{"id":189893,"date":"2017-04-25T19:11:58","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T02:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=189893"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:22:19","slug":"dvp-interview-joshua-miele-and-lainey-feingold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/25\/dvp-interview-joshua-miele-and-lainey-feingold\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Joshua Miele and Lainey Feingold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Lainey Feingold interviewed Joshua Miele for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on August 21, 2014. In this clip, Joshua talks about his work in making media accessible to visually impaired and blind people. He also talks about his childhood and wanting to \u2018pass\u2019 as an able-bodied kid, but also learning to embrace and have pride in his disability identity today. Transcript below:<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-soundcloud\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F319505055&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h3>Text Transcript<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lainey Feingold<\/strong>: When I try to introduce you to people who don\u2019t know you or I tell someone \u201coh I have this friend Josh Miele\u201d I always feel like I\u2019m missing something in the description of who you are because, you know just on the work side there\u2019s so many different things you do. Do I say you\u2019re a scientist, or do I say you\u2019re a researcher, an inventor, an investigator, so how do you think of yourself? \u00a0How do you describe what you do?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music, big band swing]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Joshua Miele<\/strong>: What I have engaged with for my entire professional life really is figuring out how to give blind people, myself included obviously because I\u2019m blind, but how to make information available that is necessary to do the things that we want to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">You know I remember seeing the Red Balloon in second grade. \u00a0To this day I think it\u2019s the dumbest movie ever, right? \u00a0But that\u2019s because I\u2019m blind and the only thing I heard through the entire video movie was \u201cballoon, balloon\u201d and it\u2019s like that\u2019s the only line in the whole damn movie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Because video is such a growing and important part of the way we communicate with each other, it\u2019s a medium that\u2019s crying for better access for blind people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lainey Feingold<\/strong>: What was it like to be blind in elementary school?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music fade out]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Joshua Miele<\/strong>: So, I, um, I was burned when I was four so I grew up, until I was four, as a little sighted kid and then went first to kindergarten at a special school for the blind in Brooklyn called the Industrial Home for the Blind which is no longer there but was mainstreamed in first grade. \u00a0\u201cMainstreamed\u201d meaning just going to a regular public school with special services for me. And We then, we moved to Rocklin when I started 3<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">rd<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> grade which is New York suburbia and I went all the way from 3<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">rd<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> grade through high school there with a Braille teacher named Joan Smith, and was charged with supporting all my accessibility needs. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Lainey Feingold<\/strong>: And did she have high expectations for you? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"><strong>Joshua Miele<\/strong>: She had very high expectations for me. \u00a0She was an amazing woman who I served badly at every step. \u00a0But she loved me and I loved her. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music: guitar, drums]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">But at the same time, no blind kid wants this, weird, like, nobody else had a Braille teacher hanging around with them! I didn\u2019t want to be seen with her, you know? And she called herself \u201cthe stigma.\u201d So, she was like, oh yeah, ok, I\u2019ll walk back here, I\u2019m the stigma.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">I was never told I couldn\u2019t do something because I was blind. I was always supported. And I think that part of it &#8212; my mother is a person who has deep resentment for authority \u2013 and I think part of it was that she was not going to let any authority in society tell her son what he could or couldn\u2019t achieve. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">I didn\u2019t want to be, I wanted to be as normal as possible. I tried to pass. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music ends]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">And, obviously I wasn\u2019t passing. Everybody knew I was blind. Everybody knew I was burned. There wasn\u2019t any question about that. But I certainly didn\u2019t want to be thought of as different. And, at every stage, I sort of fought against that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">In 5<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> grade one time I was, I would ride the school bus to school from 3<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">rd<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> grade to 5<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> grade and it was a special bus. \u00a0It was the short bus. \u00a0And just like the Braille teacher there was a stigma associated with that. And I didn\u2019t &#8212; I already am a blind kid with stars all over his face in one eye and you know, it\u2019s just, I got enough to deal with, I don\u2019t need the short bus. \u00a0You know? And so I wanted to ride on the bus with all the other kids and I had to go through this huge fight with the school system. \u00a0They said that the insurance wouldn\u2019t cover it, or, you know, if I was on the regular bus then the bus driver couldn\u2019t help me. \u00a0She would have to be helping all the other kids, she couldn\u2019t just focus on me if there was an emergency, and, just, it was clear, just, lack of vision and lack of imagination on their part. \u00a0But my family totally supported me. you know they saw it as an opportunity for me to learn how to advocate myself and that\u2019s exactly what happened and I did, you know, get off the short bus. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">And now, part of what I was trying to get away from was the stigma of disability and blindness. I didn\u2019t know anybody, I didn\u2019t\u2019 know any cool blind people, or disabled people. I thought I was the only one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">So obviously, I mean, I\u2019ve been involved with disability and technology and I\u2019ve been sort of very active in the disability community ever since I\u2019ve arrived in Berkeley. \u00a0I\u2019ve really sort of embraced disability and blindness identity when I got here and realized, \u201cOh my God, there are, there\u2019s this huge community of cool blind people and people with other disabilities\u201d and I realized that I was part of a much bigger picture of disability and identity and history.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[Music, big band, swing]<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">And I\u2019m a grown up now, and I\u2019m proud of the difference that I have. I\u2019m no longer ashamed of the differences. I think that they add to who I am. By saying I am a blind person, that\u2019s putting blind first, because I\u2019m proud of it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">[Music Ends]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Music Credit:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">The Underscore Orkestra: Jazzy Ashes (<\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Jazzy Ashes by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/freemusicarchive.org\/music\/The_Underscore_Orkestra\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">The Underscore Orkestra<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> is licensed under an <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/3.0\/us\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">The Underscore Orkestra: Sail Boat <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">(Sail Boat by <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/freemusicarchive.org\/music\/The_Underscore_Orkestra\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">The Underscore Orkestra<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> is licensed under an <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/4.0\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Source: Freemusicarchive.org<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><b>Support Disability Media and Culture <\/b><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\"><b>DONATE<\/b><\/a><b> to the Disability Visibility Project\u2122!<\/b><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Suggested Reference<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Disability Visibility Project\u2122. (2014, August 21). DVP Interview: Joshua Miele and Lainey Feingold. Retrieved from: <a href=\"http:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-NoN\u00a0\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-NoN\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Image Description<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">A photo featuring Joshua Miele and Lainey Feingold taken on August 21, 2014. The man on the left is Joshua Miele. He appears to be white, and is wearing a purple button-up shirt. He has curly brown hair, one blue eye and scars on his face. He is looking at the camera and smiling. The woman on the right is Lainey Feingold. She appears to be white, has medium-length salt and pepper hair, and is wearing glasses with a black cardigan and a blue shirt. She is looking at the camera and smiling. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Credits<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 by Geraldine Ah-Sue and Alice Wong with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.storycorps.org\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">www.storycorps.org<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">For any questions, please refer to the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\"><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Terms of Use<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lainey Feingold interviewed Joshua Miele for the Disability Visibility Project\u2122 at StoryCorps San Francisco on August 21, 2014. In this clip, Joshua talks about his work in making media accessible &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2017\/04\/25\/dvp-interview-joshua-miele-and-lainey-feingold\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Joshua Miele and Lainey Feingold<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[164935,14677050,204523799,190,130,573940453],"class_list":["post-189893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-blind","tag-disability-pride","tag-growing-up-with-a-disability","tag-movies","tag-school","tag-visual-media-accessibility","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/sfb002867_g1.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-NoN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}