[NHLakesChapter] Has anyone listened to Election Information on NFB-NEWSLINE®?

Sat Nov 2 21:52:18 UTC 2024

Dana/Jean

NFB Newsline is, in fact, an excellent source of dynamic news for eligible subscribers to this service. It affords us an opportunity to receive news (and so many other items, including the weather, major national magazines, international newspapers and magazines, advertisements for major consumer outlets, and more) all from the comfort of your home, accessed by the simple, touch-tone telephone; your smartphone, iPhones and Android models, I believe; your laptop or desktop computer; Alexa using a smart-speaker or other device affiliated with Amazone's Alexa service; and several other methods of distribution.

But during election season (and not just big, truly momentous cycles like this one), but every two-year cycle that has National elections scheduled, the national administrators of the NFB Newsline program go to considerable detailed effort to curate a collection of all stories political in nature, placing these in one simple section, connected to the system's search function, so that subscribers are able to find anything on a candidate by conducting a search, which gives us access to significant information upon which to cast our votes. For me, this section, during this cycle, has been useful in helping to inform my opinion about some State and Local office races with which I was less familiar. I encourage people to examine the All-Politics section of NFB Newsline for the Blind within the next several days, if you have any remaining doubts about the responsible exercise of casting your ballot.

Clearly, this year the consequences of our National and State elections promise to have long-lasting and potentially deep cultural implications for the character of our country for years to come. I rarely offer suggestions/counsel/advice to my colleagues in the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), but on this occasion I will urge all of us (me included) to plan to exercise one of our cherished American privileges and cast your vote. I personally am unapologetically biased as to how I will cast my vote, though I will not undertake to influence you here, except to say that every person's vote (even if you are not in a "swing State) matters and matters a great deal.

The last thing I'll offer here is that while I served as Administrator of Services for the Blind and Vision-Impaired (SBVI( for New Hampshire, I advocated vigorously to and with the Governor's Committee on Disabilities, the entity through which the State appropriation is funneled through to be paid to Newsline for this invaluable national and local service, that the Governor's Committee, interested consumers, and others collaborate to take full advantage of the "local channel" to post anything unique to the "local channel" which would be of interest to the blind, low-vision, and those with diagnosed print disabilities in our State, such as statewide consumer news and announcements; SBVI services and special projects data; information from the Governor's Committee on Disability; data from Future Insight; the State Library for the Blind; Teachers of the Vision-Impaired (TVIs) within New Hampshire; potentially important developments from the State Independent Living Council (SILC); our one Independent Living center in New Hampshire, Granite State Independent Living Center (GSIL); all of the IL Part B recipients of funding; the Adaptive Disability Sports programs in New Hampshire; The Statewide Committee that addresses public, accessible transportation, the name of which I forget at present; The New Hampshire State Rehabilitation Council (SRC) and the equivalent SBVI Advisory Council that I revived when taking the Administrator's role in July 2019, and any other appropriate entity within our State which I have not itemized. Every State that has an NFB Newsline Service that is available to subscribers has this local channel, which can be sliced and diced in any number of ways to create sub-channels, that could be representative of many different organizations. The only challenge is that it requires some in-person work to receive the announcements from each identified entity, and to load these announcements to the appropriate sub-channel, but we never managed to get meaningful movement on this topic. I even offered to have SBVI take over the portion of administering the "local channels", without asking the Governor's Committee on Disability, to relinquish the minimal distinction that comes to an agency for having the privilege of managing the program in the State, at least allowing New Hampshire to maximize an accessible means of circulating information of interest to the qualified communities in New Hampshire. It might be an interesting and substantive program if the New Hampshire Affiliate of the NFB would initiate an advocacy campaign to promote the competent use of the "local channel" of Newsline for the Blind, without political regard of standing within each organization engaged with qualified constituents, and in collaboration with Chuck and his team at the Governor's Committee on Disability, so that New Hampshire could essentially have an accessible bulletin board of information from interested entities in New Hampshire serving blind, low-vision, and print-disabled people. It's an already paid-for service, the infrastructure is present, and the energy involved with keeping it current is minimal, so long as one possesses a basic level of computer competence. When I first moved to New Hampshire to take the job with the State's VR/IL agency that caters to blind and low-vision constituents, I checked out the NFB of New Hampshire "local channel", only to find a few NFB of New Hampshire State Convention announcements and agendas from either 2010 or 2012 (but certainly a long time ago) suggesting that somebody possessed the knowledge, at one point, to know how to administer this function of the NFB Newsline system. The one thing I got accomplished while advocating for change in the use of this "local channel" was to have these old items removed and the channel wiped clean, to facilitate a dialogue about how to re-structure this segment of the service. I haven't visited the "local channel" in a while, assuming that it remains under-used, but unless progress in this arena has been made since I left State employment in February 2023, I imagine that good work remains to be done. Perhaps following the election this Tuesday, this idea for a statewide advocacy effort could be taken up by the NFB of New Hampshire.

With Kind Regards,

Daniel B. Frye, JD.
(410) 241-7006 (Mobile)
(603) 223-1976 (Home)
47 Broadway
Concord, NH. 03301
Pronouns: He/Him/His
DBFrye0468 at Gmail.com (School E-Mail Address)

-----Original Message-----
From: NHLakesChapter <nhlakeschapter-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Jean Shiner via NHLakesChapter
Sent: Saturday, November 2, 2024 3:41 PM
To: 'NFB of New Hampshire Lakes Region Chapter List' <nhlakeschapter at nfbnet.org>
Cc: jean.shiner at comcast.net
Subject: Re: [NHLakesChapter] Has anyone listened to Election Information on NFB-NEWSLINE®?

Hi Dana,

This is also great news.  It's a way for us to learn about candidates using Newsline.  Give it a try.  

All The Best,
Jean Shiner

-----Original Message-----
From: NHLakesChapter <nhlakeschapter-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Dana Trahan via NHLakesChapter
Sent: Saturday, November 2, 2024 9:50 AM
To: NFB Lakes Region Email List <nhlakeschapter at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Dana Trahan <danatrahan at comcast.net>
Subject: [NHLakesChapter] Has anyone listened to Election Information on NFB-NEWSLINE®?

NFB of Colorado shared this on Facebook. Has anyone tried accessing this information on a phone call or using the mobile app? It would be great to hear what people think.

"NFB NEWSLINE is truly a dynamic news and information service for all blind and print-disabled people. Here is the latest example.

Election Information on NFB-NEWSLINE®:
We have added the All Politics Now publication to our Breaking News Online category on NFB-NEWSLINE. Additionally, we have implemented a candidate search option for the 2024 presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The searches are done across top newspapers, breaking news, international outlets, and magazines. To access this information via telephone, select option 1 from the main menu, then option 5 for the 2024 candidate searches. If using the NFB-NEWSLINE mobile app, go to the Information Sources tab, select "All Publications," and then "Candidate 2024 Searches." For subscribers using Web News on Demand, choose "Publications Organized Alphabetically" and select “2024 Candidate Searches.”

Sent from my iPhone
Find me on Facebook under Dana Skreslet Trahan ☺️

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