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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link="#467886" vlink="#96607D" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b><span style='font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:#156082;mso-ligatures:none'>Seeing, hearing and touching the past: a new historical marker is an Ohio first<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b>The Ohio Newsroom<br>December 9, 2025</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><a name="_Hlk215729397">As a totally blind person, Dawn Christensen has spent a lifetime navigating spaces that aren’t easily accessible for the visually impaired.<o:p></o:p></a></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>For example, a nearby community college once invited her to survey their new braille signage shortly after the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“So I go in with my driver and I'm like, ‘Okay, just let me loose,’” she remembered. “I start feeling the walls and I'm not finding any braille signage. And [my driver] says, ‘Dawn, they have all the braille signage above the doors.’”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Naturally, she couldn’t reach – and therefore read – any of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>So when Christensen’s former employer, </span><a href="https://sightcentertoledo.org/" target="_blank"><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>the Sight Center of Northwest Ohio</span><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'></span></a><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>, decided to install a historical marker in honor of its century of service, they knew it needed to be more than the traditional paragraph of text.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“What's different about our historical marker is that it has both braille and audio options,” said Tim Tegge, the Sight Center’s executive director. “As far as we know, it's the only one in the state that has that level of accessibility.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><b>Making history more accessible<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>The Sight Center of Northwest Ohio exists to help people with vision loss live independently.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Its new historical marker greets visitors with a motion-sensored announcement: “For an accessible experience, press here to listen to a detailed audio description.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>That announcement is short, but critical, Christensen said, “because otherwise a blind person isn't even going to know it's there.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>But the audio is important for another reason, too: Only </span><a href="https://www.wsblind.org/blog/2022/1/19/6-facts-about-braille-for-braille-literacy-month" target="_blank"><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>about 10%</span><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'></span></a><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'> of people who are blind can read braille.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“A vast majority of people lose their vision later in life, and so taking on the task of learning braille is a challenge,” Christensen said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Not everyone who visits the Sight Center will use the historical marker’s accessible functions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Like Christensen, Betty Kasubski is totally blind. But when she’s visiting a historical place, she says she’s normally with someone else.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“Sometimes I know they're reading it, so they might as well read it to me,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Still, Christensen says it’s nice to have the option to learn about history on her own terms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“In my travels, there are all kinds of historical markers around this country and it's nice to know what they say,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><b>Harnessing new technology<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Accessing historical information is getting easier and easier with new technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Tegge, who’s legally blind, says he recently visited a WWII museum and used an app to convert text to speech.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“It was the first time where I got to wander the museum myself and listen to the description of this battle or that general at my pace,” he said. “And if I got bored in the middle of it, I could walk away. It was really a neat experience for me to have that kind of independence.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>He’s hoping that’s how visitors to the Sight Center feel when they can choose to read, touch or listen to the new historical marker.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>“Then every future marker maybe will consider an audio and a braille version,” Tegge said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'>Someday, he hopes, this historical marker won’t be an outlier, but the norm.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><hr size=2 width="100%" align=center></span></div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><b><span style='font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Aptos Display",sans-serif;color:#156082;mso-ligatures:none'>A unique app is changing the dating game for disabled and chronically ill people<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><b>WKYC<br>December 9, 2025</b></span><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><span style='mso-bookmark:_Hlk215729397'></span><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>NEW YORK(AP) — In her early 20s, Kaci LaFon lived in Branson, Missouri, a tourist town known for its older population. She wanted to date but found it a challenge, so — like many her age — she <a href="https://apnews.com/hub/dating">headed to the apps</a>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Over five years, she'd get a date here and there, but they <a href="https://apnews.com/article/dating-app-burnout-tinder-hinge-grindr-ae562b22f5b86a52f04b15c23d5a7181">always petered out</a>. “I tried and I failed,” she said. “There wasn't really much I could do about it.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>The issue, in her eyes? LaFon, now 28, is chronically ill. She has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, as well as a range of other health issues. Her matches had no idea how to navigate her challenges, or they had a god complex and wanted to treat her as an invalid. That, she said, was a hard no.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>That all changed when LaFon went on Dateability, an app designed for both disabled and chronically ill people. LaFon's mom spotted a news story about it and urged her to try it. Soon after joining, she found her forever person, Collin LaFon, who has cerebral palsy and endured a similar dating experience.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>They married in September.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“We all have the fairy tale of falling in love and meeting our person in our head,” said Collin LaFon from their home near Birmingham, Alabama. “But at the end of the day, I don’t have full function in all four of my limbs. There’s an extra piece that goes along with everything.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b>Dating while disabled made easier<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>What the LaFons describe is exactly why two sisters in Denver, Colorado, launched Dateability three years ago. One, 31-year-old Jacqueline Child, had become disabled due to Ehlers-Danlos, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and a plethora of other conditions that impact her health from head to toe. She must use a feeding tube to stay alive.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Child recalls months of being ghosted or rejected on <a href="https://apnews.com/article/online-dating-valentines-day-pew-study-romance-27e84e1e14fbe092cb9ff69e41a47ffc">mainstream dating apps</a>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“Any mention of disability was completely negative,” she said. “They wouldn’t even give it a chance, had no idea what my life looked like, but they just assumed it would be miserable.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>She and her older sibling, Alexa Child, now have about 40,000 registered users and recently updated Dateability to improve the look and functionality. They've expanded their user base to include Canada, Mexico and the U.K.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“I just wanted an equal playing field of people that I would be interested in, and that other young people would be interested in, too,” Jacqueline said.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b>Millions of people report disabilities<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>More than 70 million U.S. adults, or one in four, reported having a disability in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's the year the Child sisters founded Dateability.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>They had 1,000 people sign up in the first month. Their user base has increased 10-fold in the last year, the founders said.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>The service has both free and paid options. Among the differences in tiers: Users who don't pay must like or pass on a profile before seeing another. Paid users can see all profiles that have sent them a “like” at once.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Dateability also welcomes nondisabled users, screening as best it can to avoid those who fetishize chronically ill or disabled people. The sisters have found that most nondisabled people using it have some connection to the disability or chronically ill communities through a loved one or their own advocacy work.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“We wanted to make it truly inclusive,” Alexa said.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b>Finding long-term partners online<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>In Pikesville, Maryland, 23-year-old Sophie Brisker found her boyfriend on Dateability. She joined the app in 2022 after developing debilitating symptoms just before her 18th birthday from chronic fatigue syndrome and other long-term conditions. She has been housebound for months at a time, attending college online, and uses a wheelchair for long distances.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“It's really exhausting trying to explain to someone all of your limitations and the illnesses you have,” Brisker said. At the time, she was looking for companionship, unsure whether a romantic relationship was doable.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“Knowing that someone would be OK with not necessarily doing many of the things that most normal couples do was important to me,” she said.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Her partner suffers from long COVID-19 and other chronic illnesses. Now, the two plan to move together to Louisville, Kentucky. “We hit it off on everything,” Brisker said. “We understood each other in ways that other people just couldn’t.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Matthew Shapiro, 34, is a disability advocate in Richmond, Virginia. He works with businesses, organizations, state lawmakers and others who want to learn how to be more inclusive. He was born with cerebral palsy and uses a power chair to get around.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Shapiro has dabbled in online dating on the mainstream apps and another service for the disabled.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“People’s intentions on those apps weren’t always pure,” Shapiro said. “I was looking for a space where it felt like community.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>He's had relationships over the years with people he's met online and in person, including a relationship with a nondisabled woman who questioned her ability to cope with Shapiro's personal care needs.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>It was a woman he met on Dateability that changed his life. The older mom of two was born without fingers on her left hand and didn't flinch at his challenges. The two have shifted to be close friends after several months of dating.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>“It was the first time I ever felt fully seen and accepted and sort of loved in a relationship,” Shapiro said. “With traditional apps, you sort of have to hope that people are cool with who you are, but with Dateability, it’s all right there.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'><b>App leads to friendlier dates for disabled<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>In addition to stigma and misconceptions about their abilities and challenges, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities face other obstacles in dating.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Not all social venues like bars and restaurants are fully accessible. That could mean no ramps, poor lighting or a noisy environment. Online, some dating apps have limited assistive technology, such as sign language support or screen reader compliance with common software for the visually impaired.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>Opening up about their personal needs can also be daunting, Shapiro said. Some have given up on dating altogether, or never tried.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>“People with disabilities deserve love and deserve relationships, just like anyone else,” he said. “Love without worry. Love without hesitation and question. There are a lot of people with disabilities who don’t know what that feels like.<span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>///<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'> Suzanne M. Hartfield Turner</span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>National Federation of the Blind of Ohio, Vice President<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Ohio Legislative Director<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>Cleveland Chapter, President<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:24.0pt'><span style='font-size:14.0pt'>The National Federation of the Blind advances the lives of its members and all blind people in the United States. We know that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. Our collective power, determination, and diversity achieve the aspirations of all blind people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:18.0pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>P: (216) 990-6199<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif'>W: NFBOhio.ORG<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal>Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ohiosblind/photos/"><span style='color:#0563C1'>https://www.facebook.com/ohiosblind/photos/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>