It's a common New Year's resolution: to help others in need. What's not so common is the people who do this every day through their jobs. Kathy McKinsey is one of these people. McKinsey is a Certified Vision Rehabilitation Therapist, or CVRT, at the Cleveland Sight Center, an agency that provides services for people that are blind or visually impaired and whose mission is “to empower people with vision loss to realize their full potential, and to shape the community's vision of that potential."

Her area of expertise is Personal Adjustment Training which teaches activities of daily living, communication skills, and orientation and mobility.

"I have a passion to help those who are blind and visually impaired to reach their full potential in their daily lives, both in self-care and in working toward a career goal," McKinsey explained.

Although there are many resources for blind and visually impaired people that will provide them with information if they don't know Braille, McKinsey believes that it is important for these people to be able to access written material themselves. Braille allows people with vision impairments to do activities such as playing cards with their friends and family, writing down a simple phone number, labeling objects in their home: food, cleaning supplies, medications, so that they can do those things themselves, and access that material themselves.

"It's literacy, it's dignity, it's important."

Another skill that McKinsey believes in important for visually impaired people to know is how to sign their name.

“I believe it is very important that blind people have a signature of some kind, and don't just sign an "X," which in the past, and even nowadays, sometimes occurs. That, I believe, is a mistake. That would lead the person reading the signature to believe that the blind person is uneducated, when in fact, this person might be quite educated. Therefore, I believe a signature is important."

McKinsey goes on to explain how much a seemingly simple activity can mean to the people to whom she teaches it.

"It shows that they have enough concern about their dignity to take the time to learn that, to show that they are a competent person," she said.

In a world that is very computer-oriented, McKinsey also feels that it is important for blind people to know how to type.

"Touch-typing is the way people should learn to type, whether they're blind or not," she asserted. "Every couple of days, he'll say, 'I'm just so excited that I know how to type,'" McKinsey says of a particular client. "For years, he wanted to know [how to type], but he was so busy working so many hours a day that he was never able to learn to, and now he can type. And he says, 'I'm so excited. I'm so proud. I can type.' He says that over and over." Teaching these people the skills that will help them in their daily living is especially important to McKinsey because she understands their position more than most people could: she is blind as well. After college, she worked as a secretary in an office that worked with people with disabilities. "This was something I found that I enjoyed," McKinsey explained. "I thought, 'I would like to be able to be helpful to another person who is disabled in making steps in their life towards more independence.'"

There were people in McKinsey's life during this time that influenced her decision.

"I always remembered one lady, my rehab counselor back when I was in college, who really helped get me out on my own, and made me look for a job, and made me get out of my parents' house when I was scared to. I've always felt like she was a person that I wanted to be like," McKinsey said.

The work that she does every day goes further than the job requirements. McKinsey is truly invested in helping to improve the lives of the people she works with.

McKinsey says that the effects that she sees in the people she works with encourage her.

"It's good to see people become more confident, less frightened, less traumatized by having this disability, more sure of themselves, just realizing that this ... is not the end of the world. They can go on. They can still give to their families; they can still have jobs; they and still be competent, functioning people... Someone does realize then that they can have a dream, they can do something still, and they start to dream about getting a new job," McKinsey explained.

This is not to say that her job is always easy or rewarding.

"Sometimes, it's hard to find what a person is going to be able to do. They may not be able to support their family the way they used to. They may not be able to be as independent, driving themselves around. Their life is going to be harder than it used to be," she said.

Although many of the people who go through PAT appreciate and put to use the skills that they are taught, this is not always the case. Some people do not want to learn and are not willing to be taught.

"That's really hard," McKinsey said. "Just do what you can for them, do what they'll let you do, and move on to the next person who will let you help them."

One of the things that frustrate McKinsey is the misconceptions that the public has about people with visual impairments.

"They're still just people who are just parents and workers and have the same kind of thoughts and fears and desires that anybody does."

McKinsey believes that laughter and a "light-hearted atmosphere" is important in her field.

"Have a sense of humor, with yourself as well as other people,” she said. “Be able to laugh with other people, and laugh if things go wrong, and help them to laugh. "We laugh a lot; we laugh when we make mistakes. We realize it's not the biggest thing in the world to make a mistake, and you try again. I have a lot of memories of laughing with people."

 

McKinsey says that one of the reasons she loves her job is because it's fascinating.

“You meet really fascinating people. And it's fulfilling if you see that it really helps people."

The positive effect that McKinsey's work has on clients has been proven many times over.

A client once jokingly wrote a poem called "Ode to Kathy" during his Braille practice. He said, "You're a nice lady, and I never hear you yell at anybody, and I know you'll always be my friend."

One young man who went through PAT's summer program for high school studentscommented: "You have no idea how good, fulfilled, full of purpose, and happy I feel currently, and I attribute that solely to the fact that I met true friends at the Cleveland Sight Center …" "[The clients] get in there, and they feel comfortable with all the other people around them who are blind too, and they feel like they're with people who understand them," McKinsey said.