Episode 56: Kim Charlson (Perkins School for the Blind / Watertown Commission on Disability)

Meet Kim Charlson! She's the Executive Director of the Braille and Talking Book Library at the Perkins School for the Blind as well as the Chair of the Commission on Disability here in Watertown. In this conversation we discuss her journey into disability advocacy, from being one of the first totally blind people to get a master's degree in library science to serving as the first woman president of the American Council of the Blind from 2013-2019 to recent issues and topics being discussed. We also talk about her work as chair of the Commission on Disability in Watertown and the amazing breadth of services offered at the Perkins School for the Blind including teaching blind kids the skills to navigate the world, helping establish international training programs in 20 countries, managing a library of 80,000 braille volumes and 600,000 audiobooks, and even a manufacturing plant that produces the Perkins Brailler, the world's best-selling mechanical braille writing device. 

Find out more about the Perkins School for the Blind at perkins.org

Find out more about the Watertown Commission on Disability here: www.watertown-ma.gov/351/Commission-on-Disability

Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Kim Charlson, who is the Executive Director of the Braille and Talking Book Library at the Perkins School for the Blind here in Watertown. She's also the Chair of the Commission on Disability for the City of Watertown. I'll let her introduce herself and then we'll get into the conversation.

Kim: 0:32

I'm Kim Charlson and I'm the Executive Director of the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library, located on the campus of the Perkins School for the Blind here in Watertown.

Matt: 0:45

Excellent, and we will get into that part of your story, but there's a lot more to it from what I understand. So I always like to go chronologically as much as I can. So I guess what's the earliest point in your story that you think would be helpful for listeners to know about you?

Kim: 0:59

So just as a little bit of background, I am a Watertown resident and I have been here, living in Watertown, loving every moment of it, for the last 40 years. So I came to Massachusetts and Watertown in 1985 to work as the assistant director of the Braille and Talking Book Library here. For your listeners to understand, and it'll become clear very shortly as I talk through a little bit of my history, I am totally blind and I am the executive director of our library here. And in 1985, when I got my degree in library science, I was one of the first totally blind people to get a master's degree in library science.

Kim: 1:40

Because, as some folks will recall, the early days of librarians and libraries had physical card catalogs with lots of little cards in them. They had lots of print books, no automation. So it was a very inaccessible kind of job. But in the mid-1980s computers came into play, card catalogs disappeared, and there were terminals that people could type in, you know, the book they were looking for and get the answer. So suddenly the career path became much more accessible for me as a totally blind person. And it also gave me the opportunity to contemplate, as I did, the idea of being a director of a braille and talking book library somewhere in the country. There were no people who were blind leading the library program nationally that provides accessible library services, audio books, braille books, large print, for people who are blind.

Kim: 2:34

So I did get my degree. Perkins learned about me, reached out, I interviewed, and I accepted the job. So that's kind of how I got here and a little bit of my backstory in my professional role. But certainly, being a resident of Watertown, there's a lot of other things that I do and one of those other aspects of my work is I serve as the chair of the Watertown Commission on Disability.

Matt: 2:59 

And that's been around for?

Kim 3:00

Before we were an actual commission of the city, we were a committee that did work together. And that kind of started in probably the early 1990s as a committee and then we started working and doing more projects with the city and officially became a commission in, I would say, in the mid 1990s.

Matt: 3:20

Cool, so we have some touch points here in Watertown to talk about. Is there anything in your personal story before you came to Watertown that you think would be interesting for people to know about you?

Kim: 3:30

Yeah. Well, I actually moved here from Oregon where I grew up, and I have been blind since I was about 10 years old. I had juvenile glaucoma. It wasn't detected early enough. I thought everybody saw blue halos around lights. I never realized that was a symptom of glaucoma at age 10. Not sure how I got it. There was no family history, it just sort of was there. And so, glaucoma being very challenging to treat in children, my vision deteriorated pretty slowly over the next 10 years or so. So I basically knew that I was going to need to learn the skills that people who are blind need to know to be independent and successful. Things like learning braille, learning how to use a white cane to navigate my environment, and then, later on in my life, I actually got trained using a seeing-eye dog. And I currently do work with a seeing-eye dog, a female German Shepherd named Idabelle.

Matt: 4:24

Tucked right underneath us right now.

Kim: 4:27

She is. She's here right now, exactly. And you know we travel all over the country and even internationally together. So I've had five. She's actually my fifth. All of my dogs have been great. They've all been female German Shepherds and they give a lot of independence to me and confidence in my ability to travel independently.

Matt: 4:46

So that's obviously an interesting childhood and different childhood than most people having to go through that. So there's a difference, though, between having that and then kind of going the path you did and getting into the advocacy world about it. So what separated you out from there in terms of advocating for that?

Kim: 5:04

Well, that's a good question because I think kind of where my other activities, I'm very active in the blindness advocacy world. And before I decided to become a librarian and a library director I had thought about becoming an attorney, a disability rights attorney. So I think that's kind of where my passion for advocacy and social justice and equity and that sort of thing came about. I pursued the career in library science because it interested me and I wanted to kind of make a difference and kind of open the door for other people who are blind to enter the field of library work, specifically in the field of accessible library services. As I said, braille, audio and large print services and electronic information. So my advocacy work kind of continued around that as a passion of mine. I have had several types of leadership opportunities. From 2013 to 2019, I served as the first woman president of the American Council of the Blind, which is one of the two blindness advocacy organizations in the United States. So that was kind of a glass ceiling that I had the opportunity to break and gave me obviously a big platform for working on all kinds of accessibility issues for people who are blind or have low vision. Certainly, guide dog access is one of those areas that I've worked on to make sure that, by law, guide dog handlers do have the right to take their service dogs into public places or on transportation. 

Kim: 6:42

But for the last several years, we've also had to do quite a bit of advocacy work around rideshare services. Rideshare has been an absolute godsend, game changer for people who can't drive, and that obviously is people who are blind or have low vision, and making it possible to get a ride pretty much on a moment's notice. But a lot of rideshare drivers feel like, you know, this is my car, I don't want you to have a dog in my car. And even though the law says you're providing a service to someone, the law says you need to take me and my service dog. My dog lays on the floor, she doesn't sit on the seat. No service dog should sit on the seat. They lay on the floor, they're quiet, they don't jump around. But unfortunately a lot of rideshare drivers may have had negative experiences taking somebody to the vet or something like that and the dog wasn't well-behaved because it was a pet and it doesn't know how to behave properly in a car. Most dogs don't like cars that much unless they're trained to like them. So we've had to do a lot of advocacy about, you know, it's a responsibility, you can't refuse someone and that's a violation. So that's an example of some of kind of the advocacy issues, but there's many, many of them.

Kim: 7:55

So I'm also pretty passionate about information access. That ties back to my work in the world of libraries and the Perkins Braille and Talking Book Library here, which is an accessible library for people who can't read regular print. Not just people who are blind or have low vision, but also people who have a physical disability and they can't hold a book or turn pages because of paralysis or severe arthritis, MS, Parkinson's disease. Lots of different conditions make it challenging for people to read print. So our library provides services to them. We also serve people who have reading disabilities, like dyslexia. They can see but their brain doesn't process the printed word and so they have a lot of challenges reading a print book or a menu or anything like that. So our program also provides services to those folks with those types of learning disabilities.

Kim: 8:49

We loan all kinds of audiobooks and braille books. We have nearly 200,000 audiobook titles in our collection. The library service is available free of charge to anyone who does have a qualifying disability and has difficulty reading print. And we have an application form that can be requested from the library here at Perkins and we help people get signed up and we loan the equipment to listen to the books, as well as the books themselves. So it's a really great service supported by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners for state funding, and private philanthropy as well. So we're pretty fortunate to be part of Perkins. We've been here providing services since the mid-1800s, before even braille existed. We were providing services in raised print lettering back in the late 1800s for people who were blind, so it was touch reading with raised print letters. Very hard to produce books in that format and that's kind of why braille came along. It was viewed to be more convenient and easier for blind people to read and write. But we truly have a long history connected with Perkins of providing accessible library services.

Matt: 9:59

Yeah. I have so many questions. Maybe we'll take a step back a little bit here with the advocacy. How has that changed over the years? So you're talking about like rideshare now, but what were some of the early issues that you were dealing with when you first came into the field?

Kim: 10:11

Well, some of the things that probably, you know, we take for granted today. Another issue that I've worked really hard on surrounds the whole concept of voting and being able to vote independently. The first time I went to vote, when I was 18, I had to have someone, well, I had to have two someones with me to read the ballot, because there was no accommodation made. So I had a Democrat and a Republican go with me to mark my ballot so they would verify that what I selected was my choice. And, you know, one of the fundamental principles of voting is private. You know, everybody should be able to cast their vote privately and independently and know that their ballot is secure. And so either I had to take someone with me or get an absentee ballot and mark it at home with somebody who I trusted. But I didn't have the same kind of voting experience for a long time that people do when they go to the polling place. So in the early 2000s, federal legislation was passed called the Help America Vote Act that changed a lot about our processes for voting. It's when we started to see equipment in the polling place, voting machines. It's when we started to see equipment in the polling place voting machines. Massachusetts also went through that process where we have a voting machine that is provided in every precinct now. It's called an Automark voting machine and we've had those for about 15 years or so. That allows someone who is blind or has low vision or a physical disability to use a keypad and either large print on the screen or speech output to listen to the ballot and then use the keypad to navigate through the ballot, make selections, and then cast their ballot at the end, which then prints out the selections onto the ballot that looks like everybody else's ballot. So my ballot now is secret because it looks like everybody else's. I can take that paper ballot, feed it into the counting machine just like everybody else does. You know, allows me to vote independently using that machine at the polling place. And every polling place now in the Commonwealth has that. So our city clerk manages that. It gets programmed and that's really exciting.

Kim: 12:22

The next chapter in the voting access story came during the pandemic, when those first couple years nobody wanted to go out to the polls and Massachusetts implemented voting by mail. And voting by mail, again, presented a problem because suddenly we were back to paper ballots that were not accessible. So there was no real way to have a vote-by-mail system accessible for people with disabilities that couldn't mark or read that mail-in ballot. So the cross-disability community at that point filed a petition with the Supreme Judicial Court, the highest court in Massachusetts, saying that we're asking for an accessible process to be able to vote by mail and do it independently. And the solution to that chapter in the voting access equation was an online voting system which is used by the military all across the country to obtain an electronic ballot. You are able to mark that ballot and then submit it via a secure internet connection. So we were able to piggyback off of that system for qualified people with a disability to use that online voting system. And now that has become law in Massachusetts. We were the fourth state to implement an online voting process for people with disabilities. One of the petitioners on the application to the Supreme Judicial Court was a woman in Boston who was in an iron lung and obviously could not get out to go vote and was concerned about exposure at that time. So I'm very proud of the fact that Massachusetts has online access as well as all the other accessibility options for voting.

Kim: 14:06

So that was another example. And, you know, in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there were a lot of rights that blind people didn't have. One that in the 1980s was not possible for blind people to do was serve on a jury. That one always puzzled me, because they have the icon of justice, Lady Justice, and she wears a blindfold. Because justice should be equal. It doesn't matter what you see, you know, you use your mind and the evidence and all that.

Kim: 14:35

But in Massachusetts, blind people were not allowed to serve on a jury. And it was in the 1980s that legislation was introduced to change that so that, in fact, blind people could serve on a jury. And around 2007, I had an opportunity to serve on a jury in Cambridge at the Cambridge Courthouse. You know, I kind of went to my call for jury, excited, but kind of going well, I'll be back to the office by the afternoon because I'm sure they'll dismiss me. And so I went into the process there and court officers, they ask a lot of questions, like, you know, is there a reason why you feel you're not able to serve on a jury?

Kim: 15:12

Well, I kind of felt like I should say yes. So I raised my hand. They kind of separated the people who said yes out and then they asked questions. So the judge actually called people up and said,you know, why did you say yes? So I got called up and I said well, I felt that I should inform you, and the counsels for both sides, that I'm blind. You obviously know that because I'm here with my seeing eye dog. But I felt that that was fair to tell you that in case there was any evidence that maybe was highly visual and counsel might be concerned. So she asked the counsel do you have a problem? And both counsels said no, we're going to talk about everything during the case. We're fine.

Kim: 15:51

So the judge picked me to be on the jury. But she didn't just pick me to be on the jury, she actually made me foreperson of our jury. So going from well, I'm not sure I'm going to be, I'll be home in an hour, you know, to three days in court and serving as the foreperson of a six person jury panel on a juvenile case. So it was from not being able to be a juror in the 1980s to being foreperson in 2007 was again one of those things that I was very proud of the fact that Massachusetts changed the law and realized that somebody who's blind can serve on a jury and do a good job.

Matt: 16:30

Yeah, so when you were president for American Council of the Blind, how much are you involved in that advocacy? What does that involve in terms of getting these laws passed and stuff? What is the actual work?

Kim: 16:42

So when I, and I'm still on the board of directors of the American Council of the Blind, I'm the past president now and I have a seat on the board until another president is elected. So we have a staff, primarily in Washington DC, that does, you know, the bulk of our advocacy work in Washington DC. Going to Capitol Hill, meeting with staffers, congress people, that sort of thing, and also with federal government agencies. the regulatory process for, you know, there's testimony on bills and there's comments on regulations that are proposed and working with agencies about programs and services. So a lot of work happens there. But there are certainly a lot of times when advocacy involves not necessarily staff going to meetings but a call to action from membership. And the members of the American Council of the Blind and the blindness community are often called upon to advocate for pieces of legislation that are out there. So one that I was heavily involved in beginning probably in 2008 until it was signed into law in 2010, was the 21st Century Video and Communications Accessibility Act. That legislation really had a lot to do with ramping up the availability of closed caption on television for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It also introduced some requirements into the broadcast statutes for the Federal Communication Commission that require audio description for people who are blind or have low vision. An audio description is an audio track that inserts description in the pauses of dialogue of a television program or a film that describes what's happening so you get the key visual things that are happening, so you can follow the program. So it might be a sight gag where there's a joke and somebody comes in and trips over an ottoman, like in the opening of the Dick Van Dyke show for those who are old enough to remember. He runs in and he kind of trips over the ottoman and that was like a sight gag kind of thing. So they might say, you know, races into the room and trips over an ottoman and then the audio of the show continues. So audio description has really made television and movies much more accessible to people who can't see the screen. And that was part of the 21st century act that was passed in 2010. And I was extremely lucky to represent the American Council of the Blind at the signing ceremony at the White House with President Obama in 2010 to bring that legislation and make it a reality. So it's continuing to make more television accessible and sporting events and live events and that kind of thing for people who are blind.

Kim: 19:26

And captioning, as you know, is kind of ubiquitous now. I mean, everybody benefits from captioning. If you're in a bar and there's TV screens, usually the captioning is turned on. Or in a gym or someplace like that. People know captioning's there and they appreciate it. And in fact some of our work with the Watertown Commission on Disability, just this past year we implemented an ordinance in Watertown that if a business has a public facing television they need to turn on the captioning and just have it on. So that went through pretty easy as an ordinance because there was no expense, no burden to businesses or government or anything like that. It was just basically, if you have a public facing television in your establishment, you need to set it up so the captioning always displays. That's been really good for people who are, again, hard of hearing as well as deaf in the community.

Matt: 20:21

Yeah, again, so many questions, but I want to make sure I get to the Watertown stuff here. Since you mentioned the Commission on Disability, do you want to talk about your involvement with that and what it's done?

Kim: 20:29

Well, I've served as the chair of the Watertown Commission on Disability for, I think, almost 15 years. It's probably time for them to get rid of me as chair, but they don't seem to want to. But we have a nine-member commission and it has mixed representation from people with disabilities. We have a woman on our commission who works with Deaf Inc, that is a non-profit in Watertown. I'm on the commission. There's another low-vision woman on our commission. We have a woman in a wheelchair. We have an architect. We have community leaders. Lisa Feltner is our liaison from the city council. And we do a lot of work trying to just make things more accessible for residents of Watertown that have any type of a disability. 

Kim: 21:20

So some of our current work, we are working with a consultant right now. Watertown got a grant last, well, this fiscal year, to do what's called an ADA self-evaluation and assessment plan. So all of the city buildings have been evaluated for physical accessibility things like signage, elevators, doors, bathrooms, handrails in bathrooms, just some of those classic things. And I'm pleased to say that Watertown's buildings are pretty good. We found, you know, some little things around the edges and maybe, you know, a better ramp in a couple locations to get people who use walkers, crutches, or wheelchairs in and out of buildings. But this plan will give us kind of a roadmap to follow and to plan. You know, some of them might be essential. You need to get this thing done within the year. Other things we can prioritize to get done as soon as possible and based on funding and that sort of thing. So places like Victory Field are on the list, all of the town buildings. We also have done a similar assessment for the outdoor spaces in Watertown.

Kim: 22:24

So the various parks and making sure that the parks are accessible, that the path of travel is level and that there's not only just stairs to get in or out of a park or, in the case of Saltonstall Park, to get to the stage or any of those things. And those are all being renovated as we speak. For Saltonstall Park, that's under pretty significant renovation to make it more usable and accessible for people with disabilities and the community.

Kim: 22:52

We also, as the Watertown Commission on Disability, for several years, we have been providing captioning for city council meetings because we felt that was an important role. And the city agreed with us and they now provide that for school committee and the city council meetings. We've also been strong advocates for the hybrid meetings that are currently being held and expressed our opinion and support for legislation to make hybrid meetings a requirement for governments, for city governments all across the Commonwealth. Because I think if you asked anybody who serves on a town board or commission, the hybrid, you know, Zoom slash in-person, has really expanded the participation of citizens in town government. It's really opened it up. People who traditionally couldn't get out to attend meetings are now having a voice and an opportunity to speak and let leaders in our community know what they think and what they feel is important. And I think that's hugely important for our democracy. So it's great to see Watertown being a leader in that space as well.

Matt: 24:02

Yeah, and that's another example too of something that makes it easy for people who just have kids and can't get out to a meeting and stuff like that. So are there other success stories of things that maybe started with your community but then benefits everyone as a whole?

Kim: 24:15

Yes, there certainly are. And this one might be a little more controversial. But you know, I think in the long run it is a really good thing for Watertown and that's around snow removal. And that's been an issue for a lot of people, pedestrians. So just finally being able to have an ordinance in place that really strongly urges, you know, first we had one for business, and businesses needed to clean their sidewalks up to 24 hours after a snowstorm so that people can actually get to them. Now Watertown will also have an ordinance requirement that homeowners do that, property owners do the same thing.

Kim: 24:54

What we've been working on as far as the Commission on Disability and with the Senior Center, is creating guidelines to deal with cases where there's a hardship. If somebody has a physical disability and can't shovel their sidewalk, can't afford to have someone else shovel their sidewalk, then how do we manage to get their sidewalk cleared? So through the Parks and Recreation program there is a volunteer program now that's up and running and hopefully will be instrumental in helping people that are unable to clear their sidewalks next winter season, you know, to get that support. So Parks and Recreation does have a program to help qualified individuals who are unable to clear their sidewalks, either people with disabilities or seniors who don't have resources to have someone else come and do that for them. So hopefully it will make Watertown an easier place to get around in the winter.

Kim: 25:49

Make sure that the bus stops are clear, the crosswalks are clear, and it's always a good idea to make sure the drains are clear so you don't get flooding and puddling, you know, when the snow finally does melt. So I think it's a positive thing for Watertown all around. The other area that the commission has worked a lot in and people who live in Watertown have lived with or have grown up with the fact that Watertown almost has always, since probably the 40s and 50s, had what I call accessible pedestrian signals. So they're the bells or the chirps that you hear on traffic signals at intersections to alert people who are blind or have low vision that it's their time to cross or not to cross. So every lighted intersection in Watertown has an audible pedestrian signal and there's many different styles and types. As I said bells, there's cuckoo, there's chimes, there's a voice. Some of the newer signals around town actually say wait, wait.

Matt: 26:52

When my kid was a toddler that was his favorite one to just press all the time. 

Kim: 26:57

He liked to hear it say wait or don't walk or walk. That very loud, booming voice. But those signals on every lighted intersection are just sort of a trademark of Watertown. They've made it a commitment from way back to make sure that that happens. And that again is a handshake off to Perkins being in town and being the first school for the blind in the United States. We've been in Watertown since 1911, so well over 100 years. So we're part of the community and the community embraced that. And that's one of the examples of Watertown making itself more accessible to an element of the community. People who can't see the walk don't walk sign, but want to navigate safely throughout our community, so.

Matt: 27:43

Yeah, and we should definitely talk about Perkins. So with Perkins, do you want to talk about a general overview of what Perkins, I mean, a lot of people know about it, but you want to explain a little bit what the organization as a whole does?

Kim: 27:57

Yeah, so I'm sure there's many people in Watertown who drive by Perkins on a regular basis, either on Charles River Road or North Beacon. Perkins is almost 40 acres of campus right along the river. And we do a lot here at Perkins besides have about 200 students who come here from all over New England primarily, but other states as well and sometimes even other countries. Because Perkins is one of the leading schools for the blind in the United States. You know, we teach academics. We also teach a lot of independent living skills, teaching kids to do all those things they need to do. Because some people might think, oh gosh, well that seems really mean to make blind children, you know, learn to wash dishes and clean their room and, as they grow up, do their laundry.

Kim: 28:46

But there's not going to be somebody in their life forever to do those things. So independent living is a pretty important part of what we teach, along with the academics, the blindness skills. Teaching kids how to use a long white cane to navigate their environment safely and learning to travel from building to building here on campus and, as they grow up, learning to navigate the streets and to cross intersections safely. So we teach braille. We teach assistive technology. Now that there's computers that talk and there's other kinds of like braille computers and talking computers, large print for the screen, so someone with low vision can see bigger letters on the screen. Seniors can benefit from that too. So all those different things in our education program. We also have a division that is qualified teachers of the visually impaired who work with school districts all across the country because federal law has a requirement that students who are blind or have low vision should be educated in the least restrictive environment. A free, appropriate public education should be available to them. So a lot of school districts hire Perkins teachers to come in and work with kids in their district who are blind, who may need braille instruction or assistive technology or orientation and mobility, which is training with the long white cane, to learn how to get around their school independently.

Kim: 30:09

We also have a manufacturing plant here on campus that manufactures the Perkins Brailler. And the Perkins Brailler, since 1951, is the world's best-selling mechanical Braille writing device. So I equate that to kind of the equivalent of someone's pencil or pen. It's a mechanical device where you can write Braille on paper and have it either, you know, for your schoolwork or to write down phone numbers, messages, important financial information, whatever you need to keep track of, allows you to write it yourself independently with a Perkins Brailler. And we do final assembly here on the campus and those Braillers are sold all over the globe. There's about 450,000 units that have been manufactured in the last 70 years that are all over the world. And we repair them here for anybody in the United States and we manufacture and ship them all over the globe. 

Matt: 31:05

How big is that thing? Just out of curiosity.

Kim: 31:07

The Perkins Brailler is about, it weighs about 10 pounds. You know, some people call it a Braille typewriter. It's about that size and you roll the paper inside. It has six keys on it for each of the six dots in the braille cell. It has a space bar, a backspace, and a line advance key. And then you use the combination of those keys that represent the six dots to make the various characters in braille. So you know the alphabet and then there's a lot of short form contractions or abbreviations that help so you can write more braille on a page because you don't have to spell out every single letter.

Kim: 31:45

The library is on the campus. We occupy two buildings on the campus. In our buildings we have a lot of braille. We have the largest braille book collection on the East Coast with about 30,000 braille titles and that represents more like about 80,000 braille volumes. So that's a big collection. We have our audiobook collection, which is nearly 200,000 titles, representing multiple copies of most of those. Probably in our building we have about 600,000 audiobook containers on the shelves.

Kim: 32:20

We have four recording studios where we actually have volunteer narrators who come in and record books. Mostly the books we do are local interest, Massachusetts titles. Books about maybe our sports teams, because everybody wants to read books about the Red Sox, the Patriots and that kind of thing. So we do those kinds of local titles, biographies, books about different communities, in our recording studio. We also have a braille production department and in the braille production department we produce books for our collection, but we also produce fee-for-service braille work. We add things to our collection but we also do menus for local restaurants. We do government reports, newsletters, all kinds of things where maybe an agency just wants like two copies of something in braille. That's what we sort of specialize in is doing those kind of one-off jobs. Because there's a major braille publishing company in downtown Boston called National Braille Press and they do books and magazines and they do more, like you know, 500 copies of a magazine in braille. But we don't do that kind of high-volume work. We just do, you know, smaller jobs, theater programs, those sorts of things. And then of course our staff. We mail the books to people who are patrons for our library. So our mail truck comes every day. We send out about a thousand pieces of mail every single day mailing what we call talking books and braille books to our patrons all around the state.

Kim: 33:49

So the other department that's interesting about Perkins is Perkins International. And Perkins International works with about 20 different countries, helping them to establish programs for training teachers to work with students who are blind in the classrooms in their country so that children with disabilities in those countries aren't pushed aside and overlooked in the educational system. So Perkins International does a lot of really good inclusive education work all around the globe. And, you know, we have a museum on campus because, as I mentioned earlier, Perkins was the first school for the blind in the country, so we have a lot of history behind us. We have a really great archives museum and research library on blindness that's used by a lot of academics, one of the best research collections on blindness and low vision in the United States. So many, many aspects of Perkins. And, you know, we have a lot of people who work here. Over 700 employees for Perkins. And we have residential as well as day students so we have residential cottages on campus as well. 

Kim: 34:57

So Perkins definitely has a long history with Watertown and is supportive and I know, you know, is engaged the braille trail, which many of the residents of Watertown I'm sure have walked past, on the Charles River Road at Irving. Perkins was very involved in the creation of that braille trail, along with many other nonprofit organizations to get that up and running. And in my opinion is one of the best braille trails in the United States. We should be very proud of that. It's got ten informational signs that are available in print and braille. And it also has a guidewire around the quarter mile trail that helps a blind person to walk a trail completely independently following the guidewire. And there are round balls on the guidewire. So when you touch a round ball that signals to you that there's a sign that you should reach out over the wire and you'll touch one of the signposts that exist. And there is braille on the backside of each of those signs. The signs kind of look like the peak of a roof and the print is on the forward facing part.

Kim: 36:04

The braille is on the back. And some people have said well, why is the braille on the back. Well, if you were going to touch, you reach up over the peak of the roof side and your hand goes down the backside and you don't have to bend your fingers in a really uncomfortable way, if it was facing forward. You can just read the braille and you read it toward yourself on the back. So that's kind of an interesting design element that was unique to the braille trail. Because other braille trails I've seen in the United States, they just have the braille facing straight out and to put your hand on that braille, you have to bend your hand back and it's just not very comfortable to read that way. So our braille trail is unique and it's really, you know, a nice feature. And there was recently an article in a major magazine about our braille trail and how accessible it is.

Matt: 36:53

Yeah, well, I want to be respectful of your time here. There's, I feel like, yeah, there's a lot more we could talk about, but was there any maybe one last thought that you wanted to get out there for someone to know, either about Perkins or your community in general that, you know, is a little tidbit that could help wrap it up?

Kim: 37:11

I just would say that Watertown has a lot to be proud of. All the time I've been here over the last 40 years it's been very progressive and very inclusive of people with disabilities. Government has always been very upfront about inclusion and I think that that makes me very proud to be a resident of Watertown and to work on the Commission on Disability and the work we do because it makes a real difference in our community. We are a diverse community and I think Watertown is proud of that diversity. All of the different ethnicities and people with disabilities, ages, all those kind of things, makes our town, our city, just one of the best places to live in the greater Boston area. And if anyone has an issue around disability, they can feel free to reach out to the Commission on Disability. I'm always happy to connect with citizens if they're having an issue.

Kim: 38:12

If anyone has accessibility issues around blindness or low vision, they have a family member who's losing their sight and they don't quite know where to turn, please reach out to Perkins. You can contact me at the Perkins Library. Just call the Perkins main number, 617-924-3434, and ask for Kim Charlson in the Braille and Talking Book Library, and I'll be happy to answer questions, give some guidance, and help wherever I can. But again, thank you, Matt, for the opportunity to talk about what I do and what Watertown does to make our community more accessible for everyone.

Matt: 38:49

Well, thank you for sitting down to share your thoughts and stories and I'll try and put links in the show notes for people who want that information. And yeah, thank you again. So that's it for my conversation with Kim. I'll put links in the show notes so you can find out more about her and Perkins and the Commission on Disability here in Watertown. And if you want to hear more episodes of the podcast, you can head on over to littlelocalconversations.com. You can find all the episodes, sign up for the weekly newsletter, and if you like these conversations and you want to help support the project, there's a support local conversations button in the menu where you can pitch in if you'd like to help. I'd also like to note that, starting a while back ago, I've been putting full transcripts of these conversations on the website. They also should be able to show up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts in there, so if that helps you be able to take in these conversations in the format that's good for you, I hope those are helpful. And if you have any questions about making these conversations successful for you, you can reach out to me, matt at littlelocalconversations.com. All right, and a few shout outs here to wrap things up. First, I want to thank podcast sponsor Arsenal Financial, which is a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, who is a very committed community member. If you want to learn some more about Watertown, you can listen to a Watertown trivia episode I did with him to celebrate the sponsorship. And if you need help with financial planning, Arsenal Financial specializes in helping out busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you're any of those and you need help, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com.

Matt: 40:11

I also want to thank the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast, and I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and massculturalcouncil.org. And lastly, I just want to give a couple shout outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that's bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. You can find out more about them and their events coming up at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. And the last promotional partner is Watertown News, which is an online newspaper focused on things going on in Watertown. So if you want to find out more about what's going on in the city, check that out at watertownmanews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.