The Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) is excited to announce the implementation of Aira, an app-based service that connects people who are blind or have low vision to highly trained, remotely-located agents in real time to guide them through exploration of the Museum at no cost to the visitor.
Through the app on the user’s smartphone, Aira delivers instant access to visual information at the touch of a button, enhancing everyday efficiency, engagement and independence. Visitors to the GRPM can download the app and begin using the service during their visit for free. Through visual interpretation, this guided service provides access for visitors who are blind or low vision to engage with exhibits, label text, interactives and more while they explore the Museum on their terms.
“The Grand Rapids Public Museum is proud to continue to expand access to the Museum for members of the community who are blind or low vision, unlocking an independent experience,” said Dale Robertson, President & CEO of the GRPM. “By partnering with Aira to offer this free access to anyone visiting the GRPM, we are continuing to ensure the Museum is as accessible and inclusive to the broadest population.”
Once connected to an Aira agent, the visitor, referred to Aira as an Explorer, will decide where and when they would like additional access to information. They can choose to be navigated through the Museum, making their way to exhibits, the Curiosity Shop, Cafe or anywhere else they would like to go. The Aira agent will customize the experience to what the visitor or Explorer is interested in seeing and learning, reading labels and explaining the details of the artifacts and information around them.
Aira came recommended to the GRPM by the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ABVI) through the Museum’s exhibit design process. As the Museum works towards a new, internally-designed exhibit, Fashion and Nature, it connects with local groups and experts within the community for feedback on design, accessibility and inclusivity. As the Museum looks to not only ensure that Fashion and Nature is being designed and built for broad audiences, but that the entire Museum experience is accessible, members of ABVI shared their experience using the Aira service and how empowering it has been in their everyday lives. ABVI is one of many groups the Museum works with for this feedback, including GVSU occupational therapists, Anishinaabe Circle, Disability Advocates of Kent County and more.
For more information or to begin your visit to the GRPM, visit grpm.org.
Tyler Zahnke succeeded in school with help from math aide Doug Morse, left, and Nancy Calvi, Kent ISD consultant for the visually impaired.
Tyler Zahnke sat down at his musical instrument – aka, his Toshiba laptop – and proceeded to open a wonder-box of sounds. He called it “Welcome to the Tape.”
Out the sounds came, tumbling one into the next: Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1; an announcer spouting “Hi boys and girls!”; daffy cartoon voices; a snippet of Van Morrison’s “Moondance”; and then several voices stitched together to say, “Welcome to a very special Mini Nifty mixtape, five years in the making.”
“That is how the CD begins,” Tyler said with some pride, after the soundscape ended. It was, he explained, an artistic form called “sound collage.”
“Sound collage is where you take pieces of collected audio and basically glue it together,” Tyler said. “After all, the word ‘collage,’ from French, means ‘gluing together.’”
Tyler knows whereof he speaks when it comes to sound. He creates great quantities of it, both in collage and more traditional musical forms. All unaided by sight — and perhaps enhanced by his lack of it.
Blind since birth, Tyler has turned his inner vision loose on music, as well as writing, while navigating the challenging terrain of academics required for a high school diploma.
He has done so with plenty of support from MySchool@Kent, a partly online and partly face-to-face program offered by Kent ISD that provides flexible, online learning for students with special circumstances. Tyler is the first blind student to graduate from the program – a fact of which he is rightfully proud.
“I managed to do it,” Tyler said. “I can’t believe it, personally.”
Perseverance plus Help
He actually completed his graduation requirements late last year, but plans to walk in the commencement ceremony of Northview High School East Campus, his base school, in early June. More than 35 MySchool@Kent students are expected to graduate from their home districts this spring.
Tyler finished his requirements both by online instruction and by coming to MySchool classes at the Kent Career Tech Center, where he worked for long hours with an aide on math — the toughest subject for a student who couldn’t see the shapes and angles of a problem.
Tyler Zahnke sits in on a jam session earlier this month at the Fulton Street Pub (photo courtesy of Rachel Buzzitta)
Principal Cary Stamas credited Tyler’s perseverance for his success, as well as MySchool’s flexibility and dedicated staff members who helped him.
“It starts with Tyler and his motivation and hard work to achieve,” Stamas said. “It really speaks to what our goal is, which is to try to figure out what roadblocks there are for students to achieve their goals. And how do we use the flexibility we’ve been given to innovate and alter things in a way that makes the experience something of value to them, and something of integrity.”
Flexibility also came from Northview Public Schools, where officials arranged for Tyler to enroll in the alternative East Campus school and connected him to MySchool. They enabled him to stick with the program after his father died two years ago and Tyler moved to live with his mother in Rockford.
Through all the challenges, Tyler drew on assistive devices for the blind as well as his own intelligence. As graduation came within sight, he applied himself more diligently, coming to the Tech Center three or four days a week when only two were required.
“I’m very proud of him,” said Nancy Calvi, a Kent ISD teacher consultant for the visually impaired who’s worked with Tyler since he was 3. “I’m so glad he made it. A lot of the reason he made it is he’s just a smart kid.”
A Bright Musical Mind
Tyler’s smart all right. That quickly becomes obvious when you first meet him, and he begins citing websites, musicians and authors with ease. He seems to know the Internet like the back of his hand, or rather the touch of his fingertips.
He’ll casually mention Jonathan Bowers, a mathematician and father of googology – “the study of ridiculously large numbers,” as Tyler puts it. Or he’ll tell you about the singer Imogen Heap starting a fair trade organization for the music industry that he supports, then break into singing her song “Let Go.”
Indeed, Tyler aims for a career in music, both as a studio session musician and as a composer for music libraries that provide sound for TV, radio and movies. And he plans to continue advocating for visually impaired people as a member of the National Federation of the Blind of Michigan.
He has composed numerous tracks, both solo on his Yamaha keyboard and with fellow advocate for the blind and musician Elizabeth Kazmierski of East Grand Rapids, with whom he has a longtime group they call Mini Nifty. “Welcome to the Tape” is from a longer work in progress he’s composing with her.
Tyler believes being blind and a musician enables him to see, in a sense, things other people don’t. He said he is proud of his blindness.
“I just think it’s a unique look at life,” he said firmly. “There’s a whole scene the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be knowledgeable about, a whole culture.
“Being a musician, I get to hear about composers and artists that the rest of the world seems to miss. The same goes for blindness. I know the world has discovered Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, but for goodness’ sake, have you discovered Kevin Reeves? I don’t think so,” he added with a laugh.
Check out School News Network for more stories about students, schools, and faculty in West Michigan.
