Full Transcript
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so state services actually played a huge part in everything that I’m doing.
Speaker 3:
Don’t be afraid. Get out there, meet people, be friendly. Nobody is judging you.
Speaker 4:
Think big. Look at what do you love to do, what do you enjoy doing and then how can you turn that into getting paid?
Speaker 5:
I use my Braille display, I use JAWS.
Speaker 6:
Put on your cape, grab your Gladiator shield and go get them tiger.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Don’t limit yourself.
Jeff Thompson:
Career Expo 2019. Such great opportunity for transition age students to meet up with professionals from a wide variety of professions whose opportunity for students transitioning from high school to college to the work place. To ask questions from nearly 26 professionals. What is their job like, what tools they use and to receive encouragement about the possibilities that they too can achieve their dreams and get the career that they want.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson and I’m at the Career Expo in Rose Hill, Minnesota. Part of State Services for the Blind for transition age students from across the state and they’re coming to meet role models and mentors. People who are employed. And I came up to a booth and it’s Jennifer Dunnam. How are doing Jennifer?
Jennifer Dunnam:
Doing great. Thanks for having me on Jeff.
Jeff Thompson:
You bet. Can you tell our listeners what you do?
Jennifer Dunnam:
What I do. For my day job I manage the contract with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, which is part of the Library of Congress. And what we do is run the credential program that certifies people who want to become Braille transcribers and Braille proofreaders.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s an important job.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Keeps me very busy, that’s for sure. Been doing it about 12 1/2 years and my role as the manager of the program I have about 13 part-time workers and two full time workers all around the country who work on grading student’s lessons and evaluating tests and all of the various things that need to happen to get people moved through their courses.
Jeff Thompson:
When did you first start learning braille?
Jennifer Dunnam:
I myself am a lifetime braille reader. I think I was about four when I first began to learn braille. I started out as a young kid when my parents gave me blocks that were shaped like print letters and numbers. I learned print first but not visually but I did know what letters and numbers were and so when it came time to read the dots it made sense to me.
Jeff Thompson:
What was it like, and I remember when refreshable braille first came out, not that we’re old or anything like that.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Not at all.
Jeff Thompson:
But over the last 20 years things have changed. Braille classes are now called communications classes because it’s a form of communications. What’s that like for you today from when you first started using braille?
Jennifer Dunnam:
I think there are pluses and minuses about it. Mostly plus though because there’s more braille available ever than there ever was before. Because it’s not necessary to wait to get something into a paper format to have it available in braille. People who are in the transcribing courses have tools now to help them speed up the work of doing braille transcribing.
Jennifer Dunnam:
The minuses can come when people sort of have this idea of, “Oh, we don’t need braille transcribers anymore,” or, “They don’t really need to know the braille. They can just rely on the software to get it done.” The software is a wonderful tool that can assist but it can never replace the knowledge that a human being needs to be able to intervene and add value to something. For example, if a person needs a textbook in braille, they need all of the content. For example, descriptions of the pictures. They need it to be formatted in such a way that they can find things on the page or find the right page and such like that.
Jeff Thompson:
You and your team actually make sure that the braille makes sense when it’s put into an educational book or some sort.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Absolutely. That’s right. A number of conversations and context. There can be this kind of false dichotomy saying, “Well, braille is really less necessary now because we have technology.” Well, as you just pointed out, refreshable braille is very much in integral part of technology and so literacy remains critical for everyone, including blind people to be able to write that excellent resume and have it grammatically correct in the cover letter, et cetera, because I can tell you that when I’m hiring people I look at those things. Did they format it well? Did they make sense in their sentences? And without a good way of having literacy then that’s harder for a blind person who already has some barriers in form of people’s perceptions about your ability to work.
Jeff Thompson:
If someone was interested in getting involved and showing up at your job interview that you put on, how would they get connected with you?
Jennifer Dunnam:
They can connect with me related to the Braille Certification Program. A good email address to use is transcribers@mfb.org.
Jeff Thompson:
Jennifer, you’ve been talking to transition age students coming through here. What advice would you give them as they’re looking towards their future?
Jennifer Dunnam:
I think the best piece of advice that I can think of to give that was really helpful to me as I was growing up was to get a foundation that is well balanced and broad because ultimately you have no idea what kind of curves life is going to throw at you. What kind of opportunities are going to come your way. You thought you were going to go down a particular path and then all of a sudden something else really spared your interest and you were good at it and if you have a solid foundation.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Like for example, in college taking a wide variety of courses. Of course you got to pick a major at some point but making sure that you’ve taken just all of the spectrum as much as possible. And being flexible. Being flexible and understanding that life changes and the world changes and as an employee you’re going to be a very valuable asset if you can really roll with the punches and take what comes to you.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s great. Some of the rolling with the punches is being able to have the tools in your toolbox. I know that’s cliché but are you a PC, Apple, Android, iPhone or all the above?
Jennifer Dunnam:
All of the above. Certainly I do have the ones that I use on a large basis. For example, I am a PC user. I think that to get some serious work done, for me at least, to get serious work done I need to be sitting in front of that keyboard, have my braille display connected to the computer, have JAWS or NVDA running and I say both of those because unfortunately there isn’t a screen reader that’s perfect for every situation but to really get a document that looks nice, that’s formatted well, that I’ve spell checked, that I’ve really gone through, PC is the one that I’m going to go to. But obviously in a situation where I’m traveling and I need something small, I need to get work done, I use an iPhone. I have used a Mac before. I have used Android devices. And I think all of them have their strong points but versatility is important.
Jeff Thompson:
I myself, I collect records. I used to go to conventions and collect records and all that and I saw an article with you that you were in and you said you were going through your records and that caught my attention. And you were using a service called Aira. Can you explain that?
Jennifer Dunnam:
Aira is a service to where you can use your phone as a video device so someone else on the other end can be looking at what is being shown to you so they can be describing information that’s around you. I started using Aira about a year and a half ago because mostly I really wanted to know what it was like, what it could do, what it’s limitations were because I’ve been functioning without sight for my entire life and mostly I’ve got things worked out but it’s nice to know that there are additional tools.
Jennifer Dunnam:
One of the things that I find very fun to do with Aira is to go to record stores because I am a vinyl collector. I can put my phone on a mount that is flexible, kind of like a gooseneck stand, and if you get the phone at just the right angle I can flip through those albums really quickly and I have someone who is able to read them to me through the phone and just go crate digging all throughout the record stores. Did that a couple weeks ago on Record Store Day.
Jeff Thompson:
A friend of mine from Canada talked about Record Store Day and what you mentioned about flipping through the crates, that is a blast.
Jennifer Dunnam:
It really is. It was very exciting. And of course I can get someone to go with me, usually I’ll hire a reader or something to go, but what if I want to go on a day that I can’t get someone? I can just go and take my time and do it at whatever pace that I would like. I should point out that once I get home with my record haul then I take out some adhesive labeling and put braille labels on all the records so I don’t need to call somebody up every time I want to go through my own collection. I get the braille labeled and I’m a kind of organized person so I alphabetize them and what not but I can go through them in braille then.
Jeff Thompson:
It works for me.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Yes. I love that about Aira is that it lets you get to a place where you can call them once, do what you need to do to make it so that you don’t need to call them every time you use something. I use it a lot for braille labeling as well.
Jeff Thompson:
Well that’s great. Well, Jennifer thank you so much for being down here at the Career Expo and sharing your experiences, your knowledge, your skills with everybody here and your advice, so thank you.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Of course. It’s been great to learn from all the kids as well. They have a lot to teach as well so thank you so much.
Jeff Thompson:
What’s your takeaway from the kids that come through? What’s it like?
Jennifer Dunnam:
It’s very inspiring. I mean these kids that want to learn, are looking forward to their future, really have ideas of what they’d like to do. Some kids really don’t yet know but they’ve got their whole lives ahead of them. They’ve got time to work it out. And they’re here because they’re looking at what the options are. It’s also interesting for me to learn what the world of being in school is like today. It’s been a minute since I have been in school and things have changed a great deal and so the work that I do with the National Federation of the Blind in Minnesota, it demands that if I’m going to help people now, I really need to understand what it’s like in school today so that’s been another good takeaway.
Jeff Thompson:
Awesome. Well, thank you very much.
Jennifer Dunnam:
Thank you.
Jeff Thompson:
Be sure to contact your state services for the blind, your Voc. Rehab and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. A big shout out goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music and you can follow CheeChau on Twitter at @LCheeChau. Enable the Blind Ability Skill on your Amazon device just by saying, “Enable Blind Abilities.”
[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:
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Thanks for listening.
Contact
If 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:
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