Thomas: When I was trying to go to college in the early days I just didn’t have that drive. I thought everything would be just kind of given to me, to a degree. And I learned over the years that if I’m ready to take what’s given to me, you don’t have to change yourself to keep doing that job for an entire career. But if you want to do new and interesting things, you’re going to have to change yourself, that stuff is not going to be given to you.

Welcome to the Heard & Empowered podcast presented by the National Industries for the Blind. You’re not just a listener here, you’re a catalyst for change. Whether you’re blind, visually impaired or an ally, this is your ultimate resource for building a fulfilling career and an enriching life. We’re on a mission to shift perceptions, open hearts and minds and unlock unparalleled job opportunities for the BVI community. Ready to be heard and empowered? Let’s welcome our host, Dr. Hoby Wedler.

Hoby: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Heard & Empowered podcast where we talk about blindness and visual impairment and the best ways to employ folks who are blind and visually impaired and have a great time doing it. Thank you so much for all your love and support. Keep spreading the love, and we really appreciate it and can’t thank you enough.

Today, I have the distinct honor of chatting with my friend, Thomas Stivers. Thomas, welcome to the show.

Thomas: Hi, Hoby, thanks for having me on.

Hoby: Now, you and I actually just realized as we were chatting before the show that we’ve met each other as we co-mentored a program together in Austin. Gosh, when was that? Like 2008, I hate to say this, 2009 or so?

Thomas: That sounds about right. It just shows that we’re getting too old to remember the past as well as we used to.

Hoby: Yeah, that’s true. And you know what? Age is just a number, so that’s my philosophy.

Thomas: Wisdom is what I hope we’re getting out of it.

Hoby: You know what? That’s a good attitude. That’s the thing. So Thomas, if you could just tell us where you work and your job title.

Thomas: So I work in Austin, Texas for the Travis Association for the Blind, aka the Austin Lighthouse. And I am a systems administrator. Now, when I say that I work for the Austin Lighthouse, that’s a little complicated because I actually work for a contractor called OKIN Process because the Lighthouse contracted out the systems administrator role and I kind of went with that company.

So I get to sort of live the life of a systems administrator for multiple organizations at a managed service provider. And then my primary focus is supporting the Austin Lighthouse and whatever they need. But there are other situations, other companies that we also provide some support for.

Hoby: Fantastic. Fantastic. I want to get to know the man behind the mission, that’s so important to me. So, Thomas, before we get into what you do and how you do it and how you sort of came to be where you are today, tell me a little bit about your past. Walk me through maybe a little bit about your childhood, what it was like growing up, if you were blind since birth or when you lost your eyesight and understanding just what the expectations were for you growing up.

I think a lot of us were lucky enough to have parents that had very high expectations and you seem like you’re right there in that boat as well. So I’d love to just get to know you a little bit through your past.

Thomas: So I have been blind since birth. It’s weird to say it this way, but I identify as blind, not visually impaired or any of those things, and I always have. I actually had some vision, what I would call walking around vision up until the age of 14. And then due to an accident, actually in a science class, I lost the vision I did have. And so since the age of 14, I’ve been totally blind.

My parents, for all of my early childhood, had high expectations of me. And when that big change happened at 14, they really didn’t change anything. They knew we were going to have to learn some new strategies because things like cane use and asking for help, figuring out alternative techniques was going to become very important. But that was also happening at an age in life, in the teenage years, where you’re going through huge changes anyway.

So I was able to sort of navigate those changes with my family supporting me at the same time as all of my peers were undergoing all of their changes to becoming adults. So I think if it has to happen, that’s a good time for it.

Hoby: I fully agree. No, I think that’s awesome. And thinking back on it, aren’t you so grateful that your parents never changed a thing and kept the expectations super high? And you were not Thomas the blind person, you were Thomas and still are Thomas who just so happens to be blind.

Thomas: Exactly. Expectations are so critical to success for, well, everybody really, but blind people in particular because so often expectations are low, or if I want to be all political about it, “misaligned to the person.”

Hoby: There you go. That is the politically correct way to say it. And let’s just unpack a little bit. Did you read Braille before the age of 14?

Thomas: I did. I started learning Braille at the age of five. I think my first book that I can remember was Sam I Am and I was just learning it by the shapes of the words. I didn’t learn letters or any of that. I was just learning, here’s this word and here’s what it represents. And sort of as all of my peers learned to read, I learned Braille.

The difference being that with grade two Braille, there’s so many more symbols. So that learning process went on for several more years. But I had a dedicated teacher of visually impaired students when I was young that spent a lot of time on Braille, I thought too much when I was a kid. I don’t think it was too much now.

Granted, I may not use a lot of Braille on a daily basis, but learning to read in the same way that everyone else learns to read, that analytical, using your brain in the way that you do when you’re reading from a page is so different from when you just listen. So Braille has been critical to my success, even though I don’t get it in my life as much as I’d like.

Hoby: Well, and one of the things that I think is so important is that you knew Braille, maybe it felt like too much when you were a kid, too much time that you spent on it. But what a blessing when you were 14 and lost the rest of your vision.

Thomas: Absolutely, yes. And I used Braille all along. I was not a print reader, my vision didn’t quite go that far. So Braille was critical the whole way through.

Hoby: There you go. And that’s so valuable. Such an important, in so many ways it’s so important to be literate. I appreciate you saying that and all your commentary there.

Let’s talk about after high school. Did you jump right into work with the Austin Lighthouse or what was your trajectory there?

Thomas: About that, so after high school, my expectation was that I was going to get a degree. That’s what everybody else did around me and so it was just what you do. I went to the University of Texas and began studying computer science. But at that time, it required a lot of drive and ingenuity. And I may or may not have had the ingenuity, but I certainly did not have the drive to get through classes like calculus, where my textbooks were on cassette tape. And I had never even seen the calculus Braille notation except on exams. That was just not something we got to in high school.

Hoby: And that’s not fun to have an exam where you see it for the first time.

Thomas: Like this is what an integral looks like? I don’t even know how to read this. They were willing to offer me Braille exams, but no Braille at any other time during the class.

Hoby: Oh, that’s wild.

Thomas: So the unfortunate result of that was I did not complete my degree. I took classes at the university until basically my inability to make it through calculus was too much and I wasn’t able to stay in. And then I went to Austin Community College and I took, basically, classes as long as they would let me because in Texas, people who are legally blind can get a tuition waiver for a certain number of hours, which they don’t mention the certain number of hours part until you use up all your hours.

But I just kept taking classes at ACC. I’ve always loved learning, and so I took all manner of computer classes. And at the community college there’s less prerequisites, so I could learn a lot more. But eventually from that, I ran out of money. I had been on Social Security, the SSI, and I was getting by and so forth, but I apparently saved too much money, which you’re not supposed to do.

Hoby: Oh, we’ve all been there.

Thomas: And so they asked to see my records. Well, this was kind of a blessing, it didn’t feel like it at the time. But they asked to see my records and I gave them what they needed and they said you’re no longer eligible. And so at that point, it became pretty critical that I find another source of income. My parents probably would have helped me, but it didn’t feel like that was what I was supposed to do. It was not what was expected of myself or my brother or anything like that.

Hoby: Sure. You didn’t want that help necessarily, and I totally respect that.

Thomas: Exactly. So I went to the Austin Lighthouse for a summer job. That started in 2006 that I went for my summer job. It was so I could make enough money to get an accessible phone. It was back when the Nokia smartphones were the only thing you could do.

Hoby: Oh, I remember those days.

Thomas: It was like $300 for the phone, $300 for the screen reader. So that was what I went to work for. And I worked that summer in a production capacity, I believe I was assembling cargo tie downs. And I felt like I should be doing more. I wanted to be doing something else, but again, I needed the job. And I was applying for other positions with an interest in technology, with a love of computers, but no provable skills. And so that meant I was there at the Lighthouse.

When I finished that summer, I did go back to ACC, took some more classes, but then eventually I did come back to the Lighthouse and my wife actually started working at the Lighthouse with me about six months later. And that was kind of the beginning of where I started my path and growing at the organization and learning so much.

Hoby: Let me go back just one step. How did you find out about the summer job at the Lighthouse? Was it advertised on a forum?

Thomas: So I’ve had that question come up, like HR has asked stuff like that in surveys and so forth. The Lighthouse was just something that was mentioned that exists in the community. It was just assumed that it was there. And I’d heard about it, I guess, from teachers of the visually impaired or –

Hoby: You knew it existed.

Thomas: It was just something I knew existed. To be honest, it was something I had been warned against. That, I mean… I don’t know how much we’re allowed to talk about it here… but it’s a “sheltered workshop” and it’s a “terrible place for blind people to work.” That was what had been sort of taught to me by so many of the people that I grew up around.

Hoby: Such incredible misinformation.

Thomas: Indeed. When I started there I learned that it does offer unskilled work if that’s what you want. If you want just a place to go and do something that is useful to society that’ll get you a paycheck, that’s available. But that’s not all that’s offered.

Hoby: Absolutely not. And it’s a great place. And that’s one of the things that we’ve talked about quite a bit here that I just never hesitate to reiterate is that all of the nonprofit agencies of NIB provide amazing opportunities for very respectable, gainful employment where people can buy houses and raise families and do whatever they want to do as normal people.

And the other thing, Thomas, I’m curious to hear your experience when you were applying for other jobs to find money for that phone, because so many people find, myself included, that it’s difficult to help society understand what we can do. And what I love about the agencies like Austin Lighthouse is that our blindness is not only reluctantly accommodated, but actually celebrated and championed. And I think it’s an amazing opportunity and an amazing place to work personally.

But what was your experience with applying for other part-time positions?

Thomas: So when I applied for work, at that time at least, I could get in for an interview, you just filled out an application. But when I came into that interview, I definitely got a sense from probably two out of three interviews – I didn’t go through that many. I didn’t fight that hard to go through 50 interviews or anything like that. But of the maybe dozen times I went to interviews, I got the sense that, “We don’t know what to do with you.” And that they were just having the conversation in the interview as sort of a pro forma, “We’re going to talk to this guy because we want to make sure he doesn’t sue us,” or something like that. And I often felt like I didn’t have a chance at the job.

And honestly, I didn’t have a lot to bring to the table at that time. I was sort of a slacker and I had a bunch of hopes and dreams and not a whole lot else.

Hoby: I know the situation so well, where you feel like you’re just going through the steps and going through the process just to make sure that HR can check off their accommodations box. And then you kind of know already that you’re not going to get the position, but that’s what’s so great about organizations like Lighthouse.

And I want to transition now to six months later, when you and your wife started working at Lighthouse, and where you started and how you were able to, basically how your technology skills were seen and championed, if you will, because it looks like that’s what happened. People saw your abilities and your skills and said, “Oh man, we need this guy!”

Thomas: So pretty early on, right after coming back that second time, I went over to our distribution center where we ship out uniforms to the military. And there, there was a lot of computer use. And at the time it was pretty early days for some of that computer stuff, so we were doing a lot of things with paper tickets and there was a lot of paper stuff, but we were transitioning away from that.

And I was able to, when people had problems with their computer, I was able to provide tips. I couldn’t really fix it directly because at that time screen readers weren’t right there. And most computers didn’t have speakers on them. It was a mess, but I did find that I was able to support people. When they had an error message, I could tell them what it meant and sort of get them guided back to, “Hey, you may not have to restart the computer, maybe we can just check some cables…” or do some basic troubleshooting. Early on I had that chance, even though that was not my regular job.

From there, when I later did apply for a receptionist position, which was going to be in the front office, basically living on the computer though. I was the interface with the world for the business, but so much of the world, then and now, was by email, getting on a phone call with somebody and then finding out what they needed, transcribing it into a message to somebody inside the company or vice versa. And so I learned a great deal about just both customer service for internal and external customers.

So the people that worked there, I had to keep all the employees happy, even if management was doing something they may not have been delighted about. And I had to keep management happy in terms of reporting and so forth. So from that, I learned that while computers are very important, it’s not all that you’re going to need for a computer job. It’s just the beginning.

You don’t get to spend all day fixing computers. You spend at least half the time fixing people or figuring out, like I said before, how to get people aligned with the computer. Like, “Maybe that’s not the way you want to do this job, let me suggest you try it, you know, not build out an Excel sheet with 50 formulas, but maybe you can use this other application that will serve you better.”

Hoby: No, I love that. So you transitioned. Remind me of your first job at the Lighthouse when you started back with your wife.

Thomas: When I very first started, I was actually pumping soap for just a little while. And even there, that’s a pretty stationary job and I was a pretty mobile guy. And I was invited to go over to the distribution center, picking, packing, and shipping orders.

Hoby: Which in and of itself had some technology involved. So there’s been this theme, I guess what I’m trying to weed out here is there’s been this theme of technology throughout your entire tenure, basically.

Thomas: Exactly, yes. I mean, and it’s very much technology has been my interest. In my time not working I was building Linux boxes from computers from the trash and things like that. I love the technology. And it was through the Lighthouse that I really learned how I could make it a job and not just a hobby. And to do that, I was going to have to become a lot more of a people person, which is something I very much learned at the Lighthouse.

Hoby: Sure. No, you learned and enjoyed it.

Thomas: Yes.

Hoby: I think it’s wonderful. And so you went from being a receptionist, where you were basically on a computer all day helping other people figure things out, and in some cases, troubleshoot computer problems. How do we go from there to now your amazing contract as a systems guy?

Thomas: So from there, I worked with quite a few employees who are blind on different computer questions and issues. And the training manager at the time wanted to start up an adaptive technology training sort of division. There were a lot of people who may or may not have had keyboarding, but they certainly didn’t know how to use a computer. And we wanted to be able to give people within the organization more opportunities.

So I was right there at the beginning of spinning up an adaptive technology training department at the Lighthouse, and got to be on the ground floor. And so I went from sort of just customer service and the receptionist type role to adaptive technology instructor. But not maybe in the traditional way because I was largely building a curriculum and working outside of the state agencies where you get a curriculum sort of handed to you and you’re told this is what you’re going to teach.

Which is hard in one way, but it is so much easier because I had to be figuring out what I could teach the students. And I realized through that, that a lot of the time, you’re just teaching to get through the curriculum that you’re supposed to teach and your students may not be keeping up with you. I found that we spent a lot more time in Word just becoming comfortable with documents and things like that. And only with some of the more advanced students did I get to get into Excel.

And only in one particularly spectacular case, did I get to work in PowerPoint with this one young lady. And she had lost her sight as an adult and she had used PowerPoint, and her job was creating presentations for a marketing team. So she knew 10 times more than I did about PowerPoint, but had not used a computer as a blind person at all.

So we both had quite the learning experience because I was scrambling to keep up with what she wanted to do in PowerPoint. And then I was trying to tell her, “No, no, no, I know you can do it that way with the mouse, but you’re going to have to do it this way with the keyboard. Don’t worry about the mouse…” because she thought we would turn on a mode and the computer would speak what the mouse was over, and I’m like, “That is technically possible, but it’s not what you want, I promise.”

Hoby: It’s not what you want, yeah. But this beautiful symbiosis of you learning from her, where she knew the PowerPoint skills, you knew all the blindness skills and all the assistive technology skills, and you were able to come together and make her successful.

Thomas: Yes, that was one of my memorable students. And then there were several others that became successful. I mentioned Excel, that’s something we used quite a bit. And so I actually was able to help a couple of my students take over my previous position as the receptionist. It was people that I had taught Excel to that were then able to go and do the job that depended so heavily on Excel and Outlook and so forth.

And so that sort of points back, or points maybe forward. I don’t know how we’re going to get there, but toward that mentorship thing is training students, I learned that I was teaching them some basic technology skills, but I was teaching them also the confidence to work in a business environment.

Hoby: And that’s such a huge necessity.

Thomas: Yes, and that they had value. Not because they’re blind or anything like that, but that they had value to actually do a useful job at the company. And teaching people that they’re more than their disability is a huge thing and goes far beyond technology.

Hoby: But you can use technology as a lens to show people that. And honestly, you were able to pay that back to the community because I’m sure you gained that, as did I, from people around me. My disability is not what defines me, it’s just a characteristic. It’s like brown eyes.

Thomas: Exactly.

Hoby: Yeah. And when we can offer that back to people, students or even employees, co-workers that we get to work with, it’s just amazing. So you went from, and this is another aspect of agencies that I love, agencies like Lighthouse that I love, is how nimble they are. And the fact that you were able to go from working as a receptionist and on the manufacturing floor, to training people on assistive technology. That’s just, it’s nimble. You are not fit into a box, you are given the opportunities, or it sounds like you were given the opportunities, and still are, which were the perfect fit.

Thomas: So that’s one of the core values of the Lighthouse, is growth. And while to some degree, it may mean growth of the agency, in a lot more cases it means growth of the individuals. And so upward mobility has been sort of core to the Lighthouse’s mission all along. Helping people get out of the job they have and make sure they have the job they want.

And one of the things that I hear people sort of speak about is, “How can we get this person a job?” Well, we’re not going to do that. How can we get this person to believe that they deserve the job and that they’ll take the job?

Hoby: And that they can work for the job. They deserve it, and they should take it, but also allow them to understand that it’s their responsibility to earn it.

Thomas: Exactly, that is so critical. I’ve had people come to me, because one of the different directions of my training job, when that training manager that hired me, when he moved on, was I became a training manager. And so I started hiring people for a training program at the Lighthouse and they would get an experience in all of our different departments and sort of learn about what it is to work at the Lighthouse. And they would say, well, what job are you going to give me? What job do you want? What job are you going to earn? I’m going to give you an opportunity, but it’s all about what you do with it.

Hoby: Right, we can only do so much and then they have to take the onus on themselves to run with it. We can give people the boost they need. It’s like that, give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. But if you teach them to fish, you feed them for a lifetime, right?

Thomas: Exactly, yes.

Hoby: So let’s continue on with the trajectory of Thomas, or the TT for that matter.

Thomas: Sure.

Hoby: And think about, so from your role doing assistive technology training, what was the next step?

Thomas: So the whole time, all the way back to the very beginning, anytime an IT type position came open where I could work more with the hardware and the servers and things, I would always apply. Sometimes I got interviews, sometimes I never did. But that was something I was gradually getting to know, the IT team that was at the Lighthouse. And that’s where my love has been.

If I’m honest, I say all the stuff about people and I love working with people, but I’d much rather do a cool tech thing than be a trainer, honestly. My CEO often says, what do you want to be when you grow up? Well, a systems administrator or a developer, something like that is much more in my wheelhouse. But you don’t always get to do the thing you want early on, you have to work your way into it.

So finally, I did get accepted into that IT department. I don’t know how I tricked it. I guess I had finally just been around the team for so long and they had worked with me and I had worked with them to help, you know, they were coming to me with adaptive tech issues and things like that.

Hoby: Your intelligence did it and your passion did it. It wasn’t being around, it was you and your tenacity.

Thomas: I did not get that degree. I still don’t have that degree. And without that, you don’t get kind of a free pass. It’s about what you can actually prove in the wild. And so that’s what I’m saying, I was around them and exposed to them and they said, oh, this guy actually can do it. It’s not just that he said, because that’s another thing I’ve met in the tech world, there’s a lot of enthusiasts that want to be a programmer, but they don’t know what Python is. What you want and what you’ve taken hold of are different things.

And so they saw that I was really engaged with what I wanted to do and had taken a hold of it. So I got into IT, just doing help desk technician stuff. But pretty quickly the systems administrator at the time, who still works with me where we work hand in hand getting stuff done, saw that I was ready to do more than just solve basic, turn it off and turn it back on sort of technical problems. And he was like, I need your help managing our exchange server and our active directory environment needs to be cleaned up.

When I got started, we had hundreds of user accounts that didn’t exist and hadn’t existed in the organization for 10 years. So there was a lot of cleanup to do and they were low level sysadmin type jobs, but they were a good place to start.

Hoby: And learn.

Thomas: And so, again, because I had years with Travis Association, there was a willingness to trust me that I was going to do things with the company’s best interest in heart. Even though they may not have been sure that I had the technical skills, they trusted that I wasn’t going to do something just damaging out of ignorance. I was going to ask questions.

And so I got credentials to do things in the system that I was like, oh, wow, I kind of run the entire infrastructure for the company now and it just happened organically. And so it’s a neat experience to sort of finally have gotten to where I want. I mean, sure, there are specifics, I’d like to be a little more involved in some automation things.

Hoby: And that’s coming.

Thomas: Yeah, we just haven’t started really doubling down on as a company, but when we do, it’s probably going to be because I’ve pushed it into the environment. And so that’s really exciting to finally, I guess, I hate to say achieved my dream because it’s always an ongoing thing, but it’s very satisfying.

Hoby: Well, I’m so happy to hear, number one, that you’re happy where you are and that you’ve figured out what you truly want to do and you’re doing it. And your dreams are always going to grow, but you’re living your best life. And number two, that you’re able to help people with something very critical that they need help with, which is systems administration.

Now, do you get to get your hands on hardware in your current role?

Thomas: Yes, like we’re looking to migrate our VMware infrastructure over to Hyper-V after VMware got bought out by another company. So I’m going to pretty soon be replacing a bunch of servers and installing virtual machines onto new hardware. We’re looking at changing our phone systems. We have some big projects underway and I get to be hands-on with all of that.

That’s a lot of fun, getting to go into the server room and get in there and, well, there’s a certain amount of tinkering that you can do. But one of the phrases I heard recently is every company has a test environment, some companies are fortunate enough to have a separate production environment.

Hoby: I like that.

Thomas: And so that means that we can’t do too much tinkering because we don’t have enough resources to have two independent hardware stacks and software stacks to do testing. So in the nonprofit world, a lot of times you’re finding that you have to use the sort of least impact tools you can or the least cost solution is the best solution when you’re not Dell or Microsoft or something like that.

Hoby: Right. Well, and there’s work to be done. So you can’t tinker too much.

Would you say about 50% of what you do is for Lighthouse and 50% is for other clients, probably?

Thomas: Probably more 75-25 with more work for the Lighthouse. And sort of because I have so much sort of tribal knowledge, shall we say, about the Lighthouse, I’ve been there so long, that’s where I’m going to spend most of my time.

Hoby: Absolutely.

Thomas: And I might be able to help at another organization, but a lot of times they’ve got somebody on site that’s more specialized with their knowledge. And so I can just step in with a little bit of support on their Azure environment or maybe something about their network infrastructure.

Hoby: And provide that support that they need.

Thomas: Exactly. Yeah, so most of my day is Lighthouse.

Hoby: Sure. And it sounds, if I’m understanding correctly, Lighthouse contracts with the company who signs your checks.

Thomas: Yes, my company actually provides managed service support for the IT services for the Lighthouse.

Hoby: Got it. Got it. Well, this is a story of great success where you were able to start somewhere and realize what you like. And what I think is a very impactful part of your story is that you came in and proved yourself. You didn’t have the degree and you said, listen, I know that I can show these people that I can be responsible. And you really had to hold your own and show them that street cred, if you will. And if I was you, I would be so proud of that.

And stepping out there, that is what truly go-getting is. I think that’s the definition of being a go-getter, is someone who says I’m going to be driven enough to work my way up to where I want to be by demonstrating practical skills and showing people that I can do this.

Thomas: And so much of that, for me, was something I grew into. When I was trying to go to college in the early days, I just didn’t have that drive. I thought everything would be just given to me, to a degree. And I learned over the years that if I’m ready to take what’s given to me, it’s going to be that position on a production line. Granted, that’s not given to you either, but you don’t have to change yourself to keep doing that job for an entire career. But if you want to do new and interesting things, you’re going to have to change yourself. That stuff’s not going to be given to you.

Hoby: Amen. Yeah, I fully agree. It’s a lot of work. So anyone who’s listening, I think one of the biggest things is you’ve got to just take that first step. That difficult first step of saying I want to get training or I want to go to work. And if you start somewhere, you can grow. And I think that’s really the theme of today’s chat, is that looking at your story, Thomas, you started at Lighthouse and you said I’m going to move my way up. And you move your way right up to where you want to be. And now you’re not only working with Lighthouse, but you’re entrusted by other large companies as well to handle their systems. So congratulations.

Thomas: Well, thank you. And it’s been an exciting ride. And I think that being willing to keep learning – So shortly before getting on this call today, I was studying some documentation on C-sharp and trying to add that to my repertoire of programming languages, because I’m pretty comfortable with Python, but I don’t know C-sharp. And so that’s something I want to start looking into. So it never stops.

That’s something I keep, and there’s so much material out there, be it on websites, on YouTube, in books, there’s Bookshare that you can use to get at books. And there’s just an almost unlimited amount of information available out there if you’re wanting to learn. In the tech sector, I know it’s there. In other areas, I’m sure it is, but I don’t know it as well.

Hoby: It’s there.

Thomas: I know my wife is very enthusiastic about accounting and finance and things like that. And I ask her any kind of random money question and she’s got a whole lot more information than I ever really considered available that I might want to know, she’s got it at her fingertips. I do the same thing with her and computer stuff. Exactly.

Hoby: Well, it’s amazing how much we can learn on the internet. It really is.

Thomas: So just use the technology as your springboard to learn what you love. You may not be a tech person, but you can use it to learn about veterinary care or learn about fishing holes. If you want to go try to take people out on fishing trips and show them a good time, there’s a job to be made of that.

Hoby: There’s a job to be made of anything.

Thomas: Exactly.

Hoby: And we just need to work a little harder than our sighted community and go out there and get it. Thomas, what advice – Our time’s running very short, but I just want to ask you a question here. What advice would you give someone who maybe is newly blind, had a career in IT, and just doesn’t know how to begin? What would you tell that person?

Thomas: Start studying. If you’re specifically trying to get back into the field of IT, start studying your screen reader skills, JAWS, how to use Windows, how to get away from touching the mouse, and just double down on that. If you’re still using a little bit of vision to do computer things, it’s really beneficial to double down on your JAWS skills because so often vision is going to change over time.

But in general for everybody, be comfortable with trusting people. Most people that you’re going to deal with are good people and want to help you, so let them help you. Don’t say no to all of the help. Sure, if you’re confident and you need to develop your confidence by doing something independently, then it’s okay to say no to assistance. But don’t do it just because you’re scared. Be confident in how you take your assistance from people. You can go a long way in the world through trust, basically.

Hoby: I could not have said it better. Thomas, I was inspired by you and I always am. And we may very well ask you to be on in a few months for a second appearance to talk about specifically the roles and responsibility of your job and maybe overhauling phone systems and that sort of thing because I love that stuff. But because folks are going to be inspired by you and may want to reach out and ask a question or two, do you mind if we include your email in the show notes?

Thomas: No, that’s fine. It’s thomas.stivers@gmail.com. I’m not very much on social media, I quit using it before quitting using social media was cool.

Hoby: So did I. Yeah, we’re together there. Social media can be fun, but it can also take a lot of time. So, Thomas, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thomas: Thank you, it’s been lots of fun. Hope to be around sometime in the future.

Hoby: I can’t wait. Cheers.

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