Our Mad Lab designers have been hard at work producing a set of new maps of our region. Never before have curious blind travelers had these tactile maps, and they can be acquired immediately from LightHouse’s Adaptations Store.
Here is a list of the available maps:
• San Francisco Bay Area Cities: Ever wonder where the heck Piedmont actually is? This map shows the major cities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. $15
• San Francisco Bay Area Counties: This map shows the counties in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Now you can see, for example, why Contra Costa County is actually north of Albany. $15
• San Francisco Bay Area Highways: You’ve heard of highway 13, or 237, or 92. Now you can see exactly where they are and how they connect. This map shows the main highways of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. $20
• San Francisco Neighborhoods: Just where does the Western Addition end and the Richmond District begin? Now you can find out. This map shows the neighborhoods in the city of San Francisco. $15
• California: Sacramento is actually more north than people commonly think. This map shows the state of California and its major cities. $20
Each map comes with braille and large print labels and is available for pickup. Get yours today by visiting our Adaptations store on the 10th floor at LightHouse Headquarters, 1155 Market Street in San Francisco. Or for extra convenience, just phone in your order and we’ll mail it to you. For more information call Adaptations at 1-888-400-8933 or email our store staff at adaptations@lighthouse-sf.org.
LightHouse Staff1 Commenton Meet Stacy Cervenka, creating an online community for blind travelers with the Holman Prize
Since 2017, LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has presented the Holman Prize, which funds the ambitions of three blind individuals. One of the 2018 prizewinners is Stacy Cervenka, from Lincoln, NE, USA. Stacy’s Holman Prize ambition is to research, develop and launch a “blind Yelp” of sorts, called the Blind Travelers Network. Similar to TripAdvisor or Cruise Critic, the site would give blind individuals crowdsourced knowledge about the accessible places and services that they can’t currently access anywhere else.
“If we go to a resort in Jamaica because they have scuba diving, we’re not protected by the ADA there, so what do we do if we get there and they don’t let us dive?”
These are the questions that keep Stacy Cervenka awake at night. And they’re not just anxiety dreams: they’re real questions that she confronts every time she travels.
“The ADA doesn’t cover Jamaica,” she offered, over the phone last week, “it doesn’t cover Europe or Canada. Canada is just developing it’s disability laws now. If you travel somewhere where you’re not protected, and someone tells you can’t get on the bus – you can’t get on the bus.”
Stacy, who lives with her family in Lincoln, Nebraska, is quite good at painting a mental picture: a blind family, eager to see the world, cut short by a society that doesn’t understand their needs, or worse, their capabilities. As a blind person, once you start imagining all the ways your trip could go wrong, it’s a bit of a downward spiral. But on the flip side – where does a blind person go to have the time of their life? Also a valid question.
This is why Stacy hatched a new idea to meet a need that, oddly, hasn’t been met yet: the Blind Travelers Network. Think Yelp, Trip Advisor, or Cruise Critic – but designed for the betterment of a population who wants one thing, more than anything else: information.
Stacy grew up in a place where community was everything. Raised on the suburban outskirts of Chicago, she was a blind girl, but she was also the oldest sibling in a family that trusted her implicitly.
“We were the ultimate latchkey kids,” she explains. With a father who was a harbormaster and a mother who worked nurse shifts until 11 p.m., it was common for Stacy and her little siblings to spend entire days taking care of themselves: cooking dinner, hanging out with friends, playing in the neighborhood, and only seeing their parents for a few minutes at bedtime.
These were neighborhoods with big block parties, neighbors that watched out for each other, and fire departments that would crack open hydrants on hot summer days. But despite the nostalgic memories, Stacy acknowledges that something major was missing.
“Looking back, I really wish that I had more exposure to blind kids and successful blind adults. My relationship with my family was mostly normal, we all competed in sports, did a lot of the same activities, and spent a lot of time together because our parents worked a lot – but I think I would have had a lot more confidence if I had had exposure to other blind kids and successful blind adults.”
Nonetheless, Stacy developed a passion for travel, and by the time she was a young adult, had traversed the country several times, getting to know its diverse climates, people and cultures. She found beauty and adventure in Wyoming, idyllic summer lodges in the Midwest and Florida.
One thing nagged at her all along, though, frustrating because she had no power over it. What if, on all her travels, she was missing something? Not the visual information that most sighted people would assume she desired, but rather, the accessibility that blind people so deeply deserved; the hospitality that all travelers deserve; the sheer immersive experience, regardless of the level of her sight. She wanted a way to optimize her adventures.
“When my husband and I were first dating in DC,” she remembers, “he wanted to set up a date at a horseback riding place. He set it up, paid for it, and when we go there they didn’t let us ride. We went there really excited to have a romantic date.”
There wasn’t much they could do. “They didn’t know about the law – so the law didn’t matter,” she says. “You can’t call the cops and they’ll show up and handcuff them. The only way to enforce it is to get legal advocacy, and that stinks.” Lawsuits, she says, are not the best end to a romantic first date, for anyone: “We didn’t want to have to fight the system.”
Stacy also knew a review on a mainstream website wouldn’t do her or blind travelers any good. In fact she knew: a blind person wanting to ride horses would only get shouted down: “I could have written something on Yelp or someplace, but you would just get people saying ‘they’re just worried about your safety!’”
Soon she and her husband were married, and planning a honeymoon. Again, Stacy found herself scouring travel sites, like a tortured detective, unable to find the exact clues she needed. “I learned a ton on Cruise Critic!” she insists, “but I still had a ton of blindness-specific questions. You just can’t get those answered on there.”
Two years ago, Stacy took her family to Disney World. This time, she took to Facebook, sourcing a wealth of great information from blind friends and others who knew about accessibility and also had a healthy appreciation for Disney theme parks. And yet, she knew the thread would be lost to the sands of time, couldn’t be easily archived and tagged. This was Information that other blind parents could use “about how to get around, how to manage transportation, how to navigate, how to keep track of our children at the pool,” and nit wasn’t available to those who might need it later. “I just wanted a place for us all to be able to share that.”
The Blind Travelers Network (BTN), she hopes, will provide an answer to this problem, and build a strong new community at the same time. “The goal is that blind people will come to the site and share information about places they’ve been, and ask questions about places they want to go. It’s that simple. It’s not so much about being positive or negative, it’s about being accurate.”
Much like other online communities, though, Stacy knows that she can seed some contributions here and there, but much of the work is in mobilizing the blind internet through social media, word of mouth and other savvy marketing strategies. “It’s only going to be a useful resource if lots of us write reviews. You can still get information about the goulash or the bread pudding on Yelp – BTN is meant to be a site where people can go to get information that they can’t get anywhere else.”
As a founder of the site, Stacy is creating a platform based on her own lived experience, drawing from her travels, struggles and successes to know what works and what doesn’t. “My goal is to create something that I would use myself,” she says. “The Holman Prize will allow me to create something that I’ve always wished existed.”
“In increasing number, blind people understand that fully living in the world also mean fully participating in the richness of travel and recreation,” said Bryan Bashin, CEO of the Lighthouse in San Francisco. “Right now blind people had no effective online way to benefit from each others’ experience when it comes to finding unusual accessible opportunities or preparing for accessibility challenges. Thanks to Stacy’s work soon we will be able to better prepare for our next adventures.”
The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, is actively seeking sponsorships and support for the 2019 Holman Prize, including donations of equipment for the winner’s projects. To offer your support, contact holman@lighthouse-sf.org. Individuals may donate any amount using LightHouse’s secure form. For sponsorship inquiries, email us or call (415) 694-7333.
Photo trio of the 2018 Holman Prizewinners, from left to right: Red Szell, Stacy Cervenka, and Conchita Hernández.
LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired’s three Holman Prize recipients will use their $25,000 awards to promote blind empowerment in Mexico, complete a dramatic oceanic triathlon, and develop the first online community for blind travel.
This fall, three exceptional blind individuals will set off around the world on adventures they never imagined possible as the 2018 winners of the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition.
The three winners, Stacy Cervenka, Conchita Hernández and Red Szell, were announced Tuesday, July 10, after a rigorous judging process. Each winning project embodies its own sense of adventure and ambition – whether it takes the winners on a mentally and physically daunting journey or allows them to build and foster something positive in their community.
Created to change perceptions and reclaim the concept of “blind ambition”, the annual $25,000 Holman Prize awards presented by LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco will springboard future generations of blind entrepreneurs, adventurers and ambassadors.
Now in its second year, the Holman Prize is named after the 19th century explorer James Holman (known around the world as “the blind traveler”) the Holman Prize aims to launch worthy projects that will change the public perception of blindness for years to come.
“We are thrilled to be able to continue the Holman Prize for a second year,” said LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin. “These three new prizewinners represent a wide range of ambitions and life experience: from tackling social obstacles toto huge tests of physical and mental fortitude, they reflect the diversity and capability of blind people everywhere.”
Last year’s prizewinners, are each in the final stages of their 2017 Holman Prize projects. One of the three, Ahmet Ustunel, will finish his project on July 22 when he navigates his kayak independently across the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey without any human guidance.Read more about the blind kayaker [Red Bull], the blind baker [Virginian-Pilot], and the blind beekeeper [BBC].
Meet the 2018 Winners
Stacy Cervenka
Stacy Cervenka’s project focuses on creating a modern-day tool that James Holman might have put to good use: it’s an accessible travel forum called the Blind Travelers Network geared specifically towards blind users, and shockingly, nothing like it exists. Think Yelp, Trip Advisor, or Cruise Critic – but designed for the empowerment of a population who wants one thing, more than anything else: information. As a “founder” of sorts, Stacy is creating a website from her own lived experience, drawing from her own adventures to know what works and what doesn’t for blind travelers.
Conchita Hernández’s focus comes from her own experience of immigrating to America from Mexico as a 4-year-old, a decision her parents made in hopes of affording better opportunities for their two blind children. She will use the Holman Prize to provide staffing, lodging and scholarships for her unprecedented “Changing Lives”(Cambiando Vidas) Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico in July 2019. Geared toward families, the conference will offer workshops on white cane travel, braille and daily living. In a place where blind people are openly considered to be a burden, Cambiando Vidas strikes at a deeper insight: you can have the best education in the world, but if your family doesn’t believe in you, you are at a great disadvantage.
Red Szell’s project is an unprecedented physical feat. He plans to attempt an “Extreme Triathlon” comprised of a 200-foot abseil followed by a swim through open ocean, a 10-mile ride through a notably hazardous bog-land, and a climb up a 213-foot ocean spire called Am Buachaille off the north coast of Scotland. But more than just a triathlon, Red has a plan to document the whole endeavor, working closely with action-sports adventure videographer Keith Partridge to turn the project into more than just a feat of strength, but a message to other blind people not to give up their passions because of a change in vision.
Stacy, Conchita and Red were part of a competitive pool of applicants from every continent (except Antarctica). Applicants are required to upload 90-second YouTube videos to pitch their idea for a dream project with a $25,000 budget, before submitting formal proposals. View all 14 Holman finalists’ video pitches. Applications for the 2019 Holman Prize will open in January 2019.
The three Holman Prizewinners will fly to San Francisco in September 2018 for a week-long orientation before starting their project year on October 1. Once they land in San Francisco, the winners will not only meet and learn from each other, but they will engage with other blind teachers, technologists and leaders from LightHouse’s extended network. The winners will also create comprehensive plans to document and share their experiences along the way through video, audio, writing and other storytelling mediums.
The Holman Prize is determined by a prestigious group of judges, almost all of whom are blind. The prize is a flagship program of the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco, who will salute each winner in an annual gala now set for November 29 in San Francisco.
In 2017, San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind launched the Holman Prize to support the emerging adventurousness and can-do spirit of blind and low vision people worldwide. This endeavor celebrates people who want to shape their own future instead of having it laid out for them.
Created specifically for legally blind individuals with a penchant for exploration of all types, the Prize provides financial backing – up to $25,000 – for three individuals to explore the world and push their limits. Learn more at holmanprize.org.
About the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco
The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, is actively seeking sponsorships and support for the Holman Prize, including donations of equipment for the winner’s projects. To offer your support, contact holman@lighthouse-sf.org. Individuals may donate any amount using LightHouse’s secure form. For sponsorship inquiries, email us or call +1 (415) 694-7333.
Since 2017, LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired has presented the 
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