(PULL QUOTE) “It’s not a difficult field, especially now with all this technology available and you can access things on the Internet with your computer, and you don’t always have to rely on people to read for you.”

BEING blind for most of her life and faced with challenges at every turn could have created a situation that was discouraging to an ordinary person; but certainly not Julie Lewis. Those deterrents could not prevent the well deserved success that has attended the life of the indomitable Julie Lewis, who has defied all odds and is well recognised and respected by her colleagues at the National Communications Network (NCN), where she currently serves as a Senior Announcer/Producer.

Born and bred in Georgetown, her parents observed that as an infant she was acting unlike ordinary children; and at the approximate age of 11 months, her mother noticed and was alarmed by two shiny spots in her eyes, so she took Julie to the eye specialist, who diagnosed her with congenital cataract.
As the ninth of her mother’s 11 children, Julie had surgery done on her left eye when she was only 19 months old, and on her right eye when she was only three years old. She can recall having partial vision in her right eye up until she was eleven years old.
“I had enough (vision) to run around and identify colours and large and bright things; but I was still regarded as legally blind, and I had to wear spectacles from as long as I can remember. And I changed a lot of them because many of them got broken,” she recounted.
Relating one of her most vivid childhood memories, Ms. Lewis said that when she was six years old, she and her younger sister were crossing what they thought was a clear road, but they ended up mere inches away from being hit by a car, and that incident was witnessed by their mother.
Despite her visual impairment, Julie’s parents never prevented her from having a normal childhood or treated her any differently from the rest. She was allowed to play in the yard and romp with the other children as any of her other siblings did. “Maybe because I wasn’t totally blind as a young child, but I was allowed to play and do everything like my other siblings. No restrictions were placed on me, so much so that I used to have a lot of falls; I would run off of bridges…” she recalled.

Education
Julie attended various kindergarten schools because her parents believed that receiving an education was very important, regardless of the status of her sight.
She attended St. Stephen’s Primary School, where she was faced with the challenge of not being able to see on the blackboard; and despite securing a seat on a front bench in the class, she had to go very close to the blackboard to write.
Ms. Lewis was also faced with the challenge of neither being able to write in nor use exercise books, since she was not able to see any of the lines in the books; and as such, all of the pages looked to her like blank white sheets of paper.
Eventually, her parents enrolled her in the David Rose School for Handicapped Children, where she was the only girl in a small class for the blind, and learnt Braille, Mathematics and all the other subjects which other primary school students were doing.
According to her, those students were not promoted from class to class, and one teacher would teach the class both Braille and academics until he/she resigned and another took his/her place.
She recalled that around 1977 two new teachers came to the school, one dealing specifically with academics and the other with Braille; and having decided that the David Rose School was not a place for blind children to be, those teachers moved to have them included in the regular school system.
In 1980 she and two other students who were partially sighted were moved to the St. Roses compound and she sat the CXC examination. Julie was the first totally blind person to be in the regular secondary school setting and sit this examination; and despite being the only totally blind one out of the three in her class, she was able to top the class, writing five subjects and securing good grades in all of them.
This accomplishment, however, did not come easy, but was made possible by various persons who assisted her with the reading that needed to be done. Volunteers from the Methodist church did a lot of the reading for her.
The firsts did not stop there for Julie. She went on to be the first totally blind person to take on ‘A levels’ and be successful at that too, writing History and Literature and passing both, even topping the class in the former.
As Julie reflected on her life as a visually impaired student, she recounted that she has always been faced with challenges; and despite thinking of dropping out of school, she persisted and did not allow these challenges to deter her.
She recalled a moment of pride when she was in one of her history classes and realised that the teacher was using as part of the material for her lesson that day a history paper that had been submitted a few days earlier.
It was somewhat challenging for Julie at the advanced level, since she did not have as many volunteers to read for her, and the A level subjects required a lot of research and reading.
Her teacher told her that her History paper was an excellent one which was well put together, but her score was shortened because she did not use sufficient books in doing her research.
“She gave me an ‘A’ for presentation and my ability to analyse and assess, but she gave me a C for the amount of books I had on my bibliography,” she recounted.
Julie said that throughout the challenges she has faced in her life, a quote from William Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” has always kept her going, and drives her even to this day.
That quote is: “I have stepped so far into blood that if I should try and wade back, going back would be as difficult as going on with it.”
After A-levels Julie did a work study stint at the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), where she was subsequently employed and has stayed for six years, working in the Programming Department.
She became restless, and since it was always her desire to further her education, she enrolled at the University of Guyana (UG) and became the first blind person to pursue a degree in communication studies, which was also not void of challenges.
This programme required a lot of reading, and again Julie had to rely on volunteers to read for her the actual books on tape, which she would replay in a process which proved to be very difficult.
“It wasn’t because I couldn’t cope with the work. Once I got the work, I could handle it; but it was getting the reading done that posed a problem. But I persevered because it was what I wanted to do, it was what I wanted to accomplish,” she said.
Julie recalled that there were several persons without whom she could not have overcome this challenge, and she said she is very grateful to those persons.
These included staff members of the university, persons from the Catholic Church, as well as an American family whom she described as being very nice and helpful in getting her reading done for her.

Life in the Media
Following the successful completion of her degree, Ms. Lewis returned to working at the GBC, where she served as a reporter, rising to senior reporter and then assistant editor. She recalled that, in 2004, the merger between GBC and the Guyana Television Broadcasting Company (GTV) occurred, leading to establishment of the NCN, and she returned to the Programming Department as an announcer/ producer. Last year, she was promoted to senior announcer/ producer.
As she reflected on her 28 years of being in the media, Julie recalled one of the most vivid memories in her reporting career when, in 1999, a public servants’ strike occurred in which nurses participated.
Since two of her beats were health and industrial relations, and no one was willing to cover this assignment for her, Julie had to go out into the fields when persons were angry that this strike was ending.
She recalled that there was an unruly crowd at the Public Service Union (PSU) headquarters, and they began to pelt chairs and bottles. Everybody had to run for cover from the flying missiles, so she latched on to the first person she could find, and they ran for cover.
Asked about the tools she uses on a daily basis as a reporter, Ms. Lewis recounted that when she started in the media, the main tool used was the typewriter, and she would constantly have to get persons to make corrections for her whenever she made mistakes.
With the introduction of the computer, things were made easier, but there were still challenges that she faced.
She explained that she now uses a screen reading software called “JAWS”, which allows her to read the screen by way of text to speech; but she said this is still challenging, since the amount of information she can take in at a time is not as much as a sighted person can.
Her colleagues at NCN are very cooperative and understanding, but Julie recalled that when she was promoted to assistant editor at GBC, someone wrote in one of the daily newspapers that promoting a blind person to assistant editor was like hiring an announcer who was deaf and dumb. Julie thought this an unfortunate statement, since all she needed was someone to read for her and she could perform as well as, if not better than, anybody else in the newsroom.
Ms. Lewis considers herself not in any way different from all the other reporters, since, just like them, she records her assignments and completes her reports from those tapes.
“If there were releases to be read, I would get another reporter or an editor to read it on to a cassette, and I would take it and listen back and develop the story,” she explained.
She never dreamt of being promoted to senior announcer/ producer, and had this to say about her promotion last year:
“I was hesitant, even a bit reluctant to accept the position because I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out. But it has worked out, and I was assured that I would be given the assistance I need,” she said.
Asked what she would say to visually impaired persons who wish to pursue a career in journalism, she said: “It’s not a difficult field, especially now with all this technology available and you can access things on the Internet with your computer, and you don’t always have to rely on people to read for you.”
Julie encourages all visually impaired persons to strive to have their dreams realized, and not let them be denied because they are differently able.
“The sky is becoming the limit because of technology. Technology has really revolutionized things for people who are blind, especially the younger ones. I would strongly advise that they grab all they can, learn to use the computer, become familiar with the technology available, and utilise it to the fullest. And try and get an education,” she maintained.
Ms. Lewis loves to read, listen to the news and gather information. She said she believes that she had to become her own role model, because she believes that she is as normal as anyone else.