Independence, Mobility, and Assistive Technology with Mike Mulligan

Luisa Recchia: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Through Our Eyes, the podcast of the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation, where we share conversations that inform, encourage, and connect families navigating vision challenges. I’m your host, Luisa, and today I’m honored to welcome Mike from Blind On the Move. Mike brings a powerful combination of personal experience and professional expertise to his work in the blindness and low vision community.

Through education, advocacy, practical tools and encouragement, he helps individuals and families move toward greater confidence, independence, and possibility. Mike, thank you so much for being here. We’re really grateful to have you with us.

Mike Mulligan: Such a pleasure to be here. Excited to be with, be with you too, be with you all.

Luisa Recchia: Mike, for listeners meeting you for the first time, tell us a little bit about yourself and Blind On the Move. [00:01:00]

Mike Mulligan: Sure. Yeah. I can give a little bit of a background of who I am and how I got to where I am now. So for me, it all really started in terms of getting into the blindness and vision loss field when I was a senior in high school.

So when I was a senior in high school, I was playing high school basketball and I realized, okay, maybe I need some contacts so I can see a little bit better on the court when I was playing. So I went to see just a regular optometrist and they did the standard eye exam and test and eventually did the dilation and looked in my eyes and then they, the whoops or uh-oh kind of look.

And they said, “Okay, we need to send you to a retina specialist. There’s something going on in your right eye.” So pretty much soon after that, I was at a retina specialist and I got diagnosed with a really rare, or I don’t know, really rare, a rare eye condition called [00:02:00] Coats’ disease. So Coats’ disease, really it’s abnormality in the blood vessels in the eye and affects I think 95% male and primarily one eye.

So I fit both those categories there. Once they determined I had it, which was, you know, probably, I don’t know when it started, but that’s when they found out was when I was 17, 18, they immediately started doing treatments to try and stop the blood vessels from leaking and eventually with the goal of my retina not getting detached and, damaged there.

So started treatments, got lasers and injections and over the course of about five years, they eventually were able to stop the leaking, but in the process I lost quite a bit of vision in my right eye. So right now my right eye, you know, I can still see a little bit, but it’s not very functional and it causes me some double vision issues because my eyes aren’t functioning well together.

My brain is learning to kind of [00:03:00] turn, tune that out a little bit. So I still can do a lot of things, but, um, it can be frustrating, especially after a long day. But anyways, that, that kind of started leading me down the path to where I am now. So when I was finishing up college, I did an internship at the Braille Institute, which is in LA, but specifically was the Anaheim location in California.

And started there because my undergrad was in kind of older adult health and fitness, so I was focusing on kind of activity classes and we had a fall prevention class. And I just knew kind of dealing with I, what I dealt with with my vision that I wanted to also work with people who were struggling with their vision.

So that’s kind of what started my path in the field. And then, you know, I finished my undergrad, finished my internship, took three years to go to a Bible school. And then after I did that, I got a job at the Carroll Center for the [00:04:00] Blind on the other side of the country in Boston and it was as a job coach.

So I didn’t know what that was when I applied for it. I just knew that I wanted to continue working with people with vision challenges. So I applied, I got the job, and it was really helping people who were blind find employment. So it was very hands-on. We did it at a hospital in the Boston area, so they had like nine people and they rotated through different departments in the hospital.

And it was a really good experience of learning, that just because someone is having vision issues doesn’t mean they can’t work or do, continue to do things normally, um, maybe just a little with some a- adaptation. And then I went back to grad school to become an orientation and mobility specialist, which I learned about while I was doing the job coaching.

And that’s helping people navigate and get around safely if they’re blind or visually impaired. So a lot of that is teaching people how to [00:05:00] use a cane, how to know where they are, so if they get turned around or lost, they can find their way where they wanna go and do it safely. So I’ve been doing that for about 10 years, and then I went back to school again to become a vision rehab therapist.

And this one, people haven’t re- well, both most people haven’t heard of, but this one that people haven’t heard of in that when they hear that title, they think, like, I’m trying to restore somebody’s vision like you would go to, like, physical therapy or, like … But really, it’s helping people learn the skills to do independent living tasks in their home.

So a lot of people I work with are older or, or losing their vision, so now they’re having a hard time using their appliances or organizing their clothes or using the stove or the oven or those kind of daily living tasks that we take for granted sometimes become really difficult, can become really difficult for somebody.

So learning the skills to really be as independent as [00:06:00] possible. And now with technolo- I think t- … Yeah. And now with technology, that’s become a big part of what I do too, because technology can do so much to help the blind community. A lot of my job is teaching people how to use different forms of technology, smartphones, computers.

You know, I work with a lot of people who are working age who are working or wanna work, and so learning how to navigate a computer with a s- a screen reader or a magnification or whatever might meet their needs. So it’s a nice mix. I get to work with all, all different types of people. I live in New Hampshire, so I’m all around the state of New Hampshire, and, uh, get to just be with people a lot of times in their homes and get to know people.

And yeah, I really, I mean, I … Very thankful, I wasn’t thankful at the time when my vision started having trouble, but, you know, looking back, it led me down the path where I am now, so, you know, in a way I can be kinda thankful for it too. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing now. So now I do that. And then I also do some [00:07:00] social media awareness, kind of instructional videos is Blind On the Move.

So that’s when I have time, most of my time seeing people in person, but when I have time, I like to do a little bit there as well. So it’s a nice mix of working with people directly and then some of the social media outreach stuff.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about Blind On the Move.

Mike Mulligan: So I started Blind On the Move, uh, wasn’t very much before, but a few months before COVID happened.

And part of that was I had, I was realizing I’d go out and work with somebody, I would teach them how, a skill to, like, with their cane, how to do it. And then I come back a week or two later and they did not remember what I just taught them, which is I think normal for a lot of us for a lot of things. But I wanted there to be a resource that people can go to to review some of the skills that I taught them.

So I started making some kind of [00:08:00] instructional YouTube videos about mobility in the cane and, uh, eventually it kind of evolved to where I started doing some more of the shorter videos, just awareness. Like what kind of led me that way was I did a video about the bumps on the sidewalk corners you see at crossings.

And I think a lot of people just in general didn’t know what those were for, so it did pretty well because people were curious. So that kind of led me down, like, okay, I need to do some, not just instructional videos, but also some awareness videos, just so … ‘Cause I hear it all the time when I’m working with somebody that they’re struggling with and understanding that they can see some things and can’t do things or family members not knowing how to help or because they’re visually impaired, they can’t do anything in the kitchen.

So there’s a lot of misconceptions out there. So that was kind of my driving point to continue doing the [00:09:00] social media things. And then just over time and being somewhat consistent, you know, it’s kind of developed where it is now. But it gives me the opportunity to reach more people than I can just one-on-one, which I still really enjoy doing because there’s something about working with people directly, but being able to reach a wider audience too is also nice.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. Yeah. So tell our listening audience that may not know what those little bumps on the corners are of the street. Sure. Yeah. And some of them are, you know, it is pediatrics, uh, focus. So a lot of the folks are new parents, you know, not diagnosed, uh, their children just newly diagnosed as infants. So what do they not know that they should know?

Mike Mulligan: Yeah. So I guess starting with your first, the first one the bumps on those corners, th- there’s different names for them, but essentially I call them a tactile warning strip. So what happened is, I don’t know, a few [00:10:00] decades ago, they realized that usual corners where there was a curb where you had to step up and step down wasn’t necessarily accessible for everybody, you know, if strollers, wheelchairs.

So they’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna blend the sidewalk into the street.” And then they realized that for somebody who’s blind and using a cane, they were having a hard time finding the corner. Yeah. So then they came up with this, I think it started in Japan, but it’s here in the US now is you can feel that with the cane.

So it’s designed really for that user in mind that they would feel those bumps and know they’re at the corner so they don’t walk out into the street. And they have them for other places too, but that’s kind of the gist. And most … I would get comments on videos like, “I thought it was to slow down skateboarders or like to get some grip when it’s wet” or, you know, like things like that.

And, uh, so hopefully more people know what those are now and why they’re important. Um, and then, yeah, when it comes to, working with [00:11:00] or with kids you know, I do some with kids in the school system as well for mobility, but I think realizing that there’s ways of adapting kind of almost everything, you just, you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s what comes up a lot is like, it might seem really difficult to do something, but there might be a piece of technology or a little device or some training that maybe it’s not, maybe it doesn’t make it like it, you know, it usually was or how it was, but it might be it can get close, you know?

So knowing that there’s op- there’s options out there and there’s also the resources, depends where you live, that’s a big part of it, but, you know, to get that kind of help in different areas there, you know, I didn’t start dealing with my vision till I was 18, so I’m a little bit, a little bit older than pediatric age but, I’ve had the, worked with some children over the years and yeah, just knowing [00:12:00] that, it’s not easy, obviously, but there’s some tricks and ways of learning to be as independent as possible out there.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. Yeah. So, so with that in mind, uh, sometimes families, I know with their best intentions can really limit that independence. What would you, what would you share with a family member that, you know, is gonna be struggling with this?

Mike Mulligan: That is a challenge, for sure, is as a parent, knowing when to allow the child to learn and do something and when to step in, I have two young girls, they’re eight and five, and they’re, they don’t have vision issues, but even then it’s like, when do you make them do it themselves or do you step in and do it?

But I think s- when it comes to children with vision loss, the more, and this is just my, from my experience, the more opportunities [00:13:00] they get to be independent, as long as, you know, they’re safe, but independent is really important because, you know, I’ve seen both ends of that with kind of young adults or high school age, the difference between, some parent doing everything for them and then some parents not doing as much.

And it does, from what I’ve seen, make a difference. So, and I know it’s much easier said than done, especially when it takes longer to do something. You know, I deal with like sometimes I just put my, help my kids put on their shoes because they could do it, but we gotta go, you know? So, and then when, when struggling with vision, it could take even long, that process can be even longer.

So, uh, it’s hard to find the balance. And I think, if there’s a way to reach out to other, uh, parents who are dealing with similar things or finding some tools that people there should be, there’s probably some resources out there that can be [00:14:00] tools for people to refer to, to just get some guidance on how to deal with that.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. So, obviously you mentioned you were 18 or you were older when, when this happened to you or you, you began losing your vision, but what would you tell that 18-year-old self today, knowing what you know now?

Mike Mulligan: Yeah, that, that’s a great question. I mean, at the time, I was quite angry about it because, like I mentioned earlier, when I went for the contacts, it was because I was playing basketball.

So my goal at the end of high school, um, was to go play college basketball. So for reference, I’m 6’5″, so I’m pretty tall, and I always enjoy playing basketball, and I was pretty good at it. So that was my goal, like finishing high school was to go to college, play basketball. And I did get the opportunity to play for a couple years, but because of my vision getting worse, I eventually had to give that up.

And that was really [00:15:00] what I enjoyed and what I was going to s- that was more my focus than education at the time. That was what I wanted to do. So that all kind of got derailed, but really looking back I would pretty much try and encourage myself that actually it, that experience really defined my life up to this point and that I didn’t know it at the time, you know, I was like, when I was going through all this treatments, I was just like the vision was getting worse.

I was there all the time. I was, at some point I was just thinking about, like, they should just take it out and so I don’t have to worry about it anymore, and I’m thankful they didn’t because it’s good having some vision and no vision. But yeah, just trying to encourage myself that this will lead me to where I am now and have the opportunity to really, I think, help people both directly and then even indirectly through social media.

And, you know, I, looking back, I, I, I am thankful for it now, but at the time, I was not at all.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. [00:16:00] So, tell … Let’s go into the orientation and mobility. What would you tell folks that might be listening, uh, a little bit more about that? When should they explore those avenues and, and what should they look for?

Mike Mulligan: So having not … I mean, I’ve done some with kids, not a ton. You know, I don’t know if I have the best answer, but I think for my recommendation, as soon … Because O&M could start really young toddler age or even I’ve heard of younger, but if your child is having a difficult time navigating it around, bumping into things, or even just discouraged to get around because of the vision, I mean, it’s worth talking to someone who works with that age group, consistently, because like anything, the earlier you start, the better.

So, you know, if there’s a way of getting in there, because if the child is not walking because [00:17:00] of fear of bumping into things or getting lost eventually that can hinder other areas of growth in development too, because, they’re trying to stay to that kind of normal pattern of moving and walking, exploring.

And there’s a lot of techniques that O&Ms use for that age to how to engage kids and get them to learn some of these skills. And it might not seem like a lot at first with that young of a population, but it develops over, over time.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. How about a little bit, uh, around Braille? You mentioned working, did you learn Braille?

Mike Mulligan: So I, I learned Braille in college as part of the curriculum to become an O&M because Braille does have … So there’s some misconceptions out there about Braille because now a lot of things you can do just audit [00:18:00] by listening, right? So a lot of things are auditory. And I remember asking this question when I was newer to the field too, there’s like a, some tech fair or something I was at.

And I was asked, somebody there, like, “Why is Braille still important because now you can just listen to everything?” And one thing that helped me is, especially for kids, it really can help with literacy. So if you’re just listening to things all the time, it’s hard to … you don’t really learn to spell that way, punctuation, and then it’s not as active of a thing.

So, like, being able to learn Braille, you’re act- more actively reading, but also learning kind of the, how sentences are formed, how punctuation works. So especially for kids I, that, that can be really helpful, gro- growing up if that’s something that would be beneficial to them. It’s a harder sell for adults.

I do work with some adults on Braille, but, you know, at that point, [00:19:00] many of them have already got the literacy part down, so they’re just looking for what can be the easiest to get the information I need. But when it comes to, like, O&M, reading bathroom signs, telling the difference between men and women’s, braille can be helpful there.

A big one is elevator buttons. So elevator buttons have the braille and many people … Because elevators are all different, so there’s no, like, standard layout for an elevator button setup, so knowing braille there can be really helpful. So some basic signage and things like that for adults, but really for kids, the literacy side, I think, is really important.

Luisa Recchia: Wow. You just threw some nuggets there. Uh, learning braille early, uh, yes, because you’re right. It does require a different activity than just listening. So assistive technology, tell me a little bit about that.

Mike Mulligan: Yeah. So that’s a really … [00:20:00] Technology has advanced even since I’ve been in the field quite a bit. And the ability to use assisted technology really, I think, is important because most jobs require, or school, you know, require the use of technology.

Even my elementary school kids, they use a computer at school. They’re using screens for things maybe too much, but there’s, you know, that’s just part of our, our world. So assistive technology is really important because it really opens up that option for everyone, and it’s getting better all the time, not perfect, but assistive technology can help somebody and who has limited or no vision, use a computer with a screen reader, or use their smartphone with things like voiceover or Siri or other voice kind of command thing.

So really, it opens up a [00:21:00] lot of the technology to anybody, even though struggling with vision loss. And a big one that I’ve been working with people on recently is the Ray-Ban Metaglasses. So that is a way of getting information about the environment. It helps read documents, books and that wasn’t around a year or two ago.

So I, I always … I tell this story a lot. I was … When I was doing my job coaching, I don’t know, 10 years ago, I was working with a gentleman and he got a, uh, it’s like a internship at a TJ Maxx- mm-hmm. … like clothing store. He was in the back room, and he had no vision, and he was hav- he was great at sorting things, which was part of the job, but he couldn’t read any of the tags, and there was no technology at the time that would do it.

We tried all these different things. But now, with those Ray-Ban glasses or other similar technology, like on the phone, he would’ve been [00:22:00] able to do that job and probably would’ve done pretty well, but there just wasn’t the technology at the time to help him do it. So it wasn’t … His limitation was the technology limitation.

So now, a lot of things are opening up in that realm with technology and it’s developing quickly and AI, has its pros and cons, but for kind of the blind and visually impaired community, it has been quite helpful in general, I mean, there’s still things you gotta be conscious of, but in terms of getting information about the environment, reading, cooking, finding your way around a store, so a lot of benefits there.

So it’s definitely worth, sooner than later get some training and learn what’s out there, but know that 10 years from now is probably gonna be a lot different than it is now, but it can be quite helpful.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. So on the employment side you know, one of the things we hear about our young [00:23:00] adults because many of them that started off as young infants are now, uh, young teenagers.

And uh, you know, many of them are in college today or, um, i- trades, but what, what advice would you give them? Like, what can we help them with in terms of tools or ideas or how do they prepare themselves?

Mike Mulligan: That’s a great question. It is quite dependent on the person themselves, but I think what happens a lot is people, because of their vision, say, “I’m not gonna be able to do this, or I’m not gonna be able to do that. ” And I mean, I get it, that’s, that’s a hard thing to break through but if you can, or if they can that really opens the opportunity to get that training and the instruction that would help obtain a potential job in that area.

Uh, it does sometimes require a little more [00:24:00] flexibility, like, because of my vision, I’m not flying a plane, but maybe I can, if I really like the plane atmosphere, work at the airport, you know, something like that. So you’re not, maybe it’s not the exact thing you’d wanna do, but you can still be in that area that is rewarding.

Yeah, and it, sometimes it takes time and it does take some breaking down barriers with employers, being able to show them just because, you know, I’m walking around with a cane or blind that I can still do the job, maybe a little bit different than my coworkers, but I can still do it, so there’s a lot to it, and getting the assistance when needed is also helpful.

So, but like with anything, if you’re willing to work hard at it and do some training, I think opportunities will open up. It’s when, so when people get discouraged and think that it’s not gonna happen, that you kinda get in that side, and we all know, you all kinda get in a cycle with anything. [00:25:00] So that’s kind of my encouragement there and there, I was able to, when I did the job coaching, we were able to get people jobs and they’re, you know, and they still have them today and we’re successful.

And so it’s definitely available and out there.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that coaching. Uh, do you work with an organization and offer this service or is this something that you independently, it’s, it’s what you offer?

Mike Mulligan: So I don’t really do that that much anymore. Okay. So that was, that was more like the beginning of my career was the job coaching.

So they have job coaching, like job coaches we were called, for really all different types of disabilities, s- assisting people with on the job assistance or training. So a lot of times people get connected with that if they’re … Every state’s so different, but like in Massachusetts, they have a Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, they have counselors there, and then if somebody gets an internship, they’ll provide a job coach or, when I was [00:26:00] doing, I worked at the Carroll Center for the Blind Where I don’t work anymore and they got some grant funding to do the program we did. So it kind of depends on that. But normally there are, there’s definitely some federal funding out there to help, especially end of high school into college age kids with vision loss navigate, either college potentially or employment.

So it’s more probably rea- reaching out isn’t, is important,

Luisa Recchia: So that’s the key, right, is, um, taking action, reaching out. Don’t let anything get in the way.

Mike Mulligan: And I think with anything, you need to, what the squeaky wheel gets the grease saying, you know, I, I’ve noticed that too, is that, because there are, a lot of people out there who do need some assistance, but it’s the ones who are willing to, and not in a, obviously in a mean way, but just like bother the counselor, “Oh, like, I haven’t heard from you in a month,” or whatever it is, you know, [00:27:00] because there’s not a lot of, you know, there’s limitations on the staff on, they might have a big caseload, so they just, they don’t mean to be forgetful or something, but you gotta

It is helpful to keep reminding them and keep working with them, yeah.

Luisa Recchia: Yeah, of course. Of course. What do you hope our listeners, uh, can remember from our conversation today?

Mike Mulligan: That’s a great question. I mean, I think hopefully s- from, my experience with a rare eye disease seeing that, you know, it didn’t, doesn’t necessarily ruin everything, or I mean, it does make things harder, and I know there’s kids with worse vision than I have, but just that still being able to find something to, like, to do and enjoy.

And then another one is, really, if you’re going, you know, if your child is going through any struggle because of their vision, there’s probably some work around to help with [00:28:00] that. And for that, you probably need to reach out or do some research. But, you know, one example I get a lot is putting toothpaste on a toothbrush.

For some people, that’s really hard. So there’s different ways of doing that. And like some people will just squirt a little bit from the tube in their mouth or put a little bit on their finger and then use their tooth. So just ways of those kind of little things that are important, for growing up and being an adult, being, that there’s ways of doing that without necessarily as a parent having to do it all the time.

You know, and it might get messy at first. It might take some time, but that’s really gonna, really gonna be helpful in the long run to develop those skills as early as possible.

Luisa Recchia: Nice. What’s next for Mike?

Mike Mulligan: What’s next for Mike? Yeah, that’s a great question. So probably just keep doing what I’m doing for a while, you know?

So I work for myself in New Hampshire, so I have [00:29:00] some freedom there to you know, kind of make my own schedule and be available when I need to for the family. And I would, I like to do a little bit more on the social media side again, some more instructional videos going back to that.

But I really like being with people and working with them in their homes. So it’s, it’s hard to give … Something’s gotta get, give somewhere, give up something. So, we’ll see how that balance is. But yeah, just keep going. Keep … I don’t plan on leaving the field or changing what I’m doing anytime soon.

Luisa Recchia: Nice. Nice. Well, how can we at PRRF help you?

Mike Mulligan: Yeah, maybe just letting people know Blind On the Move is out there. You know, I’m pretty much on most of the social media things and there’s some resources there and people can contact me if they have any questions if they’d like.

Yeah. So you go to people’s homes. Do you do any work, uh, remotely or through Zoom? Is that a possibility if somebody needed to reach out or would like to reach out to you for s- some tips?

That is a possibility. I haven’t [00:30:00] done, you know, I’ve done some of that. But yeah, especially when it comes, you know, the mobility side’s hard.

Like you can do kind of an intro with that, but safety-wise, you’re kind of limited virtually, but a lot of the other skills can be done, done virtually. So that, I have done that with people. So if that somebody’s interested, they can reach out as for potentially doing some of that as well.

Blindonthemove.com. And then my email’s mike@blindonthemove.com, so-

Luisa Recchia: So before we wrap up, uh, I’d love to leave our listeners with a wor- word of encouragement. You’ve already given us a lot of encouragement, but what’s another word of encouragement, especially for those that are wanting to enter or in their phase of life where employment is the next step?

Mike Mulligan: I think it’s really to be open and willing to work for it, because if you don’t, it’s not gonna just fall on your lap. So my word for encouragement is if you’re passionate about something, [00:31:00] really, really dive into that, you know, and find … there’s a niche out there for you. There’s somewhere that you belong in that realm.

So just work towards it, be willing to put in the effort that you need to get there.

Luisa Recchia: Beautiful.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Through Our Eyes, the podcast of the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation. At PRRF, we are committed to supporting research, sharing resources, and strengthening connection for individuals and family navigating pediatric retinal conditions and vision challenges.

We hope today’s conversation has brought insight, encouragement, and a reminder that no one has to walk this journey alone. To learn more about the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation, upcoming programs and resources for families, please visit prrf.org. Until next time, thank you for listening.