136. How Transition Skills can Impact your Entire Life with APH Connect Center's Melisa Matthews and Lee Huffman
Topics:
information, resources, early intervention, vision, blind, families, students, parents, connect, technology, career, child, job, kids, work, support, transition, employment, orientation, mobility
Welcome back to the podcast, my friends! Join us on this empowering episode to elevate your life as Melisa Matthews and Lee Huffman, experts from APH Connect Center, bring a wealth of experience in empowering individuals with vision impairments to conquer transitions confidently. Whether you're a student stepping into a new academic phase or someone transitioning to the professional world, these experts will provide you with the tools you need to thrive. Tune in to gain inspiration, gather actionable advice, and embrace the incredible impact that mastering transition skills can have on your journey.
In this podcast episode:
Who are Melisa Matthews and Lee Huffman?
What are the factors that led them to become involved in the field of visual impairments?
What does it look like to serve visually impaired individuals in rural communities?
The field of accessible technology and community outreach
The impact of assistive technology for visually impaired people
The challenges and importance of transition activities and skills development for visually impaired students
APH Connect Center - their offerings, website, resources, upcoming projects and services
Transcript of the Episode:
We all know that the American Printing House for the Blind has been such a powerful entity in our field for so many years. And while we may or may not know all the products that they have available, such as the Connect Center, and all of the other things that they do, one thing we know for sure, and the most valuable thing that we know for sure is that APH is run by the most heart-centered people. We could talk all day long about the products that they offer and how to access them and how to use them and you're teaching and all of that is great. And you will get all of that at the TVI symposium when Lee Huffman and Melisa Matthews talk about transition products. What's even more interesting is getting to know the people that support you and the people that help shepherd these products into your daily lives.
Melisa Matthews started her professional career as a general elementary educator with a focus on early childhood. Since then, having two children with Albinism, her career and passion shifted. She began serving families who were raising children who were blind or low vision through early intervention. Furthering her passion and knowledge in becoming a TVI was a next step in Melisa's professional career. Since then, she has become very passionate about teaching self advocacy skills, ECC skills, and transition skills all at early ages. As a parent whose children are just about transition age, it is more important than ever to help them and others to know what to do now to prepare for a successful future.
Lee began working in the blindness fields in 2005 when he began his career with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). At that time, he evaluated access and mainstream technology products, conducted web IT accessibility testing and assisted with marketing and client relations for AFB consulting. He also authored product evaluations for accessible magazine, presented at national and international accessibility conferences and authored and contributed to articles for the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness in Diabetes, Science, and Technology. He later served as editor-in-chief for AccessWorld, AFB's technology magazine with the lead responsibility for establishing editorial policy and vision and acquiring and publishing content. He also engaged with Huntington, West Virginia community stakeholders to build support for blindness issues, and worked to educate the community about the capabilities of people who are visually impaired. And 2020 began leading the efforts of APH Huntington, a program of the American Printing House for the Blind designed to elevate the quality and quantity of services to blind and visually impaired residents and the professionals who serve them in Huntington, West Virginia and their surrounding region. But there's something in here that Lee is not sharing, and he does so in the interview, and it makes just a world of difference to hear his perspective.
Both Melisa and Lee have such a heart for what they're doing and to hear their background stories and to get to know them as people, hear the challenges that they've had to go through, how they've overcome them and how they see the world now is incredibly phenomenal. I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed talking to Melisa and Lee, and how they just let me do you know what I like to do, which is to bring out the best in them and they really trusted my guidance and knowing exactly what you, our community member, would want to hear about. I hope this gives you a little bit of insight as to what you'll be learning about at the TVI symposium happening in September. If you're curious about the TVI symposium and you aren't already signed up, just go to TVIsymposium.com and you can get more information there.
Who is Melisa Matthews?
Kassy
Thank you both so much, Melisa and Lee for being on this podcast today. I'm really excited to talk to you both, not only about the APH products that you're going to be sharing about at the TVI symposium, but also about you guys, and what brought you into the field and all of your passions and your expertise. Before we actually get into all of that I would love for each of you to share a little bit about yourself. Melisa, would you like to start?
Melisa
Sure. Um, so I am Melisa and I started off as a general education teacher. My husband and I were blessed with two kids, and when our second one was born, we noticed something just off with her eyes, which led to pediatric ophthalmologists and, you know, down the whole diagnosis of Albinism, and at the same time, our son who was not at the appointment was suggested to bring him down as well, again, as a general education elementary teacher who had no experience with any one in particular as blind or low vision, and now I had a three month old who was diagnosed with Albinism, and a two and a half year old who was more than likely also diagnosed. So that was kind of the start of my personal journey into this field, and since then, when she was younger, she had OTPT, and all of that, and we did not have any support for vision, or anything in early intervention. So that also kind of led me down to path of supporting families and early intervention of parents or grandparents can be members who are raising children who are blind or low vision. So I did go back and get my TVI, which I said, I would probably not go back to college. And I did. And so again, that led me down the path of working with families, and I absolutely love that in the early intervention space, which led me to my professor who stated she had a job, and it was with APH Connect Center, and so from there, I have been in this role of supporting families through APH's Connect Center for Families.
Kassy
Wow, that's a lot. I'm gonna stay here for just a second. You know, it's really interesting when we talk to other people in the field, how they got into the field. I got into the field, I was 19, right? This is my first career. It's not usual that people come in as their first career for you, you have got to be so impactful in your job, because you can truly empathize with the parents. Has that been something that you found that really helped you when you're connecting with the parents through the Connect Center?
Melisa
Absolutely, and the same with early intervention, again, a lot of the families when I was going into their home, they knew no one who was blind or low vision, and now they have their child with the diagnosis, and they've never met a parent of a child, you know, raising a child, so it really was a lot of that connection, right from the get go, while all of my parents may have had different diagnoses with their children, there was still that commonality of we were figuring it out together. And the same thing very much with a lot of the families from the Connect Center because we offer a lot of webinars, a lot of blogs, and I come from a standpoint kind of have that, what would I have wanted in that stage? Or what do I want? My kids are 11 and 14, so they have not left the house, and I feel like once you're a parent, you're always a parent, so even when they're much older, what are some of the things that we may encounter or I need to support in a different manner? So absolutely, I stand from a place of what do I want other families to know? Or what do I want to still learn, which I think does help that personal perspective when connecting with families.
Kassy
I can totally see that. I'm going to point to two things, and one of them will circle back around to you went back to college, when you had two kids who had been diagnosed with visual impairments. I barely hold my job that I had been doing for a decade when I have two kids. So and it's not like you went back to college to be like a CEO and making millions of dollars. You went back to college to make the same amount of money that you were making before. So kudos to you.
Melisa
It was a balancing act. We had a lot of study time, and that's your time to read, and that's my time to work. And a lot of help from my husband. Absolutely. I need a chunk of time to get this done. Yeah.
Who is Lee Huffman?
Kassy
Yeah. And I know we'll circle back around to this, but your kids are 11 14, and you're talking about a presentation on transition activities in the presentation in September, so I'm curious, and we'll come back around to that how, you know, you, as a mother and how that was all tied in together. But for now, I'd love to pass on like over to Lee. Lee, would you like to share a little bit about yourself, please?
Lee
Sure. I have been with APH for almost three, well, right at three years, and I am the chief strategist for accessible technology and community outreach. And I work on a program, a newer program, for APH called APH Huntington, which refers to Huntington, West Virginia, which is a rural town, right kind of where Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio meet. Our population is just under 50,000. And so what we're looking to do here, in this area, is learn to serve a rural community, so APH can take some of those learnings and extrapolate those to other rural areas across the country. And so in a rural area, what you find is many people, especially kids, think or find that they're the only person in their school district who is blind or visually impaired. They don't know anyone who has a visual impairment, and many times learning orientation and mobility is much more difficult because there are no city streets. Many people live on rural country roads, and maybe getting to your first job or to town is like five miles down the road. And there's just in the internet connectivity issues for folks like getting access to the internet. And so there's a lot of different challenges here that may not exist in larger cities, so we're looking to learn how to better serve this community and others like it for APH.
Serving visually impaired individuals in rural communities
Kassy
That's really exciting. I live in Texas, as you guys might know, and during my first year as a contract teacher, I would go out to really small towns, and we did experience all of those things.
Lee
Right.
Kassy
Where I had gone from, you know, being in Austin, where I could take the student off campus, walking somewhere. I was literally pulling off a highway to go to this campus, to a high school campus. And I'd be like, "Oh, legally, I'm not allowed. I can't put you in my car. There's no school bus system that runs out here, because it's the only school in the county. And, okay, how are we going to do this." And it is really interesting to try to figure out the pieces of their puzzle because they really rely on other people a lot more. I have some other students out in very rural areas right now, and we're still, we're still trying to figure it out, so I'm glad APH is taking this on. And I look forward to your findings. Thank you for doing the work for me.
Lee
You really truly, this is learning about, we're talking about kids in transition in our presentation, but for West Virginia and a rural community, it affects senior citizens as well, because many of them either no longer drive or can't get to a store, so if you don't have that, you don't have connectivity, or maybe you do not even have an opportunity to learn basic computer skills as a person with vision loss, that compounds your opportunity to use something like Instacart to have your groceries delivered to you, so there's a lot of challenges in rural communities.
Kassy
Yeah, but America is made up of a bunch of rural communities.
Lee
That's exactly right.
Kassy
So I think that what you guys are doing is on the right path, and APH is always so innovative, which is why we love APH, and taking this as a case study, and really learning in a heart centered approach is gonna be really transformative for our field in general, so thank you for doing all of that work.
Lee
Well, great. Glad to be doing it.
Lee in the field of accessible technology and community outreach
Kassy
Can you explain your job again, the chief technology?
Lee
It's the Senior Strategist for Accessible Technology and Community Outreach. I started my career about 18 years ago with the American Foundation for Blind, that was my first job in the field and started under a grant, which really looked to improve the readability of small visual displays. So back in the day, probably you don't remember and maybe Melisa doesn't remember either, but cell phones were all flip phones were candy bar style phones and had little small two inch or three inch displays and that's all there really was. There were no color, it was just black and white, they were difficult to read. And so there was a grant that the American Foundation for the Blind received to improve the readability of those displays. It was before iPhones or any tablets or anything like that. And so started with that and then began evaluating low vision technology for their technology magazine, AccessWorld, which is a great resource about different types of access and mainstream technologies, and after writing for those and evaluating for a few years, I became the editor in chief for the the publication for about 10 years before moving over to APH.
Kassy
That's really exciting. So for those of you guys listening we're all on video right now and I'm just gonna just say thank you to Lee for thinking that Melisa and I we're not, we don't have memories of these cell phones, we guess we owned the cell phones. We remember landlines.
Factors that led Lee to become involved in the field of visual impairments
Lee
You had talked a little bit about how Melisa came to the field and I came to the field sort of unintentionally, but honestly, I had been teaching, I had low vision, I have Stargardt, and that's a juvenile form of a macular degeneration and really got my first pair of glasses probably in the third grade, and they didn't really help them actually looking through them made it worse. And so I would like lose them, quote, lose them all the time and not use them and really didn't wear anything through all of my schooling, any type of glasses, and didn't really get a diagnosis until I was about 15 or 16 years old because it is so rare. I was told that many ophthalmologists and optometrists see one or two cases in their entire career.
And so I had to not only, you know, leave the area where I was living, Charleston, West Virginia, and go to a eye research center in Morgantown, West Virginia to even really get that true diagnosis. So it was a long time to even receive that. And once I received it, didn't even know what it meant. And went a long time trying to figure it out. And so I was teaching actually, in an associate degree school, lost my job at one point, and didn't know what to do. And so I came into contact with a counselor in West Virginia rehabilitation, and she said, "Well, you might want to go and learn about this thing that a American Foundation for the Blind is doing in Huntington called Career Connect." And so I thought, okay, and so I went, and I met the lady who ran the program at that time, Dr. Karen Wolf. And I remember her tried to apply to AFB and some other local nonprofits in our area that dealt with vision loss, nobody was hiring.
And about six or eight months later, I received an email about a job opening at AFB in Huntington. And the requirements were a an engineering degree of, I don't have an engineering degree. And my counselor said, "You're going to apply for this anyway." And so I did, and it all worked out, and I started reviewing products. And that's how I came into the field. It was actually, the program, that actually is not run by APH. That Connect Center started out at AFB. And so really, the Connect Center, and all of those offerings really worked for me, and that brought me into the field.
Kassy
That was not on your bio, my friend. Oh, my God.
Lee
So that's how it started, when they were trying to expand the Connect Center or the Career Connect at AFB, they were having some local people who were employed or had jobs, then we'll train them to be mentors, for other kids who were in the area that had one necessarily low vision in their life to deal with. And I went for that and try to, you know, meet and talk with all the different professionals that were there to just get them to know my name. That worked. And six, eight months later, I got an email about a job opening. So that's how it happened.
Lee discovering assistive technology for visually impaired people
Kassy
Okay, we have to unpack this a little bit, my friend. So, from around you had a juvenile visual impairment? But you went from 9 to 16. With all of the expectations, of a, you have to go through school, you have social stuff, you have all of this, and you keep mentioning Huntington, and you mentioned that you are in a rural town, so have you ever felt like, well, after you cross a river, and you have jumped past all these stones, and as you were jumping past the stones, you're like, "Why do I have to go all the way over here? Why do I have to go all the way?" Just want a clear path. I just wanted to get across. You have to find a way in jump across all the stones and a lot of times it feels haphazard, and not in a straight line. But it all comes together.
Lee
It does. And really as far as it's interesting that time, for several years, I reviewed technology as part of my job. I didn't even know it existed until I was probably 27 or 28 years old, so I went all the way through high school, college, in my, you know, several years of the working career and didn't know electronic magnifiers existed, didn't know ZoomText existed, and really just struggled basically with one monocular for years, not knowing technology even existed.
Kassy
Do you think, and you can be completely honest with me, nobody else is listening. That your struggles growing up, we all have struggles growing up, I'm not saying, but that learning about the technology that exists, do you think that you have more an of affinity for it? Because it's what you could have used as a kid or like, "Oh, I wish I would have had that" or like, "Oh, this is really exciting." It opens up a world because it's not like it was just handed to you from the get go and you didn't have to struggle for it. Does that make sense?
Lee
It does make sense and that's exactly true. When I first went the very first day, I finally, it took every, it takes everything you have to really reach out as a as a person with a visual impairment, for me it did, even as a younger adult, to reach out and make that first call asking for help because you have no idea what's on the other side of that call. And the counselor that I went to see, what had a low vision herself, she was employed in West Virginia rehabilitation, her name was Cherry Cook, and on her desk, she had a large monitor and she had ZoomText, and she had what they called back then a CCTV, which was a large monitor, in a XY table. And I said, "What is that? What are you using?" And she goes, "Do you not know about this?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Come around here." And I thought that was Christmas, I thought, I can't believe this exists. And that's how I got started in knowing about technology. And one, about a month ago, someone who actually runs a nonprofit for blindness and low vision, asked me, you know, "Why, why do you like technology so much?" I couldn't believe she asked me because she helps people everyday who are blind and low vision. So my entire life is built on it. If I didn't have it, I wouldn't have the job that I do. I wouldn't be able to live where I live, make the choices that I do, because when you have employment, you have choices about where you live, what you do, what you buy, where you go on vacation, and where you send your kids to school. And if you don't, many times, those choices are made for you, so technology is something you build your life on, especially if you have blindness or low vision in your life.
The challenges and importance of transition activities and skills development for visually impaired students
Kassy
Yeah, and you mentioned it, and I think Melisa can probably agree, and you both are presenting on transition activities, which bring you to employment, and we know that our people with visual impairments are 80 90% plus unemployed or underemployed, and the big linchpin here are those transition activities. I'm sure you guys have gotten into VOC rehab centers where people very high level of intellect, high level of abilities are screwing on, like screw caps and stuff, and we're in the, someone mentioned it yesterday, the renaissance era of our field, and I love that because I think we're starting to see that we can do better, we can make these transition activities better. And I think also, I'm going to kind of go on a little tangent here, but the American school system is broken. We know this, it was specifically built for factory workers, by factory owners, no doubt about that. Those are the facts. And we're no longer putting factory work jobs on a huge pedestal, that's not necessarily our goal. So can you guys both tell me why this specific project really mattered to you because it sounds like you both have different backgrounds, but they really tie into what you guys are doing and what you're presenting on. Can you guys share a little bit about that?
Lee
One thing, I think it's really important, as far as transition activities, number one, the kids that I'm seeing in a rural area, many of them don't even have the expectation for work. The parents don't have the expectation for them to work. And some of them may have to go 15 miles to find a place to go to work. And so the idea of the transition steps, I'm not sure that they're actually quote, getting that they need to follow these and, and be working on them. And that's one thing that I really want to impress upon all transition age students is these are what you need to be doing to becoming career, to come become career ready, and to become independent. If it means you've got to pick up and move away from your parents, and get a small apartment somewhere in a place where you can get to work, and learn those travel skills, bus skills, whatever those skills are, to make you career or work ready, those are things that you need to be working on. And you don't get those in an instant, those come over time. And that's why it's important to be developing them as you go through middle school and into high school, you can't do it your senior year and expect to get it immediately.
Melisa
And I will say I think I come from two places with that early intervention experience and trying to implement ECC skills very early on, and giving parents that if you can do some of these things now, this is where it will lead. So giving those high expectations to parents when their child is very young. And they can have chores, they can put things away, they can do all those things. It just might look differently. And then from the parent perspective, myself, knowing in this space that we are raising children, they can monetize in awful lot of things that they know and a lot of things that they are passionate about. And so when talking to my 11 and 14 year old, it's very different than me growing up, it wasn't it's college, and that's where everybody wants you to go. There's college, there's trades, there's all sorts of other options. And so I think, for me, personally, I stand on the, I need to show the buffet to my children and let them follow their passions and I need to be able to support that. At the same time, whatever their passion and whatever they're led to, I need to also implement some of those skills and some of the things to make them was successful down the road now. And so I feel like coming from that parent perspective of providing teachers who don't have a lot of time to do a lot of this research, you don't have to do this research, you don't have to recreate the wheel. We have some things that we can offer and provide you and you can then take it and tailor it. But there's also things that you can give parents to put on their radar that their child might not be ready for right now. But maybe in six months, maybe in a year, they are.
Kassy
Yeah, I can totally see that. I read an article, oh, I can't remember, it was a few years ago, that gave transition activities really young as well. I can't remember who had written it. And I loved that perspective because often we think of transition now as 14 plus, and we're like, "Oh, that's so new age." "Oh, we're getting the 14 year olds involved." But my kids came home the other day, I have a seven and a nine year old or two boys and they're so hoity toity sometimes, they like this attitude. They just think that they're like the hottest step, and they were like, "My friend's mom doesn't have any expectation of him." And I was like, "Well, that's not how things are gonna go." And I I was very firm, and that, you guys are not going to go to college not knowing how to do your laundry, or budget, or go grocery shopping or anything like that because when I went to college, my friends, a lot of my friends dropped out because they couldn't figure out how to like make food or budget their money or live on their own at all. And granted, I still had to call my mom and I still have to make phone calls home. But it was like, to make these, like complex meals not to survive. And all of a sudden, my kids just hopped up. And they both volunteered to do more chores that day. Like it was my attitude about it. I was like, "No, we are not having this."
But we can empower our students' parents to see that their children can grow up to have this level of independence. And Lee, you were talking about being in a rural community. It's so true. I have a student like that right now who a few years ago moved out to a very rural community and he is very attached to his mom, like, "Oh, my God, this sweetest relationship." And I'm like, "I'm so sorry, I have to break up this relationship. I'm so sorry, he has to move out." Like, I know, nobody wants this. But he there's no transportation in this city, outside of like between nine and noon, and it's not gonna work. And they're still very much grappling with it. And that was two years ago, I brought this up. So yeah, I think that that's both of you having such great hearts and having a personal tie into this. Lee, I can imagine if you were, when you were 16, when you were 14, if you had had these activities, I can just imagine how heartfelt it is for you to be able to offer this extra step up to all of these students, and because APH is so nationally known and recognized, and fantastic at what you guys do, because of the heart that each person behind the product puts into it. The product itself is they're always immaculate, they really are, but it's a labor of love and you can tell.
Lee
One of the things that I've really noticed before my career was always at a high level of work. I would go to conferences and look at the latest technology. And we went Access World review that. And so anything that I wanted, literally in the world on the low vision spectrum of products, I could pick up a phone or or send an email and get a manufacturer to send me for free to check it out. Sometimes I kept it a little extra long if I liked it before I sent it back. And we wrote about these things in the publication, and you just think in your mind. It trickles down to everyone it needs to get to. And that is not true.
When I started working more one on one and working with TVIs and you know, students and things, I realized that even the TVIs, the Teachers of the Visually Impaired, the rehabilitation counselors locally, don't didn't know about APH resources. They didn't know about the Connect Center. They didn't know about the 800 number, that's the information referral, that's toll free. They didn't have any idea about those things. And so even getting the people who teach in our area connected to the resources is a challenge. Many of them never get to go to a conference, for example, like an ATIA or C center, or even know about the resources that you all have an offer. Like we're coming up in September, they don't even know that those exists because they just have been doing what they've been doing for a long time and just kind of keep doing those things. And that's not going to keep moving forward to keeping pace. And so the students will come start slipping behind and I'm afraid and sometimes that's what that's what happens when the TVIs don't keep up.
APH Connect Center and their offerings
Kassy
Yeah. You just wanted a whole whole bag of worms. You and I gonna go into that. We could talk about that later. But you also brought up APH's Connect Center. Would you like to go into a little bit of what APH Connect Center does and their offerings for those people who aren't coming to the TVI symposium. I would love to know a little bit more, and I'm sure they would.
Melisa
So the Connect Center is really one of the pillars that APH offers on the service side. So our role is really to serve the lifespan. So starting off with the families side of things, we provide webinars, blogs, articles on anything, and that I won't say everything, because we can't cover everything, but as much as we can for raising a child who's blind or low vision. And that includes education, early intervention, transition ages, all sorts of things, mental health, relationships with peers, all sorts of articles and personal blogs. The next age group is kind of that careers. So preparing young adults for their first career, for college, for those types of things. They also offer webinars specific to that demographic and age group. And then the last group is vision aware. So that's really the adults who might be losing their vision at later in life. So now rediscovering how do you make those accommodations in your home, how do you work with your employer to make your job now accessible, what other resources do you need to kind of work through and technology is obviously through a whole lot of the offerings. We also offer, as Lee mentioned, the information and referral line, which we stand very proud on the fact that there are actually live people who answer the phone, so you don't get the automated press one, press five. You get two amazing people who are blind themselves, and they not only help kind of walk through what your needs are, but they are also wealth of knowledge that will follow up and send an email or a phone call with all sorts of resources locally, or nationally, to kind of go through all of that. And then we have Lee with the APH Huntington offering in that rural community. I don't know. Did I forget anything, Lee? I feel like.
Lee
I think that's that's it, you know, one of the things about our information referral line is they answer live 8am to 8pm Eastern time. So it's not just the the working hours. So if you're a person, that maybe you're the adult child of a person who's losing vision later in life, and you work nine to five, and you can't get home to find out anything or make phone calls until maybe six in the evening, that's okay, you can call our information referral line, and it's for people who are losing vision themselves. It's for professionals as well. So anybody can call that number 8am to 8pm, Eastern Time and get answers to the questions that they need.
Kassy
Okay, you are saying answers to the questions that they need? Is it like, if I have a question about any APH product? Or if I have a question about a student? What kind of question?
Lee
It can be. If it was about an APH product, they can absolutely refer you to, for example, the page on our website that gives information about that. If they needed more information, I'm sure that they could probably connect that person with the product manager for that specific tool or that specific piece of technology. They also you know, I need my grandmother's got glaucoma, what do I do? How do I help her? They can talk to them about the Getting Started Kit. They can send them information, resources about glaucoma. They can provide them with links to information or even talk about because the people that answer the phone are also blind themselves, so they can give their live life experience to somebody who may need to hear that as well.
Kassy
Can parents call?
Melisa
Absolutely. And we've had parents call and they'll ask for I mean anything from information, and IEPs information, and resources. Obviously, CBI isn't not new one, but I will say more diagnosed now and so parents will call and ask for resources based on you know, a diagnosis or you know, support group and both Sharon and Alan send out an entire email. We do not answer those IEP questions. We do not give legal advice. We give resources. It could be past webinars, past recordings, all sorts of things, that this is what we have provided, and our resources. Anyone is welcome to.
Lee
There's also a directory of services they can refer people to. And that is, for example, if you're in the state of Wyoming, they can send you a link to every horse resource that APH knows about in that particular state. They can cut and paste the information, they can send you a link. So every resource that we know about at APH in that particular state, would be the name of the organization, what they do, their contact information, email, physical address. And people can go down through that list of resources contacting each one saying, "Hey, this is my situation. Is there something you can do for me?" Instead of them trying to find all those resources themselves, which might be very difficult, especially if they cannot use printed material or if they can't surf the internet themselves, they can get it, you know, emailed to them, maybe they can print it off in large print, they can do all those different things.
Kassy
I'm thinking about implementation here. How can I take all the information that you just shared that I didn't know. I had no idea about this information. We could just like call if I have a question, instead of complaining to my friend, or somebody outside the fields, because I don't work with anybody.
Lee
You can do that too. But once you get through complaining, you can take action and call APH information referral.
APH Connect Center’s upcoming projects and services
Kassy
But I was also thinking a lot of teachers have websites now. And we add resources to our personal websites, I know I do. And to be able to give parents that extra resource, like, yes, I want you to call me at any time, when I'm working, I have very strict boundaries, because my kids will go crazy if I talk on the phone when they're here. But I can give that to them to say, "Hey, we're on the same side. You don't just have to go through me. I don't have to be the gatekeeper of this information. Here is a really solid resource." And the fact that you're offering all these webinars and your blog posts are written, and somehow you that you've magically figured this out, and I know it's not magic, it's data. But it they're so easy to read and collect the information in a really quick, timely manner, and the information is so succinct, but powerful. I know that has to take a lot of time, and as somebody who has used that resource a lot, I love blogs, because I don't have time for a video, I don't have time to go searching, I just want to type in my words, my keywords and I want to read okay, this is what I do, this is what's known, here are the numbers, here's all that information. So to be able to give that to parents, and also to use it ourselves, I think is absolutely fantastic. Can you share a little bit about what you are all working on in the next coming year and what we can expect from APH Connect Center?
Lee
Well, one thing that we just just very recently did as we combined all of our websites, and under the Connect Center used to be Career Connect, family connect, and vision aware, we are all under one umbrella, the Connect Center at APH. You can find all the resources there. We also have that available in Spanish as well. So one thing about going to the Connect Center website is it gives you the opportunity to kind of look and see what resources do you need in which way you use the most. You mentioned that you like to read the blogs, that's great. Maybe somebody else has some time and wants to go back to one of our previous webinars and watch the entire thing or watch an employment webinar that we've done, they can do that to get that information. So they can really use the resources. How they want to color. They best best fit what they're doing and what they're looking for. So that's an opportunity to kind of pick and choose how you use the website. Melisa?
Melisa
So I will stay. And again, from the teacher side of things, I, you mentioned, you know that it takes a lot to put these blogs together and have families write their stories or be interviewed, and what are the things that I, again, collecting data or webinars, they've spent tend to be a little on the longer side, so I'm really using that data to provide shorter videos. So when asking about what's coming down the pipeline, a lot of what families is going to be putting out are those shorter videos. So I hate to say it, when you're sitting in carpool and you have nothing else to do, you can pull up a 10 minute video. And so those types of things really trying to shift where families are and where people are getting their information, so we are working a lot with our marketing department to put things more on social media. So finding things more on Instagram, finding LinkedIn, Facebook, and re, you know, writing some of our articles to really be in that parent friendly language. I know as educators we throw out alphabet soup all the time, and so just trying to make it digestible, as well as again continuing to highlight families and their stories because I think that's the thing. That epic Connect Center we do really well is making people with their story, you know, highlighted but then those who need to consume their story and feel seen. So again, a lot of those shorter videos, social media, and again, just kind of following the trends in the data and where it's leading us to.
Lee
Very quickly about APH and one of the things that we're looking to do we've done a little bit of before is we did a needs assessment survey of the people in a couple of county areas in West Virginia. We surveyed by phone 100 people who are blind or visually impaired, most of them happen to be seniors, but not all they were all adults. And we found that 50.3% did not graduate from high school. And that same 50.3% have a household income of under $20,000 per year. So while we know it's a problem, when you actually have those statistics in front of you about the area that you're in, it really brings into focus the gravity of the work that you need to focus on. One of the things that we realize, especially for seniors, they had very little cell phone use. And so we decided to do some Amazon Echo trainings. And we brought them into the room, and we had them set up and we went through a couple of training sessions with them. And they were just amazed.
They did number one, some of them didn't know that Amazon Echo even existed. And just the fact that you can access so much information just by talking to it, and asking a question or asking for what you want, really has opened up a world of resources for people who had no idea something like that even existed. And we even had people that would when they would ask a question, and it would answer, they would just laugh. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know what to say. And so we're doing some more trainings like that for seniors.
And in October, we're having our second annual impactful living summit, where we're having some APH staff come to Huntington to make presentations. And we're having some local nonprofits who do serve, do some serving of low vision, and blind folks come and be able to have an exhibit area where they can share all that they do with other people as well. I think we're going to have a mentoring session with some folks who are blind and low vision professional folks to be able to talk to the middle and high school students about, "Hey, this is how I manage that situation. Here's how I navigated this." And so they can see themselves in the potential that they have. Because if you've never known another blind or visually impaired, working adult, it's kind of hard to think of yourself as that's what's going to happen to you. And so we want to make sure that students especially make those connections, so that trajectory for them will be much higher than what it was for the folks who came before them.
Kassy
Yeah, it's like that four minute mile situation, right?
Lee
That's exactly right. That's right.
Kassy
Yeah. For those of you guys who don't know, I think it was Robert Banner, Bannister. I'm gonna get that wrong. But before 1954, they believed that it was physically impossible to run a sub four minute mile, and then he ran it. And now it is actually the standard for athletes. So not only is it possible, but it's considered like a regular occurrence at this point. And sometimes we just need to be able to see it.
Lee
Right. You have to believe it. You have to believe it.
APH Connect Center’s website and other resources
Kassy
True. True, you have to be able to believe it. All right, you guys. So I wanted to point out two things. One, where can they find this information about APH Connect Center?
Melisa
Well now that it's under one roof, I'm like, it is APH connect center.org. Correct? Like.
Lee
I believe so.
Melisa
APH connect center.org. And again, it being all under one roof. It's really nice, because as someone who focuses on families, I know our vision aware has a lot on adapting your home, so I don't have to recreate the wheel. It's already there under there, so we're doing a lot of interlinking. But it'll have the directory of service, it'll have all three of our major website, demographics of needs, as well as the information and referral line, all in one space.
Kassy
Oh, that is so easy. Here's the next question. The transition activities that you guys are gonna be talking about the TVI online symposium are those also in the Connect Center, like on the website, and they can go look for it there?
Lee
A lot of those were found under the Job Seekers Toolkit. So you know, for people seeking, you know, careers at APH Connect Center information about careers, you can go there and see the Job Seekers Toolkit. And it is an online, self paced, completely accessible, completely free course. And many of the things that we'll be talking about will be actually pulled from that course.
Melisa
There will also be other resources that have been done previously as far as other webinars. And again, really trying to make it as simplistic and usable as we are talking. So there will be direct links to specific lesson plans, but then also a link to the bigger so if that one money management lesson is now what you need, there's a link to the bigger money management lessons that either you as a TVI can use or you can pass to families.
Kassy
I think that's so amazing. I can't wait to hear more about these coming up very soon. I'm really really excited and honestly for you guys to spin food it to me.
Lee
We're gonna do our best.
Kassy
We just at Allied, I like to spoon feed as much as possible, and thank you guys for being the conduit for that because sometimes, you know, we were talking earlier going to conference and you're like, "Oh, that was great. But how do I use this now?" So we'll be able to keep you guys in our back pocket and the fact that your IT team is doing so much to backlink everything makes things so much easier. You don't have to search so much. So we will put all of those links in our show notes and on our blog as well. So if you are listening to this, even after the TVI symposium, please go to APH Connect Center and to a page careers and look under the you called it the Job Seekers Toolkit?
Melisa
Yes, it would be under careers. And I can I can also provide you the direct link to that. But yes, even if you forget everything and you're at the search bar, in the search bar, you can just put Job Seeker Toolkit and it will come up. And then there is also, it was just thrown up there yesterday, as the transition hops. So we now have our tab for everything, transitions. And I do mean everything, I mean, from IFSP, so early intervention into preschool and kindergarten and into elementary and into middle school and all of that. So I'm I'm very excited about providing that for families.
An advice for the community
Kassy
Oh, I bet. What an amazing resource. Well, thank you so much for coming on. So typically, at the very end, we, I like to ask everybody, we'll start with you. I like to ask our guests to provide one piece of advice to help our community take just one step forward to being a better TVI. If, yeah, what would you say? What would be your piece of advice?
Melisa
So this comes from the early intervention space, and I had a couple colleagues who were in the classroom setting or as a TVI, and they would take on a couple kids and small cases in early intervention. And one thing that I kept hearing from them was if I knew what their home life was like, or if I knew more about their family, that would have given me such an insight to being able to support this child. And as a parent, I can say at an IEP table very much, so I am, I will give you the open book about my child and what she does from before school, and after school, because I feel like that paints a really good picture of the child. So one thing I would ask or hope is that as TVI is as busy as we are, I completely know and I understand that is just really taking the time to know what that child is like outside of school might give you an insight to some motivators to some ways to reach that child within the four walls of school.
Kassy
That's fantastic. Okay, so I, I also want to like expand on that comment that you just made. Last year at the O&M symposium, we had, some last year two years ago, we had someone sharing about intercultural aspects. And then also at the TVI symposium this year in September, we're going to have Conchita Hernandez, and she's sharing about multilingual families and ESL families. And you know, one thing that she mentioned, which was so interesting is she has a program in for daily living skills, and they don't teach their their participants how to make a sandwich, because they don't make sandwiches, they make quesadillas. And so the more that you know about the family and the child's home life, and what they eat, and what their social or cultural expectations are really, you can tailor your teaching, and we're so lucky that we get to teach typically on a one on one basis, that yeah, it just all makes sense, especially for looking at a multicultural aspect here.
Melisa
Absolutely. And where I'm at, we have the highest population of Burmese refugees. So I'm not really sure. I know a lot of it has to do with their family members are here and everything, but knowing when I was going to a house of a family who was a Burmese refugee, my shoes came off before I came in the door, you know, in some of those, like you mentioned cultural things, knowing that is huge.
Lee
If I could encourage one piece of information, God, there's so many, I think number one would be to stay abreast of the latest information teaching practices and technologies because the better you are knowledgeable about those things, the better you can share that with your students.
Kassy
Bam, so concise and so good.
Lee
I mean, that's, that's really that's it. And you know, I've sometimes get asked, you know, what is the most important thing for a student, and I said, I will tell them, you know, you need to master, whatever it is, you need to master two things, orientation and mobility, because the better you are at getting around, the better, more independent you will be, and whatever, whether it be low vision technology, or blindness, technology, whether that's Braille, whether it's large print, whatever it is, you need to master your technology, because when you can get around, and you can surf the web and use your phone and connect with folks, there's really not much you can't accomplish, and proficiency. And those two things will give you confidence in other areas. So that's my advice for students as well.
Kassy
Never thought about it that way.
Lee
That's the boss.
Kassy
All right. Well.
Lee
I mean, it's I mean, I don't know what else to say. I mean, those are things that I think are the most important for TVIs to stay up to date as possible, and share all those information that they can with their students, and the parents getting the parents involved. And for students to be just the information about orientation mobility, mastering that mastering your technology.
Kassy
Thank you so much to both of you for coming on this podcast for being open to me being so different, and doing things in a much different way than most people do things in our fields, and for stepping into this innovative era that we are really leading the charge, and I really appreciate you and it has been such a fantastic, fantastic hall.
Melisa
Thank you.
Lee
Thank you for what you're doing as well.