BVCIL in the News

http://theeagle.com/news/local/nonprofit-s-bryan-college-station-chapter-helps-make-homes-more-wheelchair-accessible/article_cc849c8c-32bb-11eb-b3bb-c7459f3ce7d6.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

Nonprofit’s Bryan-College Station chapter helps make homes more wheelchair-accessible

By CHELSEA KATZ

Astatewide nonprofit group dedicated to helping people with disabilities is marking a milestone — the construction of 100 miles of wheelchair ramps.

To celebrate, Texas Ramp Project volunteers throughout the state are building even more ramps in an effort dubbed 100 Miles of Freedom.

All together, ramps built throughout the state by the organization would stretch from College Station to Houston.

“It’s just one foot at a time,” said Jerry Gritter, regional coordinator for the Bryan-College Station chapter of the Texas Ramp Project. “You stay at it long enough, you get to it. … We didn’t get in it to get 100 miles of ramp. We got in it to try to help people that really need it, but it just adds up and adds up and adds up.”

The Bryan-College Station chapter of the organization spent Nov. 21 building a ramp for Bryan resident Carmen Rivera.

Rivera, a bilateral amputee, uses a wheelchair and had to rely on help from her neighbors or family members to move in and out of the house.

“They have to lift her up over three steps three times a week to go to dialysis,” chapter organizers said in a news release.

Ramp recipients are typically elderly or disabled and cannot otherwise afford to build a ramp, Gritter said. The chapter, which covers the seven-county Brazos Valley region, gets its project referrals from health care professionals and clinics, rehab centers, the Area Agency on Aging and the Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living.

“They all need a way to get in and out of their house,” he said. “We build ramps for people who haven’t been out of the house in months, and that’s the only way they can get out.”

In addition to helping the ramp recipient, Gritter said, the ramp also helps his or her caregivers and families by alleviating some of the stress. In Rivera’s case, he said, the ramp gives her the ability to get in and out of her house without assistance.

Gritter said the local chapter is on track to build about 88 ramps this year, which is close to what it did last year. The group lost about two months of build time due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it started building again in mid-May with mask and social distancing protocols.

Each ramp is built by volunteers that include retirees, church members and students. The Young Men’s Service League took on Rivera’s project.

Gritter said the local chapter has built more than 800 ramps since it was founded in 2008 — two years after the state organization. Across the state, the Texas Ramp Project has helped build nearly 20,000 ramps since 2006.

Locally, Gritter said, the organization puts a ramp together for about 90% of the referrals it gets, but the goal is to help every referral.

“Some people really don’t need a ramp; some, there’s no way to put one in there, and it’s just space,” he said. “But our goal is to build a ramp for everyone that needs one and can’t afford them.”

Gritter said it is satisfying to put a ramp together because it’s easy to see how the work is helping.

“We go in there, and two or three hours, we built a ramp, and we’ve changed someone’s life,” he said.

The organization receives funding from grants, the United Way of the Brazos Valley, the Area Agency on Aging, the Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living and donations.

Anyone interested in volunteering or donating can do so at www.texasramps.org.

Blake Scott, an intern with the Project SEARCH program, finishes filling out an address label on a package Thursday at the Baylor Scott & White Medical Center to be delivered within the hospital.

 

Posted: Friday, October 21, 2016 11:59 pm

By Elizabeth Kamenicky  elizabeth.kamenicky@theeagle.com

Every school day, 18-year-old Blake Scott drives himself to the Baylor Scott and White Medical Center in College Station, where he works as an intern in the supply chain services department.

From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Scott, who participates in the Project Search High School Transition program, puts labels on and distributes cardboard boxes, sweeps the floors and takes out the trash — simple tasks that teach the A&M Consolidated High School graduate important employability skills.

Scott is one of three students in the College Station school district who takes part in the international program designed to prepare students with disabilities for competitive employment by providing real-life work experience as they transition from school to adulthood.

Although the students in the program have completed their high school academic requirements, they continue to work closely with the school district, as well as the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living and Region Six Education Service Center to receive additional support for the next step in their lives.

According to Allison Hollis, secondary instructional coordinator for special education for the College Station school district, the students go through three 10-week internships — which are locally offered at Baylor Scott and White — to acquire skills that can be applied to related positions in the community.

“This takes an intern and puts them in a real, live situation to learn transferable skills,” she said. “The majority of the interns don’t work in a hospital after they graduate from Project Search. They work at other places in the community, but the skill sets that they’ve learned happened to be at the hospital.”

Students also undergo a classroom component of the internship in addition to completing the required workload for the position.

Special-education teachers and job coaches work with the interns on their employability and functional skills for about an hour a day. Currently, Scott said he and his classmates have been practicing the process of obtaining a job.

“I’ve been working on my interview skills,” he said. “[I’ll use them] maybe when I’m done with this.”

Production manager Beverly Kellman, who oversees intern Johnnie Jefferson, 19, in the hospital’s food service department, said the hospital does not hire the interns to just complete a task, but rather ensure that they are learning and retaining important skills.

“The whole thing is to give him experience that he can actually use in an environment,” she said. “We’re not hiring him to be a cleaner; we’re trying to get him to be involved in everything that is going on. We have to make sure that he is skilled when he’s done.”

After the students complete their three internships, Hollis said they get to provide their input on where they would be interested in pursuing paid employment. Many local businesses, including H.E.B., CHI St. Joseph, Lowe’s, Baylor Scott and White and the school district, offer job opportunities to the students — typically with more hours and higher pay because of the skills learned through Project Search.

With the many components involved in the Project Search process, Jefferson said he just enjoys coming in and working hard each day with his co-workers.

“I like everyone,” he said. “I like staying busy.”

For more information about the Project Search High School Transition program, go to projectsearch.us/ourprogram/highschooltransition.aspx.

 

 

Source:

http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/program-helps-disabled-students-learn-job-skills/article_41097b6e-9814-11e6-9279-0f7b7a0ec83e.html

 

 

The BCS Outlaws organized in 2014 and this is their second trip to the World Series.

Beep baseball is a baseball game modified for athletes who are blind or visually impaired.

 

Posted: Thursday, August 11, 2016 12:00 am

By Rebecca Fiedler rebecca.fiedler@theeagle.com

The BCS Outlaws — Brazos County’s beep baseball team for the visually impaired — made its second appearance in the Beep Baseball World Series in Iowa recently, competing against 19 teams that rely on nothing but a player’s sense of hearing.

The Outlaws are a relatively young team, having only been formed in 2014. The team landed in 17th place in 2015 and made a 16th place showing during the series in July.

“Being one of the youngest teams out there, we did really well,” said one of the team’s coaches, local minister Jerry House. “That means we won three games at the World Series.”

The team boasts about a dozen players who range in age from 14 to 45, nine of whom are visually impaired in some way and several who are fully blind. All players in a beep baseball game — with three exceptions — are required to wear a blindfold while playing, House explained, in order to level the playing field. The pitcher, catcher and one field spotter for each team are required to have full vision capabilities to ensure the progression of the game and assist the sightless players. Athletes hit a softball-like ball with a beeping noise device inside.

“It’s a really cool thing to watch a blind person hit a baseball,” House said.

Several members of the Bryan-College Station blind community, in conjunction with the Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living, gathered the resources necessary to form a team with the National Beep Baseball Association two years ago. The Outlaws are one of seven official beep baseball teams in Texas.

Some players are former high school or college athletes, while others are beginners, House said. Those on the team who are 100 percent blind, he noted, are actually the ones who perform best at the sport, as they have honed their sensory skills.

“One of the challenges of beep baseball is just being able to use your ears alone to find the beeping ball,” House said, “and getting past worrying about running into somebody; just trusting your instincts.”

The pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in College Station began assistant coaching the team because his own daughter, a student at Texas A&M, lost much of her vision as a teenager. She played high school volleyball and soccer as well as ran track, but could no longer participate once her vision faded. He said when his daughter learned about the league, she was excited to have a chance to participate in athletics again.

“Coaching this team isn’t any different than coaching a regular team,” said House, who played baseball when he was growing up. “It’s all about motivating people. We all have barriers. You just need to learn how to trust your body.”

One challenge beep baseball teams face — besides hitting and catching a fast-moving ball while blindfolded — is financing.

“A beep baseball is about $35,” House said. “We go through about 30 balls a season. It gets expensive.”

The Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living is the sole title sponsor for the Outlaws, though the team is hoping to expand its reach and grow.

“We’re hoping to try and host a tournament in Bryan-College Station next spring,” House said.

The Outlaws typically begin practicing for the World Series in March. To learn more about beep baseball or for information on how to support or become a part of the Outlaws, visit www.bcsoutlaws.com.

 

 

Source:

 

3D printing technologies have helped to make a difference in the lives of many people across the globe, and in so many ways. Soon, thanks to the ingenuity of a freshman engineering student, the lives of the visually impaired at the Texas A&M University will also be changed for the better with the help of 3D printing. The student, named Tyler Wooten, has been developing a 3D printed tactile map embossed with braille to help the college’s visually impaired students better understand the university campus and navigate it more easily.

Wooten conceived of the idea for the tactile map while taking a 3D printing course at Texas A&M’s Engineering Innovation Center (EIC) last year. Since then, he has been working closely with a fellow student, Kaitlyn Kellermeyer, to turn his idea into a useful and usable reality.

 

Tyler Wooten and Kaitlyn Kellermeyer

 

Kellermeyer, an economics student at Texas A&M, lost eyesight in her left eye as a baby and only recently (in 2014) lost eyesight in her right eye as well, leaving her completely blind. For the past two years, Kelleymeyer has struggled to become accustomed to having no eyesight and has depended on help from her friends to help her get to class and the like. She explains, “I had memories of where everything was relationally. With all the open space on campus, and with the lack of auditory cues, I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get around.”

Kellermeyer has also been a key figure in advocating for new and innovative projects around campus to help the visually impaired, which made her the ideal candidate to work with Wooten on developing his 3D printed tactile maps. Since they’ve teamed up, Kellermeyer has given insight, tested, and provided feedback about how the maps should be designed and feel. According to the visually impaired student, the project has given her more freedom and has made all the difference in helping her to navigate around her university.

Wooten, for his part, designed the 3D campus map using SolidWorks software and 3D printed a number of prototypes using the EIC’s in-house 3D printers. Being relatively new to the technology, Wooten went through some trial and error, but with the help of other students and faculty got into the swing of things relatively easily. As he explained in an interview: “For main campus, I had a picture of the map up on one screen, and I had SolidWorks open on my other screen and I was just eyeballing it, drawing all of the buildings. Enough people had heard about it that they taught me how to do it better. Now I can take a screenshot of the map, put it in SolidWorks and just trace the buildings.”

In the end, the 3D printed tactile maps of campus were printed using PLA and are only 1/4 of an inch thick, making them easy to carry around. To account for the size of the campus, Wooten has separated the whole map into different sections, each measuring 5 x 9inches, which can be easily assembled by sliding them together. Wooten, who invested his own money for the 3D printing materials, said that each section took roughly 5 hours to print.

Of course, the project is still in development as is being constantly improved by Wooten and Kellermeyer. For instance, according to the students, the roads on the tactile map are going to be widened, the buildings have been shortened, and the braille has been improved and corrected. The braille, which is printed on a number of the University’s main buildings, is meant to identify main campus spots and help orient the map’s users.

Tracey Foreman, assistant director of disability services at Texas A&M, is optimistic about the project. She said, “Having access to a tactile map allows a visually impaired individual to better understand the scale, size and proximity that cannot always be gathered solely by walking around or having something verbally described to the individual.”

As they keep working on the innovative 3D printed tactile maps for Texas A&M, Wooten is also starting to design tactile maps for other campuses, including the Westbrook Intermediate School in League City, Texas, and the Brazos Valley Center for Independent Living in Bryan, Texas, where a number of disabled people reside. Here at 3Ders, we can’t wait to see what else Wooten, who has managed to help the visually impaired people in his community in only his freshman year, comes up with next!

 

 

Source:

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160807-texas-am-student-3d-prints-tactile-maps-of-campus-for-the-visually-impaired.html