Commitment to Diversity
I have a disability. I'm legally blind. Because of this, I'm passionate about educating the world about disabilities, a topic with a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes. I've written multiple articles about blindness and disability in general, with the goal of dispelling misconceptions and making the world a more inclusive place for those with disabilities like myself.
The argument I make in this piece is another one I feel very strongly about. The idea that people with disabilities are inspirational whenever they accomplish anything is a common one, but I believe that notion is inadvertently demeaning.
This article is about universal design, which is the term for accessible design that ends up benefiting everybody. It's a much more research based article, originally starting out as an essay and getting altered slightly to be in a journalistic style.
In this piece about service dogs and the harm that creating fake ones causes, I interviewed my best friend, a fellow visually impaired person and future guide dog user. By combining research and personal insight from someone who understands it, I feel I made a compelling argument.
Many people think blind people can't play sports, but there are actually some sports designed specifically for people with visual impairments. This article gives an overview of the three most popular blind sports.
A Unique Experience Educating the Public
In December of 2022, I competed on a maker-based competition show called Make48. The episode I was on was at the Kansas State School for the Blind, and all the teams were made up of blind and visually impaired teenagers. Through that experience, I got connected with the communications team at Make48, and got a job writing a few articles for their blog. In this one, I talk about how to make Makerspaces accessible for any disability. My team won the KSSB competition and went on to compete at Nationals. We unfortunately didn't win the second time, but we were the only blind team competing against sighted people, so we got to represent people with disabilities. Having that representation, both through my articles and my appearance on the show, diversity.