Podcasts about national technical institute

This episode is the second part of a special focus of the Georgia Tech Research Podcast on the 50th anniversary of Section 504, the federal law that became the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The host of this episode, J. Denise Johnson Marshall, ADA Compliance Coordinator at Georgia Institute of Technology, calls this series “a very special podcast for us at Georgia Tech.” The guests for this episode are representatives from Georgia Tech's Employee Relations Dept., Captioning and Description services, the CARES Employee Resource Group, and the Excel program. This episode is in conjunction with the creation of a special award at Georgia Tech.  As a part of Georgia Tech's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Office of Equity and Compliance Programs – ADA Compliance established an award called Advocates for Accessibility. The Advocates for Accessibility award recognizes individuals who have actively worked to improve accessibility for people with disabilities in the Georgia Tech community.   The guests for this episode are representatives from Georgia Tech's Employee Relations Dept., Captioning and Description services, the CARES Employee Resource Group, and the Excel program. Thank you to our guests from Georgia Tech's Employee Relations Dept.(Langston Jackson), Captioning and Description services (Sheryl Ballenger), the CARES Employee Resource Group (Asha Hagood), and the Excel program (Kenneth Surdin), and our host Denise Johnson Marshall.   TRANSCRIPT: Announcer This is the Georgia Tech Research podcast presented by GTRI. Join us as we move forward one research story at a time.   Announcer The views represented in these interviews do not reflect the views of the organization. They are anecdotal views of individual experiences.   Eric Klein Welcome to the Georgia Tech Research Podcast presented by GTRI. This podcast highlights research and opportunities around Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Today's episode titled Beyond Compliance is in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Section 504. This is the Rehabilitation act, which became law in 1973. My name is Eric Klein and today's host is Denise Johnson Marshall.   Denise Johnson Marshall Welcome to the Beyond Compliance Podcast. I'm your host, Denise Johnson Marshall, Director of Equity and Compliance Programs and also the Institute ADA Coordinator, and I'm part of the Office of Equity and Compliance Programs. Today we'll be highlighting the individuals that are behind some of the services that you may or may not know about at Georgia Tech and GTRI that help to impact the lives of individuals with disabilities. Today you'll hear from employee relations, captioning and description services, the CARES Employee Resource Group, and finally, the Excel program. Let's take a break from this podcast to listen to more about departments that we want you to get to know.   Asha Hagood Get to know CARES ERG the CARES at GTRI Employee Resource Group is an inclusive community for employees who identify with having a visible or invisible disability, caregivers for individuals with disabilities, and allies of the community. Our mission is to create space for issues around accessibility by amplifying the conversation around accessibility inequity and by providing educational opportunities around accessibility compliance. We're seeking to grow our membership and have several cochair positions that could use your ideas and your voice as we gear up to provide information sessions and other fun events. If you're interested and are an employee at GTRI, please reach out via our contact form on Webwise. Cares and other ergs are listed there under the Communities tab.   Denise Johnson Marshall Now that you know a little bit more, it's time to get back to the podcast. Our first guest for the Beyond Compliance podcast is Langston Jackson. Langston is the HR Compliance Coordinator for Employee Relations on our campus. Welcome, Langston.   Langston Jackson Thank you for having me.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you briefly tell us the role of your office and briefly your responsibilities?   Langston Jackson My office has several responsibilities. One of them includes the administration, Americans with disabilities reasonable accommodations process for employees. We administer that. The office is also responsible for coordinating the development of the Institute's Affirmative Action Compliance Program, as well as the administration of the university's impartial board of Review Appeals process and Procedures.   Denise Johnson Marshall That's very interesting can you tell us a little bit about what elements of an employee's job responsibilities do you consider when you're considering reasonable accommodations? And also, could you define that a little bit for us? What are reasonable accommodations?   Langston Jackson So under the ADA, a reasonable accommodation is basically a modification or adjustment to the job or the work environment that allows a person with disability to still perform the essential functions of their job. The essential functions are the major components of the job duties. Minimal parts of the job duties are not considered essential functions. It is the functions that take up a large part of the job aspects.   Denise Johnson Marshall Do you have any examples of that?   Langston Jackson Yes. For example, individual that's a courier, their essential functions may include driving, whereas your most administrative functions would not include that. That would be in office work. Accommodation for a courier would have to take into consideration driving requirements, whereas most individuals, they don't understand that ADA does not contemplate how they get to and from work. So what the ADA does take into consideration is the essential functions that they're taking when they are working.   Denise Johnson Marshall So who decides what is essential? What isn't essential? You had an example of a carrier, and it may be essential to be able to get back and forth as far as those other types of tasks. Who decides what is essential?   Langston Jackson What will happen in the accommodations process? My department will send a request for essential functions and job analysis forms to be completed by the employee supervisor. We typically ask that they return those documents to us within five business days. Those forms break down into percentages what the job duties are. We ask that they give us at least four and that the supervisor breaks them down into percentages for us to review and to consider in the accommodations process.   Denise Johnson Marshall So what should an employee with a disability expect when they're going through this process?   Langston Jackson It's an interactive process. It requires give and take from the employee, the department, and from our office. We obtain the essential functions in the job analysis forms, and a key component is another form called the medical certification form. That form gives us what the condition is. It gives us an idea if this is a temporary or permanent condition. It lets us know what the limitations are for the individual, and it also gives us recommendations for the accommodation for the employee that will help them best perform the essential functions of their job.   Denise Johnson Marshall What type of guidance does your office give to the Georgia Tech larger community, such as maybe supervisors or HR business partners?   Langston Jackson With regards to our interactions to supervisors and the HR business partners, we first and foremost try to make sure that they are aware and are sensitive to the accommodation for the employee. What we like to do with all of them is to ensure that we've gone over the process and the Americans with Disabilities act with them so that they understand certain requirements and certain things that the department will have to supply to the individual. What we often find is that individuals that haven't gone through this process before, we explain everything with regards to the essential functions, the medical certification form, and then we like to go over any questions that they may have. It's really a give and take. At the end of the day, we try to establish that the department can make their recommendations as well, and we're letting them know also what the employee is asking for.   Denise Johnson Marshall So what is the best way for an employee to contact you if they just have questions or they want to get the process started?   Langston Jackson Anyone wishing for additional information may contact the office at employe-erelations@ohr.gatech.edu. Again, that's employee-relations@ohr.gatech.edu. They can contact me directly by email at ljackson98@gatech.edu.   Denise Johnson Marshall As our listeners may or may not be aware, we are also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation act of 1973. With that in mind, are there any final thoughts that you have on your office's mission and goals?   Langston Jackson As we're celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the Rehabilitation act of 1973, we recognize the many strides that have been made and that there are many more that we still can improve upon for employees with disabilities. My office is proud to continue in advancing this work forward and here to assist and guide all employees at Georgia Tech with the provision of reasonable accommodations.   Denise Johnson Marshall Langston, thank you so much for taking the time out to briefly talk about your office and what you do.   Langston Jackson Thank you all for having me. Thank you for all that you do for the employees here at Georgia Tech.   Denise Johnson Marshall Let's take a break from this podcast to listen to more about departments that we want you to get to know.   Kendra Brown Get to know the center for Inclusive Design and Innovation the center for Inclusive Design and Innovation, also known as CIDI, is housed within the College of Design at Georgia Tech. The accessibility experts at CIDI have decades of experience in user centered accessibility research and delivery of services to help individuals with disabilities. CIDI's overall mission is to improve the human condition through equal access to technology based and research driven information services and products for individuals with disabilities. With its rich history of providing accessible solutions to an underserved community, CIDI has positioned itself as a leader in accessibility and inclusion. CIDI is committed to promoting technological innovation and addressing unmet needs by providing accessible and inclusive environments for all. Maintaining dynamic partnerships with universities, state agencies, publishers, nonprofit groups, and corporations allow CIDI to continue to expand its expertise and further advocate for accessibility in Georgia, across the country, and internationally. For more information about CIDI, you can visit their website at www.cidi.gatech.edu or you can contact their customer support team by phone at 404-894-7756.   Denise Johnson Marshall Now that you know a little bit more, it's time to get back to the podcast. Our second guest today is Dr. Sheryl Ballenger. Dr. Ballenger, thank you so much for being a part of our second Beyond Compliance podcast.   Sheryl Ballenger Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.   Denise Johnson Marshall Dr. Ballenger is the Manager for Deaf and Harder Hearing Services as a part of the center for Inclusive Design and Innovation here at Georgia Tech. Dr. Ballenger, can you briefly tell us about your role within CIDI and your responsibilities?   Sheryl Ballenger Yeah, I'd love to. I am Manager of our captioning and describe media services as part of CIDI. This is a unit that started in 2011 when CIDI was interested in entering into being able to provide services for students who were deaf and hard of hearing. My background being an interpreter for the deaf one point, and also with a degree in deaf Education, made it a good fit for me. We were able to then begin having captioning for classes for students in different colleges across the Board of Regents, as well as captioning videos that were used in educational environments. First series that we actually captioned was a welding series for one of the technical community colleges in Georgia.   Denise Johnson Marshall That is very interesting. When we often see captions or audio descriptions, we know that it's there, but we really don't understand what it takes to get there. Can you tell us a little bit about that process?   Sheryl Ballenger Sure. First of all, we're going to look at video captioning or caption Media, whichever way you would like to phrase that. Basically, that involves media access. Most of the media that we do work on is for education purposes, but we also serve nonprofits and other groups that post media to their websites and want those videos captioned. There's also speech to text systems and there's two main ones that are used. The first would be CART. CART, and that stands for communication access, real time translation. This requires a skilled stenographer who's using a stenotype machine and is writing at a near verbatim speed. No matter how fast the speaker is speaking, they're keeping up with them. And then another speech to text system that we use is called either Cprint, the software or Typewell. This type of captioning is meaning for meaning. The Cprint software was developed by National Technical Institute for the Deaf. They developed the Cprint software about 20 years ago or so in a way to make sure that there was a meaningful way for captions to happen for deaf students. The Cprint software actually uses a qwerty keyboard and is something that most people already have skill with to be able to provide once they do CPrint training.   Denise Johnson Marshall How do you know what is appropriate to use in which instance   Sheryl Ballenger That's determined by the user. If a student attending college will consult with their disability services office together, they, with their disability services coordinator can work out which would be the best for their use. CART does require near verbatim English skills, so that would be somebody who is a very strong reader and who can read to learn. And that's a different skill than just reading for enjoyment. Reading for learning is difficult for some people and then Cprint because of the way it was created by the technical institute for the deaf, because it's developed for a meaning based representation of what's spoken, is typically more of a form that's understandable by people who don't have the ability to really learn everything from reading and want to see that language put in a way that's more understandable. Transcripts are also available for both services, CART or Cprint, so they also kind of serve as a double accommodation so a student can have real time access with CART or Cprint, plus they get notes afterward that they're able to then use for studying later on. You kind of mentioned audio description. It's not really one of the speech to text systems at all, or captioning, but it is used on videos. Audio description is visual information that describes the action, what's being shown on screen, what graphs may include, that kind of thing.   Denise Johnson Marshall So if I'm a department and I have an event and I want to get it captioned, what would be some of the things that I would need to take into consideration? More specifically, what is the difference between closed captioned and open captioned?   Sheryl Ballenger Well, if you're planning an event, first thing you're going to want to do is put out a statement letting your participants know that you're going to have accommodations available. Usually one of those accommodations would be we're going to offer captioning, and when it's an event, it's usually cart because that's more near verbatim and that's what most of the audience is going to prefer not just people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Use cart people who need a little more support to understand what's going on, use Cart as backup for listening once it's determined that Cart is going to be provided as a coordinator or event planner, then you would need to contract with an agency that supplies cart. Once you have contracted with an agency that's going to supply your cart, you're going to need to make sure that the event, whether it's online or in person, has good audio and connectivity for connecting. If it's going to be with a remote service provider. In most cases, that's going to require testing in the beginning just to make sure that you are connecting and that the audio is nice and clear and that the cart captionist is able to understand and hear clearly.   Now you asked about open or closed captioning. Those terms refer to the video captioning or caption media. When video captions are created, the choice is closed or open. Closed captioning means that the user will need to turn those captions on or off. If they choose to use them, they'll turn them on. So YouTube provides a way for turning captions on on a video. Televisions and things that people view screens always have a way to turn captions on or off. But in some cases, when you're showing videos that may be projected on a screen that are used for general information purposes, captions for those need to be open. So open captions are always there, they're burned onto the video. Those captions are not chooseable. You can't turn them off or turn them on.   Denise Johnson Marshall How much time does it take for audio description and what does your team do.   Sheryl Ballenger Regarding the time of how long it takes to have a video captioned or to set something up, or to have audio description added to your video. Video captioning that is accurate starts with a transcript, a correct transcript with punctuation, correct spelling, speaker identification and sound effects if there are any in the recording. Typically, that takes seven to 14 business days. For us at CIDI, section 508 calls for captions that are accurate and synchronized. That means there can't be anything that's not correct in the captions. For audio description, we start with viewing and writing a script of the action or visuals that may be in a film. The script is revised several times to ensure that it is both succinct and that it conveys the essence of the scene that is appearing on the film. Then placement of the lines in the script is determined. We don't want to make a video become longer or too much longer than what everyone else is going to view? Because that wouldn't be fair. We have to find places to fit the description in in the nonadio segments to make sure that audio described film meets our standards and what we want to see. As far as good audio description, that typically takes three to six weeks or so depending on the length of the video and the content.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you tell us what is the difference between automatic captioning that you may find on a lot of video conferencing platforms versus real time captioning?   Sheryl Ballenger Accuracy is important here. If you were having a low stakes meeting, maybe it's just a small group. The employee is very familiar with everything that's going on in the unit, knows all of the types of systems that are used. This is not a training event. This is just a conversation that's going to happen between employees. Then that might work for using an automatic type captioning service such as something that's included in Zoom. But if you're talking about high stake settings, then the auto generated captions are not appropriate. The problem with auto generated captions is that they do strive for the best guess. If it didn't quite comprehend a word, the system didn't understand the accent of the speaker. It's just going to throw in a word that makes sense in that sentence. But that may not actually be what was spoken and it could actually lead somebody to understand the wrong thing. When we did some tests on some of the auto generated systems that are used in the US, the very best platform scored at 89% accurate. That means that 11% is still inaccurate and it's not fair to the user who's depending on these captions to miss out on 11%.   Denise Johnson Marshall What is the best way to learn more about captioning, audio descriptions or just ways to make your content more accessible?   Sheryl Ballenger The best thing you could do is to just use it. When you watch YouTube videos, turn on the captions if you create content of your own and post to YouTube. Google Help has information where you can learn how to caption your own videos and you'll actually be contributing to the media that's more accessible for everyone. When you do that, you can attend movie theaters that offer caption devices. They even have described audio devices that you can check out from the customer service area and listen to during the movie. All television and subscription service broadcasts now have captions. Most of the subscription services also have descriptions added.   Denise Johnson Marshall Are there any final thoughts that you may have for the Georgia Tech community on your office and your mission?   Sheryl Ballenger Our mission at CIDI is to improve the human condition through equal access to technology based and research driven information services and products for individuals with disabilities. Part of what we do at CIDI is to make sure that we offer many services as well as we conduct research and accessibility. We also house Georgia's Tools for Life program, which is an Assistive Technology act federally funded program. Part of the fun they get to have at work is to use some of these great assistive technology tools that are available and show them to individuals who are interested in learning more about them. Our website is cidi.gatech.edu. That is cidi.gatech.edu.   Denise Johnson Marshall Dr. Ballinger, thank you so much for being a part of our second Beyond Compliance podcast.   Sheryl Ballenger You are so welcome. I enjoyed being here.   Denise Johnson Marshall Let's take a break from this podcast to listen to more about departments that we want you to get to know.   Kendra Brown Get to know the Office of Disability Services for Students. The Office of Disability Services, or ODS, collaborates with students, faculty and staff to create a campus environment that is usable, equitable, sustainable, and inclusive of all members of the Georgia Tech community. If students encounter academic, physical, technological or other barriers on campus, the Disability Services team collaborates with the students to find creative solutions and reasonable accommodations. ODS, located in the Smith Gall Student Services Building, also known as the Flag Building Suite 123, is passionate about providing support and resource information for students with disabilities at the institute. For more information, visit our website at disabilitieservices.gatech.edu or email us at dsinfo@gatech.edu. That's dsinfo@gatech.edu.   Denise Johnson Marshall Now that you know a little bit more, it's time to get back to the podcast. I'd like to welcome our third guest today to the Beyond Compliance podcast, and it's Asha Hagood. Asha is the Senior Project Support Specialist with GTRI. Welcome, Asha.   Asha Hagood Thank you so much for having me.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you tell us a little bit about your role and your responsibilities?   Asha Hagood As you stated, I work as a project Support specialist Senior on the Organizational development team, and I lead the team's quality assurance efforts for all of the content that we push out, and I also do some program management within that role. We administrate some great programs in support of employee growth and development, like the Career Link program, Job Rotation, Toastmasters Club, and we sit within the Employee Experience team under GTHR. We contribute to the organization's strategic vision by providing high quality, impactful learning experiences. Things that we develop are primarily for our GTRI audience, but we also support campus efforts. Additionally, I'm the Executive sponsor or Chair for the CARES ERG. ERGs Being employee resource groups, I stepped into that role in May of this year.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you tell me a little bit more about the CARES Employee Resource Group and a little bit about the mission?   Asha Hagood All of the ERGs were established in 2020 in conjunction with a GTRI 2020 Strategic plan. Overall, mission and purpose of all of the ERGs is to facilitate an inclusive work environment, thereby promoting a sense of community and belonging at GTRI, and to create a shared space to strategically impact change. There are a few ERGs cares is one of six ERGs. Apart from functioning as a beacon for employees who require accessibility solutions, as well as for those who are advocates for the accessibility community or caretakers, I like to think that our mission is to cultivate thought leaders in the realm of accessibility and accessibility awareness. We help provide insights to influence decision makers to keep accessibility front of mind One of our members made the point recently that accessibility provisions and mindfulness may seem like an extra step now, but it could and should become a part of your workflow if you create content or manage people.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you tell us about some of the resources that you provide to employees with disabilities? What are those specific resources that the ERG provides?   Asha Hagood Our strongest resource right now is ourselves and the lending of our voices for employees who may need them. We're a group of about 25. Some folks might be hesitant to speak up about an accessibility need. They may not want to self-identify or be considered a squeaky wheel, but we'd consider it a win if that hypothetical employee will reach out to cares and ask us what we could do to support them. And that support could look like putting them in touch with resources such as CIDI Centers for Inclusive Design Innovation. They're a tremendous resource. As well as the Georgia Library Service, the GLS is also under the USG umbrella. The GLS serves people who are blind or print impaired. Or I could put them in touch with your office or with Dr. Anne Harris. If they're meeting with resistance or running into brick walls, the support of our group could give them a second wind. CAREs could help move the needle.   Denise Johnson Marshall And, Dr. Harris is the compliance advisor who works with our guests that we had on early Langston Jackson.   Asha Hagood Yes, yes, indeed. We've partnered with Dr. Harris on some initiatives, such as the Self Identify campaign. That was an important initiative. The data that bears out from that initiative can help us to launch some programming that would be meaningful to the folks at GTRI.   Denise Johnson Marshall In the CARES ERG. Do you have meetings or is all the information just found online.   Asha Hagood We have a monthly meeting with our members, and we discuss different initiatives that we want to roll out, and we do publicize that within some channels at GTRI. We do a notice to remind members to attend the meeting and to also invite others who just may be curious to come on and attend the meeting as well. Aside from just using the group as a resource or a touchstone, we've got a tip sheet up on our WebWise intranet site and we're going to add some other content there soon. And we're also going to host a screening of the critically acclaimed film Crip Camp, so stay tuned for that.   Denise Johnson Marshall If I work for GTRI and I'm a manager and I wanted to connect an employee to the group, what would be the best way to do that?   Asha Hagood They can search us up on WebWise. Under the Communities tab, all of the ERGs are listed. We have a contact form there. They could reach out to us via that form, or they could reach directly out to me. Asha Haygood by email or slack.   Denise Johnson Marshall That is great. This is definitely a model for the Greater Georgia Tech as well, and it's a great way for us to close out our 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation act of 1973. As our final question, do you have any final thoughts for us? Just about your program, its mission and its goals.   Asha Hagood I would like to note that we are looking to grow our membership, so that is always a goal. Every voice that comes on board contributes to more diverse thought and reinvigorates our mission. So we're looking for some co-chairs in a couple of areas, and they would serve as the primary contact for outreach and maintaining partnerships and also community engagement. And they would serve as the primary contact for communications, marketing and those related activities. That's what I'd love to leave you with. And also, I thank you so much for extending an invitation to come and chat. Conversations like these will help ensure that accessibility is a forethought and not an afterthought, as one of our cares members recently stated.   Denise Johnson Marshall Thank you. We're happy to have you. And just one final thing, can you just remind all of GTRI again? What is the best way to get the information on this particular ERG or any of the ERGs?   Asha Hagood To get information on any of the ERGs, you would go to the webwise page, and that's GTRI's intranet. Under the Communities tab, all of the ERGs are listed. If you're interested in ours, you would click CARES Erg and that will take you to our page and our resources and my contact information.   Denise Johnson Marshall Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today.   Asha Hagood Thank you so much again Denise for having me.   Denise Johnson Marshall let's take a break from this podcast to listen to more about departments that we want you to get to know.   Kendra Brown Get to know the Office of Equity and Compliance Programs the Office of Equity and Compliance Programs is here to educate, identify and illuminate systemic and institutional barriers to equity and inclusion at Georgia Tech while creating a culture beyond compliance. Our office provides support and investigates matters involving accessibility compliance issues. These issues can include physical or digital accessibility barriers on campus, disability, discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. Additionally, we provide resources to pregnant and parenting individuals. As a part of our mission to educate the campus community about our office and the work that we do, we offer a series of trainings and workshops. This is to ensure that our campus partners have the tools to support the institutional strategic plan of expanding access and creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment. We invite you to collaborate with us as we work together to build a better Georgia tech. To learn more or submit a report of compliance issues, visit our website at diversity.gatech.edu/equityandcompliance.   Denise Johnson Marshall Now that you know a little bit more, it's time to get back to the podcast. I'd like to welcome our fourth guest to the Beyond Compliance podcast. We have Dr. Ken Surin. Ken is the Director of the Excel Program. Welcome, Ken.   Ken Surdin Nice to be here, Denise.   Denise Johnson Marshall Ken, can you tell us about the area of your role within the CEISMC program and then specifically about your responsibilities?   Ken Surdin Excel at Georgia Tech is a program within CEISMC. It's a four year certificate program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and it falls under the classification of Inclusive post-secondary Education.   Denise Johnson Marshall For those who may not be as familiar, can you tell us exactly what is the CEISMC program? Your overarching program that the EXCEL Program is a part of.   Ken Surdin Within Georgia Tech is the center for Education, Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing. EXCEL is part of that program. EXCEL was started in 2014 and we had our first group of students, a group of eight in a cohort, begin in 2015. There's about 260 programs across the country that are IPSY programs. EXCEL is one of about 40 4 year programs that offer Pell Grants, on campus housing, inclusive clubs, internships and is designated as a comprehensive transition program by the Department of Education. I am the founding director of that program going into my 10th year. Like a lot of directors across Georgia Tech, I am writing grants and raising funds for program needs and scholarships so that we can make sure that our program is both equitable and accessible to students that may not otherwise be able to afford college and be able to attend Excel.   Denise Johnson Marshall Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Excel program at Georgia Tech, and then also a little bit about some of the other similar programs in higher education that we may have modeled ourselves after or we've exceeded the expectations.   Ken Surdin Great question. Excel was birthed out of the College of Business by Terry Blum, who was the former dean of the College of Business and the founding director of Georgia Tech's Institute for Leadership and Social Impact. Also, Professor Cyrus Auiden from the School of Mechanical Engineering both had a son and a daughter who had an intellectual and developmental disability, and they saw this growing movement across the country of inclusive programs and they thought, Georgia Tech has a standard of excellence. Why not have a program at Georgia Tech that could be as good and hopefully better than any of the other programs that existed out there? They really helped birth the program and then they hired me about a year in advance of having any students on campus to develop all aspects of the program. I had a year to do it and work under the structure of being a pilot program under the provost office. That really is the incubation of EXCEL. Also say that what makes us unique is that most programs like EXCEL across the country are housed within special education centers within a university or college, and they're typically liberal arts institutions.   Ken Surdin Georgia Tech is not a liberal arts institution and the fact that we came out of the College of Business and are now in CEISMC really shows how entrepreneurial the mindset was in creating EXCEL. In fact, all the staff and faculty that are involved with EXCEL have used design thinking to develop the courses, to develop competencies and curriculum and measurement of our outcomes so that we can track individual students progress, students as a cohort's progress, and also our program's progress to make sure that we are constantly under a continuous improvement model. I think that really sets us apart in terms of the programs across the country is the fact that we're tracking what we do, throwing out what doesn't work and improving what does.   Denise Johnson Marshall It also sounds like an asset to have that type of thinking with this program. If there is a student out there who wants to work or volunteer for this program, can you tell us how they could do that? And then also, what does the whole selection process look like?   Ken Surdin Absolutely. We have a full-time mentor coordinator. His name is Luke Roman. He's been with the program for six years. He helps recruit students to work with our students as mentors and coaches. He will take a phone call or an email. You can reach out to him. You can reach out through our website and find out more about how to be involved with the program. I'll also add that the feedback from many of our mentors over the last nine years has been that the experience has helped them in their co-ops and their internships and also gain employment after they graduate. They've been told that employers often ask them about their EXCEL experience, and the reason is that employers are looking to hire people that are collaborative, that can work in groups, that can work with people that may see the world differently, and who are able to quickly understand when somebody may not understand something they're saying and pivot and rephrase what it is they say so that they communicate clearly. They believe that working with EXCEL students has taught them how to do that. Another thing I'll add is that Georgia Tech degree seeking students are the hiring managers and employers of the future, and the fact that they're working with our students means that one day they may be in a position to hire them because they're aware of their gifts and their capabilities and their assets can help carve a job that might be appropriate for them.   Denise Johnson Marshall Sounds like a great asset to be located exactly where we are. Through your ten years of being the director of EXCEL, what would you say are the top three experiences that participants have said have been the best part of their time with the program?   Ken Surdin I would point to students talking about gaining greater independence and independent living skills by living on campus or in many cases, private dorms just off campus, being involved in the community of Georgia Tech, gaining friendships within the program among mentors, improving their social skills, which is an asset for gaining employment, something that we do through an evidence based social skills course that we teach and in which degree seeking students act as mentors. Employment and the opportunities that they gain through their internships on and off campus are something that students get really excited about. And finally, convocation or the graduation ceremony, which is really the cherry on top for all of our students.   Denise Johnson Marshall What does EXCEL's Career placement program look like?   Ken Surdin Great question. I'm glad you asked that. We have three full time career advisors staffed at EXCEL faculty and staff. They teach career courses starting the first semester that a student arrives on campus. Students do internships every semester after that at a minimum of seven internships. Give you an example. I had a cohort of eleven students graduate and they had 96 internships between them by the time they graduated. Their students are taking career courses, participating in internships on campus, at Barnes and Noble, at CIDI, at the Dean's office. They're also participating in internships and paid jobs with over 100 employers that we work with, the Center for Disease Controls, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. I've had two students intern there. I've had four students intern at Georgia LEND. I've had students intern at Fulton county government, and on and on and on. I could talk about the internships they're involved in. Another thing I'd like to add that sets Excel apart from many programs is that we actually track our graduate employment outcomes from year to year. 93% of our graduates are currently employed. If you look at Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2022, only 21.3% of people with any disability were employed in America, and it was about 19% for the population that we serve intellectual and developmental disabilities.   Ken Surdin The fact that we're at 93% shows that our students are motivated and capable of working and that opportunities need to be put before them so that they can show those capabilities and be participants in the world of work and their communities at large.   Denise Johnson Marshall Are there any final thoughts that you want the Georgia Tech community to know about your program and your mission?   Ken Surdin Yeah, sure. Our mission is Excel at Georgia Tech, providing an innovative, inclusive college experience for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, awarding professional education certificates, and preparing students for employment and fulfilling lives. One of the other aspects of the program that's really important, especially when it was being founded, was that Terry Blum and Cyrus Aidun wanted to make sure that the program fit within the strategic mission of Georgia Tech as a whole. Improving the Human condition was front and center, and this program definitely supports Georgia Tech's mission and their values and their ethics. One thing that many programs don't do, that we do is provide a whole year of transition courses to prepare students for life after college that cover seven key areas of transition. So, for example, housing. Where are you going to live? Transportation. How are you going to get back and forth to where you live and to your job? Where are you going to work? Health and wellness, Technology. Just some of those, to name a few. But we work on developing a plan for the students, also working with the families to understand what level of support the students will need when they graduate so that they can succeed in the world after college.   Ken Surdin I often say that we are preparing our students for the world of work and to be full participants in their community. But the world of work and communities are not prepared for our students. If you enter with a disability in our program, you're exiting with a disability from our program. And all the challenges that exist for people with disabilities in the world still exist when you graduate from college. We may be better preparing our students for life after college, but all of those challenges are still there as a nation and a state, and as communities, we still have a long way to go to make sure that these students are successful post-graduation.   Denise Johnson Marshall One last time, how can individuals contact you, your office, your program? If they want to know more information.   Ken Surdin You can contact us at excel@gatech.edu. That's excel@gatech.edu.   Denise Johnson Marshall Ken, thank you so much for your time today. It was great to hear about the program and its continued growth.   Ken Surdin Denise, it was an absolute pleasure to be on this podcast and I wish you all the best and hope that you keep doing it.   Denise Johnson Marshall Thank you. Let's take a break from this podcast to listen to more about departments that we want you to get to know.   Kendra Brown Get to know GT Human Resources employee relations at Georgia Tech individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to pursue education or employment and to have access to campus programs, activities and services. If you are an employee or visitor and you have a disability and need assistance, we are here to help. The purpose of Georgia Tech Human Resources Employee relations is to one, coordinate, facilitate, and monitor the interactive reasonable accommodation process, or RA plan, which may assist qualified employees in performing the essential functions of their position and two, coordinate Georgia Tech compliance with the employment requirements of the Americans with Disabilities act, or ADA, and with other related laws, policies and procedures and three, ensure qualified persons with disabilities have full and equal access to all terms and conditions of employment, regardless of disability and four, educate staff on their rights and responsibilities under the Americans with Disabilities act and provide technical assistance as needed. For more information, please visit our website at ohr.gatech.edu/disabilityservices or email us at employee-relations@ohr.gatech.edu. That's employee-relations@ohr.gatech.edu.   Denise Johnson Marshall Now that you know a little bit more, it's time to get back to the podcast. Thank you for joining us for our Beyond Compliance podcast. This is the end of our series of the 50th anniversary of the Rehabilitation act of 1973. Join us for future broadcasts on beyond compliance.   Announcer And thanks to everyone joining us for this episode. For more information on this episode's guest and additional resources, check out the show notes for this episode and feel free to contact us via email at podcast@gtri.gatech.edu. If you aren't aware already, please note that the Georgia Tech Research Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Tell your colleagues and others who might be interested in Georgia Tech research to subscribe and tune in.    

How did our solar system get here? How did the Earth form? How commonly does that happen elsewhere, and how often do the conditions necessary for life come about? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Dr. Tom Rice, Astronomer-Educator and AAS staffer, who studies star and planet formations, how solar systems come together out of the “stuff that's out there floating in our galaxy like gas and dust.” As always, though, we start off with the day's joyfully cool cosmic thing, the discovery of “baby” brown dwarf TWA 27B that we are watching grow thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. Tom explains that a brown dwarf is not massive enough to ignite the hydrogen in their cores and turn into a star, but is 13 times more massive than gas giant planets like Jupiter. Allen asks Tom about temporal scales and “baby objects” – Tom defines objects as “young” that are still accreting mass, and tend to be in the range of 1-10 million years old. And as for calling brown dwarfs failed stars, well, you'll just have to watch or listen for Tom's opinion about that very controversial subject. Then it's time for a student question, from Alianna, who asks, “Can a star turn into a planet?” To answer, Tom uses a different distinction between stars, brown dwarfs, and planets: how they form. He explains the development from a region of gas and dust that gets dense and then collapses under its own weight, into a circumstellar disc accreting matter with an object at its center, growing either into a star, or, if it's too low a mass to ignite, a brown dwarf. A planet forms in a different process, not in the center of the circumstellar disc (aka, the protoplanetary disc) but out of the “stuff” in the disc, at the same time the star is forming. So, Tom says, the answer to the question is “probably no.” Tom and Chuck then discusss a couple of hypothetical situations that could possibly reduce a star to the mass of the planet. They also compare the atmosphere composition of planets and stars. In the case of Jupiter, the composition is very similar to the sun, but the temperature is much cooler, so there are some molecules that form in its atmosphere that would remain in their atomic states in the Sun. Then we enter the goldilocks zone to discuss what it takes to create a planet that can sustain life, like on Earth. Tom runs down the “must haves” for life, and then turns to the search for earthlike exoplanets using the Kepler and TESS space telescopes. You'll learn about the transit method of exoplanet detection and what we can learn from it, including size and orbital frequency (which helps determine distance from the sun and therefore habitable temperatures). Next we hear about Tom's work on the staff of the American Astronomical Society. His focus: figuring out how channel the energy of society members to improve astronomy education at all levels. If you have a suggestion for Tom, you can find him on Twitter (X) @tomr_stargazer or email him at tom.rice@aas.org. This being The LIUniverse, Chuck Tom and Allen end up the episode talking about video games, from Super Planet Crasher to Space Engine 2 and Universe Sandbox to the Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom which has a ton of physics stuff in it– yes, you read that right! By the way, if Tom looks familiar to you, that might be because he was in our video Chuck recorded at the AAS meeting in Pasadena last year where he showed us his fluency with American Sign Language. Tom is a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults)  and ASL and his signing identity is an important part of his heritage. He lives in Washington, DC, near Gallaudet University, the nation's only entirely signing university, where Tom works with the Astronomy Club. He's also working with The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology on activities relating to the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 that will pass directly overhead. If you want to see Tom sign a few astronomic terms including the one for “the planet we live on...the most important place we can know,” watch our video at https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ce4kc96gOT5/. We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.   Credits for Images Used in this Episode: – TWA 27B (left) and its larger companion (right) – European Southern Observatory, CC BY 4.0 – Circumstellar Disc (artist's concept) – ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0 – Illustration of the origin of a Type Ia supernova – NASA, Public Domain – The Kepler and TESS space telescopes – NASA, Public Domain – Transit detection of exoplanet WASP-96 b – NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and the Webb ERO Production Team, CC BY 4.0 – Gallaudet University's Chapel Hall – Carol M. Highsmith, Public Domain – The National Technical Institute for the Deaf, at RIT – Photog, CC BY 3.0 – Path of the April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse – NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - Michala Garrison, Ernie Wright, Ian Jones, Laurence Schuler, Public Domain.

Photographer, RIT Professor, and owner of Booksmart Studio, Eric Kunsman talks about his ongoing multi-faceted and social activist project, Felicific Calculus, Technology as a Social Marker of Race, Class, & Economics in Rochester, NY. Eric discusses how the work started and was influenced by his experiences growing up in declining steel town and later, as an adult, his family faced a dire financial crisis. Eric and Michael also talk about their connection at Mercer County Community College. https://www.erickunsman.com Bonus Content: https://youtu.be/9dZ_vpIY1gg More Vidoes about Eric's work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWeP6Y6BGspCNvTEOh4AN4w This episode is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club Charcoal Book Club is the monthly subscription service for photobook enthusiasts. Working with the most respected names in contemporary photography, Charcoal selects and delivers essential photobooks to a worldwide community of collectors. Each month, members receive a signed, first-edition monograph and an exclusive print to add to their collections.   Begin Building your dream photobook library today at Charcoalbookclub.com  Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric's most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being. Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography, all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences. Support Real Photo Show with Michael Chovan-Dalton by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/real-photo-show

It all started in 1987 with a community project, a handful of faculty, and 37 students. Now, the RIT Big Shot is a larger campus tradition than anyone anticipated. In this episode of Intersections: The RIT Podcast, get a glimpse of the history behind the RIT Big Shot, and a taste for the team's future plans, in celebration of a new exhibit, RIT Big Shot: 35 Years of Painting with Light. Michael Peres, Gannett Chair in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS), has worked on the Big Shot since its inception. He is joined by Dan Hughes, lecturer in SPAS, and Eric Kunsman, assistant professor in Visual Communication Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, who will lead the Big Shot into the future. Read a transcript of this podcast: www.rit.edu/sites/rit.edu/files/docs/podcast-transcripts/BigShotPodcastTranscript.pdf

Performing arts at RIT offer students a unique opportunity to pursue their passions of performing, while earning a technical college degree. In July 2022, RIT opens a new School of Performing Arts to offer additional creative opportunities for thousands of students who wish to pursue their passions in performance while majoring in a range of other fields. The school's first director, Erica Haskell, has been named following a nationwide search. In this episode of Intersections: The RIT Podcast, College of Liberal Arts Dean Anna Stenport talks with Thomas Warfield, Director of Dance in RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Assistant Professor Yunn-Shan Ma, director of the RIT Philharmonic Orchestra, on ways RIT is making dreams come true for students interested in performing arts. Read a transcript of this podcast: https://www.rit.edu/sites/rit.edu/files/docs/podcast-transcripts/SchoolofPerformingArtsTranscript.pdf

Welcome to Episode 78 of the Think UDL podcast: Transformational Inclusive Student Input with Sara Schley. Sara Schley is the Director of Learning Sciences, Wallace H Coulter Dept of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (aka GA Tech) and is retiring from her position as Professor, Master of Science in Secondary Education dept (deaf education teacher training program), Rochester Institute of Technology, National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The research we are discussing today comes from her time in her previous position in Rochester. Today we discuss the terms access and inclusion to understand what we really want in the college classroom, and also disability as diversity. One of the main points of her research, too, is to include disabled students in faculty learning communities in order to improve accessibility and inclusive measures in teaching and learning settings. We will go over how she conducted her research and what transformational and beneficial results have come from her studies that center students' experience and suggestions in creating positive change in higher ed settings. Thanks for listening to this conversation and a special thank you to the folks at the UDLHE Network for their financial support of the Think UDL podcast!

Joyce welcomes Dr. Gerard J. Buckley, President of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology, (RIT) to the show. Dr. Gerard Buckley has more than 30 years of experience in higher education, including more than 20 years serving in a variety of capacities at NTID. During the show, Dr. Buckley will discuss both NTID and RIT's commitment to serving college students with disabilities.

Joyce welcomes Dr. Gerard J. Buckley, President of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology, (RIT) to the show. Dr. Gerard Buckley has more than 30 years of experience in higher education, including more than 20 years serving in a variety of capacities at NTID. During the show, Dr. Buckley will discuss both NTID and RIT's commitment to serving college students with disabilities.

In this episode of Intersections: The RIT Podcast we hear from Jill Bradbury, chair of the Department of Performing Arts in RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Andy Head, assistant professor in the Department of Performing Arts in RIT's College of Liberal Arts, as they discuss what the recent collaboration between the theater departments of NTID and CLA will mean, including more inclusive and accessible theater experiences for audience members with varying disabilities. Read a transcript of this podcast: https://rit.edu/sites/rit.edu/files/docs/podcast-transcripts/Performing-Arts-podcast-transcript.pdf

Every day we read and talk about Diversity. We hear how our population is diverse and how we must work to understand and accept our diversity. As we discuss our diverse population, we consistently leave out persons with disabilities. We talk about different racial and ethnic groups, people with a variety of different sexual orientations and we discuss the need for equality of women. However, persons with disabilities are left out of the conversation. In this podcast, Mike Hingson, a thought leader on the inclusion of people with disabilities, takes up the topic of inclusion. You will discover just how often the rights of persons with disabilities are subverted throughout society. Some directories do not show full show notes. For the complete transcription please visit: https://michaelhingson.com/podcast About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessibe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast we're inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:19 Welcome to Episode Two of unstoppable mindset. Thanks for joining us. I hope that you were able to listen to last week's episode. And if you weren't, please go to www.michaelhingson.com/podcast where you can listen to that episode as well as just signing up for information about any of the podcast shows that we will be providing and all things podcast for unstoppable mindset. Today we're going to talk about the concept of moving from diversity to inclusion. So why do I talk about that? Why do I bring that particular title into it? Well, it is the title of a speech that I gave in 2019. And you will be hearing that speech in just a few moments. But if you think back to last year's presidential campaigns, if you look at the news today, and the discussions about various groups who are being disenfranchised, in one way or another, you hear about all this diversity in all these diverse groups, but you don't hear about disabilities, we who are blind, who happened to be in wheelchairs, who happened to have any other so called disability are not generally included in those topics of discussion. And there's no reason for that, except people still fear disability. I don't like the term disability By the way, but I haven't come up with something better, differently abled, and other kinds of things like that are just hiding the reality. And I'm not differently abled, I'm just as able in the same way as everyone else. I may not do tasks the same way. But I'm not differently abled, I have what society tends to call a disability. And until someone comes up with a term that doesn't strike hearts, or I shouldn't say doesn't strike fear into the hearts of people, then I'm going to accept and use the term disability. And I'm going to use that term to try to get the fear out of being stricken into the hearts of people. The reality is, just because I happen to be different in the way that I have some sort of so called disability, that doesn't really matter. I still can do the same things that most people do. I don't do them the same way. But we don't talk about that we're afraid of it. Michael Hingson 03:49 Our president, our Vice President, don't talk about disabilities regularly. We see so much of a discussion about other kinds of minority groups. But we're not included. And we should change that. I was at a conference this week where we talked about accessibility and disability. So it was all about dealing with the whole concept of accessibility, about websites about universal design, about how artificial intelligence is helping to create better access, so many different topics, all about disabilities. And no one was afraid to talk about it. They're one of the speakers was actually from the administration. And and he talked a little bit about the fact that we need to have more of a conversation about disabilities and everything that we do. And when it came time for questions and answers, I asked him what the administration was going to do about that, and how the administration was going to step up the level of conversation. Well, the answer really was kind of innocuous, and he didn't really Make any commitments as to how the administration would be able to do it. And that's so very frustrating because my response to that would be, why isn't President Biden or vice president Harris or anyone else, just including disabilities in the conversations, when they talk about some of the different disenfranchised groups, we hear a lot about what's happening with race, we hear about LG, bt Q, and so on, but we don't hear about disabilities, why it's easy to include us in the conversation. It's easy to raise the level of awareness or at least start to raise the level of awareness by putting us in the conversations and including us regularly, Then, and only then, when we start to see some people like our president and vice president, Attorney General and others, normally, including us in the conversation, then and only then are we going to really see a change in how we're included. Well, enough about that. Let me let you listen to the speech and then we'll come back and again, the title of the speech, as you will hear is moving from diversity to inclusion. MC 06:16 Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming today. We do have a little housekeeping to do first, I know they're not here, but I would like to apologize to the other presenters during this hour for having to be pitted up against our speaker today. I would like to introduce to you a scholar, comedian, a gentleman. And I don't have all the facts, but I hear he's blind. When are you introducing Michael Hingson? Michael Hingson 06:52 Well, with all those things, he said, I was wondering when he was going to introduce me and said but Okay, so I want to welcome you to our class on quantum mechanics this afternoon. Today we are going to discuss the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and its impact on the relative behavior of cats in the 21st century. I'm really honored that all of you came and we'll try to make this interesting for you. I want to start with a video. Some of you may have seen this before. But let's start with it. And then we will get into our discussion. And it will be a discussion of moving from diversity to inclusion. So here's a video for you to watch. Video Narrator 07:36 There's trouble brewing at smart world coffee in Morristown, New Jersey. These two women are trying to apply for a job opening in the kitchen. Coffee Shop Owner 07:46 Are you here for coffee, or Applicant #1 07:48 no, Job application? Video Narrator 07:50 Only to find out it's not open to everyone. Coffee Shop Owner 07:54 I noticed you were signing. Applicant #1 07:55 Yeah. That's right. We're deaf. Video Narrator 07:59 And because of that the manager rejects the application. Video Narrator 08:07 what he's doing isn't just unfair, it could be illegal. Coffee Shop Owner 08:12 I'm not gonna hire a deaf person. I'll just let you know now. So we'll save you some time. I mean, your deaf. It's gonna be really hard here to work here. Video Narrator 08:21 It's the kind of thing that usually happens in secret behind closed doors. But we're putting this discrimination setters stage right out in the open. To answer the question, what would you do? Video Narrator 08:36 The bias barista, and the deaf applicants are all actors. Hannah Warrick and Maya erielle. Attend the National Technical Institute for the death in Rochester, New York. With more than 1500 students. It's the second largest college for the deaf and hard of hearing in the country. The school helped us develop this idea for the scenario. Students there say finding equal opportunity in the workplace is a big challenge. Hannah Warrick 09:06 Let me count on my really fantastic Botha to have a really keen understanding of what it means to be a deaf person how to work with deaf people, but at the same time, there are others who should not want to thin or open themselves up to that. Maya Arielle 09:24 It would be nice for them to think about what what is it like to be a deaf person? I mean, how would they like to go into a place and want to apply for a job and then be discriminated against just because of who you are. Video Narrator 09:35 Jerry Buckley is the president of MTI D. Jerry Buckley 09:40 When the President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, many of us hope that would be the last barrier. What we found out though is that attitude, no barriers were still there, that we have much work to do to educate people. Video Narrator 09:57 Back at the coffee shop, our cold hearted Manager is busy building his own barriers. Coffee Shop Owner 10:03 I know I fill out the application, but I'm going to be honest with you, I'm probably not going to hire you. Video Narrator 10:11 Remember, it's not a question of communicating with customers. This is a kitchen job. Coffee Shop Owner 10:18 Sure you want to work here? Applicant #1 10:19 Yeah, it's a kitchen job. Right, Coffee Shop Owner 10:21 right. Can you hear me? Applicant #1 10:24 I can't really hear. But I read lips. Video 10:26 You read lips? Applicant #1 10:27 Yeah, Video Narrator 10:28 it's easy to read the look on Kristen gobies face as she watches and growing disbelief. Coffee Shop Owner 10:34 I just don't think this is the right place. Like if I yell something to the kitchen. You can't hear me. Video Narrator 10:42 But the manager ignores all those daggers. Christian shoots his way, Applicant #1 10:47 so I shouldn't even bother with this. Coffee Shop Owner 10:49 I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm not gonna hire you. I can fill it out now. Sorry. Sorry. Is this yours? Ma'am? Video Narrator 10:57 Coffee isn't the only thing steaming as Christians storms out. The manager played by both male and female actors continues serving up the discrimination. Shop Owner #2 11:08 We can't hire you. Video Narrator 11:10 Many customers are right next to the action. Coffee Shop Owner 11:13 Yeah. But if you can't hear me, how are we going to communicate? Applicant #1 11:16 You can write stuff down, like make a list there. Coffee Shop Owner 11:18 But what if I need something done right away. Video Narrator 11:20 But most don't openly object. A few do stand up to the discriminating manager. But the most surprising reactions come from three customers with something in common. They work in recruiting and human resources, HR Patron 11:46 human resources, let me give you a piece of advice. Coffee Shop Owner 11:48 Yeah, HR Patron 11:48 I probably wouldn't have done that. HR Patron #2 11:50 you cannot say that. Coffee Shop Owner 11:52 I want to be honest with HR Patron #2 11:53 you can't say that. And we can't handle it like that you can come after you can't discriminate. Coffee Shop Owner 12:00 If only they had stopped right there, these hiring and firing experts would have been heroes, but they didn't listen to the rest of our hidden camera recording. And you'll see why we're not showing you their faces. 12:15 I probably wouldn't have done that. Only because because when you think about it, everybody has rights. Coffee Shop Owner 12:23 So let her fill it out. 12:25 I just probably would have let her fill it out in your writing note on the back and say not a fit. Video Narrator 12:31 That's right, the outrageous advice from human resources. write a note on the back of the application that the deaf girl is not a fit. Now listen carefully to this recruiter, HR Patron #2 12:43 I mean recruiting you can handle it like that you can come after you can't discriminate, just accept it and don't call handicapped people they have no rights and anybody that you have to just accept your application. Just don't call. Video Narrator 12:59 Just don't call as they continue talking to the managers. Some might wonder if it's discrimination these employment experts disapprove of, or only open discrimination. Coffee Shop Owner 13:17 So it's not a problem to not hire her because she's deaf is just saying it out loud to her. Video Narrator 13:26 He did tell the manager that the owner might want to try out the deaf applicant. Still, in the end, it's not a recruiter or someone from human resources. Who takes the strongest stand of all, it's a guy just taking a coffee break. A man who's heard enough, Coffee Shop Owner 13:44 because you can fill out the application. Feel free to fill it out. I can't stop you from doing that. But I'm just trying to be honest with you. Coffee Shop Patron 13:51 That's absolutely discriminatory. Coffee Shop Owner 13:53 If she can't hear me, though, she's Coffee Shop Patron 13:55 really shocked. And if this is the case, I'm not bringing my business back here. I'm telling you, Coffee Shop Owner 14:00 I, I understand Coffee Shop Patron 14:02 You basically said I am not hiring a deaf person. You're not saying I'm not hiring a person that's not qualified. Coffee Shop Owner 14:08 I'm just trying to be honest with you. Coffee Shop Patron 14:10 I can appreciate that, sir. But I don't see how you expect things to change in the country, when no one will give anybody a chance. It's an affront, it's an affront to America, or you Coffee Shop Owner 14:21 can't she can't hear. Coffee Shop Patron 14:22 So what? Video Narrator 14:23 Hannah and Maya catch up with him outside. Maya Arielle 14:27 I really felt so great when you jumped in and tried to help. Thank you so much just for your willingness to do that. Video Narrator 14:38 You wanted to hug him? Maya Arielle 14:39 Yeah. Video Narrator 14:40 What message do you have for people who didn't say anything? Maya Arielle 14:44 What I would say to those people, is that if you feel that you want to say something, please say something Video Narrator 14:51 that would be giving you a voice. Maya Arielle 14:55 Absolutely. That's right. Video Narrator 15:00 And so as they continue their struggle for equality at work, this reminder to all of us in American Sign Language from students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, what would you do? Michael Hingson 15:17 And there you go. I deliberately call this presentation moving from diversity to inclusion, because as I mentioned this morning, diversity tends not to include anybody with disabilities, it doesn't happen. Over the past year and a half or two years, we have seen any number of situations where there has been discussions of discrimination against women against different races, and so on. And all of that is appropriate to discuss, and all of those battles are absolutely appropriate to fight. But what we never see in all of those discussions, is how anyone with a disability is included in those same battles. If you watch the television show in the dark, which is a new show that I think wb is putting out, it's not a blind person playing the, the woman in the show, it's a sighted person, all they have a blind consultant, but they couldn't find any blind people they say, who could be an actor in the show. I know that, for example, they did not consult with the major consumer organizations of blind people. I have had conversations with people in the movie industry about blind people acting in films. And the comment that is made is well, but the problem is that they're not necessarily qualified to do it. And my question, when I hear that is why have you, for example, tried to find someone, have you included blind people and I'm going to talk about blindness specifically, although it could apply to other disabilities, but I think there is more of a track record of by blind people being excluded in the movie industry. Then in other persons with disabilities. There are people in wheelchairs who have played all in films and so on, although a number of those parts have been played by people not in wheelchairs, they play people wheelchair, quote, bound people. One of the ones I think of most is Raymond bird playing and Ironside's years and years ago, and others and sometimes it happens with deaf people. There is a deaf actress that I know of, and I'm sure there's well there are more than one but Marlee Matlin is, is certainly death, but you don't hear about blind people being included. And the reality is, it won't change until society recognizes that the disability isn't the problem. It's their attitudes. I want to read to you something and again, this is from Dr. Tim brick I mentioned earlier and it is something that is about blind people. This is from an address given by Dr. Tim brick, are we equal to the challenge, and it was delivered at the 1967 convention of the National Federation of the Blind one year before he died of cancer. And Dr. Tim Brooks says, the blind have a right to live in the world. What a concept, the right to live in the world. That right is as deep as human nature as pervasive as the need for social existence, as ubiquitous as the human race, as invincible as the human spirit. As their souls are their own. So their destiny must be their own. their salvation or failure lies within their own choice and responsibility. That choice cannot be precluded, or pre judged. Those lives cannot be pre determined or controlled. Michael Hingson 19:36 And Dr. Tambora made those comments to talk about the fact that we have the same as blind people or any person with a disability, the same right to live in the world as anyone else. And that was what those three HR people I told some of the HR people outside I was gonna probably be in Trouble, sorry. But that is what those HR people were challenging and what they were really saying, they don't truly believe we have the same right to live in the world. They were saying ultimately, that we don't really have equal status with everyone else. If they truly believed that we did, they would never have given the advice that they did to the actor barista. And that is what inclusion is all about. Diversity has already moved on and not included us. So it is time that we really talk about the concept of inclusion. And as I said to all of you this morning, you are on the front lines, because you are in schools, teaching children, teaching other adults, and hopefully taking this stand to say, we truly believe in inclusion. And it is true that not everyone has the same capabilities as everyone else. But if we're going to talk about developmental disabilities, for example, let's talk about every politician in Washington somehow they take dumb pills, I'm not sure what it is. But when they go to Washington, they do something to dumb down. That has to be the case. But the bottom line is that we have to demand higher criteria and higher expectations. For every person with a disability, it doesn't necessarily mean that every person with a disability is going to be able to do every single job. Just like every sighted person or every so called person with it and who is not one with a disability can do every job. Most people wouldn't even have the first clue about what Schrodinger equation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are all about. I do. But I got that training. Michael Hingson 22:01 Many people don't have the courage to step out of of their own comfort zone in their own environment. When I lived in New Jersey, I knew people who live within 10 miles of New York City, who were adults, and had never ever been to the city and never wanted to go because they didn't want to be in that environment. They were afraid to go. My wife on the other hand, growing up in California, being in a wheelchair driving all over the place one day had to drive me into New York. It wasn't her first time. But it was one of the first times that she drove us into the city. We came through the tunnel and came out at 40 a street turn left to go north. And I said you realize that we have to turn on 41st Street. And she slammed on the brakes, turned all the way across five lanes of traffic and made it right onto 41st Street and is very proud of the fact that she did it with a single person honking their horn at her. She arrived with a far as a driver. My wife had the courage and has the courage to take those steps. My wife was very much involved in as I was the International Year of the disabled year many many years ago in terms of helping to celebrate it, helping to assist people and celebrating and, and so on. We both in various ways we're involved in a variety of efforts to deal with various issues regarding persons with disabilities. And not everyone can do that. I've spent time in Washington debating with congressional types, and others about issues concerning persons with disabilities. One of the more recent issues regards the fact that under the Fair Labor Standards Act in this country today, section 14 C, which created sheltered workshops, says that you can pay a person with a disability if you can prove that they can't work as competitively as anyone else, you can pay them less than minimum wage. When that act was formed in 1938. The rule was you could pay no more no less than 75% of minimum wage because workshops were set up to be training institutions. All over the years since 1938. Workshops organized themselves loosely together and got the law changed originally so that the floor dropped from 75% to 50%. Then it went down lower to the point where today, the floor is at zero. And there are people who have disabilities including some blind people who get zero. And they work at the sheltered workshops. I know of college graduates who are blind who couldn't find a job and their departments of rehabilitation, put them into sheltered workshops, where they're getting paid to $2.50 $3 an hour to do the work that other people get paid much higher salaries outside of the workshop environment and Of course, the workshop owners say but, you know, we don't want them to lose their SSI. These workshop people are the same ones who created their workshops as 501 c three nonprofit organizations and solicit donations to help fund the workshops. They get special subsidized contracts under the the federal government programs, including what is allowed under Section 14 C, and they have developed ways to make sure that their workers can't possibly do the job so that they can get the exemptions to pay people less than minimum wage. And they get guaranteed contracts, they have ways of triple dipping these owners or managers of these workshops to get six and seven figures, while their employees may get 20 cents an hour. It happens today. It happens because people with disabilities are not included in society. And and it are not viewed as having the same rights as everyone else. It won't change until all of us take a stand and say, yes, it doesn't matter whether someone has a so called disability. I don't like the term disability. But you know what, it doesn't really matter. It's just a word. And it doesn't necessarily mean in competence or a lack of capability. It is just one way that people describe a subset of society, just like people who are left handed are called left handed and it describes a certain segment of society. And in the past, there were times that people who were left handed were viewed as less competent, or certainly had problems that normal people in society don't have. Michael Hingson 26:46 The fact is that we collectively have to make that change. And I'm challenging you and putting the pressure on you to say you are part of what that change has to be. Jimmy Carter, former President Carter once said, We must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And if the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean anything, then those principles must include all persons. All of us have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as the Declaration of Independence says, I'm not trying to be sexist, all men are created equal. But we really know that that means all persons are created equal in today's society. We have to change it. And it won't change unless we take some stands and make those changes occur. I know it's a tough job. I told you all this morning about my parents who took some stands regarding me and being blind. But I also there are a lot of parents who won't do that. I don't dare let my child go out on their own. They're blind. After all, how could they ride a bike, I rode a bike when I was growing up. I wrote it all over the neighborhood. Let me tell you a story about riding my bike one day. So there I was out riding my 20 inch bike I was seven years old right now all around the neighborhood having a good old time, right? going anywhere I wanted to go going up Stan Ridge Avenue, going over to Third Street East going, going west to Glen Raven, and two Second Street and all that riding all over the place. In many days, I would ride my bike to school to yukka school, but I was in the first second and third grade. Well, second third grade because I didn't have my bike when I was in the first grade, but riding my bike to school along with my brother riding his bike, and we had a good time doing that while I was out riding my bike one day. And I came home after being out for a couple hours having fun and just doing what I did. And as I walked in the door after putting the bike in the garage, the phone rang. My father picked up the phone. By the way, if you bought Thunder dog, you'll see this story in there. It's still one of my favorite stories. My father picked up the phone said hello. And here's the way the conversation when I picked up from his side and what he told me later. So he answers again and he says hello. And this guy says I'm calling about your kid riding his bike out on the street. And my dad said, Okay, what about it was out riding his bike? And my dad said, Well, yeah, all the time. What's the problem? No, no, I'm not talking about the older kid. The one that can see I'm talking about the blind kid. He was out riding his bike. And my dad said, Well, yeah, what about it? Well, but he's blind. Yeah, he's out riding his bike. Yeah. What about it? bass blind? My dad said, Did he hit anyone? Well, no. Did anyone hit him? No. Did he? Did he pass cars? Or did cars come down the street? And did he have any problems with any of them? Well, no. Did he hit any Park cars? No. Did he get hurt in any way? Well, no. Well, then what's the problem? The guy hung up. He could not deal With the fact that there was a blind child riding a bike out on his Street, I was in 1957. Let's fast forward to 2000 well to 1997. My wife and I moved to New Jersey. And we joined the Cranford United Methodist Church. And we went to the first yearly meeting of the church with the essentially the meeting of the corporation. And during the meeting, they talked about one thing and another. And they finally got to the fact that they were very interested in making accessible restrooms available at the church. Right now. They had a very steep ramp, it had a slope of probably about 45 degrees. So it was certainly not something that was truly accessible, you had to fold it down, and then go down the three steps on this ramp to get to the fellowship hall unless you walked all the way around, outside and in which didn't work well and snow. And there really wasn't an accessible restroom down there, there was something that kind of served as one but there wasn't. And they were very concerned about wanting to make accessibility possible in the church. And they were proud of the fact that in the last 10 years, they had raised $10,000, toward making accessibility possible 10 years to get $10,000, which wouldn't even be enough to probably get functioning legitimate, approved architectural drawings. However, they were very excited about that. And my wife spoke up and said, What are you guys doing? Michael Hingson 31:38 Well, we want accessibility. We want accessible restrooms, not with $10,000. You know, what are you going to do about that? Well, we're working on it. And my wife said, Look, you guys, we need to get true accessibility in the church. Let's start a fundraising campaign. Well, they wanted to put her in charge of it, of course, churches, and everybody always wants to do that. So they, they discussed it one side up and down the other and so on, and my wife agreed that she would be part of it, but only if some of the other leadership in the church would be involved. Within three months, they raised over $100,000 in pledges, and they actually started getting the money in and they began work on the accessible process. It included making elevators that would go from the congregational. Well, from the main church, the synagogue, that not synagogue, but from the main church down to fellowship hall where they wanted to put the accessible restrooms, and they started, the first thing they did was to make some accessible pews in the church. And the way they did that was they cut a couple of sections out of a couple of the pews in the middle of the church so that people in wheelchairs would have a place not off to one side, but right in the middle of the place to sit with everyone else. As that process started some of the old guard in this Cranford United Methodist Church that was nearly 150 years old, started taking exception to cutting up their pews a little bit. And they called the fire marshal. They call it the fire chief in Cranford. And they said, they're messing up our church, they're cutting up the pews. They're putting the possibility of people in wheelchairs sitting in the middle of the church. And if there's a fire, how are they going to get out? Well, there was one accessible way to get out. But to go out the front of the church, you couldn't because it was down steps. And the fire marshal said, well, sounds pretty serious to me. You know, we need to deal with that. The pastor wouldn't confront the fire chief. Some of the other people on the committee's wouldn't confront the fire chief. So finally, my wife decided if you guys aren't going to do it, I will. And she called up the fire chief said, I understand you've had some complaints, can we talk about it? And he said, Sure. Here's the problem. If you want to get out of the church, you're in your wheelchair, how you going to get out if the exits blocked? And my wife said, Well, if you're going to shut the church down and stop our efforts for doing that, are you going to go to the local Pathmark grocery store that has only one accessible exit and you're going to close it down? Well, no, we've approved it. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the fire marshal said, but you know, how? How are you making sure that you're obeying all the architectural rules? Do you have an architect drawing up all the drawings? Do you know the name Ron Meeks, sir? Yeah, he's the architect for the city. Yeah, he's also the guy that's doing our drawings Hello. The people couldn't tolerate a person in a chair being in their church. It got worse. The church had a Boy Scout troop. And as the elevators started to go in some of the exits that people would normally use to go into fellowship hall directly from the church were blocked. So they had to go outside and walk around just like people in wheelchairs. had to do. And one day my wife was confronted by one of these people saying you are messing up our church, and he and we have a scout dinner coming up, you better have this cleaned up by the time our scout dinner comes. Where's the priority? Where is their true belief in God, much less Anything else? Folks, it happens today. There are constantly blind couples who have children who are challenged by departments of family and social services. And there are attempts and sometimes successful ones, at least for a while, take take children away, because the presumption is blind couples cannot possibly raise children. It takes battles in the courts to change it. And they go on today, I'm only telling you all this, and I'm only talking about this because I want you to see that this is an ongoing problem. And it isn't going to change. Until we start having discussions. I'm looking forward to getting home. And watching the view we watched the view every every day or most days, a lot of fun will be is is a hoot. And all those people are last month Ace celebrated Spanish Heritage Month, gonna be interested to see if they're doing anything about the fact that this is blindness Awareness Month meet the blind month and nationally built national disabilities Awareness Month. Michael Hingson 36:28 Are they talking about successful persons with all sorts of disabilities? I wonder they haven't in past years, I hope they are this year. But if they're not, we'll just have to see we can write on Facebook about it. And I urge you, if you have the opportunity to watch the show, record it and see and if they're not call them on it. Put it out on Facebook, why aren't you celebrating the fact that we have a rich heritage of persons who don't have the same abilities as some of us who may have senior or super abilities compared to some of us? But why aren't you celebrating those people like you do other parts of society, we have African American Awareness Month, black, our Black History Month in February, we have all sorts of different things. So I'll be interested to see when I go home, if in fact, they're doing anything with disabilities, we'll see. But all of you, I recognize also have a challenge. Because if you start talking about some of these things, and really start encouraging your students, and your parents aren't ready to step out. They're going to challenge you. But I go back to Jimmy Carter, somewhere along the line, we have to hold to unwavering principles and blindness or other disabilities are not really the issue. It's attitudes. blind children ought to be able to come to school, there are blind kids in this country who are in high school who have guide dogs, and school administration has tried to keep the guide dog out of the school. Well, we don't know we can't be responsible, excuse me, chair here, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Do you know what a guide dog is? Do you know what a trained service animal is? And do you understand that under the law, people can bring those dogs to school. So it is a challenge in a lot of ways. And I've seen parents mightily fight back when teachers want to teach Braille, and teach Sally to read Braille, not just print, because Sally will never be a good reader of just reading print. And Sally might in fact, at some point go blind, totally blind in her life. And are you going to give her the training in advance? Or is she going to have to go back and psychologically readjust, not recognizing that blindness is just as normal as everything else. And that's the kind of thing that we need to look at. And we need to address. I could go on and give you other examples. But I think I'd like to stop, because I'd like to hear some of your thoughts. I'd like to see if you have questions and open this up for discussion a little bit. And I don't know that we have a roving mic. So I'll repeat questions. But if any of you have a question, why don't you speak up? And or if you want to say something, speak up or come up here and use the mic or whatever, just don't raise your hands because we know that doesn't work, right. Anyone? MC 39:22 And I do have a roving mic. 39:24 Oh, you've got a roving mic. All right. So we have the man with the microphone who'd like to start this off. Audience Member #1 39:30 I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you giving me a different perspective of looking at challenges that everybody has. We talk a lot about emotional challenges. We talk about physical challenges, but I love the way that you bring humor to it. And the real the real way that you talk about it, not making it politically correct. Not trying to appease everybody, but your perspective and your strength and doing that. So thanks Michael Hingson 40:00 Thank you, I believe that I will sell say that I believe that my perspective is one that is evolved over time, one with which many persons with disabilities, blind people, for example, have go to nfb.org website of the National Federation of the Blind, you'll read a lot there, you'll read about the Fair Labor Standards Act, we could talk, we just don't have time about the fact that until the mid 1980s, no person with a disability could buy life insurance, because insurance companies said that we were a higher risk. That's a longer story than we have time to tell. But, you know, invite me to your districts, and I'll be glad to tell that story. It's a great story. Today, we can buy life insurance. And it's because people who were blind with other disabilities prove to the insurance industry that they were simply prejudice, and that they in fact, weren't even obeying their own precepts and criteria for providing insurance. Another story, though, next. He's walking, so we must have someone Audience Member #2 41:03 Hi, thank you. I'm a low incidence disability specialist. And oftentimes, we have challenges. I'll use the word challenges with Jenna teachers. You know, they'll say, Well, you know, according to Union, I only have to plan like a week in advance. And oftentimes, it's shorter than that. And that doesn't give our Braille technician a whole lot of time to Braille. What are included blind students need in the gen ed classroom? Do you have suggestions for bringing humor to the conversation, so that the gen ed teacher can come a little bit more to our side and and meet in the middle. Michael Hingson 41:50 Under the law today, textbooks are required to be stored in a repository at the state and the federal level, and made available to anyone who needs them, and they're in electronic form. And point being that if you have access to a Braille embosser, the books are already available, I got news in Boston, you don't have to spend a lot of time transcribing them. They are available today, that law has been passed. Here's an ironic story talking about people with disabilities and some of the myopic views that even they have a former commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, Dr. Fred Schroeder, back in 1997, went to the National Association of persons with disabilities meeting in San Diego. And he said, we are trying to get legislation passed at the federal level and so on dealing with requiring that Braille be taught to all blind children while they're in school using the definition of blindness that I mentioned earlier. And we would like your help in supporting that legislation. The organization said, No, we can't do that. That's a blindness thing. It doesn't deal with people with disabilities in general. So you got to take it to blind people. It isn't just outside of the system. Yet those same people want support when we're dealing with ramps and other kinds of things. But you know, it's and and all should be supported. But I would, I would say that it's an excuse, because the law already requires. And there are already facilities that have all those books in electronic format. And those teachers should know how to access those. So that all you got to do is awesome. It's not magic. And you know what the other side of it is? That isn't even an excuse. What are you talking about? Do you want our children to learn or not? Why are you coming up with the excuse? I would also say, why is it that we only have to have a week, you know, when I was in college, I would go to my college professors a quarter or more in advance, and say, I need to know what textbooks you're going to use in this class, so that I can get them put in Braille. And you know, professors don't want to give you that information. It's not time yet I haven't even made a decision. And it took a lot of effort to get some of those professors to recognize that I wasn't going to have access to the books, if they didn't give me the information up front. And it wasn't, we didn't have the ADA back in 1968 through 76 when I was going through college, and in fact, one instructor gave us a title of a book. That wasn't the title of the book that they ended up using. So I didn't even have the textbook for the first two thirds of the quarter we were studying it. I did get an A in the class. But in spite of what the professor did, I don't think it was deliberate. But, you know, at the college level, even now, in the college level, we're working to get similar legislation passed so that college texts are made available in electronic form and stored in a repository. But that does exist today. So there's no excuse for them doing that. And, you know, I don't know how best to do it with a lot of humor other than to say, you know, well, you know, I'll tell you what we'll we'll start preparing TV shows for you to watch when, you know when we get around to it, and you know, you may miss mom, or you may miss Grey's Anatomy or any other shows, because we're just not going to have them ready in time. And we're not going to let your VCR turn on until we're ready, and we have it ready for you to take. So there's, there's no easy way to do it. Because it's inexcusable. And it's a number of those same teachers who really don't want to teach blind kids Braille, because you don't need them. You don't need to do that you can get the book in electronic form. That's right, so can you and you could put it in Braille. But you can get an electronic form so the students can just listen to it. You ever tried to do a graduate or even undergraduate physics course and study mathematical equations from a recording? It is not trivial to do? It, it isn't the way to do it. Blind people need to learn to read and write and spell and do grammar and math just like anyone else. And teachers have no right to prevent that, or discourage that from happening. And in fact, they should embrace it. And I don't know how else to say it, which isn't necessarily funny. But nevertheless, that's what needs to happen. Does that help? Audience Member #2 46:28 Yeah, I think sometimes. The issue also is, as we're moving into, like a one to one district, Chromebook, a lot of teachers are pulling stuff for Google classroom, and of not textbooks anymore. So right, I mean, we go through and get all the textbooks, and they're available in Braille to the students. But teachers are pulling stuff off the fly. And, you know, it's all I can do to keep up sometimes to get, Michael Hingson 46:56 oh, I hear you to get Audience Member #2 46:57 someone in real time Braille in it as they're reading or, you know, for that student that needs Braille or doing like the, the text to speech. I mean, it's like, I just want to make it accessible. That's all. Michael Hingson 47:10 So let me ask you this teacher. Do you believe in obeying the law? Yes. Great. Glad to hear it. Do you know what the Americans know? I'm, I'm asking you to role model not be yourself. But do you know what the Americans with Disabilities Act? Is? You ever heard of it? You think you've heard of it? Let me tell you about the ADA. It says that, that companies, schools, organizations, and so on, are required under the law to make reasonable accommodations to make material available and to make jobs available and schools available to persons who happen to have a disability, in this case being blind. And the reality is, if you're pulling all this stuff up, and you're using inaccessible material, you are breaking the law. Do you really want to do that? Because if you do, maybe we need to have another discussion. Yes, I know what the teachers are doing. And we have battles with Google and work and are working with Google to make sure that their material is accessible. And a lot of it is and the teachers either have the obligation to pull the accessible material off, or work with you in an appropriate timeframe to find that material, because a lot of it is accessible. And if the teachers aren't going to the right place, then they are doing a disservice to people in their classroom, they cannot discriminate against certain segments of the population. You know, if we're gonna do that, let's turn the lights off. So none of the kids have to worry about wasting electricity. You know, you can't have it both ways teachers, and I hear what you're saying. But they need to do proper lesson planning. That's what it's about. And that's what I learned as a teacher. And if that means I've got to deal with certain things for students who may not use the same material in the same way, if I'm going to be a real teacher in society, I'm obligated to make sure that I work on that. They don't like that, necessarily. But that's what they're supposed to do. Because that's what the law says. And I and I, that may or may not be the answer that you want, that may not be an easy answer to give. But that's what the law says, right? And so push that and educate your principal. And if you need help, I'll find you people who can help with that. But they are breaking the law when they're not making their material available in an accessible form. And most of the time, it probably is available somewhere in an accessible form. So if they can't do it, or they don't want to do it, and you're the expert, they need to give you the time, and give you the information far enough in advance that you can find it or find someone who can help you find it and I can certainly connect you with people who can most likely help you find it if you can't, and I'm glad to do that. Michael Hingson 50:00 Next. Who have we taken such a hard line no one else has anything to say. MC 50:08 We have one over here. Audience Member #3 50:09 This is probably not them. But anyways, when I was about 1718 years of age, my mother worked for a chiropractor who happened to be blind. To be a chiropractor, you have to go med school and everything else. And for a female that's very hard to do. And she was born blind. And my mother said, you want a job? And I said, Oh, sure, I'll make some extra money. You can take her up. This was an Oak Park, Illinois, Chicago native. And I took her up into Barrington because she was horseback rider. She was getting pay me money, I relate to do that. At that point, I was I loved horses, I said, Forget the money, I'll just take a ride a lesson while you're doing yours. She was a fanatic rider. It was amazing. I was just like, I couldn't believe it. She was better than me. And temper that, that capability to be able to do that. It just at that age, at that point, I had a communication with someone with a disability that I had to help, you know, every weekend. And from there, it was just like, now when people you'll everyone hears this, and I hate correcting people. And I just heard Mike say this. And you'll hear many people say, Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. No, you don't see what you're saying. You can hear what they're saying. You don't see what they're saying. And bring it back. Listen for that. You can listen to the most intelligent person. And then they start saying, Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'm like, Oh, my God. I respect Yeah, I was just like, Whoa, No, you can't. And you're like, catch him on it. But it's true. Yes, you can hear what you're saying. And we have all these senses about us, not just her sight. And we're going to use as many as we can to make us the better person. So thank you, Mike, for bringing that to our attention. Michael Hingson 51:56 I know we're about out of time. Thank you. I've got one more story. One another story. sirius xm 167. Canada talks radio. Gentlemen contacted me, Ari Silva, who has a show, I think his last name was silver on Canada talks every Tuesday afternoon 4pm to 5pm pacific time. And he wanted to interview me about the World Trade Center and on my story, and so on. So I was on for the last 15 minutes of the show. The first part of the show, they were talking about all the problems that Justin Trudeau the Prime Minister is having because he appeared once in blackface. And now people are blasting him for that, which is totally ridiculous. It has nothing to do with his political qualifications. It has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that 20 some odd years ago, he did that. So he did, right. What does it have to do today? Anyway, so the time came for me to be interviewed. And we started chatting, and already started talking all about blindness and blind people and all that we had a great discussion about all sorts of stuff, never did get to the World Trade Center. But we had a long conversation about a lot of the issues concerning blindness. And one of the things that we talked about was the fact that he had the opportunity to participate in a dining and the dark function. y'all heard of dining in the dark, one of the worst concepts in society regarding blind people today. So Ari, starts talking about it. And he said, I walked into this place. And he said, I've got a friend who's blind, a lawyer that I know, he's a young man, and I've been mentoring him some in some areas. And I walked into this dining in the dark thing, and I became totally petrified, I walked out, and ice. And so I said to him, what did you learn? He said, that is a real scary thing to have to do. And I said, wrong answer. But let me ask you this. Why is it scary? Well, because it's not easy to do. I said, wrong answer. The answer really is, you didn't have training, you didn't learn how to function as a blind person. And you're not going to learn it in that environment. And that's the problem with dining in the dark. People go in, and they if they can eat their food, without creating much of a mess, they think they're really successful, but they haven't learned anything about blindness. I told Ari, go get yourself a white cane and a pair of dark glasses, put the glasses on, and walk up and down the streets in Toronto, where he lived. And look at how people observe you and the expressions and the things that they do. And the way they look at you, then you're going to see something about how we're viewed. The reality is dining in the dark is disgusting. It teaches you nothing because you don't have the training, you don't have the background. You don't have the basis for an understanding of what blindness is. And the result of that is you're not going to have a good experience. And all it's going to do is reinforce a lot of poor attitudes and misconceptions about blindness. It isn't going to change anything. We shouldn't have that. And unfortunately, there are so many blindness agencies that think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread because people come and they donate and all that. But all they're doing is an incredible disservice to blind people who want to live in the world, and who have the same right to do that, as anyone else. I think we've run out of time. And so we're going to have to stop. So thank you very much. I'd love to come and work with any of you at your districts. And if you haven't gotten our card yet, come up, I've got a, I've got some business cards, I'd love to speak in your districts. And I hope that we can work together. But thank you again for inviting us to come and be a part of this today. Michael Hingson 55:44 And there we are. I want to thank you again, for listening to unstoppable mindset today. And I hope that you found this presentation pretty interesting, and that you maybe come away with a little bit of a different view about not only disabilities, but how we can and should be included in the conversation. You know, one of the things that I love to do a lot is to ask the question, what is it you think a blind person cannot do? And when I asked that question, one of the common responses is drive a car. And as we discuss on a regular basis, you think so go visit WWW.blinddriverchallenge.org. That's WWW.blinddriverchallenge.org. And watch the video of Mark riccobono, who is now the president of the National Federation of the Blind, driving a Ford Escape completely independently, without any assistance from any sighted person or any autonomous vehicle technology. He drives a car, a Ford Escape around the Daytona Speedway right before the 2011 Rolex 24 race, you'll see it all at blind driver challenge. Next week, we're going to do something a little bit different. And that is that I'm going to be interviewed and we're going to talk a lot about accessibility. We're going to talk about some of the reasons that I got into doing podcasts and other sorts of things. And then after next week's show, will not only have me making remarks from time to time, but we're going to start interviewing other people. So you don't get to listen to me all the time. Or maybe I should say you don't have to listen to me all the time. You'll get to hear other people, but we'll get there. Anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us on episode two of unstoppable mindset. Michael Hingson 57:51 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week

How can HVAC contractors get the best trade school graduates to become employees? And how do they make sure those graduates are properly trained? Chris Roth, CEO and owner of National Technical Institute in Las Vegas, fills us in.

Chris Roth is the CEO and owner of National Technical Institute, a trade school offering fast-track careers in HVAC, plumbing and electrical. Featuring the only real-life, hands-on HVAC Installation training facility in the state of Nevada, the school’s advanced labs consist of the most modern and relevant HVAC mechanical, commercial refrigeration and electrical training equipment in the industry. https://www.ntitraining.com/https://www.thewhyinetwork.com/Social: @WhyiNetworkContact: kojo@thewhyinetwork.com

Chris Roth, CEO of National Technical Institute joins To The Point to discuss how his life of educating and serving the home service industry has led him to running a fast-growing training organization for entry-level technicians, plumbers, and electricians. We break open the labor shortage conversation and talk strategies and solutions about how contractor involvement and education can solve the skilled labor shortage problem moving forward

“This gives you a unique perspective as a scientist that's actually really important…it's not you overcoming these challenges, but more like you make science better.” Billie Goolsby is a second year graduate student in the Laboratory of Organismal Biology at Stanford University, studying how poison frogs co-parent their offspring. Before going to college, Billie knew she enjoyed the open-ended question asking that science allowed, but wasn't sure exactly what being a scientist looked like. In college, Billie participated in the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program at Boston University and through that, found a lab studying neuroethology in ants. Billie's love of understanding animal sociality and the neuroscience behind it has led her to where she is now, studying neuroethology in poison frogs. Billie is hard of hearing, and in this episode we talk about how this has impacted her experiences as a scientist, as well as how we can make science more inclusive and welcoming for people of all abilities. We also talk more broadly about how to talk about disability, and how to be a good advocate and ally for others. Mentioned in the episode: American Sign Language for STEM Visual Language and Visual Learning Center at Gallaudet Research labs at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT Deaf x Lab Get in touch with Billie: Twitter Get in touch with Steph: Instagram Twitter Get in touch with the podcast: Email: rootstostempodcast@gmail.com Website: rootstostempodcast.com Listen and Subscribe: Spotify Apple Podcasts

Eric Kunsman and I talk about his work, Fake News Archive Project: A Historical Archive of the Donald J. Trump Presidency. Eric is looking for people interested in the next election, and any archive enthusiasts, to search through his screen captured collection of news headlines from the past almost four years and to highlight, through your own social media, the stories that were impactful to you but, because of the overwhelming news cycle, may now be lost to history. Here is his description of the work: This is my approach at recording history in the tumultuous times we live in and a historical approach to looking at the Presidency of Donald J. Trump and his claim of “Fake News.” These images are to serve in a historical context and not as a political statement. This project started the day after Election Day and will continue until (TBD.) I started by imaging only CNN due to the President's verbiage and quickly realized I needed other major news sources as a comparative measure. The use of multiple news sources serves as a barometer and allows the viewers to view this in its historical context. You can learn more about this work at: https://www.fakenewsarchiveproject.com Share the Fake News: UnGlued Re-Broacast News Event here: https://fb.me/e/1DTe7wR2b Eric's Website: https://www.erickunsman.com Eric's Email: eric@erickunsman.com Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric's most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being. Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as a Lecturer for the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences. In addition to lectures, he provides workshops on topics including his artistic practice, digital printing, and digital workflow processes. He also provides industry seminars for the highly regarded Printing Applications Lab at RIT. His photographs and books are exhibited internationally and are in several collections. He currently owns Booksmart Studio, which is a fine art digital printing studio, specializing in numerous techniques and services for photographers and book artists on a collaborative basis. Eric's work has been exhibited in over 35 solo exhibitions at such venues as Nicolaysen Art Museum, Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and numerous university galleries. His work has also been a part of over 150 group exhibitions over the past 4 four years including exhibitions at the Center for Photography, A. Smith Gallery, SPIVA, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Spartanburg Museum of Art, Atlanta Photography Group, CEPA Gallery, Site:Brooklyn, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and many more. Eric was named one of 10 B&W photographers to watch of 2018 by BWGallerist, B&W Best Photographers of the Year 2019 by Dodho Magazine, and won the Association of Photography (UK) Gold Award for Open Series in 2019, Finalist, Top 200 Critical Mass 2019, Top 15 Photographers for the Rust Belt Biennial. His Project Felicific Calculus was also awarded a Warhol Foundations Grant through CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Eric's work has also been published in magazines such as; LensWork, Dodho, B&W Photography, All About Photo, Dek Unu along with online articles by Analog Forever Magazine, Catalyst: Interview, Texas Photo Society, and others. He is currently represented by HOTE Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Malamegi in San Daniele del Friuli (Udine), Italy.

Gerard Buckley still clearly remembers July 26, 1990. On that day, he stood alongside dozens of others in the White House Rose Garden, as then-President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. "It was really amazing," Buckley recalled. "It was everything I wish the country was today. The Republicans, the Democrats, the independents, the business community, leaders from the disability community all came together." That day, Buckley was a young deaf man. Today, he is president of RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The most important change the ADA brought to deaf people, in his estimation, was the ability to communicate more easily. In an essay for the nonprofit online platform The Conversation, Buckley pointed out that American Sign Language and the need for ASL interpreters has become more widely recognized since the passage of the ADA. Title III of the ADA requires public facilities such as museums, shopping centers, and hospitals to open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Mi4qC44VU Host: Fraser Cain ( @fcain )Special Guests: Tonight we welcome Annie Dickson-Vandervelde, Emily Wilson. and Dr. Joel Kastner to the WSH. Annie led this team of Rochester Institute of Technology astronomers which used Gaia data to discover what may be a giant baby planet located closer to Earth than any other similarly aged planet so far. Since their paper was published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society on February 7, 2020, their collaborators at other institutions received additional new data and now the situation surrounding their discovery is now confusing. Annie, Emily, and Joel will be providing insight into their research and what this new data may now indicate.   Annie Dickson-Vandervelde ( @astranniemy ) is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program at RIT. She currently studies young stars and their protoplanetary disks. She is interested in the way that stars form and additionally the way that planets form around young stars. She did her undergraduate work at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC studying Computational Physics   Emily Wilson ( @starstuffwilson ) is a Ph.D. student in RIT's Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program in Rochester, NY. Her research largely focuses on theoretical binary star evolution, though recent work has included observational stellar astrophysics studies on nearby young moving groups. In addition, she conducts research with colleagues at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf on signing with conceptual accuracy in physics classrooms. Her undergraduate degree in Astrophysics was completed at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.   Dr. Joel Kastner ( jhkpci@rit.edu ) earned a BS in Physics at the University of Maryland (1981) and Masters and PhD degrees in Astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles in 1986. As a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he worked on a team developing the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Joel's research interests include Star and planet formation; late stages of stellar evolution; X-ray, optical/IR, and radio imaging and spectroscopy; and image processing algorithms and systems. Joel joined the faculty at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2005, and in 2013 he also joined RIT's School of Physics and Astronomy. He served as the Director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics at RIT from 2010 through 2016. In 2020 he was named an American Astronomical Society Legacy Fellow.   You can read RIT's press release about this exciting discovery here: https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-scientis... Regular Guests: Dr. Kimberly Cartier ( http://KimberlyCartier.org & @AstroKimCartier ) Dave Dickinson ( http://astroguyz.com/ & @Astroguyz ) Veranika (Nika) Klimovich ( @veranikaspace / Pictame: @nika_klim ) This week's stories: - Mars 2020 gets a new name. Perseverance. - A bright comet. Finally! 2019 Y4 Atlas. - Bedrest studies for spaceflight. - Earth's tiny (temporary) new moon. - Setback for StarShip. - Merging white dwarfs. - 3D printed binoculars.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

What role do the performing arts play in the life of students at a university noted for its science and technology? An enormous and welcoming role, say David Munnell, director of theater arts, and Thomas Warfield, director of dance at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Read a transcript of this podcast here: https://www.rit.edu/ritnews/pdfs/RIT_Performing_Arts_podcast_transcript%20.pdf

John Macko, Director of the Center on Employment, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, joins the program to discuss the value that persons who are deaf or hard-of-hearing bring to the workplace, and how the National Technical Institute prepares their students for the jobs of tomorrow, and connects students to employers. 

From Human Potential at Work Podcast: John Macko, Director of the Center on Employment, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, joins the program to discuss the value that persons who are deaf or hard-of-hearing bring to the workplace, and how the National Technical Institute prepares their students for the jobs of tomorrow, and connects students to employers. 

Joyce welcomes Dr. Gerald Buckley, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) President and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Vice President and Dean. Dr. Buckley will discuss the commitment of both universities to serving the deaf community.

Joyce welcomes Dr. Gerald Buckley, National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) President and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Vice President and Dean. Dr. Buckley will discuss the commitment of both universities to serving the deaf community.

See full Transcription Below.     Molly Wezel-Peterson shares her journey, her story, her coping while sitting down one on one with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities. From her earliest days, through high school and graduating college Molly tells us what it is like accepting Usher Syndrome and staying positive about her future. I hope you enjoy this look inside of Molly’s life and what she faces every day with Usher Syndrome. I know I did and I learned a lot about DeafBlind from someone who is a true advocate for those facing the challenges which they cannot control but they can rise above the limited expectations.    Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Transcript:   Molly: You know, knowing I'm going to become blind, I would say at this point in my life, I, I do accept it. Um, it was difficult and it took a long time. Of course, I started out crying and it was very upsetting but I've since spent a lot of time learning how to cope as a deaf/blind person, and also educating my family. I do need to, to, to prepare. I do need to get ready, I mean I can still see but I want to be completely prepared when I do lose my sight, when I do become legally blind. I am taking advantage of the sight that I have now to be able to learn how to live as a person that won't have sight potentially in the future. SSB is fantastic as a support for deaf/blind and there is other organizations outside of Minnesota that are very supportive. Deaf, blind, hearing, whatever your disability is, you can do it. You will be afraid, you will want to isolate yourself, but don't go that route. Take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities that are out there to help you achieve what you want to achieve.   Jeff Thompson: Welcome to Blind Abilities. I am Jeff Thompson. I would like to introduce you to Molly Wezel-Peterson. She is someone who happens to be deaf/blind, college graduate, hard worker, an advocate, and who wants to share her story about living with Usher Syndrome. From her past to present to her future, Molly shares her thoughts, her emotions, how she copes, and most of all, she is sharing her story with you all. And if you want to find more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at blindabilities.com, on Twitter at blindabilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store, that is blind abilities, two words. So without further ado, please welcome Molly Wezel-Peterson. Molly: Was I born deaf, nobody really knows. I don't know if I was born hearing or born deaf, it was just never identified but, um, they found out that I was deaf probably when I was around 2, they kinda assumed I was deaf. I was adopted and there was really very, no communication so my parents put me in a special education school, and, I learned sign language with a tutor, and I went to a mainstreamed school so, itís called the Gideon Pond. It was a school for mostly hearing children but as a deaf student, as a deaf person I went there to Gideon Pond and I had a teacher that was there in the Special Ed classroom that taught me and used sign language. And so I learned sign language in school plus my parents learned sign language as well. And really both, my parents have since divorced and they weren't sure where I should go to school at that point so I, that's when I ended up going to MSAD in Faribault. I had actually first went to a, first I went to a summer program in Fairbault just to see what I thought of it and I had not yet been identified as having Usher Syndrome so deaf/blind, so just deaf and I really liked the summer school program when I was in Fairbault. It was total immersion environment where everybody was using sign language and so I ended up going to the school and noticing then that little things, like I couldn't read the black board you know far, and they were starting to notice I was having some vision issues so went to get a check up to the eye doctor and I was labeled as having Usher Syndrome when I was about 10. So we just sort of, I stayed in this regular deaf program despite you know, that, I just ended up graduating from MSAD, well before high school, I had a support group when I was in the, in Gideon Pond, and when I was diagnosed with having Usher's Syndrome, there was a support group. I also, you know, I played sports and did every, anything that I could do while I still had you know, my vision and didn't want to be blocked. I had never learned, I mean I never went to a specific blind school, MSAB. I never went there, so MSAD, Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf and then MSAB, Minnesota State Academy for the Blind, are very close to each other but I strictly went to MSAD. I was, my vision was fine at that time. I was just identified, I identified myself as deaf.   Jeff Thompson: You can find out more about the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf on the web at msad.msa.state.mn.us.   Molly: So things progressed and I had other friends that, I met other friends that had gone to MSAD, and again, my vision hadn't declined at that point and I met folks at MSAB. But I didn't learn braille and I didn't become skilled at what I needed to know as being a blind individual until after high school. I really wanted to be independent before my vision really went don so, I went to a vocational program. Now I didn't come here to the State Services for the Blind but a different program where I really learned how to be independent and learned skills on how to be a deaf blind individual, I learned braille and just different life skills to prepare me for when my vision did decrease to the point where I would be labeled as deaf/blind and I am very skilled being independent, I really did practice and was very much encouraged to practice the skills that I was learning.   Jeff Thompson: If you are seeking the skills to enhance your opportunities, check out your state services and see what they can do for you.   Molly: And let's see, so yeah, I'm just trying to think, it was at the time just pretty basic, that I was learning, I mean I wasn't an expert but I knew enough. And I decided, ok, that is good enough, I am going to go to a different college, I am gonna get my degree, I am going to get a job, those are my goals and plans for the future so that is when I went to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, NTID and it's under the Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT. And that is is Rochester, New York, so I entered that program and they have a few deaf programs that's specific programs there that I was involved in. I was very motivated, I socialized a lot and I was very involved in a deaf/blind support group as well. I experienced living through you know the frustrations of high school, I was now in an environment that was very supportive, I was getting more and more skilled in functioning as a deaf/blind individual and getting to know the deaf/blind community.   Jeff Thompson: Be sure to check your local area for organizations, support groups, communities where you may find support or give support and enhance not only your own opportunities, but may be able to help someone else.   Molly: So I did graduate, got my degree. My technical degree and I came back home, I wasn't satisfied, I was frustrated, I wasn't getting full time work and I was kind of not sure where things were going and I wasn't focusing on the deaf/blind community. What was important to me was finding a job. You know, getting opportunities that I could get at that time of my life, you know where I was, and I decided the job that I had, I was going to quit and I was going to become a full-time student at Metro State University. You know it was a local college and it was relatively inexpensive, and it was going to be an MA in business. Plus, at the same time I was, I was starting to get more and more involved in the deaf/blind community here. So, I was trying to balance those two things with school and deaf/blind community and again, I was slow in learning the skills I needed to learn and developing them to a proficient level since I was so focused on school and my friends and that type of thing and about four years ago I found a job at the U.S. Army Core of Engineer where I've been, plus I had graduated in 2014 with my MA degree and the company, you know I did meet my goals. I was, you know got a degree and I got a full-time job and it's been permanent work, full time and I've been very happy there.   Jeff Thompson: You can find out more about Usher Syndrome by searching Google or by going to the American Foundation for the Blind website at www.afb.org and search for Usher Syndrome.   Molly: So my vision then had, you know, it's not like all of a sudden it just went away, it slowly just started to decline especially starting at night. And during the day it was ok but I started to notice my night vision was really decreasing, I was depending more and more on people to help me get around and, you know friends, and that type of thing. So I tapped into my deaf/blind community again and really started to learn more and more coping skills and definitely improve my own skills on how to be more and more dependent, you know as a deaf/blind individual. That's kind of everything in a nutshell.   Jeff Thompson: We're talking to Molly Wezel-Peterson and I want to thank you very much for coming on board and sharing your story with the Blind Abilities listeners.   Molly: It was my pleasure, thank you.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, with some residual sight, what is your preferred method of communications?   Molly: Well, it actually depends on the individual. For myself, Technically, let's see, legally blind so, on my left, I am not legally blind yet on my right. Now I am deaf plus legally blind on my left both so, but I can still see well enough you know when there is light, when it is bright. Normally preferred is sign language, American sign language to be more specific. Now it's very important that whomever I am communication with, they were very dark solid as a background to their hands, or if they are a black person they have you know, light solid colors just as there is a contrast for their skin color, then preferred is the American sign language. But that again has to be in an environment where I can see. Now when I become fully blind, it's going to most likely be tactile sign language, I don't use that right now just because I don't need to yet. Although I do use tactile sign language sometimes when it is nighttime, if I'm in a dark environment, if the lights are very low, obviously if it is pretty dark I would need to use tactile sign language just because I can't see otherwise, but for now American sign language is preferred.   Jeff Thompson: So what kind of social networking platforms do you use?   Molly: I use an IPad, I use Snapchat, I use Glide, Facebook, IMO, I mean I use pretty much everything, what is it, I use Twitter. I do a lot of social networking, social media.   Jeff Thompson: A friend from high school put this question forward. And it's about her little sister, actually her kid sister, and she writes: My sister does a little signing but not a lot, she does not communicate well because she has been this way since birth. But I always ask myself, what could she be thinking? One of the thoughts is, does she think that she is different than us? Maybe even better because she is not caught up in all of the social values that we are. Less stressed, I guess from this question, she is just wanting answers to know what it's like to be deaf/blind.   Molly: Well, I would say being deaf and blind, taking two senses away, really there is very limited communication because when you are deaf, you can communicate, you have your hands, you can see other people signing, you can sign. When you know then become blind, that takes away that mode of communication that you have to transition and practice to learn a different mode of communication. Typically tactile sign language. Minnesota is great because it does provide a program where you can learn it. But it is a challenge to communicate with people. I mean, not a lot of people know tactile sign language so you can feel very isolated. It is very important to find a social network that you can tap into so you don't start felling negative and lonely and alone.   Jeff Thompson: Oh I bet, you know, I have vision loss. But I used to see everything and so like when I hear someone sigh I can imagine them rolling their eyes or actually they are just rolling their eyes but they make a sound and I can put it all together. But you know it's kind of different from someone from the outside looking in. Kind of like you know, her writing this letter about her sister. Because I know about blindness. I know nothing about being deaf. And actually I don't even feel half way of understanding it all.   Molly: Just to tag on to what you are saying. In the past, well I just want to say that there is something you call pro tactile. We abbreviate it as PT in deaf/blind community, that's kind of emerging as a new type of thing in the deaf/blind community and wow. Especially not so much in the blind community, specifically in deaf/blind community, pro tactile. So you know, like you were talking about with expressions, now you're deaf, you watch expression, facial expressions, that's even part of American sign language. It's a grammatical piece, now you become blind on top of it. How do you know emotions/ How do you now if someone's laughing? How do you know if someone's upset? You can't see any of that in the body language. So there's a type of, I'm going to say code that deaf/blind know that pro tactile interpreters would know. For example let's say someone's giving a presentation and there are a bunch of people. And obviously as deaf/blind person I cannot see and I am actually presenting so I'm going about presenting and I don't know, is the audience falling asleep? Are they engaged? And so I would have a pro tactile interpreter that would be giving me quote unquote codes on my back that we both know that really are attached more to emotions of the audience, of the environment, may be you know, what room, there would be explanation of what a room looks like that type of thing but, another piece of the pro tactile with relations to the emotions, it's also using it as a type of map perhaps, so let's say there's a table in a room and there is a bunch of people sitting around the table, then a pro tactile could, interpreter or person would sort of use my back as a map to show a diagram of where people are sitting and then be able to identify who is feeling what. Oh, you know, over here is feeling, falling asleep or what have you, so that the deaf/blind person is able to quote unquote see the emotions. Because that is taken away when you are deaf/blind, so I just wanted to tag on this pro tactile is kind, is a newer way of interpreting for deaf/blind as opposed to just the tactile interpreting.   Jeff Thompson: You know it's the things we never think about, that makes perfectly good sense. Such a, it's common sense.   Molly: Yeah.   Jeff Thompson: Another friend of mine, he's an assistant technology instructor down at MSAB. Ken. He showed me a device. He has three devices. It's a, they're cobbled together. A notebook, a refreshable braille, and another interface. And I believe a deaf/blind person could, or does communicate with it. I believe it was a phone. Are you aware of something like this?   Molly: You know that's actually a really good question. It's very challenging to make a phone call or to receive a phone call. There are, my understanding is there are two parts, so in the deaf, you know, the deaf world there is technology galore, you have your video phone, if you're just deaf, you have video phone, you can use that, facetime, all of that, Skype, what have you. Now you add the blindness piece into it, boy that's tough. Because, I mean for me I can still, I haven't quite needed to use a phone as a deaf/blind individual, because I can still see well enough. I can say that when I am using my video phone, I can't necessarily see, if it's a small screen or if it is dark or I can't see on the phone I just need to have my friend, a friend of mine, or an interpreter or something help me on the phone. So, if I were using the phone as a deaf/blind individual then you would really rely on someone to use the tactile sign language to interpret the interpreter or whomever is talking to be able to interpret that. Now there is braille, what you're talking about on mobile devices. You can feel a vibration, you can feel, there are different devices on your IPhone, on you know, different technology, it's actually just quite amazing how crazy technology has taken off to help put folks with disabilities, it's so more accessible now, but as a deaf/blind person, or as a deaf person, or as a deaf person, or as just a blind person you definitely need to have that technology, technology in your hands.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, another question came in. You know you kind of answered this but, did you have to go through going deaf and going blind at two different times or all at once?   Molly: Well, just so you know every individual is different and goes through different emotions when they find out they're going to go blind. Perhaps letís just say it is very emotional, and very difficult, it can be very difficult to go through.so I was first deaf, and what Usher Syndrome means when I was diagnosed at age 10, was that I was eventually going to become blind. Now I'm not, I don't label myself deaf/blind, I mean I, one of my labels is I have Usher Syndrome. I don't worry so much going blind at this point but I do identify as a person that has Usher Syndrome. As far as you know, knowing I'm going to become blind, I would say this point in my life, I do accept it. It was difficult and it took a long time, of course I started out crying and it was very upsetting but I have since spent a lot of time learning how to cope as a deaf/blind person and also educating my family on how to support me. You know, you're going to need to learn braille and you know that type of thing.   Jeff Thompson: You know, I lost my sight later in life and I lost it slowly so I use to be able to use a CC tv quite easily, and so braille, you know I learned it quickly, but I didn't stick with it because I had so many alternative techniques could use. The CC tv, especially with audio and now with digital and stuff that I kind of adopted to listening. But you know if I would have lost it quickly, I think I would have taken to the braille and dug right in. Some people might call me a lazy blind you know.   Molly: Well, and in my opinion really, I, my, well I should say my perspective from the past compared to now, I get what you are saying, I feel that I do need to prepare, I do need to get ready, I mean I can still see but I want to be completely prepared when I do lose my sight, when I do become legally blind. It'll be, it's just easier for me to learn now as opposed to before I don't, it's already going to be a struggle, I don't want to start all over again as a baby to learn all of these skills so my opinion is it is less stressful for me and a lot easier for me to accept if I start preparing myself now you know, my back up plan is I know braille and my friends are understanding what's happening to me and Iím teaching them how to support me and if there is an emergency I, people need to know how to support me and I need to know how to support myself and that, so I'm taking advantage of the sight that I have now to be able to learn how to live as a person that won't have sight potentially in the future.   Jeff Thompson: That's good. That's really good. It's a tough thing to face.   Molly: It is, yes.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah. So in passing time, leisure, what kind of hobbies do you have Molly?   Molly: I love to travel, I love to move about, I love to camp. I like to run. I love to be outdoors, I am an outdoor person. I love to camp, I like to go hiking. I like to socialize with my friends.   Jeff Thompson: Oh I love camping, I love the outdoors. Minnesota you know "The Great Outdoors" you know, way up north, you know.   Molly: Yeah.   Jeff Thompson: Minnesota has a lot to offer.   Molly: Right. My first hobby was biking because bicycle because I knew I wasn't going to be able to drive. Eventually I am becoming legally blind and so I learned how to ride a bike and you know, I am still able to do it during the day, I know, like during the summertime I can do it pretty much all day until, make sure I am home if I am biking by nine. That's when it starts to get dark and dangerous for me to be biking because I cannot see well enough to keep myself safe. So and I say that maybe it depends on the environment, if it's flat and safe I could do it when it is a little dark but I do depend on bicycles a lot right now.   Jeff Thompson: I used to love biking. I still do and you know when you mentioned camping. there is an old saying here in Minnesota, you know, some of my friends think that camping is when room service is 10 minutes late.   Molly: (Laughter) Yeah.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, I know you do a lot of advocating. How do you advocate for someone who is in a similar situation?   Molly: Well, networking is very important. it's very important to have support groups. I wish that I had an advocate when I was growing up. I really didn't have any, I was labeled Usher Syndrome and it was very difficult to get support. It's great to have an organization. Minnesota Deaf Blind, what's it called no no that's not right. Minnesota Deaf Blind Project, no that's not right, let me back up. Deaf Blind Minnesota Project, I don't know the right order of the words, But that has developed and it's very strong support especially for advocates for children that are deaf blind or have Usher Syndrome. Schools really, some schools do have support for deaf/blind, it's I think for children especially it's very important to have a deaf/blind mentor or someone who has Usher Syndrome as a mentor. So the child can look up to that person and say you know, I can do this and I can do that, I can do all of these things. I think that's key. I didn't have any of that growing up and I think that's a very important way to advocate especially for children just to show what you can do. SSB is fantastic as support for deaf/blind and there is other organizations outside of Minnesota that are very supportive.   Jeff Thompson: So, the Minnesota Deaf Blind Project, is that affiliated with the Minnesota Deaf Blind Association?   Molly: No I think it's separate from that, I think the Minnesota Deaf Blind Project is really focused on a youth program for support, I think up until 18 or maybe up until they end high school. So there is an organization for deaf/blind to help deaf/blind not feel isolated and to make sure, and that's for adults so it's a little bit separate. I think Minnesota Deaf Blind Association maybe is for the adults and the project is for the kids. they have workshops and they have fun retreats for you know, like camping, counselors, they have picnics and they just, to keep the kids engaged and active and not isolated is the Minnesota Deaf Blind Project I believe.   Jeff Thompson: Now Molly, you're no stranger to advocacy because you've been recognized by the Tim Mahony award in this area.   Molly: Yes I did win that award yeah and I can explain about that so I, it started really deaf blind adults. I was involved in the deaf/blind community but, well I was actually tapped in to to get involved in deaf/blind community and be a leader in that community for many many years but I never did because I really wanted to focus on school and get all that done so in 2014 when I finished school, I was still getting tapped into to be more of a leader in the deaf/blind community and I felt a little uncomfortable with that just because I didn't feel like I could, I didn't know enough, but I started going to different events and learning more and feeling better and, but I noticed that you know it was hard because I would see folks that had Usher Syndrome that were a little bit more advanced than I was and it was hard for me to see that knowing that was going to be me in the future. But I eventually, I got over that and I learned more and more. And I wasn't, I was basically keeping an open mind, trying to keep a balance with the deaf community and the deaf/blind community. I got so much support from the deaf/blind community and I started to become more active and give more ideas and feedback on things that I thought you know would be helpful ect. And was creative and I was given this award by them. It's a huge honor.   Jeff Thompson: Well congratulations.   Molly: Thank you.   Jeff Thompson: So what social or entertainment venues do you frequent?   Molly: Oh I love movies, I am a big fan of movies, love movies. There is a movie theater that has, you know movie theaters will have closed captions. It's technology, I prefer to have it on the screen but they don't really do that anymore so anyway, I use this type of device and it's a wireless device that you can read the captions on this device as the movie is going on. I love to go to shows, I love to go to plays, that type of thing, often times they are interpreted and I, as long as I sit in front I can usually see the interpreter. So as a deaf person I am able to do that. I like the arts. A variety of arts I'll go and enjoy.   Jeff Thompson: Well that's great. I use a device that actually plays audio into my ear. Now you said that it, actually you can read the text, I was just wondering if somehow they could make that for refreshable braille?   Molly: Good question, I don't know. I've never heard of it, I've never, I am not sure what that would even look like, yeah, usually computers do have the news, or information that you can get in a braille type, as a type of technology for the braille but movies, I don't know. When I become fully blind, If I go to a museum, those kinds of things, like those artsy things as a museum, I mean, I'm not sure if I am going to wanna, I think I still would want to go to that, like maybe the Walker to go see an art exhibit but it would obviously be important to have someone with me to describe every little thing you know. Here is a painting, here are the colors that they used, and here's what the painting is about, and here is what it's called, and here is the artist, and then really describe in detail what the painting is or what the statue is. I would need to have assistance going into detail about what I am looking at.   Jeff Thompson: Makes me think about 3D imaging, 3D printing, I wonder if more and more venues will be starting to have opportunities to you know, touch the art such as using a 3D printer to replicate a piece of art, or a painting.   Molly: Hmm, I have not, I haven't heard of that but I am not surprised. That would be really nice. Gosh, yeah, and to even have technology in the future that's even better than now is, so it's important, it is important to, in whatever environment you're in, it's important to be able to touch as a deaf/blind person. I mean obviously if I am at a play, I'm not going to be able to touch the stage and the actors and that type of thing but having an interpreter there that would be interpreting everything you know the stage, and the actors, and that type of thing, that would be really important to be able to enjoy it.   Jeff Thompson: I remember reading about some technology that was coming out. It was gloves with sensors on it so when a signer was signing, it would actually take that information and feed it into a computer for translation.   Molly: I think I saw something about that on Facebook but I couldn't wrap my head around what it was really meaning. I was also doubtful that technology like that really existed but I have no idea about that. I don't know if that's, I just don't know much at all about that technology.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, what words of advice would you have for someone going through sight loss or hearing loss.   Molly: That's really hard. I'm just thinking back. So this is just my opinion, I mean if if if, if you were, if this is, I mean if, you suddenly became overnight from a car accident or, an illness, and you suddenly became deaf or blind or something overnight, that is tough to deal with and I, I guess the first part I would say is just needing to jump in and you can, the internet is great. you can go online and you can find support groups to help you. You can use friends to help you, social media is fantastic in terms of support. Definitely I would say, I would recommend counseling to help you get through the emotional trauma of losing one of your senses or both of your senses. A counselor can, a good counselor can help you work through the emotions and you can get through it. The important thing is not to allow yourself to stay stuck forever because you can't do it yourself, you've got to tap into a community organization, counselors, friends, family to help you get over the trauma.   Jeff Thompson: Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf and Minnesota State Academy for the Blind. Minnesota Deaf Blind Project and Minnesota Deaf Blind Association.   Molly: Yes.   Jeff Thompson: They all help.   Molly: Yes, absolutely.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, is there anything else you would like to tell the Blind Abilities listeners?   Molly: Yeah, actually I will add one thing. The real important part is we live in the real world and you become deaf, deaf/blind, blind, whatever age you are, there are interpreters, different types of interpreters that will accommodate your different communication need, whether it's tactiles or sign language. there are doctors who can help you, I guess my point is that in this real world there are a lot of things that can help you. Accessibility, accommodations that can help you. Having an SSP is very very helpful to help you go grocery shopping, doing some of the basics in life. So it's not a sign of weakness, it's more of a sign of strength to ask for help and to rely on other people, that doesn't mean you're less independent. When you have a companion, an SSP that comes to help you a couple times a week, when you have an interpreter, and it just opens up the world to you. There are really no excuses to stay home and isolate yourself. There are a lot resources here in Minnesota especially that have organizations, businesses, resources that can help connect you to what you need to be successful, whatever that looks like in your own life.   Jeff Thompson: First of all Molly, I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day and sharing your journey, your story with all of our listeners.   Molly: Yeah, yeah, it was my pleasure. I'm very very happy to share my story. It helps others.   Jeff Thompson: Molly, your message really rings through to me and I'm sure to a lot of the listeners because there is a point where you have to accept it and face the real world and be part of the real world. that's a great message.   Molly: Exactly, exactly. An important quote that I rely often is "Deaf, blind, hearing blind, whatever your disability is, you can do it. You will be afraid, you will want to isolate yourself, but don't go that route, take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities that are out there to help you achieve what you want to achieve."   Jeff Thompson: That's great, that's wonderful.   Molly: Ooh sorry, I wanted to add one more thing, I did a presentation, when was that, let me think. I was involved with the American Disability Act. There was a TPT in the Minnesota, what is it, the Minnesota Public Access, there was some programming they were doing, I want to say this was last year, a couple years ago. I was involved with that as a deaf/blind can. Talked about you know the ADA and how it makes things accessible for folks with disabilities so that is in the archives you know if anyone wants to look it up.   Jeff Thompson: Oh, we forgot to mention that you're also on the state rehabilitation counsel for Minnesota.   Molly: Correct, I am. Yeah, I a rep for deaf/blind, for the deaf/blind community yes.   Jeff Thompson: Well Molly thank you very much, you're quite an advocate hear in Minnesota and I am sure a lot of people appreciate all of the hard work that you are doing, so thank you.   Molly: Thank you.   Jeff Thompson: I would like to thank Chichow for his beautiful music, and to Pam, the American sign language signer that participated in this interview. (Music) (Multiple voices) When we share, what we see, through each otherís eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between dreams and expectations and the reality of blind abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blindabilities, download our app from the app store. Blind abilities, that's two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.      

Joyce welcomes John R. Macko, Interim Director in the National Technical Institute for the Deaf Center on Employment (NCE) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), who will discuss the curriculum of this school with a national reputation for graduating qualified deaf students with disabilities in the areas of business and technology.