[il-talk] Fwd: Article from Daily Herald News Section 2016 01 24

[Lin H.]

Very informative article!  Hope many will read it!  Good info for people to 
know  about the NfB!    Sincerely,      Linda

-----Original Message----- 
From: Leslie Hamric via il-talk
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 6:45 AM
To: NFB of Illinois Mailing List
Cc: Leslie Hamric
Subject: Re: [il-talk] Fwd: Article from Daily Herald News Section 2016 01 
24

Hi Denise. Thank you for forwarding this. I'm sending the online version two 
because in the beginning there are some photo captions that Newsline 
apparently left out.
Leslie
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20160124/news/160129398/

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 26, 2016, at 4:46 AM, Denise R Avant via il-talk 
> <il-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> Denise R. Avant
> President
> National Federation of the Blind of Illinois
> Live the life you want
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: NFB-NEWSLINE Online <nfbnewsline at nfb.org>
>> Date: January 26, 2016 at 5:24:33 AM EST
>> To: Denise Avant <davant1958 at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Article from Daily Herald News Section 2016 01 24
>>
>> Constable: Suburban blind activists seek accessible Internet. Burt 
>> Constable . By Burt Constable bconstable at dailyherald,com related 
>> advertisement video Living blind, dispelling myths The Americans with 
>> Disabilities Act has been the law of the land since President George H.W. 
>> Bush signed it on July 26, 1990. More than a quarter century later, local 
>> activists with the National Federation of the Blind will travel to 
>> Washington, D.C., this week (weather permitting) with a quest to make the 
>> ADA the law of cyberspace. "The practical reality is that's not working," 
>> says Glenn Moore, a 33-year-old Elgin resident who serves as secretary of 
>> the Illinois chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. While 
>> brick-and-mortar stores are built with adaptations to make them 
>> accessible to people with disabilities, "things online aren't as 
>> well-established," Moore says. Using voice software that reads the words 
>> on a webpage, a blind person might be getting the information he needs, 
>> only to be stopped by something as simple as one of those Captcha boxes 
>> requiring that a human type a message shown on the screen, or a PDF file 
>> that doesn't include an audio file. "It depends on the website," says 
>> Leslie Hamric, 40, a Schaumburg woman who volunteers as president of a 
>> local at-large chapter of the NFB. Sometimes, even companies with 
>> accessible websites don't extend that technology to their apps, she adds. 
>> "There's still a lot of work that needs to be done," says Annette Grove, 
>> 76, a federal legislative director for the Illinois chapter, who has been 
>> on many lobbying trips to Congress. "The reality is some people simply 
>> cannot use some of the online tools. In a 2010 ceremony marking the 20th 
>> anniversary of the ADA, President Obama announced that new website 
>> accessibility rules issued by the Department of Justice would be "the 
>> most important updates to the ADA since its original enactment," and 
>> scheduled the changes to be enacted by January 2012. That date later was 
>> extended until sometime in 2018. "We don't expect things to!
  change overnight. We want it to be the beginning of a larger 
conversation," says Moore, who has gone to Washington on a couple of 
lobbying junkets. A graduate of Elgin Community College, Moore worked for 
seven years with the Salvation Army, operating social services for the 
charity's Carpentersville Service Center. Now he's taking online classes 
through the University of Missouri, working toward a business administration 
degree and an MBA. "For many blind people, getting a college degree is very 
important," Moore says, noting lobbyists will continue to pressure academic 
institutions to make every class accessible to people with disabilities. The 
group already has sponsors for bills pushing two other changes for people 
with disabilities. The Transitioning to Integrated and Meaningful Employment 
Act, known as TIME and presented in HR-188 , would ensure that blind workers 
are covered under minimum-wage laws. Current laws allow some employers to 
pay lower wages to people with disabilities. The Access to Air Travel for 
Service-Disabled Veterans bill, HR-2264 , would add veterans with 
disabilities to a program allowing military veterans to travel free on 
military aircrafts. The NFB lobbyists also are hoping for a change in 
international law through the adoption of the Marrakesh Treaty , which would 
eliminate some copyright infringements and allow for the sharing of millions 
of printed works to be distributed across borders in Braille, audio or 
digital formats. People with vision issues "continue to face a lot of 
discrimination in hiring and access," says Grove, who lives in downstate 
Belleville and travels often in her job conducting compliance audits for 
Goodwill International. "The ADA has been around since 1990, and 26 years 
later, 70 percent of blind people are still unemployed," notes Hamric, who 
has worked for Easter Seals and the Lighthouse social service agency that 
offers many programs for people with vision impairments. A graduate of the 
Eastman School of Music, Hamric, who, with her husband, Andy, has a 6-!
year-old son, Michael, teaches cello and also performs and sings with her 
church's musical groups. "Our motto is 'Live the life you want,'" Moore 
says. "We're working to make sure blind people can have full participation, 
inclusion and equality in society.
>>
>> This article is provided to you as a courtesy of NFB-NEWSLINE? Online for 
>> your sole use. The content of this E-mail is protected under copyright 
>> law, and is not to be distributed in any manner to others; infringement 
>> of our non-dissemination agreement is strictly prohibited. Allowing 
>> someone to have access to this material is in violation of the Terms of 
>> Use agreement that you electronically signed when you signed up for 
>> NFB-NEWSLINE? Online. Please do not forward this E-mail or its 
>> attachments to any other person or disseminate it in any manner. Thank 
>> you. The NFB-NEWSLINE? Team.
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