AFB Possibilities Podcast, Episode 8: Unseen Horizons

Episode Show Notes

Six west Virginians who are blind and low vision share their stories.

This past year, producer and host of AFB Possibilities Tony Stephens traveled to west Virginia to capture the stories of six individuals who are blind or have low vision. Traveling by train from the East Coast, he experienced first hand the states beauty and ruggedness as they crawled through the Appalachian Mountains before settling on the banks of the Ohio River. What he discovered was a strong spirit of independence standing on the shoulders of communities that strive to take care of one-another. The same values that made these mountain towns thrive in the early days of our nation's founding remain just as strong today in the stories of these six individuals: Heather, Lee, Earl, Asher, John and Aaron.

The stories were featured in the 2025 documentary short film Unseen Horizons, which is available to watch on YouTube.

A production of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), the documentary film was made possible through the generous support of the Teubert Foundation.

Produced and edited by Tony Stephens at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland with digital media support from Kelly Gasque and Breanna Kerr.

Theme music for this episode is "As Far As the Eye Can See" by Tristan Barton licensed through ArtList.IO.

Visit the podcast page on our website and consider making a gift today to support our work creating a world of endless possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision.

AFB Possibilities Podcast, Episode 8 Transcript

Intro: AFB

Tony Stephens: Welcome to AFB Possibilities, a podcast from the American foundation for the Blind. I'm Tony Stevens. In today's episode, we get a chance to hear from six unique voices from West Virginia as we share Unseen Horizons, a documentary short produced by the American foundation for the Blind. First, we head out to Heritage Farms outside of Huntington, where we meet up with Heather McComas, a small business owner and artist in residence who teaches basket weaving. We then head down to Charleston, where we connect with Lee Huffman from the American Printing House for the Blind. Then it's back up to Huntington to connect with Earl Parsons, who shares his passion for Braille. And then Marshall University freshman Asher Eaves, who reminds us how history can help guide our future. It's then back south down to Charleston, where we connect with John Cottrell and who teaches us how someone with low vision can drive a car. And last but not least, we connect with AFB's own Aaron Preece. These interviews are all featured in Unseen Horizons, a documentary short from the American foundation for the Blind. Check it out on our YouTube channel. Be sure to like and subscribe. But for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy Unseen Horizons.

Heather McComas: I meet so many people. I can't do that is what I hear sometimes. And I always tell them, I believe that you can if you have the patience and the determination to do it.

Earl Parsons: If I had a magic wand, I would help others who are sighted to understand we are not burdens just because we have a disability.

Lee Huffman: Everybody. And people don't even think about it. You are one accident, one diagnosis, one injury away from a visual impairment.

Asher Eaves: No matter how low things get, you can bring yourself up and you can leave a legacy.

John Cottrell: Technology is the key, I think, for people like me and those that are like people.

Aaron Preece: Working together to help each other is a big part of the culture here.

Heather McComas: My name is Heather McComas. I am from here in Huntington, West Virginia. I was born. I guess I was born with it, but it wasn't found until I was three months old. Retina blastoma cancer. And when I was three months old, it was found. So I wasn't able to see out of my left eye or right eye. Sorry. They removed it because the tumor was right on the optic nerve. But the tumor in the left eye was probably about the size of the tip of your pinky, I think. And my mom wanted them to try to save it, and they ended up giving me too much radiation. So by the time I was 12, you know, between that time and, you know, 12 years old, I could see, you know, I could see Light I could see, you know, my family. But I had to be kind of close and to watch TV I had to kind of be on top of the tv. And that made my sister and brother not so happy. When I was about 12, it was one day I could see, the next day I couldn't. So it was like the lights went out and never came back on.

I have in my hand a basket, a square basket that is about three and a half inches square. It has five spokes going horizontally, five spokes going vertically and the horizontal spokes. There is a spoke in the middle that has, that is longer than the other ones. And it's because I will eventually make it into a handle. But in 99 my sister and mom wanted to do a girls night and my sister's mother in law was teaching basket classes and so I was excited to have the time with my mom and sister. I honestly didn't think I could do a basket. It was one of those things. I was like, it's a sighted thing, I can't do it. But I proved myself and others wrong. I didn't have accessible tape measures back then and the patterns were not accessible for me either. But with verbal instruction and a little bit of sighted help measuring, we did a round basket and I was the first one done. It just started from there. It's like a duck to water. I've been able to teach it at Cabell-Wayne Association of the Blind and I've also been able to teach it out here at the farm and to sighted people, the Cabell-Wayne Association of the Blind. I teach it to other blind and visually impaired and it's so rewarding to hear them be so proud of their self that they were able to do something like I can and then out here to teach it to sighted person. Coming from a blind person's perspective, it's kind of rewarding to be able to teach them and for them to see what it's like from my point of view and you know, but then you know to hear their, how proud they are that they did their basket as well.

Lee Huffman: So this is the Jupiter. This is a product from the American Printing House for the Blind and it is pretty much at the moment our flagship low vision product. It is a portable foldable. This folds completely down, weighs about eight pounds and it is for people who have low vision. One of the things I like specifically about the Jupiter is that this is completely adjustable to where you would handwrite in a normal viewing pattern. Many of the CCTVs have a fixed screen that you have to look here, but hand write here, and that's very awkward to have to learn to do. So. This can be placed in the exact hand position that you would use to write. My name is Lee Huffman, and I'm from Charleston, West Virginia. I was actually grew up in South Charleston, which is across the river from Charleston. I was diagnosed with stars guard. I have stars guard, which is a juvenile form of macular degeneration. It is something that condition where the symptoms appear for older folks, usually who lose central vision. That can happen in folks who are younger as well. And I started really noticing a difference in my vision or I guess a loss of vision when I was probably in the second grade. So early elementary school was when I first noticed that, or it was noticed for me that I had some problems with my vision. The other kids knew that I was not good at sports because we would go out for gym class, we would play ball, dodgeball, T ball, something like that. I was not good at catching the ball because I couldn't really see the ball well. And so I was always picked last for sports. And so every day when you knew we lined up and they picked a couple captains and they said, everybody, pick up your team members. I knew that I would get picked last because it happened every single time. And it wasn't because I wasn't athletic enough. I just couldn't see to catch the ball. I think stigma right now, even, no matter how much accessibility you have, I see that with kids today. There is bullying that goes on in schools, mostly elementary and middle schools. I would say, hopefully by high school, you're a little bit better with that. But there's bullying that goes on probably 13, 14, 15 years old. There's a lot of that. And unfortunately, I don't believe from what I have seen working with students in West Virginia, a lot of times teachers might not be doing anything about it because they don't know how to address it, because they don't want to get involved for whatever the reason may be. But that's happening. And so what happens along with that is students don't want to stand out because of fear of being bullied. And so they resist oftentimes using a white cane or using a piece of technology, whether that be a braille display or a video magnifier, whatever that is for that particular student, they avoid using it. And what they see as a piece of stigma, the technology being a stigma to them, I see as a key to the future. Because when you master the use of assistive technology, there's nothing you can't do. And the earlier you begin adopting it and perfecting your technique with using it, the better off you're going to be. The younger you are when you're good at it, when you're 10 years down the road in college or in a professional job, you'll be super, you know, just. I don't even know the word to use. But the longer you have to use the product, the better you get, the better you can be with whatever you're doing.

I'll tell you. When I first began working in a career type of position, I would begin being a teacher or an instructor at an associate degree school in Charleston. And nobody knew I had low vision. I faked that for years and was able to get by with nobody really knowing. And at one point, I lost my job with the school. And I thought, well, what am I going to do now? Because I was afraid that, who's going to hire me when you have this condition? And so I beefed up my resume. I found some jobs. Back then, you looked in the newspaper for a job, and I found a couple of jobs. And I remember thinking, what am I going to do when I go into this interview? So what I did is I said, okay, I'm going to be prepared and just let them know right off the bat. And there's all different types of theories about how should you disclose in an interview. And we're not going to get into that. But I went in and I took a picture, a video magnifier, and I gave it to the interviewer and said, I have low vision and this is what I use to do my work. And she said, you didn't have to tell me that. I said, well, maybe not legally, but I think that I owe you that as a potential employer. I didn't get those a couple of jobs, even though I did that. And I thought this is going to be more difficult than I thought because of the expectations that the general population have about the capabilities of people who are blind, who have low vision, are not at all what is in reality what we're capable of doing with the appropriate technology and accommodation. There's really, maybe not brain surgeon, maybe not airline pilot, but there's really not a lot that we can't do. West Virginia is literally the third most forested state in the nation. So we have a lot of rural areas. And so a lot of times there is no expectation that when you're little, as a child with a diagnosis, for them to excel in school, for them to graduate, sometimes for them to go to college or to trade school, or even to get a job after they graduate from school. There's no expectation for the student to be independent, to have their own job, their own bank account, their own money, their own life. And so if you live two miles out a two lane road in rural Pocahontas County, West Virginia, you have no bus, you have no paratransit, you have no Uber Lyft or taxi. And if you don't have someone to do basically everything for you as far as transportation goes, you are stuck. And so what I advise people to do, especially young people, is literally and figuratively to get out of the woods. Because if you can't get to a store or get to a school or a job or a bank or a post office or whatever it is that you need to, to build your life, you are stuck and totally dependent upon somebody else to provide everything for you. And for me, I think that maybe was the thing that pushed me a lot because that was the one thing that I knew I was not going to be, was totally dependent on somebody else for anything.

Earl Parsons: My name is Earl Parsons and I am from Huntington, West Virginia, and I grew up in a little unincorporated town called Ona, which is about 20 to 30 minutes from here, and both towns are in Cowbell County. I was born legally blind, so I just knew about it my whole life. Basically. I can't read anything very far away, and even if it's near me, I can't read for long periods of time without getting eyestrain. I realized I needed to learn braille around the time I was in college, and I tried learning it during my college time, but I was taking 15 credit hours because my financial aid required that. And I'm like, yeah, this is really tough. I'm gonna have to just. And I didn't like doing it, but I had to put braille on the back burner. And I finally was able to learn Braille this past year, and I'm glad I did. If I had it to do over again, I would have learned it when I was a child, because I think that would have helped me out more. So with note taking, slate and styles, I think it has basically the blinds version of handwriting. And it's a bit more complicated than pencil and paper because you not only need paper, you need a slate and stylus. And the slate basically helps you keep your cells in line. And the stylus will poke the dots through or emboss them. Braille is important because it opens a new world of literacy and for a lot of people, Braille is their one option, especially if they're deaf blind, then audio is not an option. Currently, I am writing my name in braille. And because this is grade 2 braille, or contracted braille we are working in, instead of writing E A, R, l, there is actually a contraction for ar. So I will write E the contraction ar, and then I will write the L same when we get to my last name, Parsons. So I have. So that's really cool when you think about it. That and my name in particular. You have the same contraction in both names. That's pretty cool.

Asher Eaves: My name is Asher Eaves. I go to Marshall University. I'm from Charleston, West Virginia, and I'm going into the history major and hopefully going into law. I usually consider myself to be visually impaired, and my impairment is aniridia, which is the short term for it is losing your iris. And so I don't really have anything to block out light. I don't have peripheral vision. Sometimes depending, like, if I'm going down a staircase looking to the side, I can't see details, I can't read small print. But everything else I can pretty much do like any other individual. For me, one of the hardest parts growing up in school was having people kind of shut you down, having everyone tell you, you can't do it. You're not gonna be able to make it to college, you're not gonna be able to make it through work because you can't see like everyone else. And, well, I can go do everything like everybody else can. I think one thing that kind of inspired it was kind of the fight. I want to fight for everyone's rights, like, you know, African Americans, lgbtq, blind people, people with disabilities, like, things like that. I've always wanted to, as a kid, wanted to help people handle those things. I want to fight for the people of our country in a way, since I can't do it through military, which I would love to do, but I can't due to being blind. I wanted to find another way that I could fight for them. And the law was the closest thing to fighting. I feel like my self-advocacy came from personal experiences of being told that I can't do it. But I know one big part is kind of looking at history and, you know, specific historical figures and finding out that they went through probably even worse than what we've been through. And being able to see them kind of grow from it was like, I can do it too. I can grow, I can become something. I can show individuals that blind people aren't what people say they are.

The person who inspired me was Alexander Hamilton. Because of his past, it was pretty bad. And being able to see him kind of overcome that past kind of showed me like no matter how low things get, you can bring yourself up and you can leave a legacy. I feel like one of the things that mistake blind people is we can't get through. We can't get through a job because we can't see it. And obviously there are a lot of blind individuals who have done jobs like for example, a doctor. A lot of people think, well, you can't be a doctor because you can't see what you're doing. But you don't have to see to be a doctor. You can be a doctor and still use your hands, still use technology, still use all these other devices that blind individuals use to get through being a doctor. No matter how many times you've been told, don't do it, keep going, keep trying and you will fall. You will a lot. You will make mistakes, you will have many people say you can't do it. And that will continue. But you have to look past that and keep fighting and fight for your own freedom, not anybody else's. Yours. Because everybody deserves their own freedom and rights.

John Cottrell: My name is John Cottrell and I live in Charleston, West Virginia. I'm lifelong resident. I'm 72 years old, have a variety of professional background. I've been a state government employee, I've managed non profit grants that always seem like they assisted people at losing their jobs. And I'm currently a life and a certified life and transition coach. I suffer from opticular albinism and I can't see real far away. My eyes are light sensitive because I don't have any pigment in my skin or behind my eye. And it's just like a camera lens getting too much light in it that plum eyes are light sensitive. I suffer from a stigmatism in my eyes as well as a nystagmus, which is the jerking motion of back and forth. And it's like I say, it's lifelong. I. People that know me think I see worse than I do. And people who don't know me don't think anything's wrong with me. Sometimes over the years, I faked it. I faked seeing. You see that over there? Yeah, I see that. Just so I wouldn't draw any attention to myself in school, all the way through school, from grade school up to when I graduated, actually sometimes in college, had trouble seeing the board. I had to sit up front Sometimes I had to move my desk up by the teacher's desk. Sometimes even at that point I had to get up and actually go and see what it was that I was supposed to be copying off, off the board challenges. Being able to play normal ball, baseball and stuff that all the other kids were doing. An attempt to, to, to keep up just for the simple fact that I was stubborn and I wanted to be as normal as what normal could be for somebody like me. Teenage years was a drag because. Nobody wanted to date a boy that they had to go pick up that type of thing. So I didn't really develop any real sincere relationships until after I graduated from high school and got in college and actually met other grownups that were somewhat understanding of my situation. The driving, not only as a kid, that's something that affected my life all the way through, way into my adult years. Because there were jobs when I was state government, there were jobs that I wanted to do and could do, but the driving interfered early on in state government I was fortunate enough to have a supervisor he understood and he would assign me driver someone to take me around the state. And whenever I had to go without, the task force obtained my driver's license. When I was 61 years old, and I'm so about 10, 12 years now, I went through a special program through the division of rehabilitation where it was 90 hours. It was a 90 hour program. And even if I'd never got my license, this one thing I came away with that everyone on the road shouldn't be there. I went through a 30 hour classroom training, 30 hour passenger and car program where I was being driven around and I'd have to identify what I saw to my instructor. We would set at intersections, I'd have to describe what was going on and so forth. And then, there was a actual three-hours behind the wheel. So, it was a 90-hour program.

[Interviewer] That was using a special optical aid. Yes, I have a special optical aid. It is called either a beta or a bioptic. It is a, an adjustable telescope that fits in the carrier lens on my right eye and it brings me down from 2100 to 2060, 2050. And it's used primarily for distance on open interstate or open road. It's something I don't, I don't drive through. If it's something. If, if I had gone through this program, when I say when I was in my 20s or 30s, life would have been so. It would open me up for so much more than what I have now. Right now I kind of do what's called survival driving. You might Say I, I go to the store, you know, just around the, around the house there, but still. Yet I'm, I'm, I'm driving and I'm pleased. But it's something that will help rural West Virginia. Like we were discussing earlier about being out in the, in the country with, with no public transportation. It will, it'll help kids that, to succeed successfully in their later years. It's kind of hard to, kind of hard to explain. Like I say, it goes back to that point where people thought I was blind and other people didn't think anything else in the world wrong with me. But most people for some reason had the idea that I was legally blind and. Which is a misconception. And low vision wasn't. Low vision wasn't buzzwords until the last several years. As an individual, we need to own our condition. No, I don't see well. Can you help me? They need. We need to accept our condition and not to be afraid to, to ask for help and explore the new technology. Technology today. If I had today's technology when I was growing up, it's hard to tell what I could be today. The same way with the driving is something that I'm, like Jimmy Buffett said, I'm a 100 years too late, you know, where I was born, 100 years too early or whatever. But today's technology is the key. I think for people like me and those that are blind, it's just, it's everything for one. We have to kind of know who we are and make peace with our condition and try to make the best of a bad situation by pursuing a goal that might be out of reach. You might not, you might not achieve that goal. But who, who knows what could be stumbled into along the way that is that exact fit for that individual's personality is what I think. Accepting, not asking, not being afraid of asking for help and being tenacious.

Aaron Preece: I am Aaron Preece. I have lived my entire life here in Huntington, West Virginia. Was born here. I was born visually impaired or low vision, technically. And I was diagnosed before I had memories. So from whenever I have memories around two or three years old, I knew I was blind essentially. And I would say blindness is on a spectrum versus like a black and white. You're blind or you're not. And you go anything from mild low vision to complete blindness. I was technically, it started out technically, low vision, maybe 2800, something like that. I could read the first few lines of the, the eye chart, but not much more than that. So it's fairly severe low Vision, but enough that I could as a little kid. I could see well enough to run around my backyard, to watch TV and to see colors and see my toys as a kid and that sort of thing. I was very fortunate as a child that even though I was blind and I learned blindness techniques, I was always expected to achieve things. I would say the biggest example of that was I joined Boy Scouts whenever in Cub Scouts, in kindergarten, first grade, something like that, and went all the way through and became an Eagle Scout before I graduated high school. And the fact that my scout leader and the people in Scouting just assumed I could do anything anybody else could. I was. I did. I got the archery badge and learned how to chop firewood with an axe. There's a backpacking program called Philmont that's down in New Mexico through the Boy Scouts. Pretty intense multi week backpacking in the mountains. And I was very heavily encouraged to take part in that program. That's just one example. But by having that type of expectation that I would do things helped me expect more of myself and believe in myself. Whenever I first learned of guide dogs, of course everybody I, like anybody else, was fascinated with guide dogs and loved the idea of having a dog with you all the time and always wanted to pet people's guide dogs and that sort of thing. I got Dunsmuir here and I've had her since December of 2019. So we actually went into Covid together, into Covid quarantine together. And I've been very thankful that her training survived a Covid quarantine. So it's again a very personal choice for most people or everybody. And it's a very subjective choice, I would say. I like the kind of bike ride like feeling that I get from working with a guide dog. It's a very fluid fast. Both of my dogs have been especially Dunsmere super fast. And I trust them more than I trusted my own cane skills. So I'm able. I like being able to travel quickly and so fluidly and just dodge around things.

As a guide dog user, you have the right to bring your dog in public places, on planes, in cabs and on in Ubers and that sort of thing. A lot of people don't know that. I'm currently the editor in chief of AFB's Axis World Technology magazine. It's an online magazine that covers the intersection of blindness and technology. And we've been publishing it since 2000. When it comes to technology, it really is what allows you, especially if you're the more severe vision loss you have. It massively allows you to do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. I'm thinking specifically I spend a lot of time online, so thinking of inaccessible websites and apps and anything digital or otherwise, I think that's going to continue. The biggest problem facing people that are blind and I don't think is going to go away anytime soon, is the sort of lack of knowledge and accommodation provided by society at large. I think that again, AI, because of its ability to recognize and essentially to serve as like the person looking over your shoulder in a lot of cases will. Will serve as a stopgap measure to let you do things that you otherwise couldn't or that otherwise would be inaccessible. There are massive things that you cannot do unless you use technology. And so it is going to majorly enrich your life to learn to use technology and also find what works best for you. I mentioned that I'm. Even though I'm low vision, I use speech, braille, that sort of thing. So find what works best for you and learn it as best as you can. Because it cannot be overstated what a massive benefit is to your life and the independence it can give you that you wouldn't otherwise have without the assistance of others. Even if your life hasn't been crafted to be accessible, consider trying to change that, even if it's difficult. Because if you've lost vision suddenly, then your. Your world is not going to be set up to benefit you and by maybe going out of your comfort zone and not everybody can do this and it might not be a good idea for everyone. But consider if you live out in the country, West Virginia is incredibly rural state. Huntington has like 46,000, 50,000 people and it's the second largest city in the state. So much of our state is very rural, especially when transportation is such an just being able to get where you want to go and be able to live your life. Seriously. Consider moving to and it doesn't have to be a big city like Huntington, but consider checking out if you can, the cities around you, even if they're small. And consider moving into town so that you can walk where you need to go and get to where you need to be and to be able to experience life to the fullest. And I think even though that might be uncomfortable or scary potentially, I think if you are new to vision loss, it's definitely something to keep in mind. And again, it might not be the best choice for everyone, but it definitely should be something you consider.

Tony Stephens: Thanks for listening to AFB Possibilities, a podcast from the American Foundation for the Blind. AFB Possibilities is produced and edited at the Pickle Factory in Baltimore, Maryland by Tony Stevens. Additional digital media support from Kelly Gask and Brianna Kerr. The theme music for today's episode is as Far as the Eye Can See by Tristan Barton. Compliments of Artlist.io. Interested in supporting the work at the American Foundation for the Blind, visit us online at afb.org. Your contribution can help us create a world of endless possibilities for people who are blind or have low vision.

Outro: AFB