CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. (NEWS10) – A local woman took her skills as a voiceover actor and entered a competition to win money for expanding her business. The catch? All those competing were blind.
You may recognize her voice. From video games to commercials to audio books, Satauna Howery is a voice actor. She’s also blind.
“I was born blind, and so for me, there’s never been a feeling of ‘I lost my sight’ because I never had it to begin with,” she said.
The Clifton Park woman always had a love of music. She grew up playing the piano and finally made the jump to starting her own business.
“It’s easy to wait around and not make a decision,” she said. “It’s a lot harder to take action. But when you take action, the rewards are so great.”
Howery uses a lot of the same equipment as over voice actors do, but she reads all of her scripts off of a braille display.
“I can actually look at the script and make sure I said what I think I said,” she explained.
Howery does most of her work over the internet from her in home studio.
“You don’t have to think about transportation,” she said. “You don’t have to think about, ‘Okay, I have to bridge the gap for a sighted person about how I’m going to do the job.’”
Many of her clients don’t know she’s blind.
Recently, Howery was a finalist for a business competition through the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
“So I put a business plan together that talked a lot about scaling, because right now, I am doing everything on my own,” she said.
Howery won $5,000 in the competition to go toward her growing company. Right now, she does everything on her own.
“All of the editing and the finishing and the administration,” she said. “And I would love to hand some of that off. I would love to have a team.”
She wants to use the prize money to hire other people who are blind.
“With the 60 to 70 percent unemployment rate among blind people, there’s plenty of people out there who can be a part of that team,” Howery said.
Howery hopes she can be an inspiration to blind people, people with other disabilities, and even people without impairments.
“I think there’s lots of people with and without disabilities that are just afraid to step up,” she said.
Howery says anyone – whether they can see or not – should take that step toward achieving their dreams.
“It takes a community that believes in you, and if you don’t have that community, then it takes you to believe in you that you can take the risk and that you can go and do it,” she said.
If you’d like to get in touch with Howery, you can visit her website www.satauna.com.
If you would like to learn more about the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired, head to their website at www.hadley.edu.
Category:
Month of Issue:
June
Year of Issue:
2 016
Source:
http://news10.com/2016/06/08/blind-woman-starts-up-voice-recording-company-inside-clifton-park-home/
Place:
Clifton, New York
By Line:
News10
Segregate as:
International
Facebook comments