Cast Member Spotlight: Chris Downey

On this episode of Change Makers, we’re continuing our series of spotlight episodes featuring the incredible cast of The Dot Experience. The Dot Experience is a new inclusive museum opening in October. It features more than 20 individuals who are blind or have low vision, each sharing authentic stories. The cast includes advocates, artists, professionals, athletes, students, parents, and workers, highlighting the many roles individuals who are blind or low vision hold in society and showcasing vibrant, diverse lives.

On this episode, learn about Chris Downey. Chris is an architect, planner, and consultant who lost his sight entirely in 2008 following surgery to remove a brain tumor. Not only is he a Cast Member for The Dot Experience, he is also the Founder and owner of Architecture for the Blind. After his interview, enjoy our monthly Tech Takeaway where you'll learn five Monarch tips to keep you engaged over the summer.

On this episode (In order of appearance)

• Narrator
• Sara Brown, APH Public Relations Manager
• Chris Downey, The Dot Experience Cast Member, Founder and Owner of Architecture for the Blind
• Jennifer Wenzel, APH Technology Product Specialist
• Michael Dennis, APH Technology Product Specialist

Additional Links

• The Dot Experience website
• Architecture for the Blind website
• Email Change Makers

Transcript

Narrator 0:00

Welcome to Change Makers, a podcast from APH. We're talking to people from around the world who are creating positive change in the lives of people who are blind or have low vision. Here's your host.

Sara Brown 0:16

Hello and welcome to Change Makers. I'm APH's public relations manager, Sara Brown. And on today's episode of working three spotlight series featuring the incredible cast of The Dot Experimence. And today we're spotlighting first time and cast member of The Dot Experience of the Founder of Architecture for the Block. Hello, Chris, and welcome to Change Makers.

Chris Downey 0:56

Hi, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Sara Brown 0:58

And so this is a cast member spotlight where we're highlighting all of the cast members for The Dot Experience and having having all the cast members share their stories. And so you are a cast member. But before we get into that, let's get into, you know, the first basics. Would you like to introduce yourself and just let our listeners know uh a bit about who you are before we really get into the fun of it?

Chris Downey 1:21

Sure. Um yes, so again, my name is Chris Downey, and uh I'm a uh blind architect living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I've been uh blind for the last 18 years, and I had practiced as an architect with site for 20 years prior to that and have two degrees in architecture. So I had sort of had a very diverse practice uh prior to losing my site. And then after losing my site, I focused and retooled my career, my work to really focus in on projects for the blind and visually impaired and the broader disability uh community, uh, really sort of uh not as a code compliance uh consultant, but in design that would be more meaningful and appropriate and engaging for people that are blind and visually impaired or people with disabilities, and meant in ways that go beyond sort of the core the requirements of code. So that's my focus of my work, and also get involved with a lot of public speaking and some teaching opportunities here and there. And uh sort of really built a lot of diversity within a fairly, fairly narrow, seemingly narrow practice of architecture focusing on the blind and visually impaired experience.

Sara Brown 2:43

And do you want to talk a bit a little bit about your your childhood, where did you grow up, and some of your favorite activities?

Chris Downey 2:50

Certainly. I was born and raised for the first 13 years of my life in Nashville, Tennessee. One of two children. I have an older brother, a year older, and my parents. Uh, my dad was uh a doctor, and my mom uh is an organist, choir director, music educator. Growing up there, my uh dad had passed away when I was seven, so quite young, he was 36, really sort of growing up from that age on as uh the son of a single mom. And I'd say probably the some of the fondest memories. I have a few memories of my dad, but some some really fond ones were out just throwing football with him uh in the front yard. And something that was really, I think, formative in my life trajectory uh was that he and my mom set about designing a home with an architect when they were a young family. And it was a modern contemporary home on a hillside in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. And and it's something that really really in the living there really piqued my interest in architecture and design because it was a very fun house. It was very creative, built in the hillside, lots of fun little spaces, the building, the house uh sort of wrapped around trees, uh, different things in the landscape. It was very unusual. And you could walk onto the roof from the uphill side, and the back hill, the back side of the property was undeveloped up the hillside. So the back, the hill was basically our backyard, our playground. So that was uh sort of quick synopsis of the first 13 years. Uh my mom eventually we just moved back to North Carolina where she had grown up. She was to become a church, a uh music director at a large church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we moved there. And going off to college, I had really focused in on my interest in architecture and design and had gone to the North Carolina State University School of Design, where I majored in architecture and really sort of went in deep, got really, really passionate about design, about architecture. It took me to studying in Copenhagen, Denmark for a semester, then led to me when I graduated there to move to Boston to find a city that reminded me a bit of Copenhagen with the historical architecture, a really dense uh pedestrian-oriented city, and a fun urban life. So I worked and lived there for five years until I came out to Berkeley for grad school in 1989, uh, where I've been ever since.

Sara Brown 5:45

And so you've graduated from uh, what'd you say, UC Berkeley?

Chris Downey 5:49

For grad school, yes. Yes.

Sara Brown 5:50

And you're working in the field. Talk about when the vision loss happened.

Chris Downey 5:55

So that happened in 2008. Uh, I had been experiencing some uh sight loss, nothing that was particular significant. And I really took it as just I was 40, you know, in my mid-40s, assuming it was just, you know, aging eyes. Yeah, I've always heard my mom talk about it as she was getting toward towards her four forties of needing glasses, and I just figured that's the deal. And then uh it was actually when playing uh baseball with our son, who was probably about nine at the time. I always having troubles seeing the ball coming out of his hand, and then it would come into focus right in front of me within a few feet. And so over time I had to have him slow down so I had more time to react and it wasn't coming at me too fast. And eventually it was like I could hardly do that. So that's what prompted me to go out and have my eyes checked. And after a rant range of different ophthalmologists and things, I was eventually sent to a nerve specialist who ordered up an MRI to discover a tumor located right at the optic nerves that was distorting, compressing, and pushing the optic nerves around. So had surgery to move the brain tumor, and which was successful with with the exception that eventually within a couple of days lost all sight in both eyes with no light perception. You know, it was just a function of uh surgery to move uh a tumor.

Sara Brown 7:23

Can you talk about what it felt like afterwards when you came to?

Chris Downey 7:28

Well, when I first came out of surgery, I could see, and it was pretty much as they expected. It was blurry, but I could see call colors form, not a lot of detail. And then it was the second time I woke up that it was clearly in a downward trajectory. You know, I reported that to the medical staff, and then I was rushed back to ICU, and and next time I woke up, it was all gone. And it was probably another another week after that before, you know, they were trying all sorts of things to restore the site and things. So it was about a week later that they came back to say that there was nothing more that they could do, that this was to be my new, my new normal. So until that happened, I had full confidence that the doctors were gonna solve it and it would be okay. It wasn't until then that really got my attention. It's like, oh wow, really. And then I'd say regrettably, within four hours that same day, I was visited by a social worker to go over all the things you got to do to when you lose your sight in terms of dealing with Social Security, kicking off rehabilitation training. And in that conversation, she noticed on the medical chart that I was an architect. So she said that we could talk about career alternatives. And I was like, and that just being confronted with blindness at the age of 45 as an architect. One, you know, our son was 10 at the time, very active, family life, social life, active as an architect. But to be so quickly confronted with the assumption uh that, oh, probably can't be an architect anymore. That was somewhat alarming and quite disturbing. So yeah, that really got my attention.

Sara Brown 9:17

How was the feeling though? Was it were you just kind of in shock that you know you go in expecting one thing and there the outcome's completely different? And now you're you've like you say you got the social worker there?

Chris Downey 9:30

Yeah, yeah, it was it was certainly surprising, and it wasn't an outcome that I anticipated. I just kind of overlooked that. I knew from my my surgeon was quite confident that it would not result in blindness. He anticipated visual improvement, my visual acuity would improve, and had a patient lose sight in both eyes, and certainly not a patient that was in sort of the clear health and fitness that I had. So he was expecting uh fairly positive outcomes, and which set me at ease going in. And my research looked reading into it, that particular procedure with the size of the tumor as it was. You know, it was sounding from what I could read industry-wide, was a higher, much higher probability of sight loss. But I went with this confidence. So it was a stark, stark turnaround together with that comment by the social worker that set me, you know, all of a sudden I had to go from absolutely no thought of of blindness to then having to wrap my head around it. And quite frankly, like many people that lose their sight midlife uh or later in life, yeah, I didn't know anybody that was blind. So I didn't have any real expectation other than what I had seen of people in the streets, you know, walking with service dogs or with canes. My mom, as a musician, piano player, the growing up, the person that would come to tune the pianas in the house, he was blind. And I sort of watched him from a distance as he had all his tools and equipment sort of laid out, very organized and going about his trade. So, you know, I knew that plenty about sort of what can be done and sort of things to do. I just had no sense about how to move forward with that sort of, you know, following those instructions about the rehabilitation training.

Sara Brown 11:25

So after you received this news and you have the social worker providing you with all these resources, did you just jump right in to receiving the resources and the OM and all of that, or were you a bit resistant?

Chris Downey 11:39

I jumped right in. Like I I need to go back into describing what happened psychologically with me when I was dealing with the reality of having lost my sight. What I failed to say was that my uh dad had passed away from complications from surgery to remove a brain tumor when he was 36. So that's how he lost his life. That's how I lost my dad. So for me to then, you know, that's what I was worried about. You know, was my son gonna grow up the rest of his life without his dad? That was the more pressing outcome possibility that I was thinking about. It was a much more dire thing. I could quickly, even that night, could think, oh, well, this is just sight. I just lost my sight. I'm still here. My son still has his dad. I'm still here with my wife. It could have been a heck of a lot worse. And so that set me on a different trajectory. I also had the benefit of when I was discharged from the hospital. What I now have come to realize was a very uh some sage advice and unusual advice from the surgeon who said that he had somewhat confidence that at some point uh there'd be some advances that they'd be able to restore my sight. But he said that, you know, I was young, fit, there are better guinea pigs to be to go through those procedures. I didn't need to be at the front of the line. And he recommended that I really focus in on developing the skills, getting the training I need to rebuild my life as quickly as I can to get get on with things. So I really took that to heart. I really sort of let go of that. And my my mom and my stepfather, they were interested in that. And I said, knock yourself out, go for it if that's what you want to do. I'm not gonna take my time there and really wanted to focus in. So I actually went back to work, went back to the office uh exactly a month after the surgery, before the rehabilitation training had kicked in, and largely because I knew there were I had never heard of a blind architect. I could get no guidance on how to do that. And I figured the best way to do that was to get back into the office, start figuring it out. And uh it was a fun, fun office, good people, good creative people. It was a very optimistic, optimistic place. Uh, and I just thought it was would be a good environment to get into to start figuring it out. And and I also knew they would be very supporting and and very eager to make things work. So yeah, I was eager. I couldn't get the rehabilitation started started soon enough. And when I did, it was all about those basic skills, whether it was the adaptive technology training or the OM and all the basic life skills. A lot of it was really focused on OM to get me independently to the office between home and the office, which meant taking a couple buses uh to get uh into downtown Oakland and to the office that I was working at at the time. So I was very motivated to make that happen, very motivated to get that level of independence back, motivated to get the load off my wife, and motivated to get back to being, you know, a fully engaged husband and dad uh with our son, um, with everything else that I had been doing, and wanting my son to have that positive uh message of you know future possibilities and that it wasn't so dire.

Sara Brown 15:15

Talk about adapting your work to your blindness. So you're you're back in in 30 days. My gosh. How was that going back and just changing you know everything that you you you would see to to touch?

Chris Downey 15:32

Yeah. Well, you know, there was a lot. Actually, that that first night after, you know, in the hospital after I was told they couldn't restore the site, that night I uh had actually just I had sold the my my share of my partnership to my partner and had just started with this new company managing the architectural practice, their architectural office. And so I was very familiar with it with the job description. And in my mind that night, I just went down the list of things burned in my memory of that job description. I was like, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that. Not sure about that one. Uh probably can this one. So I just went through and sorted it out. And most of it, I quickly realized you could probably do 75% of that job in with very strong confidence that it could be done. There were some things that I thought I'd need a good bit of training to make that happen, but it had to be possible. And then there were some things more on the creative side that I had no idea about how that was going to work. But that, you know, I often say that uh an architectural or design education is is perfect for uh preparation for sight loss because you're you're trained to be comfortable with the unknown. You're you're you just by repetition from design problem to design problem, one after another, that you know you get to have confidence in the process of doing your due diligence, doing your research, trying things, an iterative process of just working through, checking it out, you know, assessing it, retooling, doing something else, tweaking things, that if you follow that process, something good can come about come out of it, even if you have no idea what that is at the outset. So I really sort of took that to heart and applying it to this new design problem of designing my life without sight and designing a new place in the profession for working without sight. And quite frankly, I really came to understand it. The majority of architecture in its inception in the creative side, it's about the creative process, which is intellectual. Uh, the way we typically execute it, deliver it, uh, and refine it is visual. And how we share it tends to be visual. So I really just saw it as a tool problem. Need some new tools. So luckily, uh being here in the San Francisco Bay Area had some really good resources that were available in the background to my rehabilitation trainers and my technology trainer. And I was quickly set up with embossing printers. So within six months, uh I was able to print uh drawings of projects that I knew from the office that I had worked on before I lost my sight, saw the drawings then, could print them out and start reading them through touch, which then given the clumsiness of that process, and how my my blind technology trainer, who had never seen a drawing in his life, was reading the drawing so much faster than I was, made me realize, okay, yeah, I hadn't focused in on studying Braille. That was the wake-up call that I needed to do that to develop not only the ability to read Braille, but also to develop those neurological pathways through the sense of touch from my fingertips into my brain to be able to visualize things on the drawing in that tactile form within my within my mind to then be able to work with it. Because you you really don't work, even sighted, you're not working with your sight in the drawing. Yeah, it's how your mind is processing that information. So I I really needed to build be able to build that, efficiently build that mental model and understanding of whatever context I was working with, to then be able to design in a more creative level within it.

Sara Brown 19:46

So when did you start implementing acoustics and accessibility aspects into your designs?

Chris Downey 19:55

I started off January looking for of 2009 looking for new work. And the within one phone call, very inspired phone call of who to reach out to first, landed me in a shop or opportunity to work on a uh polytrauma and blind rehabilitation center for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Palo Alto, California. And working on that project, there was a confluence of two things. Spending some time on the uh BA campus in Palo Alto, they had had a canopy system above most of their exterior walkways, sidewalks through campus. And I was struck by the acoustics within that space. I was already thinking about, you know, so that hyper-awareness of the sound and obsessing on that as a new skill set, but then also trying to think about that as a as a design opportunity. On the that particular project, there was a very challenging sort of space that had been set up in the design as it was when I joined the team. And it was a lobby space, two-story volume, and there was a stair that came down from the blind rehab on the second floor, and it came down in the middle of this lobby. And I was really struck by how hard, you know, it made total visual sense. It's right down the middle, and and you find the stair there. And that's really easy if you're sighted. Not so easy easy if you're not. But then I realized there was a bridge going through that two-story volume that was directly in line with that center line of travel through the middle of the space that led you to the bottom of those stairs, halfway across the space. So it made me wonder if we could design the underside of that bridge to form an acoustic response that would provide sort of an acoustic. Signal as to whether or not you're staying under that bridge above, there, and therefore that uh center line of travel through that space to help you to the bottom of the stair and across that space for those times when you need to go uh fully across that lobby space. So that was the first sort of trigger of a very overt design opportunity focused on acoustics and acoustic feedback in a manner that I don't think had ever really been considered in architectural design. It wasn't until later, through a sort of chance coincidence, was introduced to a team that was modeling sound while it was still in the design phases. So the building was still in digital space, not in physical space, and they were taking those digital models to then model what the space would sound like, and you could go into their sound lab and hear the space. And they were really doing that for music halls, convention centers, things like that. And then I talked to them about the possibility of would you be able, would they be able to put in sort of the the sound of my king hitting the floor to then hear how that sound reverberated through the space, hit the surfaces, and came back to that listening point, that hearing point uh within the model? And they're like, yeah, we can do that. So they tried that, and then I gave them the challenge of, okay, great, if it's static, just standing there still, how about walking through the space? So that was a harder lift, but they figured it out.

Sara Brown 23:41

Now, have places been receptive when you present the acoustic feedback aspect in designs?

Chris Downey 23:49

Yes. Uh the first opportunity we had to use it on a project was in 2016 for the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco. And luckily, uh, that organization is has been blessed with just fantastic blind leadership over the years. 50% of that board is blind. And so the blind leadership, and including myself who's working on that project, we spent hours within the sound lab. Uh the acousticians were just dumbfounded, and they had never come across a crew that was so intense and so deliberative, and with such stinging power in this in their sound lab, which can be pretty exhausting. And and we just camped out and really sort of got deep. And so they really uh embraced it. Uh, and the outcomes of it what once the space was built really proved the the ability to adequate to appropriately predict uh effect and arrive, not just all the visual strata uh goals, but the acoustic goals of having a dynamic, exciting, uh fun acoustic space, but that was also very effective in terms of speech intelligibility, but also the ability to hear spaces you're walking around through that space. So that kind of validated it. That was the first opportunity uh to do it, and we're I'm using it on continue to use it today on various projects.

Sara Brown 25:24

For The Dot Experience, and again, this is a podcast is to spotlight you because you are a cast member. How does it feel for you to have your story shared in The Dot Experience with other cast members?

Chris Downey 25:37

Well, it's it's certainly uh an honor. You know, I've in many ways I feel like I'm just a baby in this world of blindness. Would say that I'm yeah, I might be 63 years old now, but I'm a mere 18-year-old as a as a blind kid. Uh so I feel like I've got a lot to learn still. And and you know, there's so many people in the blind community uh in the Bay Area uh and around the the country that I really look up to and and look look to for uh other keys to success and other strategies that they've tested and proven and developed. So uh, but I also revel in the opportunity to, if nothing else, sort of be part of the community... of a collection of people that are trying to push limits, expand horizons and possibilities, and being part of a of a dialogue that really sort of defies blindness and the the deficit model of disability, about really about finding true meaning, success, and value through through that blind experience or in spite of it, or however you sort of cut your path through it. So um to the to the extent that it's part of that uh collection of examples, yeah, it's truly an honor. And I hope to live up to the to that level of expectations because there's some really wonderful um people that are are part of that.

Sara Brown 27:12

And what are you hoping visitors take away from The Dot Experience? You know, we have the AFB Helen Keller archive, the cast member stories, so much.

Chris Downey 27:20

Uh just the the wealth of possibilities and and how much more there is. You know, I I think that we we all sort of build on the six success of others that came before us and to then propel that even further. So um I like to see it as sort of just a point along the path of a lot more future development to happen and really sort of support the idea of blind positivity, of blind empowerment, of blind pride. Uh so that's to be able to, I was lucky to within such a short period of time to be able to embrace blindness uh and something to revel in, something to learn from, and something to find real value in and how I work that that uh I hope that others can take from that and find their own path in doing that, together with all the others uh wonderful uh individuals that you're focusing in on. So uh I really see this as a chance to really, it's it's almost like a launching pad for the future. It's just a sort of a study in the point of time. And maybe that's as a as a designer, we're always looking further ahead, looking further afield, looking out there. We don't necessarily know what's going there, going on straight ahead of us, but having that energy, that excitement to push towards the future opportunities that might seem like what we're doing today to be somewhat antiquated as we continue to develop new tools and new attitudes uh and new possibilities of uh sort of fewer and fewer barriers, barriers in the physical world, but barriers in the social world, in the commercial business world, uh the the digital world, and just having more and more uh opportunity as we collectively as the blind community find new ways to do think can continue to defy expectations and raise expectations of what's possible.

Sara Brown 29:42

And before I let you go, is there anything else you would like to share or say, whether it be about your experience or The Dot Experience?

Chris Downey 29:52

I think I would just reiterate what I've was was just saying about you know our the trajectory of the blind experience and blind positivity uh and a blind empowerment. I'm very involved with uh young people that are interested in career that are blind and visually impaired and careers in architecture and design, uh involved with others that are midstream, they're losing their sight or lost their sight and wanting to rebuild their careers in architecture and design. Uh so I'm very excited about more and more opportunities for people that are blind and visually impaired in architecture and other uh design fields, uh, and hope it will become sort of normalized and very sort of ho-hunk, just normal stuff, uh, and but also towards sort of new possibilities, uh things that I'm not doing or others picking up on some of the things like the acoustic work uh that's happening, uh, to sort of take that further and get better and better at it, getting better and better tools, but also having uh the ability for others to push much further than what I'm doing. So I get excited about some of these young kids going into architecture that you know they're they're I have the perhaps have the an advantage of the 20 years of cited experience in the my degrees in architecture before I lost my site. They have the advantage of a deeper, longer evolution and time width within the uh their particular blind experience, uh, and I think can have uh sort of a different uh trajectory, a different path, and bring different opportunities within it. So I I see that as the other people that are being featured uh in in this museum and everything that's covered in this exhibit. It's it's all about sort of this is where this is what's been done, this is what we're what's what we're excited about today. What what's more exciting is what stories do you want to write? Where do you want to take this? What other you know what what tracks haven't yet been uh uh really attacked and gone after? And what's what other surprises lay out there uh and just write examples that might be there in 20 years or 30 years.

Sara Brown 32:42

So all right, Chris, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to me on Change Makers.

Chris Downey 32:49

Well, thank you. Good luck with everything, and thanks for this opportunity.

Sara Brown 32:54

And now it's time for our monthly Tech Takeaway. Here's Jennifer Wenzel and Michael Dennis.

Jennifer Wenzel 32:59

Hello, welcome to another edition of Tech Takeaways. I'm Jennifer Wenzel.

Michael Dennis 33:04

And I'm Michael Dennis.

Jennifer Wenzel 33:06

And we are happy to be here to talk to you about five Monarch tips for the end of the school year and the summer and just for general use of the Monarch, sort of our five very short top tips. So I'll turn it over to Michael to give you the first one.

Michael Dennis 33:21

Yeah, thank you, Jennifer. And the first one actually has to do with resources. We realized in multiple of our trainings we are doing out there with uh teachers that not a lot of people are aware that we are creating additional resources and materials for all of you. If you go to the Monarch page, for example, you can find so-called practice documents. Those documents will teach you different things. Examples are how to set up key drive, how to connect your computer with the Monarch, how to create a language profile for foreign languages, for example. Like those kind of things have then step-by-step guidance, and they also have very helpful overviews of over some of the key commands you can use on the Monarch. And that is some really great resources, and you can utilize it yourself or even for for your student. And the second one is our Monarch snapshot videos. They are on the APH YouTube channel. And you can also see then basically those kind of things happening. Um I was just talking about as topics for the practice documents. And you have the chance of listening to Jennifer on there, teaching you uh little tasks for the Monarch. And uh Jennifer is a good keyword because she has the next advice for you guys.

Jennifer Wenzel 34:47

And just to say, uh Jason Martin, Greg Stilson, uh Willow Free, several other people are doing snapshots, but they're just a really quick, focused way of getting um short tasks. And one other resource I just thought about, Michael, is the APH Hive that um is our learning platform. And a new Monarch course will be coming out shortly to cover a lot of the new and updated features. So stay tuned for that. That's another excellent resource. So, my my tip, my um one of my tech tips is how to close an app on the Monarch. I've been working with some people on terminal mode lately, and terminal mode does not always play well the very first time you try it. There's sometimes some glitches with it. And it's an app that I often need to close. You don't need to restart the whole Monarch. It's like closing an app on your phone if it's just misbehaving and then trying it again. And you can do this by going using the recent apps button, which is on your front edge. It's a square button. And if you tap it once, it will open a list of your most recently opened apps. You navigate to Braille Terminal, do not push enter, just navigate to it so that you're focused on it, and then do backspace two, three, five, six. It will seem like nothing's happening, but what will happen is that that app will disappear from the list, and that means it's closed. You can also do backspace with C, C as in close, dots one and four, and that will close all of your apps. So that is a way to close your apps if they are not behaving like you really want them to, and try again without restarting. So now I'll turn it back over to Michael for another tip.

Michael Dennis 36:31

And that is actually a funny one because I was just recently at a training with some teachers down in Georgia and had one Monarch there. And I was actually trying to tell everyone how to set up the Wi-Fi, and somebody's like, I don't have settings. And I was very shocked and I was thinking about the the, you know, when you're on your computer, oh my gosh, I deleted the internet. And I was like, oh my gosh, they deleted the settings. How was that even possible? And I had to call Jennifer and was like, Jennifer, they deleted the settings. And here's one great advice how you can still get to your settings if you cannot find them anymore under all applications. And it's the key shortcut enter and you. So that way you get to the settings from wherever you are, and it was very helpful in that moment. And the solution about that whole mystery situation was actually the Monarch was just completely outdated. It was still on version 1.0. I don't know if we just didn't put settings in there, but it was a very funny situation in that moment. But take away from that one, enter and queue and get into your settings. And with that, Jennifer has some information on some cool programs APH has in relation to the Monarch.

Jennifer Wenzel 37:45

Yes, so sometimes people want to know how they can get a Monarch and if there's programs, and some people have heard of some of these but aren't sure about the details. So we have the Monarch Student Pilot Project, and this is for educators and students. An educator nominates a student. It was just opened up this year for grades one through 12, and that program right now, the applications are closed, and new students are being selected for this school year, and um, but it will most likely reopen in the spring. So stay tuned for that. Watch for those applications, and you're able to, as an educator, nominate a student or as a parent of a homeschool student, you would be supporting that student. So you and the student would be doing monthly surveys and working with the Monarch. Another program for students who are out of high school is called the Monarch RISE program. It's designed for adults who are seeking competitive integrated employment and will be using the Monarch to further those goals. So there are eligibility requirements for college students or for students who are or adults who are underemployed. And this is also closed right now. The applicants are being selected for next year, but there will be another phase of this. This is a federal grant, and there will be one more phase of this, and that will be for job seekers. Um, so stay tuned for information about that. If you want to check about these programs or get more information, you can go to the Meet Monarch page and find out information about these programs. And that is aph.org slash forward slash meet-Monarch. And I believe Sara can put that link in the show notes so that you will have that. And now for our last tip, I will give you Michael.

Michael Dennis 39:33

Maybe one thing to add to as a resource where you can also find when the applications are open, follow our socials. Uh we will post there absolutely when the next application phases will open. And that brings me also to one of our last tips for today. And you will also figure out when that actually happens and when you need to do it through our socials. Is don't forget when you come back to the new school year to check if there is any updates for the Monarch. There is already one knocking at the door. Uh that is something we can teach, I think, today. So another great update with another great with some new great features is coming over the summer. And it's very important that you update your Monarch before you basically start the school year again. And there is a pretty simple way when you're connected to the Wi-Fi that you just go to your key updater app in all applications, and it will prompt you directly to an update if available. When you're not online, you can always check with raise an I and you can check actually the information where your Monarch is at if you're still at 1.4. So the next update which will come will be 1.5. You can just go in that moment when you're offline to the Monarch page again on uh APH and actually download the update file from there, put it on a thumb drive and that way transfer it onto your Monarch in the downloads folder. If I'm not mistaken, Jennifer, we have also a practice document, which brings me back to how to how to update your Monarch.

Jennifer Wenzel 41:06

We do. And actually, you don't always have to put it in the upload folder anymore. If you extract the files, when you download them, it's a zip folder. And if you extract the files onto the and copy them onto the root of a thumb drive, often if you go to key updater, it will recognize it on its own now. Um if it does not, you can copy those files into the downloads folder on your Monarch, and then that will make Key Updater recognize it. So um, but yes, we do have a practice document about updating online and offline. So that's another thing you can reference.

Michael Dennis 41:40

Absolutely. And pretty important because we are working on some cool new features. That is something we can tease today, you know. It's it's great to tease all of the listeners and not tell them what's happening.

Jennifer Wenzel 41:53

Some great new features are coming, and we will cover those in probably in our next tech takeaway or the one after. But I think we may even be able to tease them in our next, give you some good details about some exciting new features in our next tech takeaway. That concludes all of our tips for today. We're so glad that you listened. And again, if you have any ideas for future tech takeaways, please email changemakers at aph.org. I'm Jennifer Wenzel.

Michael Dennis 42:23

And I'm Michael Dennis, and we hope that all of you will still join us throughout the summer break and wish everybody some great vacation time over the summer. And obviously, tune in for the next episode.

Jennifer Wenzel 42:36

Absolutely.

Sara Brown 42:37

Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Change Makers. I have put links in the show notes for anyone looking for more information about Chris Downey or for the Monarch. And do you have any podcast topics, suggestions, or do you have questions about something you heard? Send me an email at changemakers@ aph.org. And as always, be sure to look for ways you can be a change maker this week.