Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the Heard & Empowered podcast presented by National Industries for the blind. We’re on a mission to empower people who are blind, low vision, or visually impaired to build fulfilling careers, gain personal independence, and take the next step toward achieving their own American dream. Guests from all walks of life share their journeys and how they overcame challenges they faced along the way. Whatever your interests, experience, talents, or career goals, listen to discover important connections and unlock the resources and inspiration you need to chart a new path. Ready to be heard and empowered?

Dean Thompson: 00:35

Joining us today is Charles Ansley. And Charles, thanks so much for being here and welcome to Heard & Empowered. How are you doing?

Charles Ansley: 00:41

I’m doing great. And for me it’s a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Dean Thompson: 00:45

Let’s start at the very beginning, as far as we’re concerned. When did you and how did you lose your vision, if you choose to share that with us?

Charles Ansley: 00:55

Actually, I can tell you the exact day. It was July 3rd of 2019. I woke up that morning and everything looked foggy, hazy, and I was like, hmm, interesting. So. Right. So the day went on a little bit. So around about noon, I noticed that it hadn’t gone away. So, at the time my son was 15 and so I was talking to my mom, I’m like, I think I need to go to the ER to find out what’s going on with my eyes. So when I get to the ER, you know, come to find out, my blood pressure was through the roof.

And I’m sure a lot of that was fear and anxiety. Yeah. But as you know, they took me back to the ER. I stayed in the hospital for, I don’t know, several, several days, but as I – when I was in the hospital, it began to clear up, just, you know, it began to clear up a little. So they had an ophthalmologist to come in and see what was going on.

And the only thing she said to me at that time was, when you get out, go see a retinopathy, you know, retinopathy, retinopathy. I can’t say it, but yeah.

Dean Thompson: 02:28

Retinitis doctor, we all have one. Yes. Go on.

Charles Ansley: 02:30

Right. So, at that time I didn’t have any insurance. So I was waiting for my insurance to kick in. So by that time, when I went to see the eye doctor, my – How can I say this? – So my pressure was up. My pressure was very, very high. So when I was in the hospital, what they told me, and when I finally went to the eye doctor, they told me that I had what you call a stroke behind the eyes, and glaucoma. So that’s really what caused, I guess, because of the stress of life from being a single father, caused my blood pressure to go up, which caused the pressure to build up in my eyes, and caused the strokes behind my eyes. So it’s been just about six years, July will be six years for me.

Dean Thompson: 03:28

I’ve always thought that one of the great advantages I’ve had was losing my eyesight when I was a kid. Which sounds strange. I had I had all my teenage years to, and college get used to it, you know, and you just hit you in the middle of your life. That’s got to be the toughest way to, to have sight loss as far as I’m concerned. My heart goes out to you.

Charles Ansley: 03:44

Definitely. Oh, yes. Especially with a 15-year-old son at the time.

Dean Thompson: 03:48

I can’t imagine that. Don’t have kids. I can’t imagine that, let alone dealing with an infirmity. So you, so you fell in love with IT. What part of it brought you to it back 10, 15 years before you had your eyesight issue?

Charles Ansley: 04:01

Ooh. So back in, I would say 2000 is when I began my journey. I had moved from Augusta, Georgia, to Atlanta and worked at the airport for a catering company. And at that time I was like, you know, there I, you know, I need to do something. So I began to look through the, at that time, the newspaper,  trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Stumbled on the section where it started, you know, about IT. And just all the, you know, all the pages and pages and pages of IT positions. So I started going to school back in 2000, and that was my bug. And ever since then I’ve loved IT.

Dean Thompson: 04:49  

That’s a great career to have going forward. Is that your goal now as well, to get back into that? Are you into that?

Charles Ansley: 04:55

Yes, definitely. That’s my goal now. And that’s the reason why I stumbled upon NSITE through – I live in Georgia, so Georgia Vocational Rehab. So there’s a gentleman that was teaching me how to use JAWS and NVDA. So as we began to get further along with JAWS and NVDA, he spoke with me about NSITE and the different opportunities that they had.

So, I reached out to NSITE, connected NSITE with my GVA counselor at the time. And they, they talked to me about the Intro to Cybersecurity as well as the Cisco CCNA program. So I took both of those programs.

Dean Thompson: 05:49 

I understand you were a star, especially in the Cisco program. Is that an over or understatement? What do you think?

Charles Ansley: 05:57

Ah. I don’t know about that, but hey, I tried.

Dean Thompson: 06:01

Before July of 2019, how much formal education did you have? I mean, where did your formal education stop before then?

Charles Ansley: 06:10

I didn’t have my degree. I was working toward a degree, but then life happened. I got married, started, you know, trying to raise a family. That didn’t go well. So when I became a single father, my focus was on just raising my son and trying to be a provider.

So, I never had a degree. I had a lot of credits. I should have had a degree, but I was all over the place. I have to be honest with you, because I was so fascinated with IT. I was just taking so many courses.

There were times when I was taking 36 credit hours at one time. I would go to school in the morning and not come home until late at night. And, you know, that was right before I had my son and before I got married. But once I got married, things just changed for me. And again, the marriage didn’t work, so I found myself being a single father.

So education had to take a back burner. But now that my son is older, and now that I realize that I can do this again, I am full steam ahead. Because I want to be a motivation and inspiration not only to my son, but I want to be a motivation and inspiration to other people out there that think that they can’t do it. We’re always reminded of our limitations. I hear it all the time, but I tell those people that tell me or want to hold my limitations over me, I have no limitations. My only limitations are the limitations that I place on myself.

So that’s what I want to tell everybody that’s in the disability community, the blind and low vision community, whatever disability that you have, you can do whatever you want to do. Just put your mind to it. Cut out the noise and go. Go for it.

Dean Thompson: 08:30

Let’s go back. What is the CCNA Program? Can you explain that?

Charles Ansley: 08:34 

Yes. So the CCNA Program is the Cisco Certified Network – what is it – Cisco Certified Network Associate Certification program. You can sit for that, for that particular certification. And that is for if you want to become a network engineer. That is, basically, a great start to become a Cisco engineer.

Dean Thompson: 09:04 

So let’s talk about the CCNA program at the beginning. Nuts and bolts of it. Not day by day, but week by week. How did it unfold for you and how did you deal with it?

Charles Ansley: 09:16

Well, so the program is three parts. So it’s three parts of the program. And like, you know, like I was saying before, it’s about, I’d say a year, but it’s actually about 10 months or so. But you know, you, you meet on WebEx, it’s, you know, basically like Zoom, you meet two times a week, during that particular time, for three hours each night.

So you may, we were meeting on like, I believe it was like Tuesdays and Thursdays or either Mondays and Wednesdays, twice a week for that entire time. And when, when we’re on those sessions, it’s instructor led. So the instructor goes over his slides. We are able to ask any questions that we may have.

We participate along with the instructor. He may ask us questions. And we, you know, there are days that we just listen, you know, listen to him go over the, you know, go over his slides. But then there are days that after we go over those slides, we do our labs and we do our labs together.

And so, you know, it’s very intensive. The instructor that we had we, you know, we don’t go forward until everybody knows, you know, what we’re doing. So you have a chance to ask as many questions that you need answering before you move forward, even if it means we don’t get done with everything that we’re supposed to get done that night. We’ll just continue to continue it on and, you know, the next class session.

So it’s a very, like I said, it’s a very intensive program, but it’s a fun program because, you know, it’s class participation. And we all get to interact with each other. And, to be honest with you, it’s basically like you become a family. And that’s what we became. We became like a family because even outside of the courses, we all, you know, we were all contacting each other, exchanging numbers.

And if we needed help, we helped each other. So if, you know, again, if you’re looking for, if you’re looking to do something, I definitely recommend NSITE, and I definitely recommend, you know, if you’re looking to get into IT, I definitely recommend the CCNA program because it’s the beginning of the networking, as far as Cisco is concerned, it’s their first course.

And NSITE does a great job of, you know, guiding us through this particular course. They have great instructors, great instructors. And they’re patient, especially with people that are blind or low vision. We’re often told by our instructors that they would rather work with people that are blind and low vision than sighted people because of our work ethic.

Dean Thompson: 12:48

So you completed that program. What came next or what is coming next?

Charles Ansley: 12:51

Then what comes next is, now I’m studying for, to actually take the exam, and once I take the exam, then I’ll start actually looking for employment. And NSITE is a great company as well, and they help in that process.

Dean Thompson: 13:08

So when you were first introduced to NSITE and you looked at the courses, were you daunted by another year of education to kind of start over again, or – how do you face that? Someone said, it’s going to be 40 weeks. How did you deal with that?

Charles Ansley: 13:23

Wow. At first, I had the excitement. And then it was, oh, do I really want to do this for an entire year? And then said, well, if I want to get back into IT, this is going to be the only way that I can do it, because I tried to go to the technical school again, and the material was not accessible, so I figured this would be the best way, to do it through NSITE.

And I am so amazed with NSITE, with their programs and their curriculums. They have so much to offer within IT. And anything you know, they have more courses, just about anything that you want to learn, anything that you want to accomplish, they’re there to help you. They’re great people. You reach out to them, they get back with you. You need help, they help you. Anything that you need, NSITE is there. And once you’re done with your courses, they don’t stop there. They’re contacting you about finding work, and they stay on you.

They’re sending you emails. “Hey, look at this job.” “This job matches your criteria.” And they’re always offering something. So it’s a great program if you want to, like I said, if you thought that your life was over, it’s not. Not with NSITE. Not with NSITE. Great people. I recommend them to anyone.

Dean Thompson: 15:18  

Now, there’s a whole bunch of different people that hopefully will be listening to this or watching this, in some cases. There’s people like you and me, blind people looking for a different way. There’s people who maybe looking to hire people, talk to that demographic, talk to those folks. I mean, what advantage, what’s good about hiring somebody with your problem? What would you tell an employer? What would you tell them?

Charles Ansley: 15:40

We work harder in a lot of cases. We work harder than sighted people because we have to. You know, we face so much. The truth is we, a lot of the time, we are forgotten about. That’s what it feels like. It feels like we are just forgotten about. That people think that we can’t do anything, but we can do anything. And a lot of times we can do it better than sighted people because we have to. Because the fact of the matter is, we understand that we have to work harder to be seen. We work hard. We study hard.

And, you know, because of our learning styles, now, that makes us a great fit because we have to go the extra mile to learn. If you’re looking to hire someone, someone that’s visually impaired or blind would be your perfect employee. Because we have that kind of work ethic that others don’t have, because we have to go above and beyond to be seen and noticed.

Dean Thompson: 16:55 

Anything I’m not asking you? Anything you want to say you’d like to put in here, please.

Charles Ansley: 17:02

Just go for it. Go for it. Don’t be afraid. You can do anything that you want to do. Nothing is impossible.

Again, the only limitations that you have are the limitations that you put on yourself. Don’t allow anyone to put any limitations on you, because you have no limitations. You just, you just have to learn differently. We’re no different from anyone else. We’re no different from anyone else. We’re the same people that we were and have always been. We’re just learning things differently.

Dean Thompson: 17:47

Charles, that’s really lovely. And this has been, it’s been great getting to know you. I mean that, I appreciate you coming by and I appreciate the time you’ve given us. If things change and they improve, we may even stop in and ask you to update us sometime in the future, if you can.

Charles Ansley: 18:01 

Yes, sir. Please do.

Dean Thompson: 18:03 

Thank you very much. And you and your son take care. Okay.

Charles Ansley: 18:06  

You too. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Outro: 18:09 

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