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>> The Paul K. Longmore Institute
on Disability launch event, 10/11/2012,
San Francisco State University.
Henry Wedler, PhD student organic chemistry UC Davis.
>> I guess my opinion and what I want to express to you today
through my work in chemistry
is that disability is not what holds us
who have disabilities back, rather low expectations held
by society of people
with disabilities is what holds us back.
I went to a Braille symposium back at the National Federation
of the Blind a couple weeks ago and there were people
from universities all around teaching Braille,
and teaching Braille teachers how to teach Braille.
And they were saying we need to come
up with some consensus till we figure
out okay this is why blind people aren't getting jobs
and how many blind people have work and how many don't have
work and how can we make their lives better.
In truth, we don't need a consensus.
The work situation's pretty dismal.
In the blindness community,
70% of the blind folks are unemployed.
Why is this?
I'll tell you right now,
it's not because blind people can't get jobs,
it really has to do with expectations of what we can do.
And expectations set by society about what people
with disabilities can do.
The sad thing is that oftentimes there's expectations set
by society transfer through to us and show us things --
or try to make us believe
that we can't do things.
Now, I was lucky because I was raised by a set of parents
who were just incredible.
They treated me just like my brother, they never,
never lowered the bar.
I was held to very high expectations for my entire life
which I am forever grateful to.
My identity wasn't "the blind kid" or "their blind son".
I was just like my brother, I was Hoby Wedler,
he was Jesse Wedler, and I happened to be blind,
that's the only difference.
Now that attitude rubbed off on me and showed me
that I could do what I wanted to do if I believed in myself
and I worked hard, harder than I ever thought I would have to.
And I realized that I loved chemistry,
I wanted to study chemistry.
When I was a junior in college, I'm sorry when I was a junior
in high school and I had an honor's chemistry teacher
who didn't know whether I should study chemistry as a blind guy,
and I had to do a lot of convincing, do a lot of work,
and eventually during the second semester
of that honors chemistry class in high school, I told her,
you know, I know you have questions and some doubts
about whether a blind person can do chemistry
but nobody can see atoms.
Chemistry [inaudible].
[ Laughter ]
All we do with our eyes is look
at what color reactions are occurring and what's going on
and then you measure things out.
But the actual act of thinking about chemistry
that professors do is in your mind.
So I went to Davis and I thought it was going to be going
to be fun to study organic chemistry,
it's really what I want to do.
I learned that I love organic chemistry because everything is
so spatially oriented.
But I didn't know history --
or chemistry would work so I also picked up a degree
in history with Professor Cathy Kudlick.
And I didn't want science to fail me so I did that.
I was about to study history in graduate school
when I met an organic chemist who does applicational chemistry
and I said well, this sounds like too much fun.
I've got to take this challenge.
So I spent a summer working with him,
the Summer of 2009 and I liked it.
They made the lab accessible to me and here I am,
I'm in graduate school studying chemistry as a PhD student.
Some of the approaches that we use are a little bit animated
and things that I think are important,
I can't see the molecules
or the output calculations on the screen
so we've adapted a 3D printing approach that we print
out these transition states and these optimize structures.
So I can feel where the atoms are.
I don't like doing anything that doesn't help everyone else
so what we realized with three dimensional printouts
were that a lot of people, including professors
who see this stuff all the time seen everything exactly how
it is
[ Laughter ]
gain a lot more from the 3-d model than you may have thought.
Inputting structures is a little bit difficult
because I can't use my chemical intuitions to think
about where to put things.
So we're working on a project and currently applied
for funding to employ a three dimensional scanning system
where I can build a model.
It's weird, five bonds of carbon instead of four,
different length bonds that aren't really right -
things that we want to study.
Build it with my hands using custom built pieces made
by the three dimensional printer and attach our own id tags and
scan it into the computer, which is also going
to be useful for sighted students.
Now I realized that I love chemistry and I got sad
when I started thinking
that maybe there were other blind kids out in the world
that might like science too
and there might be things that they didn't think they could do.
And maybe won't do them because they didn't
that they could study them.
So through the National Federation of the Blind
and the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, I founded
and instruct a chemistry camp for blind students,
for over two days of exciting, fun, hands-on chemistry.
And students learn through this program
that we can do chemistry just the same as everyone else.
But the point of the program isn't to show people you need
to be in chemistry because you're blind,
I don't expect these people to do chemistry.
I expect these students to leave knowing they can do things
that they thought they couldn't do.
Students come in timid and nervous about everything to do
with science, they don't want to touch a pipette
but the past few camps that we've had,
students have left truly wanting to be scientists and knowing
that if they wanted to do something that was too visual
that society told them they couldn't do, that's not true.
A lot of these students have been told they could couldn't do
chemistry and we have a great time doing that.
Ultimately what I want -- the message that I want to leave you
with and the message that I've gained through my
work and through my work with a disability
and thinking about what can we do.
The truth is, I don't know.
From [inaudible] and from Professor Kudlick's talk,
we know that we need to be innovative.
I didn't know a blind person could do chemistry.
I didn't know many things that people with disabilities do
but the truth is, none of us know what the future is
and where we can go after this.
What is going to be there tomorrow, but what we need
to do is we need to dream and we need
to turn these dreams into realities.
And that's what this institute is all about
and that's why what we're doing here and what Professor Kudlick
and San Francisco State University are doing is
so wonderful.
They're dreaming of things that we didn't think we could do
because none of us know what we could do and none
of us predicted that what we are doing today would be possible
when we thought about it 20 years ago.
So thank you to the institute, we're expanding what it means
to be disabled and expanding the realm of opportunity
and dreaming of new and innovative ideas
that empower the generations of the future.
Thank you so much.
[ Applause ]