[Iabs-talk] Illinois Independent: Stories Welcome!

[Patti Chang]

Dear Debbie, 

Here is a quick one. You can do your magic and clean it up. Thanks so much.


AIRA - Helping Manage Our Affiliate

There is much buzz about AIRA, the new paid service for blind people. Most
of that buzz is around travel. But AIRA is helping us to keep up with
affiliate business. Both our President and our treasurer subscribe to AIRA
which for NFB members gives you 200 minutes of sighted assistance through
your smartphone per month. Our main reader for handwritten or hard to scan
and convert documents has generally been Francisco Chang, but due to work
commitments, Francisco is less available. Our latest solution has been to
call an AIRA agent, email the difficult document to them and have them read
it aloud. Either Patti or Denise records the document if it needs to be
shared, and then posts the recording to our Dropbox. Wow instant
accessibility. We have used this for our 990 government forms and for hotel
documents like contracts, banquet event orders, and invoices. For shorter
documents which do not need to be confidential Be My Eyes which is free
could serve the same function. Yei, technology as one of the tools in our
arsenal is awesome. 

Note that this article could even transition to President Riccobono's speech
last Summer and be truly on-brand. .

What do you think? Can you work with it?

Patti