| Cheshire woman battles to be more than 'just Tracy the blind girl' | |
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02/23/2009
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Johnathon Henninger/Record-Journal Charlie Collins, owner of
Vision Dynamics in Cheshire shows off his KNFB Mobile Reader
which is reading back to him the print that he just took a
picture of. |
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| Johnathon Henninger/Record-Journal Tracy Andrews, worker at Vision Dynamics in Cheshire uses a desktop reading machine to answer a question from a customer who was deciding if he wanted to buy a monicular. | |
| CHESHIRE - Job interviews started following a disturbing
pattern for Tracy Andrews after graduating from college. "So often the interview would start well," she said. "The minute blindness came up, the interview was over." Andrews has macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa and is unable to read most documents and has only limited vision on her periphery. Despite successfully handling her disability through public school and college, she said most interviewers only considered what she would not be able to do. The pattern ended when Andrews interviewed with Maryclaire Knight for a position at the YMCA in Dorchester, Mass. "We just flew right through that situation," Andrews said. "She was the first person other than my family who saw (blindness) as a piece" of who I am. Andrews was appointed to the Human Services Committee last week. She plans on using the skills she has acquired in business and recreational management and hopes those will define her, rather than her blindness. Tensions between neighborhoods of different ethnicities provided Andrews not only with a firsthand glimpse of racism, but experience helping people with all kinds of interests. After spending two and half years in Dorchester, Andrews took a job at a YMCA in Hamden, where she had to juggle the competing interests of volunteers. "She had to navigate with some pretty contentious volunteers," said Suzanne Friedbacher, who was the executive director for the YMCA in Hamden. At the time, finances were tight and Friedbacher said the YMCA depended on volunteers to operate. Driving was the only area where Andrews' legal blindness hampered her, according to Friedbacher. Andrews made provisions and was able to carpool with others. "It wasn't something that got in the way or that she used to her advantage or disadvantage," Friedbacher said of her blindness. "She really demonstrated her determination to not let this, this disease, define her." Andrews and her husband John have two children, Jamie, 15, and Jacob, 10. Andrews took a 10-year break from working outside the home to care for her children as well as a friend's children, who she babysat. Andrews was diagnosed with macular degeneration when she was 7 years old. The disease, in Andrews' case "dry" macular degeneration, affects the central vision and progresses very slowly. There is no treatment. Eight years ago, Andrews was also diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which reduces peripheral vision. Rather than a special school, Andrews attended the town's public schools during the state's mainstreaming of some handicapped students. "That was a challenge," she said. At the time, there were few aids for those with poor vision other than thick magnification glasses and a monocular that she used to see the board. Teacher's comments in red pen also didn't provide enough contrast to be visible to her, and not all teachers were accommodating. "Some rose to the challenge, others not so," Andrews said. "I kind of had to fight my own battles in public schools." Andrews' parents, Norman and Beverly Maconi, never treated her as disabled, she said. The Maconis encouraged Andrews to continue figure skating lessons after she was diagnosed with macular degeneration and she continued skating for more than 20 years, competing and helping teach skating during college. "We did everything we could to have her do what she wanted to do," Beverly Maconi said. "She was very self-sufficient." While public school was at times a struggle for Andrews, skating was something she enjoyed. "That did a lot for my self-esteem and confidence when school was not so fun," she said. Andrews attended UConn, where she got her degree in recreational management and used the Kurzweil machine, which takes a picture of a text and reads it aloud. "It was not very reliable," Andrews said. "It was very picky as to what it could do." Andrews has worked for Vision Dynamics at 470 West Main St. since 2007 and was introduced to the latest reader about a year ago. The mobile reader is a Nokia camera phone that operates as do the Kurzweil machines - without the bulk of a copier and much more reliably. The mobile reader is one of the many instruments, both high and low-tech, that Vision Dynamics offers to customers. Most of the instruments didn't exist when Andrews was growing up and there are still very few stores where customers can handle and try out products rather than ordering them. "It's extremely rare. There's nothing else like this in New England," she said. While Andrews can relate to customers because of her own illnesses, she said it was vital not to let blindness become her identity to the exclusion of her skills and experiences. "I am not just Tracy the blind girl." |
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More of Vision Dynamics in the News. |