- May 2, 2024
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The Center for the Visually Impaired's Daytona Beach office is the largest campus for blind services in the country. And one Ormond Beach student is taking advantage.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
Dan Pekich and Ben Fischer, co-directors of the Teen Transition Program at the Center for the Visually Impaired, 1187 Dunn Ave., Daytona Beach, try to instill assertiveness in their students. And one student, Courtney Boylan, 21, of Ormond Beach, is listening.
As she ends a year in the program, she already has an idea for a business.
“I was in a restaurant with my boyfriend in St. Augustine and asked for a braille menu and they didn’t have one,” she said. “I asked if they wanted me to do one for them and they were very happy to have me do it.”
Boylan has since launched a website, brailleitall.com, where she offers braille translations for menus (email [email protected]).
“I wish ice cream shops had all the flavors in braille,” she said.
Her proud mother, Donna, called her daughter a go-getter and an "amazing young lady."
The Teen Transition program helps visually impaired teenagers become independent, employed adults. It teaches living skills, self-esteem, self-awareness, job-seeking, socialization, computers and technology.
Boylan said that she was encouraged to look at different ideas and try new things. She said she especially wanted to learn how to cook in the program and now enjoys baking.
She also learned how to get around with a cane and how to use the bus system.
“Ben is a great mobility instructor,” she said, of Ben Fischer, orientation and mobility manager, and co-director, of Teen Transition.
She just graduated from the School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine and her next step will be the Adult Rehabilitation Program, a residential program on the CVI campus in Daytona Beach.
“My goal is to get independent enough to get a guide dog and go to college,” she said.
A career option, she said, would be to teach the visually impaired how to use technology.
“I’m very good with technology,” she said. “I helped a friend set up his I-phone. I’m very patient when it comes to teaching people.”
About 40% of the instructors at CVI are visually impaired, according to Pekich.
Boylan is happy to show her Notetaker, a computer that can translate into braille and also has audio, allowing her to use email and the Internet.
Pekich, who is also a vocation program manager, said the facility also has computers that use larger type, color and contrast to make reading easier for students.
“I’m still fascinated by what technology can do,” he said, adding that the teens use those computers to read books and learn skills that will help them someday be employed.
Boylan’s mother said the transition program has been “fantastic” and helped her develop into a “whole person.”
Socialization and recreation are also big parts of the program.
“We think of them as teens first and blind second,” Pekich said. “That’s always how they are viewed. This summer, we had a lesson on dating.”
Pekich said he once asked a group in the transition program how many had been canoeing and none raised hands.
“We get them out, and they find they can do things,” he said, such as go to Universal Studios and Sea World.
Pekich said there are about 500 clients total at the center on Dunn Avenue, which is the largest campus for blind services in the United States.
There are currently 40 in the Teen Transition Program. They attend regular school then have transition classes on Saturdays. During the summer, they meet three to four days a week.
And students continue to take the program year after year, Pekich said, because it constantly changes.
“I have to keep it fresh and fun,” he said. “These kids are giving up their Saturdays during school and their summers.”
This past summer, the theme of the program was Harry Potter. In a past year, it was the Olympics.
“Next year, we may do a reality show theme,” he said. “That should be interesting.”
CVI is supported by the Florida Division for Deaf and Blind Services, which is structured under the Department of Education.
Call 253-8879.
Second Annual Dining in the Dark
The Center for the Visually Impaired's next fundraiser will be a reception and silent auction to precede a dinner served in “absolute pitch blackness" by Volusia County Sheriff's Office deputies wearing night-vision goggle. The event starts at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2, at the Hilton Daytona Beach Resort, 100 N. Atlantic Ave., Daytona Beach. The cost of this business-casual event is $65 per person, or $600 for a table of eight.
Purchase tickets at cvicentralflorida.org/DID.
