[Massachusetts-NFB] At-Large Chapter May Meeting Minutes

[Liz Lesperance]

Good Afternoon,

Pasted below as well as attached please find the minutes from our meeting
earlier this week.

Enjoy the beautiful weather!

Thanks,
Liz

***************

The at-large chapter met on Tuesday, May 9th. Allen called the meeting to
order at 7:06PM. Those in attendance included:

Allen Larkin

Audra Andrade

Brian Langlois

Cullen Gallagher

Debbie Malone

Elizabeth Ann Johnson

Liz Lesperance

Mike Karsok

Rashad Saadieh

Rachel Kobierecki

Sandra Burgess

Sengil Inkiala

Shara Winton

As part of our roll call, we did an icebreaker where each person identified
their favorite animal.

Liz recited the NFB pledge.

The April meeting minutes were approved based on a motion put forth by
Brian and seconded by Liz.

Sandy went over the Treasurer's report. The current account balance is
$1613.63. This does not include funds raised by our Double Good fundraiser.

Cullen went over the highlights of the presidential release which included:

·       Global Accessibility Awareness Day is Thursday, May 18th.

·       THE NFB national office has a tremendous staff. If you are
interested in joining the staff, please go to nfb.org and click on "Career
Opportunities".

·       The NFB utilizes many social media platforms with the goal of
increasing membership and engaging current members. Twitter has made some
recent changes which have caused some concern such as the layoff of its
entire accessibility team. Furthermore, blind users have struggled to
access Twitter when they changed their API's. The NFB is establishing a new
presence on Mastodon. Mastodon is decentralized so no one company owns it.
The NFB’s account is:

Nationsblind at nfb.social

Please provide the national office with your experience using Mastodon by
emailing:

Mastodon at nfb.org

·       Recently an NFB member traveling on JetBlue with a guide dog was
denied boarding access. The NFB has met with senior officials at the D.O.T.
to spread awareness of guide dog access issues. If you encounter an issue
regarding guide dog denial access at an airport, please reach out to:

AElia at nagdu.org

Also, please file a complaint with the D.O.T.

·       The national convention Marriott rate is $125/night. It was
mistakenly listed at a lower price.

·       Now is the time to submit resolutions as they must be in final form
and submitted by June 1st.

Resolutions can be sent to

resolutions at nfb.org

Donald Porterfield is the new chair of this committee.



Debbie went over her president's report. A new popcorn fundraiser starts on
Wednesday, May 10th, at midnight. Debbie reminded everyone to register for
the national convention by May 31st before prices increase. Please let
Shara know if you will be requesting financial assistance from the
affiliate.

Debbie would like to have speakers attend future meetings. Please consider
what topics you would like to hear about. Shara suggested SSI and SSDI.
Elizabeth Ann attended an informative meeting about the ABLE Act at last
year's convention. Cullen suggested hearing about new technologies.

Shara suggested sharing a tip/blind hack in each future meeting. Audra
suggested creating a sign-up list for the year so everyone can provide a
tip or trick.

Next month Cullen will teach us about Air Tags.

Liz will send out an email about our new popcorn fundraiser.

We had a lively discussion about struggles surrounding transportation,
audio description, and isolation.s

The meeting adjourned at 8:23PM.

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, June 13th, at 7:00PM.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/massachusetts-nfb_nfbnet.org/attachments/20230511/82acd97c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: May 2023 At-Large Chapter Meeting Minutes.docx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
Size: 15811 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/massachusetts-nfb_nfbnet.org/attachments/20230511/82acd97c/attachment.docx>