[Nfb-editors] Arizona's Monthly Letter from the President - April

[Robert Leslie Newman]

April 4, 2013 

 

 

 

Hello, fellow Federationists, 

 

I hope you are enjoying our beautiful Spring weather as much as I.  Spring
is a good time for each chapter and division to do the housekeeping of their
membership list, and then report new or changed contact information to me in
order to keep our NFBA roster and mailing lists up to date.  This month, we
will discuss - 

 

 

.               The At - Large chapter of the NFBA will hold a telephone
conference

on Monday, April 11 at 7:00 pm.  You are invited to participate to mentor
the new members.  

 

 

* We will conduct an organizing meeting in Flagstaff April 27 to begin the
process of establishing a new NFBA chapter.  Our NFBA members are invited to
participate.  The meeting time and location and other pertinent details will
be shared soon, but please put the date in your calendar if you wish to

participate.   

 

 

* Deadline is approaching to request limited financial assistance to
participate in the NFB National convention in Orlando the first week of
July. 

 

 

* We will hold our annual face - to - face philosophy seminar in Phoenix on
Saturday May 11 immediately following the quarterly board of directors
meeting.  The board meeting and philosophy seminar will begin at 10:00 a.m.

and finish at 3:00 p.m. at the Arizona Public Service building on the second

floor.   More details    will be sent to you soon.  

 

 

* Learn more about how to access described television  

 

 

* Read the newspaper article about the accomplishments and attitudes of
blind legislator in the state of Washington 

 

 

* A Wall Street Journal article reports on attitudes of employers while
considering or not considering hiring blind employees.  

 

 

* Arielle Silverman request survey participation as part of her graduate
school studies. 

 

 

* Debi Black provides tutoring on how to create a signature block for your
letters or emails.  Think about how you want to let your friends, family, or
work colleagues know how the NFB is important to you and make a gift to our
causes, or to urge them to contact legislators for legislative issues.  

 

 

* The NFBA At Large chapter meeting will take place Monday, April 11 at 7
pm.  Participants will telephone Duane Keyannie's chat room by dialing - 

 

(218) 936-2048

Then 1 to go to live chat room

Then 307 pound to join the teleconference

 

 

* The NFBA board of directors has authorized limited financial assistance
for Arizona members to participate in the NFB national convention this year.

Because we conducted a successful fundraiser, the Caribbean cruise raffle,
we have funds for this assistance.  

.               The board authorized funds for members who are not first
timers,

since funds had been available from the Jernigan Fund for first timers and
RSA may authorize for voc rehab clients who have not yet been to a consumer
convention.  

 

Up to $300.00 is available for up to five members.  Please telephone NFBA
president Bob Kresmer prior to May 1, 2013 to make a request.  There will
not be enough funds for all.  Please make the request early! 

 

*   AFB Launches Described TV Listings!

  Finding Described TV Just Got Much Easier!

  

  For further information, contact:

  

  Mark Richert, Esq.

  Director, Public Policy, AFB

  (202) 469-6833

  <mailto:mrichert at afb.net MRichert at afb.net

  

  The landmark Twenty-First Century Communications and Video   Accessibility

Act (CVAA) has begun a revolution in mainstream telecommunications and video
technology accessibility. Among its many groundbreaking achievements, the
CVAA mandates several of the most popular television networks to make some
of their prime-time and children's programs accessible to viewers with
vision loss by adding video description. To help celebrate and promote this
achievement, AFB has implemented a Described TV Listings page on our
website, an online guide where visitors can determine which shows will be
described as well as when they air.

  

  Video description (sometimes called "audio description" or simply

"description") makes television programs and movies accessible for people
who are blind or visually impaired. Short verbal descriptions of action or
key visual scenes in a program, such as setting, costumes, and facial
expressions, are provided to add context. The descriptions are inserted into
pauses within a program's dialog.

  

  Since July 1, 2012, the networks required to each provide approximately
four hours of video description per week include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, USA,
the Disney Channel, TNT, Nickelodeon, and TBS.

  This expanded array of choices is a much-fought-for complement to the
current rich menu of described programming that PBS has offered for many
years.

  

  AFB's Described TV Listings initiative makes it easier to find which shows
are described, allowing people with vision loss to enjoy their favorite
shows alongside their sighted peers. AFB is deeply grateful to the Rovi
Corporation and Comcast for helping us create this valuable tool.

  

  To learn which programs are being described and when they will air in your
area, and to learn more about how to access them on your television, visit:

  

  <http://www.afb.org/tv http<http://www.afb.org/tv ://www.afb.org/tv 

 

 

* Associated Press Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:46 AM  Writer Mike Bake OLYMPIA,
Wash.

 

-- Behind his sunglasses, Rep. Cyrus Habib is reaching back in memory,
trying to recall the name of another fully blind politician who came before
him.

This was someone who served many years ago, Habib recalls. In the U.S.

Senate. The grandfather of writer Gore Vidal. Habib rattles off a few
details before surrendering: "Let me look him up."

Turning to a laptop that provides him constant audio feedback, Habib needs
just 23 seconds to launch his Internet browser, run a query and find the
information he's looking for - a biographical overview of former Oklahoma
Sen. Thomas Gore.

"There's a picture of him here from 1908," he says. "How does he look?"

At just 31 years old, Habib has mastered skills to bypass the limitations of
his disability, and that has allowed him to trace a remarkable life
trajectory. At age 8, he completely lost his eyesight to cancer but
nonetheless went on to become a black belt in karate, a jazz pianist, a
Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, an editor of the law review at Yale and an
attorney at a prestigious Seattle-based firm.

Now he's Washington state's first blind lawmaker in decades, and his life
story is in many ways reflected in the policies he's now championing.

Half-jokingly, Habib says that he imagines everyone still looks like Cyndi
Lauper and Boy George - celebrities from the last time he was able to see.

He was just 4 months old when his parents received his cancer diagnosis. It
was retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer affecting the retina that
typically strikes children. He lost sight in one eye when he was 2 and spent
much of his childhood in painful medical procedures and grueling
chemotherapy.

Habib's treatment came from a range of specialists, including leading
doctors at Johns Hopkins, New York Hospital and the Wills Eye Institute in
Philadelphia - all largely covered by his engineer father's medical
insurance.

Now, the care he received as a child is something Habib considers as the
Legislature explores ways to provide medical coverage for children.

"It is unthinkable to me that there would be a child, God forbid, that would
experience a life-threatening illness and not have health insurance," he
said.

Despite all the medical intervention, Habib's vision deteriorated, and the
retinoblastoma ultimately forced doctors to remove his retina at age 8. It
didn't come as a surprise to him. And today he offers an optimist's
reflection on the loss, saying it came at perhaps an ideal age, when he was
old enough to retain a strong visual archive of his surroundings but young
enough to adapt.

The family soon afterward moved from Baltimore across the country to the
Bellevue area, where Habib began his new challenge of trying to live a
normal life without sight.

His mother, Susan Amini, recalls the day he came home from Somerset
Elementary School in the third grade and complained about his recess
teacher. Fearful of his safety, the teacher wouldn't let him on the
play-yard jungle gym and instead kept him close by and away from the other
kids. He wanted to be out on the gym and jumping on obstacles like his
peers.

Amini went to the school, signed a waiver releasing the school of liability
if her son got hurt and then the two spent evenings and weekends learning
the playground, including safe ways to navigate the jungle gym and the
location of a tree stump that had sharp edges. Instead of avoiding the
obstacles, he sought them out, even when his mother wasn't there to watch
him.

"When I would go pick him up, he would be the one on top of everything," she
said.

---

In developing the skills to cope, Habib received a variety of training, and
he makes sure to note where.

He learned to use a walking cane from the Washington State Department of
Services for the Blind. Borrowing books from the Washington Talking Book &
Braille Library helped him master reading. He learned how to use
text-to-speech software through training at the Washington State School for
the Blind.

Without those state-supported opportunities, Habib says, he couldn't have
gone from "braille to Yale."

Now, as Washington lawmakers look to find new money to pay for basic
education in the state, one proposed place to get extra cash is to cut
social services. Habib said he rejects the premise that education and social
services are competing interests. In fact, he said, they actually work
together.

"I get very worried because my own biography leads me to believe that,
especially for those children whose challenges are most pressing, social
services are often what make the critical difference," Habib said. "It's
going to be very difficult for a student, no matter how good their teacher
is and principal is, it's going to be very difficult for them to learn if
they are couch-surfing with their parents at night."

At a recent hearing of the House Technology & Economic Development
committee, lawmakers rapidly moved through a series of bills. Each had
extensive written summaries and some included dense amendments.

One was a major tax-incentive initiative that Habib himself proposed.

In his seat on the committee, where Habib serves as vice chair, he sometimes
leaned over to whisper to colleagues. Occasionally, fellow Rep. Gael
Tarleton guided his hand to the right spot on sheets of paper where official
votes get recorded. But, mostly, Habib was on his own, with his sunglasses
on, laptop opened in front of him and a small earbud in one ear.

His text-to-speech software chirps at him in an almost indecipherable way,
moving so quickly that an untrained ear can only catch parts of what the
computer is saying. But Habib has no troubles keeping pace.

The software helps him to handle the massive volumes of reading required of
lawmakers, allowing him to rapidly skim through even the lengthiest bills,
and keep abreast of changes in their wording. In his ear, the voice changes
in pitch when encountering things like words that have been selected for
elimination under a proposed law.

Habib is apparently the first blind lawmaker in the Legislature in more than

50 years, when Francis Pearson was representing southwest Washington.

Even though Habib is a freshman, he has stood out. The Democrat was named as
the vice chair of the technology and economic development committee because
of his expertise on legal issues in that sector. At the Seattle law firm
Perkins Coie, he focused his work on start-up technology companies, working
on issues such as licensing and technology.

One of his first proposed laws this year was a plan to create a $1 million
annual business tax deduction to start-up ventures, targeting high-tech and
manufacturing industries that may be poised for long-term job growth.

Republican Rep. Norma Smith said she has been working over the years to
develop ways to spur such economic growth. When Habib came into the
Legislature with similar ideas, she noted, he quickly reached out to
colleagues to get input and develop a plan.

"What I've appreciated is his willingness to listen thoughtfully when
someone else has a different viewpoint and to craft a solution that reaches
that common ground," Smith said.

Habib's bill passed out of committee with bipartisan support.

While Habib sometimes uses his walking cane around the Capitol, he often
shuttles from hearings to the House floor hooked to the arm of a staff
member or colleague - sometimes a Republican. He said it was one of the
misunderstood benefits of his blindness, allowing people of different
perspectives to come together and discuss issues.

"I take the opportunity to walk with them," Habib said. "That creates a bond
and reminds us that we're really all going to the same place."

 

### 

 

 

** The Wall Street Journal

.               March 18, 2013, 10:27 AM

 

By Leslie Kwoh

When it comes to hiring blind employees, many employers remain skeptical.

Bosses often assume blind workers cost more and produce less, according to a
new study. They also believe blind workers are more prone to workplace
accidents and less reliable than other workers.

The study, scheduled to be released this week by the nonprofit National
Industries for the Blind, polled 400 human-resources and hiring managers at
a mix of large and small U.S.-based companies. The group commissioned the
survey, in part, to shed light on why roughly 70% of the 3.5 million people
working-age Americans are not employed. (Legally blind Americans are
eligible for Social Security disability, according to NIB.) NIB president
and chief executive Kevin Lynch described the survey results as a "terrible
surprise." With the exception of certain jobs that require driving or
steering, "there are very few jobs that a person who's blind is not capable
of doing," he says.

 

The findings reveal a disconnect between what employers say and what they
do. While the majority of executives claim they want to hire and train
disabled workers, many view blind workers as an inconvenience.

Hiring managers tended to be slightly more negative than human-resources
managers, but overall results were similar.

.               Among hiring managers, most respondents (54%) felt there
were few

jobs at their company that blind employees could perform, and 45% said
accommodating such workers would require "considerable expense."

.               Forty-two percent of hiring managers believe blind employees
need

someone to assist them on the job; 34% said blind workers are more likely to
have work-related accidents.

.               One-quarter of respondents said blind employees are "more
sensitive"

than other employees; the same percentage said they were "more difficult to
supervise."

.               Twenty-three percent of hiring managers said blind employees
are not

as productive as their colleagues, and 19% believe these employees have a
higher absentee rate.

Blindness is largely absent from corporate conversation about employees with
disabilities with the exception of sporadic lawsuits: Last August, Hawaiian
Electric Co. 

agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a discrimination suit by a partially blind
employee, the AP reported. And in December, Bloomberg reported that a blind
ex-banker at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group lost a suit seeking disability
benefits.

Rarer still is news about companies like apparel business SustainU, based in
West Virginia, which hires blind and visually impaired employees to man its
factory, according to the New York Times. The company said there was no
difference in the cost and quality of its goods when compared to that of
other U.S. manufacturers.

Companies may have to invest some money to provide "reasonable
accommodations" for a blind employee, as required by the Americans with
Disabilities Act. However,  says NIB's Lynch, many computers and smartphones
already have built-in features that enable users to change font size and
light intensity. Installing voice technology that allows computers to "read"

text to a blind employee costs just $1,500 to $2,000, he says. The American
Foundation for the Blind has estimated that 88% of employee accommodations
cost less than $1,000.

As for health insurance, company rates are determined by the number of
incidents among the entire group - not individual employees - no evidence
suggests that blind employees incur more costs than other workers, Mr. Lynch
says.

Blind employees may also be more loyal than most, he adds. A DePaul
University study from 2007 found that employees with disabilities were
likely to stay on the job four months longer, on average, than employees
without disabilities.

The study also found that workers with disabilities took 1.24 fewer
scheduled absences than non-disabled workers during a six-month period. But
they took, on average, 1.13 more days of unscheduled absences.

 

### 

 

 

* My name is Arielle Silverman, and I am a doctoral student in psychology at
the University of Colorado at Boulder. My advisor, Dr.

Geoffrey Cohen, and I are conducting an online study investigating blind and
visually impaired adults? experiences with preparing for and getting
employment. We are looking for legally blind adults over the age of 18 who
live in the United States and who are currently seeking employment, as well
as high school and college seniors and graduate students who plan to
graduate in May or August 2013, to participate in our study.

This study consists of three phases, which you will complete entirely
online. During the first phase, you will answer some questions about your
background, attitudes and personal experiences, and will write a short essay
about a personally significant event. This session will last for about 45
minutes. Then, you will be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire every
night for the next seven days, describing your experiences and things you
did during the day. Each of these should take about 10 minutes. Finally,
about a month from now, you will fill out another online survey similar to
the first one, which should take about half an hour. In exchange for your
participation, you will receive three $10 gift certificates to a merchant of
your choice (either Amazon.com, Itunes.com, Olive Garden Restaurant, or AMC
Theaters), one for each phase of the study.

To be eligible to participate, you must be:

(1) a legally blind adult aged 18 or older living in the United States; and
either

(2) currently seeking a long-term job, or

(3) a student planning to graduate by August 2013 and then planning to seek
employment after graduation. High school, college and graduate students are
all eligible, as long as you intend to seek employment immediately after
graduating.

 

To complete the first part of the study and receive your first $10 gift
certificate, please go to:

http://ucsas.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1OdonrYSXxrepfL

Or, if you would prefer, you may email me at Arielle.silverman at colorado.edu
To request a text version of the initial survey.

If you are not eligible to participate yourself, I would appreciate if you
could forward this announcement to anyone you know who is eligible and might
be interested.

If you have any questions before, during or after the study, feel free to
contact me at Arielle.silverman at colorado.edu You may also contact Dr.

Geoffrey Cohen at Cohen.geoff at gmail.com

 

Thank you in advance for your participation in our research.

 

 

* From Debi Chatfield nee Black - 

 

Here are the instructions for creating a signature block at the end of an
email using Windows XP and Outlook Express.  If you are not using Windows XP
or Outlook Express, look around in your email program, and you will most
likely have a similar capability for the look of your emails.

1.  Open up your Outlook Express email program 2.  Press the alt key 3.
Right arrow to Tools 4.  Press enter on Tools.

5.  Arrow up to Options.

6.  Press enter on Options.

7.  Control Tab to the Signatures Page. 

8.  Tab to the New button.

9.  Press enter.

10.  Type the message that you would like. An example is the one I created
above. 

11.  Tab to the Apply button

12.  Press the space bar to check the box to add Signatures to all outgoing

messages.           

13.  Tab once and Press the space bar if you would like to have your message
included with forwards and replies.  This is optional.

14.  Tab to apply., and press enter.

15.  Tab to okay, and press enter. 

16.  Double check you have correctly done this process by sending yourself a
test email message.

 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to give me a call at:

480.883.3121, or email me at:

debiblackaz at gmail.com  

 

 

Thanks for reading all this!  If you wish to provide information to share in
the May monthly message, please call or email me.  

 

Bob Kresmer

Toll free 888 899-6322

krezguy at cox.net 

 

 

 

Robert Leslie Newman

Personal Website-

Adjustment To Blindness And Visual impairment

http//www.thoughtprovoker.info

NFB Writers' Division, president

http://www.nfb-writers-division.net 

Chair of the NFB Communications Committee