After taking the bus home to his apartment, John Miller sits down to go over an article for class on his tiny Netbook. Most students would have trouble reading on a nine-inch screen, but Miller isn’t reading—he’s listening, and the voice reading the article back to him is speaking so quickly that it doesn’t sound like English. But for Miller, that’s the same as reading, the same as recognizing a word without sounding it out.

Miller, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student, was born with Norrie disease, a genetic disorder that causes blindness and often leads to progressive hearing loss. Thanks to computer programs like Job Access With Speech (JAWS), Miller is still able to be an independent student. JAWS is a computer screen reading program that converts text into audible output. Every e-mail, paper, assignment and article Miller receives is read back to him through his screen reader.

Jim Kessler, director of UNC-CH’s Department of Disability Services, says screen readers are one of the primary ways to make student laptops accessible to the blind.

“The students get to be independent,” he says. “The less we see students, the happier we are, because we know they’re out there being independent.”

Miller can also use his screen reader to read textbooks. The Department of Disability Services uses a high-speed scanner to scan entire books into a computer, and then a software known as ABBYY converts the pages from a PDF file into a Word document that can then be read using a screen reader.

“Having a laptop with JAWS on it has helped me out a lot,” Miller says. “My first semester, I didn’t have something portable to carry around like this. It’s cool stuff.”

Miller completed his undergraduate degree in 2002 after five and a half years at UNC-Charlotte, and was awarded a scholarship by the Thorpe/Mitchell Diversity Leadership Development Fund which allowed him to enter UNC-CH’s department of Allied Health Sciences in 2009. He expects to earn his graduate degree after four years.

Brenda Mitchell, the department’s associate chair for student services, funds the scholarship and participates in its selection process. She says one of the major criteria taken into consideration during the selection process is a student’s ability to overcome obstacles. It was in this area that Miller particularly impressed her.

“He just seemed like a prime person who we wanted to energize and give support to,” she says.

Mitchell says she does her best to mentor the students selected for the scholarship, so she has seen Miller’s progress. Mitchell says the transition from Charlotte to Chapel Hill was particularly difficult because of the difference in campus size between the two universities. Mitchell helped Miller navigate the bus system, sort through his mail and sometimes go grocery shopping.

“But once I got him in the right direction, then he took off,” Mitchell says. “I knew he needed assistance at the be- ginning, but I wanted to support him being independent, and he has been.”

Although Miller is able to ride the bus alone and has figured out how to shop for groceries online, living off campus has presented a few struggles—one of which Miller wasn’t even aware: he didn’t have light bulbs in his apartment.

“I guess the people there feel he doesn’t need them because he doesn’t see,” Mitchell says. “But he has visitors who do see.”

She says Miller is sometimes unaware when things aren’t the way they should be, and in a situation like this one, it can be difficult for him to act as his own advocate.

Along with his blindness, Miller is also deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other.

Mitchell says Miller came to UNC-CH with an old hearing aid and that she wanted him to have an audiological assessment. This ensured that he had the correct amplification to have optimal use of his one good ear.

Norrie disease causes progressive hearing loss, so Mitchell says Miller was hesitant at first because he was afraid he would learn that his hearing had worsened. But Mitchell persuaded him to have the assessment, and Miller was given a new hearing aid that Mitchell says was a hundred times better than the old one.

“I almost cried in the car taking him home from that appointment,” Mitchell says. “I had accidentally left the radio on, and normally he can’t hear me when I do that. But he said, ‘I can hear you. Even with the radio on, I can hear you.’ And he was just so tickled.”

Miller says he has recently been more able to take advantage of the community at UNC-CH and that many people, including Mitchell, have encouraged him to keep going when school seems especially challenging. Miller says getting his undergraduate degree felt like a small step up from high school, but graduate school has been a different story.

“I wasn’t prepared for what four graduate school classes was going to be like,” Miller said. “It was no joke. We’re talking three papers a week and crazy articles, and I couldn’t keep up. I barely survived.”

So Miller is tackling a two-year program in four years by knocking his course load down to part-time. That first semester took its toll, he says, but many friends were there to push him onward.

Miller says he gets along with his cousin better than anyone else. Because Norrie disease is a sex-linked disorder, only males in his family can inherit it. Miller’s grandfather and cousin were also born with Norrie disease.

Miller says the Department of Disability Services is still an important resource for him. Recently, he was working on a research paper and needed articles that were too old to be online, so the library gave him print versions, and disability services scanned them in for him.

According to Kessler, the number of students who self- identify as a disability student is up to around 35 percent from last year, and while his department is there to help people, they would also love to work themselves out of a job because that would mean the University is accessible to everyone.

“We’ve changed our focus from just accommodating to hopefully improving learning,” Kessler says. “Because when you leave here, our office does not exist in the next world.”

Miller’s graduate degree is in rehabilitation counseling and psychology, and he says that he chose this field because it will allow him to work with other people with disabilities by becoming a counselor of some kind.

Mitchell says she hopes Miller will be able to do an internship with the Commission for the Blind. In the meantime, she says, she has enjoyed learning from all that he has to offer as a student. Mitchell has a son who also is visually impaired, she said, so she has a special sensitivity to that kind of disability.

“I just see it as an ability that you have to channel in a different way,” Mitchell says. She says Miller is very open, and he has a good sense of humor, even about his own disability.

“I’m glad he has that (sense of humor),” she says. “People don’t feel like they have to tip-toe around him.”

Miller says Sutton’s Drug Store, a throwback diner on Franklin Street, is one of his favorite places to eat. He says he loves Chapel Hill for its transportation options and en- joys being able to navigate his own way to Franklin Street.

“Blindness is not as bad as it looks to other people,” Miller says. “We can still get around and do things; it’s not a reason to feel sad or depressed. I mean, I certainly have my days. But I think everyone does.”