[nfbwatlk] Sunday Profile: Lack of sight hasn't stopped Josh Bowen, The Statesman Journal, December 15 2013

[Nightingale, Noel]

Link:
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20131215/NEWS/312150020/

Text:
Sunday Profile: Lack of sight hasn't stopped Josh Bowen
December 15, 2013
Photo: Keizer resident Josh Bowen uses FaceTime on his iPhone to talk with his girlfriend, who lives in Georgia, on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Bowen and his girlfriend are both blind and use programs on the iPhone that are designed for blind users. / DANIELLE PETERSON / Statesman Journal
Written by Joce DeWitt
Statesman Journal

Family: Parents Eric and Christine Bowen; brothers Aaron, 16, and Hunter 10; and sister Danielle, 14
Place of birth: Phoenix, Ariz.
High School: Cascade High School, class of 2003
Education: Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer Degree, Chemeketa Community College
Favorite food: Pizza
Music: Country
Favorite book: "Twilight"

Josh Bowen and his grandmother Gail Isaac were at Jack in the Box last week when it happened again.

The employee took Isaac's order and, after taking a look at Josh, turned back to his grandmother and said, "What does he want?"

For most of us, these types of interactions stopped after we hit our teens, but for 30-year-old Josh, they've continued well into his adult years.

It's among a list of things people tend to do when they notice he is blind.

"They will not address me directly," he said. "You get it all the time."

Born prematurely in Phoenix, Ariz., Josh suffered from retinopathy of prematurity, or abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina.

Although he wasn't born blind, he has known nothing else his entire life. A graduate of Chemeketa Community College, Josh works as a private contractor teaching blind individuals how to use mobile technology to their advantage, is in a committed long-distance relationship and spends a lot of time with friends and family in the area. Despite that he still has frustrations while interacting with the sighted world.

As he describes it, his upbringing was "fully mainstreamed."

After moving from Arizona to Oregon, Josh's family settled in the Turner area, where he attended Cascade High School. Although being blind in a school full of sighted students presented its challenges, Josh participated in many of the same extracurricular activities, including wrestling, cross country and choir.

The greatest challenge in high school, he said, wasn't being blind.

"What I mostly had to overcome were people's misconceptions and perceptions of the blind. There are a whole lot of misconceptions," he said.

Among those misconceptions, he said, is that blind people are helpless and can't do anything on their own. Often times people assume he needs help when he does not.

Isaac said she notices some people raise their voice when they speak to Josh, assuming that he cannot hear well.

"They talk louder to blind people like they're also deaf," she said. "I think it's lack of education and lack of participation in the life of someone who is blind."

When a restaurant server asks her what Josh wants to order, she simply stays quiet until they ask him.

Josh comes from a home where his parents and grandparents intentionally treated him the same as his three sighted siblings. He learned to deal with the misconceptions at an early age, as well as developed the same skills as his peers.

"He learned to ride a bike just like everyone else," Isaac said.

But there are certain things that he can't do the same as a sighted person. For the blind, most challenges fall under two categories: transportation and communication, said Dacia Johnson, executive director of Oregon Commission for the Blind.

Josh's biggest complaint as a blind person in Salem is public transportation. He finds the newer routes inconvenient, and the fact that they don't run on weekends makes it difficult for him to go anywhere.

According to Johnson, people who are blind are forced to learn certain skills, like consistent use of public transportation, that many sighted people never need to. Most things sighted people do must be done differently by those who are blind, she said, including picking matching socks in the morning and accessing emails at work.

Most of the people who use services of the Commission for the Blind lost their vision somewhere along the way. Others, like Josh, who have been without sight all their lives, sometimes come for retraining of certain skills, like how to use the white cane and how to orient themselves according to traffic while walking on busy streets.

"Typically if you have someone who is born without vision, they have developed skills through the school system, they've had a series of instruction in terms of these adaptive techniques," Johnson said.

Another skill that is taught by the organization is general awareness of surroundings to injury or crime.

Although there are times when it can't be helped.

In August, Josh fell victim to a crime that, had it happened to someone with sight, would have been an inconvenience. But for him, it threatened his means of mobility and communication.

He was standing at a Keizer bus stop holding his cane in an upright position and listening to a news story on his iPhone when a passer-by snatched the device out of his hand. The suspect ran off before anyone was able to identify him.

Without the phone, Josh was unreachable and had no way of navigating the city without help.

Josh filed a report with the Keizer Police Department and spent about $650 to replace his phone. After the media picked up his story, offers to help and even replace the phone poured in.

Police never identified a suspect and there has not been a conclusion to the case, but Josh has moved on and uses his iPhone more than ever.

Programs designed for blind users have come extremely far in just the past few years, he said, including the iPhone's voice-over feature, Blindsquare and TapTapSee, a camera app that audibly informs users of the contents of a photo. While in the past, there were entire devices devoted to navigation and note-taking, the iPhone has apps for basically everything he needs.

"There was one device for one purpose, and it would cost hundreds," he said. "What is missing I think is peoples' awareness of what this technology is capable of."

The iPhone also plays an enormous role in Josh's relationship with his girlfriend, Kim Castro, 30, who lives in Peachtree City, Ga. The two have been dating for more than a year and talk on the phone almost nightly.

They call their meeting serendipitous, although Josh has his grandmother to thank for approaching Castro at a swap meet in California.

When Isaac saw Castro, who she described as "darling and so cute and someone you would notice," she began asking her questions about how she became blind. Turns out Castro also was born prematurely and is blind for the same reason as Josh.

"I said, 'Why don't you give me your phone number?' (Josh) called her right away and I guess they talked for three hours the first time," Isaac said.

While Kim thought at first that maybe they would become great friends, Josh called it "love at first listen."
They bonded over several things immediately: music, books and movies.

"He's the first guy I met who doesn't cringe at the following words: 'I love Twilight,' " Kim joked.

They also bonded over being "mainstreamed" throughout their upbringing, which, if you ask Josh, presented a host of benefits:

"Social skills, the ability to deal with diversity and the realization that not everyone is like you."

jdewitt at StatesmanJournal.com<mailto:jdewitt at StatesmanJournal.com> or (503) 399-6714