Countywide : Blind Can Still Work, Class Told

Zoila Najera thought she dreamed too much.

The 15-year-old could rattle off a long list of professions she had considered: actress, songwriter, receptionist. But because Zoila is blind, people only discouraged her when she told them she planned to get a job after high school. Eventually, she started believing them.

“A lot of people just don’t realize that we’re capable of doing things,” she said.

At a summer school field trip Wednesday to UCI Medical Center in Orange, Zoila and seven of her classmates saw proof of their capability.

Their host, Mike Edwards, a 37-year-old, blind radiology transcriber, told an Anaheim school district class in daily living skills for the visually handicapped how he overcame obstacles to find a satisfying job.

“They were worried I would make a mistake,” he said. “Basically, it took a lot of showing and proving. . . . The first thing (co-workers) said was, ‘Oh my God, he’s blind.’ It’s ignorance on their part. They just don’t know any better.”

The field trip was one of a series organized by teacher Chris Calvet this summer to introduce her students to a variety of careers held by people who are blind.

Edwards did not sugarcoat his description of how he moved from his job as a darkroom X-ray developer to a transcriber. Although he had completed a five-month night training course in medical transcription, Edwards said, he still had to battle others’ assumptions that he probably couldn’t handle the job.

Eventually, his co-workers realized he did his job well, Edwards said. After 2 1/2 years on the job, he is UCI Medical Center’s only full-time, salaried radiology transcriber. He transcribes doctors’ audio-recorded interpretations of X-rays.

Students huddled around Edwards’ computer and put their fingers inside the machine that creates raised-letter impressions of the words on a computer screen. They laughed at one of the tapes Edwards had to transcribe on which a mumbling doctor used technical terms to describe a broken collar bone.

“Sometimes doctors speak clearly, and sometimes you want to stick something in their mouth and open it,” Edwards joked.

Student Jorge Rentira, 12, said afterward: “When you’re growing up, people tell you, ‘You’re blind, you can’t work.’ But (Edwards) is teaching us that we can.”