A 'Feel-Good' Success Story

Here’s a feel-good story to end off the week. I’ve shared this story on Cognitive Edge but I just had to share it with everyone else because it is very inspiring!

There is a lady who I’ve been training who is legally blind. By that I mean she can still see somewhat, but her vision is getting worse every day. She came to me because she wanted to learn how to use email to keep in touch with her grandchildren. We met and I started explaining to her what an email address is and the components of one. By this point I could tell by the look on her face that she was entirely lost; she looked frightened by what I just explained to her. Further probing told me that the closest thing to a computer she has ever used was a typewriter. I realized then that we needed to back up and start from the bare basics. As she was a very proficient piano player when she was younger I explained to her that before we can learn a song, we need to learn where the notes are; a comparison I made between email and using the mouse and keyboard.

I proceeded to start with the basics when we ran out of time. I gave her a handout to take home that would cover all the basics we were going to learn in the future and she was so determined to learn how to use computers that she said she was going to study that handout at home and practice everyday in hopes that she would impress me next time. The next time we met she was indeed better at using computers. She even explained to me what a desktop was when we didn’t even go over it! I told her we would learn to use the keyboard and to my surprise she proceeded to read off every letter on the first line off the top of her head; apparently she used the typewriter a lot when she was in the workforce.

She still has a long way to go before we come back to email but her drive is very inspiring. She is losing her vision more and more everyday and has a very hard time seeing the screen and keys, but that does not hold her back one bit. She is currently in the process of having a computer installed in her home that will allow it to ‘speak’ to her. I was afraid she was going to cry from being overwhelmed the first time we met but by learning things one step at a time she is now much more confident in her abilities and this technology is not so abstract to her anymore.