NY Times Op Ed on David Paterson

Steve Kuusisto was asked to write an Op-Ed piece on David Paterson taking over the governorship of NY. In his excellent piece, he writes that despite the fact that the ADA was passed almost 20 years ago, the unemployment rate for the blind is 70%, despite advances in technology and education. He writes that "this statistic implies that the public still doesn’t fully understand how talented visually impaired professionals are."

Dr. Kuusisto adds:

"New Yorkers will no doubt discover that Mr. Paterson will take great interest in the details of governance and that this will require him to take sincere interest in people. He’ll ask more questions than your average politician. And those who work in his administration will find that they are important not simply for knowing things but because they can describe how they learned those things in the first place. That’s perhaps the most important thing for the public to understand about professionals who are blind — we are by nature tireless in acquiring information, and we remember virtually every detail of what we read or hear."

The piece ends by saying how New Yorkers once underestimated FDR, and that this is a chance for David Paterson to show how a legally blind person can lead.