"The best and most beautiful things "in the world cannot be seen or even touched.

"They must be felt with the heart," Helen Keller.

(gentle music) - It's not a disease, there's nothing to avoid, but it's everything to embrace.

(gentle music) Just because she's Deaf blind, she's a normal little kid.

- We are people like everyone else.

We can do pretty much anything we put our mind to, like our sighted counterparts.

- [Interpreter] I'm a proud person.

I'm a proud Deaf person.

I'm proud of who I am.

- I'm learning to not focus on what I can't do anymore, but to focus on what I can do.

"Deaf, Blind, and Thriving."

(gentle music) - Over the next 30 minutes.

- We're gonna share inspiring and encouraging stories.

- From our local Deaf and blind community.

- While shining a light on some of the issues and challenges that we face.

- [Interpreter] And overcome.

- First, it's important to clear up some common misconceptions about people like us.

- My name is Alicia Miller and I'm the Executive Director with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Center.

We service the Deaf and hard of hearing community.

We do things like sign language classes.

So that goes for the community education aspect.

Anybody in the community can come and sign up and take our classes.

We also offer free sign language classes for the Deaf and hard of hearing community.

Every client that we have that is Deaf, that goes anywhere, ADA law is required to provide them an interpreter, that business.

So for example, if a Deaf person needs to get a wellness check, annual physical, the doctor is required by law to provide an interpreter.

And that's something that we do.

We also, for the hard of hearing side, have amplified phone program.

And for anybody who is hard of hearing, they can come in pick up a free phone.

People who are Deaf prefer to be called Deaf.

There's nothing wrong with it.

There's actually a culture, they're proud of it.

So they use a capital D with that.

And if they're hard of hearing, then they're hard of hearing.

The biggest thing is to not say impaired, hearing impaired.

Don't assume that they can read your lips, use gestures, just common sense, go slow and be patient.

- [Interpreter] Hi, my name is Brenda and I'm the teacher of ASL here at D.H.H.C.

And I have a Deaf daughter.

That's one of the big misconceptions of being Deaf that we can read lips, and then we catch everything that you say, that's not true.

- Another thing people don't often realize is that American Sign Language is it's own language.

There is not one sign language for all the entire world.

Obviously learning the entire language becoming fluent is not something that everybody can do, but even learning the alphabet would make such a huge difference for the Deaf community everywhere.

So if you just take five minutes to YouTube or Google to learn how to say how are you nice to meet you, sign your name.

It really would make a huge difference.

What I always say and what I hear a lot of people say is that Deaf people can do anything a hearing person can do except hear.

So any questions you have, think about that.

And yes, they can do it.

-American Sign Language, ASL, is the third most commonly used language in the United States.

(gentle music) - I'm Dottie St. Amand.

I'm the Chief Executive Officer for Lighthouse of Southwest Florida.

Lighthouse of Southwest Florida serves Lee, Hendry, and Glades counties here in Southwest Florida.

And our mission is to help people of all ages who are experiencing blindness or low vision to achieve their goals for independence.

And so it means quality of life for them.

It means independence for them.

It means sense of purpose.

It means being included in the community and not isolated at home.

And for many people, especially our older adults, that's really critical in their quality of life and in our community, and the strength of our community.

We always want to see the person.

And I think that's an important lesson in life in general, regardless of what we're talking about.

We're people and we want to be treated with dignity and respect.

And so we want to see the person first, the most important thing is to not say, "vision impaired" in front of person.

Another important misconception or or myth that we want to be respectful of is that if you see a blind person or someone who has low vision and they are getting on the bus or they're going to cross a busy intersection, let's not assume that they need our help.

They might appreciate our help, but let's ask.

- I'm Frank Mazza, I'm 84 years old.

I'm totally blind due to a eye disease known as retinitis pigmentosa.

Which was diagnosed when I was 17 years old.

My hearing developed at later in life, I started having trouble with my ears.

And you know, it wasn't too bad until recently, now it's really starting to get bad.

It's called Usher Syndrome when you combine both Deafness and blindness - My name is Wendy Olson.

I work for the Lighthouse of Collier.

I am a Director of Programs.

The lighthouse of Collier is the only agency in Collier County that provides training services for individuals with vision loss.

Many times people have never met anybody who was blind or visually impaired.

They get kind of caught up in the blindness or the vision loss, and that's all they see, but people with vision loss are just like anybody else.

- I can take care of myself.

I live by myself.

I do my own cooking, my own house cleaning, my own everything, gardening outside.

I used to do my own lawn up until about four years ago.

And people got nervous.

(laughs) - I hope that people see people with vision loss as individuals like anybody else.

It could be your grandmother, could be your child, anybody in the community, we're all the same.

- I want people to realize that I can pretty much take care of myself.

I just want to be an ordinary person.

(gentle music) -People who are blind are just as likely as anyone else to experience vivid dreams while sleeping.

The difference is that their dreams are dominated by sounds, smells, and tastes.

- My name is Mike, and I'm the orientation and mobility specialist at the Lighthouse of Southwest Florida.

Today is white cane day.

There are White Cane Awareness Walks going on all around the country on this day.

Half of you are going to throw blindfolds on and the other half of you are going to keep an eye on your blindfolded partner to make sure they don't walk in front of a garbage truck.

So everybody has opportunity to experience what it's like to navigate when you can't see where the heck you're going.

Don't be fooled, not every person who carries a long white cane is totally completely blind.

In fact, the majority of people probably have some type of vision.

How good it is, who knows?

How useful it is, who knows?

- My name is Sarah Matz.

I am a second year occupational therapy student at Florida Gulf Coast University.

It was an incredible experience and it was very humbling because I think as seeing individuals we don't really understand how difficult it is for the visually impaired, because you don't think of all the environmental aspects like the grass or the curbs and all the sounds are amplified because when you lose one of your senses everything else kind of amplifies.

- My name is Shane Wright.

I'm a second year OT student here at FGCU.

It just makes you think all the memorization these people with visual deficits have to go through because if you made one wrong turn, I wouldn't know where I was.

- Yes!

(clapping) - My name is Charles McMillan.

I'm a second year occupational therapy student here at Florida Gulf Coast University.

I think the experience definitely gives me some insight to better treat and connect with people because you can only connect with people through shared experience.

- My name is Diane, D.C. Colburn, and I am the Program Services Supervisor at Lighthouse of Southwest Florida.

I think when people have the opportunity to be under blindfold, even for just a short event like this, they get the idea that "my life doesn't have to end "just because I'm blind.

"I can still get around."

They can do anything they put their minds to, and their limitations are most often what society limits them on.

And I would love to see a society move forward when they see somebody with a white cane, instead of assuming that they need all of this help, they know, they see how capable they are.

That they see they can do anything.

- It gives me an abundance of respect for those individuals that every day have to wake up and navigate their world.

(gentle music) - Only the blind may legally carry white canes.

In all 50 states, the law requires drivers to yield the right of way when they see a person with an extended white cane or a guide dog.

(gentle music) - My name is Carolyn Murphy, I'm 68.

I'm a daughter, a wife, a mom, a retired teacher.

And I happen to have retinitis pigmentosa.

I tell people it's like taking two toilet paper rolls, taping them together, and I've even done that, taped them together.

And that's what you're kind of seeing.

I want people to think of me as very capable and independent.

I want them to not assume that my mental ability has changed.

My physical ability has not changed.

When I first came to Lighthouse I took some other classes.

And then I found out about the art program.

So I came to do art, but that changed.

Now I come because it's a feel good place.

I come now because I've made friends.

I come now because you walk in the door and you leave all your problems outside.

It's therapeutic because I can come in and I can be thankful and I can feel needed by the other people.

I feel like I can almost be like a volunteer, rather than a volunteer helping me.

So we all work together and we just all feel good about it.

There is a grieving period that people go through when they are dealing with a disability.

The loss of the future, the loss of something you thought you would have.

The Lighthouse gives you hope because you're coming here and you realize there's answers.

I don't have to do this myself.

Before I was diagnosed I could say life is good, life is rich.

And after being at the Lighthouse for 16 years I can still say that same thing.

- To be considered legally blind an individual must have visual acuity of 2200 or less in the better eye with the best possible correction.

This means they must be at 20 feet in order to see what a person with normal vision can see at 200 feet.

- Are you gonna dance?

Are you gonna dance?

My name is Jenny Van Waes.

This is my daughter, Hazel.

She is Deaf blind.

She actually has CHARGE syndrome.

She has microphthalmia, bilateral coloboma, she has A.N.S.D.

in her right ear, and mixed hearing loss in her left.

She still has her retina in her left eye.

So has light perception in that eye.

I could hold her up to a mirror and she won't really see herself that much, but she'll look straight up at the lights and she can see that.

And that's really fascinating to her.

When it comes to hearing, if she's not wearing her hearing aid, she might be able to hear us like we're underwater, possibly.

When she was born I didn't really know what to expect.

I knew she had the heart issue, so I knew that they were going to whisk her away.

I went to go in and see her.

And I could tell when I gave birth to her and they were doing the assessment on the table I heard someone say, "is there an eye?"

So I was like, "Okay."

I already had it in my head this is a little bit more severe than okay.

When I was pregnant, it was very upsetting to find out that she was going to have some situations, especially with her heart.

You know, I didn't know about her eyes or ears.

So I wanted to put as much as I could on Facebook just so that, you know, maybe other moms would realize that it's not so bad.

That you'll get through it.

And she does so great.

She's so awesome.

If you get this leggy up, there you go.

I think it's for any mom, it's just for their child to be happy.

To be happy and content with life and feel that she's safe.

And that I have prepared her in every way that I possibly can, so that she can be anything that she wants to be.

She's a fighter, but she came into this world having, you know, this is how she came into this world.

So this is not anything she doesn't know any different.

You know, this is her world.

She's happy, she's good.

So I just get to teach her how to maneuver through it.

I wanna show other parents that when you find out things are upsetting with your pregnancy, that something might be different, just hold onto hope and things are going to be okay.

I feel that she's...you know she's very inspiring in such a chaotic world.

Oh what's that?

It gives them perspective, I think.

And I don't want her to really be the poster child, but basically I want people to understand that things aren't so bad.

She's happy, she's amazing.

- More than 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents.

(gentle music) - I'm Nikki, I'm 40 years old.

I was born with cerebral palsy.

Recently I was also diagnosed with pretty moderate to severe hearing loss.

And also I was born with being legally blind, due to cerebral palsy.

The community at large still has a nervousness about asking what a person with hearing deficits or visual deficits go through.

They're like, "Is it okay to ask?"

Yes, it's okay to ask.

The most important message is to understand that the person that's sitting in front of you will be as authentic with you as you will be with them.

- I'm Jennifer Denike, a member of the Best Buddies, Southwest Florida Advisory Board and a peer buddy for Nicole Coratti.

The Best Buddies Program is not a mentorship program.

One person is not above the other person.

We both teach each other things every day.

Jennifer Denike has been a pretty amazing friend, but more than that, she has been, I didn't realize this, but she has been part of a supportive wing in my life that I had always been wanting to have but didn't know I was missing.

- We met at a time where I was overwhelmed with life in general, and she has been the light of my life through all of this.

She inspires me to be a better person every day.

And I hope that I do the same for her.

Most importantly, I think she's an advocate for people in the community.

She is an inspiring woman, and not because of all that she does because of her different abilities, because that's who she is.

She just knows in her heart that it's the thing she has to do.

And she puts her whole heart in it.

And that's inspiring.

- She's got a head on her shoulders that she may be in a chair, but it doesn't make any difference, because nothing is stopping her.

I'm Melanie Musick, Area Director for Best Buddies here in Southwest Florida.

Best Buddies is a 501c 3 nonprofit with a mission of providing opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The big thing that we have seen is you never know what can someone can do until you give them a chance to prove it.

Just give people a chance.

They may not be like you.

They may not have grown up like you.

They may not be as educated as you and they may not be able to do what you can do but I can guarantee you they can do something that will, nine times out of 10, knock your socks off.

- The social butterfly part of me had to work hard to come out because I had to find ways to realize I had to bring the world to me because I had to adapt.

That is one piece of advice that I would tell people is that no matter what you go through in life you have to adapt.

I would use a quote that Mark Twain uses, I will paraphrase that and it is kindness is something that the Deaf can hear.

Basically, it's saying that just be kind to people who are Deaf or have vision impairment or who are blind because they can feel when people non verbally or even verbally, they can feel peoples energy, they can feel people's emotions right away.

(gentle music) - Men are almost twice as likely as women to have hearing loss among adults aged 20 to 69.

(gentle music) - [Interpreter] Hello, my name is Lisa Myhand.

I was born Deaf, completely Deaf.

And I work here at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Center.

And I've been here for 20 years.

My role is a Deaf mentor.

My journey through life has been very hard, especially with English, and with the hearing world being discriminated upon.

You're looked down upon.

It's very frustrating because my concern for the Deaf children are the struggles that they've had being at a hard of hearing in a school or institution.

I don't want them to have the same journey as me.

We encourage communication with the parents and the children.

Teach them how to understand things so that when they grow up they know better because I didn't have any of that education.

I didn't know anything at all.

- And this is the only place we could find and get some help to learn sign language.

And we can communicate with our son.

We have to feed the option we have so we can continue learning and we can support him on this journey.

- [Interpreter] My name is Brenda, and I'm the teacher of A.S.L.

here at D.H.H.C.

and I have a Deaf daughter.

I see less anxiety in the children and I see more bonding between the parents and the children.

The children deserve that.

- They help Deaf to know that they're... they're not alone.

My name is Amelia, Amelia.

And I'm 9.

I was born Deaf.

I love to read, I like math a little.

I love acting.

I get sassy.

- Hi, my name is Rick McClain.

Born Deaf so no one even thought that I might be Deaf until I went into the school system.

I didn't talk.

Everybody thought I would lazy, just didn't want to talk.

My mother and father decided I would not learn sign language.

They put me into an awful situation, an awful environment.

So I went to school and I had speech therapy three hours a day, three days a week for 13 years.

The philosophy was that if you didn't learn English, you would not make it in this society.

If you didn't learn to talk how were you going to function?

Look for job?

Work?

Relate with people?

How?

And I went to Washington, D.C. Gallaudet University, the world's only liberal arts college specifically designed for the Deaf.

Now there were the problem.

I did not recognize myself as a Deaf person.

I got recognized myself as someone couldn't hear.

I didn't know who I was.

I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I knew nothing about myself as a person.

So through that whole process, I left Gallaudet for awhile, I got married.

I became more entrenched in my world as a deaf person.

Meeting Deaf people here in Fort Myers.

And then I felt the call, I felt the burden, I felt the responsibility about the past and I got the urge to go back to Gallaudet and finish.

God called me and I became a pastor working with the Deaf community throughout the United States.

I can think, I can read, I can sign, I can communicate.

I can process information.

I can make the decisions.

I can do everything in this world that you can do, maybe do it better!

The only thing I cannot do, I can't hear.

So I think the most important thing Deaf people want, come be a part of our world.

It's a beautiful thing.

It's a beautiful language.

It's a beautiful culture.

And guess what?

You always learn something new every day.

It never gets old.

- Estimates vary, but even people who are most skilled with reading lips can only access about 30 to 40% of what is being said.

(gentle music) - I am Rick Hart.

I am the Assistive Technology Instructor at the Lighthouse of Collier.

I have been visually impaired since the age of seven.

I have a condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

The Lighthouse is a place that people can come to and leave their blindness at the door, so to speak.

It's the only place I go where I am not the only blind person there.

And that's really comforting to a lot of us.

If I scan, can you see colors?

- [Woman On Phone] Yes, which color are you looking for?

- I'm looking for green, yeah.

I teach other people who are visually impaired or blind to use their technology, computers, smartphones, et cetera.

And we also run a couple of support groups.

There's not much other than driving and reading text, the printed word.

Those are about the only two things I cannot do.

Cook, clean, email, pay bills, use a computer.

Like I said, Uber, Lyft, you name it.

Grocery shop, walk to the store, use a cane.

Use the tools I have.

I like to think that I see more with my brain.

In familiar places I could get around, I could do whatever I need to do in my home, at work, familiar places, as I said.

If you put me in an unfamiliar setting I will have my cane out and I will slow everything down and start listening as best I can to what's around me.

So speak to me as a person, ask me questions, and ask if you're unsure about anything, just ask.

Don't grab my shoulder and assume that I want you to pull me across the street.

Most people mean well, they truly do.

I just think they're unsure of how to handle it.

What we say now, especially in the support groups, is if you're going to be blind, now's the time to be blind because everything is out there to assist us.

There's scanning software, there is barcode readers.

I can get into a grocery store and pick an item up and scan it with my phone, it'll tell me what it is.

- [Scanner Voice] McCormick Course Ground Black Pepper.

- I can call a volunteer via Through It, something similar to FaceTime.

And I could point the camera and they'll tell me what's going on around me.

And there's dozens of us... hundreds of us, here in Collier County alone that are living with some type of vision loss and it's okay.

So it's just the understanding that we're people like anyone else.

If we're having a bad day, we're having a bad day because we're human.

Not because we're blind or visually impaired.

(gentle music) - "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.

Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

Helen Keller.

- Today millions of people live with some level of hearing or vision loss.

- These are just our stories.

- We ask that you would focus on the things that we can do.

- [Interpreter] And not on things we can't.

- Thank you for learning about our lives and listening to our stories.

Support for this program is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting And the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.