BUSINESS PEOPLE; Yarnall's well-adapted to blindness

By ANNA McCART

The Boston Herald, Sunday, June 09, 2002

Gayle Yarnall started her business when she was a single, working mother of three.

She's traveled alone overseas and tried white- water rafting.

Being blind didn't stop her.

Yarnall's company, Adaptive Technology Consulting Inc., in Salisbury, works with blind and low-vision individuals, providing training and advice on new technologies. Companies, such as Verizon Communications and Fidelity Investments, consult Yarnall on how to accommodate employees with special needs.

Yarnall began life with 20-1400 vision ("I could see at 20 feet what somebody else could see at 1400.") Today, she has next to no sight, sensing only light. There were few resources for her as a low-vision first-grader living in Chicago in the 1950s. All she could do then was put her nose on the large display version of the Dick and Jane book as she learned to read. "I can remember the first page said, 'Look,' " Yarnall said. Even the 'talking books' - textbooks dictated onto records - helped her through only her last year of classes in high school. Now she works with students like Tasha Chemel, a blind junior at Newton North High School. Chemel's computer reads her email and Web sites aloud to her.

"She's a great blind role model," said Chemel of Yarnall. She was just two years old when she met Yarnall, who was volunteering at the infant and toddler program at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown.

When Yarnall was in high school, career options were limited for the visually impaired. She got married in 1965, the summer after graduation on the advice of a high school guidance counselor who told her it was the best option for a blind girl. "In 1976 I was divorced, raising three kids with no work experience," said Yarnall, who was then living in Colorado, where she had moved with her husband.

Through her volunteer experience, she got a job at the University of Colorado in the disabled student services offices. The reading machine she was training others to use, scanned books and read them aloud. At the time, there were only six of the machines in thecountry. "I had never been exposed to any kind of electronics, but I just was fascinated by it," said Yarnall.

She was hired in 1978 to do sales for the company that made the reading machine, Kurzweil Computer Products, in Cambridge.Seven years later,Yarnall became the New England sales representative for TeleSensory Systems, a California-based company.

To the chagrin of her employers, if the products Yarnall sold didn't meet her clients' needs, she would recommend products from competing companies, said Mary Beth Walsh, a friend and colleague who runs a non-profit organization for the blind in Maine. "I did that long enough that people believed me and trusted me," said Yarnall, who left sales in 1993 and started her own business the nextyear.

Started in her Amesbury home, Yarnall had to move her business to a larger space in 1996 and has since added four sighted employees to the payroll. The large open loft where Yarnall and her staff work allows her to be involved in all aspects of the business, from negotiating contracts with buyers to working with the manufacturers.

The next step, said Yarnall, is to begin working with Web site accessibility companies to help her business clients make their Internet presence usable to the visually impaired.

No one in the office has job titles or a direct phoneline - "I'm a leftover hippie," explained Yarnall. "She's got the soul of a hippie in very nice Ann Klein suits," quipped Walsh. But, Walsh added, "For a business owner she doesn't get the whole concept of capitalism sometimes."

Gardening, traveling and cooking are just a few of the activities Yarnall enjoys outside of work. At age 55, she is not only a loving grandmother of five, but a fearless adventurer, said Yarnall's daughter, Leslie Ferrick. "She's gone whitewater rafting, she's traveled, she's done everything," Ferrick said. "I don't think she notices she's blind."

Yarnall said her parents, who met as champion baton twirlers, gave her the same opportunies as her two sisters. "I was not supposed to ride my bike on the highway," admitted Yarnall, who didn't let rules stand in her way.

Even when she lost her sight completely, that spirit of adventure is something she has retained, said her second husband, Neal Kuniansky, who works for a braille software company.

"She went to Bangladesh on her own," said Kuniansky. "That's a pretty serious adventure," he said, referring to a solo trip she made in 1989. While there, she set up braille production equipment and then trained others how to use it. For several years afterward she helped organize groups of technology professionals who volunteered to help set up computer systems and do training in countries like Thailand and Slovakia.

Though Yarnall's trips are now informal, she is planning to go to Ecuador in September to do training and awareness programs for the blind. "She's always taken big chances," said Walsh. "She didn't have big education or big experience, but just figured out how to do it."