I met today’s guest blogger Ali Krage at a “low-vision conference” in 2004. “I’m blind like you and I can read Braille and I go to the same school my twin sister goes to, but she can see, can you give me your email address? We can be pen pals!” Who could refuse an invitation like that? Ali was only 11 years old back then. She’s in college now and helps me out by writing guest posts on the blog I moderate for Easterseals National Headquarters. This one was published on the Easterseals blog earlier today, it’s about the challenges and joys Ali experiences going to the movies with her boyfriend…when neither of them can see.

Joe and Ali.

by Alicia Krage

When it comes to my blindness, one of the most common questions I get asked is, “How do you watch movies?” This is typically referring to how I go see movies at a movie theater.

Movie theaters provide audio description, which describes the movie when there is no dialogue. The description comes through a headset, so it’s not like the entire movie theater is hearing it.

A lot of movie theaters I’ve gone to over the years have given me the device for people who are deaf — that device enhances the sound and provides closed-captioning. The theater my boyfriend and I go to in our college town here in Illinois is great, though. They have never made this mistake. So ever since Joe and I started going to AMC Market Square 10 in DeKalb, I’ve enjoyed going to movies.

When I go to movies, I usually ask my mom for recommendations — she goes to movies way more than me. This time, though, I didn’t need a recommendation. I went and saw a movie I’d already seen!

My family and I went to see Wonder the day after Thanksgiving, and I loved it so much that I immediately texted my boyfriend when I got out of the theater.

I just saw the most amazing movie.

All iPhones come with an app called VoiceOver — the embedded voice synthesizer says each word I type out loud when I press space, so I can hear any errors as I’m typing. I explained the movie to him in short detail before adding three words.

Next movie date?

Joe’s enthusiastic reply came one minute later.

Sounds perfect!

Finals week was approaching. It was difficult to find time between our busy schedules, but one Saturday we took the bus over to the movie theater. One of us always calls from the bus to give them the estimated time we should be arriving and to inform them we’re both blind. I tell them what movie we’ll be seeing and inform them we’ll need assistance retrieving our descriptive audio devices for that movie as well as getting popcorn and whatever else we want at the concession stand. My phone call is always met with a very friendly, “No problem.” We are always met by someone waiting for us when we enter. Every single time.

And so it went on the Saturday we arrived to see Wonder. The manager said hello to us in that tone of voice where you know without them having to say it that they recognize you. We don’t go to the movies all that often, but it seems we are two familiar faces anyway. I could tell how enthusiastic Joe was about seeing this movie by the excitement in his voice at the ticket booth when he said, “Two tickets for the movie Wonder.”

The manager led us over to the concession stand and told us he’d go test the devices while we ordered. I kindly replied, “Please make sure it’s the device for the blind, not the audio enhancement devices.” I always say this a few times, just to make sure I’m getting what I need. The manager assured me he would, and we stayed at the concession stand to order what we wanted. The employee working the concession stand helped with our drinks and put the butter on our popcorn for us. (See? They really go above and beyond here!) When the manager returned, we had another conversation.

• Me, just to clarify: These are the descriptive audio devices, right? It’ll describe the movie?
• Manager, sounding confident: Yes.
• Joe, as per usual: And it’s already on?
• Manager, again confidently: Yes!

We know exactly what questions to ask. Teamwork! The manager led us to our seats in the theater, and going along with the script, I asked, “Can someone please escort us out when the movie is done?” We were satisfied once again when we received the reassuring answer, “Yes.”

Stay tuned for Part Two, when Alicia and Joe need a popcorn refill and Alicia’s resourcefulness saves the day.
Bonus: Alicia gives us a review of the movie Wonder from her point of view.

Little did Colleen and I know when we were both waitresses at the Oak Room at Marshall Field back in the 70s, that we’d be going to see a hip-hop version of Hamilton.

Was it the music? The lyrics? The voices? The musicians? The storyline? Buzz of the crowd? Sharing it alongside a dear, longtime friend? My months researching the show? The toast in the lobby bar with Colleen before curtain time?

Yes.

The Chicago version of the musical Hamilton did not disappoint, but for a minute there , I was afraid it wasn’t going to happen at all. Colleen phoned a half-hour before she was meant to pick me up, and when I heard VoiceOver on my iPhone announce the call was from Colleen I was afraid something was wrong. When I said hello and heard her stammer, I was sure something was wrong . Oh, no. ”Colleen?” I asked. “You there? You okay?” She took a breath before finally getting a word out. “Oh, Beth,” she said. “I’m laughing at myself! I’m laughing so hard I can hardly talk!”

Colleen bought our tickets at the beginning of the year after hearing that the Foundation Fighting Blindness” was one of the non-profit organizations given the opportunity to purchase blocks of Hamilton tickets to sell for fundraising. She and her teenage son have been enormous Hamilton fans from the beginning. “This is all making me feel so young!” Colleen exclaimed when Mike walked me to meet at her car. “I haven’t looked forward to anything like this for a long, long time. It’s like Christmas morning when I was a kid!” Mike insisted on taking our picture, and he laughed when he looked at us through the camera lens. “You guys look like two little girls going out to drink milk shakes or something!” he said. “It’s fantastic!”

Outside of the fact that the Chicago opening of Hamilton is taking some attention away from the baseball team in town heading to the playoffs, Mike’s been blasé about all the Hamilton hype. Still, he didn’t complain about my months of preparation and research for this musical. He even bought me the CD and read some of the lyrics to me before I figured out where to find them on line to research the wording myself. Anytime he left home, he’d return to the sound of the Broadway performance blasting from our living room speakers. “You can leave it on,” he’d sigh, but I turned it off. More fun to listen alone anyway. Then you could dance and sing along.

Overall, he’s been a good sport about my little obsession. He asked questions about — but did not attend — “In the Heights” (Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway musical) after Colleen and I went to see Chicago’s Porchlight music Theater’s production a few weeks ago. And, being a non-fiction kind of guy, he happily listened along when I’d go to bed with the audio version of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton (the biography that inspired Hamilton the musical).

That’s me and Lafayette. Or me and Jefferson. Whichever you prefer.

Colleen chose to listen to the book on audio, too, rather than read it in print. The audio book is 38 hours long. It is absolutely astounding that the musical Hamilton covers pretty much the entire Alexander Hamilton story in three hours. The founding father packed a lot into his short life, leaving over 26 written volumes of work and oodles and oodles of personal letters behind when he died. And when he was alive? He liked to talk. To tell all that in three hours, you need to fit a lot of words in to every measure. You can’t hold onto a musical note very long — you’ve gotta move right along to the next scene. Using hip-hop was a no-brainer. And, simultaneously, brilliant.

Colleen saw tears of joy on my face when the show started and padded my knee reassuringly. “I’m crying, too!” There is no fanfare or overture before the musical Hamilton starts — it’s almost like someone says “Go!” And you’re off. We were surprised at how quickly we got to the intermission, and I was especially surprised how much easier it was to understand the lyrics when hearing them live — better than trying to decipher them while listening to the highly produced CD version at home.

And of course Colleen and I spent the intermission comparing the Chicago cast to that Broadway rendition we’d been listening to all year. I thought the Chicago Schuyler  Sisters sounded more Motown than the Broadway sisters did and that casting an actor with a beautiful, strong singing voice as the Chicago Washington made more sense than the Broadway Washington, who sounded to me like so many of the other founding fathers in the recording of that production. He’s the father of our country. His voice should be big.

Colleen agreed that Chicago Washington had a beautiful voice but was disappointed that he wasn’t as good a rapper as Broadway Washington. “What does it mean to be a good rapper?” I asked. Colleen has three children between the ages of 17 and 21 and knows far more about this subject than I do. “This Washington just isn’t fast enough,” she said.

Huh. Maybe the entire Chicago cast raps slower than the Broadway cast. Is that why I could understand the live show better? The theater had provided audio headsets for people who are blind to use if we needed extra narration to follow the action, but I never even put mine on.

Some of the Chicago cast members spiced up their roles — Lafayette exaggerated his French accent a la Clouseau in the Pink Panther, Chicago King George was much more playful than his Broadway equivalent, Aaron Burr’s anger on stage in Chicago was so overwhelming that by the end it sounded like he was gritting his teeth and spitting as he sang. The exaggeration in the live performance made it much easier to keep track of all the men in the cast — it is hard at times to differentiate their voices on the Broadway CD.

That audio device the theater provided came in handy after the show, though. Taking the stairs down from the upper balcony to the lobby and then weaving through hundreds of audience members to bring it back took a long time. When we finally got outside the cast members were leaving through the side alley exit. “There’s Alexander Hamilton!” Colleen squealed. “He’s so cute, just there with a backpack on, hailing a cab.” We rushed over to the alley like giddy teenagers. “There’s one!” Colleen would say, and with white cane prominently displayed in one hand, I’d thrust the other one out. Anytime an actor took the bait and shook my hand, I’d ask who they played in the musical.

Chris Lee played Lafayette. He laughed when I thanked him for overdoing his French accent and agreed to let Colleen take a photo of us. Colleen had read the playbill out loud to me before the show started, so we knew that Chris (that’s how he introduced himself to me) played Lafayette in the first act, and he played Jefferson in the second. His previous claim to fame was starring as the Scarecrow in The Wiz last year in Greenville, South Carolina.

Joshua Henry, the actor who played Aaron Burr, had played more prominent roles in the past and had been nominated twice for a Tony award. I complimented his incredible job conveying anger on stage.

Me: “Were you spitting at the end?”

Aaron Burr: “Oh, did it hit you?”

Me, laughing: “We were in the upper balcony! But towards the end in the second act, even up there, it sounded like you were singing and gritting your teeth and spitting, all at the same time.”

Aaron Burr: (Smiling, you don’t even have to be able to see to know he was.) “That’s exactly what we’re going for.”

Mike was waiting for me in our apartment lobby and thanked Colleen with a big hug when she walked me inside. “Was it good?” he asked. Colleen and I faked frowns, responded with a simultaneous “it sucked” and then broke into giddy schoolgirl laughter.

I honest-to-God woke up the next morning hearing “Must be nice to have Hamilton on your side” in my head. Over coffee Mike told me he’d enjoyed my time with Colleen vicariously. “I was smiling so much while you were there, I’m almost ashamed of myself,” he said. “And today I feel like Scrooge on Christmas morning.”

Mike downloaded a “camera for the blind” on my iPhone. It’s called “Tap Tap See.” Users take a photo of what’s in front of them, wait a few seconds, and, abracadabra! The app announces out loud what’s in the photograph.

That can’t look like a woman with brown hair.

Grateful? Not me. I was petulant. “I’m not ready to learn how to use apps yet,” I snapped. “I don’t even know how to retrieve my voice mail with that thing.”

Mike not-so-calmly pointed out that I’d already been using apps. “The clock, you know. That’s an app. So is weather.”

I thought apps were things you added to your phone. “Well,” I said. “I’m just not ready to learn how to use a new one, then.”

Mike was away on a business trip weeks later when I felt through my wallet to make sure I had cab fare for the next morning. I keep track of money by folding each denomination differently, but I’d been in such a rush at the store that day that I’d shoved bills in there without folding them first.

How would I know what to give the cab driver?

I hadn’t tried my “Tap Tap See” app yet, but the same promotion that called it a camera for the blind claimed it can identify paper currency, too.

I straightened a bill on the kitchen counter, launched the app and twisted my finger around the iPhone screen. VoiceOver said, “Take picture.”

Somehow I managed to hold steady, hover the iPhone over the bill, and double-tap. “Picture taken.”

Seconds later, abracadabra! “Woman with long hair.”

George Washington looks like a woman, I guess. Must be a single.

I pulled out another bill, took a photo, waited a few seconds. “Woman with brown hair.” Lincoln doesn’t look like a woman. Washington’s hair is white. Who else’s face is on American currency?

Off to my talking computer to Google. Alexander Hamilton is on the ten. Did Hamilton have brown hair?

Back to the kitchen counter. Tap Tap See identified all my bills as women, some with short hair, some with brown hair, some with long hair. Not the clear-cut answer I was hoping for, but the app was fun to play with.

I was 26 when I lost my sight. I’m in my 50s now. Would Tap Tap See identify me as “Middle-aged woman”? “Woman with wrinkles?” Did I really want to know?

I couldn’t resist.

Off to the bathroom mirror. I held the phone up to my reflection, smiled pretty, tapped “Take picture” and felt my heart race as I waited for Tap Tap See’s judgment. Finally it came. “Woman with brown hair.”

Woman with brown hair? Do I look like Alexander Hamilton? I snapped another picture. “Woman with short hair.” And that’s when it dawned on me. I’d been using my iPhone backward. The round hole on the back of the iPhone is not what people look through to snap a photo.

Those photos I’d taken? They all were selfies.

And now, just to confirm I am not an Alexander Hamilton look-alike, I’ll be sauntering down to Private Bank Theatre tomorrow night, because, of course, I have a ticket to the musical HAMILTON! You heard that right. Me. Beth Finke. Going to Hamilton tomorrow night. Back story? Earlier this year when my friend Colleen learned that a block of tickets to tomorrow’s show were set aside to benefit the Foundation Fighting Blindness, she surprised me by buying two of them. “One’s for you,” she told me. “My treat.”

I’ve read the biography the musical is based on twice now. No easy feat. The audio version is 38 hours long! I’ve been listening to the CD non-stop whenever Mike is out of the house, too. I’m ready. I probably shouldn’t brag, but dag. Tomorrow night, Colleen and I are going to be in the room Where it happens.

Last week my Seeing Eye dog and I met a second-grader I’ve been hearing about for years. Bennett is a student at Tess Corners Elementary School in Wisconsin, and Whitney and I spent the entire day at his school Friday.

That’s Bennett and me. He’s holding a Braille copy of Safe & Sound.

I first heard of Bennett back in 2013, when his mom wrote to tell me how much her five-year-old enjoyed reading the Braille version of my book Safe & Sound. From her note:

“Bennett was so excited about the book. He told me, “I loved that book you got me. It’s a true story, mom. And no one ever writes true stories for kids about people who are blind like me.”

A stellar review — from an expert.

I kept up with Bennett and his mom via email ever since, and in 2014 I wrote a post about Bennett and his parents traveling from Wisconsin to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh to have Dr. Ken Nischal, one of the world’s foremost children’s eye specialists, try a cornea transplant in Bennett’s right eye.

Bennett told me Friday that his vision improved in his right eye after the surgery. “But just for a little while.” Whitney and I got to his Wisconsin school just in time to meet Bennett in person — he’s returning to the University of Pittsburgh this week for more tests.

Bennett and I spent the first hour of the day together with an older boy who has visual impairments — Michael came in special on a short field trip from his middle school. They both had questions about Whitney, and I let each of them inspect her harness and take a few steps with her. After that, we were off to the first presentation.

Tess Corners is a happy school. The teachers expect a lot from their students, and they enjoy their work — I heard smiles in their voices. Their principal taught first and second grades for decades before accepting an administrative position there, and she told me she still misses teaching sometimes. The school librarian had read Safe & Sound out loud to every class before Whitney and I arrived, and with Bennett at their school, the kids at Tess Corners already know a lot about blindness.

They still had questions, though. Bennett and Michael were at my side for the presentation we gave to all the second graders (including Bennett’s second-grade class), and during the Q&A, I answered each question first, then passed it on to my young assistants.

“Can you see at all?” one girl asked. “When I open my eyes, all I see is the color black,” I told her. Michael said, “I can see some things if I hold them really close.” Bennett said, “I can kind of see light, but everything is blurry…like a cloud.”

Another child asked “How do you read if you can’t see?” I described audio books and my talking computer, Michael touched the screen on his iPad so we could hear VoiceOver, and Bennett showed off his Brailliant, a refreshable Braille device.

That’s the Brailliant device Bennett uses.

Michael eventually had to return to middle school, but Bennett stayed in front with me long enough to read aloud to his classmates from the Braille version of Safe & Sound. His composure and confidence was remarkable — a credit to his fellow students, his family, the teachers and staff at Tess Corners, and, especially, to Bennett himself.

Bennett left with his second-grade class after that, and Whitney and I presented to the other grade levels on our own. I met up with Bennett again one last time during his lunch break — he wanted to show me how to use a Brailliant.

A Brailliant is an electronic device people who are blind use to read with their hands. The Brailliant transforms the words on a computer screen into small plastic or metal pins that move up and down on a flat panel attached to the computer. Bennett explained how he places his fingers on the panel to read the Braille characters formed by those pins, and then demonstrated by reading a line of text out loud. I’d never seen, errr, felt, such a thing before.

My Braille skills are poor. Bennett used the keys to tap out secret messages and pass the device my way so I could read them in Braille. He couldn’t help but notice — and chuckle — when I struggled to decipher his big words.

Bennett dumbed it down then and used shorter words. He placed my hands on the keys to show me how to compose and send a Braille note back. The blind leading the blind for sure. We exchanged “refreshable Braille notes” for the rest of the lunch hour.

Today fewer than 20 percent of blind children in this country learn to read Braille. Bennett uses VoiceOver to check his school assignments, and he listens to audio books sometimes, too. But he and his teachers know that if he doesn’t learn to read Braille, he won’t learn to spell correctly. He won’t know where to put commas, quotation marks, paragraph breaks and so on. Bennett has already tackled a lot of this stuff.

It’s true I’m not proficient in Braille, but the little I know sure comes in handy when I label CDs, file folders, ID cards, buttons on computers and other electronic devices. My Braille skills are useful on elevators, too, and it was rewarding to know enough Braille to exchange secret messages Friday with that bright, curious, cute — and patient — second-grade boy I’d been hearing about all these years.

Ali and Joe.

The Blind dating the blind guest post my 23-year-old pal Ali wrote for us Sunday got a great response from you Safe & Sound blog readers, so we’re rewarding you with another guest post by Ali. In today’s post, she describes Sunday’s date with her boyfriend Joe at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase.

by Alicia Krage

Beth and I started arranging to meet at Chicago’s jazz showcase for a Sunday show, and when I told her my boyfriend Joe is the one who got me started listening to jazz, she suggested I ask him to come, too.

I barely got the question out before he very enthusiastically agreed to tag along. Our next step was to work together on train times and coordinate schedules — something we are now very good at after a year of practice and visits back and forth between his dorm at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and my house in the suburbs.

The plan was for Joe to get on the train at Elburn, and I would join him at my train station. After the two of us chose a date that would work for us, I used VoiceOver, the speech synthesizer on my iPhone, to email Beth and confirm the date would work for her and her husband Mike to meet us at the train station in Chicago.

On the day we’d be heading off to jazz showcase, I could barely contain myself. I probably didn’t even need the morning cup of coffee —that’s how excited I was. Joe and I had been texting each other (he uses VoiceOver, too) all morning about how excited we were and counting the hours until we were on the train. In the midst of all that excited chatter was also some planning. We had agreed that once he was on the train, Joe would inform the conductor that there was a passenger getting on later who was also blind, and we’d like to sit together. All went well there.

Next was actually finding each other. Even though Joe had informed the conductor to help me find him, I texted Joe from home to make sure I knew where he was seated just in case something went wrong.

My dad drove me the five minutes from our house to the station and waited with me until the train arrived. My dad always makes sure to lead me to a conductor when I get on a train — that way I can let the conductor know where I’m getting off and that I’ll need help.

This time was different, though. Before we got off the train, I wanted to be able to find Joe and sit with him for the ride to Chicago. After spotting a conductor, Dad told him I was meeting up with another blind passenger. The conductor took over and my dad said goodbye. “Have fun!” he added — he is always encouraging and enthusiastic about my independent travel.

Then the journey began. The conductor led me through maybe four or five cars before we reached the very front, where Joe was seated. The automatic doors between cars made me anxious sometimes. I felt like I needed to rush so the door wouldn’t close on me — not so easy to do while navigating the step up and down into each car as well. We made it, though. We found Joe.

After greeting each other and getting situated, Joe and I never stopped talking. He asked me all kinds of questions about Beth: when we met, where we met, what she spoke about, how long it took to write her book, how often she goes to the Jazz Showcase. It was great to have someone to ride the train with and just talk to.

What wasn’t great was that the stops weren’t being announced out loud. If you’re blind, and you want to travel independently, you learn to be resourceful. I used a GPS app on my phone to track our progress. Time flew amongst all the excited chatter, and before I knew it, we were at the Ogilvie train station in Chicago.

A conductor helped us off the train, we met up with Beth and Mike and we left the train station by creating a train of our own: Mike held out his elbow to guide Beth while Beth held out her elbow to guide Joe while Joe held out his elbow to guide me. Joe and I were used to “the blind leading the blind.” This was normal for us, but a first for Mike and Beth.

We took a cab to Jazz Showcase, and we used our new found guiding skills to navigate inside and snake our way to our seats. As excited as I was, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d never been to a jazz club before —I’d just started to get into jazz music this past year after Joe took me to one of the NIU jazz concert events.

I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised. The band was outstanding, and before the event was over I knew I wanted to go back to Jazz Showcase again sometime.

We had dinner afterwards at Hackney’s Tavern. Beth had used her talking computer to email me the menu ahead of time, and I had gone over it with Joe. I had already chosen what I wanted ahead of time, which helped a lot. It was a fun dinner filled with laughter and questions from Beth about college life, and fun stories about how Joe and I met and how we started dating.

Mike and Beth went with us back to the train station, and after I bought my train ticket and requested assistance on the train, we all said goodbye. An agent guided Joe and me to a seating area, where we proceeded to wait for a good 45 minutes (I thought it best to get there early). She returned for us once the train had arrived and almost put us in the first car. We told her we couldn’t hear the stops called out when we were on the first car during our trip into the city, so we were placed in the second car in the front instead.

I’d be getting off the train long before Joe would reach his destination, and all the way to my stop Joe’s excitement was at an ultimate high. He couldn’t stop talking about how exciting the whole day had been. He loved the food, he loved the concert, he loved the city, and he loved the company.

His energy was contagious, and I smiled right along with him and happily agreed, responding with, “We need to come to Chicago more often!”