[New-york-news] Celebrating the CCVIP Legacy, Imagining a Sustainable Future for Accessible Tech Ed in NYC: a Community Conversation

[Chancey Fleet]

Please, share as you feel moved. 
Dear friends and colleagues: 
As many of you know, the provost of Baruch College has decided to close Baruch's Computer Center for Visually Impaired People at the end of June. Although this decision ostensibly came about because of funding issues, communities of disability were not alerted to the funding problems or consulted about strategies for finding new funding: CCVIP's leadership was not consulted either. 
For the past 40 years, CCVIP has served our community with distinction. If you think of NYC's  nonprofit agencies, businesses and freelancers that work in assistive technology as a constellation, CCVIP makes the star maps: their annual conference on technology and employment, along with their regular discussion and demo events, have provided a rare opportunity for workers and consumers to learn together and to be in community across agency lines. Located in a bustling, modern building in the CUNY system, CCVIP offers learners an environment that works a lot like typical college or workplace lab training. CCVIP students find a course ladder which includes prerequisites and clear tools for meeting them, along with discussion-oriented seminars without prerequisites. Each course is clearly outlined, syllabus-style; supported by extensive documentation; and populated with serious graded exercises and tests. While this is not the only approach our community needs, it is unique in NYC for how well it supports learners who either thrive on structure or need to experience it in preparation for structured educational or employment opportunities. 
CCVIP supports our community with Braille production, a well-stocked technology demo center, accessibility and usability testing, and live-streamed feature rents on new and emerging technology. Our NYC community is full of organizations doing good work, but cessation of the unique work done by CCVIP would be a blow to us all. 
I invite you to a community conversation at Data and Society Research Institute on Friday April 19 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. Let's gather together, have some light refreshment, celebrate the past and present contributions of CCVIP's workers, and talk about the future. Do we want to take collective action to oppose the closure? If not, how can we work in community to relocate and recast the essential work done by CCVIP? What individual and organizational assets (like spaces, equipment, skills and connections to potential funding) do we have that we could weave into a sustainable web of support for this work?
This gathering, like CCVIP's renowned conferences, is free and open to all: workers, learners, and allies, please come if you are prepared to help us imagine a future for CCVIP's work. 
The space is fully accessible. We're at 36 West 20th ST (two doors east of the Andrew Heiskell Library), on the 11th floor. 
It is critical that you RSVP if you plan to come, because our maximum capacity is 65. Please write to me with your interest at chancey at datasociety.net — I appreciate it in advance! If you need to chat with me directly, please call 347-632-8383. If you would like to join the logistics  team that will help run this gathering smoothly, please put Logistics somewhere in the subject line. 
Thanks to the Dat & Society  Institute for welcoming me as a fellow this year and welcoming us all at a difficult time.
With solidarity and respect,
Chancey

Life is short and dictation is faster. Any errors brought to you by iPhone. 
Chancey Fleet
Mobile: 347-632-8383 (texts preferred)
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