Josh was born blind. When he was old enough to go shopping, he couldn't believe there were no labels on store shelves to help him. He was in Fremont on Friday at the Whole Foods market trying to change that.
Leave it to a kid, to come up with a simple idea, that's brilliant. It grew out of young Josh's efforts to find batteries one day at a grocery store.
"'Mommy, why isn't there Braille on the shelves?' She's like, 'I don't know,'" said Josh.
He is the boy behind The Joshua Project, a foundation dedicated to making the daily lives of the blind a bit easier, like being able to find things in a store.
"That way they can come into the store and they don't have to wait a million years. They don't have to wait that long for someone to come over and help them," said Josh.
Josh was born without sight -- something his parents vowed would never be treated as a handicap.
"We thought if we raise him different, he's going to grow up different. If we raise him the same, he's going to grow up the same, so we raised him the same," said Evan Goldenberg, Josh's dad.
And Josh thinks blind people should be able to shop for groceries, the same as everyone else.
"It's a feeling of accomplishment. Getting there is one thing, but knowing where everything is, is a really good feeling," said Jennifer Boylan, from the Stockton Center for the Blind.
Besides new Braille labels in the produce department, Whole Foods also has these handheld scanners, so that blind shoppers can find what they need on the shelves. The scanners allow the person to find the item and learn a bit more about it, if they wish.
For josh, it's all about the kind of life he envisions for himself and others, who just happen to be blind.
"I'm just going to keep brailing more and more and more stores, until I Braille the world, including Target," said Josh.
