If you walk into a computer lab at many centers for independent living, a branch location of the Lighthouse for the Blind, or an affiliate of Braille Institute, you no doubt have met with an assistive technology instructor. (ATI) Many of these professionals teach the screen reading and enlargement software that we use on a daily basis.

Their duties go much farther than the lessons and planning for usually one-on-one instruction. ATI’s keep abreast with the latest software updates, new devices, and marketing of various brands available to us who are blind or visually impaired. So the man or woman who teaches the basic nuts and bolts of JAWS or NVDA spends a lot of time gearing his/her instruction for a whole wide range of students. You yourself may need help with writing emails or filling out online forms wile the next hour’s client might just need a touch-up on keystrokes before diving headlong into the numerous tutorials available through Freedom Scientific.

Some environments lend themselves to an ATI’s dictating the pace of your course of study better than others. If your engaged in a summer college-prep class at World Services for the Blind or L.A.’s Foundation for Junior Blind, deadlines might impel you to meet your teacher’s deadlines. On the other hand, if you’re in a self-paced adult education class where the only outcome depends on your desired goals, an ATI may facilitate your work but won’t have a tight agenda you have to follow. Maybe, you’re just wanting to get some one-on-one basics before heading onto a job preparation program like at the Carroll Center (Boston, MA), an ATI contracting with your State’s Commission for the blind might come to your home a couple times a week to help you.

Since the onset of COVID-19 and even as the pandemic is lifting, online technology training has grown in popularity around the world. Of course, YouTube hosts a lot of instructional videos. But if you still want the teacher/student interaction with time for Q and A during or after a lecture, the lessons being held through the San Francisco Lighthouse might appeal to you. Here I post the same link I referenced in a previous post where you can sign up. Mostlikely, the class presenter will be an assistive tech instructor who’s presented for groups of students with a wide range of abilities.

So where can someone go and learn to be an assistive technology instructor? World Services for the Blind (Little Rock, AR) has hosted one of the longest standing programs for this training. www.wsblind.org Students learn the finer points of how to operate the major screen reading programs on the market and how to teach them in a variety of settings. The WSB campus is an ideal setting for training to be an ATI since clients from all over the country enroll in the school’s numerous vocational programs (seen here: https://www.wsblind.org/programs-services). The ATI program takes seven to nine months after which students may get hired by the States where they live, a vendor of assistive technology such as Sendero, or a center like Bosma Enterprises (Indianapolis, IN)

WSB’s ATI program has the advantage of concentrating your work in an environment ideally set up for every adaptive need you may have. You are in close contact with classmates and instructors who can support you through the transition into employment while giving you tips for interviewing, presenting your skills, encouraging your further growth as a blindness professional.

Of course, ATI’s come through other programs such as those run at the Masters level at several schools including Salus University, Western Michigan, Florida State, and Northern Illinois. After completing the Assistive Technology Instructional Specialist program, you will be tested by the Academy for Certification of Vision Rehabilitation and Education Professionals. (ACVREP) https://www.acvrep.org/index This endorsement, which you can periodically update through continuing education credits, will help if you move elsewhere in the country and need to show your competency when applying for a new job. After all, there will always be need for assistive technology instructors since smart phones, computers, and screen reading software will continue opening doors for us who are blind to gain our independence.

So, thank you to assistive technology instructors for helping us navigate the web, smart phones, and other gadgets.

Many of us have no doubt heard that well-intended compliment: “You do so well despite your blindness.” Now, for those who are sighted readers, I’m not meaning to diss or put you down personally if you yourself have said this very thing to someone. It’s natural to think this way since many in the general public perceive a lack of sight to be a bad thing.

The truth is that we who are blind learn to live with it, adapt to it, and, dare I say, embrace it as part of fabric that makes us who we are. Yes, being unable to drive can discourage us from time to time. Being questioned as to our capabilities to perform routine tasks of daily living like dressing ourselves, cooking our favorite meals, or knowing how to take our own medication can get really annoying. Hearing the myth for the two thousandth time that our other senses get better so as to compensate for our lack of sight makes even our eyes rol.

That’s why I post here the latest entry to the blog, My Blind Story. While I may take a more generous approach when considering the general public’s learned perceptions of us who are blind, I do like how she speaks of living with blindness. It’s part of her total person. She is a blind, working professional boldly joining in her culture’s rat race to partake of what it has to offer.

http://blindnewworld.org/blog/living-and-achieving-beyond-my-blindness/

Many of us have the need to navigate the web these days. Sometimes, we want to find a store or online portal where we can shop. Maybe, we’re looking for that app for entertainment options or some other way of using our smart phone to identify objects around our homes. The world of adaptive technology is so broad that we may wonder where to begin or how to make sense of it all.

That’s why places like the San Francisco Lighthouse offer weekly courses to help you out. For this reason, too, we at Boldly Blind will be featuring these mini-training courses you can access on the web from wherever you live. If you are a sighted parent, teacher, or friend of someone who’s blind, you also can join in to be more familiar with the ways you can navigate life’s contours with us.

Here’s the link for the San Francisco Lighthouse’s course called Tech Together Online. I hope you, too, will sign up and enjoy it as much as I know I will.

Tech Together Online

Blind and visually impaired sports fans no longer need to pay higher prices on Major League Baseball’s site to get major league coverage. That’s because http://www.tuneIn.com coverage is free, unless of course you’re like me who loves the $9.99 premium content. Needless to say, if you can’t see the action on MLB.TV, you don’t need the subscription to its content.

Of course, we can discuss the merits of MLB’s audio-only option versus navigating TuneIn’s screens and links to find the team, schedule, or game you’re looking for.

My personal preference for the past few seasons has been TuneIn simply because there’s less abstract ads and info along the way. Here’s the simple instructions to find all the scheduled games for a given day. Oh, and the same goes for whatever sport you want to listen to like Pro Football or college basketball. Unfortunately, TuneIn doesn’t, or perhaps is prevented, from providing NBA coverage.

So, to find the baseball game of your choice:

1. Go to www.tunein.com.
2. Do a JAWS find for sports. Sometimes, the screen doesn’t cooperate and you have to find and hit the link twice.
3. Do a Jaws find for baseball and enter.
4. Once you’re on that page, type h until you get to the heading: Major League baseball. Arrow down and you’ll find links and icons to the games you want.

So, happy listening, especially if you’re catching up on games beyond what you can get via your radio.

And while we’re on the subject of such platforms as TuneIn, Alexa, and Echo, with their enhanced audio capabilities and memory storage, we who are blind or visually impaired have no less access to the same content that our sighted friends and relatives have when using them.

So, play ball! Get in the game! We’re boldly blind.

What’s for dinner? How many of us husbands ask that of our wives when coming home from work? We query the answer when drawing up our grocery lists before going to the store every week or two. It’s also the question many people who are blind ask as they anticipate a free monthly meal offered by many outreach centers across the country hosted by a loose network of Christian congregations.

The idea for a free monthly meal came about in 1998 when Bob Mates of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania approached his pastor at First Trinity Lutheran Church. Having been blind most of his life, Bob saw how many of his blind friends and neighbors lived isolated from each other unless some common event brought them together. While he himself was an active churchgoer, he observed how ninety-five percent of blind and visually impaired people are not connected with a local congregation (and that includes all denominations and worship styles). His idea was that since this gap persisted, he and his congregation could gather people for a time of friendship and devotion. Of course, he knew of how active consumer organizations like the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind strive for people’s dignity and independence through their advocacy. But, not all people who are blind get involved in these groups. Sports such as goalball and judo attract another sizable segment of the blindness population. But, not everyone’s an athlete. Mates saw the opportunity that a meal could give for anyone to just come for an afternoon or evening to be with others, catch up and support each other on their coping journey.

Then as now, free monthly meals for the blindness community take place toward the end of the month. With the unemployment rate eclipsing seventy percent across the country for people who are blind, fixed income resources run low at that time. That means shopping lists grow shorter and trips via a city’s paratransit services become less frequent. So the meal can serve as an oasis of sorts.

It’s been twenty-three years since First Trinity Lutheran Church hosted that first meal of the month. Since then, outreach centers have opened in places like Austin, TX; Santa Barbara, CA; Anderson, IN; Kansas City, MO: and Maplewood, MO.

The Rev. Dave Andrus, himself blind since age eleven, took Bob’s original vision and ran with it over the next couple decades. He connected with many of us who, like Bob Mates, were blind and active in our local congregations. We could provide a safe, welcoming environment during and even beyond the meal to lend our hands and advice in caring for our blindness community’s needs.

Some centers like the one in Pittsburgh hosted emotional support and guide dog user support groups for those who wanted to make connections beyond the time a meal could provide. Many groups like the one where I served in Kansas City, MO started up newsletters that offered practical daily living tips for people who were blind such as recipes, community calendars for events hosted by other blindness support organizations in their area, and a devotion drawn from the Bible.

Wherever I’ve been privileged to serve as a director, we’ve always said to newcomers, “You don’t have to join anything to join us for dinner.” In saying this, my goal was to emphasize that anything we did or offered was free. My phone was always an open door for people’s concerns. Like many other directors, I also enjoyed being an informal consultant for finding resources in places like our local gyms, grocery stores, or banks that lent themselves to being more blind friendly. Of course, that depended largely on word of mouth-and in an  oral culture, though isolated, that’s how many bits of information spread. So the stores that offered more courteous help drew a larger percentage of those in Kansas City who were blind. Doctors offices whose staff seemed more attentive to the needs of someone who can’t see became the topic of dinnertime conversation at our meals of the month.

Check out this link to see more of a history behind the growth of outreach centers and their free meals of the month during the years prior to the COVID pandemic.

Congregations open more 'outreach centers for blind'

AN Internet Component Takes Shape.

In 2014, just after his service with Lutheran Braille Workers ended, the Rev. Dave Andrus formed Not-Alone Ministries for blind people who, though isolated, had web access. You can find his ongoing programs and devotions, some of which are co-hosted by Cecilia Lee, at www.not-alone.net. Like at any given meal of the month, spiritual encouragement comes from the Bible as Pastor Dave teaches it in a very conversational way. He’s right in addressing the feelings many people have, that “The universe is big. We are small. We are not alone.” God extends His love through Jesus Christ, His Son, that all who believe have eternal life. (John 3:16) Pastor Andrus plans on resuming some items in the future like the online newsletter for outreach centers and support services who have lent their hands over the years.

Along with this theme, Not-Alone Ministries also seeks to dispel a notorious and sadly persistent myth that blindness is a result of some unknown sin or caused by someone’s lack of faith. Instead, blindness can prove to be a blessing according to Andrus and those of us who have shared in his work over the past few decades. Yes, a blessing! For through monthly meals and down-to-earth support, we who are blind can reach others who are coping with vision loss in ways that bring that firsthand touch beyond the joyous milieu of legislation, techie gadgets, and striving for equality in the workplace can provide.

Now, as the pandemic seems to be waning, more outreach centers are opening their doors again to hosting free meals of the month. It was a joy being served by one on this past Saturday at Concordia Lutheran Church here in Fort Wayne, IN. If you are blind or visually impaired or you know someone who is, perhaps, you might wonder if a congregation in your area offers free meals of the month like what we’ve discussed here. If so, reach the Rev. Dave Andrus via the contact link on the Not Alone Ministries’ website. He can let you know if an outreach center is in your area or, if not, how you can get one started.

Spring fever is here, everyone! That brings up a great question: What’s as much caught as taught? Yes, it’s a baseball.

We love hearing the pop of the ball in a glove or the crack of a bat. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in Little League, high school, college, or the pros.

Did you know before that there’s an adapted sport for blind and visually impaired athletes that goes by the name, beep baseball? That’s tonight’s feature for Fitness Friday. You can check out this video before reading on.

The design and the sound of the field may get you thinking this a different game. Bases buzz to let runners know where to go. There are two bses, not three. And while the bases buzz, a softball sized ball flies through the air beeping. The pitcher (who is sighted) is on the same team as the players up to bat with the goal of putting the ball where the hitter can best make contact. Six fielders wait on defense each ready for the ball to come into their assigned zones.

With all the adaptations in place, it’s still baseball, America’s pastime. Strikes versus balls matter. Outs happen when a player reaches the ball before the runner reaches base. You can find more about the specific rules to beep baseball here in a user-friendly narrative style. Snapshots along the way illustrate how these rules make the game unique and competitive..

Beepball Rules

So what’s the history of this thrilling sport?

While the first beep baseball made its now familiar sound in 1964 thanks to members of Southwestern Bell wanting to create an equivalent game for the blind to America’s pastime, the first full season and World Series took place twelve years later. That’s when the National Beep Baseball Association was formed. The team from St. Paul, Minnesota defeated the team from Phoenix, AZ to capture the first league title. Since then, some teams have created dynasties for themselves like the Austin Blackhawks (seven in a row) and the current titleholders, the Indy Thunder (currently on a streak of four).

Living in the United States, are you interested in playing the game yourself? Or do you have a friend or family member who’s blind and wants to be taken out to the old ballgame as much as possible? Check out this list of teams to see if one of them is near you.

Current Teams

Maybe, you know enough people in your area who’d like to play beep baseball but you don’t have a team you can join. Perhaps, it’s time to form one as this page shows you how.

Starting a New Team

I hope this has helped give you a snapshot of playing beep baseball. For more information about the National Beep Baseball Association go to:

Home

Play ball, folks!

The readings for the fifth Sunday in Lent are Is. 12:1-6; 2 Cor. 5:16-21; and Luke 15:1-3, 11-32.

This week’s readings call us to be reconciled with God and to rejoice in His salvation. For though we were born in sin, our Lord Jesus sought us by His grace and sprinkled us with His redeeming blood to save us from that sin, death, and hell. And though we sin much everyday, sometimes wanting our felt needs satisfied at others’ expense, our Lord calls us to repent for the forgiveness He freely bestows on all who trust in Him. For this same Jesus Christ took our sin-past, present, and future-to Calvary and died to pay the penalty for it in our place. We, then, are glad to keep steadfast in His Word while serving each other’s needs in love.

Whether you competed in sports in junior high or high school or you joined a club years later, coaches have no doubt made an impact on you. For us who are blind and spent some time in a school for the blind, this is especially true. While we didn’t have basketball, football, or soccer, we did have wrestling for the guys and cheerleading for girls. Of course, we had guys and girls teams in swimming and track.

Now, I’ve alluded to the fact I wasn’t very good athletically until my twenties, but a lot of the things coaches at the blind school said for motivation still make an impression on me. Perhaps, that’s because they knew the value of keeping physically fit and active so that we didn’t let our blindness hamper our confidence. Of course, there were some who focused mostly on the sports, but that wasn’t our coaches intention. They knew that for us to be successful in athletics and life, we had to develop that deep-seated drive that wouldn’t let instincts take over wherein we were content being “that poor blind boy” or so forth.

When I switched over to public school halfway through my freshmen year, I tried my hand at wrestling again. I was rail thin at the time and the guy who coached the team joked about seeing me being tossed in the air in his dreams, let alone in practice. With that said, I love the man as my U.S. History teacher. He carried that coach’s toughness and drive into the classroom just as he demanded it on the mat. And while I struggled emotionally during those years, Coach made me want to run through brick walls for him if I needed to.

But it was years later, when I’d moved to Philly and got involved in judo for the first time that my coaches/senseis admitted not giving a rip about how my blindness impaired some areas of my life. They were there to teach me discipline on or off the mat while instilling a fearlessness that had not been part of my inner core till then. It didn’t matter that I didn’t compete in many tournaments beyond the dojo. Being part of a sport like judo and having coaches like Lou, Tony, Bill, and Mark helped instill in me a whole new meaning to being boldly blind.

It’s great looking back on our coaches’ influence. And I’m sure you all reading this can tell your own stories of success, growth and perseverance spurred on by your coaches in whatever athletic venue you competed.

One impression many blind and sighted people alike share is that when someone gets and uses a guide dog, they say “bye-bye” to their red-tipped, mobility cane. Well, as Mollie demonstrates on her YouTube video here, that’s not always-and I’d add-not usually the case.

There are times  when you need to get out and about with family who are allergic to your dog, so you leave him at home. Sometimes, you want to go swimming or to the gym and you know your dog whines or even barks when separated from you for whatever reason. Leave him or her to lay on the couch.

Even more importantly, as Molly demonstrates here, someone with a guide dog simply needs to keep up their cane skills, especially if they are considering their furry four-legged friend’s retirement. Sometimes, it’s best to take your guide dog with you while heeling him on the opposite side of your body from which he or she usually leads out in harness when getting you from place to place.

So, let’s take a walk with Molly. By the way, with her being a blind motivational speaker, I’d love to have her as a guest sometime on the podcast component I will soon add to Boldly Blind. For now, let’s enjoy this adventure with someone who shows herself to be navigating life’s contours with joy and confidence.

When talking with someone one on one, do your best to face the sound of their voice, especially in public. Of course, many of us, blind or sighted, forget this on a frequent basis. But remembering this gesture, you will show someone you are genuinely interested in what they are saying when you do your best to make relative eye contact with them.