As I grew up, I became increasingly aware of how fortunate I really was, as I knew of several parents of blind children who were quite fearful, stifling and backward. The attitudes in Germany were such that my parents received criticism for allowing me to explore the world in my own way. I also feel that I was very lucky to experience several positive changes in my environment, which made my life more enjoyable and made it easier to achieve my full potential. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I recognized that many of these changes weren’t just a result of happenstance, but were rather attributable to my parents’ efforts. This will become quite clear through the examples I’m about to give you. Though my mom and dad are, and always have been, very different people, they allowed their differences to compliment each other in their united fight for my freedom and progress. With my mom’s emphasis on technology and training and my dad’s emphasis on the institutional aspects, the two made a very effective team.
One of their earlier successes dealt with my mobility training, which I was fortunate enough to start receiving at the young age of 9 after we moved to America. Within a few months, I was comfortably navigating the streets around the Pittsburgh School For the Blind, which I was attending at the time. After four months of training, we returned to Germany, and I could not continue receiving this instruction. Unfortunately, we found the attitudes there to be at least 20 years behind those prevalent in the U.S., and ran into a lot of fear and opposition from school administration and even parents. My parents pushed the local blind school hard for the completion of my mobility training, but the school principal refused, probably because I was so young. Since words couldn't persuade him, my parents simply had me walk through the streets of town one day, with the principal and several blind students' parents watching, with mouths gaping in amazement. After that, the principal allowed me to finish my training, enabling me to use public transportation independently by the time I was 10. With this positive experience, the school started offering mobility training to other younger children.
When I completed sixth grade, I had to switch to a boarding school, about 120 miles away from home. This was the only college preparatory school for the blind in all of Germany at that time. Right away, my parents had to face a major battle, to allow me to come home more than just once every 6 to 8 weeks. When they found that the principal wouldn't bend, they rallied the school's parent/teacher association behind them, which seemed to have more power than what American PTA's enjoy. With my father as the PTA's vice president, they were able to force the principal to be more progressive by threatening him with early retirement.
When the 6-week limitation was abolished, I generally took the train home about every other weekend. Instead of being looked down on and teased by my peers, as the principal had feared, some of my buddies joined me, and a trend was started. To guarantee this freedom to other students in the long-term, my parents got involved with Germany's national blind parents association, and had them put the rule in writing.
With my parents' positive influence at the school for the blind and my excellent mobility skills, instruction in mobility and independent living skills for all students was stepped up, and the whole climate improved. In fact, by the time I left the school just 3 and a half years later, virtually all seniors were participating in off-campus independent living programs, from which all of my friends were able to benefit later on.
Though things were going well at that school, my parents felt that the best thing for me would be to be integrated into a regular school, which at that time was unheard of in Germany. My parents tried to get me into a school close to home, but all of them turned me down. I vividly remember hearing one of the principals say: "Why, he might fall down the stairs and hurt himself; we can't accept that liability." My parents wouldn't take "NO" for an answer, and took my case even as high as the state's education minister. When that failed, they searched far and wide, until they finally found a school in Vienna that would take me. So, the entirely family moved, even though this meant that my dad had to take a sizable cut in pay. The school, called the American International School, welcomed me in enthusiastically, and I graduated from there with honors in 1981. Having received the skills I needed and my parents' healthy attitudes, I didn't have much difficulty adjusting to the new school or to college thereafter.
One of the important skills I had acquired was reading with the Optacon, a device that converts printed images into tactile images on an array of vibrating pins. My parents knew it was important for me to acquire this skill, in order to continue my education independently, especially since my areas of emphasis were engineering and mathematics. Since good instructors for the Optacon were hard to come by in the mid 70's, my mother received the necessary training to become one herself, and then taught me and continued to drill me.
Being proficient with the use of the Optacon, I was able to not only read printed text without assistance but also look at graphs and complex diagrams and read computer screens. Now that speech output has become much more affordable and reading machines have been developed and perfected, the Optacon has lost its popularity; but things haven't always been this way.
Back in the mid 70's, computer speech was still fairly primitive and reading machines only existed in people's imagination. But, when my father heard that the German postal service had started to use computerized scanners to sort mail, he knew that reading machines for the blind would be just around the corner. So, he decided to research the matter himself, and collected all the information he could at the country's largest technology expo. He found that, even though the technology was all there to create a reading machine, nobody was doing it. So, he put a convincing proposal together to the German government, to find a developer and fund the research for a reading machine. They were very impressed with his proposal and, within a fairly short amount of time, the German company AEG Telefunken took the ball and ran with it. After just 18 months, they demonstrated a working prototype to my father; and, to this day, they are one of the leaders in the business.
In parallel with these efforts, a reading machine was under development in the U.S. by Ray Kurzweil and his staff. Though we were still living in Europe at the time, my father made a personal visit to the States and presented his research proposal to them. When he learned of their struggles with the speech output, he suggested to the team that they concentrate their efforts on the optical character recognition (OCR) and defer the speech output development. They followed his advice, as the Germans had already developed the software to translate computer text into Braille. As soon as Kurzweil had conquered the OCR challenges, they developed excellent speech output, thus creating an excellent reading machine by the time I reached college. It helped me get through the vast amounts of textbooks I had to read during my studies, and I have continued using reading machines on the job. In fact, I just recently purchased the Kurzweil 1000, deemed by most to be the best OCR software in the market.
When I expressed my gratitude to my parents for how hard they fought to bring about these changes, they said that they just did what any parent would have. But, when I look around me, I find that they are the exception, not the norm. It's not because parents don't want to fight for what's best for their children, but rather I think they feel powerless in breaking down barriers, changing rules and advancing technology. I'm afraid that many parents have succumbed to the increasingly popular philosophy that we are just victims of our environment. This philosophy is then passed on to their children, and I'm sure there are some here today who have embraced it too. But, since this way of thinking provides a convenient way of taking the blame off ourselves for past failures and current shortcomings, it prevents us from reaching our full potential. If we're really honest with ourselves, I think that each of us would admit that we've entertained this mentality at one time or another.
I'm writing this today to urge all of you to shake off this destructive outlook, and to take full advantage of the great network of people we have in the NFB. One of the statements at this year's national convention that inspired me most was: "Raindrops make a forest grow and bring strong mountains down". Not everyone will have connections with the right people in power or have the where-with-all to push along technological advancements. But, when we draw from the experiences and expertise of others in our lives and in the organization, we can succeed at shaping our environment.
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