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Meet Tanja Milojevic. The following video features an individual seated in an office conference room speaking to the camera about her experiences with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind or MCB, and their Vocational Rehabilitation or VR services. Periodically throughout the video, there are cutaways to short silent video montages of the speaker walking, smiling, talking and navigating around her home, outdoors, and with her Yellow Labrador Retriever service dog, Nabu. The speaker is Tanja Milojevic, MCB client.
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Tanja Milojevic: I was born in Serbia as a premature baby of seven months. I was two pounds and nobody thought I was going to survive. Part of the issue was retinopathy of prematurity, and they had to do a couple of surgeries, bring me here to the US. And we were successful to a point, and then by the time we settled here in the US I was five years old. The reason being is that I had glaucoma at that point, and I needed frequent checkups, I needed medication. It would have been absolutely unaffordable to go back and forth. So we ultimately ended up settling here in the US, and that's where I started my mainstream education. Starting a new school with the language barrier and then learning Braille on top of it was a lot all at once for a kid who's five and a half, six years old. It was a learning adjustment, but it was a lot of just focus on moving forward. When you grow up early in wartime, you learn to plan the best that you can to survive. MCB and I crossed paths in first or second grade, and I started to learn mobility. And they started working with me around the school indoors teaching me very basic techniques, and both with and without the cane. I wanted to get a service dog because my travel with a cane was kind of getting to the point where I felt like if I had a dog, I’d travel a lot faster. My teacher of visual impairments at the time worked with me on applying for a dog, and I got my first dog, Windell. And then later on MCB got involved in IEP meetings in school and all kinds of assisting me with getting technology I needed.
In being able to develop my Individualized Educational Plan, I worked with a couple of the members of my team at the time to develop agenda goals and really have a say in how I wanted to be involved. My teacher of visual impairments who worked with me was extremely great about providing resources, and also giving me the feeling of empowerment to advocate for myself. MCB still offers an internship program for new transitioning students who are either in college or transitioning from high school. And one of the things that MCB really did was helped me with the confidence in that first interview, from getting the right clothing for it, learning the proper soft skills, showing the interviewer a little bit of my process of how I would get things done. That gave me the foundation for the future internships, future interviews. I worked at the Perkins library as the production specialists for seven years, and that was a wonderful experience. And then I moved on to Tech Resemble AI, and they do synthetic voice cloning. So I started getting into voiceover at that time, and it started off as a hobby then became more of a side job.
In the last couple of months, my partner and I started a Braille production business. We've created getbraille.com, where our aim is to bring accessibility to all who need it. What we do is produce materials in Braille, large print and audio. The connection I think, between my translating things for my family to start with, and now translating materials into accessible format, is really me wanting to help out in some way and make a positive difference in someone else's life. Having MCB always available as a resource has made me feel better in general about whatever problem might arise. I know I have someone I can ask. So I do feel very fortunate that I have that resource. A lot of people don't have anyone to ask or to go to.
To learn more about and contact the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, find them online at mass.gov. Or call 803 926450.