How innovation helps blind Americans

Thanks to technology, many new developments improve the lives of people with disabilities, yet many organizations are still working to give wider access to these breakthroughs.

One such organization is the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind. What’s Working in Washington sat down with CEO and president Anthony Cancelosi to understand what the organization has been doing in its 117-year history.

“Jobs were the initial caring part of the formation of the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind,” said Cancelosi.

“We’ve come into a world of technology, utilizing technology to give people who are visually impaired, and blind, and deaf-blind, and other people with disabilities, technology they can use to communicate, to navigate, to share.”

One of the ways the organization is creating this accessibility is through ensuring web pages are usable for those without sight.

“We’ve taken on that charge and created a way to look at websites with a special tool that we have, and make them accessible for people with disabilities,” said Cancelosi. “Everything is going online… if we deprive people with disabilities, that accessibility, we take away their independence.”

Cancelosi hopes technologies like this will help train those with disabilities to have job skills such as digital document scanning.

“We have the skill and the technology to train them to do that. Now, that creates a job for them, and that job will pay more than double the minimum wage,” he said.

However, some skills go beyond technology.

“The fundamental basis of what we do, we have to give them the interpersonal skills, the training skills, the independent living skills,” said Cancelosi. “If you were sighted, and then you lose your sight, you have to relearn how to do everything you were doing before. We provide those services.”

One of the hurdles to making services accessible are taboos around disabilities.

“I think we all want to believe everything is perfect, everything is well, everything is going to be good the next day. The reality is, we don’t know what the next day is going to be,” said Cancelosi.

“For us, we’re trying to give people the ability to know what’s out there for them to access, and the technology [to access it].”

Listen to entire July 17 show:

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