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Chicago Lighthouse’s Apple-supported “Pictures for All” program sees visually-impaired individuals supplied with an iPad Air, Magic Keyboard, and Apple Pencil.
“Pictures for All” is part of the metropolis’s One Summer time Chicago youth employment program. Apple says that it supplies folks aged 14 to 24 with job alternatives, internships, and coaching at organizations throughout Chicago. In addition to particular job coaching, the program units out to provide younger low-vision and blind folks much-needed private expertise.
“Confidence and shallowness are laborious — or I assumed could be laborious — to zoom in and educate,” Lisa Davis, former director of One Summer time Chicago who created the Pictures for All thought, instructed Apple. “However this program helped them open up and expose their confidence. It takes away the concept that they cannot do that.”
Apple has been supporting the metropolis’s venture since 2017, and this yr over 200 folks participated in Apple-supported alternatives throughout images, videography, recreation design, coding, app growth, and AR.
“Pictures for All” is a six-week program instructing the technicalities of images, but additionally giving them instruments to, as Apple describes it, “assist them navigate the world independently and confidently.”
In addition to being supplied with Apple units, the individuals had been additionally given coaching by Apple consultants on a variety of matters together with accessibility options. These included the Zoom characteristic that magnifies photos on display screen.
“Earlier than I found Zoom, I would just maintain my telephone up all the strategy to my face,” 18-year-old Adetokunbo “Toks” Opeifa instructed Apple. She’s been recognized with cone-rod dystrophy, a retinal dysfunction meaning she could have progressive imaginative and prescient loss. “This fashion I can really see higher.”
“I like when photos inform a narrative,” she continued. “This program is a pleasant start line for writing precise scripts as a result of I am studying [how] to truly painting visuals.”
Later in August, 2022, Opeifa shall be becoming a member of Chapman College, California, the place she is to review screenwriting.
“I by no means get to see myself represented in tv as a Black lady who can be a visually impaired, legally blind particular person,” she mentioned. “Tv is a means for folks to see themselves in numerous lights and totally different identities.”
“All of the youngsters really feel that they’ve expanded their capability to really feel that they’ll journey anyplace, go to locations they’ve by no means been earlier than,” says Shelle Hamer, The Chicago Lighthouse’s director of youth transition. “The coaching they acquired on the accessibility options accessible on their iPhone and iPad has given them the confidence to navigate the metropolis and really feel impartial in touring round unfamiliar areas on their very own.”