[accessibleimage] blind Capitol tour guide

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, USA
Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Capitol tour guide shows visitors an unexpected thing or two

By Sadia Latifi, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)WASHINGTON - Stacy Cervenka often leads tourists from Kansas through the 
crowded halls of the Capitol, pointing out presidential busts, historic 
paintings and details in the huge dome that arches over their heads.

Leading tours is typical duty for Senate aides such as Cervenka, 26, a primly 
dressed blonde who works for Kansas Republican Sam Brownback. But she brings 
something extraordinary to the role: She's blind.

"My big fear was that I would point to a vending machine and be like, `And this is a 
picture of George Washington,'" she said in a recent interview.

To train herself to give tours, Cervenka explained, she researched the 
architecture on the Capitol's Web site using software that reads text aloud, 
called JAWS. She also followed other interns around on their tours, asking lots 
of questions.

She's an expert now. When she's in the Capitol Rotunda, Cervenka, who uses a 
cane, determines where she is - and which painting her group is looking at - 
based on the grooves in the stone floor. In Statuary Hall, she invites tourists 
to join her in discovering tactile details of the sculptured busts.

"When she first arrived as an intern, there were folks that questioned if she was blind," 
said Brian Hart, Brownback's spokesman. "There was no task she couldn't do. She makes sure she 
can do everything herself, almost beyond the threshold of what a sighted person would have 
done."

Brownback agreed, boasting recently that, "Stacy gives the best tours of anyone on 
the Hill."

Cervenka first interned in his office in the summer of 2004, through a program 
offered by the American Association of People With Disabilities. Each year, the 
program selects students to work in Congress, and Brownback seeks them out.

Cervenka wasn't always self-reliant enough to apply, however. At her high 
school in Chicago, she stuck to a group of friends and never crossed a busy 
street alone. She passed up study abroad because she didn't want to travel by 
herself. She resented the fact that she couldn't drive.

She figured that she had no choice. She was born with optic nerve hypoplasia in 
her left eye, leaving her totally blind in that eye. In her right eye, the 
optic nerve fibers were so deteriorated that she was well beyond legally blind.

After graduating, Cervenka attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., for 
two years. There, she started making connections with other blind adults 
through the National Federation of the Blind.

"We went dancing and took the subway, and that opened my eyes to the fact that I 
wasn't living my life the way I wanted to live it," she recalled.

So she went to the Louisiana Center for the Blind in Ruston, La., which she describes as 
"boot camp for the blind." She learned cane travel, home economics, shop, 
Braille and technology. She also went on mettle-testing excursions with her blind peers. 
They tried white-water rafting, rock climbing, even Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where they 
learned to cope with crowds.

She recalled the center as very demanding. It required her, for example, to prepare a 
"small" seven-course meal.

"The scariest part for me was not the rafting or the climbing, but I was really afraid to 
grill a steak," she said. "I thought I'd light myself on fire." Fire still makes her 
a little nervous.

After eight months at the center, Cervenka enrolled at the University of 
Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she lived off campus, tested herself with 
classes in judo and horseback riding, and graduated with a double major in 
French and Italian.

Coaches and professors were sometimes reluctant to give her a chance to prove 
herself, she said.

"You have to have high expectations for yourself because sometimes people are 
willing to let you slide with mediocrity.

"It is so important to get the training and skills you need," she added. "Reasonable 
accommodations (for physical disabilities) aside, how can you possibly ask people to hire you if 
you can't do what you need to do?"

Since interning, Cervenka has spoken out against accommodations that she thinks 
may stifle skills development. She's against audible traffic signals, which she 
considers a waste of money better spent on traffic-noise training.

"It never fails to amaze me the things people try to do for me," she said. "A few 
days ago, my shoe was untied and this guy on the subway bent down as if he was going to tie it. 
People think that you're going to be childlike and that you don't live in the world or share the 
same interests as anybody else."

She's been impressed with her experiences on Capitol Hill, however.

"When I started interning, the office manager said, `How are you going to give 
tours?' She didn't say, `We're not going to let you' or `Will you be able to?' She asked 
how."

Cervenka isn't sure what's next. She's considering public policy or a law 
degree. Her short-term goal, she said, is to get together with a few blind 
friends and go skydiving.


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