A Blind Tech Consultant Finds His Calling

Legally blind from birth, Julian Vargas's old cell phone led him to a new career in training other blind people how to use technology.

Back in 2005, Julian Vargas bought a Nokia 6620 from AT&T for about $100. The phone ran the Symbian operating system, and AT&T sent him a memory card loaded with TALKS software, which provided text-to-speech access to nearly all of the phone's features and functions—this at a time when most phones had only numeric keypads, except for expensive BlackBerrys and Palm Treos. The iPhone and Android didn't yet exist.

“Having that [Nokia] phone was a game-changer for me,” said Vargas, who has been legally blind his entire life. “That was something, to suddenly have a phone that spoke all kinds of things to me that I never had access to before, like my signal strength, my battery level...If I got a text message, it would read that message and, even more importantly, I could respond to the message.”

One of the best features for Vargas, and other blind users of those rudimentary Nokia smartphones, was that they could use the TALKS software to store numbers in a contact list. Until that point, Vargas had to memorize his contacts.

Smartphones have evolved by leaps and bounds since then. And Vargas, who is now 52 and lives in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, has made something of a career out of training other blind people how to use smartphones, smart speakers, and all manner of digital technology—even microwave ovens.

ScripTalk

Today, Vargas spends relatively little time on his computer. It’s mostly apps on his smartphones that get him through his day. He’s very keen on Microsoft’s Seeing AI app, which he describes as the Swiss Army knife of blind tools. It speaks text as soon as it appears in front of the smartphone’s camera, can read some handwritten text, and identifies different denominations of currency. Vargas also uses an app that works with En-Vision America's ScripTalk, the free program whereby pharmacies will put an RFID tag about the size of a quarter on the bottom of prescription bottles. Using the app or a small standalone piece of hardware, all the info on the prescription label will be read aloud. Sometimes, Vargas needs another set of eyes to help him. At those moments he is likely to turn to Be My Eyes, an app in which a sighted volunteer on a live video call describes for the blind user what the camera on their smartphone shows. He also maintains a list of other iOS resources on his website.

“I feel that God gave each one of us a certain talent, a certain ability,” said Vargas. “And I don’t think it was intended for us to keep it to ourselves.”

A Long Road

Vargas and his younger brother were raised in an observant Catholic family in New York City. Both were born with a rare genetic condition known as Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). Somewhere around 2003, at the age of 33, Vargas’ already-limited vision began to decline. He knew that time would come because LCA is a degenerative disease with no cure or treatment. Not long afterward, he resolved to begin the transition from using magnification software for his Windows computer to an application that did both magnification and screen reading. His goal was to get to the point where he could just use a JAWS screen reader and no magnification to do whatever he needed to do on his PC.

“The more you increase the magnification, the less screen real estate you get,” Vargas explained. “When you get up to four, five, or six times magnification, you have so little screen real estate, it becomes impractical to use the magnifier and you realize it’s time to go to a screen reader.”

Though Vargas never went to college, he took computer courses in the late 1990s at a vocational center in California. He describes himself as an autodidact who realized that he had a knack for figuring out how to use all sorts of electronic devices. His career as a paid trainer for blind tech users began after a period of helping his friends without charge. That was followed by a series of presentations at blind service organizations, including the Braille Institute, the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International, and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). Word of his tech chops spread to the point where Vargas’ presentations at his San Fernando Valley NFB chapter drew people who normally didn’t go to meetings.

“I don’t want to make people dependent on me,” said Vargas. “I tell people from the start that my goal is to make it so that I don’t have to hear from them after a while.”

Vargas soon became a regular at the annual Assistive Technology Conference organized by California State University, Northridge (CSUN). The CSUN gathering, which features gear and software to help blind, deaf, and others with disabilities, has been referred to as the "CES of assistive technology." In 2009, after the conference’s location moved south to San Diego, a mini version of the gathering called Best In Tech began in the San Fernando Valley. At the last one where Vargas spoke, close to 500 people attended.

Another way Vargas kept abreast of tech developments was listening to radio and cable television shows that focused on the topic—particularly "The Tech Guy," the nationally syndicated weekend call-in show emanating from the influential Southern California news/talk station KFI-AM. In 2004, a new host named Leo Laporte took over the show. Over the years, Vargas evolved from being one of the listeners calling in for help to someone Laporte regarded as an authority on accessibility, who would help answer questions from blind listeners struggling with their computers and mobile devices. Radio has long been an important source of information for blind people, and Laporte has noticed that he gets a lot of calls from blind listeners or family members calling on their behalf.

Nokia 6620

Vargas remembers calling in the show when he got his Nokia 6620 and how Laporte was genuinely interested in learning what it was like for a blind person to use it. The radio host subsequently allowed Vargas to promote the Best In Tech gathering on the air. Eventually, Laporte encouraged Vargas to give out his phone number, email address, and website (www.techjv.com).

“Julian’s very generous of his time,” said Laporte. “He’s a really good guy.”

The respect is mutual.

“Leo doesn’t shy away from taking calls from blind listeners," said Vargas, who also listens to Laporte’s tech podcast network, TWIT.tv. "He embraces people like me being involved in the show."

Laporte said he can feel the frustration of his blind radio listeners when they call in to The Tech Guy. He tries to imagine the challenge of using a smartphone or computer— or living without them— in this modern world.

“As a sighted user, my experience of accessibility technology is never going to be the same as somebody who cannot see what’s going on,” Laporte explained. “I’m sympathetic how hard it is and I want to help, but I can’t really represent that audience, so it’s really important that people who are helping blind people with accessibility are blind themselves because only they can really understand the issues.”

Laporte and Vargas have both embraced smart speakers at home in a big way. While Vargas has several flavors of the Amazon Echo and one Google Home in his house, Laporte has Amazon, Google, and Apple smart speakers in practically every room of his home. But as far as Laporte is concerned, voice-enabled devices have not lived up to his expectations of what he thought would be a transformational technology.

“I don’t think Siri or Amazon’s Echo or the Google Assistant are as good as they could be or ought to be,” said Laporte. “And they’re not improving at the speed I thought they might.”

Paying It Forward

In addition to calling in "The Tech Guy" radio show and doing live tech presentations before blind groups, Vargas has spread the word on podcasts. He has served as co-host of a podcast called "All About Smartphones," available on the website of the Audio Internet Reading Service of Los Angeles (AIRSLA), a group he founded in 2012 to discuss everything from high tech to no tech used to meet in person until the pandemic. Since March 2021, Breaking Blindness Barriers gathers on Zoom and AIRSLA turns its meetings into a podcast.

Smart speakers are one of the things Vargas helps his blind clients learn to use. So is GPS. He taught Bob Acosta, a long-time client, how to follow travel directions spoken aloud on his iPhone by taking a walk with him around the block.

Acosta is a retired high school history teacher in Chatsworth, CA who has been blind from birth. He has paid Vargas for dozens of two-hour sessions to help with his own tech needs and those of his wife Ruth Ann, who is also blind. Now, 82, Acosta uses his iPhone to listen to text messages and audiobooks, as well as stream games of his favorite sports teams. And thanks to Vargas, he learned how to pair his hearing aids with his phone.

VoiceOver on the iPhone

Acosta got his first iPhone in 2013 but initially gave up on mastering the device, then gave it to his grandson.

“I don’t think a blind guy can learn this,” he said at the time.

But then a blind friend introduced him to Vargas, who told him, “You can do it.”

Acosta records the lessons with Vargas so he can go over the material, should he need to brush up on things. He said he likes the fact that Vargas never tells him that using tech is easy and that there are no dumb questions during the training sessions.

Acosta can call Vargas for remote guidance, which comes with no charge for clients who pay for lessons. Occasionally, a client who pays for just one lesson will behave as if there are unlimited follow-up calls afterward. It doesn’t work that way.

“People think they can call you at 2:00 in the morning,” Vargas complained.

Acosta had been blind his entire life when he started working with Vargas. But most of Vargas’ clients are newly blind and grappling with depression and bitterness. The requests for help have slowed down during the pandemic, due in part because of the necessity of doing the first training session in person. Vargas says that once a blind person has the basics of using a smartphone down, he can do subsequent sessions remotely.

“I don’t want to make people dependent on me,” said Vargas. “I tell people from the start that my goal is to make it so that I don’t have to hear from them after a while.”

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