How being blinded in an accident made Brian Charlson’s life better
from bostonglobe.com
Brian Charlson’s life changed forever on an afternoon long ago when he was alone in his family’s kitchen. Like many 11-year-old boys, he enjoyed experimenting with stuff. So he poured baking soda and vinegar into a glass bottle, screwed on the cap, and was ready to throw it into the blueberry bushes outside when it exploded in his face, glass flying everywhere. He woke up in the hospital with bandaged eyes.“I had now entered the world as a blind person,” Charlson says. He didn’t lose all of his vision at once, but medical complications took the rest of his sight by the time he was 21.
For many people, the accident would have been devastating. But Charlson, 62, credits it to turning his life around for the better. He buckled down and studied, became class president, and was on the debate and wrestling team.
“And in the rehabilitation world, in order to get services, you have to declare your future profession,” Charlson says. Because he had long been politically active, he said his vocational goal was to become governor of Oregon, where he lived with his parents and four siblings at the time of the accident.
Charlson never became governor of Oregon, but he is a force for change. As a vocal advocate for accessibility, he’s proud of meeting Presidents Bush and Clinton, having lunch with Prince Charles of England, and testifying before Congress.
“Blindness improved my life. Now I’m a big cheese in a little pond,” says Charlson, whose varied work resume includes work as a state Senate aide, assembling kidney machines, canning green beans, and running a cafeteria. Many years ago, he moved to Boston with his wife, Kim Charlson, library director at Perkins School for the Blind. Then he literally collided with another blind person while getting off a bus in Kenmore Square. They dusted each other off, introduced themselves, and Charlson’s new acquaintance told him about a part-time teaching job at Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton.
That was 30 years ago, and now Charlson is director of technology at the Carroll Center, helping hundreds of visually impaired people with technology training, either by teaching them new skills or by helping them adapt to a career they already are in.
The Globe spoke with Charlson about assistive technology solutions.
“My parents had a strong work ethic, and despite the fact that 70 percent of the visually impaired are unemployed, even after the accident I was expected to perform.
“The day I was blinded, my mother was off at her bowling league, where her best friend happened to be totally blind — and a better bowler than my mother. So there were high expectations of what a blind person can do.
Read more here.
