I think of dyslexia as a specific place, and when I travel there, I’m like an immigrant in a different culture where people rely on written texts as a way to evaluate my competence.
12 He formed a nonprofi t, Initiative for
Learning Identities, today known as Headstrong Nation. Its objective is to develop a sense of community and self- advocacy for adults with dyslexia, atten- tion defi cit hyperactivity disorder, and other learning disabilities. He has since completed two fi lms. T e most recent is a half-hour documentary, Headstrong, which tells his story and the story of others he has met on his journey with dyslexia, and which can be viewed online at http://www.headstrongnation. org/documentary. T e organization also provides information in audio books. “We recently held a conference,”
Foss says, “and we’re actively working on developing an online community in education and employment.” After law school, Foss went to
work for Intel, where he started in the venture capital group and ended up director of access technology. It led to perhaps his greatest personal achieve- ment, the Intel Reader, a device about the size of a digital pocket camera that takes pictures of text and then activates a voice to read it back. It was
born, he says, of his frustration about access to information being limited to text. “I was just
looking for a better way,” he says. “I was sitting at my desk and had this fl ash.” Foss tho-
ught, why not combine the capabilities of a digital camera, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanner, and computer- ized voice-acti- vated text into one machine.
He presented the idea to Intel who
gave him the green light. “I worked with some of the best
designers in Silicon Valley,” he says. T ere were a myriad of decisions
regarding the product: creating a user interface, selecting the operating sys- tem, considering the features for the library; there were the voices it would use and the buttons to operate it; there was the name by which it would be known, the colors of the housing unit, the countries to market it, and the legal challenges. It took three years to bring to fruition. Last year, Foss became the executive
director of Disability Rights Advocates, a nonprofi t with a mission to protect the rights of people with disabilities. “We do this [by advocating for]
high-impact litigation,” Foss says. “We look for the most socially important cases that will support people with disabilities—we really listen to what people with disabilities tell us is important to them—and try to create a legal precedent that will force people to do the right thing.”
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012
A lot of what they do, Foss says,
is advocate so that accommodations are always included for people with disabilities. One landmark case won by DRA involved Mark Breimhorst, a California man who has no hands and who asked for extra time to complete the Graduate Management Admission Test given by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in 1999 and whose test was fl agged because of this. T e suit claimed that the fl ag was a form of illegal discrimination under federal disability laws. As a result, the practice of singling out the tests of candidates who take the test with accommoda- tions for disabilities, called fl agging, has been discontinued by ETS on all of its standardized tests. Among its important recent cases,
still in litigation, is one involving mili- tary vets, whom medical profession- als have shown to be suff ering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) and yet whom the federal government has been denying benefi ts. T e denial is extremely egregious because it was revealed in the initial trial litigated by the DRA that statistics compiled by the Department of Veterans Aff airs indicate that 18 vets are committing suicide daily2
, Foss says. “T at means
they’re more likely to take their own life than die in combat.” Ben Foss is among those persistent
individuals who has transformed a barrier into a gateway, and is work- ing to remove the barriers that hold others back. He has dedicated his life to the proposition that people who are diff erent can make important contributions to our society if given the opportunity, and his example shows that those who are, should not be discouraged. D&B
Tom Calarco is a freelance writer based in Altamonte Springs, Fla.
1
Brody, L. E., & Mills, C. J. (1997). “Gifted children with learning disabilities: a review of the issues.” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30(3), pp.282-286
2
Editorial. “A Victory for Veterans.” New York Times 19 May 2011: A26 print and online: http://www.nytimes. com/2011/05/19/opinion/
19thu2.html
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