News

Clear vision: Company for the blind brings expertise to Perkins School

By Angeljean Chiaramida
Staff writer
Published: February 19, 2008

SALISBURY — When she started Adaptive Technology Consulting in 1994 from the spare bedroom in her Newburyport home, Gayle Yarnall had one goal: Nearly totally blind herself, she wanted to empower others like her by providing them with technology that could help them live independent, full lives.

The company grew from one consultant — Yarnall — and her sighted driver, to eight consultants. In 1996, the year Yarnall lost her sight completely, she relocated from her spare bedroom to office space on Bridge Street in Salisbury in 1996. From Salisbury, ATC offers services to individuals all over New England with low vision, blindness or learning disabilities.

ATC's speciality — and their success — is providing the finest adaptive technology and the most appropriate devices to meet the individual needs of each of their clients. ATC consultants find the right devices offered by a large array of manufacturers, then matches the perfect technology to their clients' needs. They then teach them how to use it properly, even customizing if appropriate.

"We represent the client, not the manufacturers," Yarnall said last week, while in London awaiting for a flight to India where she'll teach Indian teachers how to teach Braille to their sight-impaired students. "We fight our clients battles for them."

So well has Yarnall accomplish her mission, the world renown leader in blind education and adaptive products — Perkins School for the Blind and its Perkins Products division — will buy ATC in March.

The union is a natural fit, said Yarnall. After doing volunteer work with Perkins for about six years, last summer her discussions with Perkins' President Steven M. Rothstein got serious.

Rothstein said Perkins had good reasons for buying ATC, and it isn't just because Yarnall is a role model for the blind and disabled everywhere.

First, he said, Yarnall and her staff are outstanding at what they do.

Second, ATC blends perfectly with the mission of Perkins Products, which for more than half a century has provided devices that improve the quality of life for students and adult with vision problems. With ATC on board, Rothstein said, Perkins can help more people.

Rothstein's third reason deals with ATC's uniqueness in the field of adaptive technology.

"At Perkins, since 1829 we've seriously wanted to help people to be more independent and technology can be a great equalizer for someone with disabilities," Rothstein said recently. "ATC has an amazingly wide range of products they're familiar with, and they stay up to date in a field that changes almost daily."

Rothstein gave an example of the constantly changing world of adaptive technology by discussing a new device he'd seen only a few days before this interview. The device can scan a written page, then read aloud the information it scanned to its users.

"That means the device can scan a restaurant menu, for example, and read the menu back to an individual so he or she can place an order," Rothstein said.

For Yarnall and her ATC employees, the opportunities this sale to Perkins provides are huge.

"It's like someone gave me a brand new box of crayons and told me I can color anything I want," Yarnall said. "It's a future for this company."

ATC has already helped thousands in New England. But as part of Perkins, ATC's future is now Perkins' world-wide audience.

"Perkins School for the Blind isn't that sleepy little school for the blind by the river anymore," said Marilyn Rea Beyer, public relations director for the school. "We have 187 students on campus. But last year, we educate 92,000 people world wide. We're in 62 countries all over the world, Africa, China, India."

The large horizon the sale to Perkins offers to ATC employees is welcome.

"I'm very excited about this sale," ATC Vice President Doug Vesely said last week. "Everyone here is excited about this."

The Perkins purchase won't force ATC to move to the school's Watertown campus. The Salisbury office will remain and its employees will continue to work with individual clients, Rothstein said, as well as with teachers and veterans.

On its Watertown campus, Perkins will open an expanded Technology Training Center, Rothstein said, and develop a demonstration center for adaptive technology. In addition, ATC staff will come and share their knowledge.

"Perkins is not only where (famed blind/deaf scholar and author) Helen Keller went to school. It's the school where Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan was trained," Rothstein said. "ATC's consultants will work at Perkins and teach the teachers."

Those teachers will go forward with what they've learned and teach the blind and sight-impaired all over the world, helping them become independent through the use of adaptive technology, he said.

At 61 years old, after selling her small company to one of the giants in her industry, Yarnall could retire. But that's not her plan.

"This is a new challenge for me. I'm very lucky," Yarnall said. "Maybe sometime in the future I might start to think about slowing down, but not now. Absolutely, I'm not retiring."

For more information on Perkins School for the Blind visit www.perkins.org. For more information on Adaptive Technology Consultants visit www.adaptivetech.net.