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confident and learned to advocate for myself.
While in high school, I attended the Delaware Area Career Center half of the school day
during my junior and senior year. I specialized in
the Cisco Networking Academy; I also studied
computer programming and graphics design.
When I applied to the career center one of my
teachers said, "I'm not quite sure how to teach
you." I said, "We can figure it out." And we figured
it out quite well. I made friends in my class and
did everything that my sighted peers did. My
friends were [led] by my example. Blindness is
nothing to fear; I can do something if I find a way.
I worked with Cisco to help test a screen
reader accessible online course so others who
are blind can participate in Cisco online courses.
Most of our work was computer based, so I did
the same work, at the same time, in the same
way, as my peers.
I received five scholarships and pursued my first
degree at DeVry University. I was part of [an] accelerated program with a full course load. DeVry
had not had a blind student in over 10 years, so
any accommodation I received was because I
knew how to ask. Textbooks were difficult to obtain; we worked with many publishers and an inaccessible online textbook reader. I enjoyed the
new academic challenge college presented.
Other students weren't quite sure what to think of
me. Some took my example of "[it's] not a big
deal." Some seemed afraid of me; a few questioned my academic competency. A few times I
heard, "You did that? How? You can't see!" Most
