Uyanga Erdenbold: A blind person’s rewarding relationship with education.
Tell us about your story.
I am originally from Mongolia, and I was born and raised there. I have this eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, called RP for short. It's a degenerative condition where you lose your eyesight gradually. I started losing my sight when I was 3 or 4 years old, and by the time I started college, most of my functional vision was gone. I started going to a regular school, but my vision got so bad that I couldn't read the books, so I went to a special school for the blind. I went there for eight years and went to a regular high school because my special school didn't provide a high school education. I finished college in 2006 and went to the US for a master's degree through the Fulbright scholarship I received from the government. After getting my master's, I came back to Mongolia to work at the US embassy in Mongolia for seven years. That's where I met my husband, a US diplomat, and now we live in Tokyo with our little boy and a guide dog who turned 4.
How would you describe your relationship with your guide dog?
My relationship with my guide dog means the world to me because I cannot function without her. My guide dog means "mobility freedom" to me. Without my guide dog, I cannot go anywhere. My mobility is very limited, so traveling is made possible because I have a guide dog. She also brings companionship and confidence to me, as she is an integral part of who I am. Without her, my quality of life would be decreased. I would not be able to have meaningful experiences in life. A lot of people say, "Why don't you leave your dog? Why don't you use your cane?" People say those things because they're not familiar with what it's like to be blind. They don't know the difference between a guide dog and a cane. They don't know how much freedom a guide dog brings. It's very easy for them to say because they look at the dog and think it's the same as a pet dog. However, a guide dog is very different from a pet dog. A guide dog means ten times more than a pet dog to the owner.
As a blind person, how do you navigate technology?
It's becoming easier because people integrate accessibility into technology. They think about "What if a person who was visually impaired was to use our tablet?" It's opening more doors for people with disabilities. I think technological advancements are making a lot of differences in the lives of people with disabilities. For example, I can use an iPhone and laptop because there is an app or software that converts text to speech, so whatever is on the computer screen, my computer can read it out loud. With the iPhone, there's a voiceover feature, and when you turn on the voiceover, your phone will tell you what you're looking at.
What has your experience been like being a blind person in Japan? How does that differ from Mongolia? What was the transition like?
I have lived in Mongolia, the US, and now in Japan. There are a lot of differences. In Mongolia, we don't have as much infrastructure the way that Japan does. There are definitely more challenges in terms of attitude. Japan is so advanced in terms of infrastructure and removing the physical barriers. Economically, Japan is far more powerful than Mongolia, yet it's kind of in the same place in terms of attitude. Japan has many resources, but when it comes to people's awareness about who are people with disabilities or what they need or equal access in society, it's in the same place as Mongolia, which is surprising to me.
How has your work with the US embassy helped you develop your skills?
My work with the US embassy has been very rewarding. It helped me interact with society at large. It gave me more of a platform. Working with government offices, educational programs, work & press, and traveling all over Mongolia to disseminate information about different opportunities and scholarships has been a very productive and empowering experience. It not only allowed me as a person to grow and develop skills, but it also helped other people see that people with disabilities can work like other people and make a difference in society.
What do you think is the greatest reward you gain from education?
As an individual, the educational opportunities meant a lot to me because they were life-changing experiences. Studying and getting a degree in the US, going through graduate school on my own, and being in a foreign country and learning English independently gives you a lot of self-confidence and opens a lot of doors for you. You're able to read books in English and access much more information, so it opens the world to you. Through work, I've helped people learn more about educational opportunities. It is extremely rewarding because you can give essential information to a young person from a rural part of Mongolia who otherwise would not know about that opportunity. Being able to go there to tell them about the opportunities and to see applications coming in from those young people you've met and eventually being able to send them to the US on different scholarship programs and seeing them completing and coming back home. Seeing their lives change in front of your eyes is really rewarding to do something like that.
What is the best way for people to educate themselves on the disability community?
The best way is to have a friend with a disability. Often, people use the stories of people with disabilities as inspirational pieces and feel good at that moment and forget about it the next day. If you really want a meaningful connection and want to know them as friends and not as inspirational figures, you need to be around those people and become their friends. Whatever you do with your friends from school, you do those things with a blind friend or young person of your age in a wheelchair. If you have a meaningful connection with someone daily, that's when you get to know them as a real person and not as a disabled person. When I worked at the US embassy, many of the people who worked there eventually became my friends, and they don't see me as an inspirational figure; I'm just a friend. I happen to be blind, they know I can be annoying, and I have many other interests. It helps to have integrated experiences. It's unfortunate that most of the students with disabilities are separated from regular school students in Japan.
To learn more about Uyanga and her work, visit:
TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBfwUkCGJHQ
Fulbright Foreign Student Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBfwUkCGJHQ
