Life As A Blind Young Professional /w Wallace Stuckey | Episode #12
Episode 12
Life As A Blind Young Professional /w Wallace Stuckey
Meet Wallace Stuckey, a young man that is a true inspiration. Wallace was born with retinopathy prematurity and grew up legally blind. Wallace faced many obstacles but refused to let them hold him back. Through hard work and determination, he graduated from college and is now a valued US House of Representatives employee as a Website Compliance Accessibility Analyst. Wallace's story shows us that anything is possible with perseverance and a positive attitude.
Show notes:
Wallace refers to the Seeing AI app to help him read a menu.
He also refers to a paid service that does visual interpreting called AIRA.
Wallace mainly uses the screen reader function on his iPad.
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0:00:07.0 Dr. Patrick Droste: Hello world. Welcome back to the Through Our Eyes Podcast, sponsored by the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation. And I want to remind you that it's the only foundation in the world dedicated to scientific research in the area of pediatric retinal disease. This is one of your many hosts, Dr. Patrick Droste from Grand Rapids. And today we have the special pleasure of speaking with Wallace Stuckey. Now Wallace was a keynote speaker for our recent annual Family Connection Conference in January 2023. He's got a fascinating story and we would like to explore some of those challenges and things with him. And I have with me Brey Willett and Nicole Giudici, and Andrea Bennett and Luisa, and we should have a real good, good conference. Just to start, let me give you a little background. Wallace was diagnosed with retinopathy of prematurity as a child. His blindness really developed in late childhood around kindergarten. He does have some vision in his left eye, and light perception in his right eye.
0:01:10.1 DD: He has many skills and his secondary education included braille screen reading, working with the all the high tech devices. He also used the CCTV. And in addition to his academic skills, he's an outdoorsman. He likes to hike, kayak, climbing high open areas, climb rope courses. And after high school, he went to George Washington University's, Elliott School of International Affairs. And he currently serves as a website compliance accessibility analyst. Now that is a mouthful for the US House of Representatives. He plans to start a graduate school program focused on foreign affairs within the next two to three years. And his ultimate career goal is to be accepted into the Department of State as a foreign service officer. It is now my pleasure to ask Wallace's first question, Wallace, on your way up through the ladder, we call it the fish ladder of life, when did you get the dream to maybe consider working in the US House of Representatives? How did that evolve?
0:02:08.2 Wallace Stuckey: Thanks, Dr. Droste. That's a great question and thanks to everybody else on the podcast team, here for having me on. I think I probably got the first inclining, the first interest in politics from a very early age. I'm from Columbia, South Carolina, which is the state capital of South Carolina. And so politics is happening all around us. Also, I've got a family history of it. My uncle has served in the South Carolina legislature for a long time and ran for governor of South Carolina in 2018.
0:02:38.2 DD: Wow.
0:02:39.0 WS: But I think just, I've always loved history and social studies more broadly. I like writing. And so I think it was a natural fit for me, kind of had the history of politics, not just service and politics, but also in the armed forces and law enforcement, just service in different ways in my family. And so it's kind of a natural path to follow. So and to answer your question, it's from an early age starting... I would say I started getting interested in the news, what's going on really from almost second or third grade is when I started watching the news, which I think it was good because it's mostly audio. You can listen to it and get a great deal from listening. And because I started at an early age, that gave me a lead and I've continued to follow it and to get more advanced and develop my interest all the way up to today.
0:03:28.4 DD: Well, that's extraordinary, that's extraordinary. Can you kind of give us an idea, a capsule of how you start your day and what are the normal activities you do and how does that fit in with your visual challenge? Do you use a cane? Or do you have a guide dog or do you just negotiate the hallways yourself?
0:03:47.8 WS: I have a number of mobility tools. I'd say the best one that I... The one I use strictly is my iPhone. I don't use a cane on a... Very much, I really don't use it at all. I've trained to use it, I know how to use it, but I don't routinely use it. I start my day here in Northern Virginia where I live in Arlington, Virginia. And I commute to my office in Washington DC on Capitol Hill. And one of the great things that we have here is a number of ways other than driving to get around. There's a metro station across the street from me or about a block away, and I can make my way to that. And I use the accessible street crossings that we have. I've trained on navigating, even if there weren't those in the neighborhood, but that's an additional tool to use.
0:04:34.3 WS: I navigate over to the Metro Station. I have an app on my phone, which tells me where the trains are, or how long it's gonna be till the next one arrives. It's fantastic 'cause it's so detailed. That it will tell you such and such train is one minute away, traveling at 32 miles per hour, and will be here in less than a minute. I mean, it updates the position every five seconds. It's accessible. So that helps me find the train I need to get on and I've got the commute memorized. I know how many stops it is, I get off and make my way into my office and I can make my way from there but if you'd like Dr. Droste, I can talk about sort of what I do once I get to my office.
0:05:08.0 DD: That's what I would definitely like to do. And Brey and Nicole and Andrea, please ask questions as you see fit. So let's start your day. What time do you get up?
0:05:17.9 WS: I probably get up around 7:00, 7:15 most days and get to the office between 9:00, 9:30, sometimes 10:00 o'clock. I've got some flexibility because I can log hours as I want to. Most people at my office work remotely. This is a kind of a tech focused job. You're not dealing with constituents like you are in a member office in the House of Representatives. So there's a lot of flexibility for telework. I like to come to the office. I like it for the routine, so that's why I do it. But I really wouldn't have to if I didn't want to. I get there and check my email. I've got a couple of morning newsletters that I received talking about what's going on in DC, what's going on around the world. So I love to do that. I will listen to a podcast on the train, which is one of the nice things about commuting really.
0:06:04.7 WS: And then I get down to business with whatever work project I've got going on. Usually, it is examining a modernized new website for a member of Congress. I go through and analyze it for its accessibility and make... Write up a report on it. And I do all of this before that site is actually published. So right now in the House of Representatives, there's a big project underway to introduce new websites for existing members of Congress. Even people that were elected maybe 10, 12 years ago, even more, every six, seven years, they get a new website. So it's always an ongoing process 'cause it rotates from member to member, and I go through and do my work. And the question that I'm always thinking to myself is how.
0:06:47.8 WS: As a blind person, what are the challenges that I have with the site? Is there anywhere that I think, oh, I can't get just as much information out of this as a person with normal vision could. And I also think about people with other disabilities, people that might have issues with color or might need to use a keyboard to navigate the site instead of using a mouse on a screen or using their finger on the screen. So that's kind of my role. And from that I've learned a great deal about the house, all the members that serve in it. The committees learned a lot about the Senate side too, because I've done some internships over there. But, so that is sort of the main task of my work. And that's what I've been doing now since 2020.
0:07:25.7 DD: Now, when you say you read the documents and things, how do you read them? Your best Vision is 2,400. Right?
0:07:33.4 WS: Right. So I don't use vision to read them. I use a screen reader...
0:07:39.6 DD: Good.
0:07:40.8 WS: On my iPad mainly. I've used JAWS before with a Desktop computer. I can use it, but I don't prefer to use it because I find it much slower and more difficult to use, I would say, than using my iPad because I do use my vision for some things. I think one of the big experiences that I've had throughout my life and really starting to develop this from an early age, was to basically ask myself, when is it appropriate to use vision? When is it appropriate to use other tools? How can I get the most out of all of the tools I use and when should I use them? And so with the iPad, I can use vision to, for some things to navigate to say the top of the page. I can...
0:08:16.8 WS: I might not be able to see, let's say on every register of the website there's a map of the members district. I can't see the little towns written on it that are very small writing, but I can see the shape of it with my left eye anyway. And if I want to tap on that to make sure it's reading the correct district, I can see that and I can tap on it with my finger. And then the screen reader will read to me the actual text on the screen. So I use my vision in some ways and then use the screen reader and the audio tools to compensate for what the vision's not able to do.
0:08:47.8 DD: Very good. Brey, do you have any questions?
0:08:50.3 Brey: Yeah. So as far as like working and stuff like that, how has like, I guess, I'm trying to think of how to say it. [laughter] How has the accommodations been for you? Like Were they easy to get? Have you had any pushback on it, anything like that?
0:09:08.8 WS: I wouldn't say I've had any pushback in this, in any of the offices that I've worked in. And I think it has been relatively straightforward because in my role so far I've been shaping what accommodations are provided because when I worked for the member's office that I interned in Senator Pat Roberts office, who's since retired, a senator from Kansas, I also interned for a representative William Timmons, who's from South Carolina, my home state, they hadn't had anyone with a visual impairment who'd worked in their office before. So they weren't familiar with the types of accommodations I needed. So it kind of fell to me to describe, here are the tools I've used in the past, here's what works best and here's how I can apply it to your office. And I'm thankful that I've had teams to work with that have been supportive and accommodating.
0:09:50.9 WS: And my whole role now is to make sure these websites have the accommodations they need to work well for anyone with any sort of disability. So that's the kind of the goal of the office, to have good accommodations in... Just on top of the day-to-day office work, I can talk a little bit about the Capitol accommodations more broadly because one of the things that you do in member offices, especially in introductory positions, is that you give tours to constituents from the area that that member represents. And that was a challenge. I think I hadn't done that before. It's very visual. And so there is a Capitol... A US Capitol office of Accessibility and I reached out to them, I had the office reach out to them, and they provided me with a braille copy of the tour guide. So I got to work learning that and I was thankful that they were able to provide that.
0:10:40.4 WS: And I kind of used the braille to learn what I needed to in terms of the content I needed to talk about with constituents. And then when I would do these tours, it was with another member of the staff, another intern who could help lead on walking us through some of the rooms that I was less familiar with, so he kind of took charge of the visual, some of the more visual elements to it. And I could give more of the, more of the dialogue, more of the information. So it was a good team effort, which I think is a lot of what I've done here. 'Cause there are some times where the lack of access, I would say has gotten in the way, like with responding to constituent mail, that was really hard to do. So I just wrote up my constituent responses that I had to do in emails and then sent them to a staff person who would copy and paste them into the inaccessible website. That website it's not run by us, not run by the House of Representatives. So that's one we didn't have control over. So there are times where the vision comes into play, like finding getting into a say a buffet line where I'm expected to get food on my own. That's difficult. So there are times, but I work in a team effort to get it done whenever visual challenges come up.
0:11:43.4 DD: You know one of the members of our team is Brandon Warner, and I recently spoke with him and I asked him, what are some of your goals for the upcoming new year? And he said, "I am getting more and more involved with going out to dinner and with people and social gatherings, and I feel very clumsy because I don't really know how to use a fork and a knife well." And he said, "My goal is to become proficient at using a knife and a fork without making a demonstration or without having an accident or spilling something." How do you handle something like that, seeing that you deal with so many public people?
0:12:22.6 WS: And it's a good question. I find cutting things one of the more difficult things that I do, especially if there's not a lot of room on that plate, it can be very tricky. It's something that I do keep in mind. It's hard. I don't have a complete answer on kind of... And I think, a fork is fine. But when you have got something like steak for example, that's when it gets really tricky. And I'm not great at it. A lot of the pieces that I cut it's probably slower than it should be. More jagged than they should be. But I've gotten through it.
0:12:51.4 DD: Do you have anybody coach you on that? It has to be total proprioception, you know how things feel through the instruments, namely you're working your knife and you have to be conscious of it sliding off the edge of the plate and you don't have eyes to guide you there. Do you, when you go, for example, to a restaurant, is there a... How do you view the menu? How do you do that?
0:13:14.1 WS: Menus.
0:13:14.3 DD: Do you use the screen reader on your phone?
0:13:15.9 WS: I usually do my best to find the menu in advance. Not only because it's accessible... Well, it's actually not always accessible. A lot of restaurants, the menu online is not accessible. It will say... You'll click on the menu on the website and it will say 03JPG instead of reading you the menu, which is not at all helpful. So when that happens, I've got an app called Seeing AI and I can make the menu accessible by using that app. And I take a screenshot of the inaccessible menu, open up the Seeing AI app. It does its magic through OCR Optical Character Recognition technology. And then I have a copy of the menu. It's not perfect. OCR will read a few things incorrectly, but it's legible enough that I can get what I need to know if the best scenario is that the menu is accessible, which many times it is. So I learn it or I listen to it in advance and figure out what I want. I like it because it's accessible, but also I like to have time to figure out what I want to eat.
0:14:13.2 DD: Yeah. And you have time to figure out on what to eat. Some food is easier to eat than others, is it not?
0:14:16.5 WS: Absolutely. And I mean, there's a lot of pressure I think when you don't know what the menu is and the server is coming out, saying, "Hey, what do you want?" I mean, when I need them to, I can always ask folks that I'm with to give me the highlights, give me the main categories, what's on the menu. And then we can find one that I want, and we can dive deeper and look at the options in that category, whether it's sandwiches or burgers or pastas or whatever. I can hone in on one. Then have them read the specifics. So there's always a way forward. Sometimes it's harder than other times, but again, there's a way forward.
0:14:46.3 DD: I think that's... And we just take that for granted. We take that for granted. So I have one other thing that you said that I'm trying to figure out. And you said you don't use the cane, you use your iPhone to navigate, well, you kind of took me...
0:15:00.9 WS: That's right.
0:15:01.1 DD: How you wait for the bus with the iPhone, but you gotta get to the bus station, you gotta cross streets. How do you do that with a phone?
0:15:08.6 WS: I wouldn't say I use my phone for that. I don't use it most of the time anyway. I rely on the accessible traffic crossings that we have in Virginia and in Washington. I pay very close attention through audio and the visions that I do have to what the parallel traffic is doing. I had maybe eight, nine years of mobility training on this, and it certainly paid off and when I'm in an unfamiliar area. I also have a couple... This is where I do use the phone. I've got some services like AIRA, where I can give them a call and it's not really street crossings that I have the most... That I use them for. Although they will provide feedback on street crossings in terms of, "Okay, the light's green now." I use them because I think the hardest part of navigating is not street crossing. I think the hardest part of navigating is the last step, finding the actual door to the building you want to get in. I can have an idea of, "Okay, I need to go to the Dirksen Senate Office Building." I was there last week to go to a foreign relations committee hearing.
0:16:08.8 WS: The Deputy Secretary of State was testifying and I wanted to hear what she had to say, so I went to that. But it says... Okay, Dirksen Senate office building. That's a huge building. I can punch it in on Google Maps and it will tell me "Arrived," but this building has four sides and four different streets. Where's the right door? That's what I need the most help with. I've been crossing streets here in this area since 2018, since I started at the GW. So I think I've got that down pat. Of course, the caution and awareness is always key and you can never let your guard down. But I think the hardest part is just the finding the last... Last mile, if you will. So that's what I use the AIRA service for because they have an agent on the line who can tell me, "Okay, the door is gonna be halfway down the block, it's gonna be on your right." Or they can read any sign that's above the door. If it says, "This door is closed," you have to go to a different one.
0:16:56.8 DD: So what is AIRA?
0:16:57.7 WS: AIRA is the name of the company? I'm not sure that it's an abbreviation for anything, but they are a service that I started using in on GW, George Washington University. And there was a great deal there for a couple of years because they ran a back to school offer, and the offer was that while you were in college, you could use their service at no cost. And that program ended, and I think it was during COVID, they did not have the funds to keep it up anymore. So it's a paid service. It's pricey, but I find it beneficial and I'm thankful that I've had the opportunity to use it.
0:17:33.2 DD: Brey have you ever used one of those?
0:17:33.9 Brey: I just have quick question. What's that?
0:17:36.2 DD: Have you ever used one of those?
0:17:37.6 Brey: AIRA?
0:17:38.4 DD: Yeah.
0:17:39.1 Brey: No. [laughter] I have a couple of different ones, but honestly the one that I find most useful is just taking a picture and zooming in on my iPhone or something like that, if I ever need to read anything or anything like that. But I have question.
0:17:53.9 DD: Do you have enough vision to do that?
0:17:55.1 Brey: Yeah. [laughter] I have to make it super huge, but I have Seeing AI, I have Be My Eyes, I have a couple different services I guess.
0:18:06.5 DD: Well, that's good. That's really good.
0:18:08.8 Brey: I have a quick question though.
0:18:11.7 DD: Go. Go.
0:18:11.8 WS: Okay.
0:18:12.3 DD: Go.
0:18:12.4 Brey: So you said you moved to DC, well the DC area in 2018, right?
0:18:16.9 WS: Yep.
0:18:18.0 Brey: So how did you learn to figure out which bus is which, how to navigate the streets? Did you have an O&M instructor come out and help you figure out everything? Or did you kind of do that on your own?
0:18:33.5 WS: I have thought about that, but it ended up being that I did it mostly on my own. GW campus is downtown and when you're in the city, there is a street grid. Everything has letters and numbers and you can think. You can imagine little squares in your head and you can plot your position based on the street you're located at. So the, and this is a lot of detail, but the lettered streets run East West, and the numbered streets run North South, and then there are big avenues. Like you'll be familiar with Pennsylvania Avenue, which actually runs the diagonally through the streets, which those intersections [0:19:07.6] ____ diagonal streets coming through. But again, my biggest tool, honestly in the early days of being in DC was Google Maps. Because I would punch in a classroom building and it would say turn left on 8th Street, turn right on 20th Street. And I was able to get there and then when I'd get in the building, I would ask somebody, "Hey, do you know where room 205 is?" And they would point me in the right direction. And then after a couple of weeks, I kind of got used to the route that I needed to do on a daily or a weekly basis.
0:19:37.4 WS: And then for some of the further field things that I did going off campus, I use AIRA sometimes. And then I use that Metro app, that I mentioned, Metro Hero, which will tell you exactly where the trains are and when they're gonna be there. And that was helpful. I even use the Compass app sometimes, which is the generic Compass app on my phone because some of the trains and some of the buses will announce to you where they're going and some of them won't. So what I would do when I was coming into these stations for the first time is, okay, open up the Compass app, find which direction was west, and then kind of note okay which train is coming in and moving west because that's the direction I need to go. I'm going to Virginia. Or if I'm going to Maryland, that's east of me, so I need to have the compass opened up at pointed East. These things together kind of worked out. And then sometimes Brey, I would... Ike you open up the phone, zoom in, 'cause on the side of the train there's a little sign and I would zoom in and do a zoom way in and do a photo. So it just kind of varied.
0:20:33.9 DD: I have a question. In our area, in Grand Rapids, particularly down by the hospital and also downtown Grand Rapids, when you come to an intersection on the pavement, they have these, what I call 'em, for lack of a better term, raised bubbles. And we were told that that is for people that are blind, to know that they're getting near the end of the walk before a street is. How helpful do you find those?
0:21:01.4 WS: My O&M instructor would call them a detectable warning. I think they're all right. I don't make a ton of use out of them, because by the time I'm that close, I am able to tell where they are. They have them all over my area, so they're around, but I don't think I rely on them to orient me to where I am. Now, If I had much less vision, I think they would be extremely helpful. They do serve a purpose, and I'm glad they're there, but right now I don't use them very much.
0:21:33.9 DD: Taking this one step further, our crossing sections, of course have the walk sign and the stop sign, but they also have an audio that goes every time it switches. And for the average person, it's the most annoying thing in the world. It says walk on quite avenue, walk on quite avenue, walk on quite avenue. And I'm saying, what in the heck does that mean? So do you find those things helpful?
0:22:03.9 WS: I'd say those I find very helpful. I use them sort of in conjunction with the audio that I have in the visual that I do have of traffic. And yeah, I'd say I use those, the audio street crossings I use them every day. And I recall like, we've got 'em here. I recall them from Grand Rapids. I've been to Grand Rapids before Dr. Droste. I visited the Ford Presidential Museum there a couple of years ago. Really enjoyed it.
0:22:27.9 DD: Good for you.
0:22:29.4 WS: Yeah. But yeah, they're great. And I think that every street in the city should have them. It's not the case everywhere, but the coverage of them locally is pretty good.
0:22:37.2 DD: You've just given me a whole lot of information. Both the Nicole and I are Lions. Alright. And we advocate for the visually impaired, and we're always looking for ways to make their lives better. And as I mentioned, we'll find them around the hospital and some downtown urban areas where there's traffic. But if you go outside of that, you don't ever see 'em. And I think there should be more. And now that you're telling me that they're extremely valuable, I think that's something worth considering, like for a project to see what the cost is to produce those.
0:23:10.7 Brey: I know here in my hometown, I think we have two and they're at like the big... We have a couple, like different major, I wouldn't say major, but bigger roads. And we have two, and they're located on the four way, and they chirp. [laughter]
0:23:27.7 DD: They chirp?
0:23:28.4 Brey: So I think that... Yeah.
0:23:30.4 DD: Oh, so they don't speak.
0:23:33.4 Brey: No, they just chirp when it's safe to walk.
0:23:34.9 WS: It varies where you are here, because if you are in Montgomery County, Maryland... See, one of the interesting things is we've got Virginia, we've got DC, we've got Maryland, all the local jurisdictions within them, they're all run a little differently. And depending on where you are, the audio pedestrian crossings work differently. If you're in Maryland, it only... It only will beep at a constant rate when it's time to go. But if you're in DC and if you're in some places in Virginia, it will tell you the street that you can cross. So the right way to do it, I think is for it to tell you walk sign is on to cross such and such street. That's the best way. But it varies based on what jurisdiction's setting them up.
0:24:11.9 DD: Yeah.
0:24:12.3 Nicole: I have so many questions for you. This is so interesting.
0:24:15.4 DD: Great. Go.
0:24:16.4 Nicole: Alright. The position that you have right now, was this position created and then you filled it or did you kind of backfill somebody else's position?
0:24:26.7 WS: The position was in its infancy when I came along. I came into this position because, a family friend was friends with the chief administrative officer of the House of Representatives. He since retired, his name is Phil Kiko. And in conversations with him, he had mentioned that somebody in his family had recently lost their vision. And so accessibility was very important to him because he said, "We here in the government have talked the talk on it a long time. We need to walk the walk on it." And so I said, "Oh, I know somebody that might be able to help you out." And so I met with him in his office and we kind of talked about things and he said, "I really need some help with this." And I said, "I'd be happy to help you with it." And so that's how it got started.
0:25:14.2 WS: There are other people at the CAO that do the Chief Administrative Office. Everybody in DC talks and act. There are other people that do website testing. There are other people that do accessibility testing and they have fantastic knowledge and expertise, but their expertise is mostly in the tech, the new science part of this. I have the day-to-day kind of end user constituent experience. That although they have amazing technical skills, they don't have sort of the user experience, the actual real world experience that I do of using these accessibility tools to come in and check it out from the constituent's perspective. So that's the history of this.
0:25:54.7 Nicole: And I was just gonna say, I can't imagine that someone who is sighted would actually do a great job in this position because they're not using it.
0:26:01.2 WS: Right. You're only strong... I mean, you're strong in what you use so and not everybody's got everything.
0:26:05.2 Nicole: So practical, like real world practical things. How well were you received in your position being someone who had some visual handicaps? Was it something that you felt like you were constantly trying to prove yourself or was it kind of an easy jump in and go?
0:26:22.7 WS: This was... I would say this position was pretty easy. I work... It's a huge organization. There's 700 members of staff total for the Chief Administrative Office, but I work with probably three or four on a daily basis. So they were quite accommodating to whatever I needed and have been great. And I think more broadly, I think that if we think about not just the job kind of side of things, but the other offices I did in these kind of policy positions or in my coursework, I think people were happy to help because, oh, I would say contributing factor to that was I was able to come in when I was meeting 'em for the first time. And clearly sort of set out here is the visual impairment that I have, here are the effects of it and here are the tools that I've used in the past and I'm going to continue to use to be most successful even though I have this visual condition. I pitched these things, whether it's in my academic work or on the professional side of things. These are the tools I use to be most successful. Here's how I'm going to be the most contributing and you can help me help you by helping me set these up.
0:27:27.1 Nicole: That's awesome. As it sits today, do you feel like there's still a challenge that you need to overcome to really do your job well or do you feel like this is great, it can't get better?
0:27:38.5 WS: I think... I mean, this is very specific to the job I have, but I think it applies to a lot of people. One of the lesser accessible parts of it is if I need to walk to a separate building. The signs. I'd say... So on the house side, there's Braille for, say, the room number, but there's not for signs that say, "Hallway to Capitol Rotunda." There's tons of print information that is not in an accessible format, and that's hard. And I don't... Now I don't have a problem with stopping and asking people where to go because everybody gets lost. That the advice that you get is, when you start a job... I think it applies probably anywhere in DC, especially if you're at the Capitol, if you're at the Pentagon, spend all of your time getting lost because these places are so huge and everybody's lost for a long time before they get the hang of the place. But it could certainly be a lot better in terms of the navigating outside. Navigating through a building is relatively easy, but when you get in somewhere, that is where it gets really tricky and that's where I'd like to see a lot of progress being done to make it accessible.
0:28:39.5 WS: So I'm not 100% sure what the best steps are to make that progress, but that is one thing that definitely needs to be worked on. And I mean, there's a lot more that we can get into in terms of the accessibility of applying to jobs. I'm sure that everybody who was blind will have a story of how that can be tough. But in terms of the job itself, it's mostly good, but like the indoor navigation, there are definitely things that could be worked on. And again, I've been fortunate to have offices that were supportive from day one that can't be said about.
0:29:08.6 Nicole: That's awesome. Pivoting just a little bit, can you give us a little bit of your experience living independently? For instance, navigating laundry or cooking or grocery shopping, reading recipes, using measuring spoons, things like that.
0:29:24.4 WS: Sure. We'll take them one at a time. Laundry is one of the easier things, because that's where I'm able to use my phone to zoom in. Once you do it a couple of times with the laundry, you kind of know where the knob needs to be. But at first I used AIRA and they were able to sort of dictate to me, "Okay. Turn it 90 degrees, and you'll be good to go." In terms of getting the laundry started. Other things are harder. Like shopping, I am able to do that with my roommate who is very helpful. If I was on my own, what I would probably do is ask somebody at the store to assist me to locate the things I would need. I could use AIRA to do that, but it would be far more time consuming. And I want to find the solution that's going to get whatever tasks I need done in the quickest amount of time I can. And so it's not bad at all to reach out for help to other people.
0:30:12.8 WS: I also will ask for assistance. Let's say I'm going through an airport security line. I have to give up my phone. You've got to put it in the scanner. So I will ask a member of staff to assist me with that and to help locate my bags on the other side. I mean, it's kind of a case by case basis living independently, but it's gone pretty well so far. I mean, there's definitely ways to improve. I think cooking, it's not something that I've done a ton of that I want to... That's probably a goal to set to be able to do that well on my own, 'cause I've done much of that, but I'll be thinking about that and continuing to work on it.
0:30:46.7 Nicole: I hear you saying things that... A lot of the things that you're saying are actually problems really for everybody. And you seem so comfortable asking for help and it's something we probably all could work on asking other people for help. If you had to give advice to any young adult who's visually impaired, what's your best advice?
0:31:07.0 WS: Good question. I would say to just try as many different ways doing something as you can, because you never know what tool is going to be beneficial to you at what time, and so it's always best to have as many options to pull on as you can. And if you don't know how to do something, if you're not sure yet, that's okay too, because it takes time to figure that out, and you have to... There's a lot of trial and error involved in for anybody. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're blind or you have a visual impairment or not. I mean, there's so many different... Everybody has challenges. They come up at different times. If you don't know the answer, that's okay, but just keep trying at it, 'cause you'll find something that works for you eventually. And if you don't know the answer, reach out. No shame at all in doing that. Reaching out for help and asking questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions, I think, is a piece of advice that I have that I... I've always asked a lot of questions from a very early age related to almost anything, and that's gotten me a decent amount of the way.
0:32:02.7 Nicole: That's great advice. If anybody were listening to this podcast, they might be sitting here thinking, "Wow. He's got it all together. He just... Everything fell in line, life is going great, nothing's going bad. He's got this all figured out." But I imagine that couldn't be further from the truth and with all of your success, I bet there's lots of failures that got you to the success.
0:32:25.6 WS: Absolutely. I mean, lots of questions that I don't have answers to or didn't have answers to in terms of sort of... I've had this job for a couple of years. It's something I'm good at and I'm happy to help in whatever way I can for a while going forward, but I want to get back to some more policy experience and sort of figuring out... 'Cause this is not quite full time. I've got some more time in my week that I could be applying to other things. And I want to do things, like I said, like the State Department and like getting maybe into a congressional committee. I've been applying for... Since I graduated for that. Sending out tons of applications and not hearing a lot back, which is something that I think I'm in a boat with a number of people on. It's a struggle to find additional work.
0:33:10.1 WS: So the kind of getting to exactly what I want to do is something I've been struggling with for a while. And then in terms of the visual piece of it, it took me a while at GW to find, I'd say, my core group of friends. I had my freshman year roommate, who I see all the time now is one of my best friends. But kind of outside of that, being on a big campus, all new people, I didn't really know anybody. New city, that was hard for a while. And I got there, but it took really until sort of mid sophomore year. Until right around when COVID hit to find a wider group of people that I could sort of hung out with on a frequent basis. So again, if you're in college or whatever, if you are in school, if it takes you time to find your people, that's okay, but you don't... It doesn't feel good in the moment. In terms of, I'm trying to think of other things that'd be... Will welcome more questions from you all to get to some more specifics, but those are a few examples.
0:34:03.3 Nicole: So I'm curious now too. Is there something that you can pinpoint that your family either did or didn't do, that helped propel you forward in your journey?
0:34:15.5 WS: I would say they were crucial the whole time, but I think some of the biggest decisions, some of the biggest help from them came in the very early days from when I was very young to keep fighting on my behalf, to find services in terms of a teacher of the visually impaired that would be great for me to work with them and would help me along the way. And sort of the skills that you need to learn as a blind person on top of all the other things you do in school. And I think that one thing that was great was that there was never a question of, oh, we're not gonna have you do. For the most part, I'm never gonna be playing baseball, but there's not really... We're not taking away things. We're not putting them off limits because you can't see well. And so I wasn't encountered with the, Oh, there's a ton of things that other people are doing that you can't do. And that's something I'm... Continue to be sensitive of. I always want to be involved in everything as much as I can be. I don't like it whenever there's something going on that I can't participate in. And when there is, my question is how can I change this run and make sure that I can participate. And I can, and if it weren't for my father and stepmother and grandparent's involvement sort of shaping that mindset early on, it might've been much longer before I got to that on my own. I think would've gotten there, but it would've been lot longer and I could've missed out on a lot of things.
0:35:32.1 Brey: That's awesome.
0:35:33.2 DD: Wallace, I have a question for you. Where would you see yourself 10 years from now?
0:35:37.9 WS: Let's see. Where would I see myself 10 years from now? Thinking [chuckle] one or two years out is ambitious, but 10, I would say still here in the Washington area. I like it's accessible. It's allowed me to thrive, maybe in terms of career, it takes a long time to get into the State Department, which is why I've gotten the advice to start on that path as early as you can, which is why I'm starting on it now. But so I'm not sure if I would be there at that point. But I would say in some advisory role, I think people ask me about, Oh, would you wanna run for anything? I'm not sure about that, but I would like to be in a role where I can use my knowledge of policy. I love kinda studying Europe and Russia, which is what I focused on in college or any region of the world. But I like to be able to share the knowledge I have with that, with other people in an advisory role. So but that's with the congressional committee or somewhere in the executive branch here're in DC that would be really great career wise. I'm kinda still figuring it out.
0:36:37.2 DD: So you're interested in the State Department? That would be your ideal?
0:36:40.1 WS: That's right. Yeah. That's the goal I would say in long term. And when you're involved in the State Department, you're in the foreign service, you're US Embassy staff and you are asked to go on tours of duty that lasts around two years or so, and it could be anywhere. You could be in Canberra, Australia, and then you finish up your time there and they say, "Okay, we need you to go to Armenia and serve force there for two years." So I'm sure that would have... Come with a whole another round of challenges because everywhere is different. And that's one thing that here in the United States, we're very fortunate that we're a leader around. We get a long way to go, but the ADA was the foundational piece of legislation that a lot of other countries use. And we've got great civil society, great organizations too that work on making sure that folks with disabilities have as much access as everybody else. So that's something that I think the US can work on with other countries too, to continue to show the way and continue to lead on that. And maybe I'll have some role in doing that as well.
0:37:40.8 DD: Well, that would certainly be wonderful. Nicole, do you have anything else you wanted to bring up?
0:37:46.5 Nicole: I can't think of anything. I just...
0:37:48.0 DD: Alright.
0:37:49.1 Nicole: You're very fascinating. This has been a great interview. I have to say, I learned a lot and someday I'm gonna be able to say I knew you when.
[laughter]
0:38:00.6 Speaker 5: All of us on the call.
[laughter]
0:38:00.7 DD: Yeah. I think that's very true. And Brianna, do you have any questions?
0:38:06.8 Brey: I have one more before we go. I know a lot of blind people struggle to find hobbies and extra activities and stuff to do. What do you do for, fun things? [chuckle]
0:38:20.1 WS: That's something that I've been giving some thought to now that I've graduated because Brey you'll definitely know this being in school. Whether you love and hopefully everybody what they're doing in school they love, but whether you like it or you don't like it as much, it takes up all of your time. Even when you're kinda on downtime, leisure time, you're still thinking about what you have to do. There's always deadlines to meet. And now of course there's deadlines for work, but now you have more free time and I almost feel guilty when I'm not doing something and it'll be like a Saturday afternoon, "I should be doing something." It's just from going... Having a crazy workload with my job in school, and not having school at the moment. I do wanna go to grad school at some point, but now I've got time to think about, "Okay what are new things that I would want to do?"
0:39:09.0 WS: And, I mean do some of the... I like to read when I get the chance, I am reading Condoleezza Rice memoir right now. I like to get outside and walk. We've got some great trails around the area, which are quite accessible to walk on because they're paved, it takes street crossings out of the equation. So even without a tone of vision, it's not too much of challenge to navigate them. And so that's great. But I'm thinking about it of whether there's any organizations, clubs, local things in the area that I'd want to join. 'Cause now I have time to... And I hadn't in the past. I guess other than that, I'll continue to stay involved, especially when I go back to school. I joined the GW Phi Alpha Theta, which is the National History Honor Society, and that's a great organization where I met a lot of friends of mine I still see. And I think that's... In terms of hobbies and things like that, finding things while you're in school, finding organizations not just good for hobbies is good for finding people that you wanna spend time with. But this is a roundabout answer, but the long answer is additional reading and hiking and getting out, traveling as much as I can looking for more things to do.
0:40:13.0 DD: Wallace, share with us what you're going to do this evening. Today's President's Day.
0:40:18.5 WS: It is President's Day. Yes, and speaking of history. We've have this lecture series in the DC area, it's called Profs and Pints, hosted at different pubs and restaurants throughout the DC region. And tonight it is one of the professors from George Washington University. His expertise is early American history. He's gonna be speaking about President George Washington as we mark Washington's birthday, which is actually the name of the holiday in the legislation that made it the federal holiday. It's called Washington's birthday. And he's gonna speak about George Washington's legacy and how we can remember him today.
0:40:57.4 DD: I think what I'd like to do to close as listening to you brings to mind Winston Churchill.
[music]
0:41:03.0 DD: As you know, he lived during the darkest hour, during the times of Dunkirk. And when everybody was... Felt defeated because of the incursion of the German army and they had 300,000 troops on the shores of Dunkirk and nobody would bring them back, he was able to get a fleet of 150 private fishing boats to go across from England to pick up almost all of the 300,000 British expeditionary forces. And at the end of that, he said, "Victory is never final, and failure is never fatal. What is important is the willingness to persevere." And I think you're demonstrating that in a superb fashion. And I hope the young people that listen to you today will be inspired. And the big thing about it is you're having fun, right? You're having fun, and each opportunity for you is an opportunity to learn and be better and enjoy life. And I think that's what we're all about. So I think we'll conclude this. I want to thank you very much for your time. We're gonna stay in touch with you. We have a number of people I think that will communicate to us via social media, and if they have any specific questions for you, we will pass them on.
0:42:19.9 DD: The podcast is called Through Our Eyes. Make sure to like and follow our Discord channel, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and let us know whether you have any questions or have a topic you would like us to cover. We have tremendous things planned and we hope you tune in again for our next podcast. This is Dr. Droste saying good night to all of you, on behalf of our staff, the PRRF. Thank you.