[NFBMI-Talk] Will There be Space for White Canes in Space? Tickets, Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite

[Kane Brolin]

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/will-there-be-space-for-white-canes-in-space-tickets-183025192277?mc_cid=3dd490c875&mc_eid=1b7c99767b

What: Will There Be Space for White Canes in Space?
Date: Friday October 15
Time: 11.00 AM to noon Pacific Time
To RSVP: Sign up on EventBrite. After you sign up, you will receive
information to join the event using Zoom or the phone.

Talk about Blind Equality Achievement Month.  I think the linked event
notice points to something pretty special that is about to happen this
weekend, courtesy of the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco.  I
will reproduce some of the text from an article below.  We can talk to
the blind participants in an event set to take place Friday, October
15 at 2:00 PM Eastern/11:00 AM Pacific.

Photo Caption: The AstroAccess logo, a white rocket inside of a blue
triangle. It looks like a stylized letter A. In the logo, braille
spells out FAA
In July we told you about LightHouse’s partnership with the SciAccess
Initiative for the launch of a new program, Mission: AstroAccess.
Mission AstroAccess will take a group of 12 cross-disability
ambassadors on a series of weightless parabolic flights on October 17.
The ambassadors have visual, hearing and mobility disabilities and
will test various designs for accessibility in zero-gravity and high
gravity environments by performing targeted tasks during the flights.

George Whitesides, Co-Project Lead of AstroAccess and Chair of the
Space Advisory Board for Virgin Galactic, says of the venture:

“We are honored to unveil the crew for our inaugural flight, which
promises to represent a historic step in the mission to open space for
all. Each of our ambassadors brings incredible experience and a wealth
of expertise to our team.”

Four of the 12 crew members are blind or have low vision:

Photo Caption: Sina Behram
Mr. Behram is an accessibility consultant, computer scientist,
researcher, public speaker, entrepreneur, and founder of Prime Access
Consulting. He was recognized in 2012 as a White House Champion of
Change for his doctoral research work enabling users with disabilities
to succeed in STEM fields.

Photo Caption: Dr. Mona Minkara
Dr. Minkara is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at
Northeastern University and leads the Minkara COMBINE (Computational
Modeling for BioINterface Engineering) Lab researching pulmonary
surfactant. Mona is also a 2020 winner of LightHouse’s Holman Prize
for Blind Ambition and used her funds to document her independent
travel around the world through her YouTube channel “Planes, Trains,
and Canes”.

Photo Caption: Zuby Onwuta
Mr. Onwuta is a Harvard-MIT trained innovator, US Presidential Service
Award recipient, US Army Veteran, and founder of both Think and Zoom
and Future of Disability. He is the patented inventor of Brain control
for Blind Assistive Tech, a solution that reads and responds to human
brain waves and provides hands-free vision augmentation and reading
assistance.

Photo Caption: Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen
Dr. Wells-Jensen is an associate professor of linguistics at Bowling
Green State University where her research focuses on social aspects of
human colonization, astrobiology, disability, and the relationship
between language and thought.  She studies the ways in which
alternative sensory inputs influence the evolution of scientific
thought and is currently writing a book about disability and space.

Congratulations to them and the rest of the crew!

…and here’s your invitation to talk to them just before they lift off.

Join LightHouse and Mission: AstroAccess in Celebrating White Cane Day

Photo Caption: LightHouse students and staff walk in downtown San
Francisco during White Cane Day in 2019
You are cordially invited to a LightHouse White Cane Day event: “Will
There Be Space for White Canes in Space?"

As part of the White Cane Awareness Day celebrations taking place
around the world, LightHouse is hosting a discussion focusing on the
future of travel with white canes.

We are proud to present the first public seminar by the four people
who are blind who have been selected as the first blind researchers
into the accessibility of zero gravity. These "AstroAccess
Ambassadors" will experience weightlessness and carry out lunar
gravity, Martian gravity, and zero gravity observations and
experiments investigating how the physical environment aboard space
vessels should be modified so that all astronauts and explorers,
regardless of disability on Earth, can live, work, and thrive in
space. They will be speaking to us from Long Beach, California, from
where they will be undertaking this groundbreaking flight forty-eight
hours later. Mission: AstroAccess, a nonprofit and volunteer task
force is providing support for this flight, to which LightHouse is a
proud contributor. One of the goals of this research is to explore
what mobility and orientation will look like for blind astronauts in
the future. Will our traditional white canes be a thing of the past?
Or, will they morph into something like a Star Wars light saber?

Come along and hear this handpicked team of blind ambassadors talk
about their expectations of this first research flight, the access
features that will be in place for the flight and their own White Cane
wish-lists.

We’d love you to come with your own ideas of how cane travel might
evolve in the future, and your questions for this panel.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/will-there-be-space-for-white-canes-in-space-tickets-183025192277?mc_cid=3dd490c875&mc_eid=1b7c99767b


We look forward to celebrating White Cane Awareness Day 2021 with you!

https://sciaccess.org/mission-astroaccess/?mc_cid=3dd490c875&mc_eid=1b7c99767b

Cordially,

Kane Brolin
President, Michiana Chapter
National Federation of the Blind of Indiana
(574)386-8868 (mobile)