“Turn to the light.”
That is the Quaker expression that is the motto of the high school
that I attended.
Now as a high school student, that expression didn't have
that much meaning to me.
It would become a lot more meaningful years later,
when as an adult, after a series of car accidents,
I was diagnosed with visual impairment.
I have a condition known as retinis pigmentosa, or RP for short.
the easiest way that I can explain RP to you,
is to take you inside my eyes.
This is a photo that was recently taken during one of my eye exams.
Those dots that you see, near the center of my eyes,
those are the areas of my eyes
where the photo-receptor cells have died off.
That's my blind spot where I can no longer see.
With retinitis pigmentosa
you start to lose your vision from the outside in,
until some day I could be completely blind.
Today, I have about 7 to 8 degrees of central vision left.
Now to give you a sense of what it's like to see with retinitis pigmentosa,
we're going to do a quick experiment.
What I want you to do, is to take your hands,
make two small circles, and then look through them.
That's what it's like to see without peripheral vision.
Now, having retinitis pigmentosa can actually come in handy sometimes.
Right now would be one of those times.
(laughter)
But you know, having retinitis pigmentosa,
it's not just about what is happening to my eyes.
It's about a lived experience.
And so I want to share that experience with you,
but in a slightly different way.
I want to share with you a poem that I wrote
called "Entre" or "Between".
What this poem is about, is about my experience
as a person that lives between and betwixt.
As a person with a visual impairment,
I'm neither fully sighted, nor fully blind.
I live between worlds.
As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic,
as a person of color, I also live between worlds.
Now, schools often want to assign us to a category,
they want to give us a label.
How much richer would education be
if we recognized that every learner is unique,
and has a complex identity,
that we should celebrate and incorporate into learning.
Now, today I'm very comfortable in my own skin as a person with a disability.
But that wasn't always the case.
When I was first diagnosed with my visual impairment,
I actually went into a long depression,
what I consider the darkest days of my life.
So how was it that I was able to step out of the shadows and turn to the light?
Well, there were a few things that helped me.
The first, of course, was family, especially my daughter.
She's the reason why I'm here today.
Wanting to be there for her, wanting to be a good role model,
encouraged me to get help.
And she's made me a better person.
When I was first diagnosed with my visual impairment,
I wasn't sure if I would get to see that day, but just this spring,
I was able to see her graduate from high school.
And not to long ago, I got to move her in to the dorm for her first year of college.
And as a person of Dominican- Filipino descent,
she also lives between worlds.
And I've wanted to be a good role model for her in that area of her life, as well.
The other thing that helped me step out of the shadows and turn to the light,
was meeting Alex and discovering assistive technology.
One day, by chance, I was setting up a new computer,
when I discovered this feature called "Voice Over", which is a screen reader.
I turned it on, and I heard this:
"The Voice Over quick start. In this quick start, you'll learn
Voice Over basics as well as important Voice Over commands to help you navigate
on your Mac, and use apps."
As you probably guessed, Alex is not a person.
It's the synthesized speech that runs with the voice over screen reader,
on any Mac or any iOS device such as your iPhone or your iPad.
Now Alex didn't just speak to my ears, it spoke to my heart.
What was more important than the high quality of the voice,
was the message that the computer communicated to me.
It was a message of hope.
It was a message that said, no matter what happens,
even if you completely lose your vision, everything is going to be ok.
And that's my challenge to you.
Above all, focus on creating those magical moments for your learners.
Meeting Alex was that magical moment for me.
Above all else, focus on giving your learners hope.
With hope, learners can overcome any obstacle.
Without hope, even the simplest barrier will get in their way.
The other thing that helped me step out of the shadows,
was finding joy in everyday life.
And the way that I did that was by taking up a hobby.
But not just any hobby, I took up the hobby that you would least expect
from somebody with a significant visual impairment.
I decided to learn photography.
And yes, this is my first camera, with a whopping 1.3 megapixels.
We've come a long way since.
So let me share with you a few of my photos.
So why do I take photos, you're probably asking yourselves.
Why do I take photos that someday I might not be able to see?
Well, if you're just focusing on the photos, you might be missing the big picture.
See what I did there?
So the reason I take photos
is the same reason that blind photographer Pete Eckert does,
when he says, "The photos are for you. The event of taking them is for me."
You see, photography is not just about art for me.
Photography, for me, is a political act.
What photography does is, it makes me visible.
And at a time in our country's history, when my rights as a person with a disability,
as an immigrant and as a person of color, are under attack,
I need to be as visible as possible.
(applause)
I need to tell the world that I'm visible, I'm here, I'm proud of who I am, I belong.
Let's give that same message to our students.
Photography makes me visible, when I'm out in physical space.
Whenever I show up somewhere with my white cane and a camera,
(laughter)
People kind of do a double take.
And it really forces them to reconsider their preconceived ideas
about what it means to have a disability,
especially what it means to have a visual impairment.
And of course when I share those photos online,
it also makes me visible in those spaces
where a lot of our conversations are taking place today.
So how do I do my photography?
Well, I rely on assistive technology that is built into my smartphones, my tablets.
And here's one example of that.
This is technology that is built into the voice over screen reader
that actually recognizes how many people are in the frame
and tells me that information.
"One face, small face, face centered. Take picture. Button."
And of course I need to get to the places that I want to photograph.
And so I rely on apps like Lyft and Uber.
Where I live transportation, public transportation, can be kind of spotty.
And cabs can be expensive and unreliable.
With apps like Lyft and Uber, I can get anywhere I want,
and they've really opened up the world to me.
And if I want to learn about photography, I can access books on my tablet,
in the format called ePub.
With ePub books, I can adjust the text size, make it as big as I need it to be.
I can change the background so that I have additional contrast.
And then when my eyes get tired at the end of the day,
I can just have Alex read to me.
For a lot of people, technology makes things easier.
For some of us, it makes them possible.
Let me share with you another example of that.
This is my friend Logan Prickett.
When Logan was a young man, he went in for a routine MRI.
Unfortunately, they did not know that he was allergic
to the dye that he was injected with.
As a result, Logan went into shock. And he ended up in a coma.
When he woke up from that coma,
he was blind, had a significant motor impairment,
and also because they crushed his vocal chords,
while providing life-saving measures, today he cannot speak above a whisper.
So our challenge, I worked with a team at Auburn University at Montgomery,
was to create a system that would allow Logan to participate in his education,
along with his peers.
We built this system around his smartphone.
And with this system, Logan was able to attend class,
he's able to participate in classroom discussions,
he's able to submit his assignments, and he's able to participate,
and do all the things that a typical college student does.
So the end result of all this?
This past spring, Logan graduated from college.
(applause)
Not only that, he graduated cum laude in 4 years.
(applause)
Not only that, he's a published author as an undergraduate.
Because together, I believe in including the people that I work with in research
and so we published a book chapter on his experiences with technology
that we hope will help others in a similar situation.
What's also really cool about my experience with Logan,
is that you couldn't find two people more different,
especially in the political climate that we live in today.
Because we're so much basically taking sides and being part of different tribes.
Logan is born and raised in the South.
I'm a Northeast liberal.
We may have different political beliefs.
We may have different religious beliefs. We may listen to different music.
But what's important, is that we were able to find the humanity in each other,
and we were able to work together, towards a common goal.
When I work with learners like Logan,
my goal is not to do for them what they can do for themselves.
My goal is simply to be the spark.
To light the path.
To give learners the tools and the strategies that they need,
to be the best version of themselves,
to achieve their dreams, to reach their goals.
And so that's my challenge to you today.
Be the spark. Light the path.
Above all else, I'm going to leave you with a very important message.
We educators, we are the light that is so desperately needed in the world today.
Will you join me in making more light?
Will you join me in making sure every learner can turn to the light?
Thank you.
(applause)