[nabs-l] Florida Association of Blind Students (FABS)

[Jamie Principato]

This is bittersweet. I'm both glad and disappointed to find that I'm not the
only one who has noticed this. Disappointed for obvious reasons. We can do
better than this. Glad because it means I'm not going crazy, lol, and may
actually have some backing to try to improve things. I know many blind
students across Florida. I have friends in college who are finding they need
to drop their majors because the higher level maths aren't being made
accessible for them. I know others who are being forced to use unreliable
paratransit either because the local vocational rehabilitation centers wont
provide them with better mobility training or because they have been lead to
believe it is the only way they can travel. I know students who are
setteling for community college because their local high school vision
department would not properly accomodate them, sheltering rather than
helping, and therefore they could not earn all the required credits for
university admission. I experienced first hand a rehabilitation day center
that is so corrupt, they spent a month and a half teaching their partially
sighted teenage group how to microwave hot pockets, insisting that we need
to learn to do these simple things because cooking full meals for ourselves
is just too difficult and dangerous for "the visually impaired". This center
in particular spends more time focusing on "coping with vision loss and what
you can't do" than it does showing you how much you can do regardless of
your vision impairment. I could go on forever about this one issue, but it
is these and other things that made me want to join FABS, and now make me
more eager to make FABS a strong, active force in the blindness community of
Florida.

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Ashley Johnson <docjohnson76 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Jamie,
>     It's funny that you asked this question.  I actually joined FABS at the
> NFBF convention this past May.  I paid my dues and since then I have
> received only one phone call from the President.  That was to verify my
> phone number.  Since then, nothing has happened.  I actually one of the
> board members of FABS, and she has tried to contact the president of FABS,
> and she has not heard back from her.  I agree, this is a much needed group,
> but unfortunately it seems the people in charge are not very active.
>
> Ashley
>
> On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 3:52 AM, Jamie Principato <blackbyrdfly at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I'm new to this list, but certainly not new to being a blind student. My
> > name is Jamie and I live in Florida. I was just wondering if anyone who
> > reads this mailing list is a member of FABS. I've been trying to become a
> > member for a long time now, especially as I noticed how.... well, how
> many
> > problems exist (in my opinion and in the opinion of a number of others
> I've
> > talked to) for blind students in local high schools and colleges, how
> poor
> > the state's rehabilitation centers for the blind are, and how little is
> > being done about this... But there's nothing on our state's NABS website
> > that explains how to join, and when I e-mailed all the officers, I never
> > got
> > any reply. I've actually heard from other blind students who have tried
> to
> > join that the group is rather inactive, and I think something can
> > definitely
> > be done about this. So are there any Floridians out there?
> >
> > -Jamie
> > _______________________________________________
> > nabs-l mailing list
> > nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> > http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> > To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> > nabs-l:
> >
> >
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/johnson.2774%40osu.edu
> >
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> nabs-l:
>
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/blackbyrdfly%40gmail.com
>