For the Full Life Care Gratitude Gathering 4 29

This afternoon,  Full Life Care   the  STAR Center  non-profit partner is holding a Gratitude Gathering volunteer appreciation event by Zoom.

Below is the original appreciation RantWoman wrote for the occasion. RantWoman appreciates the skilled edit of what will be heard at the celebration, and RantWoman posts the whole document here.

My name is (RantWoman). I have been volunteering with the STAR Center since
before Full Life took over the contract to manage it and I am familiar
with Full Life's long involvement with computer labs at Seattle
Housing Authority. When I first became involved, I was just adjusting
to midlife vision loss and trying to figure out how to work with all
the new tools and technologies and challenges in my life. At that
point, having a stable technical environment with the assistive
technology tools I needed provided me the opportunity to figure out
what I can do, what level of technological resources I need to do
things I am good at, and what kind of social network will help keep me
growing.

I find a number of things especially rewarding about the STAR Center.
One is all the things I learn from being around people with other
disabilities. The other is being able to be examples for student
volunteers and others about adults living with disabilities, and about
what doors can open from using specific assistive technologies such as
screen reading, screen enlargement, braille embossing, and many other
tools.

I have also learned a lot from other longterm volunteers. I refer to
one volunteer as the Chief Morale Officer. She uses a wheelchair and
has many physical challenges but she is just joyous about trying to go
out to concert events even if accessibility is considerably less than
perfect. Most of the time she has a great smile in her voice and she
likes to pay attention to popular culture. There is a little bit of a
mismatch there for me, but I love that she is always encouraging me to
lighten up and have a little more fun; she is not always sure about
the things I consider fun but I so appreciate her efforts to increase
happiness.

Another longterm volunteer is quite skilled about helping people think
about what technologies will most help for what they need to do. This
volunteer spends a lot of time learning about speech recognition
technologies, interfaces such as switch scanning and lately virtual
reality and Amazon Alexa skills.

Help from Full Life about volunteer recruitment has been extremely
valuable in terms of outreach, screening and training. It cheers my
heart to learn that many short-term volunteers find their experiences
rewarding. I have also been gratified when Computer lab coordinators
have been willing to work with volunteers with disabilities who are
clients of various job placement vocational rehab programs. Recently I
ran into one former intern / volunteer. He was great working with a
range of STAR center customers and he now works for the Department of
Services for the Blind, I believe either as an assistive technology
technicion or a vocational rehab counselor. Work at STAR has also
helped a number of young adults with autism figure out different parts
of their life paths.

One example of the things I learn is a STAR Center customer I need to
call L. L had some kind of physical deformity. She had very little
ability to move anything: her hands, her head which was permanently
tilted to one side. One of the things I will always remember about L
is that she always came to STAR with some kind of cheerful brightly
colored blanket covering her in her wheelchair. Over the years one
longterm STAR Volunteer has tried a number of different technologies
related to switch-scanning or eye movements to see whether giving L
more ability to control her own computer use will be helpful.

Mainly, L likes to come to STAR, have someone put on her special
earbuds /headphones, and watch videos. Other STAR staff have set up a
path on the computer that worked best for L's wheelchair and people
who might need to help her to find free content and to give L a choice
of the genre of movies she will watch for the day. L has had a number
of caregivers, most originally from other countries. Some of the
caregivers are able to take advantage of L's movie times to learn
things on the computer for themselves. Other times L's caregivers,
like other caregivers who serve residents at Center Park just come to
STAR to fax in timesheets or to learn how to use the fairly new online
process for submitting timesheets. I so value that STAR can serve
several different parts of our community.

If I were a careful editor I would write about L only in the past
tense. L passed away recently, near the beginning of the Stay At Home
orders but not of COVID 19. I want to offer sincere condolences to
everyone who knew L and especially to her brother who has been very
faithful about looking out for his sister. At some point I hope people
can gather for a memorial, but I will remember L always anyway.