Joshua Pearson is a disability rights and inclusion advocate and accessibility evangelist. Acquiring blindness due to prematurity, Josh has always approached life with a desire to challenge people’s perceptions of blindness. He is determined to remove disability stigma through education and awareness. He obtained a B.A. in Communications from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he then worked as director of Assistive Technology/ Accessibility. He founded the Alliance Against Ableism and worked with students and staff activists to raise consciousness of the disabled experience in higher education and advocated for equity and for disability to be recognized and valued in the campus culture. He has an interest in technology’s power to increase opportunity for people of all abilities. Josh designed wayfinding technologies while at the university drawing on his own experiences traveling the world as an artist and he advocated for and designed a system for reporting and properly documenting accessibility barriers in the built physical environment. Through promoting for systemic change in higher ed, Josh came to be passionate about preparing youth and young professionals for entry into and successful navigation of school and work environments. He emphasizes the power of community organizing to ground people in their identity through a lens of disability pride.
Josh is now Program Coordinator for the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development, working as a mentor to blind people across the age spectrum. In that role his intention is to help others overcome internalized ableism and to instruct and empower them to live the lives they want. He has championed the development of support groups, community centered programming, and is project lead on the Trades Win oral history project. Trades Wind captures the stories and lived experiences of blind/low vision employees across a myriad of employment sectors and professions.
Josh is a podcaster, radio DJ, writer, public speaker and musician, and in his spare time travels playing music and advocating for accessibility in the arts and for greater disability representation in media. Josh is a born storyteller and historian, and believes the power to independence is within you and in the bonds we forge in our community.
Trades Win Interviews
This section is an excerpt from our book, Sailing Farther Than the Eye Can See.
Ramblin’ Blind Josh by Emma Rolph
Inspired by the pioneering blind bluesmen of the early 20th century, American singer songwriter Josh Pearson carries on their tradition, releasing poignant folk songs under the moniker Ramblin’ Blind Josh.
“I grew up watching some very heavy things and have always had a more heavy view of the world and the human condition. I started listening to Celtic music in childhood, and country music in middle school. Blues and folk with particular heavy subject matter has been a constant companion and salve ever since” says Josh about what drew him to the dark music that would become his largest influence.
Growing up, Josh was introduced to classic rock bands like The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin who used the work of bluesmen from the 1920s and 30s as a blueprint for their rock formula, but it wasn’t until Josh was older and researching the history of country music when he found these bluesmen and fell in love.
Josh is not only a musician but also an activist and believes blues is a powerful medium to speak out against injustices. When I asked him what he loves about the blues, he said, “The honesty of the lyrics. In particular, the idea that you can covertly sing about racism and other discriminatory issues appeals to me as I spend a lot of energy fighting systemic and micro-level ableism. Blues has given me a way to communicate those frustrations.”
Josh, however, is careful not to appropriate the struggle of black Americans, stating: “I am particularly careful with work songs and not performing them, because I don’t want to culturally appropriate or find any personal or professional profit off of others’ pain as expressed in those work songs, no matter how catchy the rhythms are.”
From an academic standpoint, Josh is also interested in the mythology surrounding the blues. For instance, he is fascinated by the themes of mystery, the macabre, and the occult that permeate the story and songs of the 1930s Delta bluesman Robert Johnson. Johnson was rumored to have gone to the crossroads and sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for astounding musical talent and reputation as the greatest guitar player in the world, a legend that he enjoyed and fostered in his songs.
Unlike the supernaturally given talent of Robert Johnson, Josh attained his mastery through hard work, dedication, and practice. He began his craft in his teenaged years, playing the ukulele and then picking up the guitar at the age of 17.
“Lightnin’ Hopkins was the musician who made me want to play guitar, and I’ve augmented that Texas style with a deep fascination with delta blues and work songs.” Says Josh.
On his journey of learning to play the guitar, Josh says, “Learning the mechanics of certain styles, like fingerpicking or slide work or complicated chords is confusing/frustrating still. However, it’s easy once I can communicate the sounds in my head into music I can hear.”
Not only is Josh an adept guitarist, but he has also been a pianist for the last ten years and is a wordsmith and impressive singer. When I asked him about his songwriting process, he said: “Usually my songs start as poems or mumbling phrases to myself and finding the rhymes and stories. Some of my songs come from noodling about with instruments, but more often than not they start because of an emotion or listening to a particular artist or song and trying to put my own spin on that sound.”
Josh’s songs bear the markings of those emotional roots. They come across as intimate and authentic, similar in style to the songs of the late country singer Townes Van Zandt. Josh has done extensive research into the life of Piedmont bluesman Blind Willie McTell. He penned the oft-covered “Statesboro Blues,” and was an inspiration to many of the rock bands that Josh grew up listening to. By channeling McTell’s artform and adopting the stage name, Ramblin’ Blind Josh, he is keeping alive the spirit and legacy of McTell and he may well pass along the tradition to a succeeding generation.
Assistive Technology Trainer by Juan Figueroa
“My need to use assistive tech grew out of my need to adapt schoolwork and my home life as a blind person. It has quickly become an indispensable tool for my success.” Joshua Pearson began to use assistive technology at age 9 when he was going to school. He was motivated to learn to use assistive technology to improve his life and to find out more about the world. When he was only four or five years old, his parents helped him label the whole house with Braille labels for things like “dishwasher, trash, silverware.” He was able to become a master of the Braille system, a tool that has remained central to his reading, writing, and note-taking to the present day.
“I began to train others in assistive technology both as a means of finding a job and also because I like to help people achieve the same success as I have had. I started training people once I had a grasp on the technologies I used in my own life to be able to help evaluate their skill level and what they needed to succeed.” Before teaching assistive technology, it’s necessary to know both the hardware and software involved in these tools, and Josh excels at this.
Like many blind and visually impaired people, Josh ran into some challenges in landing his first jobs. He says, “The issue wasn’t in finding jobs, it was in making those jobs fit my needs for fulltime employment. Many places that need assistive technologists are higher ed institutions, and at the time when I was looking for work were only interested in paying part-time employment. It was a multi-year process to find stable employment in the field, and to secure certifications that would keep me relevant and competitive in the field.”
Josh has worked in a number of jobs including the role of Accessibility Consultant at the University of Massachusetts in the Assistive Technology Center. He helped other blind and visually impaired people learn to use screen readers like JAWS and NVDA, as well as how to use the Google suites software. Presently he works as a Program Coordinator for the Polus Center for Social and Economic Development where he is heading up the Trades Win project.
To those interested in working in the field of assistive technology, Josh shares this advice: “I would recommend you getting all possible screen reader certifications you can, as well as the Deque University accessibility certifications. There are some university courses through CSUN that will certify you to be a general practitioner of AT, although they are not necessary if your focus is blindness tech.” These certifications mark you out as a professional and offer the chance to work with a variety of companies and institutions.
Josh makes use of a wide variety of assistive technologies in his own life including screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, and Narrator), Voiceover on the iPhone, Braille Note for Android, and a number of smart devices that help him at home: vacuum, door lock, window blinds, coffeemaker, tea kettle, microwave, and oven. He notes, “Once I realized what [these technologies] could do for me, I started advocating for others.” In all his work, Josh helps people achieve freedom and make good on their immense potential. “I am passionate about the ability of assistive technology to give people agency and authority over their own lives.”