Full Transcript
Pete:
Please meet Dr. Natalina Martiniello, a researcher focused on the education and rehabilitation of individuals with visual impairment, sharing her experiences of moving through the educational process, and more.
Natalina:
Growing up, I actually struggled with subjects like math, as many other blind students do. They’re kind of traditionally viewed as being very visual. I had to turn to math, particularly, for statistical analysis, and science, because that’s something that I had to tackle as a blind graduate student, and somebody entering the research realm. I discovered that I really enjoyed it, but I also was very good at it.
Pete:
-and accessibility and inclusion-
Natalina:
There’s still a lot of problems in accessibility and inclusion, in not just the STEM fields but in research in general, that I think is something we’re starting to talk about more.
Pete:
-advocacy-
Natalina:
Advocacy has to be a global effort and sighted colleagues and friends play an integral role in that.
Pete:
-with personal stories-
Natalina:
I had visited a university campus to attend an event, dressed very formally. I stepped into the building and I had my guide dog with me, and I stopped to get her bowl out to give her some water. A few seconds later I heard a sound, and I realized that somebody who walked by dropped change into the bowl. We can all think of examples like this, but what if that person is a professor, what does that say about how they’re going to unconsciously think about blind students?
Pete:
Reframing accessibility-
Natalina:
I think part of what we’re starting to talk about more and more is shifting away from simply viewing education as accommodation-based, and instead shifting towards the idea that if you make things accessible and inclusive from the start, it really ends up benefiting everyone.
Pete:
-laser-focused on braille literacy.
Natalina:
I value that I know braille. I am one of those people who needs to have access to information in writing. Sometimes I just want to have an actual physical braille book and just go read.
Pete:
-and her love for what she does-
Natalina:
For me I’m doing it because I’m passionate about these topics. I want to play a role in improving some of the barriers that are encountered.
Pete:
-and now let’s meet Dr. Natalina Martiniello, as Jeff chats with her about these and other topics on this episode of the Blind Abilities podcast.
Jeff:
Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio, we have Dr. Natalina Martiniello. She’s a researcher focusing on the education and rehabilitation of individuals with visual impairment. She’s a certified vision rehabilitation therapist, and president of Braille Literacy Canada. Natalina, welcome to Blind Abilities.
Natalina:
Thank you, thank you for inviting me, I’m happy to be here.
Jeff:
Natalina, I really want to congratulate you on achieving and getting your doctorate last December.
Natalina:
Yes, thank you very much.
Jeff:
You know, as we were talking before this show, some of the themes that your studies have really focused on, one of them really stuck out to me – STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. I think it’s very important for blind and visually impaired students to have opportunities to access and be included in the STEM fields, and I was really excited when I read that you have really focused a lot of your attention into STEM for blind and visually impaired students being included on curriculums in the education system.
Natalina:
Yeah, so I entered the kind of scientific world at the graduate level, and before that I had really focused more on the humanities, and education. Growing up I actually struggled with subjects like math, as many other blind students do, and as you know, and as many of your listeners know, that’s often a consequence of how we think about certain subjects, particularly in the STEM field. They’re kind of traditionally viewed as being very visual, but of course it’s a question of how those subjects are being taught. They don’t need to be thought of in that way, and there’s a lot of perspective you can gain from thinking about it in different ways, but I always struggled with math, mostly for accessibility reasons, and the difficulty of trying to access a curriculum that was not designed for people who rely on non-visual methods, and so I grew up thinking that I wasn’t very good in those subjects, and it wasn’t until the graduate level, when I had to turn to math, particularly for doing statistical analysis as a researcher, and science, because as you mentioned, my research focuses very much on the education and rehabilitation of the blind, and part of that is understanding how learning works, and learning how these things happen at the cortical level in the brain, and knowing about how the brain is structured, that’s something that I had to kind of tackle as a blind graduate student, and somebody entering kind of the research realm, and I discovered that I really enjoyed it, but I also was very good at it, and you know, part of that is that I was older and had a better understanding of what I needed to succeed and could advocate for myself, but you know, I’m sure as we’ll talk about, there are still a lot of problems in terms of accessibility and inclusion in not just the STEM fields but in research in general that I think is something we’re starting to talk about more.
Jeff:
Something that really struck me was the barrier was just the accessibility. I mean, for students who are in K-12, why should they have to wait until they get to a point where, yeah, they can now advocate for themselves and demand or ask for the right stuff, shouldn’t it be that even at a younger age in school, that accessibility would bridge that gap and maybe more students would be in STEM programs.
Natalina:
Sure, right, and there are so many different issues at play here, but I think part of what we’re starting to talk about more and more is shifting away from this idea of simply viewing education as accommodation-based, you know, finding ways to make things accessible for specific groups, and instead shifting towards the idea that, well actually, if you make things accessible and inclusive from the start, it really ends up benefiting everyone, you know, so a good example of this is when I attend a conference, obviously having an electronic access to conference materials, to the program, to Powerpoints, makes that information accessible to me as a blind professional, but at the same time, it’s obviously very beneficial to a lot of people who don’t want to have to carry around paper with them, who might not be able to do that, who want access on the go on their devices, so I think it’s a question of increasing accessibility by recognizing that this is actually something that affects more than just a niche population, and as research becomes more and more diverse, we need to be thinking about that. What can we do from the start to increase that inclusion?
Jeff:
And sometimes that starts right with the student making contact with their teacher at the college level, whether they’re gonna use disability services at the school, or have a direct communication with their teacher, that’s where advocacy comes into play.
Natalina:
Absolutely, and I think the really interesting thing about advocacy is that we talked about self-advocacy and ensuring that students who are blind have the opportunity to develop those skills early on, before they enter post-secondary education and they’re kind of on their own without the supports that they’ve been used to, but I think what we’re seeing more and more is that advocacy has to be a global effort, and sighted allies or sighted colleagues and friends, play an integral role in that. So part of it is also, you know, colleges and universities and professors making the commitment to advocate when they learn that certain products or books, publications, software, are not accessible and making a commitment for that to be part of the decision-making process when you’re deciding what you’re going to be using.
Jeff:
So how was that for you, when you experienced, you know, going for your doctorate, going into the classes. You said you had more experience with advocacy and stuff, what was your experience like?
Natalina:
Yeah, I think it’s interesting, because as many of your listeners I’m sure will have experienced in their own lives, a lot of the time the biggest barriers we face are due to perception, right? The perception of what we are and aren’t able to do. We talk about the glass ceiling a lot, with gender, but I often view it as, you know, when we think about disability, of this bar effect, right? Like we kind of have this invisible bar that is unconsciously placed before us, by well-meaning people, but it’s detrimental, because it kind of makes assumptions about what we can and can’t do. And so I always think back to a story that I think illustrates this well. Early on in my PHD studies, I had visited a university campus to attend an event, and I was dressed very formally for the event, and I stepped into the building, and I had my guide dog with me, and I probably walked just a few steps into the building, and I stopped to get her bowl out, to give her some water. A few seconds later I heard a sound, and I realized that somebody who walked by dropped change into the bowl.
[Natalina and Jeff laugh]
Natalina:
Right? We can all think of examples like this, but what’s interesting about that story is it really struck me that whoever it was that walked by didn’t think twice about it, right? They thought they were doing something good. But you have to think, you know, what if that person is a professor. What does that say about how they’re going to kind of unconsciously think about blind students. What if that person is a parent, or will be a parent of a blind child, or what if they develop a visual impairment one day? And so the way we really think about disability carries a lot of consequences, not just our perceptions but the way we then respond to it, so that’s part of what we’re trying to push through, and the best way to do that, of course, is to increase diversity and inclusion, and accessibility is only one part of that, right? Accessibility is kind of a fundamental piece of the puzzle, because if things aren’t accessible, then we can’t participate at a fundamental level. But then there’s also inclusion, right? Do we have a voice at the table, not just as blind people or people with disabilities, but as experts in our own right, in our fields, and a good example of this that I’m sure many of your listeners will have experienced is when there’s a research project about a new device being trialed, have people with disabilities, have they been consulted from the start? Are there assumptions about what we do and don’t need, and are there people on the team who really understand that from different perspectives?
Jeff:
Exactly, especially when you’re in school, being inclusive in school with sighted peers on projects, if you have an experience where it worked out really well, that person could probably go on into the workforce and remember that, oh, they’re perfectly capable of doing this. I don’t know what your feeling is on mainstream schools or separate academies or schools for the blind?
Natalina:
It’s really interesting, because we’ve made so many strides over recent decades, right? Like there was a time not too long ago, some people don’t realize, where blind students weren’t educated at all, right, so before the late 1700s there really was no formal mechanism to educate blind children, and so if you compare that to, you know, the sighted population, that’s quite a big difference, and so the schools for the blind were really where things started. And as things began to transition, we started seeing, you know, this what we call mainstreaming, where students are integrated into regular schools. For a long time that started with specialized classes, and special education, and increasingly, what we kind of refer as, you know, differentiated education, where students are put into regular classrooms and inclusive classrooms, alongside their, quote, “nondisabled peers.” And a lot of that, as you know, has happened in conjunction with a whole bunch of legislations that have improved many different things, just by providing kind of those fundamental rights. And so we’ve made a lot of positive strides, the problem is that in education it’s still somewhat retroactive, right? If you’re not accommodated, you need to kind of pursue that and make a complaint, and there’s a lot of advocacy that’s still needed. And so while it’s been really positive and we’ve made a lot of positive strides, there’s still a lot further that we need to go, and we’re talking about inclusive education, and part of that I think also goes back to how we’re starting to think differently about disability and inclusion, right? And it goes back to, again, not just viewing that as an accommodation but preparing future educators to understand what they can do from the start to make the curriculum as inclusive as possible, so that fewer accommodations are needed. That’s really part of the conversation as well.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think it’s a good developmental piece, because when I lost my eyesight I didn’t know anybody who was blind. Then when I did start finding out, I found out that some went to school here, some went there, they were separated out and stuff like that, so- and then when I found out that mainstreaming was common and they had district teachers or teachers that come around, give them those hours or whatever they get, it’s not at a point in their life where they should be spending too much time trying to develop their advocacy, when they should be learning, I’d like to see some improvements in that area, for sure.
Natalina:
Sure, and part of it is also ensuring the teachers are well supported, right? I’ve spoken to many classroom teachers through my role as a rehabilitation specialist, and having the funding that’s needed and the resources in place so that those inclusive practices could really flourish, but even separate from that, I think, is at the kind of professional training level, when we’re preparing future teachers, to have them think more critically about inclusion and what they can do from the start. The other really interesting thing about inclusive education for me is that we often talk about it from an accessibility standpoint, but there’s also the other side of it, right? It’s about who’s represented in the curriculum, and who we see in positions of authority, and growing up I didn’t see too many examples of blindness in the curriculum. It’s also thinking about diversity and kind of just intersecting identities in that way, and ensuring that everyone has a voice and feels represented.
Jeff:
Like on the school board.
Natalina:
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff:
Or at the university level. Did you ever have a teacher who was visually impaired or blind?
Natalina:
I had teachers of students of visual impairment who themselves were blind, and that was really important to me, especially because I always have attended a regular school, so it was really valuable to me to kind of have my foot in both worlds if you want to put it that way, where I could kind of attend the same school as my siblings and learn how to function in the sighted world, but also have those reference points. Peers who were going through similar experiences and older blind role models is really, really important, because you can tell a blind child what’s possible, but it’s often far more empowering to show them, right?
Jeff:
How about when universities, colleges, schools are developing their curriculums? It seems like some people get into their field, and they never had any talk about accessibility. Are universities starting to put in a class for teaching a little bit about accessibility or bringing awareness to it?
Natalina:
Yeah, we’re starting to see more and more initiatives towards that. There have been offices for students with disabilities for a long time, but again, that traditionally has focused on kind of an accommodation-based approach, and so what we’ve been seeing in the past decade in particular is more of this emphasis on universal design for learning, and so that’s definitely something that, you know, proponents of inclusion are advocating for more and more, and providing college faculty with opportunities to learn about UDL and how to implement universal design within their curriculum, how to think differently about it, and part of it is also the technology side, right, continuing to advocate for not just accessible technologies on campus but lower-cost and mainstream accessible devices and we’ve been seeing with Apple products as well.
Jeff:
Mm-hm. You know, you talked about the glass ceiling, or breaking that, or when someone walks into the room, whether it’s skin color, gender, or disability, that stigma, that initial knee-jerk reaction, they turn and right away they think of something. How do we go about changing that, all the way through the whole system?
Natalina:
That’s a huge question, right? But I think for me, education has to be a very essential piece of that, you know, we need obviously legislation, we need those principles in place to ensure that, you know, certain things happen, and that, you know, there are things in place to support people when they encounter problems with inclusion, but education is a big piece of it, and the best way to educate the public is to increase representation, right, because if you think about the perceptions, a lot of our perceptions about, not just disability and blindness, but about everything, are very unconscious. With blindness in particular, there are so many examples throughout history, visual culture and literature, about blindness and kind of portraying blindness as a symbol of charity or pity, right, you think of the blind baker, or when you have examples of blind characters in movies or stories, usually the blindness is a very central piece of who they are, right? There’s a lot of emphasis on that.
Jeff:
Defines them.
Natalina:
Exactly, it defines them. And so what happens then is that people kind of develop a perception about blindness from what they know, which is what they’ve seen, right, they’ve never met a blind person before, and so these are the ideas that they learn from society. You know, as a rehabilitation specialist, I’ve worked a lot with older clients, adults and seniors who lose their vision later on in life, and they were sighted throughout their whole lives, and so they’re coming into this new world with a lifetime of misconceptions about blindness and so often the biggest barrier they have to face is working through those misconceptions and coming to understand that there’s a lot of inaccuracies there that contribute to the stigma that they feel.
Jeff:
As someone who’s taught accessibility, rehabilitation services, you’ve been involved in that, how important is, you know, a child’s growing up, or a young adult’s growing up, but the parent’s influence, sometimes a parent who usually becomes their first advocate, how do we get to the parents and educate them when they had a child, they didn’t know anything about blindness, and now they must get going on learning all they can.
Natalina:
Yeah, and the parents play a central role, right, education starts far before formal education begins, and so there’s a lot that blind children learn before they ever enter a school building about themselves, and one thing that we talked about a lot in the field of blindness, of course, is this concept of learned helplessness. You know, parents are well-meaning, right? We all want the best for our children, and as you mentioned, you know, with parents, a lot of the time it’s just simply because they don’t know, right? They’ve never met a blind person before, and they’re doing the best that they can, and so the really important piece here is that we need to really be increasing access to early intervention, and ensuring that parents have access to professionals, to positive blind role models, to the resources, the tools that they need, so that they can educate themselves, and so they can support the early development of their blind child as early as possible.
Jeff:
When I first lost my eyesight, there was a big thing called cassettes that you would get your books on, 30, 40 of them, four sides, I just dated myself there. But a lot of people who are coming into blindness as an adult are introduced to audio right away. It kind of overlooks braille, where if someone would have started with the braille, right off the bat, just like people who are four years old do, they would have gotten better at it and been able to use it to become more literate, rather than relying on a piece of equipment to hear, listen to, rewind, and stuff like that. I mean, like giving a speech, I heard you give a speech and you mentioned something about no one notices you’re reading your braille, or your notes, but you know. I cannot listen to something and speak at the same time. I know some people have, but I think braille would be more efficient than any other way of becoming literate.
Natalina:
Absolutely, there’s a big misconception that blind people are by nature auditory learners, and that’s not true, right? Some of us are, but some of us need to physically have access to what we’re reading, and there’s actually a lot of research that touches on this, that often people can retain information and understand it better if they can physically read it for themselves rather than passively listening to it, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that you’re kind of more connected, you’re paying more attention when you’re reading it for yourself, and I think the question of braille, I mean it comes down to choice, right, if you’re never taught braille, then you never have the choice to truly use the method that’s best for whatever it is that you’re doing. I listen to audiobooks, I like listening to audiobooks, particularly when I’m doing other things in the house, but I value and feel incredibly grateful that I know braille, because I am one of those people who needs to have access to information in writing to really be able to engage with it. You gave the example of giving a presentation, I would not be able to do that if I had to kind of multitask and listen to audio at the same time. I think with adults who lose their vision later on in life, the most common question I get is “Is there still a need for braille,” right? Now that there is all this technology, I try to shift the conversation, right, because we don’t want people to continually view technology as the opposite extreme or somehow supplanting braille, because as you and I know, technology has really increased access to braille, right, through refreshable braille technologies. Obviously those are still quite expensive, we’re starting to see lower cost devices that are changing the playing field, but technology has really increased access to braille in many cases, and really, I mean, sighted individuals have seen the benefits of technology as well, but no one’s asking them if they should still be learning print, right?
Jeff:
Correct, yeah. If a parent is wondering about if they should learn braille, that’s a good point, because as a youngster, or someone that’s newly blind, I wish that more of the people who we look towards when we don’t know much about blindness and stuff, would be more open to braille, it seems like lately the last 10, 15, 20 years maybe, that it was easier to just slide on over into the audio, here’s your books on tape, easy enough to do, and I think it was cost-prohibitive, some still are.
Natalina:
Yep.
Jeff:
I like to see that the Mantis has come out, a few others have come out, what refreshable braille device do you utilize?
Natalina:
Well, I’m very fortunate, because I have access to several through my work, and so I just recently got the Mantis, which I do love. I have the braille no-touch, which I primarily use when I’m doing research, because it has a visual screen, so it’s very useful for any sighted researchers or research assistants working with me. I also have a Smart Beetle, which is a very portable 14-cell device that I take with me to conferences and I just connect to my phone and take notes that way, and I have a Focus. And the Focus is a really big 80-cell device, which is not portable at all, but here’s a really good example of why braille is so crucial, right? I need it that size braille display to do my research, because when you’re doing analysis, statistical analysis, you have kind of strings of text and numbers and symbols, and so if you only have access to, you know, audio or a few symbols at a time, it becomes very difficult, and so having that, you know, the 80 cells right in front of me is very, very important.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah, and especially- some people talk about the 14-cell, but when they talk about the 20-cell, they’re able to do a little more math. I like that some options have come out from APH and Humanware just having their brilliance come out, it seems like it’s changing a little bit, the opportunity to acquire one might be easier for people.
Natalina:
Yeah, and I mean, very recently we actually did some research on kind of the benefit of braille displays for adults who learn braille, as some of your listeners may know, as you get older your sense of touch decreases, and so one of the questions that I had was, you know, whether a braille display, because the dots are of greater height and density, they’re firmer, whether that would be a benefit to older people who are learning braille, and what we found is that it did lead to, you know, increased speed, increased accuracy, when compared to paper braille for new learners, but the really interesting thing is that participants could read on both paper and display, so this misconception that you’re unable to learn braille at older ages is not really that accurate, right? I think it’s more a question of ensuring that the supports are there, and that you have very ongoing access and opportunities to practice braille, and one of the biggest barriers that adults encounter is that they don’t have access to these devices, because they’re so expensive and even where funding exists, it tends to prioritize younger students.
Jeff:
I think that’s really great, that you really dug into that area, because I think most people who are blind went blind after age 21 or so. They pretty much got their education, and now they want to learn something new, and that’s just so foreign to them. I think that’s great that you looked into what works, what is working, what’s not working, and is there a better way that we can do that, because I know so many people who lost their sight later on in life that won’t touch braille. They might be able to figure out an elevator, maybe.
Natalina:
Yeah. Part of it is just ensuring that they have access to training, to properly learn braille, right? That’s part of it as well, is that depending- particularly here in Canada and I’m sure the situation’s quite similar in the US, but we’re such a big country and we’re all spread out, and rehabilitation here goes under provincial jurisdiction. The services vary depending on where you’re living, and they are places where there may be very few or no services, when you have to travel to access them and, you know, larger cities, so that’s a real problem, that’s why I’m so interested in kind of focusing on adult braille learners, because this will continue to be a growing problem, right? As you mentioned, most people we encounter today lose their vision later on in life, and so we really need to start understanding what barriers they’re experiencing and how we can kind of tackle through that to better support them.
Jeff:
When I went to training, adjustment to blindness training, I’ve told this story on other podcasts, but a couple girls left some notecards in my locker, and all I had was my A-Z card and 1 through 0 little card, but I had an hour and a half ride, and I would read that card all the way home, just figuring it out, translating, pretty soon it got better, then they started doing a full 8.5×11 sheet, they were just so upset I didn’t know grade two braille, because they had to spell out every word and everything like that.
Natalina:
Yeah, what we tell adults too, right, when they’re learning, is that, you know, some people will go on to contracted braille, and that’s really helpful for longer text, but even if you only learn uncontracted braille, right, it’s all about what meets your needs and of course, you know, we have so many personal examples of why braille is so vital for blind people, right? It’s our primary form of literacy.
Jeff:
But it was really neat to have a personal note or letter sent to me, and now the only way I could get this was to use my braille.
Natalina:
Exactly.
Jeff:
And then my first braille teacher had me remember the last book I physically read with my eyes, and we ordered that book and it showed up at my door in, you know, four or five big boxes, and I was like shocked, but I started reading the book, and because I was familiar with the book, I kind of leaned into it, in that direction, you know, I kind of knew what was coming up, so that was a way for me to pick up learning braille a little bit easier.
Natalina:
Exactly, yeah. Isn’t it nice, right, to be able to get away from technology as well, right, sometimes I just want to have an actual, physical braille book, and just get away from all the technology, and audio, and batteries and all the gadgets and just go read, go read a book and so it’s great to have that option.
Jeff:
You know, spelling is important, because now I know so many people are using their devices, you know, hey, how do you spell, hey, how do you spell, and I think you lose touch with it after you don’t see the words for so many times, you just hear them all the time, like you said, you learn more. I used to learn more by writing something down, just by transferring it from my brain to my hand, to write it down, I’m sure that translates into braille itself.
Natalina:
For sure, and I mean, when we talk about braille literacy for children, spelling is a big piece of that, right? That’s really the best way to learn about how words are spelled, lots of words that kind of sound the same but are spelled differently, to learn about grammar and punctuation, even to learn about formatting, right, but the fact that when you’re reading a story, the title at the center of the page and then there’s a blank space, and the page numbers are usually on the bottom right hand corner, these are things that blind children need to learn as well, and I think there’s this misconception that, you know, if you’re learning braille at an older age, that this no longer applies, but as you mentioned, you really benefit from having that access to physical literacy, there are lots of new terms we see every day on social media, if you’re writing an email, knowing how to spell someone’s name, and just having that physical access to written text is really vital, as vital as it is for sighted people.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah, especially if you go to a restaurant, and if you know braille and you can just cruise through the different sections, some of my friends can do it faster than a sighted person because they’re so busy in the pictures.
Natalina:
Exactly.
Jeff:
So, you got your doctorate. Sometimes I hear these people, scholars, and they write papers and all that stuff, but you seem to really- like you said, you had your foot in both sides, it seems like you really are grounded to make sure your work, your studies, your findings reach all the way down to little Timmy down the street who’s trying to learn braille.
Natalina:
Yeah, I mean that’s crucial for me, and you know, many others as well, but you know, for me personally, I am a blind person, right? And so a lot of the things that I’m discussing might have been things that I’ve personally experienced. I know what it’s like to go through the education system, I know what it’s like to go through the rehabilitation system, and so it’s important not to generalize one experience to, you know, the experiences of everyone. But I think what that firsthand experience provides me with is an understanding of how important it is to not just do research, but to remember why you’re doing it, and for me I’m doing it because I’m passionate about these topics, because I want to play a role in improving some of the barriers that are encountered, and so having that communication is central to everything I do, I try as much as possible to publish my articles in an open access format, I wish that, you know, would be easier for researchers, but that’s something that I definitely strive to do all the time. I make an effort to kind of present to different audiences, but I think the other part of it is actually not just ending with the findings, right? Like what can we then do with it. A good example is that Braille Literacy Canada, this past year we actually initiated a new program to address some of the barriers that adult braille learners experience. This program is called Braille Zoomers, and what we do is we offer virtual peer support workshops once a month, that anyone from across Canada can join, if they’re learning braille as an adult or if they learned it at some point as an adult, or if they’re thinking about it and they’re not really sure. And so it’s providing them with, you know, a network of other adult braille learners, to learn from each other, share resources, and tips, we have a listserv, we’re starting to provide kind of starter kit items, thanks to lots of donations, to give them kind of the basic braille tools that they need. It isn’t replacing training, because we believe that that’s something that should be funded and provided through the government, but it’s providing them with that link, that missing link, because often people learn alone in adulthood, and so having those reference points is really important, and so a lot of that, I mean, this program is thanks to many different people, but my personal motivation to move that program forward stems from my research.
Jeff:
You know, you talk about the Braille Zoomers, that’s really cool that you have an organization like that, a group like that, that meet like that, to have that peer support. You talk about role models, I think that’s a great thing to have in someone’s life, because I didn’t know, you know, so when you find someone that is doing something, you know, 15 and you find someone that’s 35, that’s working, doing something, it really opens up your mind to the possibilities and everything, so I really want to thank you for what you’re doing to bring awareness to braille, awareness to the systemic- should I say problems that are out there, and doing something about it, and I like that with your activism, your speaking to all the different groups, I’ve seen you on four or five different platforms speaking, and whether it’s to older people, younger people, to scholars, you’re out there doing it, and carrying that torch, so I want to thank you so much for doing what you’re doing.
Natalina:
Well, thank you so much, and the same to you and your podcast. You highlight so many important things, there’s so many good initiatives out there, and it’s really great when we’re able to make these connections.
Jeff:
Well, thank you. So, where can we find you on social media?
Natalina:
So, I am pretty active on social media, you can find me on Twitter if you search for @paws2see, so that’s P-A-W-S, the number 2, S-E-E. I share a lot of blindness and braille-related research and advocacy, including the things that I’m working on as well, and I’m always really excited to connect with other people who share these interests.
Jeff:
Well, thank you. Thank you Dr. Natalina Martiniello, thank you so much for taking your time and coming onto Blind Abilities, and sharing with us what you’ve been doing, what you plan to be doing, and how you’re bringing awareness to blindness, and most of all, bringing a brighter future to the blind and visually impaired.
Natalina:
Thank you so much.
Pete:
We’d like to thank Dr. Natalina Martiniello, for joining us today, and sharing her views on education and rehabilitation for blind and visually impaired individuals. You can follow Dr. Martiniello on Twitter at @paws2see, P-A-WS, the number 2, S-E-E. And special thanks to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. Follow Chee Chau on Twitter @lcheechau. And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, to you, your family, and friends, stay well, stay informed, and stay strong. Thank you so much for listening, and have a great day.
[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:
For more podcasts with a 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 email at info@blindabilities.com. 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.
Contact:
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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, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group