July 31, 2023 • 43 mins
Mark Miller, host, and Dara Golding, co-host, speak with Welby Broaddus about his education, life experiences, and how he gained more confidence in himself and his abilities. Learn about:
- His constant willingness to try.
- His advocacy and desire to raise awareness for people with disabilities.
- The benefits of hiring individuals who are blind and visually impaired.
- His consulting firm, Broaddus Business Solutions.
- His book Leading Blind Without Vision.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- [Announcer] Welcome to(upbeat synth music)
TPGI's "Real People Real Stories" podcast,
where you'll find interestingand diverse stories
from folks working to make theworld a more inclusive place.
- Hey, welcome to "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGI.
I am your host, Mark Miller,
(00:22):
thanking you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor, if you're enjoying
the "Real People Real Stories" podcast,
share it, tell someone about it,
even link to it fromyour accessible website.
Well, listen, thank youeverybody for joining us again.
We love you, we love our audience,
and I'm really excited tobring you our guest today,
(00:44):
Welby Broaddus, whowe've spoken to before,
he came in and spoke toour team here at TPGI.
And once he did that, hisstories are so much fun
and so dynamic and he's got just a,
he's had a great lifeand some great messages
that go along with it.
I knew we had to come in andchat with him and share him
(01:07):
with all of you.
So Welby, welcome, welcome,welcome to the podcast,
it's great to have you here.
And I also wanna welcome Dara, my co-host
who you guys have seen here and there.
So welcome Dara.
Welby, can you just start off by giving us
(01:30):
a little bit of backgroundabout who you are
and particularly the thingI'm most excited about
is that while everybodyelse was watching Netflix
during the pandemic,you were writing a book.
- Yes.
- So I definitely want tohear about your book too.
So tell us a little bit about who you are
and about how this notion ofwriting a book came about.
(01:53):
- Okay, wait.
Thanks for having me, Mark.
I appreciate you havingme on your show today.
Yeah, I'm Welby Broaddus,
So I was, well, I don't know for sure,
I either was born visually impaired
or I became vision impairedwhile I was at the hospital,
I know that when I left the hospital
I was vision impaired.
I just say that much.
(02:13):
And what happened was,I was born premature
and had to stay, my mom left,
came home after a maternity stay,
I had to stay in the hospital10 extra days in an incubator.
And what my research showedme, what I found out,
actually I researched itfor my book and found out
that I think whathappened is I was exposed
to too much oxygen whileI was in an incubator
(02:35):
and it caused me to be visually impaired.
And my diagnosis is opticatrophy and nystagmus.
And optic atrophy isI'm severely nearsighted
that I'm considered to be legally blind
in both my eyes.
And the nystagmus is I can't control
the muscle of my left eye,
so my eye tends to moveon its own left and right.
(02:57):
So it's hard for me to use my left eye.
So it may use my righteye when I'm talking,
when I'm seeing and talking to people.
So when I got home fromthe hospital, you know,
I didn't know this as a kid,
but I always see a eyespecialist, even today.
If I go to a regular eye doctor,
it's just like theycan't do nothing for me,
(03:18):
but it'd be good for them tobe able to look at my eyes,
but I won't get nothing out of it.
So I always seen a specialist.
But I didn't realize that as a kid.
I had glasses and everything
even before I was five years old.
And I just thought I woreglasses just like everybody else.
It just normal, some people wore glasses
'cause they eyes weren't thatgood and some people didn't.
I didn't think it was that severe
(03:40):
until I actually got into school.
- So when you were growing up that young
and you're starting to goto school and all that,
you don't realize thatyou're different in any way?
Is that's what you're saying?
- Right. Yeah.
So especially elementary school, you know,
elementary school is, and let me go back.
So I went to the ClevelandClinic in Cleveland, Ohio.
(04:02):
I always saw an eye specialist
and they suggested to my parents
that I ended up goingto a specialized school
for the blind and vision impaired.
And at that time, my brother,
who's three years youngerthan me, he was just born.
And my parents had justmoved to this house
and so they really couldn't afford
for me to go to the school.
So I ended up going toregular traditional school.
(04:22):
And elementary school was finebecause it's more hands-on,
you know, you sit in a group,
you basically play to learn,
how you learn, things like that.
I didn't realize I was different
until I actually gotinto junior high school,
middle school for some people.
I'm telling my age, I guess.
So when I got in seventhgrade and junior high school,
that's when you sat ina classroom setting,
like the desk in front of a chalkboard
(04:45):
or overhead projector.
And I realized that I couldn'tsee what was on the board.
And I couldn't see what'son the overhead projector.
Now I would see some things
or something I couldn't recognize.
And that was going on.
Also, what's going onnow in middle school,
that's when everybody'strying to find themself,
puberty, things like that.
So I'm starting to get bullied now.
(05:06):
Get picked on, talked about,
just so other kids can fitin and things like that.
I was a kid that tried topick on things like that.
So all this was going on,my grades was dropping,
I always had good grades in school,
and so my counselor, and Iwish I could find her today,
I'm gonna throw her name out there
if anybody out therelistening Carol Sharon,
I heard she's in California,
but if I could find this lady,
(05:27):
I would love to see her and thank her
for things she's done for me.
That was my counselorin junior high school.
- Wow.
And let me just go back.
You're being bullied at this time,
and is that based on your vision
or based on the fact thatyou're not keeping up
with your classmates or like,
what was the premise of the bullying?
- It was basically my vision,'cause I would be in class,
(05:48):
had a book close to myeyes, they would see that,
but I would left and right.
Kids would come in to say things like,
"how many fingers I got up,"
and move their hand in frontof my face and stuff like that.
I got up called all typesof names, Mr. Magoo,
things like this, youknow, and it was hurtful.
But I endured it because onething I didn't, you know,
(06:08):
and some kids would try to,
they think they would wanna fight me,
because they think theycould beat me, the blind kid.
I could beat the blindkid and show myself,
but my father wouldnever let me, my brother
just have anybody justbully us and jump on us.
We was always taught to fight back.
And I would fight back, things like that.
- If it's any consolation, Welby,
one of the guys I workwith that is totally blind
was a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, so.
(06:32):
So maybe they should fight him.
- And that's what I'm saying.
Just because I'm blind don'tmean I can't defend myself.
And I'm gonna defend myself.
So, you know.
- Good for you.
- It was basically 'cause ofmy vision that that happened.
And so my counselor, she just basically,
her own observation was going on,
(06:52):
she talked to some of my teachers
and found out what was goingon and talked to my parents.
And my parents thoughtit just me going from,
from transitioning fromelementary to junior high school,
but in reality is I wasn'table to see the board,
the overhead, some of my textbooks.
- Right.
- So my counselor decided,
(07:12):
she set me up with a visualservice for the vision impaired,
which is VSBI now, this isthrough the state of Ohio
with vocational rehabilitation services.
And so they met my parents andmy counselor, this is funny.
So my mom tells me this one day, said,
"hey, you ain't gotta ridethe bus home from school
'cause me and your dad gotta come up there
(07:33):
to talk with the counselorand the guy from VSBI.
"Okay."
Then I got nervous because,
what are they gonna do for me?
And all I'm worried about is
how's gonna make me lookin front of my friends,
the other kids in school?
I'm already getting talked about now.
I was so nervous this day.
So they had called me down in the office
and they was all happy, smiling.
(07:54):
So they had some visualaids for me, which is fine.
They gave me their magnifiersand things like that.
And then the guy said, theyalso got me talking books
on casettes and recordsand a casette record player
I could take home to listen to books.
That was fine.
Then he pulls out this bag,
a replica of the books that got me,
it was a large print, but back then
it was like the books are now.
(08:15):
This book was probably asbig as a computer monitor.
And the first thing I said,
"you guys really expect me
to walk in class with these big books?"
I said, "they already talk about me now.
They're really gonna talk about me."
And everybody in the roomexpression just dropped
because nobody thought about that.
But my counselor, Ms. Sharone, she says,
(08:38):
"well, I got an idea.
Take these books home,
do your homework andstudy with these books
and just bring your regular books in class
and you can just usethose in the classroom."
And that's what I did.
So at that point, middleand junior high school,
everything was fine.
So when I got back to high school,
it kind of got back to whereit was in the beginning
when I got to junior high school.
My counselor never helped me.
(08:59):
But what I learned myself,
I started become morecompetent with myself
being vision impaired sowhat I would do on my own,
I would approach my teacher and say,
"hey, can I get your noteson the board or the projector
because I can't see it,"and things like that.
And I would ask for extra time.
I would just ask for the things myself
that my counselor should have did for me.
So now let's fast forwardto my senior year.
(09:27):
You couldn't tell meback then, it was 1984,
my senior year, graduated '85.
I was going to Kent State University
and I'm just gonna majorin computer science.
That was my plan.
So I go in with my counselor.
Now, this lady never worked with me
as a vision impaired student at all.
So she says, "what's your plans?"
And you know, and itjust rolled off my tongue
(09:49):
because it is so what I wanted to do.
I said, I wanna major in computer science
and I plan to go to Kent State.
And they rolled right offher tongue right back,
"well, you're not college material.
You should go find a job."
So at that point she said that.
In my mind, I said,
"she just said I was not college material,
I should just find a job."
(10:09):
And so we stayed, we talking for a while,
but I'm gonna tell you,I couldn't tell you
what she said after that point.
So when she was talking,
it sounded like thePeanut's parents talking.
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa.
That's all I heard the entire time.
But I left out of that room and I said,
"I gotta go to collegeand I gotta graduate
(10:30):
because this lady's not going to be right.
I know what I'm capable doingand that's what I'm gonna do."
Now the only thing that she didn't,
there's two things she didn'tget right by the whole thing.
I didn't go to Ken State
and I didn't major in computer science,
but I did go to Universityof Akron and got two degrees.
I got a bachelor of sciencein technical education,
I got associate of appliedbusiness management technology.
(10:53):
- Good for you.
- Yeah.
- I love the fact that yourreaction to basically an adult,
an authority figure, sayingyou can't do something
was like, "oh, well nowI have to do it," right?
There's just no question in your mind.
Like, yeah, you said I can't do it?
That means I have to do it.
- Right.- That's fantastic.
- Yeah, I had to.
- I mean, this makes total sense.
(11:14):
- It does.
- My mom and my grandmother, my dad's mom,
they raised me not as a impaired kid,
they made me as a personwho happens to be impaired.
So this is just a part ofme, but it doesn't define me.
And I wanna be defined onwhat I'm doing om society,
(11:34):
how I make people better.
That's always been my goal in life.
And sometimes I don't even bring up
that I'm visually impairedunless somebody might ask
if I'm in a certaincircle, things like that.
And so that would, I would never use that
as an excuse for me.
It's just a part of me.
(11:55):
And there's barriers tome that I, let me go,
there's things I know I can't do,
I'm not gonna sit upthere and tell you that,
"hey, I'm gonna go buy me a car tomorrow,
I'm gonna drive to wherever."
And I think that most people
who are blind and vision impaired,
like mean we don't putourselves in position to fail
because people already expect us to fail
and people don't wanna give us a chance.
So I definitely don't wannamake their job easy for them
(12:16):
to tell me no.
That's always a factor with me.
So after I got into college,
my first job was workingin University of Akron
and I ended up working in this program
called Advancing Health Program.
And what the program is, itwas a welfare to work program
(12:36):
that people who receivedgovernment assistance
to come to come on campusand get their basic skills up
to either enroll in the collegeor help 'em find employment.
And I taught basic math tothe participants who came in.
And also we ran a programwith the Akron public schools.
It was a pilot program thatran with the special ed kids.
(12:57):
And it was a high school thatwas in the middle of campus.
So those kids that went to,it was called Central Howard,
they would come up in the morning
and I would teach 'emportability skills to 'em,
and then in the afternoon,
they would do different jobs on campus,
get their work experience,and I would go by
and make sure they're doing the jobs right
and things like that.
So I was the liaison forthe University of Akron
(13:18):
and we had a liaisonfor the Akron schools.
And one day this, this ishow God works, things happen.
He says, "I want you to comedown and meet the teachers.
I want you to meet the counselorto work with these kids."
I said, "okay."
So I walked down, meet the teachers,
now going to the counselor's office.
Guess who the counselor was?
- I've got a guess.
- We're both smiling.
(13:39):
- Maybe somebody who told youyou shouldn't go to college?
- Yeah, my same counselor that told me
I wasn't a college material,
here I show up helpingher with a pilot program
that started with two degrees
and I've worked with your kids.
- How fantastic was that?
- Yeah.
- Did she recognize you?
- Oh yeah, she recognizedme, and people always ask me,
well, did you tell her who you were?
(13:59):
I said, no, she knows.
The vibe in the room, she knew who I was.
Now she may not rememberwhat she said to me,
but who knows.
But she knew who I was.
- Right.
And then probably at thatadvancement and things,
it's not necessarily evenimportant at that point.
- Oh yeah, no.
- That I told you so is probably not
what you were looking for.
(14:20):
You had achieved what youhad achieved and she knew it.
Everybody knew it.
That's fine.
- Right, and I view it like this.
She was the fuse thatfueled me to keep on going
to be the person that I am,
because there was somestruggles on the way
that when I was in college
that I thought that Iwasn't gonna finish college.
But that always came my mind.
So I gotta finish.
I just got to becauseI cannot let her know
(14:41):
that I did not graduate college.
- Welby, just one ofthe things I wanna say
that I'm sitting here thinkingabout hearing your story
before you continue,right, is that, you know,
that's a really neat momentthat you're talking about there
where somebody says,"hey, you can't do this,"
(15:02):
and then you end up doing it.
But going back even further,when you were being bullied
and you essentially as a young boy
needed accommodations tobe successful in school,
you know, like you said,
you don't want to defineyourself by your blindness.
(15:22):
You're a person who happens to be blind,
but obviously there's certain limitations,
certain things that you can't do
and certain ways that you'regonna need accommodations
to be successful.
That's what our business is all about.
But the added element forme that's really interesting
and that I hadn'tstopped and thought about
is that as a young boy,there's a whole social dynamic
(15:44):
that you gotta be careful of too.
And just the fact that you, yourself,
and the adults around you recognize that
and were very careful,
and I think a lot of peopledon't think about this.
They were careful with a young person
who was trying to navigateall those social dynamics,
(16:05):
they were very carefulwith how they provided
those accommodations for you
so not only could you besuccessful in the academics
that you needed to be successful in,
but it also gave you the best chance
of being successful socially.
And I think that'ssomething I haven't heard
in a lot of people's stories.
And I think that's something that,
it's a new thing for me, Welby.
I talk to a lot of people who are blind
(16:27):
and have a variety of disabilities,
and that dynamic of the picture you paint
of that young boy who's trying,
who's struggling in more ways than one.
and just the dynamic ofhaving to deal with that
is really, really interesting.
I appreciate you bringing that to us.
And I didn't mean to interrupt you,
but I wanted to make sure.
- I'm gonna say, one thing my mom,
(16:47):
my grandmother always told me is,
"you can do anything you want.
You can put your mind to it,
there's something you believe you can do
and be honest with yourself,know what you capable doing."
And my mom would never allowme, I would go and say,
"well, I can't do it."
"You can do it.
You need to do it."
"But can you do it for me?"
(17:08):
He said, "you gotta do this by yourself
because I'm not gonna bearound you all your life.
I'm not gonna be here all your life,
you're gonna have to be ableto do things on your own
no matter what you're dealing with.
We all dealing with something,
but you need to work it out
and you get help if you can't do it,
but you gotta do things thatyou're capable of doing."
- Yeah, it sounds like youhad an amazing mom, right?
- Yes.
- And I'd like to diginto her a little bit more
(17:30):
because what I'm hearing,like your attitude of,
of I just, you know, I'm a person
and all the things that come with that
that happens to be blind,
it sounds like your momtreated you as her child
who just happened to be blindand gave you the same advice
as she would any other child.
And I think that that's ahuge credit to your mom.
(17:53):
And it's somewhat, I don't knowif unique is the right word,
but I think that when a person
who doesn't have a disabilityor something as profound
as vision loss,
as a child that has somethingas profound as vision loss,
they kind of get stuck inthat a little bit, right.
(18:13):
They all of a sudden, that'sthe biggest deal in the world.
And I can see where they maystart to define their child
as being blind first inthat case or whatever.
But your mom didn't do that.
To her credit, she really stepped up
(18:33):
and parented you in a beautiful way.
- Yeah.- Right?
- Yeah, I commend her for that.
I wasn't that kid who, I didn't hang out
at the blind centers too often
because that's one thing,
there, it felt like I wasbeing helped, coddled kind of,
I guess helped out, things like that,
(18:54):
versus allow me to figure out on my own
because my mom, shereally, she said, you know,
I might not be around, yourgrandma might not be around,
your dad might not be around.
It might be just youand what you going do?"
- Yeah.
So you're not over coddled right?
She's like, you gottamake it in this world
like anybody else.
I don't care if you gotvision loss, you go do it.
- Right.
(19:16):
I was sitting around a crysome time like a little kid,
like, "come on, mom, help me."
"Nope."
And she'd just walk off.
- Wow.
- Dara, you had a question or a comment?
- I was curious, do youhave an example in mind
of something that yourmom basically got you
to figure out on your own?
Like something that reallystands out to you in that way?
(19:37):
- I'm gonna tell you a story.
And I wanted to put thisin a book, but my editor,
it didn't relate to what my book's about.
- So this will go in the second book,
is that what you're saying, Welby?
- So I wrote a KindleVilla right now about,
his story is in there.
I was eight years old and,
and the street I grew up onthere was kids everywhere.
(19:58):
I was brought up withschool kids of my age
up and down the block.
And we always hung outat my one friend's house,
his name is Butch.
We hung out and we'd sit in this stoop
and we'd always be talking.
And some of 'em had playedbaseball like the year before,
and they talking, "hey, youguys should play with us,
come out and play."
And I'm like, "yeah,I'm playing baseball!"
My grandfather played baseball,my uncle played baseball.
I said, "oh yeah, I'm playing baseball."
(20:21):
And like I said, I'mnot even thinking about
my vision gonna stop me from playing.
I'm playing baseball.
So I go down to my house,I get in, my dad's there,
my mom's not there.
I said, "hey dad, canyou take me up to the Y
and sign up for baseball.
Everybody gonna, we gonna play baseball."
And he said, "well, you know,"
and my father's more, I guessworried about me failing
(20:45):
by my vision impairmentthan I need to try it.
Which that would bother me,
but I understand wherehe is coming from now.
- Right, right.
- So he said, "well, I don't know
about you playing baseball, you know,
you might not be able to be good.
That might not be good for you."
And I'm like, "what?"
And so in my mind, like, don't every dad
want his son playing sports?
I'm telling myself.
so mom came home, I couldreason with her and I said,
(21:06):
"hey, I want to try it out.
I don't know what I can do."
She said, "okay, you cango ahead and try it."
For the first year ofbaseball, it was great.
You know, I might haveone hit the whole season,
but I had fun.
You know, my other friends,they would hit the ball,
but I might have struck out, I knew I did.
I might have one hitand I knew it was luck
because I knew I couldn't see the ball
(21:27):
coming down the pipe.
But so what I did, I enjoyed it!
So the next year we move up to the upper,
like they call it themajor league, upper league,
you had to try out.
So I go to that, go to tryout,I get picked for a team.
And so the first day of practice,this is how things work.
(21:48):
So our coaches hit the fly balls.
They taught us how, you know,if you have ball coming,
you call out, everybody runthat way to catch the ball.
Okay, I got it.
Hit a fly ball, and I, at that time,
there was no sports goggles back then.
So I had wire frame glasses on.
So here's a fly ball, andI could never see the ball
(22:08):
come off the bat, but thesound would let me know
where the ball would be in the air,
'cause I could listen.
And then I would see itas it started to come down
when it gets close.
So I saw it coming.
So this ball, I misjudged it.
So the ball hit off myglove, hit my glass,
and cut the left side of my eye.
(22:29):
I had to get stitches.
So, and this is before cell phones.
So my coach had to take me to the ER,
my bike was at the field,
so my buddies had to get mybike take it to his house,
and they had to call myhouse to find my parents.
And they wasn't at homethe time, so they came,
that was end of my baseball career,
(22:51):
because now I'm scared ofa baseball for that fact.
But what happens in that scenario is that
I didn't know if I could playor not, but I wanted to see.
And I had to see, becauseif I didn't do that,
I would've beat myself upbecause I didn't give it a try.
So now I know that that's not for me.
(23:15):
- You're basically saying it mattered more
to try it out than itdid to actually like,
be good at baseball or anything.
It was more the idea of trying baseball.
- And the thing about when that happened,
I got picked on again.
All my friends talked about me,
"oh, you couldn't see the ball!"
I go to school like the next day
with about 15 stitches in my head.
(23:36):
You know, they talking about me,
I'd rather endure all thatbullying and stuff like that
for me, I tried it.
That's the goal.
My goal was I tried itand I know it didn't work
versus me to sit back and let somebody,
let my dad tell me, "well, you shouldn't,
you can't play that becauseyou're not gonna be good."
I don't know that.
- Right.
- So I need to do those things.
(23:57):
- Listen, Welby, I got a story for you.
- Okay.- Right?
My vision is fine.
Right, it's fine.
I got about one hit per season,
my dad threw practices, I said,
"dad, I'm terrible at baseball.
We gotta practice," right?
So I go out on the streetwith my dad and we practice
and he throws up that, you know,
(24:20):
that lob you're talking about.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.- Guess what happened?
Hit me right in the eye.
I had to go to the ER!
My vision's fine!
I don't think yourexperience was any different!
I don't think it had anything to,
I think you[re just like me,just weren't good at baseball!
- United in baseball accidents.
(24:42):
- And then my team, I was so bad,
my team started picking on me!
Welby, they bullied me.
I'm not joking.
That's not a joke.
I'm telling you the truth!
I finally, halfway through the season,
it was the same thing.
I did better, you know,when I was younger,
and then when I gotinto the bigger leagues
and I quit halfway through the season,
(25:02):
'cause my team was so mean to me!
- Right.
I get it.
I feel your pain.
I never went back.
But I had to do that for myself.
- Yeah.
Yep.
Well, you know, and I thinkthat that's not a story,
you know, that's not a story
that only somebody withsomething like vision loss
can tell us.
I mean, that's a lifestory, right, for all of us
(25:22):
where we've dug in andwe've tried something
and we just had to figure out.
- Right.
- Through effort and trial and error
that maybe that wasn't a path for us.
- Right.
- Well it's like, youknow, sometimes enthusiasm
is more than, you know, youractual skills in the area.
But enthusiasm's always a good thing.
(25:43):
- Well, if you're not willing to try,
how are you ever gonna know?
- Exactly.- You know what I mean?
Like sometimes it's aboutlearning that lesson
and being willing to learn that lesson.
Otherwise you'd beafraid to try that thing
that maybe you try and findout you're good at, you know?
And I think that that's the real lesson
is that you were willingto push the boundaries
(26:04):
in order to understandwhat your boundaries were.
- Well, that actuallygoes right into something
from when I listened to anotherpodcast you had been on,
you talked about your first experience
with getting praise for your writing,
but you weren't super interestedin writing at the time.
(26:24):
So it didn't go a lot of places.
And I want to hear about your experience
with learning that youwere good at writing.
Writing is a mysterious art.
And yeah, I wanna kind ofhear about that experience
of finding out that writing was something
you had a skill in.
- Yeah, so that wasfreshman year in college.
It's English 111.
(26:45):
I'll never forget English Comp.
And I'm just taking English,
'cause you had to take itas a general studies course.
Everybody had to take it.
So our professor, I don't know,
it was an entertainment paper.
we could write about anythinghe wanted entertaining-wise
and that's what we had to write about.
So me and a couple ofbuddies, we had took this trip
from Akron, Ohio to Virginia Beach.
(27:07):
I think it was like Labor Day weekend.
It was like Black Greek weekend there.
And so we had to stop in the DC
'cause a couple of friendswent to Morgan State,
we picked them up andwent on to Virginia Beach
and had a great time.
And so I wrote about thattrip and so I turned it in
and I'm not thinking of nothing.
(27:27):
I'm thinking like, let me just get my B
in this core credit class and move on.
I'm not gonna do nothing with English.
This is just something I gotta take.
So about a week or so later, we had class
and we had the leave, sothe professor asked me
to stay after.
Now in my mind I'm like,"did I plagiarize something?"
(27:51):
I said, "that paper was about me."
I said, "what do youwanna talk to me about?"
So he first thing out his mouth he said,
"well, what's your major?"
I said, and that was freshmanyear, so computer science.
He's like, "oh, you everthought about being a writer?"
(28:12):
I said, "no."
I said, "I said right up to here,
I gotta take English all my life.
Nah, I'm not being a writer.
No."
He said, "oh my, you're good."
I mean, "you're great."
Like you have the skills down already.
You write very well.
This per you wrote.
I said, "oh, okay.
I just wrote about what Isaw, what I experienced."
(28:33):
And so I never tookthat nowhere after that.
I said, "yeah, thisguy wanna be a writer."
I would tell people that story.
I said, "I ain't gonnabe in no English class.
I ain't taking that."
They have to do all thatstuff, nah, I'm good.
So later on, yeah, I alwayswanna write a story about me,
my vision impairment.
And so this is how Iended up writing the book.
(28:55):
So my girlfriend, shetold me about this program
at Georgetown Universityand I'm like, "oh, okay."
She said, "you should apply for it.
Yo wanna write your book.
This is the opportunity."
And so it is called theCreative Institute at Georgetown
and it's a free program.
You just have to pay for your editors.
(29:16):
So I applied now and when I applied,
it's like I'm pacifying her,and it kind of like pacify me.
Least I tried it, 'causeI'm not gonna get accepted.
So I filled it out.
I get a call, a email fromProfessor Coster's assistant
saying, "hey, you wannaset a meeting up with you."
(29:37):
I'm like" set a meeting up?"
I'm like, "what?"
- What did I do wrong?
- Yeah!
- At those meetings,
you're really happy when youdidn't do anything wrong.
- So I'm not saying that now.
You know what I said there?
I said, "I ain't trying to write no book!"
(group laughs)
I'm like, "okay."
So I meet with him, I tellyou what I'm write about,
(29:59):
he goes, "oh, great."
He gave me assignment on the phone.
I need you to go find about 25, 30 people,
successful blind peoplethat's on YouTube or online
and you gonna use thosefor your sub stories.
So I said, "what?"
Okay.
So I did all that.
So I go to class.
So now I'm in the class.
(30:20):
I'm writing a memoir.
That's my original bookI'm writing about me.
And so when you go through the program,
you work with editorsthroughout the process.
So your first editor is a DE editor,
which is distributing editor.
And this editor's job is to make sure
that you just write content,get stories, give 'em stories.
(30:41):
You just keep writing stories.
And so you meet with this,I meet with her once a week.
So about three weeks in,I've done wrote a few things
and stuff because so she keep me writing,
how many words each week I gotta write.
So finally, we talking.
She says, "oh, well, Igot a question for you."
And she has a disability too.
So they pair me with somebodywho has a disability,
(31:01):
basically to understandwhat I'm going through
as a writer in my story.
So she says, "yeah, you gotsome great stories here.
So you writing a memoir, huh?"
I said, "yeah, I'm writing a memoir."
So her name is Joanne.
Her question, "I got a question for you.
Who's gonna read your memoir?"
I'm like, "what?"
(31:21):
I said, "what you mean?"
She said, "you know, people write memoirs
are celebrities,athletes, past presidents,
people like that.
You, Welby, are from Akron, Ohio,
so who gonna read yourstory besides your family,
your friends, maybesome people from Akron?"
I'm like, "this is a great story."
She said, "it's true,but who knows you to say,
(31:42):
'hey, I'll read Welby Boraddus's memoir.'"
So she said, "you shouldwrite a book about
teaching people withdisabilities how to get jobs."
And I sat back and thoughtabout that for a second.
I said, "no."
I said Joanne, "becausewe already know how to,
we already know those skills,
pretty much everybody who has a disability
(32:04):
has gone through some typeof rehabilitation training
to either get employment,to get in school,
to show what what jobs best wecan do for our disabilities.
So we already know that."
I said, "I'm gonna flip it.
I'm gonna write a book toeducate business owners,
executives and HR professionals
on the benefits of hiring us,
the blind and vision impaired."
(32:24):
So she, she even trieddiscouraged me, said,
"well, you know, that's gonna be hard."
I said, "it has to be doneand I'm up for the task."
- You said try playingbaseball when you can't see.
That was hard, this is gonna be easy.
- Right, right, right.
And there's nothing out there.
There was nothing out out there like that.
'Cause I did researchbefore I even did it.
And I said, "there's nobooks even talking about us."
(32:46):
She said, "well, that'swhat you wanna you do."
I said, "yeah, that's what I'm gonna do."
And that's what I did.
- So you're kind of going toward this,
like they always say, youknow, to write for a niche
where there isn't anything already.
That's kind of what youwere planning to do, right,
to do something that therewasn't one of already.
- Right.
So I'm kind of like arebel at some things,
(33:07):
so I would go against the grain sometime
and I felt like I knowwhere she was coming from.
Like the easier way was to write a book
on how to get a job as a blindand vision impaired person.
I get it.
- But she's trying to sell a book, right.
So she likes setting the path.
- But the blind and visionparent people that wanna work
(33:28):
already know how to go about getting jobs,
that wanna work.
So they can go get that training already
from anywhere for free through any state
in the country or US territory.
Actually, that's a section of my book too.
But yeah, so I decided towrite this book, educate 'em.
And even the people Iinterviewed for the book,
(33:51):
like professionals in thediverse equity inclusion field
say, "wow, nobody even,there's no material out there
even about this population like this."
I said, "yeah, so that's why I did it."
- Nice.
So let me ask you this.
You know, you're talking about how,
and I think this is the other way
we kind of find passions is that
(34:11):
we don't even realize our passions,
but as somebody encouragesus towards them,
they become that.
So do you, once you kind of got over
your initial lack of desire to write,
did you find the joy in it?
I mean, when you sit downwrite, do you find that joy?
(34:34):
- I love it.
It's the best thing I've ever done,
and I'm probably gonna continue writing.
- Isn't writing great?
I love writing.
- Yeah, it's probably this is the,
besides my having my son,
the biggest accomplishmentI think I did in my life.
I really do.
- And, it's amazing. 'cause I have a,
(34:56):
I'm not gonna go into it deeply,
but I kind of have a similar story in that
I wasn't good at writing and, you know,
my teachers and professors told me that
in no uncertain terms.
But I eventually turnedinto a writer myself.
And man, did it feel goodwhen I figured it out
(35:16):
and started doing it.
I had no idea because I struggled,
you know, with those academics.
I had no idea how goodsomething like that could feel.
So I can really appreciatewhere you discovered that.
You know, and it'sdiscovering passions like that
is almost as interestingand important and all that
(35:36):
as pursuing a passion, right.
And I think allowing yourself to be open
to discover those thingsand listen to other people
is another kind of message
I'm hearing from yourstory, Welby, you know?
- Well, I'm actually, oh, sorry, Mark.
Did you have something else to say?
- No, no, I'm good.
I'm good.- I was curious what,
in the end, started todraw you in about writing?
(35:56):
Was it just the accomplishment
of completing something each day?
Was it literally working with sentences?
Like what do you findexciting about writing?
- I think the exciting part,so this program at Georgetown,
their premise is you write in a community.
So you go in, everybody on a,
it's this platform called Quip.
(36:18):
I don't know if you guysare familiar with Quip?
All my material is in this Quip.
And it's in community with everybody.
So like, let's say of us in there,
all of us got our own folders.
I can look in your folder,you can look in mine.
- Okay.
- So you say, "well hey, I got this guy
you might wanna interview for your book."
Or "Mark, I got somebodyyou might wanna interview.
This guy might,"
(36:38):
- So like truly collaborative.
- Yeah, because this is to show
that if a person who'swriting a book by their self,
especially self-publishing,
that's what they teach us how to do.
You're never finished, butpeople who write together
as a group tend to finish more
(36:58):
because we got the supportsystem one another.
And so when I was doingthis writing, you know,
it was just like, it'ssomething that I never thought
I would ever accomplish,
even though I knew Iwanted to write a book.
I thought I would never accomplish.
And once I got started,it was like nonstop,
(37:21):
even the bad part.
Like I got writer's block at one point.
I got COVID and thisis before the vaccine.
I was outta work for a month at home.
But one thing I did do,
I got up every day withmy robe and pajamas on
and got in front of my laptop
and tried to meet my deadlines.
(37:42):
And at that time it was when
they look at your manuscript and said,
"hey, are we gonna takeyour story and publish it?"
And I had a deadlineto meet or it was done.
And I got up and had and had to meet
with the professor on Zoom.
I went in on my robe and he says,
"what's going on?"
I said, "I don't know, I'm sick.
(38:04):
I gotta go get a COVID test tomorrow."
And he said, "you look like crap.
Wanna just cancel?"
I said, "no, it can't cancel.
Can't cancel.
I gotta go through this."
And I did.
And I love the good about it.
I tell you what, I love the good about it,
the bad about it, everything,
because I'm telling a storythat needs to be told.
(38:25):
And I like writingnonfiction, so I got it.
I like put putting messageout you that need to be told.
And I realized when I was doing,
those type of books I liketo read myself anyway,
about stories, self-help books,
books that tell you about things going on.
That's my genre.
And that's what I write about.
(38:46):
And I think that everybodyhas a story in 'em.
I think everybody shouldat least write one book,
'cause everybody has a storyto share that society may need.
I do believe that.
- That's great.
What a great message.
Well, listen, we're kindof coming to the end
of the podcast here, Welby,and I'll tell you what,
when you came and spoke to us and my team,
(39:09):
you really won me over
and you've won me over all over again.
I absolutely love yourstories and I love the way
that you've just conducted your life
and we all have unique situations
that we're presented with in life
and you've really done the best
I think that you could with yours.
And it's just sointeresting to hear about it
and it's so inspiring.
(39:29):
Before we wrap up, is there anything else
that you want to say ortell people or anything,
any part of your storythat you really want
to get out there before we say goodbye?
- I just want thebusiness world executives,
HR professionals, business owners,
you missing out on untapped market
(39:49):
of the blind and vision impaired community
who can pretty much do any job
that requires you the use of technology
and pretty much all your operation system,
your computer has accessibilitytechnology built in.
You just don't access it toget this population to chance.
And if you don't haveit, there's even places
like state vocationalrehabilitation service
(40:10):
to get you programs like Jaws, Zoom Text
and things like that tohelp these individuals
be productive employees in your company.
And especially now withall these help wanted signs
all over the nation,there's an untapped market
that you can tap intothat your competitors
not even thinking about.
Trust me.
So I just say give 'em a chance.
(40:31):
- So basically you'retelling managers and stuff
that a lot of the tools they need
to help accommodate peopleare already there basically.
- It has to be by law.
Everybody, any company, software company
that creates operations system
has to have accessibilitytechnology built in.
There's a lot of times employers
don't even know that it exists.
(40:51):
It's there.
And if something needssomething that's besides that,
it's a minimum cost.
And if you are a small companybased on ADA guidelines,
you can get exempt on that type of stuff
and maybe get some assistanceto pay for it as well.
So to me, there's no excuse.
I think the problem is the fear
(41:15):
because of the fear unknown.
I'm gonna say this one part.
The difference between individuals
with blind vision, impaired
versus somebody elsewith another disability
is that all our conditions are different
within the blind orvision-impaired community.
What I may need to just enlarge my screen,
somebody else might need a braille reader,
a screen reader, somebodyelse might need Jaw,
(41:35):
somebody might need somethingelse to be accountable.
And that's the fear, becausethey fear the unknown.
But it's still simple.
- You know what, Welby,somebody should write a book
so these executives know allthis stuff, don't you think?
- I got one!
- Oh, you got one!
Well, since you got one,
can you tell everybody whatthe name of that book is
and how-- Yeah, we can all look it up.
(41:55):
- My book is titled "LeadingBlind Without Vision:
The Benefits of Hiring theBlind and Vision Impaired."
You can find it on all online platforms
that sells books, audiobooks, and eBooks.
You go to my website Broaddus Bizsol,
so that's B-R-O-A-D-D-U-S-B-I-Z-S-O-L.com.
(42:19):
And my book is on my website as well.
And if you want do some consulting service
to onboard some blind andvision period employees
into your workforce or want me to come in
and do a training, becauseyou can actually get
certain credits now for my business.
HR professionals, you cango to email me as well
at broaddusbizsol@gmail.com.
(42:40):
- And as always, we'll make sure
all that stuff is in the show notes,
so you don't have to sitthere and write this down,
particularly for you'relistening in your car
or while you're workingor something like that.
We'll make sure all that'swritten down for you
and you can just grabit in the show notes.
Hey Welby, really thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
I think you're doing great work out there.
We appreciate it because,you know, in our business,
(43:03):
we're trying to help everybody
be able to access informationand do the same jobs
as everybody else.
So you're doing that same good work
and we really appreciateit and we appreciate you
being willing to shareyour story with us today.
- I appreciate you guys,
I appreciate what you guys do
because you help us blindand vision impaired people
(43:23):
play on equal playingfield like everybody else.
That's great.
- Well, you know, takes a village, right?
- It dure does.
- All right, well thank you so much.
This is Mark Millerthanking Welby and Dara,
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- [Announcer] This podcast(upbeat synth music)
has been brought to you by TPGI,
(43:44):
the experts in digital accessibility.
Stay tuned for more "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
- [Announcer] Welcome to(upbeat synth music)
TPGI's "Real People Real Stories" podcast,
where you'll find interestingand diverse stories
from folks working to make theworld a more inclusive place.
- Hey, welcome to "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcast,
brought to you by TPGI.
I am your host, Mark Miller,
(00:22):
thanking you for helpingus keep it accessible.
Do us a favor, if you're enjoying
the "Real People Real Stories" podcast,
share it, tell someone about it,
even link to it fromyour accessible website.
Well, listen, thank youeverybody for joining us again.
We love you, we love our audience,
and I'm really excited tobring you our guest today,
(00:44):
Welby Broaddus, whowe've spoken to before,
he came in and spoke toour team here at TPGI.
And once he did that, hisstories are so much fun
and so dynamic and he's got just a,
he's had a great lifeand some great messages
that go along with it.
I knew we had to come in andchat with him and share him
(01:07):
with all of you.
So Welby, welcome, welcome,welcome to the podcast,
it's great to have you here.
And I also wanna welcome Dara, my co-host
who you guys have seen here and there.
So welcome Dara.
Welby, can you just start off by giving us
(01:30):
a little bit of backgroundabout who you are
and particularly the thingI'm most excited about
is that while everybodyelse was watching Netflix
during the pandemic,you were writing a book.
- Yes.
- So I definitely want tohear about your book too.
So tell us a little bit about who you are
and about how this notion ofwriting a book came about.
(01:53):
- Okay, wait.
Thanks for having me, Mark.
I appreciate you havingme on your show today.
Yeah, I'm Welby Broaddus,
So I was, well, I don't know for sure,
I either was born visually impaired
or I became vision impairedwhile I was at the hospital,
I know that when I left the hospital
I was vision impaired.
I just say that much.
(02:13):
And what happened was,I was born premature
and had to stay, my mom left,
came home after a maternity stay,
I had to stay in the hospital10 extra days in an incubator.
And what my research showedme, what I found out,
actually I researched itfor my book and found out
that I think whathappened is I was exposed
to too much oxygen whileI was in an incubator
(02:35):
and it caused me to be visually impaired.
And my diagnosis is opticatrophy and nystagmus.
And optic atrophy isI'm severely nearsighted
that I'm considered to be legally blind
in both my eyes.
And the nystagmus is I can't control
the muscle of my left eye,
so my eye tends to moveon its own left and right.
(02:57):
So it's hard for me to use my left eye.
So it may use my righteye when I'm talking,
when I'm seeing and talking to people.
So when I got home fromthe hospital, you know,
I didn't know this as a kid,
but I always see a eyespecialist, even today.
If I go to a regular eye doctor,
it's just like theycan't do nothing for me,
(03:18):
but it'd be good for them tobe able to look at my eyes,
but I won't get nothing out of it.
So I always seen a specialist.
But I didn't realize that as a kid.
I had glasses and everything
even before I was five years old.
And I just thought I woreglasses just like everybody else.
It just normal, some people wore glasses
'cause they eyes weren't thatgood and some people didn't.
I didn't think it was that severe
(03:40):
until I actually got into school.
- So when you were growing up that young
and you're starting to goto school and all that,
you don't realize thatyou're different in any way?
Is that's what you're saying?
- Right. Yeah.
So especially elementary school, you know,
elementary school is, and let me go back.
So I went to the ClevelandClinic in Cleveland, Ohio.
(04:02):
I always saw an eye specialist
and they suggested to my parents
that I ended up goingto a specialized school
for the blind and vision impaired.
And at that time, my brother,
who's three years youngerthan me, he was just born.
And my parents had justmoved to this house
and so they really couldn't afford
for me to go to the school.
So I ended up going toregular traditional school.
(04:22):
And elementary school was finebecause it's more hands-on,
you know, you sit in a group,
you basically play to learn,
how you learn, things like that.
I didn't realize I was different
until I actually gotinto junior high school,
middle school for some people.
I'm telling my age, I guess.
So when I got in seventhgrade and junior high school,
that's when you sat ina classroom setting,
like the desk in front of a chalkboard
(04:45):
or overhead projector.
And I realized that I couldn'tsee what was on the board.
And I couldn't see what'son the overhead projector.
Now I would see some things
or something I couldn't recognize.
And that was going on.
Also, what's going onnow in middle school,
that's when everybody'strying to find themself,
puberty, things like that.
So I'm starting to get bullied now.
(05:06):
Get picked on, talked about,
just so other kids can fitin and things like that.
I was a kid that tried topick on things like that.
So all this was going on,my grades was dropping,
I always had good grades in school,
and so my counselor, and Iwish I could find her today,
I'm gonna throw her name out there
if anybody out therelistening Carol Sharon,
I heard she's in California,
but if I could find this lady,
(05:27):
I would love to see her and thank her
for things she's done for me.
That was my counselorin junior high school.
- Wow.
And let me just go back.
You're being bullied at this time,
and is that based on your vision
or based on the fact thatyou're not keeping up
with your classmates or like,
what was the premise of the bullying?
- It was basically my vision,'cause I would be in class,
(05:48):
had a book close to myeyes, they would see that,
but I would left and right.
Kids would come in to say things like,
"how many fingers I got up,"
and move their hand in frontof my face and stuff like that.
I got up called all typesof names, Mr. Magoo,
things like this, youknow, and it was hurtful.
But I endured it because onething I didn't, you know,
(06:08):
and some kids would try to,
they think they would wanna fight me,
because they think theycould beat me, the blind kid.
I could beat the blindkid and show myself,
but my father wouldnever let me, my brother
just have anybody justbully us and jump on us.
We was always taught to fight back.
And I would fight back, things like that.
- If it's any consolation, Welby,
one of the guys I workwith that is totally blind
was a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, so.
(06:32):
So maybe they should fight him.
- And that's what I'm saying.
Just because I'm blind don'tmean I can't defend myself.
And I'm gonna defend myself.
So, you know.
- Good for you.
- It was basically 'cause ofmy vision that that happened.
And so my counselor, she just basically,
her own observation was going on,
(06:52):
she talked to some of my teachers
and found out what was goingon and talked to my parents.
And my parents thoughtit just me going from,
from transitioning fromelementary to junior high school,
but in reality is I wasn'table to see the board,
the overhead, some of my textbooks.
- Right.
- So my counselor decided,
(07:12):
she set me up with a visualservice for the vision impaired,
which is VSBI now, this isthrough the state of Ohio
with vocational rehabilitation services.
And so they met my parents andmy counselor, this is funny.
So my mom tells me this one day, said,
"hey, you ain't gotta ridethe bus home from school
'cause me and your dad gotta come up there
(07:33):
to talk with the counselorand the guy from VSBI.
"Okay."
Then I got nervous because,
what are they gonna do for me?
And all I'm worried about is
how's gonna make me lookin front of my friends,
the other kids in school?
I'm already getting talked about now.
I was so nervous this day.
So they had called me down in the office
and they was all happy, smiling.
(07:54):
So they had some visualaids for me, which is fine.
They gave me their magnifiersand things like that.
And then the guy said, theyalso got me talking books
on casettes and recordsand a casette record player
I could take home to listen to books.
That was fine.
Then he pulls out this bag,
a replica of the books that got me,
it was a large print, but back then
it was like the books are now.
(08:15):
This book was probably asbig as a computer monitor.
And the first thing I said,
"you guys really expect me
to walk in class with these big books?"
I said, "they already talk about me now.
They're really gonna talk about me."
And everybody in the roomexpression just dropped
because nobody thought about that.
But my counselor, Ms. Sharone, she says,
(08:38):
"well, I got an idea.
Take these books home,
do your homework andstudy with these books
and just bring your regular books in class
and you can just usethose in the classroom."
And that's what I did.
So at that point, middleand junior high school,
everything was fine.
So when I got back to high school,
it kind of got back to whereit was in the beginning
when I got to junior high school.
My counselor never helped me.
(08:59):
But what I learned myself,
I started become morecompetent with myself
being vision impaired sowhat I would do on my own,
I would approach my teacher and say,
"hey, can I get your noteson the board or the projector
because I can't see it,"and things like that.
And I would ask for extra time.
I would just ask for the things myself
that my counselor should have did for me.
So now let's fast forwardto my senior year.
(09:27):
You couldn't tell meback then, it was 1984,
my senior year, graduated '85.
I was going to Kent State University
and I'm just gonna majorin computer science.
That was my plan.
So I go in with my counselor.
Now, this lady never worked with me
as a vision impaired student at all.
So she says, "what's your plans?"
And you know, and itjust rolled off my tongue
(09:49):
because it is so what I wanted to do.
I said, I wanna major in computer science
and I plan to go to Kent State.
And they rolled right offher tongue right back,
"well, you're not college material.
You should go find a job."
So at that point she said that.
In my mind, I said,
"she just said I was not college material,
I should just find a job."
(10:09):
And so we stayed, we talking for a while,
but I'm gonna tell you,I couldn't tell you
what she said after that point.
So when she was talking,
it sounded like thePeanut's parents talking.
Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa.
That's all I heard the entire time.
But I left out of that room and I said,
"I gotta go to collegeand I gotta graduate
(10:30):
because this lady's not going to be right.
I know what I'm capable doingand that's what I'm gonna do."
Now the only thing that she didn't,
there's two things she didn'tget right by the whole thing.
I didn't go to Ken State
and I didn't major in computer science,
but I did go to Universityof Akron and got two degrees.
I got a bachelor of sciencein technical education,
I got associate of appliedbusiness management technology.
(10:53):
- Good for you.
- Yeah.
- I love the fact that yourreaction to basically an adult,
an authority figure, sayingyou can't do something
was like, "oh, well nowI have to do it," right?
There's just no question in your mind.
Like, yeah, you said I can't do it?
That means I have to do it.
- Right.- That's fantastic.
- Yeah, I had to.
- I mean, this makes total sense.
(11:14):
- It does.
- My mom and my grandmother, my dad's mom,
they raised me not as a impaired kid,
they made me as a personwho happens to be impaired.
So this is just a part ofme, but it doesn't define me.
And I wanna be defined onwhat I'm doing om society,
(11:34):
how I make people better.
That's always been my goal in life.
And sometimes I don't even bring up
that I'm visually impairedunless somebody might ask
if I'm in a certaincircle, things like that.
And so that would, I would never use that
as an excuse for me.
It's just a part of me.
(11:55):
And there's barriers tome that I, let me go,
there's things I know I can't do,
I'm not gonna sit upthere and tell you that,
"hey, I'm gonna go buy me a car tomorrow,
I'm gonna drive to wherever."
And I think that most people
who are blind and vision impaired,
like mean we don't putourselves in position to fail
because people already expect us to fail
and people don't wanna give us a chance.
So I definitely don't wannamake their job easy for them
(12:16):
to tell me no.
That's always a factor with me.
So after I got into college,
my first job was workingin University of Akron
and I ended up working in this program
called Advancing Health Program.
And what the program is, itwas a welfare to work program
(12:36):
that people who receivedgovernment assistance
to come to come on campusand get their basic skills up
to either enroll in the collegeor help 'em find employment.
And I taught basic math tothe participants who came in.
And also we ran a programwith the Akron public schools.
It was a pilot program thatran with the special ed kids.
(12:57):
And it was a high school thatwas in the middle of campus.
So those kids that went to,it was called Central Howard,
they would come up in the morning
and I would teach 'emportability skills to 'em,
and then in the afternoon,
they would do different jobs on campus,
get their work experience,and I would go by
and make sure they're doing the jobs right
and things like that.
So I was the liaison forthe University of Akron
(13:18):
and we had a liaisonfor the Akron schools.
And one day this, this ishow God works, things happen.
He says, "I want you to comedown and meet the teachers.
I want you to meet the counselorto work with these kids."
I said, "okay."
So I walked down, meet the teachers,
now going to the counselor's office.
Guess who the counselor was?
- I've got a guess.
- We're both smiling.
(13:39):
- Maybe somebody who told youyou shouldn't go to college?
- Yeah, my same counselor that told me
I wasn't a college material,
here I show up helpingher with a pilot program
that started with two degrees
and I've worked with your kids.
- How fantastic was that?
- Yeah.
- Did she recognize you?
- Oh yeah, she recognizedme, and people always ask me,
well, did you tell her who you were?
(13:59):
I said, no, she knows.
The vibe in the room, she knew who I was.
Now she may not rememberwhat she said to me,
but who knows.
But she knew who I was.
- Right.
And then probably at thatadvancement and things,
it's not necessarily evenimportant at that point.
- Oh yeah, no.
- That I told you so is probably not
what you were looking for.
(14:20):
You had achieved what youhad achieved and she knew it.
Everybody knew it.
That's fine.
- Right, and I view it like this.
She was the fuse thatfueled me to keep on going
to be the person that I am,
because there was somestruggles on the way
that when I was in college
that I thought that Iwasn't gonna finish college.
But that always came my mind.
So I gotta finish.
I just got to becauseI cannot let her know
(14:41):
that I did not graduate college.
- Welby, just one ofthe things I wanna say
that I'm sitting here thinkingabout hearing your story
before you continue,right, is that, you know,
that's a really neat momentthat you're talking about there
where somebody says,"hey, you can't do this,"
(15:02):
and then you end up doing it.
But going back even further,when you were being bullied
and you essentially as a young boy
needed accommodations tobe successful in school,
you know, like you said,
you don't want to defineyourself by your blindness.
(15:22):
You're a person who happens to be blind,
but obviously there's certain limitations,
certain things that you can't do
and certain ways that you'regonna need accommodations
to be successful.
That's what our business is all about.
But the added element forme that's really interesting
and that I hadn'tstopped and thought about
is that as a young boy,there's a whole social dynamic
(15:44):
that you gotta be careful of too.
And just the fact that you, yourself,
and the adults around you recognize that
and were very careful,
and I think a lot of peopledon't think about this.
They were careful with a young person
who was trying to navigateall those social dynamics,
(16:05):
they were very carefulwith how they provided
those accommodations for you
so not only could you besuccessful in the academics
that you needed to be successful in,
but it also gave you the best chance
of being successful socially.
And I think that'ssomething I haven't heard
in a lot of people's stories.
And I think that's something that,
it's a new thing for me, Welby.
I talk to a lot of people who are blind
(16:27):
and have a variety of disabilities,
and that dynamic of the picture you paint
of that young boy who's trying,
who's struggling in more ways than one.
and just the dynamic ofhaving to deal with that
is really, really interesting.
I appreciate you bringing that to us.
And I didn't mean to interrupt you,
but I wanted to make sure.
- I'm gonna say, one thing my mom,
(16:47):
my grandmother always told me is,
"you can do anything you want.
You can put your mind to it,
there's something you believe you can do
and be honest with yourself,know what you capable doing."
And my mom would never allowme, I would go and say,
"well, I can't do it."
"You can do it.
You need to do it."
"But can you do it for me?"
(17:08):
He said, "you gotta do this by yourself
because I'm not gonna bearound you all your life.
I'm not gonna be here all your life,
you're gonna have to be ableto do things on your own
no matter what you're dealing with.
We all dealing with something,
but you need to work it out
and you get help if you can't do it,
but you gotta do things thatyou're capable of doing."
- Yeah, it sounds like youhad an amazing mom, right?
- Yes.
- And I'd like to diginto her a little bit more
(17:30):
because what I'm hearing,like your attitude of,
of I just, you know, I'm a person
and all the things that come with that
that happens to be blind,
it sounds like your momtreated you as her child
who just happened to be blindand gave you the same advice
as she would any other child.
And I think that that's ahuge credit to your mom.
(17:53):
And it's somewhat, I don't knowif unique is the right word,
but I think that when a person
who doesn't have a disabilityor something as profound
as vision loss,
as a child that has somethingas profound as vision loss,
they kind of get stuck inthat a little bit, right.
(18:13):
They all of a sudden, that'sthe biggest deal in the world.
And I can see where they maystart to define their child
as being blind first inthat case or whatever.
But your mom didn't do that.
To her credit, she really stepped up
(18:33):
and parented you in a beautiful way.
- Yeah.- Right?
- Yeah, I commend her for that.
I wasn't that kid who, I didn't hang out
at the blind centers too often
because that's one thing,
there, it felt like I wasbeing helped, coddled kind of,
I guess helped out, things like that,
(18:54):
versus allow me to figure out on my own
because my mom, shereally, she said, you know,
I might not be around, yourgrandma might not be around,
your dad might not be around.
It might be just youand what you going do?"
- Yeah.
So you're not over coddled right?
She's like, you gottamake it in this world
like anybody else.
I don't care if you gotvision loss, you go do it.
- Right.
(19:16):
I was sitting around a crysome time like a little kid,
like, "come on, mom, help me."
"Nope."
And she'd just walk off.
- Wow.
- Dara, you had a question or a comment?
- I was curious, do youhave an example in mind
of something that yourmom basically got you
to figure out on your own?
Like something that reallystands out to you in that way?
(19:37):
- I'm gonna tell you a story.
And I wanted to put thisin a book, but my editor,
it didn't relate to what my book's about.
- So this will go in the second book,
is that what you're saying, Welby?
- So I wrote a KindleVilla right now about,
his story is in there.
I was eight years old and,
and the street I grew up onthere was kids everywhere.
(19:58):
I was brought up withschool kids of my age
up and down the block.
And we always hung outat my one friend's house,
his name is Butch.
We hung out and we'd sit in this stoop
and we'd always be talking.
And some of 'em had playedbaseball like the year before,
and they talking, "hey, youguys should play with us,
come out and play."
And I'm like, "yeah,I'm playing baseball!"
My grandfather played baseball,my uncle played baseball.
I said, "oh yeah, I'm playing baseball."
(20:21):
And like I said, I'mnot even thinking about
my vision gonna stop me from playing.
I'm playing baseball.
So I go down to my house,I get in, my dad's there,
my mom's not there.
I said, "hey dad, canyou take me up to the Y
and sign up for baseball.
Everybody gonna, we gonna play baseball."
And he said, "well, you know,"
and my father's more, I guessworried about me failing
(20:45):
by my vision impairmentthan I need to try it.
Which that would bother me,
but I understand wherehe is coming from now.
- Right, right.
- So he said, "well, I don't know
about you playing baseball, you know,
you might not be able to be good.
That might not be good for you."
And I'm like, "what?"
And so in my mind, like, don't every dad
want his son playing sports?
I'm telling myself.
so mom came home, I couldreason with her and I said,
(21:06):
"hey, I want to try it out.
I don't know what I can do."
She said, "okay, you cango ahead and try it."
For the first year ofbaseball, it was great.
You know, I might haveone hit the whole season,
but I had fun.
You know, my other friends,they would hit the ball,
but I might have struck out, I knew I did.
I might have one hitand I knew it was luck
because I knew I couldn't see the ball
(21:27):
coming down the pipe.
But so what I did, I enjoyed it!
So the next year we move up to the upper,
like they call it themajor league, upper league,
you had to try out.
So I go to that, go to tryout,I get picked for a team.
And so the first day of practice,this is how things work.
(21:48):
So our coaches hit the fly balls.
They taught us how, you know,if you have ball coming,
you call out, everybody runthat way to catch the ball.
Okay, I got it.
Hit a fly ball, and I, at that time,
there was no sports goggles back then.
So I had wire frame glasses on.
So here's a fly ball, andI could never see the ball
(22:08):
come off the bat, but thesound would let me know
where the ball would be in the air,
'cause I could listen.
And then I would see itas it started to come down
when it gets close.
So I saw it coming.
So this ball, I misjudged it.
So the ball hit off myglove, hit my glass,
and cut the left side of my eye.
(22:29):
I had to get stitches.
So, and this is before cell phones.
So my coach had to take me to the ER,
my bike was at the field,
so my buddies had to get mybike take it to his house,
and they had to call myhouse to find my parents.
And they wasn't at homethe time, so they came,
that was end of my baseball career,
(22:51):
because now I'm scared ofa baseball for that fact.
But what happens in that scenario is that
I didn't know if I could playor not, but I wanted to see.
And I had to see, becauseif I didn't do that,
I would've beat myself upbecause I didn't give it a try.
So now I know that that's not for me.
(23:15):
- You're basically saying it mattered more
to try it out than itdid to actually like,
be good at baseball or anything.
It was more the idea of trying baseball.
- And the thing about when that happened,
I got picked on again.
All my friends talked about me,
"oh, you couldn't see the ball!"
I go to school like the next day
with about 15 stitches in my head.
(23:36):
You know, they talking about me,
I'd rather endure all thatbullying and stuff like that
for me, I tried it.
That's the goal.
My goal was I tried itand I know it didn't work
versus me to sit back and let somebody,
let my dad tell me, "well, you shouldn't,
you can't play that becauseyou're not gonna be good."
I don't know that.
- Right.
- So I need to do those things.
(23:57):
- Listen, Welby, I got a story for you.
- Okay.- Right?
My vision is fine.
Right, it's fine.
I got about one hit per season,
my dad threw practices, I said,
"dad, I'm terrible at baseball.
We gotta practice," right?
So I go out on the streetwith my dad and we practice
and he throws up that, you know,
(24:20):
that lob you're talking about.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.- Guess what happened?
Hit me right in the eye.
I had to go to the ER!
My vision's fine!
I don't think yourexperience was any different!
I don't think it had anything to,
I think you[re just like me,just weren't good at baseball!
- United in baseball accidents.
(24:42):
- And then my team, I was so bad,
my team started picking on me!
Welby, they bullied me.
I'm not joking.
That's not a joke.
I'm telling you the truth!
I finally, halfway through the season,
it was the same thing.
I did better, you know,when I was younger,
and then when I gotinto the bigger leagues
and I quit halfway through the season,
(25:02):
'cause my team was so mean to me!
- Right.
I get it.
I feel your pain.
I never went back.
But I had to do that for myself.
- Yeah.
Yep.
Well, you know, and I thinkthat that's not a story,
you know, that's not a story
that only somebody withsomething like vision loss
can tell us.
I mean, that's a lifestory, right, for all of us
(25:22):
where we've dug in andwe've tried something
and we just had to figure out.
- Right.
- Through effort and trial and error
that maybe that wasn't a path for us.
- Right.
- Well it's like, youknow, sometimes enthusiasm
is more than, you know, youractual skills in the area.
But enthusiasm's always a good thing.
(25:43):
- Well, if you're not willing to try,
how are you ever gonna know?
- Exactly.- You know what I mean?
Like sometimes it's aboutlearning that lesson
and being willing to learn that lesson.
Otherwise you'd beafraid to try that thing
that maybe you try and findout you're good at, you know?
And I think that that's the real lesson
is that you were willingto push the boundaries
(26:04):
in order to understandwhat your boundaries were.
- Well, that actuallygoes right into something
from when I listened to anotherpodcast you had been on,
you talked about your first experience
with getting praise for your writing,
but you weren't super interestedin writing at the time.
(26:24):
So it didn't go a lot of places.
And I want to hear about your experience
with learning that youwere good at writing.
Writing is a mysterious art.
And yeah, I wanna kind ofhear about that experience
of finding out that writing was something
you had a skill in.
- Yeah, so that wasfreshman year in college.
It's English 111.
(26:45):
I'll never forget English Comp.
And I'm just taking English,
'cause you had to take itas a general studies course.
Everybody had to take it.
So our professor, I don't know,
it was an entertainment paper.
we could write about anythinghe wanted entertaining-wise
and that's what we had to write about.
So me and a couple ofbuddies, we had took this trip
from Akron, Ohio to Virginia Beach.
(27:07):
I think it was like Labor Day weekend.
It was like Black Greek weekend there.
And so we had to stop in the DC
'cause a couple of friendswent to Morgan State,
we picked them up andwent on to Virginia Beach
and had a great time.
And so I wrote about thattrip and so I turned it in
and I'm not thinking of nothing.
(27:27):
I'm thinking like, let me just get my B
in this core credit class and move on.
I'm not gonna do nothing with English.
This is just something I gotta take.
So about a week or so later, we had class
and we had the leave, sothe professor asked me
to stay after.
Now in my mind I'm like,"did I plagiarize something?"
(27:51):
I said, "that paper was about me."
I said, "what do youwanna talk to me about?"
So he first thing out his mouth he said,
"well, what's your major?"
I said, and that was freshmanyear, so computer science.
He's like, "oh, you everthought about being a writer?"
(28:12):
I said, "no."
I said, "I said right up to here,
I gotta take English all my life.
Nah, I'm not being a writer.
No."
He said, "oh my, you're good."
I mean, "you're great."
Like you have the skills down already.
You write very well.
This per you wrote.
I said, "oh, okay.
I just wrote about what Isaw, what I experienced."
(28:33):
And so I never tookthat nowhere after that.
I said, "yeah, thisguy wanna be a writer."
I would tell people that story.
I said, "I ain't gonnabe in no English class.
I ain't taking that."
They have to do all thatstuff, nah, I'm good.
So later on, yeah, I alwayswanna write a story about me,
my vision impairment.
And so this is how Iended up writing the book.
(28:55):
So my girlfriend, shetold me about this program
at Georgetown Universityand I'm like, "oh, okay."
She said, "you should apply for it.
Yo wanna write your book.
This is the opportunity."
And so it is called theCreative Institute at Georgetown
and it's a free program.
You just have to pay for your editors.
(29:16):
So I applied now and when I applied,
it's like I'm pacifying her,and it kind of like pacify me.
Least I tried it, 'causeI'm not gonna get accepted.
So I filled it out.
I get a call, a email fromProfessor Coster's assistant
saying, "hey, you wannaset a meeting up with you."
(29:37):
I'm like" set a meeting up?"
I'm like, "what?"
- What did I do wrong?
- Yeah!
- At those meetings,
you're really happy when youdidn't do anything wrong.
- So I'm not saying that now.
You know what I said there?
I said, "I ain't trying to write no book!"
(group laughs)
I'm like, "okay."
So I meet with him, I tellyou what I'm write about,
(29:59):
he goes, "oh, great."
He gave me assignment on the phone.
I need you to go find about 25, 30 people,
successful blind peoplethat's on YouTube or online
and you gonna use thosefor your sub stories.
So I said, "what?"
Okay.
So I did all that.
So I go to class.
So now I'm in the class.
(30:20):
I'm writing a memoir.
That's my original bookI'm writing about me.
And so when you go through the program,
you work with editorsthroughout the process.
So your first editor is a DE editor,
which is distributing editor.
And this editor's job is to make sure
that you just write content,get stories, give 'em stories.
(30:41):
You just keep writing stories.
And so you meet with this,I meet with her once a week.
So about three weeks in,I've done wrote a few things
and stuff because so she keep me writing,
how many words each week I gotta write.
So finally, we talking.
She says, "oh, well, Igot a question for you."
And she has a disability too.
So they pair me with somebodywho has a disability,
(31:01):
basically to understandwhat I'm going through
as a writer in my story.
So she says, "yeah, you gotsome great stories here.
So you writing a memoir, huh?"
I said, "yeah, I'm writing a memoir."
So her name is Joanne.
Her question, "I got a question for you.
Who's gonna read your memoir?"
I'm like, "what?"
(31:21):
I said, "what you mean?"
She said, "you know, people write memoirs
are celebrities,athletes, past presidents,
people like that.
You, Welby, are from Akron, Ohio,
so who gonna read yourstory besides your family,
your friends, maybesome people from Akron?"
I'm like, "this is a great story."
She said, "it's true,but who knows you to say,
(31:42):
'hey, I'll read Welby Boraddus's memoir.'"
So she said, "you shouldwrite a book about
teaching people withdisabilities how to get jobs."
And I sat back and thoughtabout that for a second.
I said, "no."
I said Joanne, "becausewe already know how to,
we already know those skills,
pretty much everybody who has a disability
(32:04):
has gone through some typeof rehabilitation training
to either get employment,to get in school,
to show what what jobs best wecan do for our disabilities.
So we already know that."
I said, "I'm gonna flip it.
I'm gonna write a book toeducate business owners,
executives and HR professionals
on the benefits of hiring us,
the blind and vision impaired."
(32:24):
So she, she even trieddiscouraged me, said,
"well, you know, that's gonna be hard."
I said, "it has to be doneand I'm up for the task."
- You said try playingbaseball when you can't see.
That was hard, this is gonna be easy.
- Right, right, right.
And there's nothing out there.
There was nothing out out there like that.
'Cause I did researchbefore I even did it.
And I said, "there's nobooks even talking about us."
(32:46):
She said, "well, that'swhat you wanna you do."
I said, "yeah, that's what I'm gonna do."
And that's what I did.
- So you're kind of going toward this,
like they always say, youknow, to write for a niche
where there isn't anything already.
That's kind of what youwere planning to do, right,
to do something that therewasn't one of already.
- Right.
So I'm kind of like arebel at some things,
(33:07):
so I would go against the grain sometime
and I felt like I knowwhere she was coming from.
Like the easier way was to write a book
on how to get a job as a blindand vision impaired person.
I get it.
- But she's trying to sell a book, right.
So she likes setting the path.
- But the blind and visionparent people that wanna work
(33:28):
already know how to go about getting jobs,
that wanna work.
So they can go get that training already
from anywhere for free through any state
in the country or US territory.
Actually, that's a section of my book too.
But yeah, so I decided towrite this book, educate 'em.
And even the people Iinterviewed for the book,
(33:51):
like professionals in thediverse equity inclusion field
say, "wow, nobody even,there's no material out there
even about this population like this."
I said, "yeah, so that's why I did it."
- Nice.
So let me ask you this.
You know, you're talking about how,
and I think this is the other way
we kind of find passions is that
(34:11):
we don't even realize our passions,
but as somebody encouragesus towards them,
they become that.
So do you, once you kind of got over
your initial lack of desire to write,
did you find the joy in it?
I mean, when you sit downwrite, do you find that joy?
(34:34):
- I love it.
It's the best thing I've ever done,
and I'm probably gonna continue writing.
- Isn't writing great?
I love writing.
- Yeah, it's probably this is the,
besides my having my son,
the biggest accomplishmentI think I did in my life.
I really do.
- And, it's amazing. 'cause I have a,
(34:56):
I'm not gonna go into it deeply,
but I kind of have a similar story in that
I wasn't good at writing and, you know,
my teachers and professors told me that
in no uncertain terms.
But I eventually turnedinto a writer myself.
And man, did it feel goodwhen I figured it out
(35:16):
and started doing it.
I had no idea because I struggled,
you know, with those academics.
I had no idea how goodsomething like that could feel.
So I can really appreciatewhere you discovered that.
You know, and it'sdiscovering passions like that
is almost as interestingand important and all that
(35:36):
as pursuing a passion, right.
And I think allowing yourself to be open
to discover those thingsand listen to other people
is another kind of message
I'm hearing from yourstory, Welby, you know?
- Well, I'm actually, oh, sorry, Mark.
Did you have something else to say?
- No, no, I'm good.
I'm good.- I was curious what,
in the end, started todraw you in about writing?
(35:56):
Was it just the accomplishment
of completing something each day?
Was it literally working with sentences?
Like what do you findexciting about writing?
- I think the exciting part,so this program at Georgetown,
their premise is you write in a community.
So you go in, everybody on a,
it's this platform called Quip.
(36:18):
I don't know if you guysare familiar with Quip?
All my material is in this Quip.
And it's in community with everybody.
So like, let's say of us in there,
all of us got our own folders.
I can look in your folder,you can look in mine.
- Okay.
- So you say, "well hey, I got this guy
you might wanna interview for your book."
Or "Mark, I got somebodyyou might wanna interview.
This guy might,"
(36:38):
- So like truly collaborative.
- Yeah, because this is to show
that if a person who'swriting a book by their self,
especially self-publishing,
that's what they teach us how to do.
You're never finished, butpeople who write together
as a group tend to finish more
(36:58):
because we got the supportsystem one another.
And so when I was doingthis writing, you know,
it was just like, it'ssomething that I never thought
I would ever accomplish,
even though I knew Iwanted to write a book.
I thought I would never accomplish.
And once I got started,it was like nonstop,
(37:21):
even the bad part.
Like I got writer's block at one point.
I got COVID and thisis before the vaccine.
I was outta work for a month at home.
But one thing I did do,
I got up every day withmy robe and pajamas on
and got in front of my laptop
and tried to meet my deadlines.
(37:42):
And at that time it was when
they look at your manuscript and said,
"hey, are we gonna takeyour story and publish it?"
And I had a deadlineto meet or it was done.
And I got up and had and had to meet
with the professor on Zoom.
I went in on my robe and he says,
"what's going on?"
I said, "I don't know, I'm sick.
(38:04):
I gotta go get a COVID test tomorrow."
And he said, "you look like crap.
Wanna just cancel?"
I said, "no, it can't cancel.
Can't cancel.
I gotta go through this."
And I did.
And I love the good about it.
I tell you what, I love the good about it,
the bad about it, everything,
because I'm telling a storythat needs to be told.
(38:25):
And I like writingnonfiction, so I got it.
I like put putting messageout you that need to be told.
And I realized when I was doing,
those type of books I liketo read myself anyway,
about stories, self-help books,
books that tell you about things going on.
That's my genre.
And that's what I write about.
(38:46):
And I think that everybodyhas a story in 'em.
I think everybody shouldat least write one book,
'cause everybody has a storyto share that society may need.
I do believe that.
- That's great.
What a great message.
Well, listen, we're kindof coming to the end
of the podcast here, Welby,and I'll tell you what,
when you came and spoke to us and my team,
(39:09):
you really won me over
and you've won me over all over again.
I absolutely love yourstories and I love the way
that you've just conducted your life
and we all have unique situations
that we're presented with in life
and you've really done the best
I think that you could with yours.
And it's just sointeresting to hear about it
and it's so inspiring.
(39:29):
Before we wrap up, is there anything else
that you want to say ortell people or anything,
any part of your storythat you really want
to get out there before we say goodbye?
- I just want thebusiness world executives,
HR professionals, business owners,
you missing out on untapped market
(39:49):
of the blind and vision impaired community
who can pretty much do any job
that requires you the use of technology
and pretty much all your operation system,
your computer has accessibilitytechnology built in.
You just don't access it toget this population to chance.
And if you don't haveit, there's even places
like state vocationalrehabilitation service
(40:10):
to get you programs like Jaws, Zoom Text
and things like that tohelp these individuals
be productive employees in your company.
And especially now withall these help wanted signs
all over the nation,there's an untapped market
that you can tap intothat your competitors
not even thinking about.
Trust me.
So I just say give 'em a chance.
(40:31):
- So basically you'retelling managers and stuff
that a lot of the tools they need
to help accommodate peopleare already there basically.
- It has to be by law.
Everybody, any company, software company
that creates operations system
has to have accessibilitytechnology built in.
There's a lot of times employers
don't even know that it exists.
(40:51):
It's there.
And if something needssomething that's besides that,
it's a minimum cost.
And if you are a small companybased on ADA guidelines,
you can get exempt on that type of stuff
and maybe get some assistanceto pay for it as well.
So to me, there's no excuse.
I think the problem is the fear
(41:15):
because of the fear unknown.
I'm gonna say this one part.
The difference between individuals
with blind vision, impaired
versus somebody elsewith another disability
is that all our conditions are different
within the blind orvision-impaired community.
What I may need to just enlarge my screen,
somebody else might need a braille reader,
a screen reader, somebodyelse might need Jaw,
(41:35):
somebody might need somethingelse to be accountable.
And that's the fear, becausethey fear the unknown.
But it's still simple.
- You know what, Welby,somebody should write a book
so these executives know allthis stuff, don't you think?
- I got one!
- Oh, you got one!
Well, since you got one,
can you tell everybody whatthe name of that book is
and how-- Yeah, we can all look it up.
(41:55):
- My book is titled "LeadingBlind Without Vision:
The Benefits of Hiring theBlind and Vision Impaired."
You can find it on all online platforms
that sells books, audiobooks, and eBooks.
You go to my website Broaddus Bizsol,
so that's B-R-O-A-D-D-U-S-B-I-Z-S-O-L.com.
(42:19):
And my book is on my website as well.
And if you want do some consulting service
to onboard some blind andvision period employees
into your workforce or want me to come in
and do a training, becauseyou can actually get
certain credits now for my business.
HR professionals, you cango to email me as well
at broaddusbizsol@gmail.com.
(42:40):
- And as always, we'll make sure
all that stuff is in the show notes,
so you don't have to sitthere and write this down,
particularly for you'relistening in your car
or while you're workingor something like that.
We'll make sure all that'swritten down for you
and you can just grabit in the show notes.
Hey Welby, really thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
I think you're doing great work out there.
We appreciate it because,you know, in our business,
(43:03):
we're trying to help everybody
be able to access informationand do the same jobs
as everybody else.
So you're doing that same good work
and we really appreciateit and we appreciate you
being willing to shareyour story with us today.
- I appreciate you guys,
I appreciate what you guys do
because you help us blindand vision impaired people
(43:23):
play on equal playingfield like everybody else.
That's great.
- Well, you know, takes a village, right?
- It dure does.
- All right, well thank you so much.
This is Mark Millerthanking Welby and Dara,
and reminding you to keep it accessible.
- [Announcer] This podcast(upbeat synth music)
has been brought to you by TPGI,
(43:44):
the experts in digital accessibility.
Stay tuned for more "RealPeople, Real Stories" podcasts
coming soon.
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