Kristen Steele: You’ve Gotta Fight for Your Right …
Kristen Steele knows a thing or two about telling her story and getting what she needs to be her best.
The 22-year-old from Council Bluffs, Iowa, is a licensed massage therapist in Iowa and Nebraska. She travels throughout rural Nebraska, giving massages to the elderly and the ill as an independent contractor specializing in geriatric care.
But she had to fight to take her massage therapy exam in Braille. Never had anyone taken the Massage and Bodywork Licensing Examination, known as the MBLEx, in Braille.
Kristen told her story to people living with Leber congenital amaurosis and other inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) at the Sofia Sees Hope second LCA Family Conference in Philadelphia in July. The gathering brought together patients, advocates, doctors, researchers and biotechnology leaders – more than 80 people from across the nation and Mexico. She spoke from the audience following the conference’s session on patient advocacy called “Your Voice Matters!”
Doctors diagnosed Kristen with LCA as an infant, while her clinical diagnosis of LCA10 (CEP290) came years later in middle school. She learned Braille at age 3.
Kristen planned to be an English teacher but decided her passions aligned more with the medical field. She enrolled in Midwest School of Massage near Omaha after rejecting another school because of difficulty accessing its curricula. At Midwest, she found an instructor with a background in exercise physiology and physical therapy. She said the teacher cared and put in extra time to make sure she fully understood the techniques.
After completing the 1,000-hour massage therapy course on anatomy, physiology and pathology, plus 200 practice massages, with a 4.0 average, Kristen learned she couldn’t take the exam in Braille. Instead, volunteer readers administered the test to people with visual impairment. Readers could be unfamiliar with and prone to mispronouncing complex anatomical and medical terms, putting Kristen at risk of failing the exam. Plus, she didn’t want to pay the $195 exam fee twice.
She found a blind lawyer in Iowa and they sued the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards. She reached a settlement agreement and took the exam, passing on her first try. Kristen also insisted on having a professional reader, an occupational therapist familiar with terminology used in the test questions – just in case she needed clarification.
Kristen polished her resumé with the help of visual interpreter services, highlighting her certificates in advanced dementia processes and other therapies.
“It placed my disability on the back burner, and it gave me the upper hand when you have sighted massage therapists and they’re interviewing without any of these advanced certificates,” she said.
A company interviewed Kristen by phone last year and hired her the day after her in-person interview. She continues to thrive there as a massage therapist specializing in geriatric care. She also devised her own transportation system to get to and from clients in the Nebraska countryside.
Kristen paved the way for others, including perhaps another conference attendee, Danielle Senick from Norwich, Conn. Danielle is studying to be a massage therapist, and Kristen said she will be there to help her succeed in changing the rules to take the exam in Braille in Connecticut.