[IABS-Talk] at large minutes for June

[David Meyer]

At Large Chapter Meeting
ZOOM Meeting
June 1st, 2025

CALL TO ORDER
Persons in Attendance: At Large Chapter President, David Meyer, Bill 
Reif, Michelle Ault, Rachel Ng
, Greg Rosenberg, Marilyn Green, Michal Nowicki, Jemal Powell, Kim 
Liddell, Debbie Pittman. The  meeting started at 7:03 PM

APPROVAL OF May Minutes

Jemal Powell moved and Bill Reif seconded. All in favor said Aye. 
Minutes were approved.
PROGRAM ITEM
David Meyer introduced Kim Liddell from Blue Island. She works the Blue 
Island Office for the  Progress Center for Independent Living. She 
discussed with us the Illinois Telecommunication Access  Corporation 
and let us know if you have hearing loss you can apply to get a free 
IPhone, thru ITAC.  You can get a new one every three years.You can 
save yourself the money from leasing or buying an  IPhone. There is not 
a income eligibility requirement. The other program is I Can Connect. 
It is  for people with a combination of hearing and vision loss. This 
program does have a income  eligibility. The income level goes up if 
you are married or if you have children. There is another  program that 
is State funded which is the Home Modification Program. In the past 
people have  applied thru rehab but now Independent Living is part of 
the program. They are in suburban Cook  County and they do not do the 
city of Chicago. Residents in Chicago would have to go thru the  Mayors 
Department of People with Disability. They can do a floating sink, 
modify the doorway, get  rails coming out of the house and also receive 
grab bars for support in the shower. It is State  funded but we do not 
know what is Federal funded yet. The income cutoff is unknown at this 
time. On  June 21st there will be a meeting in Blue Island which will 
be at the Progress Center for  Independent Living. At the annual 
meeting the Mayor of Blue Island will be welcoming the community.  
There will also be a deaf advocate speaking on the shortage of the 
impact of shortages of ASL  interpreters. RSVP for lunch. Lunch is at 
12:00 and the program is 1:00 to 3:00. At the Progress  Center for 
Independent Living there is off and on assistance that is offered to 
build resumes and  career builder web sites. The person being assisted 
must have the initiative to take the steps.  Aira also gives a certain 
number of minutes a month for job searching and resumes. It is 30 
minutes  a day. It is helpful for formatting, cover letters, proof 
reading, and using inaccessible job web  sites. The address for the 
annual meeting is 13102 Western Avenue. It is on the Southwest corner 
of  Vermont Street and Western Avenue. It is two blocks away from Metra.

PRESIDENTIAL RELEASE

 This is Presidential Release 550, the official release for the month 
of June. This is the Chapter  version.

President Mark Riccobono started by wishing us a Happy Pride Month and 
a Happy Mothers Day to all  the Moms out there.
We are very close to National Convention and online registration will 
be closed by the time we hear  this. We can still come to the National 
Convention if we can find a room and we can register when  we get to 
the convention. It is only the online registration that will have 
closed. But if we are  making a last minute decision, like we really 
must be at the convention, which is a great decision,  we can still 
sneak in, especially if you can find a place to stay.
If you are not going to be with us in New Orleans, remember that you 
can register for our virtual  convention experience. You can tune in on 
Zoom to our sessions and our special virtual experience  activities. 
You can get all of that information as you already know, at  
NFB.org/convention .
You will need to register for the virtual convention to be eligible for 
virtual door prizes. And  the registration fee for the virtual 
experiences is for a modest donation to the Federation. So, if  you 
cant be with us in New Orleans, please register and participate in the 
virtual experience and  stay plugged in to all of the great 
conversations we will be having.

Our advocacy work continues and earlier this week, the Access 
Technology Affordability Act was  introduced in the United State Senate.
This is Bill S.1918 introduced by Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, a 
longtime friend of the  National Federation of the Blind, and our lead 
co-sponsor on this bill is Ben Ray Lujan from New  Mexico. So, really 
proud to have this bill introduced and to have bipartisan leadership 
support for  the bill in the Senate.
We have the ATAA in the House already, thats H.R.1529. So H.R.1529 and 
S.1918, please continue to  talk to your members of Congress and 
encourage them to support these bills, even as they are  advancing 
other discussions of taxes and credits in the Congress, this bill 
should continue to be  on their radar.
We had a moment of disappointment that our bill was not included in the 
big bill that is currently  being considered in Congress, but as we 
have dug a little deeper, one of the reasons is that that  bill is 
largely based on the campaign promises that the President of the United 
States made.  Although our bill has a lot of merit, we were not one of 
the campaign promises. So dont think the  fact that our bill was not 
included is a negative.
In fact, our bipartisan support for this bill continues to be its 
strength and your pushing it  forward is going to make it happen. 
Please remind members of Congress that this bill is projected  to save 
the federal government 315 million dollars over a five-year period. 
There is a lot of talk  about saving money in the government, this is a 
very important fact about this bill.
Our Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act was introduced 
finally in Congress.It was  introduced in the House of Representatives 
on May 14, and that bill is sponsored by Representative  Pete Sessions 
from Texas, and the lead co-sponsor is Representative Steny Hoyer here 
from Maryland.  The bill number is H.R. 3417 and it is expected that 
the Senates version of this bill will be  introduced soon.
We would like to announce that we have another important partnership 
opportunity that we put  together with a company called Innosearch AI. 
Being a member of the National Federation of the  Blind has many 
benefits, and this is one of them. The size and reach of our 
organization allows us  to partner with individuals and organizations 
in ways that we could not otherwise achieve without  the scale that we 
have. And we have announced that we are working with Innosearch AI to 
provide NFB  members with special benefits and to help build our 
community of blind people.
When we establish a partnership with an entity like Innosearch AI, we 
make sure that the entity  were dealing with takes accessibility seriously.
And in this case, Innosearch AI provides a new exciting platform for 
using artificial intelligence  to access thousands of online retail 
sites and to give users curated information about the products  that 
you are interested in. And to be clear, this innovative approach does 
not at all diminish our  expectation that all e-commerce platforms out 
there will be usable and accessible to blind people.
This however, is an important option as it provides some functionality 
which is accessible to blind  people, but I think really powerful and 
usable by all sorts of people who want to cut through the  flashy 
images and get right to the facts and figures and dive into the details 
of the products that  they are considering buying.
Innosearch AI is an online platform that allows you to search thousands 
of online retailers and ask  questions. And using their AI engine, they 
are able to surface information about what you are  looking for. Just 
as an example, the Riccobonos, were looking to buy a new lock for their 
front  door. They have a push button lock that they had for about a decade.
President Mark Riccobono wanted a new one so he could now go online and 
find them, but he really  wanted to make sure that what he bought had 
real physical tactile buttons on it, not just some flat  touchscreen. 
He used Innosearch AI and was able to ask these questions and identify 
what locks had  real physical buttons and identify a unit that he could 
purchase.
NFB members will get a special promotional credit when you set up an 
Innosearch AI account, a 10  dollar credit. You can find the link to 
get this promotional credit by going to your NFB member  profile at 
NFB.org. You will need to use that link and special code to get this 10 
dollar credit.  This is a good benefit to NFB members.
If you have forgotten your NFB member profile information, you can go 
to NFB.org, go to the  membership link, and you can hit change password 
if you have forgotten yours and use the email  address that you believe 
NFB has on file. If you do log into your member profile, go to the  
membership tab and you will find your membership information, but also 
find benefits like  Innosearch AI.
And while were on it, you can find information about the very special 
deal that AIRA offers  exclusively to members of the National 
Federation of the Blind.
In addition to offering an online shopping service, Innosearch also 
offers a telephone-based  system. If you set up your online account and 
put in your phone number, it will recognize you when  you call their 
online shopping system.
If you want to try it out even without an account, you can dial 
1-855-SHOP-GPT, or that would be  1-8 5 5-7 4 6-7 4 7 8, and you can 
get all of the same powerful features that you would get on the web  
using the voice interaction on the telephone.
We are going to be finding other ways to work with Innosearch AI. They 
have included a round-up  feature in their shopping experience so you 
can round up to benefit the programs of the National  Federation of the 
Blind and continue to build this community.
We will be sending out information to our Affiliates about working with 
Innosearch AI to provide  training on the platform and other engagement 
that the company is interested in, and they will be  at our National 
Convention in New Orleans. They are also a White Cane sponsor.
Please check out Innosearch AI and give us feedback on what you find, 
what you think, what your  experience is. You can write to Jonathan 
Mosen, who is our Executive Director for Accessibility  Excellence. You 
can write to him at jmosen, M-O-S-E-N,  jmosen at NFB.org .

Here at the NFB, we launched our e-commerce for the NFB Independence 
Market. We are really excited  that the e-commerce is now live and 
available. You can find the products that we offer through our  
independence market and you can place your order. You can go to 
Catalog.NFB.org, Catalog.NFB.org,  to find our e-commerce site and do 
some shopping and get your products in advance of the National  
Convention. Of course, we will have the Independence Market at the 
convention, but you can buy  products now anytime you want, whether the 
market is open or not.
Mark Riccobono encourages our members of the Federation to give us 
feedback not only on the  e-commerce, but on what products you would 
like to see us carrying in our Independence Market. I  would encourage 
you to write to Shawn Seward, he is our manager of the Independence 
Market. His  email address is  sseward at NFB.org . Thats S-S-E-W-A-R-D at 
NFB.org.
That does bring me to the end of this Presidential Release, the last 
one before we get to the  National Convention. We wont have one in July 
because we will be together in New Orleans. I do want  to take this 
opportunity in addition to again saying Happy Pride Month, to wish all 
of my fellow  fathers out there a very happy Fathers Day.

STATE PRESIDENTS REPORT

Pre registration for National Convention ended last night and the room 
block is gone. Please reach  out to Marilyn Green if someone no longer 
needs a room they booked or if they are looking for a  roommate. You 
can always post something on the convention list serve to find out if 
anyone is in  need of a roommate. We also have a virtual option if we 
cannot attend in person.
The next State Board meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 17th 
at 7:00 PM. It is the same  Zoom info. This is a great opportunity to 
learn about what is going on in the National Federation of  the Blind 
of Illinois, our policies and procedures and gets more into what we do 
as an  organization. We will also have a face to face Board meeting on 
August 24th on a Sunday this year.  It will be at Chicago Marriott 
Hotel in Naperville. The number to book a room is 6 3 0-5 0 5-4 9 9 0. 
We  do have a NFB room block. You can also book a room for our State 
Convention which is the weekend of  October 17th. The face to face 
Board meeting starts at 9:00 AM, we adjourn at about 11:30/11:45  for a 
30 minute lunch break and usually adjourn somewhere between 2 and 3 for 
the day. Information  will be coming out in July. You can use the same 
ZOOM link as our June meeting if you are not able  to come in person.
Our NFB Bell program is coming up. We have a two week day program in 
Chicago which will be July  21st thru August 1st. We offer that in 
partnership with the Chicago Lighthouse. The program is from  8:30 til 
2:00 in the afternoon. If you know of any children between the ages of 
4-12 who could use  some extra Braille Skills, White Cane travel 
skills, and independent living skills, please let the  parents know of 
this great opportunity. This is a great opportunity for the students to 
get out and  be with other blind students, They make there own lunches, 
go on field trips and do different  activities. If you would to be a 
adult blind mentor you can contact Debbie Stein at  dkent5817 at att.net  
or contact Tasabih Elfaki (Abbu) at  tasabih.elfaki at gmail.com . We also 
have a resident Springfield program that is August 4th thru August 8th. 
We will be at the  Abraham Lincoln in Springfield IL for any children 
outside of Chicago. We do pay for the housing  for the families and the 
child. You can contact Debbie or Abbu about any of those programs.

The reason we are having our Face to Face board meeting on a Sunday is 
because we are piloting a  NFB STEM2U on that Saturday. STEM stands for 
Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It is an  opportunity for 
blind students to know that STEM is possible for blind people. It will 
be a great  opportunity for the students to get together and do some 
fun science experiments and to learn about  all different types of 
things as it relates to STEM. It will be at the Chicago Marriott 
Naperville.  If you would like to be an adult blind mentor for this 
please reach out to Debbie Stein, Abbu, or  Marilyn. In order to be an 
adult volunteer we do ask for references and do a background check.
We have a State Convention coming up in October. If you have any ideas 
on presentations you would  like to see at State Convention, ideas for 
sponsors or exhibitors to contact, or a convention theme  idea please 
send them to:  president at Nfbofillinois.org . The room rate will be 
posted on the web site.

New Business

We had a board meeting and it was recommended that we would give 
$100.00 to each of four National  funds which is the White Cane Fund, 
SUN Fund, Jernigan Fund and Jacob TenBroek fund. We are also  
recommending that we will be giving $600.00 to the State during the 15 
for funds segment at our  State Convention. We will also contribute to 
the PAC Plan which stands for Pre Authorized  Contribution. The 
recommendation is to go to $15.00 a month. A motion was made by Bill 
Reif that  this is approved and Marilyn Green seconded. All in favor 
said Aye and the motion was approved.
Greg Rosenberg was welcomed in and this was moved and seconded. All in 
favor said Aye.
We voted on not having a meeting in July. It was voted that we should 
not have a July meeting due  to a lot of us going to National 
Convention. Jemal Powell made the motion to cancel the July  meeting 
and this was seconded by Debbie Pittman. All in favor said Aye. Our 
next meeting will be  on August 4th.

ADJOURNMENT
Motion to adjourn by Bill Reif and Marilyn Green seconded. All in favor 
said AYE and the meeting  adjourned at 8:21 PM.
Respectfully Submitted,
Michelle Ault
Secretary/Treasurer
Add to Sync List
Previous
Next
Folder:
Move to Folder
Create Folder
Folder:
Return to Folder Summary
Return to Main Menu