[Brl-monitor] The Braille Monitor, November 2015
Brian Buhrow
buhrow at lothlorien.nfbcal.org
Fri Dec 4 10:11:32 PST 2015
[ Hello. I realize it's December 2015 and not November 2015. somehow, I
missed getting this out at the beginning of November. My sincerest
apologies. - Brian ]
BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 58, No. 10 November 2015
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive
(see reverse side) by the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: (410) 659-9314
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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
© 2015 by the National Federation of the Blind
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Vol. 58, No. 10 November 2015
Contents
Illustration: Effort and Planning: A Crucial Part of our Successful Mosaic
The Gift
by Debbie Wunder
Pushing the Limits: Changing the World through Big Ideas
by Eileen Bartholomew
Crafting Your Diamond: The Four Cs of Bringing Up Blind Children
by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
Leadership through Education: Raising Expectations, Improving Training, and
Innovating Opportunities
by Michael Yudin
Important Changes 2016 Washington Seminar Logistics
by Diane McGeorge
The Foundation of Our Federation
by Jeannie Massay
iBRAL is Back!
by Robert Gardner
Transforming the Training of Professionals in Education and Rehabilitation
for the Blind
by Edward Bell
The Joy of Getting a Summer Job
by Everett Elam
A Therapeutic Research Collaboration
by Anil Lewis
Increasing the Investment in Accessibility: Nonvisual Access in Microsoft
Products and Services
by John Jendrezak
Food for Thought about the BEPLT
by Sheryl Bass
Innovation and Accessibility: Creating Outstanding Customer Experiences at
Target
by Alan Wizemann
Raising Expectations: A Commitment to Full Participation in the Twenty-
First Century
by Christopher Lu
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
[PHOTO CAPTION: A view of the empty parking lot, each place an NFB member
will stand marked with an umbrella.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Members getting instructions from volunteers before
entering parking lot]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Members stand in marked places as more file in to fill the
mosaic]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Federationists stand, umbrellas at the ready, for the
signal to open and create the mosaic.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: View of the Guinness World Record umbrella mosaic from the
drone.]
Effort and Planning: A Crucial Part of our Successful Mosaic
We began planning meetings in the fall of 2014. This started by
working with an image of the parking lot captured from Google Earth to help
with the planning of our design. An order for 3,000 umbrellas was placed in
December 2014. We took pictures of the lot during a pre-convention visit in
May to assist with logistics. In both May and July we walked the parking
lot. The Rosen Centre Hotel closed the parking lot to its staff beginning
on July 2nd. A small team created a grid outline using spray chalk in the
parking lot on July 4th.
Test columns of dots were laid out on July 5th, the first of 3,280
dots to be sprayed.
Teams of fifteen continued with the spray chalk at 5 a.m. on both the
mornings of July 6th and 7th.
Work was scheduled for the evening of the 7th, but a particularly
angry Florida storm forced us to change plans.
About twenty folks helped place umbrellas at 5 a.m. on July 8th.
Our work plan had assignments for 113 staff and volunteers, but, as is
typical of NFB events, additional willing hands jumped in wherever needed.
It turned out we needed those hands as well to make up the mosaic.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Abbey Houchen stands next to the butterflies her mother
painted for her]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Abbey Houchen, Debbie Wunder, and Megan Wilson.]
The Gift
by Debbie Wunder
>From the Editor: Debbie Wunder is the mother of four, is my wife, and
together we live in Columbia, Missouri. She has long held the view that
blindness, while something that cannot be ignored, is not her most
significant characteristic. This message she has communicated to her family
by word and deed.
In this article Debbie commits to do something she is sure she can,
has second thoughts and emotional doubts, and looks for a way out. But what
she finds both uplifts and terrifies her-her children believe she is as
capable as she has always claimed, and they will expect no less from her,
even when self-doubt threatens to erode her confidence and immobilize her.
Incidentally, the little girl about to turn ten in this story celebrated
her twenty-first birthday on October 5, 2015. Here is Debbie's story:
All of our children's birthdays are special, but some more than
others. When my youngest daughter Abbey was about to turn ten, I asked her
to think hard about what she wanted on her special occasion. She said she
would be happy if we could redecorate her room, buy her some new clothes,
or get her a GameCube. "Which of those do you really want" was the question
I asked her, and she thought through the choices. She knew I wasn't
enthused about a GameCube, since I'd already warned her that her game time
could not cut into her reading time. She was old enough to know that winter
was coming and that new clothes were something she was likely to get
whether they were on her birthday list or not. Eventually she answered: "I
want to fix up my room and paint it in mixed colors." I immediately thought
about the cost of repainting. For a moment I felt sadness and regret for
offering something I might not be able to afford. But after my initial
shock I began to feel excited. Here is why: I have an addiction; it is not
to chocolate, drugs, or alcohol-well okay, maybe a slight addiction to
chocolate. But the addiction I am speaking of is HGTV, the Home and Garden
Television Network. I can spend hours watching programs such as Design on a
Dime, Trading Spaces, or just about any fix-it-up show they carry. One of
my strengths has always been arts and crafts. A wonderful possibility was
taking shape in my head and my heart: I could give my daughter something
more than a gift off a store shelf-I could give her a gift that showed my
love, my talent, and my creativity. Her tenth-birthday gift would be
something she would treasure for a long time to come. I decided that I
would do it on my own, my way of providing a very special gift to her.
I told Abbey that fixing up her room would be her present, and I
anxiously began to plan the project. We made a trip to the paint store to
choose her colors. I told her to pick three that would complement one
another. I already knew that her first choice would be some shade of pink.
I was right; she chose a color called "passionate pink," otherwise known as
Pepto-Bismol pink. The other two were a slightly lighter shade of pink and
purple. She asked what I was going to do with three different colors, and I
told her this would be part of her surprise.
From HGTV I learned that you need one wall to be the focal point. It
can contain a piece of artwork or furniture, or the focal point can be the
wall itself. I could not afford to buy new furniture, and neither did I
have an eye-popping piece of artwork, so it would have to be the painted
wall that made the room. I had a good idea what could make that wall the
focal point if only I could figure out how to do it: I remembered Abbey
telling me that one day she would like to travel with me to Mexico to see a
mountaintop that is filled with beautiful butterflies in the winter. This
provided the inspiration, but could I possibly paint a wall of butterflies?
Then it hit me: I realized I could use a large rubber stamp to stencil the
image. I used two of the colors Abbey had chosen, painting one half of the
butterfly in one color and the second half with the other. Those
contrasting colors would make the butterflies stand out.
When the weekend before her special day drew near, I went out and got
the other items I would need. I also arranged for Abbey to visit a friend
for a slumber party and made plans to paint her room.
The night before she left, Abbey began questioning me about how I was
going to redecorate. It was clear that she was skeptical but didn't want to
show it. Some of her skepticism was whether an adult could do the kind of
makeover a ten-year-old would want, but some was because my husband Gary
and I are blind. Painting is not something blind people typically do, and
Abbey was worried about what she would return to at the end of her weekend.
I reminded her that we did all kinds of things that others thought blind
people couldn't do and asked if I had ever disappointed her or broken a
promise. "No, Mommy," was her reply, but her tone was less confident than
her words. "Will Megan help you?" Megan is one of Abbey's older sisters,
and Abbey has always adored her, respected her judgment, and admired her
honesty.
"No, I am going to do the job myself, but of course Megan will want
to take a look once it is done, and we all know how Megan always gives her
honest opinion." I assured Abbey that I knew what I was doing, told her to
have a good weekend, and once again promised she'd be happy with her room
when she returned.
The initial steps were easy. The first thing I did was remove all the
switch plates and socket covers. I then taped around all of the woodwork,
door frames included. I probably used more tape than necessary, but I
wanted to protect the woodwork and thought that I might get to it faster
when I was painting than someone who could see. Then I put tape between the
walls and the ceiling. I put plastic on the floor, unwrapped the brushes
and the rollers, got out the cans of paint and a couple of paint trays, and
closed the door to the room I would soon turn into my daughter's dream
place.
But when it came time to open that paint, put it on the roller, and
start painting the wall, I fell apart inside. The thought of painting the
room energized me; the thought of taking that brush in hand and messing up
an already painted wall terrified me. Could I follow through to create
something worthy of my daughter's tenth birthday, or would I create a tenth
birthday memory that would shame us all? I sat down on a stool and began to
cry. I was a sweating, shaking, crying mess, and I couldn't think of any
easy way out of what I had committed to do.
Then my cell phone rang, and my older daughter Megan said she was
dropping by to see how the room was coming. I started to tell her I was at
my wits' end and was paralyzed by doubt, and then it came to me: God was
delivering a response to my unvoiced prayer. Megan was coming over. She
could help. I would do my share, but she would be there to do the hard
parts, to supervise my work, and to make sure I didn't mess things up. I
could still deliver on my promise, and no one would have to know how scared
I had been of failing.
When she arrived, Megan could see that I had done all the preparation
but hadn't yet started on the wall. I told her I was nervous about the
project, and I suggested we have a girl's night, order a pizza, laugh about
some memories and stories, catch up with one another, and together create a
gift her sister would love. She was not enthusiastic about spending the
evening together, reminding me that it was Friday and that she already had
plans with her friends. Again I began to feel panic, and it showed.
Noticing my imminent meltdown, Megan began to repeat back to me things I
had said to her since she was a baby. She reminded me that I had told her I
could do anything I set my mind to and that blindness only made the way I
did a thing different-not better, not worse, just different. She said that
I had always been as good as my word, that I had never let my family down,
and that she was so proud of the mom I was. She told me that there was no
way I'd let Abbey down, that I was perfectly capable of painting that room,
and that I needed to put myself back together, remember how much I loved to
do artsy craftsy things, and that, by the end of the weekend, we'd all have
something to treasure. I heard what she said, and, although they were nice
words that were exactly what I had dreamed she would one day say to me
about raising her, my fear held fast, and I begged her to stay and help.
After listening to my pathetic protests, Megan turned to me and said,
"Okay, I'll help you," and immediately she went for the paint can and the
roller. She dipped the roller into the can, and I gave a big sigh of relief
when I heard paint being applied to the wall. We would do this together. I
could hand her brushes and pour paint into the trays, but she could do the
painting, and we'd do a great job. But my elation was short-lived. The next
thing I heard was the roller being placed back in its tray and Megan
saying, "Okay, Mom. I've started it. It's your turn. Bye!"
I laughed, and in a shaking voice I said, "Oh Megan, don't tease me.
I don't think I can take it tonight."
"I'm not teasing," she said. "Mom, this is Friday night, and I have
plans. You told Abbey you could do this, and you can. You've been planning
it for two months. This is only paint; you can't break anything. Now get to
it, and I'll come by tomorrow to see how you're doing. Bye. Love you." With
a hug and a kiss, out the door she went.
Again I was alone, but now Abbey's wall, which had been an off-white
color, had a big pink stripe across it. There was no turning back.
Eventually I pulled myself together, thought about what Megan had said,
said a silent prayer for God's help, and started to paint. I painted all
that night and much of the next day. I used a specially-made stamp to place
the imprint of butterflies on the wall, being careful to ensure that each
went on at a slightly different angle to give the appearance of the
butterflies in flight. I had to be careful about their spacing since being
too close together or too far apart would ruin the intended effect.
When Saturday night came, I was a boiling mix of emotions: exhausted,
exhilarated, proud, scared, anxious for Megan to return and give me her
always painfully honest opinion, and afraid of what she might say. When she
entered the room, I felt as tense as I have ever felt. "Hey, Mom, it looks
great! This will be the best present ever. Abbey will be so excited."
Again I began to cry, but these were not tears of fear but tears of
relief. When Abbey came home on Sunday and looked at her room, the joy she
felt wasn't conveyed just in what she said but in her tone. She kept
saying, "Thank you, Mommy, oh thank you, Mommy. This is the best birthday
present ever!" After all the fear, all the anxiety, all the concern that I
had pushed too hard, promised too much, I felt supremely happy. There
wasn't one trace of surprise or amazement in her little voice-just
appreciation for a promised birthday gift that was exactly what she had
asked to receive. Again I cried. This time I shed tears of joy-I had given
my ten-year-old a gift she would remember for the rest of her life. I had
done what I said I would-just as she expected I would do.
We always tell people that blindness poses two problems: one is the
physical lack of sight, the other the reaction that we and others have to
being blind. A big part of what we do in the National Federation of the
Blind involves changing the attitudes of the public with the words we say
and the actions they can see, but it is hard to measure something as large
as a change in public acceptance. What we can more easily see is the
reality our children come to know as we tell them what we believe about
blindness, and they then compare those words with what they see day after
day and year after year. My daughter Megan believed what I told her about
the role blindness played in my life, and she accepted as true what I said
about being able to do anything. She then reflected or echoed back that
belief to me at a time when I was down on myself and was questioning
whether I had promised to do something beyond my capabilities. So certain
was she that I could succeed that she placed me on a road that ran in only
one direction-forward-and left me alone to navigate that road by myself.
The Bible tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive,
and I am a living example of that truth. To my daughter that newly
decorated room was something she enjoyed, treasured, and proudly showed her
friends. But soon she was no longer ten and wanted a bigger room
downstairs. Now she is in college, the newly decorated room a treasured but
distant memory. But for me the picture of that room will always remain in
my mind, and the accomplishment it represents often reminds me that I can
do more than I think I can, that I should encourage others to go beyond
what they think they can do, and that sometimes discomfort is a necessary
ingredient in finding the joy of real accomplishment. Blindness almost
stopped me from giving my youngest daughter the best gift I've ever given,
but it was my older daughter's faith, her belief in my ability, and her
reluctance to accept anything less than my best that has made this one of
the most treasured stories of my life.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Eileen Bartholomew]
Pushing the Limits: Changing the World through Big Ideas
by Eileen Bartholomew
>From the Editor: One of the most exciting presentations made by someone
from outside the organization occurred when Eileen Bartholomew from the
XPRIZE Foundation took the stage on Friday morning, July 10, 2015, to
address our seventy-fifth convention. We often tell people that success is
primarily about attitude, so it was interesting to hear the words of
another organization that holds this view. Here is what Ms. Bartholomew
said:
Thank you for that welcome, and I'm so glad to be here. At XPRIZE we
like to say, "The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy
idea." You know, the world needs a lot of crazy ideas, and never before has
the world been poised to take individuals and empower them to make those
crazy ideas the breakthroughs we need. The reason behind that is because of
exponential tools, business models, and a mindset that I know you all have
in this room.
I'd like to share a little bit about what we think is possible in the
coming years and decades ahead of us. But first, to do that, I want to talk
about a big problem with all of us. That is that we are pretty linear in
how we think about things. Our brain hasn't had an upgrade in about 50,000
years. We get up every morning, and we think that tomorrow is going to be
pretty much like it was yesterday, only that's really not the case. The
brain that we have is limited in our ability to understand that. There's
even a famous number called Dunbar's number, which is really the number of
relationships that you can keep track of and that's about 150. So for all
of you who have more than 150 friends on Facebook, you really only know
about 150 of them.
But the world and technology is exponential and global, and to give
you a sense of that, the world created more information in the time the
last speaker from Google spoke then we really have had in almost all of
human history. That is exponential.
What does exponential feel like? Well, I'll give you a brief exercise
to think about this. If you took ten steps linearly, you'd go about thirty
feet-one, two, three, four. If you took ten steps exponentially-one, two,
four, eight-you'd be all the way to the moon and back. Technology grows
exponentially, and it's really hard sometimes for us to know about that and
understand about that.
I want to give you an example of what exponential looks like. All of
you probably know Kodak, the famous photography company. In 2012, when it
was about a $26 billion dollar company employing one hundred thousand
people, it declared bankruptcy-a hundred year company gone basically
overnight. Its competitor in the same year, Instagram, a company that
captures moments and images and memories all over the world, had an IPO,
and it was worth $1 billion and only employed thirteen people. That is
exponential change. Kodak was known for creating the digital camera, but it
didn't take advantage of that, and it was instantaneously usurped
overnight. That is exponential change and exponential technology's impact.
As a result, the average lifespan of most companies today has gone
from about seventy years in the 1920s to less than fifteen today. What that
means is that in ten years about half of the Fortune 500 companies we know
today won't be around. Innovation is going to happen at the corporate
level; it's going to happen with individuals.
Why is this happening? I want to talk about some new, amazing tools,
many of which you may have heard about to help realize this future. There
is a little-known but important fact that is driving all of this: Moore's
law, the idea that every eighteen months the processing power of computers
will double. We've all seen the benefits of this; that's why we're all
carrying around small phones and not ginormous contraptions. But the world
is now going to see the impact of this, and what's going to be happening is
going to take us in an amazing direction.
Today we can process things at about the rate of a mouse brain. In
about ten more years we'll be able to process information at the rate of a
human brain. But in ten more years after that we will be able to process
information at the rate of every human brain on this planet, and, when that
happens, brilliant new things will occur.
So what is driving this? We are seeing advances in things such as
biotech, robotics, artificial intelligence, energy, medicine-changing what
it means to be human every day. Companies like: HLI (Human Longevity
Institute) are going to be taking every piece of medical data that exists
and trying to find a cure for individuals, not for groups of people;
companies like Rethink Robotics that are making humanoid-like robots that
have facial expressions and arms and legs-robots that you don't have to
program that you can simply train-you teach them to do things by showing
them how to do it, just like you would teach a child or teach a friend;
things like synthetic meats-we may no longer have to grow meat, we will
craft it in factories and breweries all around the world; things like
advances in healthcare. You know about five or six years ago the only
product you had to help you understand your health was a thermometer and a
telephone to call your doctor, but now we have millions of devices-Fitbits,
iPhones, Pulse oximeters, bringing health care to individuals. That is
going to be the patient of the future, not just the clinician of the
future. Companies like Matternet that are taking drone technology and are
able to craft the last mile of logistics in a space of just a few months'
time-in other words, getting things to remote villages in Africa can now be
a matter of delivery by drone, not by having to build roads and
infrastructure to do this. And, most importantly, things like 3-D printing
that are changing the way manufacturing happens and even personalized
development-cooking in your home.
These are the tools and technologies that are driving changes, and
they're pretty exciting, but they are only one part of the equation. The
next real piece is the new type of business models that are happening
because we are all connected online. What does that mean? Well right about
now there is about 25 percent of the planet that is connected to the
internet. Only a quarter of the possible minds are actually connected
online, but in the space of the next five or six years, that number is
going to grow to about 70 percent. That equates to about 3 billion new
minds coming online that have not had a voice in what we consume, create,
desire, demand, and legislate; when those minds come onboard, they are
going to want to be engaged and connected in really amazing ways, and we're
already starting to see that.
We have new business models like crowdfunding, crowd labor, and crowd
knowledge that are taking problems that before used to have to be solved by
governments and now are solved by individuals. You probably have all heard
of something called Kickstarter. [Applause] Kickstarter is democratizing
the way companies and individuals get access to capital and resources.
Companies like Oculus that have developed the Rift virtual reality goggles
that are going to be crafting the virtual worlds of tomorrow: they set out
to raise $200,000 on Kickstarter. They ended up raising $2.5 million. Less
than a year after that campaign, they were acquired by Facebook for over $2
billion. No longer will companies and individuals need to wait around for
financial markets to invest in their ideas. Individuals can now ask other
individuals to give them the resources to make this happen.
What about the future of work? There's a new model out there called
crowd labor, where individuals are asked to help participate in small
tasks. Consider a company called Gigwalk which is based out of San
Francisco, that pays people anywhere from one dollar to ten dollars to
perform tasks that used to take staffs and staffs of researchers and
companies-things like, go and see if a product is at the end of an aisle at
the local CVS. Or perhaps the assignment is to test out this new
application. Today almost $1 billion worth of gigs that before were the
responsibilities of companies are now happening on a one-to-one basis.
Individuals are now the new movers and shakers of the business economy.
What about creativity? Here is a great story from only two years ago:
the Super Bowl ads-those ginormous, expensive, frustratingly difficult, and
sometimes non-comical ideas-in 2013 the number twenty-four placed
commercial, which, by the way, was an advertisement for Speed Stick
Deodorant, was developed by a team of four people, not by a multi-tiered
corporation or a big advertising agency, not on a $500,000 budget or even a
$5 million budget. It was done for $14,000 by a group of four kids. That's
the new type of creativity and creation that's being allowed to happen
because of the connectivity of these exponential tools and technologies.
Even really hard challenges, things like finding Genghis Khan's tomb,
which, by the way, we haven't been able to figure that out for about 800
years-we're closer than ever before because a famous National Geographic
researcher realized that the research and archaeology community couldn't
find the answer to this. He turned to the entire collective crowd, and
almost 30,000 people helped him sift and sort through data to identify
fifty new sites that had never before been determined. They think that they
are pretty close to finding something that has eluded the experts for
almost 1,000 years.
These are the types of tools and technologies and business models
that are changing what's possible, but these are only just a start. Because
the third ingredient for making this new world possible is something that
every one of us has; it is so simple and yet so hard; it is a new mindset.
Most of the world looks at the world today and sees a lot of problems, sees
things that feel like they can't be fixed-and trust me, every major media
news network out there loves to talk about that. So whatever you call it
(CNN, the constant negative news network or whatever else it might be),
they are always talking about how bad things are, how difficult things are,
how it's harder than ever before to do that. But you know what's funny? Our
brain-the one that hasn't had an upgrade in 50,000 years-we're actually
wired to think and pay attention to negative news. We are wired to pay
attention to it almost ten times more than positive news. We've all
experienced that, right? You pay attention to a negative comment much more
often than you do a positive comment in your life. An abundant mindset
needs to be thought about today because the biggest problems we talk about
are actually the world's biggest business opportunities. A billion people
on the planet can't take a drink of water without risking their lives.
That's a great business opportunity. How can we bring tools and
technologies to make that not a reality?
In reality the world isn't getting worse; it's getting better, and
the data show it. There's a recent article in The Economist called "The End
of Poverty." In the last twenty years the number of people who have lived
below a dollar and a half a day, which is the international poverty line,
has been cut by half. Access to things like connectivity, energy, and water
is happening, and it's happening through these tools and technologies.
Right now your world is pretty darn safe. In primitive society almost 20
percent of the people died because of some form of violence. Today that's
down to 1/500th of what it used to be. We are safer than ever before; the
world isn't worse off; it's way better off. As a result, we need to think
about these problems differently.
I want to tell a little story about an abundant mindset, something
that I think really resonates with me and maybe something you'll take home
with you as well. Back in the 1840s when Napoleon III had a very important
diplomatic event happening, the King of Siam was to visit him, and of
course the entire kingdom wanted to layout its finery. So at the dinner
where the King of Siam was to be greeted, Napoleon's staff was to eat off
silverware. The King of Siam's staff was to eat off gold, but the king
himself was going to eat off aluminum plates-aluminum plates-because in
1840, aluminum, although very plentiful, was extremely rare in its purest
form. In fact it was so rare that it was reserved for the most royal of
Royals. Today, because we've invented a simple system that separates
aluminum from bauxite, which naturally occurs in nature, we throw it away.
Aluminum foil is a throwaway substance. Something that in decades past was
scarce, impossible, and rich is now available, plentiful, and in fact throw-
awayable.
The idea of changing your mindset about what is scarce versus what is
abundant can really happen through simple technological breakthroughs, and
it is that type of mindset that we have to bring to all of the world's
problems today.
So what do all of you think about scarcity in your lives or in the
world today? Do you think about diamonds? Diamonds are now being crafted in
the lab for about five dollars a carat. What about energy? A lot of people
talk about a lack of energy all around the world. More energy hits this
planet every day in solar rays than we can use in any given year at our
rate today. All we need to do is figure out how to tap into that solar
power, and we're seeing these changes happen-solar power's cost has come
down 50 percent in the last year; it's almost on parity with diesel
generation, and, when that happens, we will unlock a future of abundant
energy that will free us from a lot of issues around environmental concerns
and access to energy. It is a simple change that we need to have, and that
changes the mindset that we bring to it.
What about water? We know that water is not necessarily available
where it needs to be, but there are breakthroughs that are happening right
now in osmotic technologies, and things like Dean Kamen's SlingShot, where
you can literally put a SlingShot into a pool of anything that looks like
water and, for about the voltage required by a hair dryer, in a few minutes
you can have completely drinkable water-simple, simple things that are
changing the mindset of what's possible.
Again, we think that the day before something is a breakthrough, it's
a crazy idea, but we need to think exponentially, abundantly. We can't
think linearly and statically.
At XPRIZE we've crafted competitions to help try to change the
mindset of what is possible. A great example is that everybody knew in 1996
when we launched our first prize that only governments go to space, but we
didn't think that that was right, and we thought exponentially about what
was possible. In 2004 the first privately built spaceship went a hundred
kilometers up in the air. That is underpinning the Virgin Galactic
technology that may one day allow all of us to buy a ticket to go to space.
We ought to think exponentially, abundantly, to craft the future that
we think we can create. There are others around the world using prizes to
help do that. We think that's a great idea. One simple example: right now,
today, the Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation says there are about 7
million individuals who are paralyzed, and in a hundred years the only
thing we've been able to develop is a wheelchair. We think that should
change, and there are a lot of robotics companies around the world that
think that should change too. They are launching a Paralympic competition
in the fall of next year to take formerly paralyzed individuals, strap
prosthetics, bionics, and all kinds of great new advancements on them to
try to change what we think of in terms of disability. That type of
exponential and abundant thinking is what we need.
In closing I would like to ask all of you: where are you thinking
linearly, where you should be thinking exponentially? What do you think of
as scarce that, with a simple mindset, could be looked at as abundant, and
where are you attempting crazy ideas? Thank you.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Carlton Anne Cook Walker]
Crafting Your Diamond: The Four Cs of Bringing Up Blind Children
by Carlton Anne Cook Walker
>From the Editor: Carlton Anne Cook Walker is the immediate past president
of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children, an attorney, an
educator, and-most importantly-the mother of a blind daughter. She has
recently taken a job at the NFB Jernigan Institute as manager of Braille
educational programs. Here is what she said to parents attending the
seminar held at the 2015 national convention:
Good morning! Again, welcome! As president of the National
Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a proud division of the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB), I am eager to share with you over
this next week all that the Federation, including the NOPBC, has to offer.
First, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Carlton Anne
Cook Walker, and I am the mother of a blind fourteen-year-old, Anna
Catherine. In addition to serving as president of the NOPBC, I am a teacher
of students with blindness/visual impairment in South Central Pennsylvania,
and I am an attorney with my own solo law practice. Of all my roles, parent
is most important, and it will always be so. However, after faith and
family, the most important facet of my life is the Federation-the National
Federation of the Blind. For without the NFB and its Parents' Division, the
NOPBC, I would not have the information I need to be an effective parent
for Anna Catherine. Indeed, it is the education from and support of my
fellow Federationists-both in the Parents' Division and in the membership
at large-that has taught me how to provide my Anna Catherine the tools and
skills she needs to become the successful blind adult she has the right to
be.
You may have heard that the NFB is celebrating a diamond anniversary-
seventy-five years of the blind advocating for, supporting, and serving the
blind. Seventy-five years-and still going strong! On a personal level this
year's convention is the tenth for my daughter Anna Catherine and me. You
might know that the traditional gift for a seventy-fifth anniversary is the
diamond. We will encounter many of those this week. But guess what? The
tenth anniversary gift is also a diamond! Coincidence? I think not.
When my husband Stephen and I went to our first NFB convention in
Dallas, Texas, we thought that our "low vision" five-year-old would
probably be okay because she had some remaining vision. After just one week
of learning from parents and blind adults, listening to new ideas that made
sense, and seeing competent, successful blind adults with varying levels of
vision, we left with the knowledge that it would be our daughter's level of
blindness skills-not her residual vision-that would determine her chances
of future success.
Diamonds are created from a common element-carbon-which has been
subject to uncommon external pressures. Most natural diamonds were created
in the high-pressure environment of the mantle of the Earth (about ninety
miles deep) at temperatures of around 2,000 degrees Celsius and were
brought up toward the Earth's surface by deep source volcanic eruptions.
Other tiny, natural diamonds have been found where asteroids have hit the
Earth. The necessity for high temperatures and extremely high pressure
render natural diamonds a rare gemstone. As parents of blind children we
know how rare blindness is-there is a good reason it is called a low-
incidence disability.
Diamonds also come in many shapes, sizes, and colors-like our
children. Many people have an image of what a diamond-or a blind child-
looks like. While there will certainly be examples to fit the stereotype,
there are many more which do not.
The outside world often places value on diamonds in a manner
unrelated to their actual utility and functionality. But despite the
external differences highlighted by society, every diamond has a core
strength unmatched by any other gemstone. I know that our children, blind
or sighted, are the most precious gems we will ever encounter. Like
diamonds they are strong and resilient. And, like diamonds, they are often
judged on factors that are not related to their actual potential.
When shopping for diamonds, buyers are taught to focus upon the "four
Cs" of diamond buying: cut, carat, color, and clarity. With our precious
diamonds, our blind children, I submit that the four Cs of rearing a
successful blind child are: competence, confidence, creativity, and
community.
Competence
Like determining the cut of a diamond, the first step in rearing a
successful blind child is ensuring that child's competence. In what areas
should a blind child be competent? In all areas!
As I have mentioned, my blind daughter Anna Catherine has functional
vision. For some tasks her vision is quite functional; for others it is
not. In some circumstances ("perfect" ambient lighting, familiarity with an
area, etc.) her vision is more functional than it is in other
circumstances. Like Anna Catherine, blind children must be skilled in all
situations in which they find themselves, and the key to this is blindness
skills. For children with visual impairment/blindness, their vision is not
their strong suit. Asking a visually impaired/low vision/partially sighted
child to rely solely on that impaired/low/partial vision ensures that the
child's progress and success will be impaired/low/partial.
As a teacher of blind students I am tasked with performing assessments
on my students, part of which involves interviewing classroom teachers
about my students in their classrooms. Far too often I hear, "She's doing
great for a low vision student," or, "He's doing well considering his eye
issue." I know these teachers mean well, but I cringe whenever I hear them
describe my students with "for a" or "considering." My students need to
perform at their optimal levels, not "considering their visual impairment"
or "for a blind child," but their individual optimal levels period. And
it's my job to teach them the skills that will help them accomplish this-
blindness skills.
Blindness skills provide our children the tools they need to be
defined as individuals, not by their disabilities. Blindness skills include
Braille (all forms: literary, math, science, music, etc.); orientation and
mobility skills, including use of the long white cane and mobility in all
areas-on escalators, crossing streets, buying food at the snack bar by
themselves; technology skills, including nonvisual software, refreshable
Braille displays, and audio output; and nonvisual skills that help our
children maximize their independence-no matter if they are blind, with or
without additional disabilities.
This week you will hear about and experience a secondhand immersion
in many different blindness skills. You will witness efficient, confident
mobility with long white canes. You will hear brilliant, well-researched
sessions and speeches which were created and will be presented using
Braille and accessible technology. You will watch blind adults performing
everyday tasks without regard to their visual abilities and living their
lives just as you do-and as you want your children to. Most importantly,
you and your child will be enriched by learning the importance and secrets
of the blindness skills you will experience here this week.
Every child deserves to have the skills and tools to achieve all that
s/he can achieve. Anna Catherine's success, like that of your child, will
be determined by what she can do, not by what she can see. This basic
competence is the first "C" necessary for preparing a blind child for
lifelong success. And you will find a multitude of opportunities to gain
information about and practice blindness skills at the NOPBC conference as
well as at the NFB convention for the entire week.
Confidence
The next vital "C" for all children is confidence. While confidence
is important to sighted children, it is probably even more important to
blind children. Blindness is a low incidence disability, particularly in
children, so blind children may have few same-age peers in their home
communities. This can be isolating and can make it difficult for blind
children to accurately gauge their levels of accomplishment.
For example, many blind children are bombarded with people telling
them what they can't do because they are blind. Alternatively, they might
hear how amazing they are for performing tasks which are both mundane and
come easily to them. Both of these environments can erode the self-
confidence of a blind child. In neither case may the blind child experience
the opportunity to try, fail, and try again-the very experiences which
build learning and self-confidence. A child in the former environment may
never be permitted to stretch into new areas, and a child in the latter
environment will never feel the need to do so. In both cases these
children's wings are clipped: they will never walk to and from school, cook
a meal, or gain other skills of independent living, no matter how much they
achieve academically.
Confidence is not something that can be taught or given. Confidence
comes from within. Our children deserve to have the confidence to know that
they can do-or figure out how to do-anything they need. Our children
deserve to have quality instruction in Braille, long white cane skills,
technology, and independent living skills. Will all of this instruction
occur in the school building? No. It cannot. As parents we have the right
and the duty to support our children in their acquisition of blindness
skills. I knew this intuitively ten years ago, but as a sighted adult whose
child is the first blind person I'd ever met, how could I do this? Didn't I
have to rely on the school-after all, they are the experts.
No. You, as a parent, are the expert on your child. Blind adults, who
have learned, become proficient in, and used blindness skills every single
day are experts. School officials have a great deal to share, and they may
be experts, but they are not the experts. Instruction in skills leads to
competence; the opportunity to use and master these skills instills
confidence. Please do not hesitate to take advantage of the competent,
caring blind adults you will encounter everyday here, and connect with
Federationists in your own state. A strong network of experts in the home,
in the community, and at school and the high level of expectations they
will bring will provide your child a fertile field in which confidence may
grow every single day.
Creativity
Diamond buying's third "C" is color, and my third "C" is creativity.
Like color, creativity is both unimportant and vitally important.
In diamonds, the color is irrelevant to actual industrial utility.
However, the color of a diamond can significantly affect its value as a
gemstone, and many people have strong opinions about diamond color (hating
or loving colored versus clear diamonds).
In the lives of blind children, creativity is too often pushed off to
the side in favor of academics. So many blind children are pulled from art
and music for instructional time. Can you believe it? Art and music? These
subjects are vital to the development of a well-rounded person. The lessons
learned in the creative arts spark innovative thought processes that will
help children overcome both academic and real-life challenges.
Another obstacle to creativity is the pursuit of perfection. Too often
children, especially blind children, are not allowed to fail. They are not
allowed to experiment and find that their ideas didn't work that time. This
robs them of the opportunity to problem solve to determine what they might
do differently to achieve a different result. In the words of Eleanor
Roosevelt, I encourage you and your children to "Do one thing every day
that scares you." Today during our concurrent sessions, ask a question no
matter how scary it might seem at first. Tomorrow morning your one thing
might be a cane walk under sleepshades with your child. This week, go to
the exhibit hall and experiment with some of the multitude of devices, both
high-tech and low-tech, even if you don't know what they do. In fact,
explore a device with your child, and guess at what it does.
Once you encourage imagination and make it okay to be wrong, you may
be quite surprised at what ideas your child comes up with. This is the
beauty of creativity in action. Creativity cannot be measured on a
standardized test, but its value outweighs that of any test. First, your
blind child gains competence and confidence in blindness skills. Then you
help nurture the creativity that will serve your child for a lifetime.
These three "C"s, competence, confidence, and creativity are great. And
we're almost there, but not quite.
Community
The fourth "C" in crafting our diamonds is community. Wonderful
blindness skills and terrific academic achievement are of little
consequence if a blind adult merely goes to work, goes home, and repeats
the cycle day after day after day. An important part of all of our lives is
our interaction with others.
Many blind children are always on the receiving end and do not have
the opportunity to serve others at all. Each of us needs to be needed, and
each of us needs to have something to give. No matter your child's age, he
or she can give back. Maybe your child will make a "Thinking of You" card
for someone in a nursing home or a soldier overseas. Maybe your child can
volunteer to read (in Braille, of course) to other children. Maybe your
child makes lunch for others at a local soup kitchen. It doesn't matter how
your child uses blindness skills to give back to the community; it matters
that your child does it. Indeed, this last "C," community, completes the
circle.
Welcome to the Family
Speaking of community, please know that you are a most welcome part
of our community. As a member of the National Organization of Parents of
Blind Children you are a part of an amazing community-actually, a family.
Tonight, please come to our family hospitality night and talk to someone
you don't know yet. This week, go up to a blind adult and introduce
yourself. Here in the National Federation of the Blind, you won't find any
strangers-just friends you haven't met yet.
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Michael Yudin]
Leadership through Education: Raising Expectations, Improving Training, and
Innovating Opportunities
by Michael Yudin
>From the Editor: Michael Yudin is a former chairman of the United States
Access Board and at the time of the 2015 National Convention had just been
appointed as the assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education
and Rehabilitative Services at the United States Department of Education.
Here is what he said to the convention on Friday afternoon, July 10:
Good afternoon, everyone. How are you? I am truly honored to be
here, President Riccobono, with Dr. Maurer, Jim Gashel, and my partner
Sachin there whom I have the pleasure of serving as his vice chair at the
US Access Board. Congratulations, everyone; congratulations on your seventy-
fifth anniversary. It is truly amazing-the work that you all do here-and I
am honored-I am honored to address you today. The work that you do around
raising expectations, around securing enduring equity, and removing
barriers and creating opportunities for blind and low-vision people in this
country is so incredibly important. I just want to say to the young people
here-and I know there are a bunch of you here today-that your success
reflects the fundamental belief in this country that, if you give a child
the opportunity to learn, he or she can achieve anything; that, if you aim
high, there are no limits; and that your success is our success as a
nation.
About fifty years ago President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the
original Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (otherwise known as
ESEA), and it ensured that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds had the same
kinds of educational opportunities as their more affluent peers. When he
signed that law, he said that he believed that no law he had signed or
would ever sign would mean more to the future of America. He set full
educational opportunity as our first national goal. But we all know that
takes work; it takes real work to make that opportunity real.
If you truly believe that all of our children deserve that kind of
opportunity, then our collective work becomes extraordinarily clear. We
know that, when families and educators and community leaders work together,
they can unlock the great vaults of opportunity of this nation, to echo the
words of Dr. King from the March on Washington. We know that we have to
work to make sure that that opportunity is not just a possibility, but that
it's a promise. We know that we've made enormous progress in those fifty
years since Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act. We have passed the IDEA and the ADA. We know that forty or fifty years
ago millions of kids with disabilities were denied access to education. We
know we've made an enormous amount of progress. We know that today a
majority of kids with disabilities spend about 80 percent of their time in
the general classroom. We know that today African-American and Latino nine-
year-old students succeed in math at about the same level that their
thirteen-year-old peers did in the 1970s. Today dropout rates are down
significantly, and high school graduation rates have soared in recent years
for all students. Just since 2008 alone, college enrollment by black and
Latino students has grown by more than a million. That's a big deal,
particularly because many of these young people are first-generation
college-goers.
But clearly our work is not done. The achievement and opportunity
gaps are pernicious, and they are persistent. For too many kids,
circumstances of birth remain a barrier to opportunity; the odds are
stacked. Opportunity gaps begin early, often at birth, and they compound
over time, becoming harder and harder to bridge. Too many kids drop out of
school. Too few kids go on to college, too many are underemployed or
unemployed, and far too many end up in jail. Our work will not be done
until we ensure that that opportunity is again not just a possibility but a
promise. You know the president of the United States, President Obama, has
said that there is nothing, not a single thing, that is more important to
the future of America than whether or not young people all across this
country can achieve their dreams [Applause]. And that's why we're all here
today. Because, particularly for the young people, particularly because as
the president says, "We believe in the idea that no matter who you are, no
matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what
your circumstance, if you work hard, if you take responsibility, then
America is the place where you can make something of your lives, that we
care about you, and that we believe in you."
So how are we going to get to these goals? I think that there are
three things-and I know that we're running short on time; I could talk all
day, I won't-but there are three things: breaking down barriers, ensuring
that students and families and educators have the tools they need to be
successful, and identifying opportunities and exploiting them so that we
ensure kids' success.
First barrier: low expectations. We must change the culture of
expectations in this country [Applause]. Too many parents-I've heard it,
you all know it-too many parents hear from their doctors, from their kids'
teachers, "I'm sorry, your kid's not going to/your kid can't/your kid
won't." It is not a parent's expectation of their child [Applause]. Their
expectation is, "My kid can/my kid will/my kid is able to succeed." We know
from research that high expectations and access to the general curriculum
actually make a difference. We know that teachers' expectations on a kid
actually make a difference in their performance in reading and math. So
again we need to change the culture of expectations; that's the first
barrier. We also need to begin focusing on results in the education field,
particularly in special ed. We have spent so many years focusing on
compliance and ensuring procedural safeguards that are critically important
in special education, but we haven't focused enough on results. It's really
important to focus again on these procedural safeguards and compliance with
the law-it is absolutely necessary. But if you look at how kids are doing
in reading and math and graduating, students with disabilities have among
the lowest performance outcomes out of all subgroups of kids. We need to
change that focus and also look at results and outcomes.
We also know that there is inadequate access to Braille. We know that
from parents and advocates of blind children. We know that numbers of
students receiving education and instruction in Braille have decreased
significantly over the past several decades despite years of research that
has shown that Braille is a very effective reading and writing medium for
many students who are blind or visually impaired, including heightened self-
esteem and increased likelihood of productive employment. That's why it's
important for us at the Department of Education to issue guidance to remind
states and local school districts of the importance of Braille instruction
as a literacy tool for blind and visually impaired students and to clarify
the circumstances in which Braille instruction should be provided. I'm
going to quote the law. The law says that "In the case of a child who is
blind or visually impaired, the IEP team must provide for instruction in
Braille and the use of Braille unless the IEP team determines, after an
evaluation of the child's reading and writing skills, their needs, and
appropriate reading and writing media, including an evaluation of the
child's future needs for instruction in or use of Braille, that instruction
or use is not appropriate for the child." This requirement of course
applies to kids as they enter kindergarten, as well as children who will
benefit from Braille later on because they face the prospect of future
vision loss later on in their careers.
Accessibility-the attorney general [Maura Healy of Massachusetts]
talked about accessibility. We know that access to information and
technology is so critical. Our Department of Justice, our Office of Civil
Rights has issued a series of guidances, has taken some very active roles
in ensuring that colleges and universities ensure that emerging technology
is accessible to individuals with disabilities, including those with visual
impairments and other impairments that make it difficult to access printed
materials. They must ensure that the technology is implemented in a way
that affords individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to
participate and benefit from the technology.
We explained that under the federal civil rights laws blind students
must be afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in
the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as sighted students with
substantially equivalent ease of use. Relying on these principles, our
Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice-resolved complaints
filed by the National Federation of the Blind regarding universities that
were asking or requiring students to use the Kindle DX. Those universities
agreed not to use ebook readers that are not fully accessible to
individuals who are blind or have low vision unless the universities
provide reasonable accommodations so that a student can acquire the same
information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services
as sighted students with substantially equivalent ease of use. We've
actually also taken this guidance and made sure that everybody understands
that applies to elementary and secondary schools as well.
We have engaged in a number of enforcement actions requiring equal
access to school websites and online resources: University of Cincinnati,
Youngstown State University, and the University of Montana at Missoula.
These all say that technologies, including websites, online course
registration, library database materials, video classroom clickers,
discussion boards, and electronic textbooks must be accessible. Just last
month our department and the Department of Justice filed a statement of
interest in litigation the National Association of the Deaf filed against
MIT and Harvard, reiterating that Section 504 and the ADA apply to your
online content.
Effective communications-we issued guidance just a year or so ago
regarding insuring that educational agencies understand their requirements
under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as IDEA, to reinforce
that effective communication requires schools to ensure that students with
disabilities receive communication that is as effective as communication
with others through the provision of appropriate auxiliary aids and
services.
I'm going to run out of time, but I want to talk about tools and
Bookshare. You all know about Bookshare, right? [Cheers] It converts
instructional materials into accessible formats. We have over twenty-eight
personnel development prep programs that are providing supports to train
teachers on the way to provide instruction to kids in Braille. Technology-
creating and disseminating a mobile app-the Braille Challenge mobile app-
incorporating evidence-based strategies. Media services: video on demand TV
programming is now accessible for thousands of students with visual or
hearing disabilities. The Accessible Television Portal Project opens access
to free video on demand children's television program for thousands of
students who are blind, visually impaired, deaf, or hard of hearing. And
finally, just one more quick thing-Mister President, I promise you I will
leave-two things I want to say:
Randolph-Sheppard-Randolph-Sheppard is doing incredible work. That
program in 2013 generated in excess of $708 million in gross sales, had a
nationwide average annual income of $56,000, and employed over 14,600
individuals. Randolph-Sheppard programs around the country are doing
incredibly innovative work. They're working with private industries-the
state of Illinois actually is contracted with the Randolph-Sheppard program
to operate the cottages at Carlyle Lake. It is the largest campground in
the state of Illinois, offering services that include lodging, a swimming
pool that will accommodate two hundred people, a camp store, a laundromat,
and vending machines. The state of Georgia's state licensing agency is
looking at having blind vendors work food trucks. There is so much
innovation that is going on in the Randolph-Sheppard program, and I urge
you to work with our young people, mentor them, and show them how they can
take advantage of these opportunities.
Finally, the last thing I want to say and before I get the hook is
about the WIOA, the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. It provides so
much opportunity to ensure that individuals with disabilities have the
supports and the services and the skills and the training they need to
engage in high-quality, competitive, integrated employment. There are so
many really important issues to talk about focusing on transition and
services to youth: limitations on sub-minimum wage, working with employers,
making sure that VR counselors understand the skills that are necessary to
meet the demands of the economy, and creating a seamless, accessible
workforce delivery system that is physically and programatically accessible
to all. I'm going to wrap up and just say that breaking down barriers,
creating opportunities, and making sure that folks have the tools that they
need is critical. The fundamental belief that, if you give a child a
meaningful opportunity to learn, they will succeed is all-important. Equity
in education is a core American value; kids must have the chance to learn
and achieve; education must provide a path to a thriving middle class for
all who are willing to work hard. Our national identity and our economic
strength depend on it. Thank you so much; I'm honored to be here.
----------
Important Changes
2016 Washington Seminar Logistics
by Diane McGeorge
>From the Editor: For many years now Diane McGeorge has been the coordinator
who works with the hotel to see that we get room reservations and meeting
rooms for our annual Washington Seminar. With renovations and staff changes
that have occurred at the Holiday Inn Capital, Diane writes to inform
readers of the Braille Monitor about how we will now handle making room
reservations and other important matters. Here is what she has to say:
This message is to advise you that Washington Seminar will be held
January 24-28, 2016, with the Great Gathering In taking place on Monday,
January 25. Additionally, I wanted to inform you that I will no longer be
managing reservations for this event. With the Holiday Inn Capitol's
progressive policy changes and renovations having been completed, it seemed
like a natural progression that we turn the reservations over to the hotel.
We no longer need to document special requests such as smoking or non-
smoking rooms, or the need for refrigerators in rooms. We may no longer
request rollaway beds since the rooms now have queen beds and can no longer
accommodate rollaways.
The reservation process has become very standard, requiring check-in
and check-out dates only, just as you experience with national conventions.
This process will allow you to have full control of your reservations and
any changes you need to make.
You can now reserve a room at the Holiday Inn Capitol (550 C Street,
SW, Washington, DC 20024) for Washington Seminar for check-in beginning
Saturday, January 23, 2016, check-out Friday, January 29, 2016. The rate is
$184.00 per night. This rate does not include DC sales tax, currently 14.5
percent. You may begin booking reservations directly online at:
<www.nfb.org/ws-hotel>. You may also make reservations by calling (877) 572-
6951 and referencing booking code N9B. Credit card information is needed at
time of reservation. Individual cancellation policy is that you must cancel
seventy-two hours prior to date of arrival to avoid one night's room plus
tax cancellation charge on the credit card provided. Please call (877) 572-
6951 and reference your confirmation number. Please obtain a cancellation
number when cancelling a reservation. The firm deadline date to make a
reservation is Monday, December 21, 2015. Reservation requests received
after the deadline date will be subject to availability and the hotel's
prevailing rate.
If you wish to hold a special meeting during the Washington Seminar,
please email Lisa Bonderson at <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 about your meeting needs by December 10, 2015.
Lisa and I will always be available to help you with any problems you
might experience with this new system of booking your hotel reservations,
but we have worked closely with the hotel staff, and they are looking
forward to working with each affiliate or group wishing to make
reservations.
See you in Washington!
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Jeannie Massay]
The Foundation of Our Federation
by Jeannie Massay
From the Editor: Jeannie Massay is a member of the National
Federation of the Blind Board of Directors, the state president of the
National Federation of the Blind of Oklahoma, and she works as a Licensed
Professional Counselor in her newly established private practice,
addressing mental health and behavioral concerns. In this article she
writes in her capacity as the chairman of the National Federation of the
Blind Membership Committee, and here is what she says:
What did you think of when you read the title of this article?
Perhaps you thought of one or more of our leaders in the organized blind
movement who have been visibly active over the years. I too think of
President Riccobono, Dr. Maurer, Dr. Jernigan, Barbara Pierce, Joanne
Wilson, Dianne McGeorge, and countless others. They are all leaders in our
movement and have all played and continue to play vital roles in the
Federation today. I believe that the most important decision that they all
made as blind people was to join and become active members in the National
Federation of the Blind. Without that pivotal decision they would not be
the people they have become, nor would our beloved organization, which many
of us call family, be the leading force in blindness that it is today.
You may have heard me or others say that the National Federation of
the Blind is a membership-driven organization. What exactly does that mean?
In simple terms it means that without our members, without you and without
me, the National Federation of the Blind would not have the collective
voice to drive change in seeking equality in education and employment, the
collective action to facilitate changes in legislation that bring about
civil rights equality, the power to make sure that blind parents don't have
their children removed solely on the basis of their being blind-I could go
on. Without members there would be no Federation.
Now let me go back to the title of this article-The Foundation of the
Federation. When President Riccobono asked me to chair the membership
committee, I accepted the challenge and then began thinking back over the
years that I have been a part of the Federation. It occurred to me that no
one ever really asked me to join. I paid my dues, and that was that. I then
began to think about the many individuals I have invited to local chapter
meetings or to our affiliate and national conventions. I had an interesting
epiphany: I never really asked any of them to join.
It has become clear to me that, while we are very passionate about
what we do, we are not always focused on finding blind people wherever they
may be and then bringing them into the family by actively asking them,
"Please join us; we need your help." I know of many blind people in
Oklahoma and across the nation who do not yet understand what the
Federation can bring to their lives, so we need to help them discover what
being a member of the organization can do for them. We are living the lives
that we want, and this is why we boldly affirm and must share what we have
learned: that blindness is not the characteristic that defines us and that
together we must address those obstacles that stand between us and living
the lives we want. The Federation found me where I was and took me to where
I could believe in myself again. I fervently want this for every blind
person. Don't you?
At our national convention held in July of this year, the membership
committee held a meeting that was exciting! The room was packed. The
meeting was dynamic, interesting, and participants left with real examples
of how to bring in new members. Six speakers made presentations about what
they have done and are doing to bring the positive message of the
Federation to blind people and their families and friends. Beyond bringing
the message, they explained how they are working on bringing these men and
women into the Federation family.
The speakers (listed here in no particular order) were Amy
Porterfield from Arizona, Lisamaria Martinez from California, Shawn
Callaway from the District of Columbia, Jimmy Boehm from Tennessee, Mary Jo
Hartle from Maryland, and Jedi Moerke from Oklahoma. Each speaker
enthusiastically came to share his or her secrets about how they are
growing our Federation family.
Lisamaria told us about an event called "Discover You" where NFB of
California members spoke about and demonstrated technology, discussed
employment, promoted sports and recreation, and shared tips and tricks
about being blind parents. The event brought in more than one hundred
attendees from all over the Bay area. Members from several chapters came
together to telephone every name on any list they could get and to visit
agencies who regularly work with blind people. This really paid off. She
said, "We partnered with the Lighthouse to use their facility. They also
helped out by adding to our list of presenters and by chipping in for the
meals." Another comment was that the California affiliate board's decision
to help members get to the state convention was a tremendous benefit in
bringing them to the transformative experience a convention can represent.
The NFBCA Board voted to charter buses from different parts of the state to
encourage and make financially feasible the opportunity to attend. The
newly found members were encouraged to attend a national convention. We all
know how important this gathering can be in showing new people the big
picture through highlighting all we do, but what is sometimes overlooked is
how much stronger we become by spending time together.
The idea of getting new members to attend state affiliate and
national conventions seems to be a solid strategy that is shared by many
affiliates and for good reason. Amy Porterfield from Arizona spoke about
the Membership Recruitment and Engagement Committee for the affiliate. Amy
said, "We aim to bring in new members and help find a lasting role for them
in an area where they both bring and feel value. We have a very diverse
spectrum of members on our committee, including members from each chapter
and division. We also include members with a range of experience in the
Federation and with a wide range of interests." In order to bring this
concept to all chapters in the affiliate the NFBA Membership Recruitment
and Engagement committee developed a traveling road show that visited all
local chapters in Arizona. Every meeting included a philosophy/membership
training session that allowed new members to learn about us, while
encouraging our more established membership to welcome and mentor new
members. Amy's final remark about membership recruitment and engagement was
this, "The NFBA affiliate relies heavily on all the branding and messaging
that is provided by our national office and board. We find that the one-
minute message is a vital element in educating others as well as our other
tools. The value statement is foundational and reminds us about why we are
spreading the Federation philosophy."
Shawn Callaway, president of the National Federation of the Blind of
the District of Columbia delivered a similar message. He stressed how
important it is that we create opportunities to meet blind people who can
use the information we possess about the adjustment to blindness and who
have not had the opportunity to meet us and hear our message of hope. The
DC Affiliate planned an event in cooperation with the DC Independent Living
Council. This event, as did ones mentioned earlier, brought in many new
faces. Shawn proudly announced that the DC chapter would soon surpass one
hundred dues-paying members.
Jimmy Boehm, membership chair in the Tennessee affiliate, also spoke
passionately on the necessity of finding blind people where they are and
bringing the message of the Federation to them. Jimmy and others in the
Tennessee affiliate have begun efforts at finding blind college students by
organizing a chapter on campus and having official chapter meetings by
applying to be a campus-recognized organization. By doing so, the chapter
was able to secure funding for members to attend the Tennessee affiliate
convention and funding to assist members in attending the national
convention this year.
"Growing our movement requires that we not only meet people where
they are, but that we provide them needed information enabling them to move
forward on their journeys toward living the lives they want," said Jedi
Moerke, president of the T-Town Chapter of the National Federation of the
Blind of Oklahoma. She went on to describe an event planned and executed by
the chapter. "Last October our chapter held a seminar for local vocational
rehabilitation consumers. The half-day seminar covered a variety of
important topics including the value of blindness training featuring high
expectations and an empowering curriculum; a variety of everyday jobs blind
people do; the steps to the rehabilitation process; advocacy in the
rehabilitation process; and an opportunity to hear from executive agency
leadership regarding available services and the direction in which our
agency is headed. They heard from real blind people who went to training,
got jobs, and are leading fulfilling lives. We expected at least twenty-
five participants. We had double that number in our audience! Some
participants joined our chapter, and others continue to remain in contact
with us. Many attended our most recent state convention."
No report of our convention meeting would be complete without
mentioning the comments of Mary Jo Hartle during her presentation. She is
the president of the newly formed chapter in the Greater Baltimore area.
Mary Jo said, "Our chapter meets on a weekday evening closer to the area
that we live in. We were coming to the National Center for the Blind for
the chapter meetings on Saturdays, but it took us over an hour one way to
get to the meeting and another to get back home. With kids it just wasn't
making sense for us. We decided to organize a second chapter so that
members would have a choice of meeting days, times, and locations. Things
have worked out really well. Our chapter is growing, and our original
chapter in Baltimore has not diminished in size. This presents a growth
opportunity that we need to look into wherever we have chapters in large
cities. We can find many more people in this manner."
In all of the presentations summarized above, you will note a shared
theme: that we must find people where they are. We then love them into the
Federation family by educating and helping them to discover that blindness
is not what holds them back. They can live the lives they want and we, the
members of their new family, are standing beside them every step of the
way. We continue the forward momentum of the Federation by finding blind
people and asking them to join our family. To help perspective members
learn more about us, tell them about our new member homepage at
<www.nfb.org/how-join>, but always remember that no webpage or piece of
literature can substitute for the personal contact of a friend, mentor, and
Federation family member.
Wherever we find new members to grow the Federation, we must begin
and keep the momentum going. Let's go build the Federation!
----------
Consider a Charitable Gift
Making a charitable gift can be one of the most satisfying
experiences in life. Each year millions of people contribute their time,
talent, and treasure to charitable organizations. When you plan for a gift
to the National Federation of the Blind, you are not just making a
donation; you are leaving a legacy that insures a future for blind people
throughout the country. Special giving programs are available through the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB).
Points to Consider When Making a Gift to the National Federation of the
Blind
. Will my gift serve to advance the mission of the NFB?
. Am I giving the most appropriate asset?
. Have I selected the best way to make my gift?
. Have I considered the tax consequences of my gift?
. Have I sought counsel from a competent advisor?
. Have I talked to the NFB about my gift?
Benefits of Making a Gift to the NFB
. Helping the NFB fulfill its mission
. Receiving income tax savings through a charitable deduction
. Making capital gain tax savings on contribution of some appreciated
gifts
. Providing retained payments for the life of a donor or other
beneficiaries
. Eliminating federal estate tax in certain situations
. Reducing estate settlement cost
Your Gift Will Help Us
. Make the study of science and math a real possibility for blind
children
. Provide hope and training for seniors losing vision
. Promote state and chapter programs and provide information that will
educate blind people
. Advance technology helpful to the blind
. Create a state-of-the-art library on blindness
. Train and inspire professionals working with the blind
. Provide critical information to parents of blind children
. Mentor blind people trying to find jobs
Your gift makes you a part of the NFB dream!
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Robert Gardner]
iBRAL IS Back!
by Robert Gardner
>From the Editor: Robert Gardner is a man of tremendous accomplishment. He
was trained and worked as a mechanical engineer, and when he lost his
vision, he simply figured out on his own the alternative techniques he
would need to do his job. On retirement he decided that he had the time to
really learn blindness skills, so off to BLIND, Incorporated he went. He
learned Braille but soon realized that he could use the discipline of other
people to help him maintain and increase his speed. Readers may remember an
article he wrote that appeared in the October 2010 issue of this magazine
entitled "We Are Able." Here is what Bob has to say about a reading contest
for young people:
iBral? No, we're not talking about iPad or iTunes, we're talking
about iBRAL. Say hello to the Illinois Braille Readers Are Leaders, or
iBRAL, contest for kids.
For the second year the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois
(NFBI) has run its own Braille reading contest for kids within the state.
And once again the response to our contest to promote the reading of
Braille by school children was fantastic. Last year (2013-14), we had
twenty-six applicants, and this year (2014-15), we had thirty-two. These
ranged from a first grader all the way to students in the twelfth grade.
We have been happy with the enthusiastic response to our contest,
reflecting the interest in Braille by blind and visually impaired children
in Illinois. It also shows how throwing in a little competition can
increase that interest. For example, one mother wrote on a registration
form, "Thank you so much for organizing this event in Illinois. The iBRAL
contest was the single biggest motivator for my son to really work on his
Braille skills."
Another typical comment on a registration form was received from a
teacher of the visually impaired (TVI). She wrote, "This is my first
student to take the Braille Challenge, and we are both super excited!"
Another TVI wrote at the end of iBRAL: "I have attached my students'
reading logs. They enjoyed participating in the competition, and it
definitely gave them more incentive to keep reading."
The iBRAL contest was first organized in the fall of 2013. Patterning
our contest after the former Braille Readers Are Leaders contest run by our
national center, the NFBI put together rules and forms, which are
accessible and can be found on our state's website. This last year, the
reading period for the contest ran for seven weeks, including the Christmas
school break, to allow even more time for the kids to work on their
Braille. As always the object of the competition was to read as many pages
as possible during the contest.
Deborah Kent Stein of the NFBI Chicago Chapter and editor of Future
Reflections volunteered to be the contest coordinator. She created an email
account for iBRAL, allowing electronic submission of registration forms at
the beginning of the contest and reading logs at the end. The email account
also allowed easy communication between Deborah and parents and/or TVI's,
the people who acted as certifying officials for the kids.
Sometimes the feedback was amazing. One parent wrote of her son, "He
wanted to make sure he would do well. He just brought me his last book to
log and told me his fingers hurt. No wonder. He read five hundred pages
today alone!"
Sometimes the feedback was touching. For example, a TVI wrote about
one of her students, "We had a great time reading! Pierre has just started
reading Braille the last few years and is finally reading with some fluency
and reading for fun! He is seventeen years old and has autism along with
his blindness and cognitive delays. He was diligent daily about telling
people he had to read for the Braille challenge. Hope to do it again next
year! Thanks!"
Cash prizes are awarded to first, second, and third place winners in
each of the five grade levels. When Joanne Sullivan of the National Braille
Press was contacted about us purchasing gift certificates to use as
additional prizes, she subsequently told us we wouldn't have to buy them.
The NBP, a great supporter of Braille, would donate gift certificates to be
given to all entrants. In addition, the NFB national center has donated
slates and styluses and Braille calendars to be given to all contestants.
When the contest is over, each child receives a generous goodie package
from iBRAL, regardless of their placing in the contest.
The Braille Literacy Committee in Illinois, along with the entire
state affiliate, is proud of their accomplishments: they took the dream of
having a statewide Braille reading contest for children and made it a
reality. More information about the Illinois Braille Readers Are Leaders
contest for kids can be obtained by contacting our affiliate president,
Denise Avant, at <davant1958 at gmail.com>.
We are committed to running the iBRAL contest for kids and hoping to
make it even bigger in the future. Go Braille! Go iBRAL!
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Participants in the program cross railroad tracks under
sleepshades using a long white cane.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Trainee under sleepshades reads Braille in an elevator.]
Transforming the Training of Professionals in Education and Rehabilitation
for the Blind
by Edward Bell
>From the Editor: Eddie Bell is the head of the Professional Development and
Research Institute on Blindness, a solid academic, and a man who is well-
steeped in the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind. Here's
what he has to say about a program pioneering new and innovative work for
the blind:
Louisiana Tech remains the foremost leader in preparing professionals
who hold a positive and empowering philosophy of blindness consistent with
the National Federation of the Blind. We at the Professional Development
and Research Institute on Blindness strive to provide our students with the
most cutting-edge, thorough, professional training programs to ensure that
our students succeed in the field and have high expectations for future
blind students. We continue to adjust and add to our curriculum without
compromising the characteristics that set our programs apart. There have
been several updates which prospective students and employers should know
about related to our Teaching Blind Students (TBS) program, changes in the
Orientation and Mobility program, and the recent addition of our
Rehabilitation Teaching for the Blind program.
Teacher of Blind Students Program
President Mark Riccobono addressed us at the fourteenth annual
rehabilitation conference in Orlando about the need to change our nation's
education system in the same way that the nature of rehabilitation has
changed, and I couldn't agree with him more! As he mentioned, blind people
often say how they wish that they had found the Federation's positive
philosophy sooner, and how they wish they had received quality blindness
skills training earlier. The only way that will happen is if we get our
philosophy into the education system through Federationists teaching blind
students.
Teachers of Blind Students teach children in school settings or
adults in rehabilitation centers the skills of Braille, assistive
technology, and problem-solving, which we know to be crucial for their
success.
We, of course, think some of the best teachers for blind kids are
blind adults. We've made it a point from the ground up that our programs
are inclusive and built to be appropriate for blind or sighted teachers.
Keep that in mind as you think about your clients, people you work with, or
you yourself. We're taking applications, and we'd love to have you.
There are three ways to enroll in our TBS Program. If you do not have
an education background and you are not a certified teacher, you would
enroll in our Master of Arts in Teaching program, which is an alternative
certification program. We also have two programs for those who already hold
a teaching degree: we have a Master of Education program and, if you want
to only take the classes needed to add on certification to teach blind
students, we have the graduate certificate program. All three of the
programs have the same seven core courses specific to blindness. If, for
example, you're just doing the graduate certification to add to your
education degree, you take the seven core classes, complete a student
teaching internship for one quarter, and you're ready to take the
professional exams that your state requires.
I am often asked, "Can I take the classes without being admitted into
Louisiana Tech University?" For example, a student at another university
may want to take one or two classes without getting the certification. You
can take individual courses without seeking a degree or certification, but
you still must be admitted to Louisiana Tech. One option is to be admitted
as a lifelong learner, meaning you don't have to take the Graduate Records
Examination as you do with our degree tracks. At the institute we are happy
to help you find the best education plan for you.
Another frequent question is about our online coursework. Our Master
of Arts in Teaching and the graduate certificate program are almost
entirely online. This is something that we really thought hard about, and
there are a few reasons we decided to push forward with the online
platform. Primarily, we must train more teachers. There are so many people
already working or with families who can't pick up and move to Ruston for a
couple years. We need to serve those people as well. The unique elements of
our program, however, used to be in-person opportunities working with blind
people at the Louisiana Center or in the community. We have a number of
classes-like our Braille 1, Braille 2, and assistive technology classes-
conducted weekly using a video conferencing platform so that instructors
can give students real-time feedback. We also schedule times for hands-on,
long-weekend training sessions in Ruston for assistive technology and
advanced Braille training. In the summer quarter there's a week in Ruston
focused on teaching orientation and mobility to teachers of blind students,
in which students receive cane travel instruction under sleepshades from
successful blind role models.
Orientation and Mobility Program
Our Orientation and Mobility cognate is now housed within the Master
of Arts in Counseling and Guidance degree track at Louisiana Tech
University. We feel that this degree track better prepares our students for
working in the field. Instructors, after all, don't teach only travel
skills, they build confidence and help people accept their blindness. This
new program touches on some of the strategies and techniques that allow us
to guide students toward this way of thinking.
Scholarships are available for incoming students in the orientation
and mobility track thanks to a long-term training grant from the US
Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services Administration. This
allows us to provide financial assistance to our students on a first-come,
first-served basis. We hope that this will help encourage you to consider
joining us. One thing that definitely hasn't changed is the need in our
field for more quality orientation and mobility instructors. We need blind
and sighted mobility instructors who really believe in blind people and
possess nonvisual skills.
Louisiana Tech University is still the only orientation and mobility
university program that has the Federation philosophy and specifically
teaches the Structured-Discovery Cane Travel (SDCT) method. All of our
orientation and mobility students go through blindness immersion at the
Louisiana Center for the Blind for a full quarter. In immersion, students
take all of their classes-cane travel, Braille, computers, wood shop, and
home management-under sleepshades.
After their immersion experience, students take six additional months
of cane travel classes under sleepshades to improve their mobility skills.
They also participate in several trips with the Louisiana Center for the
Blind and on their own to further hone their skills in environments from
subways to nature trails, Capitol Hill to the mountains of Arkansas, and
Mardi Gras to New Jersey. We conduct the majority of these trips with
Louisiana Center students so our students can watch others progress in
their skills and adjustment to blindness.
The ten-week summer internship is a great opportunity for our
students to teach others and gain feedback from the highly-qualified travel
instructors at the Louisiana Center. As you all know, the Louisiana Center
for the Blind has a great reputation as one of the best rehab agencies in
the country. Our students get to spend the entire summer working with
Roland Allen, Marco Carranza, and Darick Williamson. They also get to work
with kids in our summer programs, including the Louisiana NFB BELL, Buddy,
and STEP programs.
People often ask if they have to have excellent travel skills before
coming to our programs, and my response is always the same: it doesn't
hurt, but we've accepted many students whose skills aren't up to par yet.
They come in, do immersion at the center to get the skills they need, then
they continue to work on nonvisual travel for two hours a day, five days a
week for about six months. That will get your skills where they need to be.
Your background or bachelor's degree is irrelevant; we've had people with
majors from art to education. You don't need to be a blindness expert when
you come into the program, either. We need more good orientation and
mobility instructors out there in our schools, state-run agencies, and
veterans' programs. If you or anyone you know is interested in becoming an
orientation and mobility instructor, I urge you to give us a call at the
Institute on Blindness.
Rehabilitation Teaching Program
In addition to these two core programs, we now offer a Master of Arts
in Counseling Guidance with a concentration in Rehabilitation Teaching for
the Blind. There are a lot of different jobs out there for which this
degree applies, but, in a nutshell, rehabilitation teachers are cross-
trained individuals who are skilled in all aspects of blindness techniques.
The folks going through the rehabilitation teaching degree program will go
through immersion training at the Louisiana Center and the first
orientation and mobility class, which will give them a solid introduction
to teaching independent travel. They also take the first Braille class to
demonstrate competency in Braille and assistive technology.
The rehabilitation teaching degree program came into existence thanks
to a grant from the Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services
Administration, a grant which also allowed us to strengthen our orientation
and mobility program. The scholarships that we are able to issue cover
tuition, fees, and a living stipend. To qualify for funding, you need an
undergraduate degree and must be admitted to our program.
Every day, job opportunities cross my desk for instructors in
Braille, cane travel, and home management, many of which come from training
centers who are looking for people to hire in all these fields. We train
professionals who will be ready and equipped to go to those centers and be
able to fill almost any of those positions. The person who gets certified
as a rehabilitation teacher can choose to stay at Louisiana Tech for an
extra semester to earn the designation of NOMC (National Orientation and
Mobility Certification). With a little bit of extra effort, a student who
goes through the rehabilitation teaching degree program can be certified in
all three areas: rehabilitation teaching, orientation and mobility, and
Braille. After all, we want to see more cross-trained individuals in the
field.
Immersion is a requirement for either of these degree tracks.
Blindness immersion can occur at any of the NBPCB (National Blindness
Professional Certification Board)-approved centers that use the structured
discovery method. While the vast majority of students' internships will
take place at the Louisiana Center, I would love to see our students
working as interns in Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, and
Hawaii. I need staff at all structured-discovery centers to send us people
to train, including your graduates; then, I want to turn around and send
them back to you, so you can finish polishing them and hire them
yourselves.
Through these programs, we can do what Mark Riccobono charged us to
do: do with the education system what we've already done in the
rehabilitation field. I'm excited to work toward this goal. With your help,
dedication, and recruitment efforts, we can collectively build the next
generation of highly trained and qualified teachers for our blind children
and adults. Come and visit us at Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana, or
online at <www.pdrib.com>. We look forward to developing a better world
together.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Everett Elam]
The Joy of Getting a Summer Job
by Everett Elam
>From the Editor: Everett Elam is a college senior majoring in music.
Needing money and some work experience, he applied for a job and was hired
by the Arkansas Lighthouse for the Blind. Here is what he has written about
the joy of being hired, the challenges in his training, and the benefits of
bringing home a paycheck:
It is difficult to describe the elation I felt from seven words: "Are
you ready to come to work?" Since these words came to me through the phone,
I didn't have to worry about the lady on the other end seeing my mouth
opening and closing like a fish out of water. But there's another reason I
didn't need to worry about her seeing me: she was the recruiting
receptionist at the Arkansas Lighthouse for the Blind and was herself
blind.
Founded by a blind Methodist reverend in 1940, the Lighthouse is a
nonprofit organization which employs individuals who are blind and visually
impaired. The Lighthouse manufactures belts and t-shirts for the military
and also mass produces spiral bound notebooks and paper products. During
the summer of 2015 I would be a sewing machine operator, sewing the
shoulders onto t-shirts for use by the military. I would be making a
difference in thousands of lives, just as the Lighthouse was making a
difference in my own.
I'd first learned about the Lighthouse at a conference in early
April. My roommate and I were asked to speak about the importance of
fitness in the blind community. The lady who spoke prior to us gave a brief
overview of how she'd come to work at the Lighthouse. It was very
inspiring. Both my roommate and I applied and were hired within weeks.
According to National Industries for the Blind, seven out of ten working-
age individuals who are blind are unemployed. The Lighthouse provides a
beacon of hope to those who wish to enjoy the same prospects as their
sighted counterparts.
Employees begin working promptly at 6:30 a.m. The workday is a
standard eight hours, with three breaks throughout the day for lunch and
for workers to stretch their legs. While working, employees are allowed to
listen to reading material or music if they wish, and the atmosphere is one
of high energy and motivation. A forklift passes by periodically to deliver
fresh material and supplies, beeping its horn intermittently to alert those
who can't see it.
My machine was a surger, or over lock machine. At full RPM, the
surger was capable of sewing a stunning sixty-five hundred stitches a
minute; it was the Gatling gun of sewing. My job was to sew the shoulder
seams onto t-shirts. To do this, I had to become familiar with the shape of
the t-shirts and the different materials from which they were made. I also
had to be extremely precise. If I put the shirt into the machine
incorrectly, the shoulders would turn out lopsided, and I'd have to send
the poor piece to a fellow worker for a repair. A straight line of raised
tape was set as a guide for me to sew against. As long as I kept the two
corners of cloth together and against the guide, the seam stayed straight.
My trainer also gave me stacks of dummy test shirts which were made of
lower quality cloth that I could use to practice.
"Remember, the machine's going to do what you do," my trainer
Janice said, smiling after the umpteenth time I'd mangled a t-shirt beyond
repair. "If you pull on the shirt, it's going to pull back. Talk to it if
you need to." Janice was from a small town and had worked with her aunt in
a factory sewing the inseams of blue jeans. Her aunt was visually impaired.
I was pretty slow at first. Janice told me, "I didn't understand how
my aunt could use the machine so well even though she didn't have sight. I
decided to try sewing the way my aunt did, by touch. It was actually easier
that way."
During my training I learned how to sew in a quiet office, isolated
from the manufacturing floor. This allowed me to concentrate and move at my
own pace. At the end of the day Janice would tell me how many shirts I'd
sewn correctly. If I'd made mistakes, she'd show me by touch how I could
fix them.
My third week was exciting because I got to leave the training room
and work on the floor for the first time. The machine I worked with was
much faster than the training machine. I couldn't get the hang of it, but
within hours the operations manager, Curtis, arrived to fix the issue.
Curtis had been training blind people in the use of sewing machines for
over a decade. Before that he'd served four years in the air force. He'd
learned his trade through hard knocks and had never been formally trained.
Like Janice, he'd pulled himself through life's challenges by sheer
determination.
"My grandma always told me to keep myself humble, because there is
always going to be someone out there who knows a little more than you, and
then there may be times where you know more than the next guy. That's what
makes us all unique." Curtis fixed my machine and gave me tips on how to
keep the shirts against the guide, and within a week I'd more than doubled
my numbers and was sewing eighty to one hundred shirts a day.
Occasionally schools and perspective clients would take tours of the
facility. Blindfolded, Janice would demonstrate how a blind person could
use a sewing machine by touch. It was inspiring to know that my trainer
could use the machine without sight, and I respected her for putting
herself on an equal playing field with me by learning to operate the
machine without using vision.
Though I only worked at the Lighthouse for a summer, the experience I
gained and the friends I made will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I have now entered my final year of college as a music major, and the money
I earned from my summer job has allowed me to pay the remaining amount for
my violin.
The Lighthouse is still searching for prospective employees. If you
are interested, contact Toni Fraser by email at
<tfraser at arkansaslighthouse.org>, or contact the Lighthouse by phone at
(501) 562-2222.
----------
A Therapeutic Research Collaboration
by Anil Lewis
>From the Editor: Anil Lewis is the executive director of the Jernigan
Institute, and one of his goals is to partner with others involved in
research. The collaboration with the Therapeutic Research Foundation is one
of many partnerships in which the NFB Jernigan Institute will be involved.
Here is what Anil has to say:
The National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute leads the
quest to understand the real problems of blindness and to develop
innovative education, technologies, products, and services that help the
world's blind to achieve independence and live the lives they want. We
capitalize on the collective life experiences of the blind in order to
analyze, design, develop, and evaluate products, services, and systems that
affect the lives of blind people. We seek to establish productive and
mutually beneficial relationships with other researchers to leverage their
expertise with our own.
In one of our most recent collaborations, the National Federation of
the Blind (NFB) has engaged in a partnership with the Therapeutic Research
Foundation (TRF) to seek innovative and technologically driven solutions to
improve the healthcare and mobility of the blind and visually impaired.
TRF is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded to facilitate the
research and development of cost-effective and innovative pharmaceutics,
biotech devices, medical aids, and treatment options. Because of our shared
interest in developing mobility and healthcare solutions for the blind and
visually impaired, we helped TRF develop and launch an online survey of
members of the blind and visually impaired community. Boehringer Ingelheim
Pharmaceuticals (BI), a research-driven group of companies dedicated to the
discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of innovative healthcare
products generously made a ten thousand dollar donation to support this
effort. We received feedback from 377 participants. The survey focused on
mobility and healthcare needs, with an emphasis on adoption and usage of
current technology such as internet and mobile phones. TRF will be
publishing their findings in an upcoming white paper, and we will provide a
link once it is available. The following is a sample of some of the survey
findings:
Survey data related to access technology usage demonstrated that the
most frequently used access software programs were JAWS, VoiceOver, Window-
Eyes, and Kurzweil 1000. Even with knowledge of and use of access
technology, 57 percent of those completing the survey expressed an
inability to use important websites due to lack of accessibility. In
addition, 52 percent expressed experiencing mobile phone apps not working
as expected, which could be an expression of usability and/or accessibility
issues.
Of those individuals surveyed, 88 percent expressed having difficulty
reading the medication label, with 84 percent of them using a magnifier and
51 percent using additional visual aids.
Thirty-six percent of those surveyed indicated transportation is a
significant barrier to receiving healthcare services. In addition, an
inability to independently complete required paperwork and lack of empathy
from professional medical staff was identified as major challenges they
experienced when visiting a doctor's office.
Along with the focus on medical concerns, the survey covered some
basic issues of mobility, with these findings: long white cane, 93 percent;
sighted guide, 78 percent; electronic device, 33 percent; and guide dog, 31
percent.
After a preliminary analysis of the online survey findings, we helped
TRF coordinate three separate telephone conference focus groups to probe
deeper into the responses and to better help understand the unmet needs of
the blind and visually impaired community. The conference calls, consisting
of fifteen NFB members, were held on March 30, 2015. As a result of the
focus groups, several innovative ideas emerged including a desire for
certain accessible medical devices. We plan to work with TRF to refine the
best ideas using our membership and specifically our Diabetes Action
Network as a resource. Moreover, we will seek to build prototypes that
result in advances in healthcare tools and mobility aids for blind and
visually impaired consumers in the marketplace.
The TRF bridges the gap between academia and industry, and with our
continued collaboration the TRF hopes to forge an unprecedented effort to
design, develop, and implement solutions to the unmet navigation and
healthcare needs of the blind and visually impaired. For additional
information about the Therapeutic Research Foundation and to donate to this
cause, please go to <www.tr-f.org>.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: John Jendrezak]
Increasing the Investment in Accessibility: Nonvisual Access in Microsoft
Products and Services
by John Jendrezak
>From the Editor: John Jendrezak is Partner Director of Program Management
at Microsoft. Since the accessibility of products that run on the Windows
Platform is crucial, we have worked extensively with Microsoft to press for
measureable improvements, and this is the report Mr. Jendrezak provided to
the convention:
Thank you, Mark, for the intro; hopefully I can live up to the
expectations of the group here. First of all, as many other people have
done today, I really want to congratulate everybody on the seventy-fifth
anniversary for the NFB. Your years of advocating are great, and we really
appreciate everything that you do. On behalf of Microsoft employees who are
here throughout the week, we are honored to have the opportunity to partner
with you. We've had more employees at this convention than we've ever had
before, so hopefully you've really felt our presence. We've appreciated the
opportunity to listen, to connect, and to share ideas with you throughout
the week. We're looking forward to taking your feedback back to our teams
in Redmond.
At Microsoft I'm an engineering manager on the Office development
team. I'm here specifically to talk to you today about Office and the work
we're doing to improve accessibility. I've worked on the Office team for
over twenty years, but my personal involvement in accessibility began two
years ago with the implementation of CVAA [Communications and Video
Accessibility Act]. The work that you all have done to have CVAA passed has
been great, and that involvement that I've had personally has really whet
my appetite for accessibility, and my passion and involvement has been
growing ever since. So thank you.
We believe that the Office products are essential for you to be
successful in your work and your personal lives. Communicating and
collaborating with people, whether they're your coworkers, your friends,
businesses or other institutions is part of what we all do on a regular
basis. When we release products that aren't accessible, we make it
difficult for you to succeed professionally and personally, and that's not
acceptable. [Applause] I was recently reminded of this in a poignant way
when I spoke with a woman at our ability conference this spring. She's
blind, and she shared with me her personal story about how she had to drop
a college course because she had to use Microsoft Project, and it wasn't
accessible with her screenreader. That's just not acceptable. We do not
think that our software should prohibit people from going to college
[Applause]. So by getting involved and leaning in, I think we can make a
big difference and a big change for the better.
This is my first opportunity to attend the conference, and I'm very
excited about it, but I can definitely say we've appreciated working with
the NFB over the years. You've always provided us with very candid
feedback, which is great-grateful for that. It's really really helped us
out. So I wanted to spend a couple minutes and really share some of what
we're doing today to improve accessibility of Office.
On the desktop, our apps have had a long history of accessibility
through the partnerships we've developed with the AT [assistive technology]
community. The apps continue to lead the industry in terms of functionality
and availability to our customers who are disabled, but, with that said, we
have to continue to improve the experience. We've made some progress over
the year; I'd like to share a little bit of that with everybody. Our core
mission, really, is to deliver the best productivity experience to all of
you across all of our products, across all of the devices that you use them
on. We're clearly unique in that we bring productivity to you on any device
you own, whether it's a Windows, a Mac, an Android, or an iOS device. We
really want to respect your choice and deliver the best experience to you.
We've been busy over the last two years building versions of Office that
span multiple platforms with the goal of providing this productivity
experience across all of our devices. We've made Office accessible for iOS
by adding VoiceOver support across our core iPhone and iPad devices. The
early feedback for that has been super positive. We want to keep hearing
feedback for those applications so that we can drive further improvements
to them.
I'm sure many of you use iPads and iPhones, so hopefully you're able
to use our products with them. We've also made Mac Office accessible for
the first time. [Cheers] We released just yesterday Mac Office 2016, so if
you have a Mac, I highly suggest you go download it, try it out, and give
us feedback.
Again, there's no doubt that the NFB gives us good feedback. I'll
probably say that over and over and over again. It's awesome that we have
such an active and passionate partner; you definitely keep us on our toes.
One specific piece of feedback for the Office team over the last year
is that we need to improve our keyboarding workflows in Office. Based on
that, we've made improvements to our overall workflow so that our keyboard
shortcuts are consistent across our desktop and our Office online products.
We've taken it a step further; we've found ways to improve and speed up the
overall keyboard interaction by simplifying the steps needed to get things
done. We'll continue to work in this space over the coming year, so watch
for more improvements.
This year we also launched a third-party AT partnership program for
desktop users and have since expanded it to all of our Office365
subscribers. AT providers provide an important part of the Office
accessibility experience, and in 2013 we approached all of our partners to
find ways to provide this experience in a more affordable way. After
reaching out to our core partners in the screenreader market, we're proud
to have partnered with GW Micro (now Ai Squared) to make Window-Eyes
available to all of our customers free. [applause]
Finally I want to highlight a new feature that we're shipping called
Tell Me. Tell Me is a feature that helps our customers find and use Office
features. It's a feature that's a great example of how we can design for
accessibility and how we want to evolve our engineering culture to really
weave accessibility into the fabric of our team. I'm sure you've all been
in the situation where you're using a product, maybe Excel as an example,
and in the back of your mind you're trying to remember how to do something,
and you can't quite figure it out, and you don't know where that feature or
that functionality is in the product. It's a problem for any user using our
product: search through the ribbon, and the tabs, and figure out what's
going on-and I can imagine that with a screenreader it's even a little bit
more challenging. Tell Me helps avoid that frustration by allowing you to
type what you want to do using your own words and phrasing into a simple
search box. We then expose the best matches for what you're trying to do,
and you can execute the features right there from that search in the
product. [Applause] It's a great example, we think, of combining natural
language input with machine learning to help really build the best
experience for our customers to access the functionality of Office. Now,
coincidentally, while managing that team that built that functionality, I
was also responsible for the accessibility work that we were doing. We were
going through our CVAA implementation at the time, and I was involved in an
early demo of that Tell Me feature. Because of my newly-heightened
awareness of accessibility, I just asked simple questions like: Can you
hotkey into that feature? Is there anything we can do here to help people
with disabilities? What happens if you turn a screenreader on when you're
using the feature? And just from that kind of serendipitous involvement
that I had with these two teams, it really helped us build a feature that
we think is a great way to help our customers with blindness accomplish the
tasks with less effort, while also keeping all of our users able to
discover commands more readily. This is the type of universal design we
really strive to deliver: functionality that helps everybody.
This was also a great career-level lesson for me-it really was. The
thing that I took away was that, in order to make material improvements, to
find those serendipitous moments, to build Office for everyone, we really
need to have local awareness of disability. This is similar to what Kannan
talked about, I think, with Google as well. We at Microsoft need to
increase the diversity within our engineering organization. This "Tell Me
moment," as I call it, not only created a new capability for our customers,
but really set our organization down a path to materially change the
culture and composition of our team. Our CEO Satya Nadella has said, "The
world is diverse. We will better serve everyone on the planet by
representing everyone on the planet. We will be open to learning our own
biases and changing our behaviors so we can tap into the collective power
of everyone at Microsoft. We don't just value differences, we seek them
out, we invite them in. And as a result, our ideas are better, our products
are better, and our customers are better served." [Applause] It's really
important that we encourage a culture that sees accessibility as an ongoing
investment that results in better designs for all of our users right up-
front, as opposed to relegating it to a task that we complete afterwards at
the end of design and development. We've operated that way in the past, and
it really is our goal to change that: to establish an engineering culture
that's inquisitive about accessibility early on, and on-point to carry that
through the end of development. So now with implementation of Tell Me,
first in the Office online apps, and soon to be delivered in our Office
2016 applications, you can hotkey right into Tell Me, find what you want,
and get your task done quickly. [Applause]
I want to spend a minute talking about the things we want to do to
change our culture. Again, it's eerily similar to what Kannan talked about,
but one of the things we really want to do is change the culture in the
Office organization because until you change the culture, you're not going
to change the way they behave. I really believe that if we want to move the
culture of our organization in a direction that thinks first about
inclusive design, you have to start with the makeup of the engineers on
your team. To that end, we're making intentional changes in our hiring
practices. We're partnering with our corporate accessibility and human
resources team to develop recruiting pipelines specifically for engineers
with disabilities. [Applause] Our goal, and we have a number of active open
positions today, is to hire a number of engineers with blindness, deafness,
and learning disabilities into our engineering teams to help the culture
that we strive for. Over the coming months we'll be hiring fully qualified
engineers to come work on products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook,
OneNote-and I can say from my personal experience that when someone on your
team has a disability, it really makes a big difference in how you think
about your product and the features in your product overall. A few years
ago we hired a program manager in our user experience team who has a severe
hearing disability. After she was hired we watched her quickly become one
of our rising stars, and we noticed direct influences on our team culture
as communication improved significantly. She's able to provide a different
perspective, and often provides insights and makes connections that other
people on the team don't because of her personal experience. She has a
great perspective on how to make our products more accessible, and we want
more people like her in our organization. [Applause] On a related note,
while she's not on the Office team specifically, and apparently she's on
loan, we're excited to have one of your own, Anne Taylor, at Microsoft-I'm
really looking forward to working with her.
In addition to changing our perspective on how we're hiring
engineers, we're also changing the way we think about our engineering
process. When we began our efforts to build versions of Office for iOS,
Android, and Windows 10, we quickly realized the software code written for
apps was specific for each platform; our code wasn't able to run across
platforms. Over the last couple of years we've worked hard to bring that
together so that we can simultaneously release our products across multiple
platforms. There's a bunch of engineers back in Washington that are patting
themselves on the back for their increased efficiency, but that's not the
important part here. The important thing for everyone here is that, by
doing this work so that our features are built to be cross-platform for all
devices roughly at the same time, it's now possible for us to make faster
advances in our accessibility improvements. Because, as we make those
changes to our common code base, they will accrue to all of our endpoints
and will be able to release accessibility improvements at a much more rapid
pace. We're also changing the cadence we work at Microsoft. We used to
build Office on a three-year-long lifecycle, and if we delivered a product
to market that didn't have the accessibility features you were looking for,
it took three years for another one to come out. We're changing that, and
we're releasing our product every month, so we'll be able to work regularly
on accessibility. [Applause]
And finally we're raising the visibility of accessibility at
Microsoft. Within Office, we've made accessibility one of our core
investments for the next wave of development. I personally oversee the
effort, and I'll be working with our organizational leaders to improve the
accessibility of our products and reinforce the culture of inclusive design
that we strive for.
To conclude, let me talk a little bit about what we have planned for
the next year. Specifically, we're going to continue to provide Tell Me
support for all Office applications across all platforms and all devices,
making it easier than ever for everyone to harness the power of Office.
We're going to make our Android and Windows 10 applications accessible.
We'll continue to improve the accessibility of our desktop applications,
insuring that with our partners we're delivering best-in-class
accessibility. We'll monitor the feedback we're getting from iOS and Mac
releases and continue to improve those products. We're going to further
improve Office online reading and editing scenarios so that our web
applications more closely match the desktop applications. We're going to
continue to move to shared code so that we have more rapid and consistent
accessibility features. Finally, we're going to be more engaged with this
community. That increased involvement started here this week, and we want
to continue it throughout the year. With that, thank you very much for the
opportunity to speak.
----------
Food for Thought about the BEPLT
by Sheryl Bass, The Hadley School for the Blind
>From the Editor: Nicky Gacos is the president of the National Association
of Blind Merchants, and one of his goals is to create more opportunity for
blind entrepreneurs through partnering. One partnership he has helped to
establish is with The Hadley School for the Blind, and the result is a
quality training program that will help to bring national training
standards for blind merchants and assist those states that do not carry on
active training programs. Here is what The Hadley School for the Blind has
to say about this joint partnership:
For those not in the know, the acronym sounds like a popular
sandwich. However, for Louisville, Kentucky, resident George Bouquet, The
Hadley School for the Blind's and the National Association of Blind
Merchants' joint BEPLT program (Business Enterprise Program Licensee
Training) is more like a dream come true. Hadley is the largest provider of
distance education for people who are blind and visually impaired
worldwide, and the BEPLT program is part of the school's Forsythe Center
for Employment (FCE) and Entrepreneurship. Under the Randolph-Sheppard Act,
legally blind adults are given first right of refusal on operating state
and federal government vending facilities including cafeterias, snack bars,
convenience stores, micro markets, and vending machines and rest stop
vending areas nationwide. In February 2014 Hadley's FCE partnered with the
National Association of Blind Merchants (NABM) and the National Federation
of the Blind Entrepreneurs' Initiative (NFBEI) to bring the academic
portion of training to would-be blind vendors. Individual state Business
Enterprise Programs provide the hands-on component of the blind vendor
training.
Bouquet is Hadley's first graduate from the school's new BEPLT
program. Born with both Pierre Robin Syndrome, which often results in a
smaller-than-normal lower jaw, a cleft palate, a tongue that falls back in
the throat, and difficulty breathing, as well as Stickler Syndrome, which
causes hearing loss, eye abnormalities and joint problems, Bouquet has
struggled with health issues throughout his fifty-four years. Although he
was born without eye lenses, he was not born blind. Rather, his vision
worsened over time. Bouquet had worked in several food service positions
since high school and wanted to become a Randolph-Sheppard vendor even
before he would have qualified as legally blind!
There are only so many blind vendor licensee training slots
available, and many more people compete for them than such programs can
accommodate. The first time Bouquet applied to receive the training was in
February 2014. Unfortunately he was not accepted into a program. However,
he was fortunate to gain some blind vendor experience by working under
friends who already held the license.
In early 2015 Bouquet's counselor told him about another opportunity
to apply for vendor training. This time he was accepted, and Bouquet began
Hadley's BEPLT program in April 2015. Bouquet was so motivated to graduate
from the program that he completed approximately two modules (one-lesson
online courses) per week. Hadley's BEPLT students complete a ten-module
program and then take their state's physical training component. After
passing both elements, graduates are eligible to bid for the opportunity to
become a blind vendor in their community.
"The Hadley BEPLT program offers a lot of useful information. It will
really help anyone wanting to undertake vending," he said. Bouquet then
acknowledged that the material about food-borne illnesses helped him to
realize the tremendous responsibility he would be accepting by running a
government food service area. "As a manager you need to decide what you are
willing to delegate to other people," he added.
For Bouquet, becoming a blind vendor allows him to hire and train his
twenty-five-year-old unemployed son, who inherited most of his visual and
hearing problems. This training is Bouquet's first step toward creating a
legacy of financial independence.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Alan Wizemann]
Innovation and Accessibility: Creating Outstanding Customer Experiences at
Target
by Alan Wizemann
>From the Editor: With players such as Google and Microsoft at the seventy-
fifth convention, one would expect to hear exciting news about technology,
but one of the most exciting presentations focusing on accessibility and
technology came from a retailer. At one time we found it necessary to
engage Target in the courts to get them to address accessibility, but today
their efforts represent some of the most innovative and forward-looking
efforts to be found in the country. Target has embraced accessibility as a
critical customer service, and this is clear by their actions in hiring a
quality team and the way that team is embraced by the corporate culture of
Target. Here is what Alan Wizemann said to the convention on Friday, July
10:
Thanks very much. That's great applause, and you don't even know what
I'm going to talk about yet.
I appreciate that. I have to say that I'm pretty honored to be up
here: not only to be part of what we're trying to do at Target for
accessibility, but to also be part of this panel and the speakers that are
here today-I'm a technologist who works with a retailer, and to be on the
same stage with Ray Kurzweil and politicians is pretty humbling, so thank
you for the opportunity.
But more than that, to see an organization like this that can crush
world records and take down problems of companies the size of Apple is
pretty impressive. Today, I'm really here to talk about how Target treats
innovation and accessibility, and we're really about creating outstanding
customer experiences. We refer to our users or anybody who interacts with
our company as guests. You'll hear me use that phrase a lot in this.
First, let me give you a sense of the size of Target: we're a $70
billion company, with 350,000 employees, powering 1,800 stores that service
30 million guests a week, just in the United States. Digitally, with
Target.com and our mobile apps, we serve and handle over 2 billion user
sessions a year. We have stores within three miles of 95 percent of the US
population, and our brand promise, which hopefully you've heard before, is
"Expect more. Pay less." Now when I found out that the slogan of the NFB
was "Live the life you want," I immediately thought of our brand promise,
"Expect more. Pay less." Especially the "expect more" part. It's my job to
empower my teams to deliver on that promise and to make sure that we're
building experiences that fulfill the needs and fuel the potential of our
guests. That is our internal, foundational mission statement as a company.
When I started doing research into this presentation, something
really funny happened. When we build presentations internally, we actually
deal with several different parts of our company. They asked to see a
visual slide presentation-which told me that we have a lot to learn
internally as a company about how to treat accessibility. What I also
learned, though, is how many people can be affected. According to the
research that I've done, and confirmed by the National Center for Health
Statistics, 20.6 million adults in the United States have experienced
vision loss or impairment. When we couple that with an aging population of
baby boomers, there's actually a significant total addressable new market
for us to lead in. It's a large opportunity for not only growth and
revenue, but it's also just the right thing to do. Target prides itself on
being an inclusive and diverse culture, and for us not to support an entire
segment of the population just doesn't fit with our mission as a company.
[Applause] But more importantly, we want to lead. We want to set the
standard of what it truly means to be accessible. We don't feel it's right
to change experiences or remove features for any guest, regardless of their
abilities. Everyone should be able to experience Target the way we want
them to be able to experience it: all the same. And to do that, we needed
to hire accordingly.
We've built a world-class accessibility team that deals with issues
and opportunities of the population that we want as guests. Many of our
accessibility team members are blind and use assistive technology on a day-
to-day basis in their work. Some of the team are actually here today, and
I'm not only proud of what they've helped us accomplish; I'm proud of their
continued efforts to drive this exciting work across our company. I'm
actually hoping-if you don't mind-that we can give them a round of
applause. [Applause] They definitely deserve that and more.
At Target one thing I've realized in the eighteen months I've been
there is that we had to change the rules. When I started, accessibility was
really viewed as compliant; it was a checkbox before we released something
to our guests. Our engineers did not like handling it. It became a hurdle.
What we needed was something that would be treated differently-a positive
change.
What we've done is just made it part of what we do. We've empowered
teams to think of new ways to design, test, and build our products for all
of our guests, rewarding teams that help us lead in this important guest
segment. It has also become a really proactive use of resources within our
company. Engineers are now actively building for accessibility and
understanding its true value and that it is core to our guests' mission.
The great news is that it's working. We're seeing significant accessibility
work across all of our experiences.
Recently our teams demonstrated some really neat changes to some of
our Target.com activities properties such as selecting a store. What we
didn't realize until we saw that through actual assistive technologies was
that it was incredibly difficult. So they took it on their own to build new
experiences with our accessibility team to make that easy.
In the past three years we have decreased our accessibility issues by
400 percent. We are aiming for zero issues across all of our platforms.
[Applause]
To show a small example of this, I looked at the last test run that
we did of our homepage. We compare these tests to several of our closest
competitors. Target had six minor issues. Although we were going to address
them, I wanted to see what our competitors had. Our closest one had 170.
Now these results are from automated testing, and we use that as an
indicator of our own success, but it's not the only indicator. We do heavy
manual testing to represent what our guests' actual experiences are, and we
train our internal and external partners to test with assistive technology
across all of our guest experiences. Now our team has made this a priority,
to not only inform, but instruct and maintain some of the highest standards
of the industry. But we're also teaching these practices as we go. We think
there is massive room for improvement, and we're constantly conducting user
research and usability testing to incorporate the widest range of Target
guests, including users of assistive technologies.
Here's where we need your help. If anyone here is interested in
performing usability research for Target or would like to give our
accessibility team some feedback, feel free to reach us anytime at
<accessibility at target.com>, or catch our team members here at the
convention. You can help us reach our goal and show the industry why others
should treat accessibility as a priority. Because as we compare ourselves
with our competition, part of leading the industry, an important part, is
to help others understand the unique challenges we faced, tools we used,
and practices we have established to help the accessible community. We have
already supported companies across several industries and even a few of our
own competitors. With this work and the work across all of our teams, we're
bringing accessibility to a national conversation. Every developer that
works with us, every contractor we hire, learns about accessibility and our
commitment. They take that knowledge with them, which means over time we
will actually help shape an industry far beyond our own walls. [Applause]
Our teams of engineers are excited. We're exploring the development of our
own tools that we can opensource and release to the communities.
But there's one very big number that I want you to take away from our
presentation here, and that's 100 percent. Our goal at Target is for all
our guests' experiences to be 100 percent accessible, regardless of device.
That is the mandate I gave our teams and what we strive for every day. I'm
also hopeful that this mission will start to spread, not only across our
company, but into our stores to create exciting experiences for all our
guests and jobs for the community.
So here's what we're doing to make that happen: we've been developing
an accessible, adaptive web platform. Currently if you're using Target.com
on any device, you're actually using three different codebases. It makes
changing our experiences incredibly difficult. It also makes testing,
tracking, and fixing accessibility issues harder work than it needs to be.
Later this year and early next year we'll be transferring all of our
platforms that power our mobile, tablet, and desktop experiences to this
new, single platform that adapts to the device you are using, making it
easier to attain our accessibility goals [Applause].
We're not just stopping with the web. Our mobile applications are
some of the most accessible in the industry, but we also want to do more.
We want to make sure that we can leverage every tool at our disposal to
bring our experiences to life, whether they're used outside-or more
importantly-inside our stores. By combining different types of navigation
using beacons, voice, and more, we are slowly unlocking more ways to
experience Target. We just announced a new product called Target Run, which
is available in fifty of our stores as a test, using location beacons and
different navigation to guide someone through a store based on items in
their shopping list and tell them where they are when they're there.
[Applause]
We also know we can't do it all, so we're partnering with new and
innovative technologies that we find. We've recently partnered with a
company called Conversant Labs, that's actually here today, on the launch
of their new mobile application, Say Shopping, to leverage their capability
with Target to deliver our entire assortment in a new and exciting way-
through speech. This new conversational shopping technology will provide a
quality accessible experience and also help identify new shopping
capabilities to satisfy the needs of all our guests. And I am proud that
they announced the launch of this application for this convention, and it's
available right now on the app stores. [Applause]
One of the most exciting things, however, about dealing with
innovation and technology is the future of wearable devices. I personally
think that wearable devices have the potential to be world-changing
technologies for accessibility. If one of the most important parts about
blindness is access to information, this has the potential to be one of the
biggest advancements we've seen in a generation by giving us never-before-
experienced levels of that information. We are currently testing multiple
wearable platforms like the Apple Watch to see if we can unlock new
features and capabilities across our digital portfolio that will allow our
disabled guests to build lists, find products, and navigate our stores
without any assistance. [Applause, cheers] Although widespread adoption of
these technologies is probably a couple years away from being mainstream,
we're investing the time now to make sure we're at the forefront of these
potential use cases. If you've seen the news this week, we just launched
our Open House, a place in San Francisco where people can actually
experience what we call the connected home, which uses many different
assistive devices across new and exciting innovation companies showing how
you can use different technologies for sale at Target within your house.
But being a retailer, our mission is just to get our guests what they
want, when they want it, and where they want it. It's a remarkably easy
statement, but an unbelievably complex set of processes, technologies, and
partners are here to make that happen. We're experimenting with multiple
fulfillment options to allow us to deliver on that promise, and
accessibility is part of the decision criteria that we use to introduce,
test, and ultimately deploy these to our guests. From curbside delivery, we
are rapidly expanding to deliver on that promise.
That brings me to my final point and the reason I'm here today, which
is all about innovation. Innovation is key to driving change across our
digital properties, our stores, and our company. We feel that there is a
place for an innovative accessibility team to help identify, prototype, and
deliver innovative ideas to help unlock this large and growing guest
segment. From augmented reality through audio and touch technologies, to
partnering on driverless cars and digital guides, we want to always be on
the cutting edge to make sure that everyone, regardless of their abilities,
can experience Target. So expect more, a lot more. Thank you.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Christopher Lu]
Raising Expectations: A Commitment to Full Participation in the Twenty-
First Century Workforce
by Christopher Lu
>From the Editor: Christopher Lu serves as the deputy secretary for the
United States Department of Labor. He appeared on the 2015 convention
agenda on Friday morning immediately following a presentation by a newly
graduated high school senior, Angel Ayala which appeared in the October
2015 issue. Secretary Lu obviously was moved by those remarks and President
Riccobono's pledge to Angel. Here is what the secretary said:
Thank you so much, Mark, for that kind introduction. Mark, I want to
thank you and this wonderful organization for your seventy-five years of
advocacy. I was moved by your words about your having Angel's back, and let
me say that we have the backs of everyone in this room, and we are proud of
our partnership with the NFB.
In the 2014 State of the Union, President Obama said, "The best
measure of opportunity is access to a good job." The folks in this room
know better than most people that people with disabilities want to work,
can work, and deserve to work. They want the same things we all want: the
feeling of pride and purpose that comes with waking up every morning,
performing a job, earning a paycheck; the ability to make choices about the
course of their lives, what they do, where they live; the ability to
support families, raise children; the ability to enter the economic
mainstream, and at bottom the ability to earn a fair day's wage for a fair
day's work.
Now I use the word they, but it's really we; it's really us. People
with disabilities are our friends, our colleagues, sisters and brothers.
They are members of every part of our community, and, most importantly,
they are young people like Angel: people that we work for every single day
at the Department of Labor to ensure that they have a fair shot at
opportunity in their future. So our goal in the Obama administration is
really quite simple: we want to level the playing field and provide equal
access to good, integrated, and competitive jobs for all people with
disabilities. To do that we need to create inclusive and supportive
workplaces where, as we say at DOL, people can bring their whole selves to
work.
This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with
Disabilities Act. I can't think of a better place to celebrate the
anniversary than right here with all of you to celebrate your seventy-fifth
anniversary. Like other civil rights legislation that came before it, the
ADA renewed and advanced our nation's founding ideal of equality for all by
prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities in all aspects
of community life, including most especially, employment. The passage of
the ADA and the progress that we have made over the past quarter-century
would not have been possible without the vigorous advocacy of organizations
like NFB. Yet in many ways employment is the unfinished business of the
ADA. Simply put, the employment gap between Americans with and without a
disability is unacceptable. Last week we released the job numbers for the
month of June, and the unemployment rate among people with disabilities was
9.3 percent, which is down from 12.9 percent a year ago. Now before you
start clapping, let me say that while the downward trend is positive, it's
less positive when you compare it to the unemployment rate of 5.3 percent
for people without a disability. More concerning is the labor force
participation rate among people with a disability. It's only 20 percent,
and compare that to the almost 70 percent labor force participation of
people without a disability.
We know at the Department of Labor that the groundwork that the ADA
laid is not finished, that there remains more work to be done in order to
create a more perfect society. That is why my boss, Secretary of Labor Tom
Perez, and I often refer to the Department of Labor as the Department of
Opportunity. We work hard to provide opportunities to Americans to
contribute fully to our nation's workforce because we believe that America
does best when we field a full team, and we can't afford to leave anyone on
the sidelines.
Especially in 2015, when we have such an array of fantastic
technological advancements, we can no longer say that someone can't do what
they need to do in the workplace. As an example, I know of a young woman
named Helen Chang. Helen is a web developer with a multinational technology
services corporation, and she spends the majority of her time writing code
for computer applications. Her employer is a federal contractor, and she
works with the company's defense division, which services the US Department
of Defense-pretty important stuff. It doesn't matter that Helen is blind
because she can do this important work thanks to cutting-edge accessible
technology, which is one of the great equalizers in today's world of
employment.
When other young people with visual impairments ask Helen for advice
on pursuing a high-tech career, she tells them to be open to learning new
technologies and software-anything that will be helpful to you in order to
be successful in your job. So our mission at the Department of Labor is to
help people like Helen bring their whole selves to work.
Let me spend a few minutes telling you how we're doing that. First,
we are working hard on the implementation of the new Workforce Innovation
and Opportunity Act or WIOA. This landmark bipartisan legislation is the
first update to the nation's workforce development system in over fifteen
years, and it amends and reauthorizes crucial programs to help jobseekers
access the services they need in employment and match employers with
skilled workers. In addition to prohibiting discrimination against people
with disabilities in services and programs, WIOA includes a specific focus
on increasing competitive, integrated employment opportunity for people
with disabilities, including the most significant disabilities. To that end
WIOA established a committee to make recommendations to the secretary of
labor and Congress on how best to accomplish this goal. This advisory
committee is already hard at work, having met three times since January,
and we look forward to receiving the recommendations of this advisory
committee about how to move forward. Just this week we also released a
guide for all 2,500 American Job Centers around the country on how to
better support persons with disabilities in helping them prepare for and
find work. If any of you are looking for a job or know someone who is
looking for a job, I hope you will consider our American Job Network first.
We are in almost every community in the country, and the people who staff
these centers are experts. In the Department of Labor we also have a civil
rights agency called the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or
OFCCP, that is tasked with protecting workers, promoting diversity, and
enforcing laws to prohibit discrimination and take affirmative action. Last
year we demonstrated that commitment to increasing access when we
implemented long-overdue updates to regulations implementing Section 503 of
the Rehabilitation Act. As you may know, Section 503 establishes an
aspirational 7 percent utilization goal for the employment of qualified
individuals with disabilities. This law encourages federal contractors to
proactively recruit and retain qualified people with disabilities. The
basis for 503 is quite simple: contracting with the federal government is
not a right; it is a privilege, and that privilege should only be extended
to companies who try to make the workforce reflect the diversity of our
country, and that includes hiring and retaining people with disabilities.
While the ADA leveled the playing field for people with disabilities
in many ways, we all know that there is much work that remains. One of
those areas is accessible technology. I know this particular issue is near
and dear to people in this room, and I certainly don't need to tell you of
the barriers that inaccessible technology poses to people in the workplace.
That's why yesterday-just yesterday-I visited a company in the suburban
Virginia area just outside Washington, DC. The company is called SSB BART,
and I had the opportunity to spend an hour with an extraordinary technology
expert named Sam Joel. Sam is blind, yet he provides critical assistance to
government agencies and major corporations around the country about how
they can make their websites more accessible to the visually impaired. Sam
did this wonderful demonstration-and I've got to tell you, I'm not a tech
person-I was completely blown away by what Sam showed me. He took a website-
and I'll be honest; he had a website already ready, but I said to him,
"Take the United States Department of Labor website. I want you to scan our
website and see how we're doing."
So he scans the digital content of any website-it happens in like
twenty or thirty seconds-and he can instantly look at where the flaws are
in the website. He and his company make recommendations to the clients
about what ought to be adjusted, and they make those adjustments. In just
that one hour I spent with Sam, I was inspired by the tenacity and
dedication that he brought to his job. The work that he is doing is cutting-
edge-it's cutting-edge in any industry, and the fact that he is visually
impaired is immaterial. The work that he is doing is transformative for all
people.
We at the department want to do more to support what Sam and his
colleagues at SSB BART are doing. That's why we've created a new effort
called the Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology. We call it
PEAT. This is a multifaceted initiative to advance the employment,
retention, and career advancement of people with disabilities through
accessible technology. I want everyone in this room to consider yourself in
the PEAT effort, because at the core of PEAT is a commitment to dialogue,
collaboration, and action. You can access PEAT online at <peatworks.org>,
and we've created a user-friendly web portal that will make it easy for you
to learn about and actively engage in issues related to accessible
technology in employment. There are educational articles, webinars,
interactive online tools-resources that are intended to provide incentives
to businesses to create more inclusive IT practices.
We at the Department of Labor are your partners. We want to be close
partners with all of you because, while we celebrate the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the ADA, we know that there is much more work to be done. We
know that the promise of the ADA has yet to be fulfilled, and we believe at
its core what this is about is increasing opportunity for all people.
This really is about the American dream. I am the child of
immigrants; my parents came to this country seeking a better life. They
came to this country because of the enduring value of the American dream:
the very simple idea that, if you are willing to work hard, you can get
ahead. Unfortunately our neighbors, our friends, our family members with
disabilities want to work hard and aren't given the chance to do so. That's
why I am motivated; that's why my boss, Secretary Tom Perez, is motivated
each morning to get up and work for people like you in this room.
Twenty-five years ago when President Bush signed the ADA on the South
Lawn of the White House, he did so a year after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, and he said this at the signing ceremony: "And now I sign legislation
which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has for too many
generations separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they
could glimpse but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as this barrier falls
for claiming together we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not
tolerate discrimination in America."
Thank you to all of you at NFB for being our partners to create a
more perfect union. It is truly an honor to be here with you today.
----------
Recipes
This month's recipes come from the members of the NFB of Washington.
Oven Baked Fajita
by Debby Phillips
Debby is the state affiliate's secretary, is an active leader in her
church, and sings in the church choir.
Ingredients:
1 pound boneless, skinless, chicken breasts cut into strips
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes with green chilies (Ro*Tel)
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 green bell pepper cut into strips
1/2 medium red bell pepper cut into strips
Method: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place chicken strips in a greased 13-
by-9-inch baking dish. In a small bowl combine oil, chili powder, cumin,
garlic powder, dried oregano, and salt. Drizzle spice mixture over chicken
and stir to coat. Next add tomatoes, peppers, and onions to the dish and
stir to combine. Bake uncovered twenty to twenty-five minutes or until
chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender.
----------
Blue Cheese Dressing
by the Mackenstadt Family
Gary and Denise are longtime Federationists and strong leaders both in the
state of Washington and nationally.
Ingredients:
1 serving spoonful plain Greek yogurt
2 1/2 serving spoon scoops real mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
6 ounces blue cheese crumbles
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground mustard
Coarse ground pepper to taste
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Pinch of sugar
Method: Mash blue cheese crumbles. Mix with yogurt to consistency of
cottage cheese. Mix all wet ingredients, blend well. Add dry ingredients,
stir, and add pepper to taste. Refrigerate in a jar or similar container.
Let sit overnight before using.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Denise Mackenstadt]
Meat Roll
by Denise Mackenstadt
Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
2 teaspoons barbecue sauce
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Filling:
1 cup shredded sharp cheese
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons water
1 small onion finely chopped
Method: Combine beef, bread crumbs, barbecue sauce, egg, and salt, mix
well. Line 9-by-13-inch pan with heavy foil. Put meat mixture in pan,
spread evenly and pat down firmly.
Combine filling ingredients and mix well. Sprinkle over meat mixture.
Pat down firmly, keeping about one inch from edge of meat. Roll as jelly
roll. Chill overnight. Cut into six even pieces. Place in shallow pan cut
side down. Bake about thirty-five minutes at 350 degrees. This recipe
freezes well.
----------
Cowgirl Cookies Gift In a Jar
by Amanda Mackenstadt
Amanda is the daughter of Gary and Denise Mackenstadt.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup cooking oats
3/4 cup M&M's
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup to 1/2 cup chopped pecans
Method: Start with a one-quart smooth ball jar. (I found these at Hobby
Lobby craft store.) Layer ingredients in like this: first layer-flour,
baking powder, baking soda, and salt; second layer-oats; third layer-M&M's;
fourth layer-chocolate chips; fifth layer-brown sugar; sixth layer-white
sugar; seventh layer-chopped pecans.
Pack each level down really tightly. I mean it. Pack it in or it
won't all fit. Also, I add the chopped pecans last because if the
ingredients were too much or not enough then I could add more or less
pecans to adjust. I would rather sacrifice nuts than chocolate, you know.
The ingredients should be flush to the top of the lid when you seal it up.
Attach tag with directions for preparing cookies, and you have a lovely
gift.
Tag Directions:
Ingredients:
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup butter, melted slightly in microwave
1 teaspoon vanilla
Method: Stir all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mix wet
ingredients into dry ingredients. Use the back of a large spoon to work it
all together. You may even need to use your hands to get everything
incorporated. Roll the cookie dough into 1-1/2 inch balls and place on a
parchment-covered baking sheet. Bake about ten minutes in a preheated 350
degree oven. I got about twenty-six to twenty-eight cookies out of these.
----------
Caramel Apple Salad
by Betty Watson
Betty Watson is the Clark County Chapter president and a member of the
state board. She has lived in several states over the years and attended
her first national convention in 1965.
Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese
8 ounces sour cream
16 ounces whipped topping
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
8 to 12 apples
2 to 3 cups seedless grapes
Lemon juice
Raisins and pecans optional
Method: Combine sour cream and cream cheese. Dice apples to desired size
and sprinkle with a little lemon juice. Cut grapes in half. Mix brown sugar
with cream cheese and sour cream. Add apples, grapes and optional
ingredients to mixture. Finally fold whipped topping into apple mixture.
Chill and serve.
----------
Easy Crockpot Cream of Crab Soup
by Betty Watson
Ingredients:
3 cans condensed cream of potato soup
2 cans condensed cream of celery soup
4 large cans evaporated milk
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
8 ounces Velveeta cheese, cubed
1 pound crab meat with shell bits removed, or 2 8-ounce cans crabmeat
Old Bay Seasoning to taste
Method: Combine all ingredients except Velveeta, crabmeat, and Old Bay
Seasoning in crockpot, heat on low until hot (about one hour). Add cubed
Velveeta, crabmeat, and Old Bay seasoning to taste. Heat on low until
Velveeta has melted (about one half hour). Serve and enjoy.
----------
Colossal Caramel Apple Trifle
by Betty Watson
Ingredients:
1 package yellow cake mix
6 cups cold milk
2 packages instant vanilla pudding
1 teaspoon apple pie spice
1 12.25-ounce jar caramel ice cream topping
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, toasted
2 21-ounce cans apple pie filling
2 16-ounce containers frozen whipped topping, thawed
Method: Prepare and bake cake according to package directions using two
greased round nine-inch baking pans. Cool ten minutes before removing from
pans, and then cool cakes completely on wire rack. In large bowl whisk
milk, pudding mixes, and apple pie spice two minutes. Let stand two minutes
or until soft set. Cut cake layers if necessary to fit evenly in an eight-
quart punch bowl. Place one layer in punch bowl and poke holes in cake with
a long wooden skewer. Gradually pour one-third of the caramel topping over
cake. Sprinkle 1/2 cup pecans and spread with half of pudding mixture.
Spoon one can pie filling over pudding. Spread with one container of
whipped topping. Top with remaining cake layer and repeat caramel, pecans,
pudding, pie filling, and whipped topping layers. Drizzle with remaining
caramel topping and sprinkle with remaining pecans. Chill to set. Store in
refrigerator.
----------
Monitor Miniatures
News from the Federation Family
Travel & Tourism Division Annual Trip Fundraiser: New York State
Experience:
The National Federation of the Blind Travel & Tourism Division is
organizing a fundraiser trip called "The New York State Experience." This
trip is open not only to Federation members, but also to the general public
to try and make this the biggest and best trip it can be. The trip will
take place September 21 to 26, 2016.
On this trip we'll visit the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and New
York City. There will be a number of tours of the city and options for
those who are interested in seeing a Broadway show or other extra
experiences. We will also be visiting other parts of New York State, as
well. Hyde Park, New York, is the home of the Roosevelt Museum, Eleanor
Roosevelt's Cottage, and the Culinary Institute of America. We will have a
dinner at the Culinary Institute as a part of the tour package, and the
dinner is included in the price of the trip. From there we will head over
to Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and Wax Museum,
because who doesn't like baseball? There will also be a brief side trip to
one of the best apple cider mills in the area to have lunch. After that,
it's back to New York City for more touring, especially optional activities
you might have decided to try, as well as a good-bye dinner.
Pricing is based on double occupancy at $1,290 per person. A deposit
of $300 per person is due no later than December 15, 2015. For full details
of the trip, check out our website at <http://nfbtravel.org/september-21-26-
2016-fundraiser-trip-to-new-york-state/>.
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.
[PHOTO CAPTION: EZ2 See Weekly Planner]
Announcing a New Low Vision Weekly Planner:
If you are seeking a print calendar designed for people with low
vision, you should know about this new product. The EZ2 See Weekly Planner
has just entered the market. The 8-1/2-by-11-inch spiral bound product was
brought to the market by NFB-member Edward Cohen. You may have met him at
convention when he was an active member and lived in Indianapolis. He
designed this calendar when he could not find a weekly planner that met his
late-stage RP vision needs. His calendar is nothing like you've ever seen.
The all black and white calendar features a clean and open design with
maximum spaces for each day's schedule. Calendar fonts range from forty to
fifty-five point. The monthly pages include large-print holidays with room
for your own reminders.
Tired of writing off the edge of the page? Well it will be hard to do
with the EZ2 See calendar. Each weekly page has a dark border or as Edward
calls them, "pen bumpers." Check it out at the NFB Independence Market:
<https://ecommerce.nfb.org/asp/default.asp>.
----------
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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