A Voice of His Own
Charlie was born blind and began losing his hearing at a young age – but he always has enjoyed using his voice. From public speaking and small group discussions to singing, telling jokes and exploring accents, the now 15-year-old is an important voice in Society for the Blind’s CareersPLUS Youth program.
Charlie began learning to adapt to a sighted world from a young age. At age 2, he began learning braille from an instructor who would come to his house and work with him on speech and mobility. He participated in a program at his elementary school that provided mobility specialists, occupational therapy and Teachers for the Visually Impaired.
Early on, he began speaking about his experience with vision loss because the rest of his family was sighted, including his little sister, as well as most of his friends.
“In elementary school, I would always hang out with my best friend who was sighted,” Charlie said. “We found things we could do together, and she always included me.”
Throughout elementary school and junior high, he always was willing to answer kids’ questions about his white cane and other experiences with vision loss. At 8th grade graduation, Charlie spoke in front of his entire school, which his principal confessed would make him nervous.
After graduating from middle school last summer, Charlie decided to try our CareersPLUS program, and he was hooked.
“I joined CareersPLUS because my mom thought it was a good idea to get to know people around my age who also had vision loss,” Charlie said. “I love getting to talk about life with my friends there, and I love the guest speakers and social nights.”
CareersPLUS is a comprehensive program that empowers teens and young adults with vision loss to explore career readiness, connect with mentors and engage with other youth their age who have vision loss through various social and learning activities.
What Charlie loves most about CareersPLUS is the opportunity to talk to other people his age and share experiences. Not one to shy away from fun, Charlie has participated in the group’s holiday party, played Alexa games, line danced and even competed in a pie eating contest. He also has brought his sense of humor to the group, winning an award for his British accent in a talent show.
This summer, Charlie plans to attend our CareersPLUS summer camp, a five-day immersive experience that includes opportunities to practice foundational blindness skills, from a hotel stay, light rail rides, college campus tour and shopping trips to cooking, karaoke, takeout and more.
With his love of music of all varieties – rap, country, R&B, indie pop and “old school” as he calls it – he also plans to continue learning to play piano this summer, even though it is challenging.
“It’s really hard to learn piano, especially with vision loss,” Charlie said. “Reading braille sheet music is hard, and even my Teacher for the Visually Impaired does not know how to read it.”
However, he has a leg up on other students with vision loss learning to play piano because he started learning braille so young – and Charlie is a big proponent of braille.
“It’s so important to learn braille because it’s the only way blind people can read,” Charlie said. “Text to speech isn’t reading – that’s someone reading to you.”
In fact, this year as a freshman in high school a charter school in Sacramento, Charlie had an internship with elementary school kids where he taught them what it is like to be blind, including how to read braille.
“At first, I was nervous, but they were really curious,” he said. “Some kids wanted to learn how to write their own names in braille, so we made a decoder message to use the braille alphabet.”
As he wraps up his freshman year, Charlie is hoping to begin an internship with our CareersPLUS program in the fall, using his voice to help create program curriculum. He also plans to continue attending the weekly Zoom meetings and other in-person activities.
Charlie said. “At CareersPLUS, I get to share my experiences and listen to other people’s experiences,” Charlie said. “I love meeting people and finding things in common to talk about – that’s my favorite part.”