Full Transcript
Pete Lane:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. This is Pete Lane.
Ted Galanos:
Well, let’s see how smart we are today. Welcome to this edition of No holds Bar Trivia.
Pete Lane:
You’re listening to the voice of Ted Galanos.
Ted Galanos:
I graduated with a degree in business administration, majoring in computer information systems.
Pete Lane:
A proficient user of technology.
Ted Galanos:
I used USB Darci which allows me to type with two switches, utilizing an expanded version of Morse Code.
Pete Lane:
With an active social media presence.
Ted Galanos:
I became a member of the Out of Sight Community. They have all kinds of entertainment and fun on this chat site.
Audio:
Welcome to this edition of Chain Reaction.
Ted Galanos:
I hunted around and found some tutorials for GoldWave. The next month was nothing but GoldWave.
Pete Lane:
A self-taught audio producer.
Ted Galanos:
I started doing intros. They were very rudimentary and kind of poorly done right at first, but then I invested in some better equipment.
Jeff Thompson:
You may have all you want baby, but I got something you need.
Pete Lane:
Taking on even more challenges with a new concept and business enterprise.
Ted Galanos:
Sighted folks, they take a lot of pictures and they put them in picture album. Those of us in the blind community are kind of left out. Tammy and I got to talking about this concept, audio scrapbooking.
Pete Lane:
But as is sometimes the case, we often measure our accomplishments against those barriers we overcame to achieve them.
Ted Galanos:
I was a very sickly baby. Was not expected to live beyond about two to three years old.
Pete Lane:
And Ted has overcome a lot.
Ted Galanos:
It’s called osteomyelitis. The doctor then has to amputate. That is what has happened with portions of all 10 digits of both hands and a couple of toes.
Pete Lane:
And even more.
Ted Galanos:
The femoral patellar ligament was torn. It made me go from being almost totally dependent on others to absolutely needing others.
Pete Lane:
How did he cope with the pitfalls?
Ted Galanos:
I’ve never been prone to depression. It was tough, but it taught me character, it gave me grit, and made me the thicker skinned person I am today.
Pete Lane:
Join me as I chat with Ted Galanos.
Ted Galanos:
I learn from every experience I go through.
Pete Lane:
And hear about how he has learned to adapt.
Ted Galanos:
I do have a lot of workarounds. Adapt and overcome has always been my mantra. The phone has just opened up a whole new world for me.
Pete Lane:
You may be surprised or-
Ted Galanos:
I use my nose and other facial body parts to operate this thing.
Pete Lane:
… you may be amazed.
Ted Galanos:
Adapt and overcome.
Pete Lane:
Hi, folks. Welcome to Blind Abilities. This is Pete Lane. Today, I have a very special guest on the line with me. Ted Galanos hails from the great state of Texas. Ted, I want to say hey to you this afternoon and welcome you to the Blind Abilities Podcast. How you doing today?
Ted Galanos:
I’m doing very well and thank you for having me on the show. I really enjoy listening to it, and I’m honored and proud to be a part of this next episode.
Pete Lane:
The honor is ours. I think over the next half hour to an hour or so, our audience is going to be absolutely enthralled with you and your story. Speaking of your story, Ted, normally we kick off with a question such as tell us about your blindness. But in your situation, Ted, your medical situation spans far beyond blindness. Why don’t you fill us in a little bit about your picture?
Ted Galanos:
Sure. I was born December 21, 1973. I was adopted at birth, so I know nothing about my biological history. I was a very sickly baby and was not expected to live beyond about two to three years old said the doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital. When I was a baby, my mother wanted to give me shoes. The doctor said, “You need to worry about grieving and not worry about shoes.” My mother said, “Well, if this boy is going to live even 20 minutes, he deserves to have shoes.” My mother has always been a supporter of mine all of my life. I was diagnosed at five years old with retinitis pigmentosa. I don’t need to go into any explanation because I’m sure all of your listeners know what RP is all about.
Ted Galanos:
Early on, it was discovered that I had several other issues that deal with my hands and my feet. There is no known syndrome or disease or whatever. It’s a compilation of symptoms really. I have poor blood circulation, peripheral sensory neuropathy. That basically means I can’t feel with my hands or feet. I explain it to people in this way. The further you get from the core or the further away you get from the heart, the less sensation I have in my arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers and toes.
Ted Galanos:
Having those two issues to deal with, I was able to easily injure myself. Whether it be catching the tip of my finger with a fish hook when I would go fishing or trying to microwave something in the microwave and something spills and it burns my hand, I don’t notice it and it develops a skin tear or a blister or something like that. With poor blood circulation, I’m slow to heal with wounds. Over my lifetime, I have had to deal with numerous infections. You can’t avoid it. My parents basically had to put band aids on the tips of my fingers to protect and to cover up any existing wounds. I live this way most all of my life. Well, you have enough infections in your fingers or any kind of a joint, the cartilage is going to begin to erode.
Ted Galanos:
Bits of bone would start floating when you get infection that is not cured by oral antibiotics or intravenous antibiotics. The infection get so bad it gets into the bone, it’s called osteomyelitis, the doctor then has to amputate. That is what has happened to me with portions of all 10 digits of both hands and a couple of toes. My left heel has had some bone taken out of it. I’ve had to deal with that. I also have scoliosis. I think because I use a wheelchair now and have been for years, the scoliosis has really become prominent. I was able to walk. I was able to see for most of my child … Well, all of my childhood. I only went totally blind about a year and a half or so after college.
Ted Galanos:
I used a scooter to get around campus and other things. One of the battery operated wheelchair like things. But when my sight went completely gone, then it was prudent that I use the manual wheelchair not only just in the apartment or around my house, but everywhere.
Audio:
There’ll be nothing but a good time. How can I resist?
Pete Lane:
I’m assuming, Ted, that you attended mainstream schools through at least high school?
Ted Galanos:
I attended mainstream schools throughout my entire school career. From kindergarten to second grade, I was in a Montessori school. From third grade through seventh grade, I was in a parochial Lutheran school. Unfortunately, when you go to private schools, you don’t have access to state agency help. I do recall getting some help when I was in seventh grade and this was on the cusp of my parent’s divorce. I think I might have had somebody come to the house. I think they brought me a talking clock. I think they brought me some independent living aids. It’s hard to me to remember exactly what went on in that part of seventh grade because there was a lot going on with divorce and family issues.
Pete Lane:
You did complete high school and you actually obtained a degree did you not in college?
Ted Galanos:
Yeah.
Pete Lane:
Where did you go to school in college?
Ted Galanos:
I first went to Tomball College, which is now called Lone Star Community College. We moved to Houston. My mother sold the property in Magnolia where I grew up, so I transferred to University of Houston-Downtown. Not to be mistaken with University of Houston the central campus. I started there in ’95 and graduated in December of 2000 with a degree in business administration, majoring in computer information systems.
Pete Lane:
Through grade school and high school, did you have full use of your legs? Were you ambulatory or did you have some sort of adaptive equipment for your disabilities throughout grade school and high school?
Ted Galanos:
I didn’t have any adaptive aids from eighth grade to twelfth grade, except I do remember there was a CCTV in the library, the high school library. I did receive orientation in mobility training from eighth grade through twelfth grade, though I was very reluctant in using the cane at all because I wanted to depend on my vision and because I didn’t want the stigma of carrying a cane. I wanted to be as “normal” as possible. I rarely used my cane unless I knew that the O&M instructor was going to show up that day to take me out of class and walk around.
Pete Lane:
Didn’t want to get caught.
Ted Galanos:
Yeah. I did get caught. I did get caught one day and I did get chastised for having the cane folded up inside my inside jacket pocket. Begrudgingly, I did start using it a little bit more.
Pete Lane:
I think we all go through that transition, that reluctance, at some point or another.
Ted Galanos:
Because my vision in high school was not quite as good as it was in elementary, I did use various magnifiers. I’d carry one in my pocket and use it to help supplement reading the large print textbooks that I actually did get. I finally got to use large print textbooks from eighth grade on. In high school, I started using the heavy ruled paper. I think that was provided either by the school or by the state. At that time, I still was able to see well enough to use ballpoint pen.
Pete Lane:
You still had enough dexterity and use of your hands too, right?
Ted Galanos:
Yes. I had enough dexterity to write until probably when I shifted to U of H Downtown where I relied less on handwritten notes and solely on cassette recorders.
Pete Lane:
Did you take advantage during college of any disability services?
Ted Galanos:
I did. I did that in high school and in college. I would take extended time to test a couple of talking computers in the disabled students services office that I was able to use. The only computers I had was the one in my house provided by the state for college. That’s the first time I ever touched a computer in fact was when I was preparing for going to college.
Pete Lane:
This was the mid-’90s. What kind of screen reading software did you have on that computer?
Ted Galanos:
At that time it was all DOS-based, so I used Vocalize, ZoomText for DOS, and the very first exposure to the Morse Code concept using a handy code hardware/software combination. This hardware plugged into the serial port of the computer and had a two or three switch input. I used three switches starting out when I was first getting trained on it, but then my typematic rate was such that I was able to eliminate one of the switches and just type with two switches.
Audio:
Welcome to this edition of Grab Bag with your host Mary Kay.
Pete Lane:
So, throughout your schooling, obviously you had all these medical issues going on. How did you feel emotionally about this? How were you coping with this myriad of medical issue?
Ted Galanos:
Yes. I’ve never been prone to depression. I’ve fought against any form of depression throughout my life in dealing with what I deal with. I think that when I was in the five years of the Lutheran school, I was picked on. In some cases, beaten up. My sister tried to protect me in various ways she could being two years younger and in a different grade, of course. It was tough, but I think it taught me character, it gave me grit, and made me the thicker skinned person I am today. I learn from every experience I’d go through. With a larger school population in public school, I was able to find people that I could fit in with.
Ted Galanos:
Interestingly enough, it was the blue color type headbanger, stoner, wood shop, auto mechanic kid that I got along with really well. Better than some of the more studious I’ll say upper class kids.
Pete Lane:
Right.
Ted Galanos:
They tended to look down their noses at me. To say that I have a don’t care attitude is not exactly accurate, but then again, it is. I don’t sweat people pulling rank or pulling attitude even in this nursing home where I live today. There’s a lot of personalities and a lot of personality conflicts and problems. I just say to them, “You’re not going to run over me. I’m intelligent. I am educated, and I speak eloquently, and I get my point across.”
Pete Lane:
That you do.
Ted Galanos:
A lot of these people that work in this nursing home I think are threatened by it.
Pete Lane:
Speaking of nursing home, talk a little bit about the facility that you’re in, how you got there, and fill our listeners in on your living situation.
Ted Galanos:
The whole reason why I’m in the nursing home to start with is that on August the 4th, 2012, I was transferring from the restroom to my wheelchair. My left foot got caught between the big wheel and the front wheel, the caster of the wheelchair. I’ve done this transition hundreds of thousands of times over the 12 years I lived in my apartment. This one time, this freak accident, my foot did not come free of the place it was stuck in, and then not feeling my foot, I didn’t know it. Once you get to a certain point in your turn to sit in a chair, you kind of just plop right down. Well, when I plopped right down and let gravity take over, from my foot to my ankle to my knee to my hip got wrenched.
Ted Galanos:
The femoral patellar ligament, I didn’t even that ligament even existed, was torn. One late night went to stand up to go to the restroom and fell back in my chair. I thought, “Ooh. What’s wrong here? Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I had one too many beers.” I don’t know, but I sort of took a short nap in my wheelchair, regained my composure, and tried to stand up again and it still didn’t work. I had a grab bar affixed to the wall beside my bed and I thought, “I need to grab this grab bar and stand up that way.” I went to stand up and I fell straight down. It was as if my left leg didn’t exist anymore. Long story short, I was put in an ambulance, taken to the hospital to a SNF unit at Concierge.
Ted Galanos:
Couldn’t stay there because they don’t take Medicaid, so they decided you have to leave and find a place that takes Medicaid. I ended up at Woodridge because that’s the place my father found. I wish that nobody had to live in a nursing home and it’s not just Woodridge. It’s all nursing homes. I’ve found to be true over the six years I’ve lived here, they’re not a good place. I mean there are nice people here, but there’s also a lot of bad apples as well. Six months out, the orthopedic doctor finally decided that it was time we could do surgery. He did surgery. He did reconstruction surgery, but it was done outpatient. I left here, went to the hospital, had the surgery done, came back here the very same day.
Ted Galanos:
In four days time, a CNA or certified nursing assistant hold both parts of my leg, my thigh and my calf. While it was in a knee immobilizer, she did not support both sides of it. When I had to turn to have things taken care of, I felt a pop in my knee and basically that brand new ligament was detached yet again. In very short order, it got very badly infected. I had to go back to Memorial Hermann Hospital. They had to clean out the infection. I spent two and a half weeks on very strong IV antibiotics and then carried on with the IV antibiotics here for another month. Once I was stable, I went back to the doctor so he could note the progress of my healing. I asked him, “Can we try to have this surgery again?”
Ted Galanos:
He said, “Absolutely not. With your risk of infection, with your exposure to MRSA, no.” No orthopedic surgeon is going to ever touch my knee again because it’s too high of a risk. He said if it gets infected this same way the second time, it could very well be fatal. It made me go from being almost totally dependent on others for daily living here to absolutely needing others now that I cannot stand and transfer independently anymore was the whole reason why I had to be in a 24 hour type care facility. I don’t need 24 hour around the clock care, but I need the availability of someone in the event.
Pete Lane:
In the event of an emergency.
Ted Galanos:
Yes, exactly.
Audio:
Recognize me and punch me in the nose. He said no more Mr. Nice Guy. No more.
Pete Lane:
Ted, let me harken back to your transfer accident as you were describing it. Even that little bit of independence, your ability to stand up and transfer to a chair or wherever, having lost event that little bit of independence had to be just a huge loss. I think our audience can certainly understand that, but I’d like to kind of get a real quick snapshot right now if you’re agreeable of what your physical limitations are. Let me ask you a couple of quick questions. As far as the use of your legs, are you not able to use your legs to stand up at all? I’m gathering that one leg is completely useless. Do you have any ability to stand up at all?
Ted Galanos:
Not really. It’s what physical therapist call minimal assist. In order to go to the restroom, we would … By the way, these bathrooms are not ADA compliant and I don’t care what the employees and other people say. They’re not accessible.
Pete Lane:
Next question, do you use a motorized wheelchair or do you have enough use of your arm to wheel the chair yourself?
Ted Galanos:
I’ve got enough use of my arms to roll the manual chair, and I would not be allowed to have a powered chair because they don’t want to have a whole of bunch of walls with holes.
Pete Lane:
Next question, you did say that you had some part of all 10 of your digits, your fingers and thumbs, amputated. Am I to assume then you have absolutely no fingertips with which to do anything?
Ted Galanos:
Correct. You as well as the listening can imagine you have three bones in each of the four fingers and two bones in your thumb. Imagine the bone that’s under your fingernail on all 10 digits gone, and then the next bone, that’s gone too. Your left with only the bone that comes out of the palm of the hand. In the case of my left hand, the ring finger is completely gone. I jokingly say that I can never get married because there’s no place to put the wedding band. Then I’m quickly told that you can wear it around your neck on a chain.
Pete Lane:
On a chain, sure, or in your nose. What about your nose?
Ted Galanos:
I was going to go there too, yes.
Pete Lane:
Speaking of noses, my segues are shameless here. I want to tell our audience that, Ted, we are speaking on Skype and that you are using a PC Windows computer with great adeptness by the way and that you are absolutely computer literate. Why don’t you talk about some of the workarounds that you had to contend with in order to master technology given all those physical limitations?
Ted Galanos:
Okay, sure. I do have a lot of workarounds. Adapt and overcome has always been my mantra from the time I was very little to even today. With a computer, I now use Windows. I use Windows 10. I’ve got two laptops and a desktop computer that’s behind me. I used USB Darci which allows me to type with two switches, utilizing an expanded version of Morse Code. I use JAWS for Windows. Yeah. If you would like me to demonstrate, Pete, I can pull up a Notepad and the audience can hear sort of what it is that I type or how I type.
Pete Lane:
That’s a great idea. Go for it.
Ted Galanos:
We have two buttons in front of me. One, on the left is dot, on the right is dash. Incidentally, I was evaluated for this stuff at what is now called the Institute for Rehab and Research or Texas Institute for Rehab and Research or TIRR in the Houston Medical Center. I got in touch with their technology lab. Since they knew that I was aspiring to go to college, that college professors don’t take handwritten papers and we needed to devise a way for me to be able to type. It was ineffective for me to try to type on a normal QWERTY keyboard. I will open Windows and then open Notepad and I’ll type a sentence. My chin is on the left button and it’s at E.
Ted Galanos:
The right button is T and that’s done with my right thumb poised over the right button. Control escape brings up the search box. I’ll type NO because Notepad will pop up immediately. Okay. Now, I’ll just type the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Audio:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
Ted Galanos:
There you have it. I typed a sentence in Notepad. I could do this with email, Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. I do this all day long with editing audio like Pete’s going to have to edit the audio for this podcast.
Audio:
Come and play Chain Reaction with Susie Pini. Every first and third …
Pete Lane:
Tell us again how you navigated those buttons.
Ted Galanos:
In this case, I was using my chin for the left button and my thumb for the right button.
Pete Lane:
Got you.
Ted Galanos:
When I could see, I could easily just sort of glance down and I could use my left and right hands both. Once I started losing my vision in all seriousness, I found that my hands would drift away from the buttons and I would not know it because I couldn’t feel them drifting. I adapt and overcome and don’t really even realize I’m doing it with much thought. I merely just put my left arm in my lap, leaned over and hit the button with my chin. Then in doing so, I realized with my chin over one button and my right thumb over the right button, my thumb is always grazing the right side of my chin.
Pete Lane:
Your chin and your cheek. Yeah.
Ted Galanos:
It’s a proximity thing.
Pete Lane:
Right.
Ted Galanos:
Once I know my right hand is touching my cheek, it’s going to hit that right button every time. I don’t have to worry about my hands drifting and then causing me no end of frustration. Because when I’m typing, I try to type quickly. Then if I start missing buttons, you can see where the frustration goes.
Pete Lane:
Absolutely. Getting into the nitty-gritty, you’re positioned on a chair and your computer is on a table or a desk I gather, right?
Ted Galanos:
Right.
Pete Lane:
Your device is on the table in front of you. You’re actually leaning over, putting your head down and your chin down to reach the device on the table.
Ted Galanos:
That’s correct. Again, adapt and overcome. I use a lot of Velcro because if you didn’t Velcro …
Pete Lane:
It’d be sliding all over the place.
Ted Galanos:
It starts sliding all over the place. Exactly. I’ve got a block of wood. Well, I guess it’s four inches by two inches by maybe an inch high. I guess it came by from two by four.
Pete Lane:
Okay.
Ted Galanos:
The buttons are Velcroed to the board and the board is Velcroed to the table. The reason for the board is it gives the buttons a bit more lift. I can hook my pinky finger against the board and my right hand won’t go any further than the board.
Pete Lane:
Kind of anchors it a little bit. Yeah.
Ted Galanos:
Yeah. If none of this was affixed, you’re right, it would be sliding everywhere. With me not having feeling, I could push it and use more strength than is necessary and it’ll go all over the place.
Pete Lane:
Right.
Ted Galanos:
Having said that, my wrist is right on the edge of the table. When I talk to you about open wounds and stuff, that’s a pressure point there and it’s been no end of trouble for me with my right wrist. I found just recently, I should have had this years ago, a mousepad online on Amazon that has a wrist rest. The maintenance guy here at Woodridge screwed the mousepad to the table and it overhangs the edge of the table I guess about three-quarters of an inch and it fits just perfectly. My wrist is padded. The mousepad stays affixed to the table and it doesn’t go moving anywhere. The buttons stay where they are.
Pete Lane:
Wow.
Ted Galanos:
It works out very well.
Pete Lane:
An amazing technological breakthrough, the mousepad, huh?
Ted Galanos:
Yeah.
Pete Lane:
What I’m wondering, Ted, do you ever get a stiff neck and shoulders?
Ted Galanos:
I’ve been doing this for so long. As I said, I have scoliosis and it’s far more evident today than it was when I was first diagnosed as a two year old. I think part of it is my horrible posture in having to work this equipment. No, I don’t necessarily get much of a stiff neck. My shoulders do end up getting a little sore though.
Pete Lane:
I would imagine you’ve developed the musculature in that area. It’s pretty resilient.
Audio [singing]:
That’s they say every rose has its thorn. Just like every night.
Pete Lane:
Ted, despite the day-to-day challenges that you have, you’re still not content to sit around and let time pass by. Tell our audience a little bit about what additional things you do to keep yourself challenged.
Ted Galanos:
Well, I thought of myself as a shut in for years because once I did lose my sight, I had to give up the keys to my scooter, which was a major tool of independence. I treated my scooter as a sighted person would treat their car. I would literally drive it in the road. I would rarely be on sidewalks because the sidewalks weren’t maintained as well. But I couldn’t use that forever because I can’t drive and be totally blind, right? I was a shut in for a while. I got involved with an outfit called Texas Adaptive Aquatics, which teaches disabled kids and adults how to water ski. Yes, you can water ski sitting down. I also got involved in that same time period in 2001 with a nonprofit called Turning Point.
Ted Galanos:
They do a whole lot of different adaptive sports of the disabled. They do hand cycling. The do kayaking. I would go on their Black Drum Tournament where they take physically challenged kids and adults out fishing in the bay for Black Drum. The Texas Adaptive Aquatics Organization had created a wheelchair accessible hunting edition called Texas Adaptive Outdoorsman. I told Roger, the president of TAA, “I want to do some hunting too, but there’s no way in the world I can shoot a shotgun.” He looked around and found an outfit out of Somerville, Texas, and through donations and grants, he bought some equipment. It started out with a laser. Now we use a camera.
Ted Galanos:
There’s a mount that attaches to the wheelchair that holds the gun for me. The laser or the camera looked down range, and I have a trigger pull hook like thing that’s taped to my hand. Roger looks at the laser beam and where it’s pointing on the animal or he looks through the LED screen that’s attached to the camera and he guides the front of the rifle to where it needs to go. I hook the trigger pull into the trigger and I shoot the deer that comes to the feeder. That’s a physically challenged deer hunt I go once a year.
Pete Lane:
Have you bagged some bucks?
Ted Galanos:
No. This is what they call a meat hunt. Due to certain laws in Texas, they don’t want to have any risk of hunters shooting an illegal buck due to inexperience or whatever. We’re only allowed to shoot doe. Texas Parks and Wildlife give us a certain number of tags to use for this event. The first year I went on it, I got two within about seven minutes of daybreak.
Pete Lane:
No kidding. Wow.
Ted Galanos:
The next year I came up dry. Those are my three outdoor activities that I love to do.
Pete Lane:
Now, before we move into your other indoor activities, talk about what you do in a more mundane routine type of an outing because we do have some audio clips that you’ve provided to me which are a recording of you taking an outing with your mom during Thanksgiving. Talk about how often you get out of Woodridge and what types of things do you do.
Ted Galanos:
Well, the one you’re speaking of is when mom and I went to Thanksgiving morning before I call METROLift. That’s what we call our paratransit in Houston. Made reservations to go to the restaurant. Mom came up to Woodridge. This is November 22nd, Thanksgiving morning. My mother and I are about to get on METROLift and go out to eat. Are we getting on a METROLift fast?
Male:
Yes.
Ted Galanos:
Okay.
Male:
Getting on a van.
Female:
Let me get you his ID and his ticket.
Male:
Okay, ma’am.
Ted Galanos:
You having a good Thanksgiving?
Male:
So far so good.
Ted Galanos:
Good. Ah, somebody who likes Queen. Classic rock.
Male:
What, you got some Queen on right now?
Ted Galanos:
I don’t. You do. I hear it in the stereo of the vehicle. Another One Bites The Dust.
Female:
Let me get his ticket.
Male:
The brakes.
Ted Galanos:
Went to the restaurant, had a meal.
Cary:
Hey, guys. Welcome to The Classic. My name’s Cary. I’m going to be taking great care of you guys today. Happy Thanksgiving.
Ted Galanos:
Happy Thanksgiving to you, sir.
Cary:
Thank you.
Ted Galanos:
We will have drinks.
Cary:
All right. What can I get for you all?
Ted Galanos:
I’ll have the TP. It started growing on me.
Ted’s Mom:
It’s got rosemary in it and I’m not sure I like rosemary. I don’t think I would want rosemary in a drink.
Ted Galanos:
It has a lot of the flavor properties of cough syrup.
Ted’s Mom:
A cough syrup?
Ted Galanos:
Like Robitussin.
Ted’s Mom:
That’s strange.
Ted Galanos:
That’s what I would most personally associate it with is Robitussin and that’s never good. Other things that I have recently gotten involved in the last a little bit less than a year is Houston Council of the Blind. I knew it existed, but I never got involved in the local politics of ACB, NFB. I knew they existed, but it just wasn’t my shtick. But because I wanted to go to the ACB national convention last summer in St. Louis, I decided, you know, I better try to make a half-hearted effort to see what this program is about and start educating myself. I got to where I liked going to it because it actually gets me out of this building and back into society again.
Ted Galanos:
Whereas I was more of a shut in and some people would even call me a hermit for a number of years, except for my online outlet and socialization to the computer. The computer is certainly not the same as socializing in person. I’ve grown to reunder-stand that.
[music]
Audio:
Welcome to this week’s Password Christmas edition.
Ted Galanos:
Getting involved with HCB, Houston Council of the Blind, and coupled with friends on Out of Sight, the voice chat network, I was challenged by a friend to get an iPhone. Well, all I had was a little government throw down phone that Woodridge provided that I couldn’t really use. I mean I could get phone calls and fortunately had Bluetooth, so my little Bluetooth earpiece I can say answer or ignore, but I couldn’t make phone calls out. Bruce Stockler, a good friend of mine, said, “Ted, you can do this. You can do this with your nose.” No, I can’t. I’ve known friends who’ve had iPhones for years with Siri and the talk back and all that, but I couldn’t see myself using it.
Ted Galanos:
Bruce said, “Well, if I can play dice roll with my nose, then you need to look into this,” and he did. He played dice roll with his nose and I thought, “You know what? He’s got something there.” I did some research. I found a program called STAP or Specialized Telecommunications Assistance Program, which aids people that are blind and upper mobility impaired and helps them to get communications devices. I got a voucher for $649 and I’ve got myself a nice little iPhone 7. I thought, “Well, how in the world am I going to use this?” Another close friend of mine, Tammy Lin, an assistive technology instructor in Minnesota, started helping me over Skype. She’s so sweet.
Ted Galanos:
She brags on me saying that I learned more in one week about the iPhone than a lot of her students learn in two months. The Houston Council also recommended that I get in touch with ibugtoday.com. Ibugtoday.com is our Houston version of I think Pete, it’s called iAccess there in Jacksonville?
Pete Lane:
Right.
Ted Galanos:
iBUG stands for blind users group for the iPhone and I device. I found out how to dial into their meetings and I dialed into a few meetings late last spring when I first got my phone. I thought, “You know what? This isn’t cutting it. If this is local, I’m going to go there.” I bought myself some more METROLift tickets. If I want to go somewhere, I call METROLift, make my reservations. I get from here to the front of the building. I get on the METROLift and I go to wherever I want to go. The phone has just opened up a whole new world for me.
Pete Lane:
That’s incredible, Ted. What a story that is. You operate the phone with your nose?
Ted Galanos:
That is correct.
Pete Lane:
Using Voiceover.
Ted Galanos:
Using Voiceover. I’ll do a “Hey, Siri” quite a bit, but my … As you just heard it, it reacted.
Pete Lane:
There you go.
Ted Galanos:
Yes, I use my nose and other facial body parts to operate this thing.
Pete Lane:
Let me pause here a moment, Ted. Tell us how you do the two finger double tap, otherwise known as the magic tap.
Ted Galanos:
I use my nose and my upper lip to do the two finger double tap. I’m not sure who this is.
Pete Lane:
Why don’t you go ahead and answer it for our audience?
Ted Galanos:
Hello? Hold on one second if you can hear me.
Richie:
I could hear you.
Ted Galanos:
Had to use my forehead to do the proximity sensor until it would go to speaker phone. Okay. I don’t recognize the phone number. Who am I talking to?
Richie:
No problem. This is Richie with ScripTalk. Russ Davis wanted me to give you a call.
Ted Galanos:
Ah, wow.
Richie:
Friday night and I need a bite. My motorcycle and a switch blade knife. My hand full of grease and my hand feels right, but what I need to make me tight are those girls, girls, girls.
Ted Galanos:
All right. I got the iPhone and I use my nose, my upper lip, and in some cases, lower lip and chin. It gives a whole new meaning to Facetime, doesn’t it? To hit the home button, I use my upper lip to hit the home button assuming I’m holding the phone. Oh, and by the way, this is something else that might be good to note. I have my phone on a leash. In fact, it’s a lanyard. If I’m not sitting in the bed or if I know that I’m going to leave the tabletop and go somewhere else in the building or out and about, it has a four loop lanyard that goes over the four corners and then it’s looped around my neck. I will grab the two ends of the loop that’s around my neck into my fingers.
Ted Galanos:
Between my teeth and my fingers, I will get the phone sort of in the palm of my hand and then I’ll manipulate it such that both hands are on either side of the phone because I can’t hold it, but I can hold it, right? Then I rest the home button side of the phone against my chin when I’m and about and don’t have a tabletop to put the phone on. I’ll use my nose and upper lip to wrench my neck to do the rotor. Then to turn on the lock screen, I kind of fumble with it to get it on its edge and use my tooth.
Pete Lane:
Your tooth? Your tooth as in T-O-O-T-H?
Ted Galanos:
Yes, to push the lock button or the volume control. It’s on the other side of the phone. I use all parts of my face to operate the phone.
Pete Lane:
Essentially you’re only cradling the phone with your hands.
Ted Galanos:
Yes.
Pete Lane:
Then all of the motion, the gesture movements, the swipes, the flick, the touches, the double touches are all done with various parts of your face, head, mouth and teeth.
Ted Galanos:
Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Pete Lane:
Ted, I just have to pause here a moment and just marvel. You’re a remarkable guy.
Audio:
Welcome to a Haunted Game of Mirror with your host the wicked witch of …
Pete Lane:
Talk about your audio production and work.
Ted Galanos:
Okay. Yeah. This is something that … Oh, I guess about four years or so ago, not long after I started going to Out of Sight and becoming a member and getting involved, one of my friends on there, TJ, had an intro done for one of the nighttime games we play.
Pete Lane:
Let me interrupt. Do a 20-30 second set up about Out of Sight.
Ted Galanos:
Well, in being a shut in back in 2005, got involved with an online accessible gaming website called All In Play. Through All In Play, I heard them talking about FTP, For The People. For The People was a voice chat community. Well, over the years, other newer chat sites came about. Over the course of the next, oh, I guess 15 years or so, we bounced from … I say we because there’s a number of us that did this, bounced from one chat site to another landing on Out of Sight, out-of-sight.net. I became a member of the Out of Sight community about four years ago. On Out of Sight, they have different games they play, word games, trivia games, music games, dice games.
Ted Galanos:
They have all kinds of entertainment and fun to be had on this chat site. One of the games on there is five category trivia. When I first started going there, Rich DeSteno had an intro for his game. He was the only one to have an intro for his game, and my friend TJ was the one who create it. I thought, “You know what? I could do that.” About three and a half years or so ago, I hunted around and found some tutorials for GoldWave. For the next probably month, just was nothing but GoldWave. I started doing intros for other games that went on.
Ted Galanos:
They were very rudimentary and kind of poorly done right at first, but then I invested in some better equipment, a sure microphone that I’m speaking to you on now, an audio interface that plugs into the USB port. Kind of what I call an external sound card meets really tiny audio mixer. My intros started getting better. Welcome to your favorite quiz show Brethren. Fire. Trivia. I also wanted to start participating in a talent type show on Out of Sight on Saturdays called On Stage. That’s where I got into trying my hand at karaoke singing.
Ted Galanos:
Again, it was very rudimentary early on, but when you work at something long enough, and especially if you’re self-taught in my opinion, you really learn yourself where you really learn the tools of your trade. You don’t necessarily need formal education to learn.
[music]
Audio:
Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey.
Ted Galanos:
In doing the intros and stuff, I was asked to put together a memorial of our late friend Victor Chan. I used one of the vocalizer voices to read a kind of biography that was in one of the newsletter back in time and then I backed that to some musical pieces.
Male:
What we’re going to do first is have my sound engineer, Teddy, play a recording of the interview that was done December 2014.
Audio:
Out of Sight news and views issue 24, December 1st, 2014. Member Spotlight by Karen Santiago. The spotlight is traveling 2826 miles from the East Coast, Brooklyn, New York to the West Coast, Sacramento, California to shine ever so brightly upon Victor Chan.
Ted Galanos:
Well, I did such a good job with putting that together and the memorial turned out really nice. Karen Santiago approached me and asked if I could turn their text of theblindperspective.com newsletter into an audio format. She liked it.
Audio:
Welcome to The Blind Perspective. Logo description. A view from a window with lavender curtains drawn back viewing the snowy peaks of a mountain range. The words “The Blind Perspective” hover above in the sky.
Ted Galanos:
Doing that gave our friend, Tammy Lin, this idea of audio scrapbooking. I thought, “Wow. audio scrapbooking.” She wanted to have a scrapbook, an audio scrapbook, for her daughter. Sighted folks during the holidays take a lot of pictures and they put them in picture albums and they bring them out at family gatherings. Those of us in the blind community are kind of left behind. Tammy and I got to talking about this concept. She took cassette recordings that go back 25 years. Got a cassette to USB recorder from Amazon, started recording literally hundreds of hours of cassette audio from the time before her daughter was born up to very recently when she graduated from nursing school from the Navy.
Ted Galanos:
I’ve got this whole pile of cassette recordings and then various musical pieces that backed up certain parts of the timeline. Then, of course, Tammy recorded herself speaking throughout. It turned into about 30 or 31 minutes of audio. Now, Tammy can put it on a thumb drive and take it to someone’s computer and play it or she can transfer it to somebody’s victor and play that. Even on her phone.
Pete Lane:
What a great idea audio scrapbooking is.
Ted Galanos:
Very cool concept, yes.
Pete Lane:
Are you now in the business of doing audio scrapbooks? If so, do you want to let our audience know to reach out and contact you if they have any interest?
Ted Galanos:
Absolutely. I want to say that it’s still a concept, not a business. I don’t have a DBA. I don’t have a tax ID. In fact, I’m not sure I’m even allowed to have anything like that living in a nursing home. I certainly don’t want to put my Medicaid and all that in jeopardy, but contributions or donations are certainly the key to circumvent any kind of problems with my medical insurance. In a manner of speaking, yes, I want to parlay this into hopefully a business in the future. I have created a Gmail account specific for this, blindaudioscrapbooks@gmail.com, B-L-I-N-D-A-U-D-I-O, scrapbooks, S-C-R-A-P-B-O-O-K-S@gmail.com.
Pete Lane:
Great. Good stuff, Ted. Yeah, it’s a wonderful concept. I’ve tried my hand at that.
Sheryl Spencer:
To Sir Tom. When I was losing my sight, you gave me the strength to stay in the fight. In order to see if I could be able to go backstage, I created an email. Explained my name is Sheryl Spencer. I’m totally blind. I’ve met Sir Tom in the past and he has always said whenever I see his name that I could come and say hello. That I have been a fan club president of his for 15 plus years, and I would like a minute of Tom’s time. Saturday morning, there is a reply, “Dear Sheryl, we will happily arrange a meet with you and Sir Tom.” Wow. When I heard that, I just pulled my headset off and just started crying. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It really meant a lot to me.
Pete Lane:
Had a great time doing it. We wish you a lot of luck with that.
Audio:
With your hosts, Ted and Carol.
Pete Lane:
Ted, we ask our Blind Abilities guest a pretty standard question. What advice would you give to a blind teenager who is transitioning from high school either onto college or into the workplace?
Ted Galanos:
My advice is don’t let the world get you down. There’s going to be disappointments in life, major and minor. But if you keep your nose pointed in the right direction and you have a good attitude and you’re ambitious, that’s the key, ambition. Take pride in what you do. If you find a niche, go after it. Make it an achievement, an accomplishment. Living in a nursing home, there’s a lot of employees here that ought not be here because they come to work with a chip on their shoulder. They come to work rather not wanting to be here. Sadly, in little nitpicky ways, they take it out on the residents and that tells me they don’t have pride in their craft. They don’t have ambition.
Ted Galanos:
You as a blind or disabled or wheelchair bound or all of the above individual listening to this podcast, it’s even harder for you because you are disabled and already a minority. My advice is go that extra mile. Be that much more ambitious. Don’t keep your eye on the ball. Keep your nose pointed in the right direction.
Pete Lane:
Or in your case, on the iPhone screen.
Ted Galanos:
Exactly.
Pete Lane:
Above all, adapt and overcome. Right, Ted?
Ted Galanos:
Exactly. Adapt and overcome.
Pete Lane:
Right on, dude. We’ve been speaking with Ted Galanos. Ted has a remarkable story, and I am absolutely positive, Ted, that our audience has benefited from hearing your story, all of your challenges and all of your adaptations and barriers which you’ve had to overcome in your lifetime. You are truly inspirational. It’s been a pleasure, absolute pleasure, speaking with you today.
Ted Galanos:
Thank you for having me on.
Pete Lane:
Again, our pleasure, Ted. You have a great day and we will talk to you soon, my friend.
Ted Galanos:
Excellent. My name is Ted, T-E-D, Galanos, G-A-L-A-N-O-S. My email address is tr.galanos@gmail.com. I can be reached through Skype. My Skype ID is Tedster1. That’s T-E-D-S-T-E-R and the number one. I am on Facebook. I am on Twitter.
Pete Lane:
This concludes my chat with Ted Galanos. I certainly hope that Ted’s story will be in some way motivational to you and perhaps even inspiring. Once again, the theme that we often present on Blind Abilities is one of achievement, one of accomplishment. We often measure those accomplishments against the barriers and the challenges that our guests have overcome to achieve them. Clearly Ted has had a myriad of significant challenges over his lifetime. We applaud Ted on his grit and wish him all the best as he moves into the future. I’m sure we’ll see further accomplishments from our guest, Ted Galanos. For more podcast with The Blindness Perspective, you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com.
Pete Lane:
Download our app free from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. We’re on Facebook and we’re on Twitter. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
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