we have a lot of resources out here now where there's not as much of an issue with getting your materials in an accessible format. Again, it isn't perfect. There are still some pretty significant challenges, but we have moved leaps and bounds forward from where it was when I was a kid. But the challenges that I faced with having parents that didn't speak English are similar challenges to what you guys are facing out there in the field. You have kids that are coming into the United States whose parents don't speak English, kids that maybe have been born here whose parents have been here a while and donÕt speak English. Or don't speak enough English to be able to communicate effectively in terms of like education and stuff. You're dealing with those challenges. And I can tell you right now that those challenges are very, very difficult, especially when you have, you know, general Ed teachers, for example, who may not have time to address some of those issues. TheyÕre expected to teach a class. They're expected to produce and they're expected to turn in grades. TheyÕre expected to work with as many students as possible to meet the standards. And there's a lot of kids that actually fall through the cracks because of that kind of stuff. And I did -- I was one of those kids in some areas, falling through the cracks. And falling through the cracks is not easy because you have to then catch up. If you stumble, if you trip and fall, if you mess up on an exam, if one of your semesters doesn't work out the way that you want it to. Let's say that you fail a class -- and I did fail a class in high school -- I failed a few classes because I didn't have the way to access the material. And so, when it came time for taking a test, for example, they didn't play around. Like, if you didnÕt know the material, you didn't pass the test. And if you didn't pass the test, you didn't pass the class. That's essentially how it worked back then. Again, not having a lot of support there to be able to access your textbooks and things like that. So, there are some challenges there and parents continue to face those challenges. Kids continue to face those challenges. And I am here to tell you that taking some time to see it from their perspective could go a long way. It could go a long way in communicating with your general Ed teachers and with your administrators and the different program directors that your kids are in. And, okay, how will I do this task myself if I were having the challenges that this particular kid was having, right? How am I going to sit there and, you know, and to get access to this material? How will I sit there and write a paper? How will I sit there and do research when I havenÕt really learned assistive technology to be able to use it effectively right now, right? All of those are challenges faced in 2021. TheyÕre different in the way that we have to face them, but theyÕre still the same type of challenge. And the biggest challenge has to do with access. Being able to access material. State-wide exams -- you know, research papers, research material. Websites that you have to go to in order to access that stuff. All of it is a huge challenge. And this is where a lot of people struggle, both teachers and especially families and students. Right? So, I'm going to pause for a second and I'm going to ask -- does anybody out there have any questions? Like do we have any questions in the Chat? Because I like being interactive and I love questions from the audience. Like, that's one of the things and I don't want to just stand up here or sit up here and talk and run my mouth and not get any kind much back-and-forth with people. So, I want to see if thereÕs anybody that has questions. If you have them, please throw them in the Chat and I'm going to go ahead and unmute my speech. See if anything comes through and if Kate would like to --

>>Kate: There's not any questions yet.

>>Bill: Not any questions, all right, you wimp, no one is asking anything? ThatÕs fine. So -- there we go. Speech off. What I do want to say is that I completely hear what a lot of the challenges are out there. I have worked with teachers very, very often. And so, you know, this is something that I think that we all agree is problematic at times, but communication is key. And getting the message out and having regular communication with your parents, with, you know, the other teachers that are in your school system, you know, all of that stuff is really important. Being part of a team and making everyone feel like they're part of a team is important. A lot of mainstream teachers get frustrated, right? Because they don't know what to do. They haven't been trained. You guys have been trained, right, the TVI has been trained and the rehab teacher and the OEM specialist have been trained. Parents have been trained aggressively because not only do they see it all day long, but at night, at home, over the weekend, they see that kind of stuff regularly. So, parents have had some serious challenges there, and, again, communication is key. Like, talking to everyone, and making sure that everyone is comfortable, making sure that everybody understands what is happening and why and what their role is in helping that student succeed. Because everybody has a part to play. And sometimes we run into issues where people don't know their role. They may overstep their role sometimes. Not always on purpose, but, you know, these things happen. People want to be helpful. And people are always wanting to make sure, you know, that they're part of the puzzle and that the kid is getting help that they need, and the family is getting help that they need, and the mainstream Ed teachers are getting what they need. But very often it's very difficult for those folks to even know what they need. And that's where you guys come in. That's the important piece of it here. So assistive technology -- I told you guys that I liked to explore. And that I liked to figure out how things worked. What button does what. How do you make this little character on the screen move? How do you open up a document where you can type stuff out? And then later on email -- like, how does email work? How does the internet work? I want to check out this internet thing that you -- everybody is on the internet. And for me, like, screen readers were not very advanced at that time. They are now, right, now you have very good web accessibility. It isn't perfect, and there are some very significant challenges, but it's not like it was when screen readers first came to be on Windows computers and stuff like that. Now you even have a choice. You can have a windows computer and you can have an Apple future and an Android device and all of that stuff has now become accessible to not only people like me, people who need a screen reader, you know, Jaws, voiceover, and MDEA, but people who use magnification tools, right, and students who have decent usable vision or functionable vision and they're able to use these devices just right out of a box, right. And not a whole lot of stuff to install unless you install a third-party thing like Jaws, but back then we didn't have that kind of stuff. So, I always wanted to figure out how stuff worked. And if I couldn't get it to work, I had to figure out how to make it work. I had to figure out work arounds if I could find them, right? And I still remember, like, home devices, like a VCR, if you know an VCR, it's an old-school DVD player issue and if you don't know what a DVD -- God, I'm old -- but, but the VCR, I would go -- I had had enough usable vision to see a little bit, so I would walk all the way up to the TV and just put my face right into the screen and figure out how to program the VCR and it would take me 10 minutes and I'd have to go character to character, moving my face across the screen, and getting more close to it. And you know what, I ended up to doing it and it was an accomplishment. I felt good after I programmed the VCR and you guys have no clue. All right, cool -- sorry, I went old school with the VCR reference.

>>Kate: This is Kate, a question came in. Savannah asked so you mentioned that as a high school student you didn't have access to materials and the TVI teachersÕ responses and how does it work with advocating in the workplace when things aren't accessible?

>>Bill: You have people in the workplace that are not knowledgeable of -- of assistive technology. Like, if you go work somewhere and they've never worked with a person who is blind before -- I mean, I'm the only person in my agency -- now not the only person, but IÕm the only person in my agency that is blind. Or that has any kind of vision impairment. I think we have a couple of contractors that might, but for our agency as far as our employees go, I'm the only one visually impaired or blind, right? So, I walk into this place and it's called the vision center of excellence. And you would think oh, these guys get it, these guys totally understand. And I walked in and they treated me like I was fragile, right. So how do you ask for what you need when it comes to work. And the answer is very, very carefully. You explain it verbally first, like we always do it verbally. Don't put anything in writing because it tends to freak people out, right. But the support -- it is there if you know how to properly access it. And thatÕs really the challenge in the beginning is learning where do you access the support, where do you go -- if you need a screen reader for the computer, how do you figure that out? And for a lot of our older folks, they get it, right. They understand. But for a lot of our younger folks, the path is not as clear. And the reason that the path is not as clear is because they don't really know who to go to first. Do you go to your supervisor? Do you go to H.R.? Do you go to the I.T. department? And doing it the right way and balancing it properly, itÕs like walking a tightrope and balancing that is really important in the workplace because if you donÕt, you are going to trip and fall and people are going to get freaked out, right. And that's the last thing that you want to do when you're the new guy and you're blind and you have some challenges that you have to overcome, the last thing that you want to do is start freaking out your employer. So, it's a balancing act and usually I would go to my direct supervisor to help with that type of stuff. And training -- you can ask for training to learn how to use that equipment. But I think that the training very often comes before you even get that job. It comes from your rehab agencies, it comes from -- if you're visually impaired at a young age, it comes from your school system, from your TVIS and your instructors that do assistive technology. All of that stuff is -- is, you know, you need that stuff before you get to work if you can, right? I think that it is really important that we train people, I think that it is really important that we rehab people all the way through. That we don't do rehab halfway. I think that it is important that if you are a rehab counselor and you're going to sponsor someone for a particular goal that, you do everything in your power to help them to meet that goal. And we donÕt cut corners when it comes to assistive technology. We don't cut corners when it comes to training, all right. So that stuff is really important. And, unfortunately, the way that the system is set up, sometimes -- all right, when you leave high school and you're working with your department of labor whatever -- they want to push the case through. They want -- like, their goal is to get you employed as quickly as possible, because if you get employed, they get their numbers, right. And the numbers are very important to them. It's what keeps them funded. It's what keeps the rehab agency working. And being productive. But sometimes, unfortunately, we tend to speed through and people aren't ready when they need to be. They take a lot longer to get ready and to get trained and all of that kind of stuff. And I'm one of those people. You know, it took me a long time to get trained because, you know, my case had gotten bounced around a few times within the rehab agency and within the rehab system. There was always -- you know, I think that at one point I had four different rehab counselors in a period of six months because people were either leaving, transferring, retiring -- whatever. I got bounced around for a little while and it was -- it was a very, very bumpy ride. So, I ended up, you know, going to college at first, like, as soon as I graduated high school. I ended up going to college and I didn't have what I needed. I didn't have the training, I didn't have the organization skills. I didn't have the communication skills to be able to go out and to do a research paper on my own. So, I didn't do well. And it took me years, five or six years to go back to college after not doing well. And I went back to college under this thing called a "Forgiveness clause," right. I had to ask for forgiveness for not doing well because I didn't have the tools that I needed and I didn't have the skills that I needed. So, I'm sitting there and basically asking for forgiveness for being blind, but it was a thing that I had to do -- it was a hurdle that I had to jump. So, I got back in and this was a community college in Brooklyn, New York, it was Kingsborough community college. And I got back in after getting the skills and after getting trained and after lose learning how to use Jaws and all of a sudden, not only am I doing well in school, but I'm practically getting straight As, right? And so, I went from not doing well at all, from basically dropping out, because I couldn't -- I couldn't hang with the assignments and the workload and all of that stuff -- I went from that to becoming pretty much a straight A student. And I maintained that for a very long time. So, it was -- it was great, right. So, this presentation is supposed to be how assistive technology saved my life, right. It is a story of a blind kid who is telling stories, a former blind kid and I'm now a blind adult. So, the deal with how assistive technology saved my life is this: assistive technology gave me the ability to work, be independent, manage a budget, earn money, feed myself, prepare my clothing, to be able to get the things that I need as a successful person, and, you know, to be successful in life. And the way that that came was that I trained myself to use a screen reader. There was a transition where I had to go from using, you know, some Braille and some large print, but a lot of my usable vision to using a screen reader. And that transition was probably one of the most difficult things that I've ever had to do. Because you have to now trust your ears as a source of taking in information rather than your eyes. You had to sit there and, you know, to basically learn to do things differently after you haven't been doing very well with what you had in the first place, right? So, I'm sitting there and I'm learning Jaws on my own. I'm calling tech support at freedom scientific and I'm asking them questions, and then, you know, I'm hanging up and trying out what they showed me. And I call them again when I run into a problem. I think that I learned every single tech support person at equip freedom Scientific for a couple of years. They knew me by name and they knew exactly who I was and exactly what I was doing and they basically trained me to train myself. They kind of gave me a push and I had to figure out a way to keep the wheels on that bicycle moving. And so, it -- you know, without assistive technology, without having the passion to explore and to know how things work, I would have had a very serious problem right now. I would not be employed. I would not, you know, be successful. I would not be able to fund the things that I need to fund for myself. And I wouldn't have college degrees. You know, there's so many things that I would not have, and I see so many people out there that struggle. I see so many families out there that struggle -- adults that have been former blind kids just like myself who didn't figure it out and who sit there every single month and, you know, during the last week of the month they're having to make do with what they can to prepare meals for themselves and their kids and stuff like that. I didn't want that for myself. And no one really wants that. But the challenge is getting the training and getting people to -- to kind of go with you and figure out, you know, how that stuff is going to work for you. My heart goes out to the folks that struggle. I know that we have some serious issues to fix in the rehab field. We have very serious training issues out there, because we have employees that work in the field that don't understand the technology. Or don't understand what it's going to take to go from point A to point B. There are a lot of folks out there that have received minimal training and one of those areas, by the way, is Braille. There are people that receive very little training on Braille. And when you go out into the field and you are working for a local school system, there's times when you don't use Braille for a while. So, it goes away as a teacher. And then when you have to teach it, a lot of teachers, unfortunately, kind of shy away from it and some of them even outright -- you know, I have heard teachers say -- many of them -- not just one or two -- I'm not going to base what I'm saying here today on one or two people. I'm going to base it on what I hear regularly. And I hear teachers regularly saying, well, with technology the way that it is, you don't really need Braille anymore. I have heard people say that Braille is obsolete because they have screen readers on everything now and technology will do the job. Technology doesn't make you literate. Braille does. Technology doesn't make you competent. Braille does. And thatÕs what it's done for me and that's what it's done for a lot of people out there who are quote/unquote, successful. And I'm proud to say that every single day that goes by, I hear one of my TVIs yelling at me about Braille. And doing it in a way that is productive, not yell at me to yell at me, but pushing me in the right direction and they're yelling at me about organization and yelling at me about doing things that I need to do to be successful and to be looked at as a leader in this field, right? And I got my start, I got my push from those teachers. And it's always going to be that way for me until the day that I take my last breath, there's always going to be the voice of that rehab or of that TVI and that rehab professional in my head pushing me in the right direction. And so, what you guys do is extremely important. What you guys do is not just math and science. What you guys do is not just skills for blindness. It is a package of things that help kids to move all the way through life, and you will see some of them become successful, and you will see some of them that struggle, but at the end of the day the way that you work with those folks, the way that you handle it, is what makes all the difference in the world. And I hope that people will understand that. If you need Braille training, if you have a kid that is struggling to read Braille, if they're getting their magnification beyond four or five X, and they're pushing their nose into the screen to be able to see what's going on, it is time for that kid to learn a different way to input information. If you need training, if you need to get a refresher in Braille, they're available out there. There's the Headley institute, hadley.edu, you can get training in Braille, they have several levels of Braille training out there. If you are comfortable, let's say, with grade one but you need to move on to grade two and you need to learn that stuff so you can push it to your kids -- there's a way to do it. And, you know, backing away from it and pushing it aside and finding ways not to do it, that takes more work often than it would just to learn the stuff and get it done for your kids. All right. Any questions coming through? Where are we at with time -- on time also. I want to make sure.

>>Kate: So, one question came from Debbie brown. How do you make a student understand that Braille is their only option?

>>Bill: That comes with time. What time do we have, speaking of which?

>>Kate: It is 3:36.

>>Bill: All right, so we have a little bit of time. So, start pushing those questions through. If you have questions for me -- and so anything dealing with rehabilitation or blindness or whatever. Any question that you have, start shooting it through right now so we can grab you, okay? And to answer your questions. So, the answer to the question is -- how do you teach them that Braille is the only option? You do it and it takes time. What you have to understand is using a white cane was the only option for me. But it took me years to recognize that. With Braille, it is going to take a lot less time because it's more of an immediate need. If you have functional vision, if you have some usable vision, you can probably get away without using a cane for a while. I mean, you'll have bumps and bruises all over your knees and your legs and your ankle will get twisted a few times and that happened to me. And I'll tell you my cane story in just a second. But the truth is that it's going to take time. And, you know, it's also very private. It's a very private matter. Talking to the kid about it publicly is not going to help. Talking to the kid about it in front of people that they're not kind of sure how they feel about those people, thatÕs not going to help. The message has to come from a person that this kid trusts, that has some type of rapport with, somebody who isn't going to necessarily be gentle but they're not going to hit them over the head with it either. It has to come as a discussion and a discussion is -- is based on caring for the kid. You know, you're not going to tell your kid, well, what happens if you fail your classes. That stuff isn't going to work. The lesson has to be, and the message has to be, you know, jenny, this is the way that you're going to need to communicate for the rest of your life. The stuff that you learn here, the quicker that you learn this, the quicker that you'll go out there and you'll be successful, the quicker that you'll go out there and you'll get that job. The quicker that you'll go out there and make money. Don't you want to be able to buy your own stuff, don't you want to be able to support yourself? This is where it begins, this Braille thing is so important because if you don't get it now you're not going to have time in the future, right? And those are some of the messages that you have to push. And you don't push them all at once, and you don't push them hard. It's got to be a soft sell in the beginning. If you -- if you take the advice of some of the consumer organization people out there -- they have a very no-nonsense approach to learning Braille. And it doesn't work. Right, itÕs not going to work for kids, especially kids uncomfortable in their own skin. Kids are going through a period where they feel like they're getting judged. I felt like I was getting judged and I wanted the girls to like me, right? What girl is going to like me -- I'm in public school and what girl will like me if I'm sitting there with a Braille book in my hands and a white cane with a red reflector tip on it, right? Kids are vain and they want to fit in and they want to be like anybody else, so pushing Braille hard to them is a mistake. It doesn't work. And you're going to see more pushback than you do anything else. It's a soft sell. And that goes with anything. So, let me tell you my cane story, all right. So, 14 years old, in high school, and I'm a freshman, and this orientation and mobility specialist comes over to me and she's telling me that we're going to work together. And she measures me for a cane. And I'm like, okay, I wanted to please her so I wasn't going to fight. But I wasn't using that cane no matter what she said, okay? That was in my mind day one. I'm not using that cane. You're not going to make me use that cane. But I wouldn't tell her that because I was respectful. I was taught by my Greek father that he'd smack me in the face if I got rude to one of my teachers, right. I mean, that's just the way that he was, heave a heavy-handed Greek, right, it is what it is. But sitting there and working with her, it took me ages to get comfortable using a cane. My vision drastically got worse. And that's when I started using a cane regularly. It was like -- it was like after senior year of high school, I was almost 18 years old when I started using a cane regularly. So, what I would do? I would take my cane and I would keep it folded up because I knew my way around school and I would basically cheat my way through it. I would walk through school when people weren't crowding the hallways, and I would walk through school, you know, and get into class like right after the bell or right before the bell. You know, I would-- I would use every trick in the book to not use my cane. I would get on the bus, like public transportation, and I would use my cane on the bus because everyone on the bus was basically a stranger and it didn't matter. Again, this is my teenaged thinking. It's not my adult thinking. ItÕs my teenaged thinking. My teenaged thinking is, well, if they don't see it, they're not going to know, right? Everybody knew. The bus would drop me off near my neighborhood and I would fold up my cane and I remember to this day that I had a gym bag and it was a timberline brand gym bag and I would fold my cane up, stick it in that gym bag, and start walking home on the route that I knew. There were times that I bumped into stuff and there were times that I tripped and there were times that, you know, I had to be really careful crossing the street. But I made it through. And I wasn't killed almost. I was almost killed multiple times. But I -- I eventually -- it had to sink into me and it had to sink in and using a cane was something that I just ended up having no choice to do. My vision wasn't supporting me being able to move around and so I started using my cane when I had no other choice. And you will see that from a lot of your teenagers. You will see it from a lot of your adults. If you work with adults, you are going to see that push against canes from your adults. You're going to see it all the time. Especially to newly blinded adults. They're concerned what people at the grocery store will think and what people at church will think. They don't want the neighbors talking and they don't want the pity is what it is, all right? I didn't want the pity and I wanted to be just like any other kid -- just like any other young guy who is growing up in the world, you know, and to do his thing. So that's my story on canes. It was hard. It was rough. They yelled at me. They pushed me. They -- you know, they tried to punish me and they offered punish up and I didn't care until I had no choice but to care and to do the right thing. So now I spend my career doing exactly what those teachers -- what those OEM specialists. I spend my career telling, hey, man, you really need to use your cane and you're going to get hurt, this is an issue and a safety thing. It's not a stick, it's a tool. And I go through all of that stuff with people but I fully recognize what I'm up against, and I fully recognize that vanity can cause a person to -- to run into a brick wall 15 different times and it's like ah, I meant to do that, you know what I mean? So, it's just something that people are going to have to overcome. Any questions?

>>Kate: Yeah, Bill, this is Kate and we have about 10 minutes left.

>>Bill: All right.

>>Kate: So, Christy asks, what is a good resource to stay up-to-date with the ever-changing technology?

>>Bill: All sorts of podcasts. So, I do something called the "Field of vision." And the field of vision is a club on clubhouse. We have done Facebook live chats. I know that Danica have been a part of a couple of them, but we have done Facebook live chats. So, we do them on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 6:00 p.m. And each day we do a different topic on living life with blindness and low vision. They usually last anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes. Again, they're at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. So 5:00 p.m. Texas time, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. And they are on clubhouse. I will be posting a link on blindrehab.com, later tonight so you can join us on clubhouse. There are podcasts all over the place. And Texas school for the blind, during" Coffee hour" have done a lot of new technology-type stuff. And the best way to keep in touch with it and to keep up with it is to read. There's something called the top tech tidbits newsletter. I'm going to do it one more time for our interpreters. So, it's called "Top tech tidbits." And it's a newsletter that comes out every single Thursday. And it's been out for over -- what -- 15 years at this point. It is something that is regular. It is something that happens all the time. But, you know, I try to do the best that I can with the field of vision. I'm really proud of that project. And I'm going to talk to you guys really fast about "Field of vision." Do we have any more questions though? I'll do the "Field of vision" at the end so I hope that you guys will stick around and I'll be brief about it but I want to talk about "Field of vision" and how important it is to me and what I think that it does for your community.

>>Kate: Yeah, here's one about some technology. So, Michelle asks, curious about your opinion of screen reader instruction for student with low vision, 20, 200 with stable eye condition. And the student is a visual learner.

>>Bill: What I would do is to use screen reader techniques to read longer passages and longer documents and longer websites, like, use the screen reader to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And then use your vision to do some of the other tools like navigation, like finding your place in certain documents, like doing different types of mark-up. You can have a situation where you use something called Fusion, if you're using a screen reader/magnification combo, you can do it with Fusion and you can do it with a MacBook and you can turn on Zoom and voiceover at the same time. Make sure that you use a comfortable voice and make sure that you use a comfortable speed. Those are two very important pieces of the puzzle. You've got to use a comfortable speed with your speech, and you've got to use a comfortable voice. If it sounds uncomfortable, the person is not going to use it. So, get comfortable playing with all of the different voices. Learn the different voices. And then when you figure out what the person needs, you can help to accommodate them by showing them the right voice that's going to be comfortable for them. Does that make sense? I hope that it does. We don't have a lot of interaction. It's like -- I hope that does make sense. But definitely you can use both at the same time. All right? Anybody else?

>>Kate: Michelle asks the following question -- when text to speech offers the same support?

>>Bill: So, you're thinking of, like -- like read aloud or something like that. It would -- it would, but if the person needs more bells and whistles in their screen reading, you may have to switch to a full screen reader. But if you use like text-to-speech or read aloud or whatever that would work fine as long as you don't see the student getting lost, like, losing their place, having struggles. Like, you know, navigating a website or pulling out research material. As long as they're not struggling with that, if they can get away with using a read aloud or one of those types of assistive technologies, then you should be fine. You don't necessarily need a full screen reader like Jaws or like MVDA, but, again, your assessment is going to show you what you actually need. So, doing the assessment properly -- and I have been yelling about this all semester long because I'm teaching at western Michigan University and they have an assistive technology program there so I'm actually teaching the assessment class this semester. And I'm here to tell you that your assessment is going to dictate what you actually need and what you should be using. So constantly, like, do your assessment properly and then also take some time to reassess as you go through. Like, as a student, starts to use that technology, you have to re-assess as you go along. It doesn't have to be anything formal. It can be just like a -- an internal reassessment that you're doing with yourself for the student. And then you can make recommendations based on what you see.

>>Kate: Thanks, Bill. We have about four minutes left so if you want to talk about field of vision.

>>Bill: "Field of vision" is -- is the thing that I love most out of what I'm doing right now. It is a conversation, we have a club on clubhouse, with over 620 members right now. And I have been talking about this particular presentation that I'm doing here today with all of those guys. So, if any of my field of vision listeners are in the audience, thank you for coming and, of course, I love your support. But on clubhouse, we have a club and it is called "The field of vision," and I do a different presentation three nights a week. So, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 6:00 p.m. eastern time. This week we will be talking about the rehab act. And we're going to talk and taking apart what the rehab act actually is. We're going to put it in plain English so you don't have to be a lawyer to understand it. We did the exact same thing a few weeks ago with the Americans with disabilities act. So, we're going to also draw some comparisons as to where the rehab act and the Americans with disabilities act go together. And so, I hope that if you are on clubhouse, which is a social media platform, that if you look for the club -- the field of vision -- you will see it right there. It will talk about who I am, and it will give you a description of the club and you can become a member for free. And we don't charge anything for these things. They are not available yet for continuing Ed credit, but they are available to people who want to take a little time, listen to the different topics that we put up there and, you know, to take some time to learn and to communicate, to share information, to sit there and, you know, to make sure that you have -- make sure that you have the ability to get something out of it and share with other people some of the challenges that you're having in the field. All right? So, I appreciate you guys if you're going to do "Field of vision" with me and if you want to be a part of it, I'm a huge supporter of the Texas school for the blind and of Kaycee Bennett and Kate Borg and Nathan and Susan, all of those folks that have helped to put this thing together. I'm a huge supporter of you guys and I have been here as often you have done the "Coffee hour" and I'm a huge fan. I love what you guys are doing and this has been a real honor to be a part of it with you guys. So, before I go, I'm going to show you a couple t-shirts that we have available if anybody wants to purchase them to help out the blindrehab.com website and all of the money helps to keep the website up and running. They're fully tactile and I don't know if the camera is working but it says "Braille, the best six pack that you'll ever lay your hands on" and it has a six pack where your belly should be. And so, it's cool. It's cool. And it comes in all colors, like, this one is teal and we have teal and we have Navy, pink, and they're available in all sizes. And I have one other shirt to show you guys and if you order them there's free shipping and we'll ship it to you for free. This is a pink one. I believe. And it says "Braille, the bumpy road to success." Right? And I truly believe that Braille -- learning it, teaching it, all of that stuff can be a real bumpy road but if you get it done right, you are successful and it's the bumpy road to success. And, again, you can feel the Braille on these shirts and you can feel the print as well. We used a puffing agent ink to make them. So, they -- they last forever, you know, like as long as forever is. Like, with a t-shirt. They last really long. And I hope that you guys will enjoy them and, you know, tell a friend and all of that good stuff. And as I said all of the proceeds go to fund the blindrehab.com website and to fund the projects that we do with "Field of vision," all right. So, thank you very much for having me. I love you guys. I love this field. I love the parents, the teachers, and, of course, the students. Like, you guys are really, really important. And I want the message to be clear that I believe in the abilities of people who are blind, and I certainly believe in the abilities of the people who serve us. All right? So, thank you. Thank you for having me.