Visually-impaired Intern Creates New Vision of Opportunity

Kenny Calhoun is spending his summer helping program a superconducting quantum interference device to sense magnetic fields at the quantum level.

He’s also legally blind.

But that doesn’t mean this MITRE Intern lacks vision for how far he’s come or where he wants to go.

An Origin on the Far Side of the World

Born in the Jiangsu province of Northeastern China, Calhoun never knew his biological parents. Most of his early life was spent behind the black-fenced walls of an underfunded orphanage. He was called YiBai, Yi after his home city of Yixing and Bai meaning "white." He was seven when he was adopted and brought to the United States.

From birth, Calhoun was marked as visually different from his peers. He has white hair, pale skin, and his colorless eyes are sensitive to light. All are markers of a condition known as albinism, where the body doesn’t generate the pigment usually found in eyes, hair, and skin. The lack of pigment in Calhoun's eyes impacts his ability to see.

"I can’t sit back at a normal distance and look at a computer and read the text," he explains. "And my distance vision is very, very limited. I can’t read a sign or poster more than 10 feet away. It looks like jiggly black lines."

To compensate, Calhoun relies on technology, eBooks with large print, text enlargers for computer screens and digital notepads for drawings and other non-text assignments. "I resented using technologies for a long time," he says. "I was too proud and didn't want to use them. But I've come to realize that I work much faster and it's just so much better for me."

That technological assistance enabled him to pursue his passion for math and math puzzles. But as he entered college, math became too abstract, and physics became more exciting. "It was still math, but now you’re putting physical values and concepts behind it."

Making Accommodations and Overcoming Limitations

Still, pursuing a college degree "was never really a thing," he says, until he was accepted into a NASA Academy program operated by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. Suddenly surrounded by others with ambitions and aspirations, he embraced his accommodations, eventually landing at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., where he is a rising sophomore in engineering.

The path to MITRE began in coordination with Virginia’s Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired (DBVI). Helping connect the visually impaired with job opportunities is part of their mandate. Gary Pinder, a MITRE information systems engineer and advocate for people with disabilities, had been working with DBVI to setup a recurring internship for the visually impaired at MITRE.

Calhoun was a natural choice. He was interested in computer science and physics and had also worked with DBVI supporting people who became blind adapt to their new world.

"I really love it here," Calhoun says, "I'm doing work in my field. I'm learning new things every day and I'm able to talk to very smart and brilliant people."

"I really love how MITRE’s been treating me, because they're not treating me as someone with a disability," he says. "And when I disclose that I do have a disability and explain it, people are understanding, and I can access those accommodations."

As Calhoun readies to return to college at the end of the summer to continue his degree in computer science and physics, he's taking his MITRE experience with him.

Reflecting on his past thoughts about work and careers, he says, "I would not have expected to be in this situation. This experience has helped me reaffirm what I want to do, and I'm not going to let anything stop me."