[Faith-Talk] Possible new partnership

[Ericka]

Resources was just brought up yesterday as some of you know. Well with all the technology I was assuming just stupid in the beginning, that the app for our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America women’s magazine gather was accessible. It is in a sense, but you can only read past issues not current ones. So it was back to the drawing board for me. I went to the website for the church worldwide office and was happy to see that they had Bookshare as one of the resources for people who are blind. However they still offer everything on audio cassette or large print. In the past when I contacted the disability coordinator the person was clueless and didn’t want to be informed. Well I had a wonderful talk with the person who took the job. She’s been there for three years and is very willing to be informed. In fact they are working on getting videos of people with disabilities talking about their experience in churches available for seminarians, current pastor‘s and other leadership in the church. Well that’s in production, they are also working hard to get conference calls together are people with disabilities to brainstorm how we can make ELCA churches more welcoming. She was very understanding about why I didn’t feel I could participate as well in my women’s group and I connected her with Scott White and informed her about the NFB andnewsline For the blind. I’m so excited because I know she will get more information from Mr. White about what other services the NFBW can offer to make everything they have as accessible as possible 

Please pray for this new adventure as I’ve been asked to be one of those teleconference numbers add to reach out to others in my state to join. Also pray for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that they stop looking at funding the changes and accessibility and looking at who and how. God will always provide, right? 😀

Ericka Short