Deborah Kendrick
When Joshua Miele was a little boy, his family had its own sort of personal terrorist attack. A neighbor was at the gate, and four-year-old Josh ran to let him in. That ill or evil young man poured acid on the little boy's head, burning him, blinding him, and coming close to taking his life.
Horrific as the tale is, and Miele does still mentally commemorate the date 48 years later, it did not kill him, and in some ways it had much to do with shaping the person (part scientist, part philosopher) he has become.
By the time he was 11, Miele was thriving in school. He was an avid reader and writer of braille, and was still having his life interrupted by repeated surgeries aimed at making him look "more normal."
Other things were far more interesting to him, however, than seemingly pointless plastic surgeries.
There was, for example, a party for the colleague of a parent. It was 1981 and the man being celebrated was one of several to receive the very first MacArthur fellowships. This MacArthur thing, Josh remembers thinking, was something amazing: tangible proof that a person was doing authentic and important work. The prize was something to remember and maybe to dream of being worthy of receiving.
Perhaps recognizing the value of producing work that mattered had something to do with his outlook on his ongoing surgeries.Fitting in is a goal for most middle schoolers and, as the kid who was both blind and burned, Miele was no exception. Yet, with wisdom far beyond his years, he was emphatic in his decision that he did not want any more surgeries. He wanted to get on with his life and focus on what he could do, not on what was lost.
Brooklyn to Berkeley
Today, Miele describes himself blind first:blind professional, blind husband, blind father. He is proud of his blindness and of the work he has done and foresees doing. Most of that work benefits blind people.
His pride in being blind, in being good at being blind, started when he headed off to college at the University of California, Berkeley. There he made new friends who were blind, friends who were not ashamed of blindness and not trying to "pass" for sighted, and his attitude toward this important part of himself underwent a dramatic change.
When he first arrived at Berkeley, Miele planned to be a physicist, a rocket scientist. But one of his friends helped him get a job with Berkeley Systems, an acccess technology company. Working there, he realized that the area of equalizing technology for blind people was a much more personally satisfying fit for his talents.
There would be thousands of people working in physics, he rationalized, but not so many working to equalize technology opportunities for blind people. Being one of those blind people himself, he saw that his contribution and creativity belonged to that field. To his physics degree he added a PhD in psychoacoustics and extended a graduate fellowship with the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Institute into a full blown career. He eventually left Smith-Kettlewell for Amazon, where he has worked for the last five years as a principal accessibility researcher.
Then, in early September of this year, Miele received a text message from someone on the MacArthur staff, asking him to schedule a phone conversation. One tiny part of his heart had always dreamed of this honor since learning of its significance at age 11. Now that he was about to have a phone conversation with someone representing the MacArthur Foundation, he was afraid to allow himself to believe it was real. Maybe they wanted to talk to him about a friend or colleague being considered for the award, he mused. Or maybe it was one of his brilliant friends playing a quirky joke. Of course it turned out that the conversation was to inform him that he had been selected as a 2021 recipient.
Those of us who knew him already thought of him as a genius; now, that status would be proclaimed to the world!
What Is the MacArthur Fellowship?
In 1981 (the year Miele's parent's colleague, Paul Richards, was selected), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recognized the first class of MacArthur fellows. The award is given to approximately 25 individuals annually whose creativity is recognized in a given field or fields. Unofficially known as the "genius grant," the honor has been given to scientists, poets, inventors, journalists, musicians, and more. Other MacArthur fellows who might be recognized by AccessWorld readers include 2006 honoree Jim Fruchterman, founder of Arkenstone and Benetech , blind author Ved Mehta (1982), and composer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda (2015).
MacArthur grant recipients are not chosen for a single or particular accomplishment. Rather, the grants are viewed as investments in the future creativity of individuals whose work may or may not have resulted in significant discoveries, but demonstrated creative prowess that could lead to something magnificent.
You can't nominate yourself and you can't know that you have been nominated. All candidates are researched thoroughly and winners are notified, as Miele was, only weeks before the public announcement is made and are expected to maintain silence until that public revelation.
In addition to astounding prestige, the grant comes with $625,000, paid out over a period of five years, with absolutely no strings attached. Fellows are not required to put the money toward any given project or to report on outcomes.
Projects, Yesterday and Tomorrow
Many of Miele's Smith-Kettlewell projects are still evolving. TMAP (Tactile Map Automation Project) makes it possible to emboss a tactile map with braille labels, beginning with any given address as its center. The project was launched while he was at Smith-Kettlewell, and later granted to the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, where he previously served on the board of directors, including a four-year tenure as president. To learn more about obtaining a tactile map of your own work or school environment, contact the Adaptations Store, San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (415-694-7301). An outgrowth of TMAP led to a project producing maps of all transit stations in San Francisco, providing both tactile and audio information.
A crowd-sourced approach to audio description for YouTube, YouDescribe, another Miele project, brings curious blind people and sighted volunteers together to add audio description to YouTube videos.
The Blind Arduino Project, launched in 2015, brings blind people together for coding, soldering, and creating, sharing the tips and tricks necessary to making projects without sight.
What's Next?
In many ways, Miele will just continue doing what he was doing before the MacArthur announcement. He is still working to enhance accessibility at Amazon. He is still involved in the lives of his kids, ages 16 and 18, and still playing bass in the group he formed with his childhood friend that plays meditation music for Jewish services.
While there are no rules guiding or restricting the use of the $625,000 grant accompanying the MacArthur fellowship honor, Miele immediately had some notion of how to put some of that money to work.
He anticipates forming a nonprofit organization, a place where blind thinkers and makers and dreamers can carry on with some of the projects he has inaugurated as well as others not yet known. His organization, he says, will be the spiritual descendant of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Institute, a place where blind programmers and engineers can teach one another and where the mission is open source accessibility. He expects to start slowly, but the funding will allow him to build such a foundation, and his experience with nonprofit organizations will be a valuable guide.
He loves his job, he says, where he can weigh in on making devices and tools accessible, and relishes the freedom to continue using his own fine-tuned skills to bring more opportunities to blind people.
Although his primary computer these days is an iPhone 12 Mini, because it can be always in the pocket and available, he is a long-time zealous user of braille—whether reading on a refreshable braille display or writing with a slate and stylus. He claims braille in the same way he claims blindness: with pride and the deep satisfaction that accompanies awareness of doing something well. As a child, he wanted to hide his blindness, but as an adult, he embraces it as integral piece of the fuel that sparks his creativity. Stay tuned as great things will inevitably be emerging from Berkeley, Calif. And let's all celebrate the recognition of one very special blind genius!
To learn more about Joshua Miele and/or his past projects, check out the first of a five-part series on the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Institute that appeared in AccessWorld in 2013.
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
