Podcast: Serving those with vision impairments
When he was commissioner of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, Joseph F. Bruno said he would take a new hire, point out the window and say, “See all those people walking around out there? Those are your clients.”
“I feel it’s the same way with our people,” he said of the individuals who are visually impaired, blind or deaf blind, that he now serves as president and chief executive officer of Helen Keller Services. In a recently taped podcast, Bruno told us the common mission to serve people, and familiarity with managing a similarly sized staff, helped him feel comfortable about making the leap from OEM to this national nonprofit headquartered in New York. He’s even taking advantage of his former connections at the Department of Transportation to advocate for making the transit system more accessible for the visually impaired. What he’s had to combat is the perception that individuals with visible impairments are “being taken care of.” Bruno cautioned that though family members do often step in to meet the additional needs that arise, they often can’t give these individuals the skills that Helen Keller Services can – skills that address their particular challenges and prepare them to live and work independently.
It takes staff to teach those skills. And unfortunately in New York they are in short supply due in part to their inability to obtain licenses. The number of New Yorkers and Americans suffering from visual impairments is expected to grow dramatically over the next few years, especially among African-American, Latino and Asian populations where such impairments are more prevalent, explains our guest for the second half of the podcast, Nancy Miller, executive director and CEO of New York’s VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Miller digs into some of the infrastructure challenges to serving this community, including the fact that rehabilitative services for people with vision loss are not generally supported by Medicare or Medicaid. She also talks about advocacy efforts by the New York Vision Rehabilitation Association which has been working for 20 years to get licensure for orientational mobility and vision rehabilitation specialists. Miller shares her hope that if family members, consumers and advocates stand together, “maybe 21 will be the magic number.”
New York Nonprofit Media regularly interviews nonprofit leaders to discuss their professional experience, lessons learned, perspectives on the industry and more. To recommend a candidate, contact Dan Rosenblum.
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