An Introduction to “Through Our Eyes”
Episode 0
An Introduction to “Through Our Eyes”
Welcome to the “Through Our Eyes” podcast by the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation. We are a community of visually impaired young adults talking about what it’s like to navigate through high school, college, career, and beyond. We tap into our experiences and cover a wide range of topics providing you with actionable tips and strategies you can implement in your own life.
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DR. PATRICK DROSTE: We would like to welcome the world to our Through Our Eyes podcast, brought to you by the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation. We are a community of visually impaired young adults, talking about what it's like to navigate through high school, through college, through career development, and beyond. We tap into our experiences and cover a wide range of topics, providing you with actionable tips and strategies that may be able to help you negotiate these same obstacles. My name is Dr. Patrick Droste. I am a pediatric ophthalmologist practicing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've been taking care of visually impaired children, young adults, and now older adults, and it's been a real experience watching them negotiate the different challenges in life. I frequently refer to this as the fish ladder of visual challenges starting out at a low level, and each time jumping up the ladder a little bit, swimming around a little bit, learning some new skills to get up to the next. And we have three outstanding, outstanding, young adults, that have done this, all three come from different backgrounds of visual disability and have different stories, and we've asked them all to talk to us about three things. One, a little bit about themselves in her background. Two, what were the greatest challenges they had in their formative years? Three, what do they consider their greatest accomplishments during his time, and lastly, how are they preparing for the future?
SHELBY: My name is Shelby Craig. When I was in middle school, I was given a braille teacher who did not know braille. The challenges presented by the educational system isn't always easy.
BRANDON: My name is Brandon Warner. One of the things I really liked to do was go and buy old technology and mess around with it like old tape recorders and record players and things like that.
BREYANNA: My name is Breyanna Willitt obviously, as a kid, I didn't know what was going on and I never thought anything differently about the way I could see, so it really took us, me, and my family by surprise.
DR. PATRICK DROSTE: The podcast is called Through Our Eyes. Make sure to like and follow our Discord channel, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and let us know if you have any questions or have a topic you would like us to cover. We have some interesting topics coming up in the very near future, and they're basically broken down into technology, gaining independence, college, and career development. We're going to be talking about learning technical skills, and discussing different high and low technical devices like Versa, Perkins Brailler, Braille Compass Trekker, etc. And then we're going to work on gaining independence, on home repair, taking care of things in the house, mobility, cooking, and the challenges of daily life. For the young people who are trying to pursue careers in college, as we heard from Breyanna, some of the challenges there, navigating inaccessible textbooks, and software, getting help from disability resources, and so forth. Then we want to work on choosing a job that's right for you and your skills, using community services, and choosing how to get involved in the community. We have tremendous things planned, and we hope you tune in again for our next podcast. This is Dr. Droste saying goodnight to all of you and on behalf of our staff at the PRRF, thank you.