[NFBNJ] NFB: [Brl-monitor] The Braille Monitor, November 2019
Brian Mackey
bmackey88 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 11 23:14:23 UTC 2019
>From the desk of NFBNJ President Joe Ruffalo.
Received from Brian Burrow, NFB of California.
BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 62, No. 10
November 2019
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive, by
the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: 410-659-9314
email address:
<mailto:nfb at nfb.org> nfb at nfb.org
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National Federation of the Blind
200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place
Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND KNOWS THAT BLINDNESS IS NOT THE
CHARACTERISTIC THAT DEFINES YOU OR YOUR FUTURE. EVERY DAY WE RAISE THE
EXPECTATIONS OF BLIND PEOPLE, BECAUSE LOW EXPECTATIONS CREATE OBSTACLES
BETWEEN BLIND PEOPLE AND OUR DREAMS. YOU CAN LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT;
BLINDNESS IS NOT WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND—IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR
OURSELVES.
ISSN 0006-8829
© 2019 by the National Federation of the Blind
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Vol. 62, No. 10
November 2019
Contents
Illustration: Show-Me Meet the Blind
Month.....................................................
United States Supreme Court Denies Petition from Domino’s
Pizza..................
by Chris Danielsen
Expanding Opportunities, Protecting Rights, and Ensuring Accessibility: A
Report from the Advocacy and Policy
Department.................................................................
by John Paré and Gabe Cazares
Eleven Years of BELL Academies: Gaining Skills, Enhancing Opportunities, and
Building
Relationships...............................................................
.......................................
by Karen Anderson
Mujeres of the
Federation..................................................................
.................
by Mary Fernandez
Leadership, Partnership, and the Pursuit of Financial
Accessibility...................
by Doug Marshall
Exploring the Layers: A Blind Researcher, Mom, and Federationist Enhancing
the Understanding of
Disability..................................................................
..............
by Angela Frederick
Philosophy in
Practice....................................................................
....................
by Angela Howard
A Dream Come
True........................................................................
...................
by Leslie Hamric
The Status of the Orbit
Reader......................................................................
.....
by Curtis Chong
Keeping the Blind in Sheltered Workshops in the
Afterlife.................................
by Justin Salisbury
Meet the Sighted
Month.......................................................................
...............
A Contest to Promote Literacy that is so Fun it Won’t Seem Like
Work
.
by Sandy Halverson
The Continued Significance of the National Library Service for the Blind:
Expanding Braille and Implementing the Marrakesh
Treaty.................................................
by Karen Keninger
Electronic Braille Reimagined: The Revolution of the Canute
360......................
by Ed Rogers
Message from Buna Dahal Regarding 2020 Washington Seminar Reservations.
Accelerating Accessible Content: Progress through the DAISY Consortium......
by Richard Orme
The Future of
Recipes.....................................................................
....................
Monitor
Miniatures..................................................................
...........................
[PHOTO CAPTION: Stephanie, Jeff Griffen, and a friend from Kansas City
finish up a walk around McKay Lake.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Melissa Smith chats with local Lions Club president Doreen
Jackson and another Lions Club member.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Melissa Smith and Gary Wunder race along a rope.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Debbie Wunder shows off a toddler-sized white cane at a
preschool visit.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Gary Wunder uses a Perkins Braillewriter to Braille a
preschooler’s name while he watches.]
Show-Me Meet the Blind Month
October was Meet the Blind Month, and across the country NFB
affiliates, divisions, and chapters held events to introduce sighted people
who might not know or meet a blind person in the normal course of their
lives.
In Missouri the Jefferson City Chapter held a walkathon talkathon
on November 6. Friends from other cities visited, as well as members of the
local Lions Club, and the weather cooperated in making it a wonderful day
for fellowship and sharing our message. But it wasn’t all tame walking. The
Jefferson City Chapter had set up two guide ropes, and members of the
Jefferson City and Columbia Chapters ran races, stamping out the idea that
blind people can’t run to any who watched.
In Columbia, Gary and Debbie Wunder visited a local preschool.
Debbie brought along the harness her now-retired guide dog wore at work, as
well as the small white cane that would fit any in the audience who cared to
use it. Gary demonstrated the use of his Perkins Braillewriter, embossing
index cards with children’s names so that they could see how blind people
read. Then came the fun part for the students, approaching with their cards
in hand to see if that code using dots really worked.
Sometimes we wonder if people really want or need to meet the
blind, but the enthusiasm of these children take the question off the table.
They do, and we must.
United States Supreme Court Denies Petition from Domino’s Pizza
by Chris Danielsen
From the Editor: Chris Danielsen is our energetic director of
public relations, and he writes this short follow-up to the article in the
October issue entitled “Accessibility and Accountability: Drive-by Lawsuits
Leave Pothole-size Problems.” In that piece Chris mentioned the request by
Domino’s Pizza that the Supreme Court declare that the Americans with
Disabilities Act did not apply to the internet. Here is his recounting of
what just happened:
In last month’s Braille Monitor, we mentioned a petition pending
before the United States Supreme Court brought by Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s
had filed what is legally known as a petition for certiorari, or “cert
petition,” which is a legal document asking the Supreme Court to review a
lower court’s ruling. Each year the Supreme Court hears a select group of
cases drawn from such petitions. Domino’s wanted the Supreme Court to
overrule a decision by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial
Circuit, based in California. That ruling had affirmed the right of a blind
man, Guillermo Robles, to sue the company under the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) because he couldn’t use its website to order a pizza.
Domino’s argued that the Supreme Court should put an end to such lawsuits by
ruling that the ADA does not apply to websites, or, if the court wasn’t
willing to go that far, to at least rule that it was unfair to allow such
lawsuits in the absence of federal regulations setting accessibility
standards. So far, the United States Department of Justice, which enforces
the ADA, has declined to issue such regulations. Obviously, any ruling along
the lines Domino’s wanted would have made it much harder, or perhaps
impossible, for the National Federation of the Blind and others to bring ADA
claims regarding inaccessible websites.
The Monitor went to press before Monday, October 7, the “first
Monday in October” that begins each Supreme Court term. Thus, it was unclear
at the time whether the Supreme Court would take the case. On that exact
first Monday, the Supreme Court issued an order denying the petition. This
means that the ninth circuit’s ruling stands and that Mr. Robles’ case will
go forward. More importantly, it means that for now the ability to bring
website claims under the ADA remains intact.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: John Paré]
Expanding Opportunities, Protecting Rights, and Ensuring Accessibility: A
Report from the Advocacy and Policy Department
by John Paré and Gabe Cazares
From the Editor: The energy is always high at convention, and this
presentation was certainly no exception to that. When introducing the two
presenters, President Riccobono noted, “Together they represent the dynamics
of what we do in our advocacy space in the National Federation of the Blind.
They come from different backgrounds, from different generations, but they
share many traits. Chief amongst them that they are tireless, thoughtful,
and positive representatives for us in the halls of power in Washington, DC,
and they bring those strengths to us in a strategic way. They help me to
coordinate the tremendous amount of work that we get done on an annual
basis, both with our members and our staff. Their talents and especially the
heart that they bring to the work of this organization are critical in
helping each and every one of us achieve success in our advocacy work in
this organization. Their job is to put the National Federation of the Blind
in the right place at the right point in every conversation that we need to
be in in Washington, DC, and they’re doing an awesome job.” Here is what
John and Gabe had to say:
John Paré: Thank you, President Riccobono. E pluribus unum. As
most of you probably know, this Latin phrase was the original motto of the
United States. When translated it means “Out of many, one.” The thought
behind this phrase was that, through the union of the original thirteen
colonies, a single nation was born. Out of many, one. I am in awe when I
think about our nation’s founders as they set about this grand experiment in
self-government that we know today. I feel that same sense of awe when I
stand up here in front of all of you and imagine the unlimited potential of
what we might accomplish when we work together.
To further illustrate this point, I’m going to go back even
further in time, more than two thousand years to ancient Greece and the
storyteller Aesop. One of Aesop’s fables is about a father and his children.
The father gives each of his children a twig and asks them to break it. The
children are easily able to snap the twigs with their hands. The father then
takes a bundle of twigs, ties them together, and asks his children to break
the twigs now. Each child tries, but none succeed. The father tells his
children, “When you stand alone, you are easily broken. But when you stand
together as one, no one can break you.” [applause] The moral behind this
story is that union gives strength. When many stand together for a common
cause, they become one, and that one is unstoppable. Aesop knew this
immutable fact 2,500 years ago; the founders knew it in 1776; and I know it
right now as I stand up here before all of you.
It is no coincidence that the written history of the National
Federation of the Blind is titled Walking Alone and Marching Together. It is
this sense of teamwork that has resulted in our recent legislative
successes: here are two examples.
On June 28, 2018, the United States Senate passed the Marrakesh
Treaty Implementation Act. The House passed it on September 25, and it was
signed into law on October 9. The Marrakesh Treaty Resolution of Advice and
Consent was also passed by the United States Senate on June 28. The treaty
ratification paperwork was signed by the president on January 28, 2019, and
deposited in Geneva on February 8. Both the law and the treaty were passed
by unanimous consent. This is a perfect example of our teamwork. It was all
of you working in every state, every county, every city which resulted in
the ratification of the first multilateral treaty specifically intended to
benefit blind people. [applause]
At last year’s convention I discussed and reported that the House
and the Senate had included language in the National Defense Authorization
Act to permit veterans with a service-connected permanent disability rated
as “total” to participate in the space-available program, but there was a
problem. The House and Senate language did not match, and we needed the
House to agree to the Senate language. Again our advocacy paid off, and on
July 23, the House agreed to the Senate language. The president signed the
National Defense Authorization Act into law on August 13. In a congress
divided by acrimony and turmoil, our teamwork gets things done. [applause]
Turning to our current work, on March 14, 2019, Senator Boozman of
Arkansas and Senator Cardin of Maryland introduced the Access Technology
Affordability Act. This legislation would create a $2,000 refundable tax
credit for use over a three-year period for the purchase of access
technology. The bill currently has fourteen cosponsors including Senator
Wyden of Oregon, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. On
April 4 Representative Mike Thompson of California, the chair of the House
Select Revenue Subcommittee, and Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania
introduced identical legislation in the House. The House bill has eighteen
cosponsors.
On January 29, 2019, Senator Casey of Pennsylvania introduced the
Transformation to Competitive Employment Act. This legislation phases out
subminimum wages for workers with disabilities over a six-year period and
then sunsets section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. [applause] It
also authorizes $300 million in grants to facilitate the transformation from
subminimum wages to competitive, integrated employment. The bill currently
has seven cosponsors. On January 13, Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia,
the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Representative
Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington introduced identical legislation in the
House. The House bill has fifty cosponsors.
We are working with Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois to
introduce the Greater Accessibility and Independence through Nonvisual
Technology Act. This bill would establish a minimum nonvisual access
standard for home-use medical devices, home appliances, and fitness
equipment. [applause]
The National Federation of the Blind continues to promote the
development of autonomous vehicles that are fully nonvisually accessible. We
have participated in congressional policy briefings, presented at industry
summits, and submitted regulatory feedback. We have also pivoted our
excellent relationship with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers from
the quiet car issue to autonomous vehicles. You will be hearing from Dave
Schwietert tomorrow.
Let’s talk a little bit about NFB-NEWSLINE®. As President
Riccobono announced, NFB-NEWSLINE now includes the core elements of KNFB
Reader. [applause] You can now use NFB-NEWSLINE to read your newspaper,
check the weather, look up your favorite television program, find a job, or
use it to take a picture of almost any printed text and have it read back to
you aloud. NFB-NEWSLINE is available in forty-five states plus the District
of Columbia, with Maine scheduled to come online later this fall. It has
125,000 subscribers and more than five hundred publications. On average we
receive 5,700 calls per day, and some portion of NEWSLINE is accessed every
1.8 seconds.
The weather portion of the service includes detailed seven-day
forecasts, emergency alerts, and other useful information such as air
quality and heat index (it’s about 106 right now). [laughter] The TV
listings include content from every cable and broadcast provider, specific
channel mappings for your cable and satellite provider, and information on
video description.
Our job listings include every job listed on CareerBuilder and
USAJobs. Note that the iOS app now includes four pages or tabs. The first
page is the Highlights page and provides quick access to announcements, your
favorites, and the weather. The second page contains links to all of the
major content categories. The third page now is KNFB Reader. [applause] The
fourth page contains overall app settings.
Late last year NFB-NEWSLINE was released as an Amazon Alexa skill.
[applause] You can now access NFB-NEWSLINE hands-free on any of the Alexa
family of products. To get started, just say, “Alexa, open National
Federation,” and the skill will walk you through the login process.
As you can see, the past year has been incredibly successful for
the Federation in terms of our advocacy. You—each of you, every one of you,
all of you—you were the key to that success. But there is still much more
work left to do. The demand is great, but we are equal to the challenge. It
will take all of us working together as a team to achieve that success. When
one of you calls your congressional representative, they take a note. When
ten of you call, they pay attention. [applause] When a hundred of you call,
they realize we mean business. And when all of the members of the National
Federation of the Blind call, they understand that we cannot be stopped.
They understand that we demand to be recognized. They understand that we
demand for our voices to be heard. And they understand that we demand our
civil rights. [applause, cheers]
Our many voices together create a single unified voice that rises
above the din of partisanship in Washington. Out of many, one. E pluribus
unum. Through our union we become stronger, and that strength makes us, the
National Federation of the Blind, unstoppable! [applause, cheers]
Alright, turning to our next speaker. So much of what happens is a
result of our entire team and our group in Baltimore, and the next gentleman
does an incredible job leading that effort. His intelligence, his passion,
his in-depth knowledge of education policy, the work he does to help
organize and run our Washington Seminar, and most recently his incredibly
effective testimony that he delivered to help ensure appropriate funding for
the National Library Service, here is the manager of government affairs,
Gabe Cazares.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Gabe Cazares]
Gabe Cazares: Howdy, my Federation family. It is a joy to be up
here. I tweeted earlier this week that the energy is electrifying. You don’t
understand how powerful you are.
In 1857 Frederick Douglass, the escaped Maryland slave turned
abolitionist and orator wisely observed, “Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did, and it never will.” All of us gathered here in this
room know all too well this to be true. Ten years ago an insecure, shy,
closeted, Latinx blind kid stumbled upon a ragtag group of folks who called
themselves the National Federation of the Blind of Texas. [loud cheering
from Texans] Those folks were fiercely independent, committed to one
another, and, more importantly, to a larger movement, the National
Federation of the Blind. [applause]
Fast forward five years from the initial interaction. Since May
18, 2019, I have had a front-row seat to the steely determination,
collective power, and unwavering resolve of my Federation family from across
the country. Over the last four years I have witnessed my Federation family
spring into action to successfully advance a multilateral treaty many
thought was dead, and simultaneously pass its implementing legislation. All
of this we did while charging forward to tackle a broad policy agenda from
the accessibility of electronic instructional materials in higher education
to protecting our right to cast a private and independent ballot. [applause]
>From protecting the rights of blind parents to our continued push for the
elimination of subminimum wages for blind and other workers with
disabilities, the depth and breadth of our organization’s policy agenda is
the envy of many. And because John Paré, Kimie Eacobacci, Stephanie Flynt,
and I are frequently on Capitol Hill wheeling and dealing, many get to
thinking that we are the driving force behind our organization’s policy
success—and side note, here, we do have an excellent policy team—but boy do
I enjoy telling them that they are wrong. Make no mistake: the only reason
why John and I are able to stand before you today highlighting the policy
successes we have achieved over the last year is due to President
Riccobono’s steadfast leadership and your relentless advocacy.
You see, one of the many lessons I have learned from my Federation
mentors is that even when the odds are against us, I will still bet on my
Federation family every time, because I know my Federation family will
always get the job done.
After the famous (or infamous) 2016 presidential election,
security and voter protection were thrust front-and-center into our national
dialog. Politicians were tripping over themselves to be the first to call
for securing the integrity of our electoral process. Over the subsequent
two-and-a-half years, politicians and pundits alike have offered their
“expert” opinion regarding election security. Often the discussion turns to
the method by which ballots are cast. This inevitably leads to their
foolproof solution: casting hand-marked paper ballots. When introducing the
Protecting American Votes and Elections Act (or PAVE Act for short—DC loves
its acronyms—Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said, “The PAVE Act scraps insecure
voting machines that are juicy targets for hackers and replaces them with
reliably secure, hand-marked paper ballots.” I know I don’t need to point
out to this crew the obvious problem with the Senator’s observations, and to
be completely honest, I didn’t think I’d have to point out such a glaring
discrepancy to congressional staff. These ballots would be so secure that
they would deprive blind and other voters with disabilities from our right
to cast our ballots privately and independently. We fought this battle
during the consideration and passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2001,
and we won. We have tasted freedom, and we will not go back. [applause]
Now to Senator Wyden’s credit, and thanks to the work of our
Oregon affiliate, the Senator’s staff attended an election security
conference which was held at the Jernigan Institute in May of this year. As
a follow-up to that conference, we met with Senator Wyden’s staff and
proposed major changes to the PAVE Act that balance the need to protect the
integrity of our electoral processes and the necessity that we not
compromise the privacy and independence of voters with disabilities. We
fully expect these changes to be implemented.
Although we may not always agree, when we are invited to the
table, we endeavor to negotiate in good faith. But when we are excluded, my
Federation family has no problem kicking down the door, pulling up our own
chair, and inviting ourselves to the table. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. [applause]
For several years now our National Association of Blind Students
has been leading the effort to pass our Accessible Instructional Materials
in Higher Education Act (AIM HIGH). First we were negotiating with the
higher education lobby—and I’ve got the higher blood pressure to prove it.
Then we were convincing congress to take our bill on. Now we have language,
we have congress’s support, and our bill will be reintroduced in the 116th
Congress with the goal of having it included in the larger higher education
package that is expected to move before this congress adjourns. [applause]
And I’ll tell you a secret, just for us in this room and everybody listening
to the stream: the lawyers are going to love this. Our bill will be
introduced without a safe harbor for institutions of higher education.
[applause, cheers]
My Federation family is not afraid of doing the hard work of
negotiating, persuading, and mobilizing. I know that with the energy and
enthusiasm of our students, we will get AIM HIGH across the finish line.
[applause]
Eighty-one years ago congress passed the Wagner-O’Day Act, and in
doing so authorized the creation of the Committee for Purchase from People
who are Blind. Amended in 1971 as the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act and expanded
to include nonprofits employing blind and other people with severe
disabilities, the committee was also rebranded as the AbilityOne Commission.
While the originally intended goals of the program are noble, the current
structure falls short of those ideals by failing to equip workers with the
necessary skillsets to compete in the twenty-first century workforce. Not to
mention that the AbilityOne Commission’s failure to adequately manage their
own financial resources and display an appropriate level of transparency has
eroded public confidence in the program.
It’s no secret that the American workforce is changing. Automation
has transformed almost every industry. Yet many workers with disabilities
employed under the AbilityOne program are assigned repetitive tasks which do
nothing to equip them with the skills needed to succeed and advance in the
modern workforce. However, the biggest failure in the AbilityOne program is
not that it creates artificially inclusive work environments, nor that some
of the specialized nonprofits participating in the AbilityOne program pay
workers with disabilities subminimum wages, but rather that the founding
statute of the program incentivizes the exclusion of blind people from
advancing to administrative, supervisory, and managerial positions.
We know that blindness is not the characteristic that defines us
or our future. We have come to understand through our participation in the
organized blind movement that society’s low expectations are the true
obstacle between us and our full potential. Together we will reform the
AbilityOne program to reflect the changing workforce, to better prepare
blind workers to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, and to ensure
that blind employees are employed in all industries at every level, from the
private to the public sector. [applause] No more will we settle for
artificially integrated workplaces. No more will we allow contracts to
prohibit blind people from climbing the ladder of opportunity. No more.
Together we will advance the Disability Employment Act, which will allow
for-profit as well as nonprofit entities to bid on contracts through a newly
created commission. We will ensure that workers with disabilities have the
same earning opportunities as their nondisabled colleagues by prohibiting
the use of 14(c) certificates and by requiring employers to pay workers with
disabilities at least the minimum wage, or, if greater, the prevailing wage.
Oh, and by the way, we will protect our blind entrepreneurs by ensuring that
the newly reimagined commission honors the Randolph-Sheppard priority for
all military dining contracts including cafeterias. No more will we allow
the AbilityOne Commission to ignore the Randolph-Sheppard Act and
unilaterally threaten the livelihood of our blind merchants. No more. Our
bill changes the composition of the commission, restructures the way
contracts are awarded, and creates a trust fund to support the organic
integration of workers with disabilities into the mainstream workforce.
Revolutionizing this program won’t be easy. In fact some folks
have told us that we don’t truly understand what we are attempting to do. My
response is simple: you don’t truly understand the members of the National
Federation of the Blind. [applause, cheers] We will transform the AbilityOne
program, and we won’t rest until the job is done.
My Federation family, I could spend more time telling you more
about the countless ways your advocacy, your dedication, and your commitment
to our movement continues positively to influence the reputation of our
organization in the halls of power. I could talk more about how in January
over five hundred of you stormed Capitol Hill bringing our priorities to
congress at our Washington Seminar. Or that in May over one hundred blind
merchants hiked The Hill to protect and expand employment opportunities
under the Randolph-Sheppard Act. I could talk about the great strides we
have made over the last twelve months to ensure that no blind parent is ever
torn away from her child solely because of the low expectations and
ignorance of a social worker. A dozen states have now enshrined permanent
protections for blind and other parents with disabilities, with Alabama and
Georgia passing such laws.
There is no question in my mind that in the field of blindness, we
are the only real game in town. But our policy successes are only possible
because we are committed to our movement as well as to one another. Ten
years ago the shy, awkward, Latinx blind kid would never have believed that
he would be here today celebrating the policy successes of such a powerful
movement.
We are changing what it means to be blind through public policy,
yes. But through our active participation in the movement we are also
showing those who are newly blind as well as those who are losing vision as
well as black and brown blind kids, kids who look like me, that we can live
the lives we want. “Puedo vivir la vida que yo quiero. Mi ceguera no es que
lo me impide.” Blindness is not and will not hold us back. Together with
love, hope, and determination, we are and will continue to transform our
collective dreams into reality. [applause] So here’s my invitation to you
here today: join me, and together let’s go build the National Federation of
the Blind.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Karen Anderson]
Eleven Years of BELL Academies: Gaining Skills, Enhancing Opportunities, and
Building Relationships
by Karen Anderson
From the Editor: Our first BELL Academy was held in Maryland in
2008, and since then it has expanded to include almost every affiliate in
the nation. It is a direct-service program that gives students ages four to
twelve blind role models and helps move them from being spectators to
players.
Karen Anderson is the NFB director of education programs, and here
is the article she has written to inform and inspire:
On my clock at home I have a collection of bells, each signifying
an experience in my life that allowed me to grow. The bell with the eagle on
top is the one I received when I graduated from the Louisiana Center for the
Blind. The one with the ship’s wheel is the bell I got after running my
first summer program for blind teens. And the bell with the plastic handle
is the bell I took with me after running my first BELL Academy in Nebraska.
That bell reminds me of how much my students grew in two weeks. I remember
the six-year-old boy who learned to put on his seatbelt by himself, the
eleven-year-old girl who was sure she couldn’t do things without using her
vision and ended up making a cake in a cup while wearing her learning
shades, and the fourteen-year-old girl who’s family traveled to Lincoln and
stayed in a hotel so she could learn Braille because the school was not
willing to teach her. At the end of the program I had the privilege of
giving bells to each of these children who had come so far in such a short
time. As I handed one to each student, I hoped that when they rang it
throughout the year, they would remember how much I believed in them, and
that they would continue to believe in themselves.
These days my favorite bells are the BELL (Braille Enrichment for
Literacy and Learning) Academies we hold every summer. Started in Maryland
in 2008 by Federationists who realized our blind children were not being
exposed to nearly enough Braille, there are now more than twenty-five states
holding BELL Academies each summer. Just like the bells that sit on my clock
at home, each summer’s BELL Academies signify opportunities for blind
children to learn and grow.
In 2019, we held thirty-five BELL Academies in twenty-six states.
This means that more than 250 children between the ages of four and twelve
were exposed to Braille in a way that made literacy fun. The New Jersey BELL
Academy started each day by having each student read a joke that had been
Brailled for them and matched their personality. By having fun with reading,
students’ confidence grew along with their knowledge of the Braille code. In
New York, one nine-year-old boy began the program with very little knowledge
of the code. Upon learning most of the letters, he was excited to be able to
read and exclaimed, “I’m like a superhero. I can now read in the dark!”
One parent from New Jersey said, “For nine years of my son’s life it has
been recommended that he lean on his vision. Attending Bell Academy, my son
learned the complete Braille alphabet in a mere two weeks, something that
eluded us for nine years. What sticks out is how simple it was to start
Braille and the shame it is that the world resists.”
In each of our programs, children use learning shades so they can
practice doing things without using their residual vision. This can be
challenging for kids, and sometimes it takes a while for students to get
comfortable with their learning shades. Jenny Carmack from Missouri sent us
this story about a returning student:
We do an activity for some of our children who are new to Braille, called
Treasure Hunting. In this activity children must dig through dried pasta,
beans, or rice to find what kind of treasure is in there such as bells,
gems, or animal shaped beads. This is done with only their fingers, no
vision. Last year one of our children did not like to do any activity in
which he could not use his eyes. This year he was excited to turn off all of
the lights and treasure hunt with his fingers.
Additionally, other students can serve as great encouragers for their
classmates. One little girl in New York made a switch to try and encourage
her classmates. “Instead of shame on you, let’s try shades on you.” She even
made a song out of it.
Cooking and food are great motivators for many kids. In Utah,
students got to make bread in a bag. They read a Braille recipe, measured
and combined ingredients, and baked the loaves using nonvisual skills they
had learned at the program. Other programs made playdough, banana animals,
brownies, and even individual pizzas. One student in New Jersey took the
skills he was learning at BELL home with him and came back the next day with
cookies he had baked for everyone with very little help from his parents.
Students also work on things that will help them be more
independent at home. Stacie Gallegos from Texas sent us this story:
During the 2019 BELL Academy, I had the opportunity to work with
Randy, one of our veteran BELL students. One of Randy’s long-term goals has
been to learn how to tie his own shoes. Randy was able to complete the first
two steps but had difficulty with mastering the task of the bunny ears.
During the second week, we worked on shoe tying at the end of the day’s
lessons. By the end of the week, Randy was able to make bunny ears and,
although they were really big, he managed to tie his own shoes. I had the
opportunity to speak with a group of parents, including Randy’s mother. I
demonstrated to mom the steps Randy and I followed for shoe tying. I
encouraged mother to work with Randy a little each day on this task. I feel
confident that with practice and the opportunity to do so, Randy will be
tying his own shoes next Summer.
For years BELL Academies have offered students the opportunity to be
artistic and creative. Students get to decorate their long white canes using
things like multi-colored duct tape, yarn, beads, and bells. This makes the
cane, which is often awkward for students, feel like their own and helps
make it more fun to use. In addition to decorating, many academies find
other ways to introduce students to tactile art. This year several of our
academies partnered with local businesses that teach students to work with
clay. In Baltimore, students worked on a mosaic that will be displayed at
our Jernigan Institute, and in Mississippi students got to work on several
clay projects including writing their names in Braille.
This year, thanks to the generosity of the American Action Fund
for Blind Children and Adults, each BELL participant was given an intact
Sketchpad which helped them develop an understanding of tactile art and
graphics. One child in Texas, who had previously only drawn using her
limited vision, was able to create a fish with her hand, write her name and
feel what the print letters look like, and draw several other shapes of her
own choosing. One twelve-year-old student from New York has never liked
drawing and was very resistant to drawing in the program. Once he learned to
use the Sketchpad, he was ecstatic and exclaimed, “Yeah! I can play
Pictionary with the family now!” In South Carolina, three students who loved
art used the Sketchpads to draw their favorite Minecraft characters so the
volunteers could feel what they looked like and gain a better understanding
of one of their favorite games. In all these cases, students were developing
tactile literacy skills.
As is so often the case with kids, some of the most impactful
lessons come through play. Briley O’Connor from Minnesota sent us this
story:
During recess one afternoon, we decided to go to the park across the street
from BLIND, Inc. This park has no playground equipment, so I suggested the
boys play a game of tag. Ben (age six) said he’d never played tag before.
Silas (age four) said, ‘How can he play tag? He can’t see anything.’
Challenge accepted. I told Silas he should be ‘it’ first and make a loud
noise as he ran so that way Ben could chase him. Silas took to this
suggestion immediately, taking off at the count of three yelling ‘beep,
beep, beep,’ as loudly as possible. Ben took some time to get used to
running without help outside, but after a round or two, they needed no
assistance from me. One blind child learned that he could run freely, and
another learned that you don’t need any vision at all to enjoy a game of
tag.
As wonderful as all these activities are, it is the relationships
that our teachers and volunteers form with students and parents that make
the most difference. For some, we are the first successful blind people
their family has ever met. One parent from Missouri posted on Facebook that
her daughter, who has attended BELL for the past four years, looks forward
to it every year. She went on to say that the best thing about the BELL
Academy, in her opinion, is the fact that the staff who volunteer their time
are blind and are great role models for the children. Other families are
heartened to have found a group of people who believe in their children,
have high expectations for them, and are willing to help the families fight
for what is best for their kids. A mom from New Jersey said, “As parents who
have recently found the NFB we are relieved to know that we are not alone
and are fully supported moving forward.” One grandmother in South Carolina
plans to stay in touch with the Federation so she knows what she should ask
in her grandchildren’s IEP meetings. She wants to make sure they are being
raised with high expectations.
Then there are the families who are not new to the Federation.
BELL gives their blind kids an opportunity to be around kids like them. This
story comes from Briley O’Connor, who, in addition to being the Minnesota
BELL coordinator, is also the mom of a blind son:
As the coordinator, I knew this program would be great for my
four-year-old son, Silas. I’ve done this before and have seen firsthand the
positive impact BELL Academy can have on a child. What I did not anticipate
was how dramatic a difference it would make in his understanding of himself
and his identity as a blind person. Silas is in that tricky low-vision space
where his parents refer to him as a blind person, his parents are blind,
many of the people in his life are blind, but he still has a degree of
useable vision which makes him feel like he can see. Convincing a kid at
this age to eat his vegetables is hard enough, much less to understand the
value of the alternative techniques of blindness, so the cane and Braille
have been a bit of a hard sell for a while. Every day we would have him
leave the house with the cane, and every day it’d be a battle of wills with
the refrain of ‘But I can see, I’m not blind like you,’ echoing in our ears.
After decorating his cane at BELL, being around other children who are using
a cane like his, a positive blind instructor (Miss Michell) constantly
reminding him to have it in his hand, and a curriculum that makes learning
nonvisual skills fun, his attitude has improved significantly. He now refers
to himself as ‘mostly blind,’ which is an enormous shift over such a short
period of time. He will take the cane when we leave the house without an
argument, and he uses it more effectively when we travel.
Because I spent a lot of my career as a teacher and I’m a blind person, I
assumed Silas would have an easier time than he has accepting his blindness.
I’m grateful for the BELL Academy and for the National Federation of the
Blind for making this possible. Parents are so important, but without this
village, we’d still be fighting every day at the front door about the cane.
These stories, and the hundreds like them, are the reason I choose
to be so involved in the Federation. They are why members across the country
volunteer hours of their time, talent, and creativity. We know that
blindness does not have to hold these kids back, and programs like BELL help
them and their families realize that, too. I love to imagine more than 250
blind kids across the country ringing their bells at the end of summer—a
whole bell choir of freedom and independence.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Mary Fernandez]
Mujeres of the Federation
by Mary Fernandez
From the Editor: Mary Fernandez is a woman who brings and shares
with the world her intelligence, her passion, and most of all her honesty.
As Monitor readers will remember from past articles that she has written,
she goes where others dare not go, and she does not let blindness get in the
way, even when people fear that her going into impoverished neighborhoods
will expose her to unacceptable danger because she is blind.
Here is a presentation that Mary gave at a seminar of the 2019
National Convention. It was advertised with these words: “This bilingual
event features a keynote address from a dynamic Latina leader. It will
provide inspiration and mentorship opportunities for the next generation of
blind Latina trailblazers.” Here is what she says:
I spent much of my childhood in Cartagena, Columbia, where my
story unfolded in binary terms: dos and don’ts. Like other kids, I did have
chickens as pets. I did have room to be rambunctious—often, running around
the house so fast that I crashed into a wall, denting the middle of my
forehead. I did try to shave my imaginary beard with a real razor at the age
of four. And then there were the things I was not allowed to do, most
painfully, not attend school. I would wistfully watch my brother go off on
the bus, books under his arm, and I’d just have my radio and chickens to
pass the time.
So how does a young uneducated girl from Colombia, whose only odd
claim to sophistication was a love for classical music, grow up to have a
successful career, attend two prestigious institutions of higher education,
and walk into spaces where people like me aren’t seen? There are three
elements that have been essential to my success. My mother, who not only
encouraged and inspired me to do my best, but who also made many sacrifices
to insure I’d have a bright future, is central to my achievements. Second
has been the role models and mentors who continue to demonstrate what is
possible regardless of disability. Third, somewhere along the way I realized
that vital to my success are authenticity, resilience, and gratitude. I’m
going to share stories from my personal and professional lives that
highlight these elements.
In 2013 I applied for a position with a highly selective federal
agency. To my utter amazement, a month after applying, I got a call to
initiate the year-long, eight-step, grueling interview process. And guess
what? I received a job offer! I quit my very safe job, signed everything,
and enrolled at the Louisiana Center for the Blind to obtain blindness
training while the security clearance process was underway. However, six
months after leaving a perfectly secure job, I got a one-page letter
withdrawing the job offer. I remember standing in Pam Allen’s office,
crushed and dumbstruck. I had no idea what to do or where to go. I went to
the bathroom and ugly cried while I called my mom. Later, I went home to
ugly cry again. Funny thing about life though, is that you may be going
through the hardest part of your life, but the world doesn’t stop, even when
we think it should. So, I woke up the next day, and my stubborn streak
kicked in. I had started this training program, and I was going to finish
it. I was going to get a damn job too!
I often think back to this time in my life and all the ways it
could have gone differently if I had gotten what I thought was my dream job.
I would have never set off on a path toward business school. After
completing blindness training, I went back home to New Jersey and was hired
as a youth transition program coordinator, creating something from the
ground up. While fulfilling, a year-and-a-half later I left that safe job,
knowing that there was something else out there for me. I did all the
contract work that I could find. I even worked as a customer representative
for a cottage cheese company. Never mind that I literally had never tasted
cottage cheese in my life! Hustling helped me realize the value of my
network. It enabled me to explore my interests and eventually brought into
focus my next step. I woke up one day and thought, “I really need an MBA.
Then people will take me seriously, and I’ll have many more options. And
this plan actually worked!
Attending business school at Duke has tested my resilience like no
other time in my life. I don’t know many blind people, even in the NFB, who
obtained an MBA. But I did know many blind pioneers, so I had no doubt I
could do it. The journey has been challenging. First, you take all the
classes that the world usually tells you blind people, particularly girls,
aren’t good at, like stats, and econ, accounting, and my absolute favorite,
finance. Second, institutional bias in higher education means that students
with disabilities are set up to fail. I went through my first two quarters
essentially with no accessible materials. When I say none, I don’t mean I
was getting a bit of stats but not all of it—I mean none. Our quarters are
only six weeks long, so falling behind even by a week means it’s hopeless.
Third, there is recruiting. Recruiting season is when about a hundred
employers visit campus to present on their companies and to network with
students. After full school days we switch into networking mode, hoping that
insightful conversations and brilliant questions will translate into a
summer internship opportunity. Standing out was the goal, and at least my
being the only blind one helped me get that part down.
I survived, and I pushed forward. It comes down to resilience,
which is being able to persist even when you are bruised and battered.
Resilience isn’t lack of failure; it’s being able to fail over and over and
getting back up. Resilience doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when you are
punched to the ground; it means you feel the hurt and make it back up.
Resilience can’t be taught; it is something we develop. And if I know one
thing about immigrants, it is that we are damn resilient. We continue to
work and succeed and contribute even when the message we are hearing is that
we are not wanted.
Three months after recruiting started, and a number of
unsuccessful interviews later, I finally accepted a job offer with Cisco.
Working at Cisco was a dream come true. I worked on the Global Talent Brand
team—we do marketing for talent acquisition. The Cisco culture is truly
inclusive, and the people are brilliant, welcoming, and warm, a combination
that is hard to find anywhere. However, as we move into spaces that people
like us—blind Latina women aren’t usually seen, no matter the company
culture, these characteristics become a focal point. Often, the curiosity
grows from a desire to learn and understand our experience. For me, it
quickly became exhausting being the new intern at this global corporation
and the in-house accessibility and disability expert. In this instance I had
to set boundaries. At the same time, it’s important to leverage our lived
experiences to influence inclusion at all levels whenever we can. That’s
what I did, resulting in guiding the team to create more accessible
marketing materials.
I’ve learned that in situations where my intersecting identities
become a prominent feature, authenticity, boundaries, and using my lived
experiences help me navigate. Authenticity is a strength. It is important to
bring our true self, values, and integrity to work. If we do that, we will
always find the best path forward. If we do not, we will not fail, but we
will not grow; we may please others but not ourselves, and ultimately, we
will stunt our personal growth. Do not ever allow anyone to make you the
token x. I set limits around what I will and will not tolerate. At the same
time, recognize and accept that you are representing others. This acceptance
allows us to better control our narrative. If it’s inevitable that a story
will be told about us, then we should make sure we create that story.
Leverage your knowledge and experiences to pave the path for those who will
come after you.
So, here is what I want you to remember. First, play to your
strengths. Second, embrace failure, because failure leads to resilience.
Third, live authentically, live your truth. And last, be grateful. I could
not have gotten to where I am today without an army of supporters behind me
and trailblazers before me. Gratitude engenders joy and confidence, so hold
it close to you. When you play to your strengths, when you are authentic to
your values and beliefs, when you are courageous, you will leave an
indelible mark in the world and blaze a path for those who will follow.
----------
Leave a Legacy
For more than seventy-five years the National Federation of the Blind has
worked to transform the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people into
reality, and with your support we will continue to do so for decades to
come. We sincerely hope you will plan to be a part of our enduring movement
by adding the National Federation of the Blind as a partial beneficiary in
your will. A gift to the National Federation of the Blind in your will is
more than just a charitable, tax-deductible donation. It is a way to join in
the work to help blind people live the lives they want that leaves a lasting
imprint on the lives of thousands of blind children and adults.
With your help, the NFB will continue to:
* Give blind children the gift of literacy through Braille;
* Promote the independent travel of the blind by providing free, long
white canes to blind people in need;
* Develop dynamic educational projects and programs that show blind
youth that science and math are within their reach;
* Deliver hundreds of accessible newspapers and magazines to provide
blind people the essential information necessary to be actively involved in
their communities;
* Offer aids and appliances that help seniors losing vision maintain
their independence; and
* Fund scholarship programs so that blind people can achieve their
dreams.
Plan to Leave a Legacy
Creating a will gives you the final say in what happens to your
possessions and is the only way to be sure that your remaining assets are
distributed according to your passions and beliefs. Many people fear
creating a will or believe it’s not necessary until they are much older.
Others think that it’s expensive and confusing. However, it is one of the
most important things you will do, and with new online legal programs it is
easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do decide to create or revise
your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as a partial
beneficiary. Visit <http://www.nfb.org/planned-giving>
www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more
information. Together with love, hope, determination, and your support, we
will continue to transform dreams into reality.
Invest in Opportunity
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not
the characteristic that defines you or your future. You can live the life
you want; blindness is not what holds you back. A donation to the National
Federation of the Blind allows you to invest in a movement that removes the
fear from blindness. Your investment is your vote of confidence in the value
and capacity of blind people and reflects the high expectations we have for
all blind Americans, combating the low expectations that create obstacles
between blind people and our dreams.
In 2018 the NFB:
* Distributed over seven thousand canes to blind people across the
United States, empowering them to travel safely and independently throughout
their communities.
* Hosted forty-eight NFB BELL Academy programs, which served more
than three hundred and fifty blind students throughout the United States.
* Provided over one hundred thousand dollars in scholarships to blind
students, making a post-secondary education affordable and attainable.
* Delivered audio newspaper and magazine services to 118,900
subscribers, providing free access to over four hundred local, national, and
international publications.
* In the third year of the program, over three hundred fifty
Braille-writing slates and styluses were given free of charge to blind
users.
Just imagine what we’ll do next year, and, with your help, what
can be accomplished for years to come. Below are just a few of the many
diverse, tax-deductible ways you can lend your support to the National
Federation of the Blind.
Vehicle Donation Program
The NFB now accepts donated vehicles, including cars, trucks,
boats, motorcycles, or recreational vehicles. Just call 855-659-9314
toll-free, and a representative can make arrangements to pick up your
donation—it doesn’t have to be working. We can also answer any questions you
have.
General Donation
General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and
the work to help blind people live the lives they want. Donate online with a
credit card or through the mail with check or money order. Visit
<http://www.nfb.org/make-gift> www.nfb.org/make-gift for more information.
Bequests
Even if you can’t afford a gift right now, including the National
Federation of the Blind in your will enables you to contribute by expressing
your commitment to the organization and promises support for future
generations of blind people across the country. Visit
<http://www.nfb.org/planned-giving> www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call
410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information.
Pre-Authorized Contribution
Through the Pre-Authorized Contribution (PAC) program, supporters
sustain the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind by making
recurring monthly donations by direct withdraw of funds from a checking
account or a charge to a credit card. To enroll, visit
<http://www.nfb.org/make-gift> www.nfb.org/make-gift, and complete the
Pre-Authorized Contribution form, and return it to the address listed on the
form.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Doug Marshall]
Leadership, Partnership, and the Pursuit of Financial Accessibility
by Doug Marshall
From the Editor: Doug Marshall is the executive vice president and
chief digital and product officer for BECU (the Boeing Employees’ Credit
Union) in Tukwila, Washington. As President Riccobono said during his
introduction, “BECU is one of many organizations we are partnering with to
further better accessibility. When we came to them with our concerns, they
did not protest; they said yes, we need help, and it is on this foundation
that we began to build a relationship. Here is what Doug Marshall had to say
to the convention on Wednesday afternoon, July 10:
Thank you, President Riccobono. It is a pleasure to be here this
afternoon on behalf of BECU. We are one of those companies that Eve was
referring to [Eve Hill proceeded Mr. Marshall’s presentation.], so we’re
pleased to be here today to share our journey toward digital accessibility.
Before I do that, I’d love to share just a few things about BECU because,
other than our Washington contingent way in the back, my guess is that most
of you don’t know anything about us. As you know, we are based in
Washington. We have about 1.2 million members. We have about $20 billion in
assets, and that makes us about the fourth-largest credit union in the
country. We have about 2,100 employees, and we’re really pleased about our
place in the market out there in Seattle.
As I move into why we did this work, I think it’s important for
all of you to understand the why as well as the what, so first we will talk
about the why, we’ll talk about the how we did it, and then we’ll talk about
where we are right now so you can get some sense of how this journey
unfolds.
For us the why starts with our values, and probably a lot of the
organizations you work with talk about having values. We do that, but the
three that are most relevant to this discussion are these: we have a value
called members first. Our customers are called members because we are a
cooperative. We are owned by members, not by shareholders. Our second value
is called people helping people, which seems very relevant to this
discussion as well, because ultimately we’re all just people. Finally, and
maybe the most important one for this discussion, we have a deeply, deeply
embedded sense of doing the right thing, and as President Riccobono alluded
to, that’s what really prompted us to move forward in doing the right thing.
It started as a legal issue; it rapidly became a moral issue for us. So that
is some context. [applause]
Again, most organizations have values, so the second part of the
why for us is the fact that we actually try to live those out. I could talk
with you all day about examples where we try to live those values every
single day with every single member, but I won’t. Just trust that our
culture has those values deeply embedded.
The third thing that is behind the why is our history. Just to go
back for a moment, we have a long history of solving problems. We were
founded in 1935, so over eighty years ago, in the depths of the Depression.
I think our founding story is relevant to this discussion. We were founded
by eighteen machinists who pooled fifty cents each to raise nine dollars. We
are worth $20 billion today, so we started with nine dollars. They then made
a loan for $2.50 to a fellow machinist at Boeing because back then you had
to buy your own tools. So in order to have your job, you had to buy tools,
and in order to have tools you had to have money. Our members raised that
money so that person could have a job. That’s the very first problem we
solved, and ever since we’ve been trying to solve problems, sometimes
successfully, sometimes not as much.
So with that history we thought it was important to listen when we
heard from our members that we were having some problems around
accessibility. It started in 2016 when we heard from some members directly
in our call centers. They said they were having difficulty using our online
banking tool. In 2017 we then made an enhancement or two or three to our
mobile app. Most of you know what a mobile app is and how important it can
be to people’s lives. We made some fixes that helped some of our members,
but inadvertently we made our mobile app much less accessible for our blind
and sight-impaired members. That was a mistake. So we started to hear from
some of our members, and in fact some of them are in the back of the room,
so they can attest to this. Things weren’t working. We were starting to take
some action to address that, and then, as President Riccobono alluded to, we
heard from him, Eve Hill, the attorney general, and at least as importantly,
some of our members who were in the room that day. I’ll never forget that
day. It was in early 2018, and I had not had a lot of exposure to the blind
community. Some of our members shared their stories. We didn’t actually ask
any questions because we knew it was important that we try to understand
where we should start. They told us that, rather than being able to use our
mobile app to make a check deposit, for them it would require a two-hour
plus trip to get to one of our branches. They would get on one bus, get on
another bus, and they would have to walk a ways and catch another bus. So as
we heard that story, again it made it very, very clear to us that we did not
have the time to wait to get this addressed.
That’s a little bit behind the why of why we tackled this. What
you may be caring more about—I know I would—is how do we tackle this? We
drove back down from Seattle to beautiful Tukwila, sat down right away, and
began to plan how we were going to tackle this. Ultimately we ended up with
six different things. Frankly it was a lot that we had to do. First of all
we worked with our internal team and laid out a plan, and that plan
included, first and foremost, how we would prioritize the work. I know
you’ve talked a lot about websites, and they are critical. But in our case
we had digital properties including our mobile app, our online banking—sort
of our desktop experience—and then, of course, our site itself. We
collectively agreed that it was important to tackle the mobile app first
because that actually allows you to bank. Second would be the online banking
experience for the same reason. Finally we would tackle the website itself.
All of these other things were important, but we had to make some choices
and prioritize.
The second thing we did, and this was even without pressure, was
to develop detailed plans. We ended up with eighteen different bodies of
work that we identified, and each of those plans had committed dates and
specific efforts to make sure we met those dates.
The third thing we did was to invest resources. Again, you’ve
heard that sometimes this work is not that expensive and that it doesn’t
have to be. In our case we had to invest significant resources. We added
some user experience resources. In fact one of those resources is right here
in the room today. We added some outside development teams. We have a
development team who does that work, but we had to bring in outside help
because again this is relatively new to us. I can go on, but basically we
invested a lot to make this happen.
We then engaged our vendors. What you may not know is that in many
cases in addition to doing the work ourselves, we work with outside
partners. I talked about our values earlier, and the great news for us is
that when we vet our vendors before we select them, one of the things we
look hard at is whether they share our values. So when we showed up and said
that we have an issue here, that being to improve accessibility, and you
need to help us, the response wasn’t, “No we don’t.” The response was,
“Well, of course we have to.” They have been a really, really important part
of this puzzle, and we’ll talk about that in just a minute.
Finally (almost), we developed policies and procedures to ensure
that once we got this work done, it would be sustainable. The last thing we
want to do is invest in this effort, get accessibility where it needs to be,
and then go backwards.
As you heard me say, we are a members-first organization, so along
the way, as the sixth initiative, we had our members help us test. We worked
with them to see if the changes we had made had in fact made things better
or perhaps worse. This is very important because along the way we discovered
that sometimes we got it right, but a couple of times we got it very, very
wrong. So we had to go back and make a change, make a change, make a change.
It was really important to have our members involved all along the way.
That is the how, but many of you may be wondering (I know I would
be) where are we: what did all of that work result in? I can start by saying
that we’re not done yet. I guess you’re never ever done, but we’re not quite
where we want to be but thought it was important to come today and share at
least where we are now. We’ve made great progress on those eighteen bodies
of work. About three of those eighteen we’re not quite done with, and again,
thanks to the collaboration with Eve Hill and others, we know we have to get
that work done, and we will.
Second, we realized that as we add new features—for example there
is a product called Zelle that is very similar to Venmo, which some of you
may use. I believe it is an accessible product, but I’m not 100 percent
sure. As we add those products, we want to make sure that they are also
accessible, so that’s the second thing we have embedded in our process and
procedures so we don’t go backwards.
The next thing we are doing is that we are continuing to add
resources. In fact, one of my colleagues is here today and attended the
employment session. We’re actively looking for two people to join BECU to do
quality assurance testing. They need to be blind to do the work right, so if
you know someone, send them our way. We’d love to hire them. [applause]
We’re continuing to lead our vendors. Our vendors are not done,
and they’ve actually told us that our work with them has forced them to go
and do an even better job with some of their other financial services
partners. So we think we’ve raised the bar for our vendors, and we hope
we’ve done the same thing for other financial institutions. We’ll see.
Finally, and this is probably the one that has been most
personally gratifying, we started with digital accessibility, because that
is vital in an increasingly digital world. But what I love about our
organization is that we have this deep commitment to getting better. As we
started to think about it, we realized that the kiosks in our branches that
are used to check in to make an appointment with one of our consultants are
digital, and they’re not accessible. We’ve already realized that we need to
get that fixed, and in fact we met someone today at the booth who is going
to help us get that done. [applause]
We have realized that even some of our marketing material—I mean
who doesn’t want to be marketed too—isn’t compliant. So we have embedded
closed captioning and textual descriptions of pictures.
The last thing is the one that I’m most proud of. It’s a very
small one, but it means a lot to us. As we looked around, we realized that
the checks we provide to all of our members—including a large-font check for
members who have difficulty using checks with the standard font size—were
more expensive than they needed to be and should be. We went back to our
check vendor and said, “Explain to us why a check that has a large font is
more expensive than a check that has a smaller font. Clearly the additional
ink you need can’t be that much more expensive.” And they said that we were
right. Now we are charged the very same price for small font checks as we
are for large font checks. [applause]
So again, we know that we are on a journey, but we feel like we
have made tremendous progress and that we really embedded this more deeply
in the organization. I’ve heard several of you today as I’ve spoken with you
that it’s all about culture, and it is.
To wrap up, if I was thinking about tackling this issue from your
perspective and I was going to approach an organization of any kind, I think
I’d say this: First, enter into a dialogue: many of you have, and many of
you will. Make sure you are involved in a conversation. Again, that first
meeting we had was a conversation, and we are grateful for that. Don’t be
afraid to share your stories. The entire meeting was great, but that story
was a very powerful part of the puzzle for all of us who were in that
meeting. Second is that, when you work with that organization, make sure
that you understand the organization, the environment that they work with,
figuring out whether they have vendors, whether they have a complicated
architecture. Don’t let them off the hook, but do make sure that you
understand. The third thing, as we did, is work together with that
organization to help develop a plan. Make sure there are hard commitments,
but work together with that organization. Don’t leave it to them, and don’t
leave it to you. And then, make sure that plan is sustainable. Because, as
you’ve heard throughout the afternoon, we can’t stop doing this stuff.
I want to offer just a couple of thank you’s. First, thank you
again for the opportunity to be here on behalf of BECU to share this. We
know we’re not done, but we wanted to share some thoughts along the way. I’d
like to thank my colleagues who are here: Jessica Schultz, Mike Ryan, and
Obaid Khan, who are a big part of why I am up here talking. They made it
happen, so thank you to each of you. Thank you again to Eve and President
Riccobono for being the prompt that got us to get this done, and we
appreciate that prompting. Last, thank you to our blind members way in the
back. On a personal level they made us a better organization, and we always
strive to be better, so thank you for that.
I will end on a personal note. I’ve been at this a while. If you
could see me, you would know that I am old. I love what I do, but I’m always
trying to learn. This experience, on a personal and professional level, has
been one of the most interesting and engaging. Thank you for helping me stay
young at this late time in my career. [applause]
----------
[PHTOO CAPTION: Angela Frederick]
Exploring the Layers: A Blind Researcher, Mom, and Federationist Enhancing
the Understanding of Disability
by Angela Frederick
From the Editor: When most of us first met Angela when she was a
national scholarship winner, we knew her as Angela Howard. Now she is
married and has a child who seems to be as inquisitive, friendly, and
socially aware as her mom and dad. On Friday morning Dr. Angela Frederick
gave one of the most moving presentations of the 2019 National Convention.
In it she talks about her personal journey to become a professor and what
she has learned about intersectionality and her life. Her remarks make an
incredibly moving case for strengthening our diversity and understanding of
one another. Here is what she said:
Good morning, Federationists. Good morning Texas. [cheers] People are
complaining about this microphone being too tall, but this entire podium is
too tall for me.
In her classic essay, “The Outsider Within,” sociologist Patricia
Hill Collins urged scholars from underrepresented groups to embrace the
creative potential of our biographies. Documenting the contribution of black
women intellectuals, Hill Collins employed sociologists to tap into the
unique insights we bring as outsiders working within a traditional academic
field.
I will share a difficult truth with you. During my doctoral
training in sociology, I wanted nothing of the creative potential offered by
my outsider status. I did not want to research disability. I wanted to be an
insider. I wanted to be respected as a good teacher and researcher. I
planned to land a tenure-track position as a professor. Disability had no
place in my plan. I was terrified of being pigeonholed as someone who worked
in a dusty, unrecognized corner of sociology. I knew I would be competing in
an impossibly difficult job market. I wanted my identity as a blind person
to be invisible, to just go away.
In April 2012 I received a call from the chair of a faculty search
committee at a college in Memphis. He called to invite me to their campus
for an interview. I was overly prepared for the moment. I took a deep breath
and then cheerfully shared the news that I am blind. I was met with a long
moment of silence. “I’m so shocked,” he finally replied. “Your research,
your teaching—how?” I quickly decided that I should also let him decide that
I am having a baby in three months when he picks me up from the airport next
week. [laughter]
I knew that what I had to overcome in that daylong interview was
tremendous. There has always been a unique kind of comfort I feel with other
Federationists. We so deeply understand one another’s struggles to obtain
employment and to overcome the social distance sighted people often put
between us, and we enjoy the camaraderie of shared laughter over those
absurd moments that only another blind person can understand.
Yet, blindness never exists in isolation. It exists in interaction
with other aspects of our identities and experiences. I did not go on the
job market for my first professor position as a blind person. I went on the
job market as an expecting blind mother. In sociology we call this dynamic
intersectionality. Developed by legal scholar Kimberly Crenshaw,
intersectionality is an approach that considers forms of inequity not as
separate but as intertwined. The heart of this approach is that we cannot
add up people’s hardships and privileges as if they are points on the
scoreboard. Instead we can think of each aspect of our identity as
interacting with the others. To put this simply, I am not a blind person on
Mondays, a white person on Tuesdays, a woman on Wednesdays, or a highly
educated professional on Thursdays. I experience all of these aspects of my
identity every day. They shade one another, sometimes in unique and
surprising ways. This is the case for all of us.
I did receive that job offer in 2012. [applause] My daughter had
been home from the hospital for just ten days when we moved from Austin to
Memphis, and I started my first job as a professor the following week. To
make our transition easier, my husband became a stay-at-home dad. [applause]
I’ll let him know he got applause from you. Yet, even with his unwavering
support, it was a grueling year of firsts for me. By day I wore the hat of
bewildered new professor; by night I wore the hat of bewildered and
sleep-deprived new mom. Maybe it was the freedom I felt from finally holding
that title of professor. Maybe it was just the chronic lack of sleep. But
that year I finally felt ready to embrace my outsider within.
After publishing my dissertation research, I began brainstorming
what my next project might be. Even though I had not been trained as a
disability scholar, I felt more and more strongly that sharing the story of
disabled mothers was an important contribution I was uniquely poised to
make. So I set to work. Over a fifteen-month period I interviewed forty-two
mothers with physical and sensory disabilities. I also conducted three focus
groups with blind moms right here at one of our national conventions. I
would like to share a few of my findings today.
In one article I published titled “Between Stigma and Mother
Blame,” I explore blind mothers’ experiences in hospital postpartum care. I
found this moment was in an acute time when blind mothers in particular face
high levels of scrutiny and misunderstanding. At this time these new moms
need to be able to engage in trial and error, to figure out how best to
perform the tasks of mothering without sight. Yet, in the same moment, they
are under the gaze of medical professionals who are now trained to watch
mothers closely for risks they may pose to their children.
I also took up social class as a part of this project. I found
that social class privilege did not entirely shield the middle-class women I
interviewed from being unjustly portrayed as inadequate mothers. Disability
brings with it such profound forms of prejudice that it is not erased by
being middle-class. But I also found that, when a problem arose, the
middle-class mothers I interviewed were able to lean in on their social
class status to successfully navigate the threat. Their social capital
mattered. They were more likely to be networked in with advocates and
professionals who helped them. Their cultural capital mattered. They knew
how to speak the language of dominant institutions. As one mother put it,
“You have to know lawyer speak.” These mothers were generally able to garner
their resources and present themselves in ways that were favorable to those
in power.
I remain deeply grateful to these mothers for sharing their
powerful stories of grit, hardship, and triumph with me. My research on
mothers with disabilities has been the recipient of two outstanding
publication awards and an honorable mention from various sections of the
American Sociological Association. [applause] Most meaningful to me, I was
the recipient of the 2015 outstanding faculty award, selected by students on
my campus. [applause] These recognitions have given me the confidence to
know that I no longer need to fear being pigeonholed into a dusty,
unrecognized corner of my discipline. Disability is an exciting and critical
topic of inquiry. It belongs at the center of sociology and in the center of
our classrooms.
My daughter turns seven years old next week. She has spent much of
her life on the college campuses where I have worked: practicing piano,
having family picnics, balancing along retaining walls, and receiving much
adoration from students. Her favorite new campus activity is to sit in my
office chair and teach first grade math to her pretend college students. We
have traveled as a family to attend what she refers to as “mommie’s boring
conferences,” and she knows some of my colleagues to be her aunts and
uncles.
Just as my daughter has grown and changed over the last seven
years, so too has my research trajectory. I want to take you now to a recent
article I published along with my colleague Dara Shifrer. The article is
titled, “Race and Disability: from Analogy to Intersectionality.” In this
article we document the ways both race and disability have been used as
analogy in American social movements. Disability rights activists have long
drawn parallels between disability injustice and racial injustice to
legitimate disability as a significant category of inequality. In fact we
have often done this analogy work in our own organization. My colleague and
I do not argue this analogy work is always harmful. It is common for social
movements to draw from the successful frames of movements that have gone
before them, and it can be an important first moment of connection to draw
such parallels. We do argue, however, that important histories and important
people are missed when we do this analogy work to the exclusion of
intersectionality. Moving beyond analogy brings into focus important parts
of our history as blind people, including the mistreatment of European
immigrants with visual impairments as they entered our country through Ellis
Island in the early 1900s, or our painful history of eugenics, or the long
legacy of blind African-American musicians throughout American history which
Terry Rowden has so eloquently documented in his book “Songs of Blind Folk.”
Indeed, the histories of disability, race, and immigration do not happen to
have similarities as analogies would suggest. They are inextricably
intertwined.
I am passionate about being a sociologist. I love understanding
patterns in our social world. I love deepening my students’ empathy by
introducing them to the stories of others and by encouraging them to share
their own. In many respects I have you, the Federation, to thank for the
career I love so much. [starts to tear up] [applause] In my younger years it
was you who taught me how to be a storyteller. Giving testimony is such an
important part of the work we do in the Federation. It was you who taught me
how to be a story receiver, to meet people where they are in their journeys,
to gently accompany them in their next steps, and to allow others to shape
my next steps in turn. These are the great lessons from the Federation I
bring to my teaching and research. I also bring the Federation spirit to
motherhood. My daughter is biracial, bicultural, and she has a mom who is
blind on top of it all. [applause] I work every day to help her develop a
strong sense of self. I know she will need to thrive in a world that isn’t
always going to nurture her unique identity. I feel well-equipped to give
her this gift because, in the moment in my life when I needed it the most,
the Federation gave that gift to me. [applause] I also want my daughter to
know the joy that comes from being part of a force for good that is bigger
than herself. I feel well-equipped to give her this gift because you gave
that gift to me.
My husband often marvels at our daughter’s industrious spirit. She
can find a solution to any problem, he says. He thinks she inherited that
spirit from me. I know she inherited that spirit from you. [applause]
Becoming an outsider within sociology has deepened my appreciation
for what a unique and special community we are in the Federation. Social
science research overwhelmingly demonstrates that Americans remain
segregated in nearly every aspect of our lives. Most of us live in
neighborhoods segregated by race and social class. We are largely educated
in segregated schools. We worship in segregated spaces, and even our
volunteer and advocacy work does not often put us in contact with people of
different political perspectives. And here we sit; we are without a doubt
one of the most diverse communities in our country. We are diverse not only
by our racial and ethnic and social class backgrounds, but by our religious
and political beliefs and by our gender and sexual identities and family
configurations. We are even diverse along disability, as many among us
manage more than one disability. Our diversity is our greatest asset.
[applause]
I believe using intersectionality in our work only deepens our
collective power. Working at the intersection helps us to frame our message
in ways that resonate across cultural and community boundaries. Working at
the intersection allows us to reclaim aspects of our own histories that
might otherwise be forgotten. Working at the intersections gives us the
tools to create space for us to honor the stories of those among us who
contend with more than one form of inequity. We will inevitably experience
tension as we work at the intersections. We all have a lot to learn. We are
all going to mess up, and we are all going to be asked to give others grace
when they mess up. This is the good work!
Intersectionality need never be a threat to our unity. Our
diversity is the glue that binds our solidarity. Thank you.
----------
Philosophy in Practice
by Angela Howard
From the Editor: As part of transcribing the address given by
Angela Frederick at the 2019 National Convention, I looked for other things
she has written and found one splendid offering about her work with homeless
people in Atlanta, Georgia. It first appeared in The Student Slate and was
published in the Fall/Winter issue in 1999. Angela is a fantastic writer,
but it is the experience she details as much as the writing that persuades
me that this article should be in the November issue. I hope you enjoy it as
much as I do:
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was growing up in Atlanta, he rode
the public bus across town to school every day. Segregation laws forced him
to take a seat in the back of the bus, even if the seats in the front were
vacant. Unable to do anything about the situation at the time, Dr. King
decided to leave his mind in the front seat and promised himself that one
day he would put his body where his mind sat. Years later, Dr. King led
African Americans in a movement to put an end to segregation.
The blind do not endure the segregation laws that once confined
African Americans to the back of the bus. But, due to negative attitudes
about blindness, we continue to endure a kind of spirit-squelching
segregation that has threatened to confine us to a world of high
unemployment and social isolation. Members of the National Federation of the
Blind have developed a philosophy that has directed us to move toward a life
of complete integration and full participation in society. Our movement for
equality at one time demanded that we march and campaign in order to be
heard, and this is still sometimes necessary. But, more often today, our
struggle takes place in the work and play of our everyday lives. As
Federationists, we struggle to put our bodies where the Federation has led
us. We struggle for the opportunity to participate fully in our homes,
schools, and communities.
Recently, my Federationism led me to a most special place. I spent
the summer living with the homeless of Atlanta. The Open Door is a community
of religious leaders and former homeless people who live together in service
to those who are on the streets. I took part in this community as a resident
intern. In the Federation, we like to say that blind people possess the same
range of personalities that any cross-section of society would produce. I
have become convinced that this holds true for every other group in society
as well. I faced the same struggles against negative attitudes living with
homeless people that I do in any new community in which I become a part.
Most assumed that I would hold a marginal position in the community, and in
the beginning, none expected from me what I was capable of producing. It was
up to me to break down those walls that threaten to steal our right to full
participation.
My struggle against negative attitudes began the first night I
moved into the house. The woman assigned to be my spiritual advisor reviewed
with me the general rules of the house. She then suggested, “We thought you
would be good at handing out hard-boiled eggs to the homeless people at
breakfast.” When I learned what my schedule was to be for the following
week, it became clear to me that passing out eggs during breakfast was the
only job they thought I could handle. After three days of handing out eggs
from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. and having nothing else to do for the rest of the
day, I decided that things were going to have to change.
I began to voice my belief that I could do much more than hand out
eggs. I also developed another strategy for solving this dilemma. I was
beginning to get to know many of the people living in the house and could
sense which ones had the most faith in my ability. When I noticed that one
of them was doing a certain job, I would sneak over and ask them to show me
exactly how the task was performed. I even got them to let me try. Then
during breakfast and lunch circles when certain jobs were delegated, I would
raise my hand.
“Are you sure you can do that, Angela?” they would ask.
“I’ve done it before,” I would say.
My strategy worked. I found my schedule for the following week to
be much more promising.
Phone and door duty is one job that is frequently delegated to
resident interns. The responsibilities of this assignment include answering
phones, answering the door, and supervising our homeless friends as they
pick out t-shirts and socks from the sorting room. As you can guess, the
leaders of the community did not consider the possibility that a blind
person might be capable of meeting this challenge.
By the end of my first week, they decided that I might be able to
answer the phones. I assured them that I could write out the important phone
numbers in Braille and deliver messages personally rather than writing them
out. They agreed to let me give it a try.
By the end of my second week, they trusted me to answer the
phones, but fulfilling the other responsibilities of phone and door duty was
out of the question. Another helper was always assigned to answer the door
for me. I am not proud to admit this, but even I was not sure that I could
handle the responsibility of managing a room of people who are often under
the influence of drugs and who are known to try to get out of the house with
as many things as they can. Pretty soon, however, all of us in the house
learned a valuable lesson about blindness.
Phone and door duty is often a demanding job. I found myself quite
naturally falling into the role of assisting the person in charge of
managing the folks coming in and out. This gave me the opportunity to
develop some alternative techniques for getting the job done. For example, I
learned very early on, because it was not possible for me to describe
someone visually, I needed to have another method of identifying the people
I was letting in. When a homeless person would come to the door and ask to
be let in to grab a t-shirt, I would ask for his or her name. This practice
also helped me to develop good relationships with the regulars who came
through our doors. I found that people appreciate being called by name
rather than being directed by a finger. Developing relationships of mutual
respect with many of the regulars put both them and me at ease. Soon,
supervising the sorting room no longer seemed like an impossible feat.
My biggest challenge was figuring out how to keep people from
taking more items than they were permitted. When people are struggling to
meet their most basic needs, they are often forced to try to survive by
manipulating others. Some of our homeless friends have been known to get out
of the door with eight pairs of socks instead of one. I found that since I
couldn’t monitor with my eyes how many pairs of socks someone was taking, it
was easier for me to hand them the socks myself. I also learned to listen
for clues that would tell me if someone were trying to get out with an extra
shirt or two, such as a bag rustling too long or too many coat hangers being
moved. I do not think that these alternative techniques were entirely theft
proof. I am sure that some of our homeless friends snuck out with an extra
shirt or two. But, it is an understood rule at the Open Door that our
friends will leave the house with extra things. The key is to not let it be
excessive. My alternative techniques worked, and after a few weeks, I was
entrusted with all of the responsibilities of phone and door duty.
Phone and door duty was a most unpopular job among the resident
interns. I hated doing it as much as anyone else. But, being expected to do
the job gave me a sense of satisfaction that ran much deeper than my hatred
of performing the task. Being assigned to phone and door duty meant that I
was needed. It meant that expectations of me were as high as they were for
any other resident intern. And, perhaps most important, it meant that I got
the chance to complain how grueling the job was right along with my peers.
Creating allies in our friends and associates is an essential
component of achieving full participation. Befriending the other residents
of the Open Door, as well as many of the homeless people we served, helped
me in my struggle for equality. Many volunteers stopped by the Open Door at
random to help us out. Coping with the negative attitudes of new people day
in and day out was a difficult challenge for me this summer. My roommates
and I used to joke that we had to hear the amazing blind person speech every
time someone new walked through the door. On several occasions, a new
volunteer assumed that I was one of the people she was supposed to help. I
found, however, that as those living in the house began to understand my
struggle, they participated in helping me to educate the new folks.
Every morning after we served breakfast to the homeless, we would
sit down with our own breakfast and reflect together on how the morning had
gone. We learned many lessons about blindness during these reflection times.
One morning I had been assigned to hand out tickets in the yard to those who
wanted to come in for breakfast. A volunteer, who had just arrived the night
before, shared in her reflection time that she was amazed that I could go
out into the yard and hand out tickets.
She said, “I am afraid to go out there, and I can see.”
We in the Federation know that the “even I” compliment is no
compliment at all, and I was preparing to give a little speech on the
subject. Much to my surprise and delight, however, my housemates in the
group picked up on the fallacy of her logic and called her on it.
One man said, “It ain’t got nothin’ to do with sight. You’re just
scared of homeless people, and we’ve gotta help you with that.”
At that moment, I felt like a teacher whose student won the
national spelling bee. Not only did my friends inside the house help me to
educate people about blindness, but I found that my homeless friends also
helped me to educate others in the neighborhood. I had one friend on the
street who was particularly special to me. His street name is Bear. Bear is
a crack addict and the most widely respected and feared person in the
community. As one man put it, “Every homeless person and policeman in the
city of Atlanta knows Bear.” Bear has a gift for being brutally honest and
is a champion for justice in his own way. Once a man who had a reputation
for paying homeless workers illegal wages came into the yard and asked who
wanted a job. Many of the men began begging him to let them work, and it was
Bear who said, “Don’t let that man take your dignity.” It came as no
surprise to me that Bear would help me in my struggle for equality. Bear
became my good friend and helped me to educate others. When someone would
make a nuisance of himself by trying to help me too much, I would politely
try to manage the situation. But Bear did not believe in sugarcoating words.
He would say in his gruff voice, “Shut up, she don’t need no help.” Bear
disappeared for several weeks in July, and when I saw him again, he was
excited to inform me that he had seen people from our national convention
downtown. I had told them all about the National Federation of the Blind and
about our convention. “I saw all them people you were talking about downtown
last week,” he told me with glee.
Bear and the other homeless people I befriended at the Open Door
made this a summer I will cherish for years to come. I am grateful to all of
my friends in the Federation who continue to push me to put our philosophy
into daily practice. Let us continue to put our hands and feet where the
Federation has taken our minds.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Leslie Hamric]
A Dream Come True
by Leslie Hamric
From the Editor: This article has been gratefully taken from the
summer 2018 issue of the Illinois Independent, the newsletter of the
National Federation of the Blind of Illinois:
On a Friday night in May 1985, excitement twirled inside me. I
walked to my chair using human guide with my stand partner, sat down, and
got my cello into position. I was in third grade. I had started taking cello
lessons in October 1984, and this was my first orchestra concert. I had
memorized all four pieces from audio recordings made by the conductor weeks
ago, and I felt well prepared. This was it.
A hush fell over the audience, and I knew the lights had dimmed;
then there was silence. Before I knew it, we were playing the first notes of
"French Folk Song." Enthusiastic applause followed. We played our other
three pieces: "Long, Long Ago," "Chorale," and "Ready, Steady, Go." It was
pure heaven playing these pieces with the group. I felt that my cello and I
were one.
As the last piece came to a close, my stand partner gave me the
verbal cue to rise. I stood up for the applause with the biggest smile on my
face. We all sat down and stood up a few more times before the clapping
faded. At last I put my cello down next to me, put in the endpin, and laid
the bow on top as I was taught. We in the beginner orchestra had completed
our performance with flying colors.
I was filled with a sense of accomplishment. Since I was the first
blind person in the school district's orchestra program, I felt that I had
set a new trend. Proving to myself and my orchestra conductor that I could
play in an orchestra like any other musician meant the world to me. With a
little planning and teamwork, it could be done. As I sat listening to the
performances of the other two orchestras, I knew that I wanted to continue
with orchestral playing. In fact, performing in my first concert had gone so
well that now I had a dream to pursue: that of participating in a
professional symphony orchestra someday.
My orchestral studies continued from elementary school through
college. I played with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Music
Educators Association (IMEA) District and All-State Orchestras, Northern
Illinois University Philharmonic, Aspen Festival Orchestra, and the New
Eastman Symphony. While attending the Meadowmount School of Music in the
summer of 2000, I fell in love with playing in a string quartet. In
addition, I made sure to nurture my love of playing chamber music in
graduate school and beyond.
After graduate school and completing coursework in music therapy
in 2004, I decided it was time to start looking for a job. I started my
first full-time job in 2004, but it was totally unrelated to music. Part of
me was okay with having a job in a new field, because I felt that getting
work experience was so important. However, another part of me felt
unfulfilled, and I persuaded myself that I could both work and keep music as
an important part of my life. How wrong I was! With commuting and working
full-time, my days were long and busy. Practicing put me on such a high that
afterward I couldn't fall asleep. I felt that music as I knew it was
slipping away from me.
In March 2004 I auditioned for an orchestra, thinking that my
talent would keep me afloat. Instead, I totally messed up on the audition.
The conductor's comment that stood out most for me was that I was not
dedicated enough to music. On that day my dream of playing professionally in
an orchestra was shattered, and my life in music seemed to come to a
devastating end.
When I got home from that audition, I wanted to run and hide. I
was so distraught that I put my cello away for nine months and tried to
block music from my life. However, I know now that I simply needed a break
to reorganize. Slowly I got back into music, and it became a big part of my
life again.
In 2005 I started singing with my church choir. I played for as
many church services as I could. However, the missing part remained. After a
couple of years I thought I'd audition for another community orchestra.
However, as soon as I informed the principal cellist that I am blind, that
was it. She was convinced that things would not work and absolutely refused
to be educated about the alternative techniques I would use. In a way I was
not surprised, but still, I was hurt and angry. I resigned myself to the
fact that my professional orchestra dream was over.
When my son was born in 2010, I had no time for music for the next
year-and-a-half. Yet I did a lot of soul searching to figure out what my
next purpose would be. Through it all I still kept teaching. Teaching gave
me hope and kept me going.
In 2015 I started getting a few gigs through the Chicago Cello
Society and felt the familiar excitement returning. In 2017 I even had a gig
with Eclectic Choral Artists and performed the “Holocaust Cantata.” As I was
playing these gigs, I began to ask myself what would happen if I auditioned
for our local orchestra, the Elmhurst Symphony. I consulted with a couple of
contacts there and scheduled an audition for September 12, 2017. I got some
excerpts transcribed into Braille and started practicing like crazy.
I called the conductor of the Elmhurst Symphony, Stephen Alltop,
to inquire about sight reading. I mentioned that since I am totally blind
and need both hands to read Braille music, sight reading while playing my
cello is not possible. However, I explained that I have had experience sight
reading in ear training and music theory classes in college. I waited to
hear what would come next.
To my relief Stephen seemed very calm about my blindness and
started asking questions. I felt that he was quite interested and wanted to
know more. For once I did not feel that I had to be defensive.
Before the audition I did some role playing with a fellow
Federationist, and we went through every kind of question I might be asked.
My goal was to respond to each one calmly and directly. The most helpful
advice I received was to let my cello playing speak for itself.
I decided to play my audition pieces at Oktoberfest, an annual
fundraiser for the NFB of Illinois that draws a good-sized crowd. That was
the weekend before my audition, and I figured Oktoberfest would be a good
opportunity for me to get some feedback. I received positive comments from
everyone who heard me play.
The day of the audition finally came, and I was nervous and
excited, but I felt that I was ready. I had the most liberating feeling as
my guide dog Gerry and I walked onto the stage and found the chair with
minimal assistance. Stephen and I met in person for the first time, and then
my audition began. Once again I felt that I was one with my cello, and I had
the sense that the audition had gone well.
After I played, Stephen had a bunch of questions for me. They were
all good questions, and I was able to answer them calmly and directly, just
as I had practiced. I knew this was a time for me to explain how I could be
an asset to the orchestra. It was also a time for Stephen to find out how I
would learn my music and keep up with the ensemble.
Apparently my approach was successful, because Stephen told me he
would like to give me a chance. I was shocked and excited. Here was someone
who was willing to take on a new challenge with dignity and grace. Stephen
acknowledged that this was new territory for him; he never had a blind
person in his orchestra before. I responded that this was new territory for
me, too. It was the first time I would be learning the material exclusively
through the use of Braille music. We would be pioneering together.
The next day I went on some blindness listservs and asked
questions about which alternative techniques I could use. Although I felt
ready from a blindness standpoint, I had plenty of work cut out for me. I
had to get my music transcribed, and then I had to memorize it.
Due to some health issues I couldn't attend my first rehearsal
until February, and the first concert was scheduled for March. I was a
little anxious about the first rehearsal, but once I was in that musical
moment with the other cellists, with my guide dog asleep next to my chair,
all nervousness disappeared. I was one of the group. I felt that way during
every rehearsal after that.
The first concert I played in was performed twice, on March 10 and
11, 2018. The piece was Verdi's “Requiem,” the longest work I had ever
memorized. Both performances went well.
As soon as the March concert was over, it was time to get cracking
for the May concert. The second piece I was to play, Hindemith's “Symphonic
Metamorphosis,” scared me to death. There were so many notes, and I had
trouble keeping everything straight. At one point I thought I was going to
have to back out and not play in the concert at all.
However, persistence and determination prevailed. I contacted
another Federationist who plays classical music. I asked him if he had ever
memorized a crazy twentieth-century piece and how he went about it. He
advised me to memorize no more than four measures at a time and to put the
sections together as I went along. I did a lot of listening and playing
along with the recording. Little by little the Hindemith started to come
together. I played in the last concert of the season, which took place on
May 5, 2018. I am looking forward to next season, which starts in September.
Stephen and I are in the process of getting next season's music so I can
have it transcribed into Braille.
So far I've written about playing in an orchestra from my
perspective. I want to take things a step farther by sharing the conductor's
viewpoint. Here is what Stephen Alltop had to say:
Leslie Hamric auditioned for the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra in
September of 2017 and showed fine skills and training as a cellist. She had
studied with acclaimed teachers at excellent schools, and her playing
reflects it. Leslie provided me with the names of two conductors who had
worked with her in ensembles. Both of them gave rave reviews concerning her
abilities to perform in a musical group.
The first work we performed together was Verdi's “Requiem.” Leslie
had memorized the cello part of this eighty-minute work, an incredible feat.
There is no doubt that she came to the first rehearsal the best prepared
member of the orchestra.
In rehearsals I found myself trying to indicate starting places
not just by measure numbers but by notes and harmonies so Leslie could also
know where we were. As I had been told, she does a great job of taking cues
from my breathing and the breaths of her section mates, and she seems to
play as well with her section as anyone.
Leslie has invested so much in the art of music. I am so happy
that she has found a fine orchestra in which she can have a challenging and
rewarding experience.
I am delighted that I have found an awesome orchestra and a
conductor who challenges me all the time. After thirteen years, my dream of
performing in a professional orchestra has finally come true. This time I
feel it will stick around.
Before I close I would like to acknowledge the things for which I
am grateful. First, I will always be grateful to my first orchestra
conductor back in third grade, who inspired me to love music and gave me
such a moving first opportunity. Second, I am grateful to those who
supported me through all the years in between. Third, I am grateful to the
two church choir directors who gave me the chance to participate in their
groups. Finally, I am forever grateful to have found the Elmhurst Symphony
Orchestra.
My advice to other aspiring blind musicians is this: as early as
you can, learn and use Braille music, develop strong self-advocacy skills,
decide on a goal, and prepare a game plan to get there. Then, go for it! You
absolutely can play or sing in a musical group of your choice. You can even
take things a step farther and have music be your career. All it takes is
some planning, teamwork, alternative techniques, and the willingness to take
on something new.
I can happily say that today I am living the life I want. I am
doing what I love: enjoying the art of being a musician and taking advantage
of all the musical opportunities that come my way.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Curtis Chong]
The Status of the Orbit Reader
by Curtis Chong
From the Editor: Curtis Chong loves Braille and technology, so
when they come together, you can bet he is going to put himself right in the
middle of them. So it is that he writes this article about the Orbit Reader,
the first-of-its-kind reader for less than six hundred dollars. This product
was the first to come from the Transforming Braille Group, one in which the
National Federation of the Blind was a founding member and has been very
active both with ideas and the money to finance them. Here is what he says:
The Orbit Reader 20 was intended to be an attempt by the Transforming
Braille Group to radically reduce the cost of refreshable Braille
technology. When this device first came on the market back in 2017, it was
the least expensive refreshable Braille display/note-taker, being priced at
$449 and sold in the United States by the American Printing House for the
Blind. At that time, there were both supply problems (there were not enough
Orbit Readers available) and manufacturing issues (which showed up as
Braille defects in the early units).
I was among the small handful of enthusiastic buyers who jumped at
the chance to purchase an Orbit Reader 20 for $449. Since my initial
purchase, I have had to send my unit in twice. The first problem was that,
after a few months, some dots in the display simply did not come up. The
second problem (which occurred early this year) was that my charging port
stopped working. Both of my issues were resolved within a matter of weeks,
and both issues required me to send my unit to Orbit Research.
For people who would say that this reflects badly on the Orbit
Reader, I would point out that refreshable Braille technology is, by its
nature, extremely fragile because of the many small parts needed to move the
Braille dots. It is often the case that Braille displays need to be sent in
for cleaning or repair, and the Orbit Reader is no exception.
The American Printing House for the Blind seems to have been the
only organization in the United States selling Orbit Readers. Two years ago,
when I purchased my unit, there were not enough of them to meet the demand.
Customers were often told that the Printing House did not have any Orbit
Readers in stock, and when units did become available, they were sold out
within a matter of days.
Another issue with the Orbit Reader was that its firmware could
not be updated unless a person was able to run an update utility on a
Windows computer. This was not a problem for those of us who used Windows on
a regular basis. However, there was a strong sentiment expressed within the
community of Orbit Reader users that firmware updates needed to be available
to people who did not have ready access to a Windows machine. After all,
other popular blindness products could be updated simply by copying the
update to an SD card. Why not the Orbit Reader?
It has been two years since the Orbit Reader hit the market. Since
that time, two notable events have occurred. First, in April of this year,
the American Printing House for the Blind announced that it was removing the
Orbit Reader from its catalog pending further negotiations with Orbit
Research. Secondly, on June 6, Orbit Research announced a new bootloader
program which would enable the Orbit Reader to be updated from a binary file
copied to an SD card.
On the plus side, there does not seem to be a problem with supply;
it took about a week for an Orbit Reader that I ordered to reach me.
As for the bootloader update which enables the Orbit Reader
firmware to be updated from the SD card, units purchased from this point
forward will have the bootloader update installed; future firmware updates
can be installed directly from an SD card onto which the update has been
copied. For Orbit Readers already sold, the process of updating the
bootloader requires both a Windows computer and a firmware version that is
at least at level B0.00.00.55r02.
In the United States, the Orbit Reader can be purchased directly
from the manufacturer, Orbit Research, for $599. Orbit Reader 20's can once
again be purchased from the American Printing House for the Blind for $699,
and during this year's convention of the National Federation of the Blind
(and some time thereafter) Orbit Reader 20 units were available for $549
(you can now purchase Orbit Reader 20's from our Independence Market for the
retail price of $599)—as long as there are units available.
While the Orbit Reader has had its share of difficulties, it is
today a robust refreshable Braille technology with very good Braille. It is
disappointing that more organizations are not selling and supporting this
viable product.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Justin Salisbury]
Keeping the Blind in Sheltered Workshops in the Afterlife
by Justin Salisbury
From the Editor: Justin Salisbury is a frequent contributor to the
pages of this magazine. He works in Hawaii and is an instructor, an active
advocate, and a man who is committed to thinking a lot about what it means
to be blind both for those who have not had training and opportunity and for
those who may benefit significantly from it. As this article is being
edited, we are approaching the Halloween season, so perhaps, after spending
some time contemplating the spirits, this will be a great way to conclude
your Halloween festivities while at the same time thinking about how you
will continue to enhance opportunities for blind people. Here is what Justin
says:
When I was a student at the Louisiana Center for the Blind, I
remember all the tension and nervousness as we prepared for Mardi Gras. I
just got the feeling from my classmates. I did not know what exactly we
should be nervous about, but many of them were, so I was, too. That
nervousness can be healthy in the right doses. It can help a person to focus
on what they’re doing and to feel empowered when they realize that they were
able to manage that stress. We stayed on our game that week, and it was
exhilarating. Side note: I wish we could take our students there from Hawaii
every year.
While at Mardi Gras, students and staff choose the kinds of
activities that they want to do. One of the activities that I chose was a
ghost tour of New Orleans. We learned stories of old hospitals with amputee
veterans, quadroon ballrooms, slave children who fell to their death while
fleeing a beating, priest burials, a young orphan who grew up in a brothel
with a sailor boyfriend, and so many other stories. The tour guide told us
stories of love, loss, grief, fear, and untapped potential. So far as I can
tell, it is still an inexact science to determine if the spirit of a person
will remain in this world as a ghost. I do not say that to disrespect
anyone’s spiritual beliefs, but I think it is safe to say that spirits exist
and that something involving a strong emotion is commonly what tethers them
to the location that their spirit occupies.
When I had my first experience with a residential center for the
blind, it was in a really nice suburb of a large city in the northeastern
part of the United States. It was founded by a Catholic priest, and I
remember seeing a portrait of him hanging on a wall somewhere in the center,
maybe the dormitory or the main building. I was told early on that his ghost
was known to appear around the center campus. Sometimes, a sink would turn
on while nobody was near it, or a light might be on after everyone was sure
that they had turned it off. I was told that his ghost was there to continue
looking after the center and, most importantly, the blind people in the
center. This priest really cared about blind people, and he wanted to make
sure that we were taken care of.
When I began my current job at the state-run vocational
rehabilitation agency in Hawaii, which is called “Ho`opono,” as a nickname,
I learned that there were also spirits in that building. The original
administrator from many decades ago, Ms. Morrison, was known to still walk
the halls of Ho`opono with her high-heeled shoes. I heard that there were
many ghosts, or spirits, around the building, and I was advised that I might
encounter them, especially if I was ever alone in the building. These
spirits were never known to be malicious, and I resolved myself to be
spiritually diligent with my spiritual practices. In Native American
contexts, this means using sage, sweetgrass, and tobacco, and staying
focused on my purpose for being there, at least for my nations. I have
realized that Hawaiian spirits function differently, but I think they
respect me.
The agency serving the blind in Hawaii has not always understood
blindness the way that it does today. In recent years, even times that
current staff can remember, we were a subminimum-wage sheltered workshop. We
still have the unused stack of broom handles to show the people who come for
tours, and then we point to the signs on the wall where the workers were
directed to stack boxes of forks, knives, and spoons. Our agency used to be
the only supplier for all the mops and brooms used by the state of Hawaii.
In other words, if a mop was used on any island in Hawaii by a state worker,
blind people made that mop in the subminimum wage sheltered workshop in the
basement of the agency serving the blind. One of our vans is called “the
Beast” because it is the biggest in our fleet. We sometimes use the Beast to
drop students on drop routes or to carry the luggage when we go camping. The
Beast used to be the delivery van that delivered furniture and other
products made by the blind in our workshop. We still have showers in the
locker rooms downstairs, but the large lockers have been moved upstairs to a
hallway, where they replaced the smaller lockers that the sighted people
used to use. Those larger lockers are now used by students in our
residential adjustment to blindness program. The work benches from the
workshop are now the work benches for our industrial arts class in our
training program. We have repurposed the resources of our training center to
fundamentally change what the agency does.
Many of us encounter spirits around the building, and it is
believed that many of those spirits are those of workers from the
subminimum-wage sheltered workshop. The old workshop has more spirits than
any other place I know in Hawaii, and it is certainly highlighted as a hub
for spiritual activity by the blind people I know. We often experience those
spirits when we are alone. I distinctly remember being in the bathroom in
the old locker room and hearing the sound of someone using a metal file. I
walked out toward the industrial arts classroom to look for the sound,
thinking I could compliment a student’s nifty idea on a project. It turned
out that there was nobody there in the flesh. Some worker’s spirit, however,
was still working in the workshop. Maybe that person was crafting a piece of
furniture. I don’t know what exactly he/she was doing, but his/her spirit
was still there, working in the workshop.
Sheltered workshops were once considered a viable opportunity for
blind people to achieve employment and earn some money to supplement what
they received in welfare programs. Eventually, we started to look at futures
beyond the sheltered workshops, and so the sheltered workshops became framed
as “stepping-stones,” to help them transition into competitive, integrated
employment. Perhaps this is because people are afraid to deviate too far
from the old status-quo, low-expectation model that leads people into the
sheltered workshop, or perhaps it is because they are afraid to render the
sheltered workshops irrelevant. For far too many blind people and people
with other disabilities, the promise of the sheltered workshop has been a
false promise, and we have been living in The Grapes of Wrath. Far too many
of us have thought that we were on our way to prosperity but landed in a
trap, where we are stuck in poverty, dependent on the charity of others for
survival, and never really finding a way out.
The spirits can linger in the sheltered workshops, especially if
that is the only connection with the outside world that they really know.
Human beings in our settler society want to be industrious and useful. We
want to make meaningful contributions to the world and create some value to
the society around us. For some blind people in the sheltered workshops,
especially those who were never introduced to the philosophy and blind role
models like the ones available through the National Federation of the Blind,
they may only feel connected through the workshop. They may not belong to
community organizations. They may not engage with their sighted neighbors.
They may live a highly segregated existence. Throughout history, there have
been some little blind ghettos, where blind people were housed by some
charitable agency in a group setting, which also got them away from the
sighted. For some, their existence was merely being shuttled back and forth
between the workshop and the happy home for the blind. Perhaps a family
member would come to visit on Christmas and Easter, but that would be their
lives. Some of the sighted people working in those establishments could have
very sincerely believed in their hearts that they were doing something good
for the blind by “giving us a place to go.” The workers died with so much
potential that they never showed the world, and so many dreams that they
never pursued. Maybe the spirits are still seeking that fulfillment.
Some people who hear our plight will speak from their position of
sighted privilege and say, “If you don’t like it, then leave.” For us, it is
often not that simple. We often have fewer options after we went into the
sheltered workshops than we did before we started there. What makes this
possible is partly a deterioration of a person’s confidence and self-esteem,
but it is also a deterioration of their work habits. In sheltered workshops,
specifically unproductive behaviors are often encouraged, such as sitting
around and waiting to be cued because the sighted supervisor does not have
work for you in that moment. In sheltered workshops, employees are required
to attend but only “work” when there is an order of widgets to be produced.
If I got into a habit of loafing around, it would make me less employable
for my next opportunity.
The status quo bias can burn a blind person who is trying to
transition out of a sheltered workshop. Some employers may not even know
about sheltered workshops. Then, when they learn that the applicant has been
working in a workshop for people with disabilities, they often start to
think things like, “That is a good place for a worker with a disability,”
and, subsequently, “I don’t think this job is a good job for a worker with a
disability.” There is a tendency to think that, if those workshops are set
up to give us jobs, that is where we should be working. It becomes the
status quo that blind people will work in workshops for the blind, so it is
more difficult for them to imagine us doing anything else.
Some administrators of sheltered workshops genuinely believe that
they are doing a good thing for the blind by putting us in sheltered
workshops. Others know exactly what they are doing to us. When exposed to
respectful requests from members of the National Federation of the Blind,
some of them use open minds to examine their practices and even migrate away
from them. Others often resist and make every effort to suffocate the voices
of the organized blind because we threaten the system that is so profitable
to them financially and egotistically, and possibly because change requires
mental effort. No matter where these administrators fall, if they can find
it in their hearts to change their practices—and hopefully the beliefs that
undergird them—I will eagerly become their friend and sing their praises. If
not, then I will act however the Federation calls upon me to act as we work
to liberate the blind from low expectations.
With the homes and the sheltered workshops, even if it is well
intended, blind people literally remain there forever, even in the
afterlife. It does not create opportunity; it gouges a hole in the hull of
the ship that was heading toward opportunity. I know that there are
spiritual interventions where I could hire someone to come into the old
workshop and try to chase off the spirits, but I don’t want to do that. I
don’t have a way to work with those spirits to improve their understanding
of blindness and the opportunities that they could have had in life. I can
make a difference, however, with the blind people who are alive today and
who will live in the future. There are some little girls growing up in the
Hawaii affiliate, and I am glad that they have the National Federation of
the Blind. I want to be absolutely sure that those little girls never work
in a subminimum wage sheltered workshop, but that still would not be good
enough. I want the opportunity to be the one who teaches them about what
subminimum wages used to be and what sheltered workshops used to be. Then,
when they learn about the spirits at the old workshop, they will understand
that they deserve a life full of opportunities and that they need not spend
the rest of eternity in the workshop with a metal file.
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Meet the Sighted Month
From the Editor: This little gem was making the rounds on
Facebook, and we felt that Monitor readers who might not be on that social
media platform also deserved to see it. October is officially Meet the Blind
Month, but while the sighted meet the blind, the blind meet the sighted. And
that’s where this little guide comes in handy to help the blind understand
the limitations that the sighted labor under as they move through the world:
October is Meet the Sighted Month. Throughout the month, sighted
people will hold events where we can mix and mingle and learn about the
special equipment and techniques they use to cope with the presence of
eyesight. Also, many sighted people will post invitations on Facebook
encouraging us to ask them questions, any questions we want, about their
sightedness. To kick off Meet the Sighted Month, I have put together this
list of things to keep in mind when interacting with the sighted.
1. Sighted people are often incapable of traveling, cooking, or doing
much of anything without the aid of light. While we use our other senses to
enable us to function perfectly well in the dark, sighted people have great
difficulty developing these skills. When you welcome the sighted into your
home, don't forget to turn on the lights.
2. Sighted people often cannot understand synthesized speech, and the
text on a Braille display is almost always unreadable to them. They must
depend on special equipment such as computer monitors and phone and tablet
screens to use their electronic devices. If you let a sighted person use
your phone or computer and forget to turn the screen on, they will be very
confused.
3. Sighted people have difficulty learning from textual and verbal
explanations or tactile models. They often must be presented with pictures.
A good rule of thumb, when writing instructions for the sighted, is to
include a picture with each step.
4. Sighted people have great difficulty distinguishing auditory cues in
their environment. While we can tell when to cross a street by the sound of
traffic or where an entrance is by the sounds of people entering and
exiting, sighted people often must rely on visual information alone.
5. Sighted people rely heavily on an inaudible code called color. They
use color to safely navigate by car and perform countless other tasks we can
perform using auditory and tactile cues. Also, they are often quick to judge
us based on what colors we present to the world. It is important to gain at
least a working knowledge of color, so they don’t think we’re weird.
6. Sighted people often communicate displeasure using a secret signal
called a dirty look. I’ll admit, I’m not exactly sure what this entails,
except that it sometimes causes sighted people to behave in ways which seem
inappropriate to the situation, i.e. telling someone off for no apparent
reason. As blind people immune to the effects of the dirty look, we can only
try to teach the sighted to use their words when communicating displeasure
with us.
So, there you have it. Keep these points in mind, and your next
encounter with a sighted person should be as smooth as a brand new NFB cane
tip.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Sandy Halverson]
A Contest to Promote Literacy that is so Fun it Won’t Seem Like Work
by Sandy Halverson
From the Editor: Sandy Halverson is in charge of the Braille
Readers Are Leaders Contest sponsored by the American Action Fund for Blind
Children and Adults (AAF). This contest was initially run by our national
body, migrated to Illinois, and is now a project of the AAF. Here is what
Sandy, whose skill in reading Braille is second to none and has served her
well in her many careers, has to say:
Readers of the August-September 2019 Braille Monitor and 2019 National
Convention attendees had an opportunity to learn about the American Action
Fund for Blind Children and Adults century celebration. The American Action
Fund Braille literacy programs have grown from the production and
distribution of Twin Vision books with print and Braille text on facing
pages with picture captions in parentheses to free slates and styluses and
the Free Braille Books Program enabling blind children to build their own
book collections.
Before we get into contest specifics, I want to thank our Illinois affiliate
for its commitment to Braille literacy and organizing the Great Lakes
Braille Readers Are Leaders Contest for the past three years. The number of
states that participated in the 2018-2019 contest shows that our blind
students are motivated to read recreational materials for seven weeks and
challenge others to do likewise. In the past, participating affiliates made
a $100 contribution to cover contest-related expenses. While the Action Fund
is making this contest available to all of our affiliates, donations are
always welcome to help with those expenses which include things like the
cash prizes awarded for first, second, and third place winners in each
category and the Braille-related prizes each participant receives.
This year we are promoting Braille literacy to children from K-12 grades and
blind adults to encourage not only our NFB center students who are learning
Braille, but others who might be motivated by a little cash and other
Braille-related prizes, to participate in a contest. Teachers, parents, and
adults may register for the contest from Friday, November 1, 2019, through
Saturday, January 18, 2020—but you have to do a little more than just
register. Each participant must keep a log with the book title, author, and
number of pages read, which may not be the entire book or article. The
actual reading period begins Sunday, December 1, 2019, and ends Saturday,
January 18, 2020, but that is not a concern for today! By November 1, all
contest-related documents will be available from our website
(actionfund.org) and will be widely distributed by email and social media.
The full text of these materials will be included in the December Braille
Monitor.
Now is the perfect time to begin gathering books, magazines, and anything
that is not a textbook that you’ve always wanted to read. You will have
seven weeks in which to get it done. ShareBraille is an excellent resource
in addition to Bookshare and the Braille lending library in your state.
You can help us by spreading the word to blind children and adults you know
who want to improve their Braille efficiency. So on November 1, registration
starts the fun!
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Karen Keninger]
The Continued Significance of the National Library Service for the Blind:
Expanding Braille and Implementing the Marrakesh Treaty
by Karen Keninger
From the Editor: Karen Keninger is the director of the National
Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), soon to be
renamed as you will see from the article. Ms. Keninger clearly defines the
role that the library plays and makes it clear that even with all of the
other sources we have for material, nothing replaces our library. She also
outlines what the library is doing to take advantage of new changes in
technology and the work we must all do together to fully reap the benefits
of the Marrakesh Treaty. Here’s what she said:
Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here. It’s a real honor and a
privilege to stand here and tell you about the things that are happening in
our library. NLS and its network form a free public library service for
people who can’t read print. There was a time when it was the only source of
accessible reading material that we had, but today that has changed. We have
access to Audible, to Bookshare, to Learning Ally, to the internet. We have
options, including an expanding trove of commercially available and
pretty-well-narrated books. And we can read print titles with a whole bunch
of different apps.
So ladies and gentlemen, why is NLS still relevant today? I submit that the
reason is precisely because it is our free public library. [applause] Nearly
every town in America has a free public library. Why? Why do cities and
counties and states and the nation spend tax dollars on the library instead
of, say, roads? Well, Franklin Roosevelt put it this way:
To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings
where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a
nation must believe in three things: it must believe in the past, it must
believe in the future, and above all it must believe in the capacity of its
own people to learn from the past so that they can gain in judgment in
creating their own future. Among democracies through all of the ages and the
history of the world, building these permanent institutions such as
libraries and museums for the use of all the people—all the
people—flourishes. And that is especially true in our own land, because we
believe that people ought to work out for themselves and through their own
study the determination of their own best interest rather than accept such
so-called information as may be handed out by certain types of
self-constituted leaders who decide what is best for them.
Libraries are critical to our way of life, and NLS is our free
public library. [applause] And it’s accessible. You don’t have to drive to
it; you don’t have to have technical skills to use it; you don’t have to pay
for it, and you don’t have to go it alone— we have professionals to help you
find anything you’re looking for. With over 110,000 titles and counting on
BARD, and about 20,000 magazine issues, it holds the content comparable to a
mid-sized public library in a community. NLS is relevant because we as blind
people have a right and a need for full accessibility to free library
services, every bit as much as our neighbors and friends. We have a right to
information, and we have a right to self-determination. [cheers, applause]
So what is our free public library system doing today? Let me talk
about a couple of things. First of all, we are working on providing a
Braille e-reader to the NLS program. [applause] Braille is our literacy
medium, just as print is for the sighted. As print has moved into the
digital realm, so has Braille, and I believe that every blind person should
have access to digital Braille. [applause] So for the past seven years, with
tremendous support from NFB and other partners, I have been working to make
Braille e-readers part of the NLS program, and we’re on our way. As of
today, we have two contracts in place to develop and distribute Braille
e-reader technology to our program. [applause] Those contracts are currently
under review by the Government Accountability Office, which will be
completed later this month. We expect to do the development in the next
several months, and by next spring we will be piloting these devices through
our network libraries. I’ve been talking about this a long time folks, and
this really is happening. We’ll have a limited number of devices and a
limited number of libraries to start with because the purpose of the pilot
is to refine the machine, make sure it’s what we need. It’s to refine the
distribution, the training, the tech support, the maintenance processes, and
all the other things that surround this project. We’ll be starting out with
2,000 machines, and we will be selecting a few Braille lending libraries
based on their capacities to actually participate in the project. I know
that people are interested in whether or not they can sign up to be pilot
testers, and the answer is that that will probably be done through the
network libraries. We will be providing some of these devices to NFB
headquarters for them to give us their feedback as well. [applause]
So we’re going to have 2,000 devices to start with, and we are requesting
funding from Congress from 2020 through 2024 at this point for additional
funding to continue to add to the project. We have a long way to go, so
we’re going to need a fair amount of funding. But we’ve already had
tremendous support on this particular piece of it from NFB, and I know you
will continue to help us. I know that Congress is ready to give us the
money, so I’m very excited about that.
So what is it going to look like? Initially it’s intended to read
NLS books. That's its goal. It will render BRF files and TXT files (and
there might be some others; I’m not quite sure where we landed on that.) It
will have software that can be updated as time goes on. It's going to have
twenty cells, and they’re going to be eight-dot cells. It will have a
Perkins-style keyboard, and it will have search functions: bookshelf,
bookmarking, all the things you need to read library books. It will have
Bluetooth for connectivity to Bluetooth devices. It will have internal
storage for standalone functionality and wireless capability so that you
could go directly to BARD to download. [applause] If you don’t feel
comfortable or don’t have the access to do that, books will also be
distributed from the regional libraries on cartridges that will connect to
the device, so you’ll have both options.
It will not have a notetaking capability, and it will not have
onboard text-to-speech.
We expect that hard-copy Braille will continue for the near
future, until we get these devices in place. We expect that we will continue
to update the project as we go forward, and eventually we anticipate having
hard copy Braille on demand, but we are a long way out from that. So that’s
where we are with the Braille e-reader; thank you so much for all of your
support as we move forward with this project. [applause]
As you know, the Marrakesh Treaty was ratified, and we are now
full members of the Marrakesh Treaty. I wanted to talk a little bit about
what impact that’s going to have on NLS and the United States.
The first thing that happened was that, as part of the
ratification process, the Marrakesh Treaty Implementation Act was passed
last October. That act changed the Chafee Amendment, which we have been
using since 1996 to bypass having to ask for permission to create books. It
also changed several things. It broadened the type of works we can do to
include musical scores without having to ask for permission. It changed the
eligibility issue—eligibility used to be dependent on whatever NLS said, but
they’ve taken that away from the NLS program to say, “This is who an
eligible person is under this amendment in the United States: a person who
is blind, a person who has a visual impairment or a perceptual or reading
disability that cannot be corrected, or a person who has a physical
disability that keeps them from either managing a book or moving their eyes
well enough to actually read the book.” So the definition is a little bit
bigger, and one of the impacts that I think that’s going to have is that we
will have more people with reading disabilities entering the NLS program.
[applause] It has also changed the terminology from “specialized format,"
which we considered to be Braille or talking books, to “accessible format,"
which broadens the possibilities for the formats we can use. And it has
added a separate paragraph that allows for import and export.
But the NLS program itself has another law; that law is our
funding legislation, and it tells us how we can spend our money. Really, it
often comes down to money, so we need to get our law to conform to the
Marrakesh Treaty Implementation Act and the new Chafee Amendment so that we
will be able to participate fully in the Marrakesh Treaty.
At this point NLS has submitted legislation which is right now in
the Senate Rules Committee undergoing a standard process, and we are hoping
to get it out and get a bill number so that we can really start advocating
for it. That law that we’re hoping to get changed will give us permission to
participate. It will conform our definitions to the definitions in the
Marrakesh Treaty, and it will do some other things, one of which is to
preserve priority for the blind and for veterans. If we have a lot more
people coming into the program, we want to make sure that those of us who
are the basic owners of the program will have priority. [applause] There are
some other things that it does, but, as we said, we will be hoping to move
this forward as soon as we can get the bill number and get it moving
forward. We’ll also be changing our regulations to conform to the new laws,
so there’s many things going on there.
NLS has been a member of the World Intellectual Property
Organization’s project—which started out being called TIGAR, but now it’s
called the Global Book Service—which has allowed some exchange of materials.
We’ve gained a lot of information through that process, and we are still
part of that process. We will be able to continue that on a limited basis.
Basically what we are contending is that a one-for-one swap is not abusing
our funding legislation, so we’ll be continuing that until we can broaden
it. We know that we have need for Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, and
a whole lot of different languages. We also know there’s broad interest in
our own collection, but for now, as it affects us as patrons of the National
Library Service, we will be adding what we can through the Global Book
Service, and we will also attempt to fulfill requests specifically from
patrons. If you take your requests to your network library and ask them to
forward them to us, we will try to find the book for you.
So where do we go from here? Well, the legislation change needs
your support. I know that we will have that support. I am very grateful for
that. [applause]
Our funding requests are still on the table and will also need
continued support. We have two funding requests. We have the one for the
Braille e-readers, and we also have one to build out our IT infrastructure
so that we can support more people. I know that we can count on all of your
support for that as well.
In closing, I want to thank you again and again for your ongoing
and proactive support of our free library services. So let us all, through
the work of the NFB—and through our own individual efforts—let us all
continue to work out for ourselves and through our own study the
determination of our own best interests through our public library system.
Thank you very much. [applause]
[She starts to leave the stage, exchanges a few words with
President Riccobono, then returns to the microphone] Oops, I forgot
something else. We are going to be changing the NLS’s name. I have talked
with President Riccobono about this. We are changing it sort-of subtly. We
are going to be calling it the National Library Service for the Blind and
Print-Disabled. [applause, cheers] We hope to make that official in October.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Ed Rogers]
Electronic Braille Reimagined: The Revolution of the Canute 360
by Ed Rogers
From the Editor: Ed Rogers is the founder and managing director of
Bristol Braille Technology. Mr. Rogers lives in the United Kingdom and has
been working with the National Federation of the Blind and the American
Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults for quite some time. His device is
truly revolutionary and a dream come true for many of us who have wanted a
multiline Braille display. Here is what he said to the 2019 National
Convention on Friday afternoon:
Thank you, Mark. We’ve been told by all sorts of people that
they’ve been waiting for decades, so we have built, as you have heard, a
multiline Braille e-reader. It has nine lines, forty cells each. That is 360
cells of refreshable Braille. And the cost: well, it is on sale in the UK at
the moment for just over $2,000. It’s called the Canute 360. This has been
in development for seven years. We are a not-for-profit company from Bristol
in England. The Canute project has been an open and collaborative effort
with associations of Braillists across the US, the UK, and across the rest
of the world. Our common goal for all of us involved has been to make an
affordable machine to increase the use of Braille everywhere.
The Canute 360 has hard Braille. It’s like signage Braille. It’s
easy to feel, even for some people with neuropathy who might find soft
Braille more difficult. It has quite wide line spacing, again making it easy
for learners to keep tracking on their line. It reads BRF files from an SD
card or USB stick. It will handle anything that you would send to an
embosser or through your normal transcription software. There is even a
preset now in Duxbury for the Canute, and we are very pleased about this.
The Canute is a drop-in replacement for stacks of paper Braille when you
don’t have the space for that. We know that not everyone has an entire room
available for paper Braille.
When using the reader, you can insert bookmarks and navigate by
page number. In other words, it is an e-book reader. It’s a very stripped
down playing device for reading high-quality Braille files.
How many people here use Braille music, may I ask? [Cheers in the
audience] You can read the left hand and the right hand of a piano piece
without having to shuffle up and down and without having to carry three
cubic feet of paper with you everywhere you go if you’re a traveling
musician. We are happy to now be working with Dancing Dots and hope you will
see something in the very near future.
Multiline Braille is also critical for technical subjects as I’m
sure most of you know. How about generating a complex equation in Nemeth
Code and viewing it on one display? You can track up and down the columns
and see how they add up. How about generating two complex equations and
putting them next to each other, still on the same display?
We are just beginning to find out how useful multiline
Braille—refreshable Braille—will be in those subjects. One of the best uses
for a 360-cell display is tables. When you’ve got forty cells in a line and
nine lines, you can present times tables, spreadsheets, or from your
favorite transcription software. You can present sports results for a whole
league on one screen or a whole month of a calendar on one screen.
Back in Britain there is a friend of mine who is a programmer.
She’s going to be using it to review log files. That might sound like a
mundane usage, but it’s actually critical how much faster that can make
someone’s job as a professional programmer and being able to scroll down a
log file.
But we haven’t even begun to see how powerful this can be for coding with
all the correct whitespace and indentation. Think about using it for the
creation of Python or something like that. This is just the beginning.
What about graphs and charts and vectors? This isn’t what the
Canute was designed for; it was designed for Braille. But when you’ve got
spatial Braille, you can start experimenting with bar graphs, showing route
maps, and how about floor plans? Now you can really start experimenting with
these things.
Finally, I would just like to ask how many people here read
Braille for pleasure? [loud cheers and applause] Well, not everyone likes to
read quadratic equations, and not everyone can read music Braille, but I
think everyone can appreciate that it’s kind of nice to have a digital
display that shows whole paragraphs. You can feel the shape of a paragraph.
You can feel bullet points, and you can compare between them by running your
hand up and down, and it keeps all the formatting. It will show a block
quotation with all of the formatting that you would expect. In other words,
you will get all the things you expect and now get from paper Braille.
[applause]
But to get to this stage has been quite a marathon. I mentioned
earlier the support we received from the National Federation of the Blind
and the American Action Fund in order to get this far. All of that is
essentially being honored, and we are therefore very honored by receiving
the Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award today. It means an awful lot to our entire team
and the hundreds of people in Britain, America, and other places around the
world who have been testing this and proving where we went right and where
we went wrong. I can’t help but remember all of those times when we made a
prototype and had to drive it two hundred miles to somewhere for testing.
When we got there, it didn’t work, so we had to drive it two hundred miles
back in the rain on a motorcycle. We had to drive it all the way back again
after we fixed it. So those sorts of things really come together when you
receive recognition like this, and earlier this year we were very pleased to
receive the Touch of Genius Award from the National Braille Press at CSUN. I
wasn’t expecting when I first went to see a Touch of Genius Award
presentation in 2016 that I would pick that up, just as I wasn’t expecting
when I first came to this convention three years ago that I would be
standing up here getting frightened.
In fact we have been very lucky with our partners. We are very
proud to be working in the United States with the Federation, with the
Action Fund, and with the American Printing House for the Blind, which has
the Canute on its stand and also sponsored us to go through this complex
prototyping process. They’ll hopefully be selling this soon, so watch this
space.
Outside America, we’ve been working with and helped found the Braillists
Foundation. Now this may be unfamiliar to many of you, but this is an
organization founded and very much inspired by the work that the NFB does.
This is a mostly British organization which realized that there weren’t that
many people in Britain who were trying to really promote new Braille
projects and technologies and to support those inventors. We’ve now got 500
members, and we’d like to thank them for all that they’ve put in.
Techno-Vision, in the UK, is a distributor who has recently taken
on the Canute 360. The CNIB in Canada is making great strides in testing how
multiline Braille will work in Braille libraries. Many others are just
starting their trials now.
As Mark said, we’ve been coming for several years now. It’s always
been extremely educational, so we owe a great deal to the critique and the
feedback we received over those years. In particular I’m going to name a
few, but there have been more: the Office of the President, the Technology
Evaluation Committee, the Research and Development Committee, the National
Organization to Promote the Use of Braille, the Braille music committee, and
of course the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults all get
credit for helping us. Not least I want to thank all of the members in the
room today who have come along after meetings and have given us valuable
advice. Some of you stayed for up to an hour telling us what was going wrong
in our presentation. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here now, and
the machine would not work. So thank you very much. [applause]
So far, we’ve run trials in eighty schools in England, Scotland,
and Ireland. We have also worked with individuals and organizations. We’ve
been running trials in Europe, in Zambia, in parts of India, and of course
in Canada like I just mentioned. We’ve also run trials in Kentucky, in
Boston, in Ohio, and in Baltimore. But now we need to know more about how we
will all use multiline refreshable Braille. The Canute 360 is just the start
of multiline refreshable Braille, and there’s a lot that everyone needs to
know about how it will impact Braille production and the use of Braille. So
any organization out there—be it a college, a center, or printing house—we
think that their work or their pleasure reading will be improved by
multiline Braille. We want to hear from you, and we want to run those
proposed trials together. We want to know what impact this is going to have,
what needs to happen, and what standards need to be set, so please talk to
us.
I leave you with this then: whether you are an organization or an
individual, please get in contact with us. Visit our website
bristolbraille.co.uk. You can call or email us because we want you to tell
us what you have been waiting to do on multiline Braille displays as you
have dreamed about them over all of these years. Now it’s probably possible
with the Canute 360. Oh yes, when is it available in the US? We hope that it
will be available this year. Thank you.
----------
Message from Buna Dahal regarding 2020 Washington Seminar Reservations
This message is to advise you that Washington Seminar will be held
February 9 to February 13, 2020, with the Great Gathering In taking place on
Monday February 10.
The firm deadline date to make a reservation is Wednesday, January
8. Reservation requests received after the deadline date will be subject to
availability and prevailing rate.
You can reserve a room at the Holiday Inn Capitol (550 C Street, SW
Washington, DC 20024) for Washington Seminar for check-in beginning Friday,
February 7, and check-out Thursday, February 13. The rate is $198.00 per
night. This rate does not include DC sales tax, currently 14.95 percent. You
may begin booking reservations directly online by clicking on the weblink
below. You may also make reservations by calling 1-877-572-6951 and
referencing booking code N2F. Credit card information is needed at time of
reservation. Individual cancellation policy is seventy-two hours prior to
date of arrival to avoid one night's room plus tax cancellation charge on
credit card provided. If your departure date changes, you must inform the
hotel seventy-two hours in advance of departure to avoid a $100 fee. Please
call 1-877-572-6951 and reference your confirmation number. Please obtain a
cancellation number when cancelling a reservation. The direct link to book
is: <https://tinyurl.com/y5vebu73> https://tinyurl.com/y5vebu73.
If you would like to hold a special meeting during the Washington
Seminar, please email Lisa Bonderson at <mailto:lbonderson at cocenter.org>
lbonderson at cocenter.org just as you have done in past years. She and I will
work with the hotel on the assignment of those meeting rooms. To ensure that
you get the space you need, please let us know of your meeting space needs
by December 10, 2019.
Lisa and I will always be available to help you with any problems
you might experience with the booking of your hotel reservations. We have
worked closely with the hotel staff, and they are looking forward to working
with each affiliate or group wanting to make reservations.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Richard Orme]
Accelerating Accessible Content: Progress through the DAISY Consortium
by Richard Orme
From the Editor: There was a lot of energy in the room as
President Riccobono introduced the following presentation: “This is
continuing our theme to talk about accessible books and the Marrakesh
Treaty. I believe the National Federation of the Blind has been an official
member of the DAISY Consortium since about 2012. We have had a number of
presentations at these conventions about accessible books, and we’ve heard
about the work of the DAISY Consortium and the work that we’ve been doing.
Our next speaker has a vast amount of experience in the blindness field. A
bunch of it he worked at RNIB in the United Kingdom for over twenty years,
but he’s got many other things on his resumé. He has been serving as the CEO
of DAISY since 2015. His experience and leadership are critical components
in our work to ensure that the implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty is
most effective for us as blind people. We’re pleased to have him here with
us at this convention. Here's Richard Orme:”
[“Book of Love” by the Monotones plays as he walks up to the
microphone.] I was wondering what kind of theme I’d walk up to here.
[laughter] President Riccobono, thank you for the introduction and to all
the members of NFB gathered here in Las Vegas for having me on your amazing
convention. [applause] I presented on the main stage a few years ago on the
topic of access to television equipment and to television programs. It’s
great to be back; it’s been far too long. Now accessible television, that’s
essential in today’s world. But as Mark said in his amazing, barnstorming
presidential report, literacy is a prerequisite to independence. He’s in
good company; Groucho Marx said, “I found television very educating. Every
time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a book.”
[laughter]
I’m speaking to you today on the amazing progress to solve the
longstanding issue of inequality of inaccessible books. Books are so
important. As young children we are read to by our parents and our carers.
We learn with textbooks at school. As young adults we follow our interests
and learn about the world through books. When we go to college or
university, we rely on textbooks and scholarly works for our learning. And
as adults we enjoy the latest thriller, classics, self-improvement books,
romance. Books can help us to be more employable and to progress in our
chosen career. Books help us to learn about different cultures, other
periods in history, to be better parents, to be better people. But since the
invention of the printing press, people with print disabilities such as
blindness have been disadvantaged. Our vision at the DAISY Consortium is
that books, journals, magazines, newspapers, all published information is
accessible to everyone irrespective of disability. [applause] Because in the
information age access to information is a human right. [applause]
Now the DAISY Consortium was formed over twenty years ago in
Stockholm, Sweden. Our association started with six members, a mix of
organizations representing blind people and specialist libraries. Now in our
DAISY family we have over 150 organizations in sixty-six countries. The NFB
is a treasured member of the DAISY Consortium, and Scott LaBarre serves on
the board of directors. As you can imagine, he admirably represents the
interests of Federationists there. Guided by our board, there are three main
pillars to our work: 1) support the special libraries, 2) extend the DAISY
family, and 3) bring about accessible mainstream publishing. So let me
unpack each of these in turn.
I guess some of you here have heard of DAISY books, let me hear
you. [cheers] So DAISY is a technical standard for accessible books used all
around the world. If you’ve read books from NLS, from Bookshare, or Learning
Ally, you’ll have read DAISY format books. And in developing the DAISY
format we developed the first standards for digital books and digital
talking books. Blind people were listening to digital audio books and
reading e-books twenty years ago. So to the typewriter, the fountain pen,
and cruise control, we can add e-books and audio books as inventions by
blind people that have later been adopted by everyone. [applause] And
friends of the DAISY Consortium, commercial partners making hardware and
software, make great products for reading these books, and it’s good some of
them are here at the convention. These include HumanWare, that has built
DAISY reading capabilities into its excellent audio and Braille products.
Our first pillar is to support special libraries and accessible
reading services with the technical standards and tools for accessible
content. The second pillar is extending the DAISY family. Many countries
just don’t have special libraries converting books into accessible formats,
or they may be using rudimentary and inefficient approaches. Our vision is
to ensure that everyone with a print disability has access to publications
wherever in the world they happen to live. By enabling organizations to
efficiently produce accessible books—including textbooks in local
languages—we extend accessible reading more widely. Our capacity-building
program is led by DAISY Consortium team members who are themselves blind and
from developing countries. They provide training to blind persons’
organizations, other nongovernmental organizations, and ministries of
education. This year we’ve been working in India, Mongolia, Indonesia,
Botswana, Nigeria, Argentina, and Uruguay; and next month we’ll be working
in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. There are blind people in every country in
the world, but in fact most of the world’s blind people live in developing
nations, countries with low resources and certainly very few accessible
books in the hands of blind children and adults. Our work in extending the
DAISY family provides essential tools, know-how, and ongoing support to
create and distribute books to change this inequitable situation. In the
next presentation you’ll learn more about the Marrakesh Treaty, but I just
want to say that to efficiently exchange books across boarders it is
critical that they are produced to internationally-adopted open standards.
There are blind Americans who want to read or study in French, Arabic,
Chinese, Russian, or any other language. And with books created to a common
accessible this will be possible. [applause]
Now let me turn to the third pillar of our work at the DAISY
Consortium. For more than twenty years I worked, as Mark mentioned, at the
organization in Great Britain, the Royal National Institute of Blind People,
and actually I still volunteer for them—so I work for them, but I just don’t
get paid. Our talking book and Braille library is one of the flagship
services, and we were proud to be adding more than 2,000 books to the
collection every year. And yet every year in the UK more than 200,000 new
print books are published. In the US that number is something in the region
of 600,000. So despite all the hard work of the special libraries, the
number of books that blind people cannot read is getting bigger every year;
the injustice is getting worse. Our mission in the DAISY Consortium is to
take what we have learned about accessible books over more than two decades
and help the international industry of mainstream publishing to reach a
point where accessibility is part of their business. This is possible in the
new world of digital publishing—when books are born digital, they can be
born accessible. When books are born digital, they should be born
accessible. [applause] When books are born digital, they must be born
accessible.
Over the last few years we have been building the best bits of the
DAISY format into the publishers’ own standard for publishing e-books, which
is called EPUB. We have just concluded a three-year project thanks to a
generous grant from the Google Foundation. The outcomes of this initiative
are transforming the publishing industry internationally and will increase
the number of books available to you and to blind people around the world.
The first thing we did in this project was to define a baseline for
accessibility for EPUB. We got this agreed as a recommendation with the
publishers. Once we had an accessibility specification, we developed a
wonderful tool that checks EPUB books for accessibility. We call this tool
ACE, or the Accessibility Checker for EPUB. The adoption of this tool has
been beyond our wildest dreams. Not only is it used by publishers and their
suppliers all around the world, but several large publishers and
distributors will only accept books if they pass through error-free through
ACE. [applause] And once they see and measure the accessibility of their
books, publishers are now enthusiastically improving their new titles:
they’re fixing accessibility issues, they’re adding descriptions to images,
they’re adding extended descriptions. And some of these publishers,
including Pearson and Wiley and others, have been here at the convention
talking with you in the exhibit hall or conducting user research.
One of the requirements of this accessibility specification is
that the book should contain information about the accessibility of the
title, information such as: can you make the text bigger, can you change the
font, does it contain images with descriptions? Does it have proper
structure, and has it been certified as accessible by a third party such as
Benetech? Now this is really important. How frustrating it is to find a book
in an online store, buy it, download it, only to find it isn’t accessible.
By providing information about the accessibility features in the catalog or
in the store, including an easy-to-read summary, you can decide whether the
book is for you. A professor can decide which book to adopt for a course
based on the accessibility information. A university can decide to purchase
only books that are accessible. [applause, cheers]
The first distributor to provide the accessibility information in
its bookstore is a company called VitalSource. It is one of the leading
textbook suppliers in college and higher education in the US. You may have
met them at the convention in the exhibit area. We applaud their leadership
in this space, and I know that other distributors are working on their
catalogs so that before long information about which e-books are accessible
and which are not should be transparent and a competitive advantage.
Ladies and gentlemen, these pieces are only just coming together
now, and there’s much more to do. But these developments in accessibility in
mainstream publishing are already changing the experience of blind students
in the US. Last year blind students would have had to buy the print book,
take the receipt to the disability service office, and ask them to source a
digital version and then wait. And then the university would start the work
of remediating the book chapter by chapter in order to provide the student
with something they could use. This year the student is able to search for
the accessible title in the electronic bookstore; download the book; read it
on their smartphone, tablet, or computer with their screenreader; and some
students have told the disability services, “Thanks, but I don’t need you to
start getting the books for me this year. I’m already reading them.”
[applause, cheers] If you or someone you know is a student, you should start
asking for accessible EPUB. You’re going to love it. There are literally
millions of EPUB e-books out there; that should keep you pretty busy.
Karen’s session just before me was entitled “The Continued
Significance of the National Library Service," and I agree strongly that
specialized library services will continue to be really significant. The
longstanding inequality of access to books will not be solved for everyone
overnight. For the reasons mentioned by Karen, special library services
should continue to be supported, and the DAISY Consortium will continue to
provide technology solutions and standards as we have done for the last
twenty years. Through our capacity-building program I’ve described to you,
we will extend information about accessible reading solutions to new parts
of the world, supporting the practical implementation of the Marrakesh
Treaty. By our leadership in the publishing industry we are ensuring that
the books that are published today are accessible as they should be.
There has never been a more exciting opportunity in history than
right now. DAISY is your organization, delivering the technical solutions to
end the book famine, working at a global level, punching above our weight,
and together with the powerful voice of the NFB in challenging injustice,
we’re going to get this done. Happy reading. [applause]
----------
The Future of Recipes
Recipes have been a regular feature in the Braille Monitor for
nearly fifty years. It began in November 1971 with a single “Recipe of the
Month.” In December of 1991 it changed to showcase multiple recipes provided
by each state affiliate in turn. The original purpose of this change was to
increase the opportunity to get to know the Federationists contributing the
recipes and widen the variety of culinary offerings. The recipes shared have
brought a lot of joy and connection. Sharing recipes is a traditional method
of welcoming new members into the family, whether by marriage or membership.
It can strengthen bonds and offer a touch a familiarity when someone has had
to move to a new town or state.
That said, this is a feature that is nearly fifty years old. That
doesn’t mean it needs to be discarded as out-of-date, but it does mean we
need to take a serious look at it and decide whether to continue. Are the
recipes something that are still eagerly anticipated, or with the rise of
recipe websites is it unnecessary? Is it something state affiliates take
pride and joy in contributing, or is it a chore that distracts a busy
affiliate while organizing programming? Do we keep going as is, freshen it
up with a change of format, or with love and regret decide that the time for
it to retire has come?
We at the Monitor want to hear from our readers about this. We
want to know what you think about it, and how you’d like to see the Monitor
move forward with this feature. Please email <mailto:gwunder at nfb.org>
gwunder at nfb.org and let your voice be heard as we consider the shape of the
Monitor going forward.
----------
Monitor Miniatures
In Brief
Notices and information in this section may be of interest to
Monitor readers. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the information;
we have edited only for space and clarity.
Mike Robinson Joins Xavier Society for the Blind Board of Directors:
Xavier Society for the Blind is pleased to announce that Mike
Robinson has joined its Board of Directors. Mr. Robinson is currently the
president of the National Federation of the Blind of New York. His interest
in working with the NFB stems from his own personal journey as a legally
blind individual. Mike was diagnosed with myopic degeneration and cone-rod
dystrophy at birth. Born and raised in Tonawanda, New York, he is a graduate
of SUNY Delhi, where he received an associate degree in restaurant
management.
After graduation, Mike worked in the Randolph-Sheppard Business
Enterprise Program, managing stands in the Buffalo and Rochester areas. He
also worked in the technical support field as a call center technician, and
for the Internal Revenue Service.
Mike’s passion for working with the NFB began in 1988, after attending his
first convention. Since then, Mike has been an active, involved member of
the National Federation of the Blind. He served as second vice president of
NYS for ten years and president of the Buffalo Chapter for eighteen years.
Also during that time he was active in the Tonawanda Lions Club, the Knights
of Columbus, and served two terms as Faithful Navigator for the Nelson-Baker
Assembly. He constantly works to educate the public about blindness and
strives to empower all blind persons with the tools and attitudes necessary
to “Live the Lives They Want.”
Mike is married to Angie, his wife of thirty years, with whom he
shares two sons. He supports the work of Xavier Society for the Blind and
its essential purpose of helping those living with blindness and visual
impairment to integrate religion and spirituality into their lives.
[PHOTO/Description: National Library Service for the Blind and Print
Disabled logo]
NLS Remains NLS but with a Name Change:
President Riccobono received this letter from Karen Keninger, the director
of NLS. Here is what she said:
Dear President Riccobono,
Earlier this year, NLS received approval from the Librarian of
Congress to change our name. NLS and the Library of Congress sought input on
this change from stakeholder groups and gathered data through various public
channels when considering our new moniker. We have been considering a change
for some time, and we’re very pleased to see this day arrive.
As of today, October 1, 2019, our name will officially become “National
Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled,” though we will continue
to be referred to by the abbreviation NLS. We are also introducing our new
logo, which is in keeping with the new graphic identity the Library of
Congress implemented in late 2018.
With this name change, we intend to address the use of outdated
language in our old name and more clearly communicate the breadth of those
we serve. In addition, our name emphasizes the patron-centric perspective
that is central to the library’s strategic plan.
We are proud to share our new name and graphic identity with you
as we feel that the new name, as with all of NLS’s work, rightly puts the
emphasis on the people we serve.
Touch of Genius Prize Seeking Applications:
National Braille Press’s Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation is quickly
approaching, on January 10th! Please help us spread the word.
The Touch of Genius Prize was developed to inspire entrepreneurs, educators,
or inventors to continue the promotion of Braille and tactile literacy for
blind and deafblind people worldwide. This prize can be granted for
innovative and accessible computer software applications, tactile hardware,
or curriculum that promotes Braille and/or tactile literacy. NBP encourages
all applicants to think outside the box to what can be used to help improve
the lives of blind people.
The winner of this prize will receive up to $10,000, which will help them to
continue to innovate in the fields of technology and education for blind
people. Frank Gibney and the Gibney Family Foundation helped fund and
establish this award in 2007, inspiring people to go beyond what was thought
possible.
Full application details and more information can be found at
<http://www.touchofgeniusprize.org> www.touchofgeniusprize.org. All
questions can be directed to my email, <mailto:tmcbride at nbp.org>
tmcbride at nbp.org. Thank you for your support!
Monitor Mart
The notices in this section have been edited for clarity, but we
can pass along only the information we were given. We are not responsible
for the accuracy of the statements made or the quality of the products for
sale.
Windows Power User Guide Available:
Windows Keyboard Power User Guide is a new book which will make users more
proficient in Windows, JAWS, and Word. MP3 and Word versions are available
for $15 each, or both for $25. For more information and to order, visit
<https://techforblind.us> https://techforblind.us.
We also want to make sure you know about “Top Tech Tidbits for Thursday,” a
free blindness-oriented adaptive technology newsletter that has been
published using email since 2004. If you’d like to join the other 6,000
people who receive it early Thursday mornings, visit
<http://flying-blind.com> http://flying-blind.com and click on the link that
says Sign-Up Here to Receive Flying Blind, LLC Publications.
For assistance signing up for the newsletter, questions, or welcome
feedback, please email Dean at <mailto:topdot at gmail.com> topdot at gmail.com.
----------
NFB Pledge
I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the National
Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for
the blind; to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to
abide by its constitution.
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