[NFBCS] Feedback Request

[Brian Buhrow]

	hello peter.  As a long time IT person who has worked on networks, large computer
installations, and a variety of technical projects, I am going to echo wha others have said
here about on-line resources.  It is usually the case that when one is learning a new API or
programming technique, or any new skill for that matter, what one needs to know about is the
skill itself, not about the blindness adaptations necessary to become an expert at that skill.
Because everyone's blindness skills are different, it makes the most sense for the individual
learning the new thing to figure out the way that works best for them.
So, for example, Bookshare.  Yes, the books in Bookshare may not discuss ways to peform the
skills those books teach as they might be performed by a blind person, but the fact that the
books are accessible on Bookshare makes them extremely useful to blind folks just by virtue of
the fact that they're there.

Now, having read those books, one can then ask specific questions about how a specific API or
development environment might be used in an accessible manner.  

	If one is going to hold a job as a blind person, whether it be in technology or something
else, it is necessary to become an expert on how to make things accessible for yourself.  As
part of that, building a network, as exists on this list, becomes one of the tools you use to
gain the knowledge you need to do the things you want.

Blindness specific training is wonderful, but it is mostly a general training in the sense that it
teaches you how to teach yourself to use tools or create techniques which make things
accessible to you.  Those tools and techniques might not work for anyone else in the world, but
if they work for you, then you're good.  For example, for me, half the battle of learning to do
something is just knowing another blind person has done that thing.  If I know they have, then
I can turn the question of "can I do something?" to "How do I do something?"  Once I've have
how, then I can go about setting up the task of figuring it out.

	Part of the reason we've not set up an NFB CS web site is that it would be out of date
before we finished building it.  If we said, for example, that something was inaccessible,
someone would prove us wrong.  Or, if we said, if you follow these instructions for making
something work, the thing would change and our instructions would be rendered inoperative.  
In other words, what we offer you here, and in our training centers, are a lot of fishing
poles.  We leave it to you, the fisherman to go out and catch your fish.

-Brian