[Nfbwv-talk] May Braille Monitor

[Smyth, Charlene R]

The May edition of the Braille Monitor presents a fascinating examination of the effect of attitudes on both policy making and personal behavior.  Marc Maurer gave an address to the 2015 Jacobus tenBroek Law Symposium entitled Improving and Augmenting the ADA, Rehabilitation Act, and IDEAA Vision for the Next Twenty-Five Years: Disability and the Law of the Poor.  This address which is reprinted in the May Braille Monitor explains how both the attitudes of society and the attitudes of the disabled themselves will determine disability policy over the next 25 years.  Read this stimulating article to find out why Dr. Maurer thinks "the law should abandon the practice of adopting rights for disabled people without creating a corresponding set of remedies."

The lack of employment is one of the greatest problems that blind people face today.  Dick Davis continues the theme of the effect of attitudes in his article entitled Blind People and Talking Dogs.

Attitudes effect individual behavior.  Read My West Virginia Experience by Dr. Donald C. Capps to see what shaped his attitude for a lifetime of giving back to the NFB.  How did Ronald A. Owens acquire his positive attitude toward Braille?  Read Illiterate No More to find the answer to this question and to see how his attitude toward Braille developed.

The struggle of changing attitudes is challenging and difficult.  Patti Chang and Kelsey Nicolay describe the personal struggle and reward of changing attitudes.  Patti Chang's article is Jumping the Fire and Kelsey Nicolay's article is My Journey Toward Winning Friends and Influencing Others.

Changing what it means to be blind is a lofty goal, but what does it mean?  The attitudes that shape the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind are eloquently explained in The Barrier of the Visible Difference by Dr. Kenneth Jernigan.  The statistics presented in the article by Donna Hill, Is Literacy Really for Everyone?-The Numbers Tell a Different Story, should compel us to continue the work of the Federation.
Read, heed, and succeed.
Go to

https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm15/bm1505/bm1505tc.htm


Sharon Maneki


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