[Ohio-Talk] Thoughts on Zoom

[Barbara Shaidnagle]

Well said.  Remember, too, that the new generation of NFB'ers are more tech
savvy than us remaining dinosaurs.  Go with the floor be left behind.

When I was working as a pathology transceiver in Houston, whenever the
question was put forth, I always advocated to work from home.  After one of
the hurricanes that indeed happened.

On the subject on phones specifically, I had cause to upgrade my flip phone
when working with CVS on some sort of project I did.  Which is why I now
advocate for the android; it fits me as great as the IBM clone computers I
worked on as a medical/pathology transcriber.  My late husband Joe
Shaidnagle kept his flip phone was not interested in upgrading to anything;
he used it to read Newsline and to stream conventions in Orlando.  I
upgraded his phone and it is what I am using now to convey this.  It does
not have a SIM card, no second line, so I play WORDFEUD and word pearls on
it.  Ok.  Done.  Looking forward to our virtual convention which I will
probably call in to participate...

On Tue, May 26, 2020, 6:36 AM Eric Duffy via Ohio-Talk <ohio-talk at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

> I am not writing this for the purpose of a debate or a prolonged
> discussion. In fact, although I don’t moderate this list, my guess is that
> if we go in that direction the president will end the thread after a
> reasonable time.
>
> I write this because I think it is important for the membership to
> understand why decisions are made when we can bring clarity to a situation,
> and I think we can do it here. Change can always be hard for individuals
> and organizations. I remember when we began to move away from the cassette
> edition of the Buckeye Bulletin. The Board of Directors said that we would
> continue to record the newsletter on cassette  for as long as it was
> practical to do it. But there came a time when cassettes were harder to buy
> and our duplicator was breaking down. Deborah Kendrick then recorded one
> edition of the newsletter on CD. There were problems with that, the chief
> of which was the amount of time it took. But we said that we would make it
> possible for everyone who wanted it to have access to the Buckeye Bulletin.
> Tom Anderson was our poster child for this. Tom made it clear that he was
> not a computer user, and that he was not going to read the Bulletin by
> Email. The obvious solution was to put the newsletter on the Ohio
> information channel of NFB-NEWSLINE. Thus we have been doing that for
> years.
> What does all of that have to do with Zoom? Everything! We don’t make
> major changes in this organization without considering the needs of as many
> members as possible. We research, test, and research and test again. We do
> what we can to provide help and resources to help those who need it when
> adjusting to the change. The national organization began using Zoom when I
> was Director of Access Technology. We tested other platforms and found Zoom
> to be the most stable and non-visually accessible. We used Zoom for our
> Bell planning meetings in Ohio last summer. I used Zoom when trying to
> stream the state convention in 2018. There were problems with that, so we
> invested in hardware and used a brand new streaming system last convention.
>
> President Payne spent hours becoming familiar with Zoom and others of us
> did the same before we began to use it on a regular basis. We have offered
> training for those who wanted it. We made resources available. We have done
> all we can to make it clear that you can still use your phone and that all
> you have to do is get used to calling a different phone number and entering
> a different access code.
>
> Our national convention will be a virtual convention. This will allow more
> people to participate than ever before. How this will all come together, I
> am not sure. Which platforms will be used? I am not certain. Fortunately
> the responsibility for making such decisions is well beyond my pay grade.
> But I feel fairly safe in saying that Freeconferencecall.com <
> http://freeconferencecall.com/> won’t be one of those platforms.
>
> Services such as free conference call are getting harder for some people
> to get into either because of changes phone carriers have made or because
> of changes the services have made. What we do know right now is that Zoom
> is accessible in every way we need it to be.
>
> If you need help please reach out to president Payne or to other affiliate
> leaders. We are here to support you.
>
> Eric
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