Summer 2001

Employee Spotlight - Debbie Sommer

Debbie Sommer assembles Lighthouse easels

"One of our favorite family activities was going out on Christmas Eve and looking at the Christmas lights," recalls Debbie Sommer, a sixteen-year Seattle Lighthouse employee. "One Christmas when I was about thirteen years old, my family was gathering together to go out and look at the lights," continues Debbie. "When I tried to walk up to the house I missed the stairs completely in the dark. My sister had to help me to the house. That's when we realized I was suffering from night-blindness."

Born totally deaf, Debbie later learned she has a genetic condition called Usher Syndrome. "When I was about two years old, my parents realized there was something wrong with my hearing," Debbie explains. "At that time we moved from Nebraska to Colorado so I could be seen by an audiologist there. He had lots of experience with deafness. He also told my parents he thought I might be mentally retarded, but they told him there was no way. They knew their daughter."

When Debbie was about five years old, her parents enrolled her in a public school where instruction centered on teaching deaf children to speak. "This was an oral school," Debbie recounts. "I didn't learn sign language. It was very difficult to communicate with my family, and it was extremely difficult to learn things like math and English." Then, at about age thirteen, Debbie transferred to a school for the Deaf. "I started learning American Sign Language, and it opened up a whole new world for me," she says. "It was about this time I started suffering from night-blindness and had my Christmas Eve episode, but we didn't really know what was going on."

Finally, at age twenty-one, Debbie visited a center for the blind and spoke to someone familiar with Usher Syndrome. People with this genetic condition are typically born deaf, losing their sight over time due to retinitis pigmentosa. "The person explained what Usher's is and what it would mean for my life. They told me I would eventually lose my sight and would need to learn blindness skills like braille, and how to do tactile sign language so I could feel the hands of the person signing to me. It was extremely depressing at first, and I also suffered from lots of denial. Now I have come to accept that this is my life, and I must live the life I have without being angry."

After learning the facts about Usher Syndrome, Debbie traveled to the Helen Keller National Center in New York State for a year of training. "I learned everything from mobility training, to daily living skills like sewing, and communication. I also had my first opportunity to socialize with other adults who had Usher Syndrome."

Following her year of training, Debbie returned to Colorado, but unfortunately found no suitable employment opportunities. Suffering through a few unsatisfactory forays into the world of work in Colorado, Debbie next found herself in Seattle. "I went to Seattle to attend the annual conference of the American Association of the Deaf-Blind," Debbie says. "Part of the conference was a tour of the Lighthouse. I had heard about the Lighthouse for years, and now had a chance to visit. Shortly after returning home to Colorado I thought to myself, why not move to Seattle?"

Packing up and moving to the Northwest, Debbie did indeed find employment at the Seattle Lighthouse. "I've worked in many different areas of the Lighthouse," she reports, "from putting together hose assemblies for big trucks, to the Boeing area, to making paper trimmers, file folders, binders and easels." In addition to employment, Debbie has discovered the wonders of computer technology at the Lighthouse. "I was hearing about people using email," she says. "People communicating with friends and family, and making new friends all over the world. But, there was no way to use braille with the computer. This inaccessibility of such a fantastic technology was very frustrating. Then, a few years later, I heard that the Lighthouse was getting some braille equipment that could be used with computers for email. I decided to be assertive, and get started as soon as I could."

Debbie enrolled in some of the Lighthouse Education and Training programs. "I was so far behind at first. It took me a long while to just learn the basics. We did not have any Deaf-Blind instructors at that time, so everything was done with interpreters," she recalls. Eventually, Debbie mastered email and Microsoft Word. "At Christmas time I can send messages and cards to my family and friends!" she exclaims. "Since English is not my first language, ASL is, my English is not that good. But, that doesn't really matter. It's the communication that counts." This summer Debbie is enrolled in another Lighthouse Education and Training course, with a Deaf-Blind instructor, to learn how to access the World Wide Web. "I'm so excited about learning more and more about computers, about email, and about the Web. It's extremely liberating for me as a Deaf-Blind person to have these tools for communication and access to information," Debbie concludes.

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