DO-IT Ambassador Speaks at Employment Conference

I'm Anthony from Grand Forks, North Dakota; some of you might know me from being on ACOLUG (Augmentative Communication Online Users Group), attending past conferences and/or receiving a chance of speaking to me on the Prentke Romich Company [PRC] technical service line to get answers to your questions and/or problems on communication devices. [Note: Anthony uses an Augmentative Communication device to speak.] Today my boss and one of my friends, Janie Burgan from the Prentke Romich Company, and I received this great chance to share what I believe is a great success story on both the PRC's end, as the employer, and on my end, as the employee. But it doesn't stop with these two ends being happy and pleased. The most important part of the triangle is our PRC customers, which are some of you here today.

As most of you can figure for yourself, I have cerebral palsy and use a communication device to communicate. Unless you have been lucky and know something I don't, you know that receiving meaningful employment as a person with a disability is very difficult for a number of different reasons...

During the time I was planning what to say today, I was e-mailing some of my friends out at the University of Washington who worked with me during my high school days. In my e-mails to them, I was telling them that I feel people with disabilities sometimes just get placed anywhere, even if it's at a job that nobody actually needs done. This situation really puts a person down because they don't see the work actually getting used by somebody or something in the end... I, myself, had a few job placements, which, in the end, were really just "busy work."

Talking to you here today about my current position as a Remote Troubleshooter at the PRC technical service department is an honor for me. I had learned that the PRC was beginning to get interested in contracting actual communication device users to become Remote Troubleshooters. They were trained to answer technical service calls directly from their own homes. At first, it was slow getting started as a Remote Troubleshooter and getting trained in problem-solving each communication device that PRC makes or has made in the past. I had always dreamed of working for PRC or any place else where I could help people with communication devices to overcome their speech disabilities, which I have experienced in my own life. I have always wanted to provide the experience for somebody else, to wheel into somewhere and openly communicate something like I have been able to do ever since my Touch Talker™ days...

The real reward for me is when I get to call a parent who needs to reboot - to do some programming - and they receive a call from an actual communication device-user explaining the steps they need to follow to get the device working. Most often they are thankful for the help and encouragement I give them for their own child with a disability. I think my family and I would have felt the same, had we been helped by a Remote Troubleshooter when I had communication device problems or questions as a child starting to communicate and having no clue what an adult with a disability could do. I feel that my parents would have been very encouraged and would have thanked them in the same manner.

Also, when I was planning what to say here today, I asked my Mom if she remembered a man who was in some kind of accident and lost his leg and was trained to make and fit braces at the rehab. I remember when that man helped me... and how encouraged I was to be helped by another person with a disability... It's getting so that we can just stay home and turn on the computer and phone to do most things that, before, we had to go to the office to do...

In closing, I want to say that I hope that you have received something from listening to me. I truly hope that at the next PEC, you will be giving the same speech up here with your boss because it's definitely time to walk the walk instead of talk the talk. This is the most important thing that my Pathfinder has ever said to anybody. I feel getting a job, a house, or whatever you may want to have always begins if the individual who is commanding the communication device actually turns up the volume and begins speaking. Nothing is going to happen until then, because people don't have the time to guess what you want. You just have to take that first step.