Full Transcript
Rachel Carver:
Blind high school students that come in and they’re like, “Yeah, we use our Braille Note.” I’m like, no, you need to get on the computer. Whether you start your first job or you go into college, you don’t struggle your first semester like I did.
Jeff Thompson:
Please welcome Rachel Carver, Senior Specialist Public Relations, Outlook Business Solutions.
Rachel Carver:
Speak up and advocate for yourself. That’s huge. If you don’t have blindness skills, go somewhere where you can get those. If that means starting college a semester later, fine. It’ll be worth it.
Jeff Thompson:
Her journey from high school to college to the workplace.
Rachel Carver:
I went through a phase in my life when I didn’t want to help with anything no matter how challenging the task was, and then I started to realize, well, that’s kind of silly. Everybody needs help with things sometimes.
Jeff Thompson:
From assistive technology to training centers and structured discovery, learning the campus, and applying for jobs
Rachel Carver:
You need a support system. Everybody does. Whether you’re blind or not, you need a support system.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store and Google Play Store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. Enabled the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying “enable Blind Abilities.” Now, please welcome Rachel Carver, from high school to college to the workplace. We hope you enjoy it.
Rachel Carver:
It’s that education factor. So important. Both blind people and employers.
Jeff Thompson:
Rachel, being an individual that was born blind, you started off school with assistive technology from the get-go. What were some of the tools that you had in your toolbox back then?
Rachel Carver:
Well, I am old enough now that when I first started elementary school, I had the Braille writer obviously, and then I had the computer with the floppy disk with an external voice box on it with the giant keyboard. I think it was like Deck Talk or one of those. I think by the time I was in third grade, I was typing on a keyboard, which at that point was further ahead than other kids. Now that’s not even really a big deal because everyone’s on technology. Let’s see. Through high school I used Window Wise, but I was never where I should’ve been technology wise. I used the Braille Note a lot. I didn’t learn as much on the computer as I should have. I did what was I call a crash course. After I graduated high school, I went to the Iowa Department for the Blind for a summer. I did learn some more technology enough to use it there.
Rachel Carver:
Then the next summer I went to BLIND Incorporated Minneapolis because I still needed some help with some stuff. Through some of that training and through just my own use, I finally started to get more… I was formatting papers and surfing the internet and doing all the things. Part of it was me in high school not really wanting to do much with technology. I strongly and encourage. We do sometimes have some blind high school students that come in and they’re like, “Yeah, we use our Braille Note.” I’m like, no, you need to get on the computer, and you need to use it, and you need to make sure that you are able to do the things that your peers are doing, whether that’s on the computer or the iPad, whatever it is, so whether you start your first job or you go into college, you don’t struggle your first semester like I did.
Jeff Thompson:
I think in the workforce out there, most companies are using this Microsoft database or some type of resources that it’d be good to know your PC. Not too many I don’t think are using Apple system, but having PC is what you really need I think.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. I think at least from what we use here, it’s still largely PC driven. I know people that have Macs and they use them. I’ve known people that do use them at work, especially if you’re doing like graphic design work, you’re going to probably want a Mac more. But I would say I use my PC a lot and I use my phone a lot. Microsoft Office is huge and also like these collaboration like Google Docs, Dropbox. I know now in schools at least are using those more. We use that some now, especially when we’re working with external people. Being able to use some of those things is important as well.
Jeff Thompson:
What was it like for you out of high school to transition to in college?
Rachel Carver:
One story that kind of comes to mind. High school, I used Braille books for everything pretty much, and my teachers told me that I needed to start using books on tape. I fought it. I didn’t want to because back then everybody was still using their textbooks, the print textbooks. For whatever reason, I wanted to be able to flip through my Braille pages just like everyone else. I had a couple classes where they said, “Nope, we’re not giving you the book in Braille. We’re going to give it to you on tape,” and I did come sort of kicking and screaming into that because… I’m glad that I did because college Braille books were… I think I might have gotten a couple of math books in Braille. The other thing that I did when I started college was I learned my college campus on my own. That was a thing for me that I wanted to do, so I wandered around lost a lot.
Rachel Carver:
That was I guess my first time really truly using the structure of discovery method, like living and breathing it because I was in a whole new place and I didn’t want to have to rely on anyone, and I wanted to be able to go where I wanted to go. I guess those are the landmark things that kind of helped me start my college career.
Jeff Thompson:
For those who may not know about the structure discovery method, can you explain that to them?
Rachel Carver:
I guess what I did, and it might not be exactly right, but I did start at college, and I went on a couple of tours with the group. I got like a very… Because your freshman year you get orientation and so you kind of get shown the very basics, “All right. This building’s over here. This one’s here.” I did do a lot of just wandering finding landmarks. I asked a lot of questions like how do I get to the science center from here? I’m not saying that it was never attempting to just have, “Oh yeah, I can take you there.” I knew I wasn’t going to learn that way. I guess the best way I can sum it up is you walk and you explore and you learn your landmark. I had a very small campus. It was probably the size of about two city blocks, but you can use the same sort of idea really in any size area.
Rachel Carver:
Just might take you a little bit longer. I did eventually. I’d say to really know the whole campus, I’d say it took me about a month to be able to know where everything was over the entire campus. Obviously the buildings I went to more regularly, I picked up more quickly, but I was a newspaper reporter, so I had to interview the president a couple of times. That building I didn’t go to as often, so that was a little more interesting at getting my way through there, but I did it. It felt good to do that because I’m still not the greatest cane traveler. I admit it, but at least having that confidence of, well, it might take me a little bit, but I will eventually figure it out.
Jeff Thompson:
Something that rings true to me over the years is experience is the best teacher.
Rachel Carver:
For sure.
Jeff Thompson:
By you putting yourself out there and going left, going right, going over to the next building or exploring. Because if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s exploring. Once you do, then you’re traveling, and then you can do that in a timeframe that works for your schedule. I would suggest you… I think you started before your classes exploring.
Rachel Carver:
A little bit. If I could go back and do it again, I would have spent more time doing that, but I was a little shy still. I grew up in a small town of about 1200 people, so there were no stoplights. There were no big highways. The summer before I went to college, I was in Des Moines, so I did get some city experience there and worked on listening to traffic and all that. It’s not that I hadn’t done that before. It was just like my mobility teacher would have to drive me to a city. It was like, okay, I’d work on crossing the street, then I’d go back to my small town and wouldn’t practice. It’s easy especially when you’re 16 and you’re very resistant to change and to advice that adults are giving you because you think you know everything, but yeah, I did start early.
Rachel Carver:
I actually had one of my professors… Because I had a class at noon and then I had a class at 1:00 and I was late for like the first couple of weeks probably every day. I was like, I’m probably going to be late because I’m still learning the campus and I might get a little lost. Obviously, since she understood what I was doing, she was accommodating. I eventually figured it out and I could walk… Because you have about 10 minutes to do that. I did eventually get to where I could go pretty fast and get to where I needed to be, so that was nice.
Jeff Thompson:
Try and try again, it works, right?
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. It can get frustrating at times, but when you do figure it out, it does work for you.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. Not only classes, attending classes, getting your homework, getting accessibility, getting your books, getting the tapes on the audio, what else was dorm life like? Laundry, eating, all sorts of other stuff?
Rachel Carver:
I guess the big thing for me was I had a roommate who’d never met someone who was blind before. I talked to her before I got to school so that she wasn’t just blindsided, pardon the pun, that I was blind. I said, “You know, I’m pretty much like you. I just can’t see. If I need anything from you, assistance, I will definitely ask, but I promise I won’t expect you to do everything for me.” Sometimes I’d help her with stuff and sometimes she’d help me with stuff. Maybe we’d walk to the cafeteria and she’d tell me what was on the lines, things like that. But once I got comfortable and my friends got comfortable … I did have a friend that I met who was pretty much like, “Well, you’re blind. You’re not incompetent.”
Rachel Carver:
I think it was the first week I was having issues getting my key in the door, and she was across the hall from me. She’s like, “Well, you’ll figure it out,” and I was like, “Oh, that’s so cool.” She didn’t rush over and try to do it for me because we all as blind people meet people that like they want to help. They just don’t know how and so they try to be maybe too helpful. We encounter them all the time. I try to educate and it honestly got to where I was just one of the other people in the dorm really. I wasn’t really any different from anyone else.
Jeff Thompson:
Just blended in.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah, I did.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s a good feeling. Then from college, the workplace, what was it like applying for jobs?
Rachel Carver:
Well, that was a whole new frontier. I actually graduated a semester early from college, and I had this like, “Awesome. I’m done. I can do whatever I want.” I went through the holidays and was like, “I don’t have any more homework. No more papers.” Then it hit me like, oh, now I got to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I can’t just hang out in my parents’ house all day forever. Again, that technology, because you know, being able to write a resume and write cover letters, and it was some… Because my parents, they live about an hour from Omaha, so like trying to get to job interviews. When I actually get a job interview, I would make it a point to be, if somebody was driving me, I would just have them drop me off. I wouldn’t have them go in with me because I didn’t want to give the wrong impression.
Rachel Carver:
There were times… I mean, you could just tell because I didn’t tell anybody that I was applying with that I was blind. You’d walk in and they would see you and go, oh. You knew they wanted to ask more questions, but they didn’t know how. Some of those situations, honestly looking back, I probably would have spent more time talking about, okay, here’s some of the technology I use, here’s how I would use it. I did some of that, but there’s so much that a sighted person isn’t going to know. It’s hard for people to look past what’s different. I mean, for anyone. The more you can I guess sell yourself to them and it seems like as a blind person you have to work a little bit harder at that, at least right now in our current society the way it is.
Rachel Carver:
I think the education part is really important when you’re going into that interview to just be as open as you can be without… I mean, obviously if things can still not turn out the way that you want them to, it happens, but the more competent you are and confident going in, the more of an impression you’re going to leave on them.
Jeff Thompson:
It seems like as a blind and visually impaired person that some of the extra working harder type of things you talked about, working outside the box, if I may use that, when you’re talking about working harder, as you mentioned, it seems like employers are actually looking for people who work outside the box, people who are solution driven. Using the alternative techniques that we do, we have to overcome so many obstacles. It seems like a good quality or trait to have on your resume.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. They just want to know how you’re going to be able to do the job and if you can do it. They Legally cannot ask you any of those questions. The other thing is sometimes some of the accommodations scares them because how much is it going to cost? I don’t know anything about it, so I don’t know what they’re going to need. Like I said, looking back now, I wish I would have explained more of that kind of thing, but it was nice coming to Outlook and coming to somewhere where they already understood JAWS and ZoomText. They had people that use canes, and they weren’t really overly concerned about, well, how is she going to find the bathroom? Things like that.
Jeff Thompson:
It must be a real relief for you to be in that position now going with the experience that you’ve had to see people coming in and being able to just readily start their training to make the next step of their journey.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. We’ve had a couple people that were actually concerned that they were going to lose their jobs because I’m losing my sight and I don’t want to tell my employer about it because I don’t know what’ll happen if I do. One person did that. Once he talked to us about the technology and came in and realized, okay, I need screen magnification. He went to his supervisor. He found out that, oh yeah, there’s five other people here, because was a pretty big company, there’s five other people that are using that same technology. It ended up being fine, but it can be hard when you’re in that position. I always say that I was born blind, so I didn’t have to go through that transition of going from being sighted to being. I think that would be harder. It’s still achievable to make that transition, but it does come with its own obstacles from what I’ve seen through others anyway.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s great. Everyone usually thinks about a blind person or someone that’s visually impaired looking for a job, but like you said earlier, people who lose their sight later maybe fearing that they’re losing their job. Retention is a huge component too. I’m glad you brought that up.
Rachel Carver:
From an employer standpoint, if you’ve got an executive who’s losing their sight and you’ve got all that experience and all of that knowledge and all they need is a piece of technology and you can keep them, they’re going to stay with you if you are willing to help them with that. We talk about that with business professionals that come in as well, that maybe it’s digital eyewear, maybe it’s JAWS, maybe it’s whatever it is, it’s going to be less cost than trying to find somebody else with that level of experience.
Jeff Thompson:
I think it’s great that you guys do talk to the employers or to their supervisors to open their eyes up to the possibilities and capabilities that blind people do have in the workforce.
Rachel Carver:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). The education factor is so important I think for both sides, both blind people and employers.
Jeff Thompson:
I think it’s important. I want to thank you for what you’re doing at Outlook Business Solutions, Outlook Nebraska, because it seems like in today’s world right now, the people are looking. With the unemployment rate that it is today, that trying to crack through this glass window or whatever you want to call it, trying to break through it and let people realize that they can hire someone with a disability, especially blind and visually impaired people because they are capable.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a very low unemployment rate right now in Nebraska, and I don’t know exactly what it is, so I won’t say a number. But when it comes to blind and visually impaired, 70% of people who are blind are still unemployed or underemployed. You’ve got an untapped population of talent that can do great for you as a company or organization.
Jeff Thompson:
Great. We’ve been talking to Rachel Carver, Senior Specialist Public Relations at Outlook Business Solutions, part of Outlook Nebraska. I got one more question for you. What type of smartphone are you using?
Rachel Carver:
I use an iPhone, iPhone 8.
Jeff Thompson:
Ah. They say that was the last greatest iPhone ever put out because of the home button.
Rachel Carver:
Yes. I have not messed with a 10 or anything else above it. I already said, whenever I have to make the change, I’m going to have to go see the trainers because I’m going to need help. Not having a home button, so.
Jeff Thompson:
Here’s a question that a lot of listeners would like to know, what are your favorite apps that you utilize on the iPhone?
Rachel Carver:
I use Seeing AI. I love all the different modes that it has.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, it’s like a Swiss army knife.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah. I’d say blindness specific, that one is probably… Then of course, Uber and Lyft, and then the rest of them I’d say are probably pretty common, Microsoft Outlook, Safari, Facebook, Outlook on the phone. I do have IRA, which is the subscription service that you can buy. Being in marketing, there are sometimes some visual things that you need. If there’s an ad in a magazine, for example, the Seeing AI can give me the text, but it doesn’t describe to me how it’s laid out. Maybe I want to know, all right, where’s the text, or how big is the image compared to the words, things like that. Just being in marketing, there are just times when having that ability is important to me. Another app that is available is called Be My Eyes.
Rachel Carver:
If you are just going through your mail or maybe your computer stops talking and you just need to know what’s on the screen, Be My Eyes is an app that uses volunteers. It’s a live person on the phone that is working with you. We all have times where our computer just won’t talk and we want to know why. Seeing AI can also read it sometimes, but it goes back to that having another tool available. It is a free app, so it’s great for college students who are trying to be budget conscious. It’s a great resource for you. I believe in having multiple tools. If I can do something myself, I’m going to. I went through a phase in my life when I didn’t want help with anything, no matter how challenging the task was, and then I started to realize, well, that’s kind of silly. Everybody needs help with things sometimes.
Rachel Carver:
I’d say now I’ve got a pretty good balance of when I might need a hand with something and when I don’t.
Jeff Thompson:
I think it sometimes comes down to efficiency because I mean, they used to say, “Apo, it just works.” Well, sometimes you just want to get over that hurdle to the goal.
Rachel Carver:
Yes. You know what? If there’s a website that’s not accessible right now, a lot of hotel websites are not accessible, you know what? I’m here at work and I’m booking a trip. IRA can actually remote into your computer and the agent can help you with some of those things that are not accessible, and then you can move on with your life. I am all about efficiency for sure.
Jeff Thompson:
Rachel, what advice would you have for a transition student who is transitioning from high school to college to the workplace?
Rachel Carver:
A couple of things. Speak up and advocate for yourself. That’s huge. If you don’t have blindness skills, go somewhere where you can get those. If that means starting college a semester later, fine. It’ll be worth it. Just be confident in yourself and know that it is okay to have help with something. It doesn’t make you weak or less able to do things on your own. Everyone needs help. Don’t do what I did first two years of college and refuse help from anyone because all it’s going to do is give you more headaches and make some things more difficult for you. I’m not even talking about blindness related tasks. I’m talking about just life in general because I went through so much of being told that I couldn’t do things or people wondering if I could do things. I did. I went through that, well, I’m going to show everybody that I can do anything I want on my own.
Rachel Carver:
There is a difference between getting a hand up so that you can get yourself in a position where you are doing everything on your own to the best of your ability and you need a support system. Everybody does. Whether you’re blind or not, you need a support system.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s kind of like networking.
Rachel Carver:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s always you can’t do everything all by yourself.
Rachel Carver:
No, you can’t. Very unrealistic.
Jeff Thompson:
Well, Rachel, I really want to thank you for coming on the Blind Abilities and taking the time to come on to Blind Abilities and sharing with us your story, Outlook Nebraska, Outlook Business Solutions and National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Thank you very much.
Rachel Carver:
All right, well, thank you for having me
Jeff Thompson:
Such a great time talking to Rachel. Be sure to check out part one of the series with Rachel where she talks about her role as senior public relations specialist at Outlook Business Solutions. If you want to find out more about Rachel Carver and Outlook Business Solutions, you can check them out on the web at outlookbusinesssolutions.com. Check out their blog. They’ve got a good one on Rachel called Meet Rachel Carver. A big shout out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music and follow Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau. Chee Chau, Chee Chau. Most of all, I want to thank you, the listener. I want to thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective:
Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities
Download our app from the App store:
‘Blind Abilities’; that’s two words.
Or send us an e-mail at:
Thanks for listening.
*****
Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361.
To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org and search the directory for your agency.
Contact:
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 Storeand Google Play Store.
Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impairedand the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired.