[Brl-monitor] The Braille Monitor, January 2017
Brian Buhrow
buhrow at lothlorien.nfbcal.org
Fri Jan 6 10:31:15 PST 2017
BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 60, No. 1 January 2017
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash
drive, by the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: (410) 659-9314
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of the Blind and sent to:
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
©2017 by the National Federation of the Blind
Each issue is recorded on a thumb drive (also called a memory stick
or USB flash drive). You can read this audio edition using a computer or a
National Library Service digital player. The NLS machine has two slots-the
familiar book-cartridge slot just above the retractable carrying handle and
a second slot located on the right side near the headphone jack. This
smaller slot is used to play thumb drives. Remove the protective rubber pad
covering this slot and insert the thumb drive. It will insert only in one
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(Note: If the cartridge slot is not empty when you insert the thumb drive,
the digital player will ignore the thumb drive.) Once the thumb drive is
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materials. If you remove the thumb drive to use the player for cartridges,
when you insert it again, reading should resume at the point you stopped.
You can transfer the recording of each issue from the thumb drive to
your computer or preserve it on the thumb drive. However, because thumb
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order to stretch our funding. Please use the return envelope enclosed with
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[PHOTO CAPTION: Palm-lined drive leading to front entrance of Rosen Shingle
Creek Resort]
Orlando Site of 2017 NFB Convention
The 2017 convention of the National Federation of the Blind will take
place in Orlando, Florida, July 10 to July 15, at the Rosen Shingle Creek
Resort, 9939 Universal Boulevard, Orlando, Florida 32819-9357. Make your
room reservation as soon as possible with the Shingle Creek staff only.
Call (866) 996-6338.
The 2017 room rates are singles and doubles, $83; and for triples and
quads $89. In addition to the room rates there will be a tax, which at
present is 12.5 percent. No charge will be made for children under
seventeen in the room with parents as long as no extra bed is requested.
The hotel is accepting reservations now. A $95-per-room deposit is required
to make a reservation. Fifty percent of the deposit will be refunded if
notice is given to the hotel of a reservation cancellation before June 1,
2017. The other 50 percent is not refundable.
Rooms will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Reservations may be made before June 1, 2017, assuming that rooms are still
available. After that time the hotel will not hold our room block for the
convention. In other words, you should get your reservation in soon.
All Rosen Shingle Creek guestrooms feature amenities that include
plush Creek Sleeper beds, 40" flat screen TVs, complimentary high-speed
internet service, in-room safes, coffee makers, mini-fridges, and hair
dryers. Guests can also enjoy a swimming pool, fitness center, and on-site
spa. The Rosen Shingle Creek Resort has a number of dining options,
including two award-winning restaurants, and twenty-four-hour-a-day room
service.
The schedule for the 2017 convention is:
Monday, July 10 Seminar Day
Tuesday, July 11 Registration and Resolutions Day
Wednesday, July 12 Board Meeting and Division Day
Thursday, July 13 Opening Session
Friday, July 14 Business Session
Saturday, July 15 Banquet Day and Adjournment
Vol. 60, No. 1 January
2017
Contents
Illustration: Connecting Blind People and Jobs
Belief
by Jonathan Mosen
Answering the Spelling Conundrum
by Gary Wunder
Breaking the Glass Ceiling for Blind Actors
by Gary Wunder
In Hollywood, People with Disabilities are Almost Nonexistent
by Alyssa Rosenberg
In Hollywood, Diversity Tends to Ignore the Disabled
by Tre'vell Anderson
Let's Dance: How I Dealt with Choreography
by Kelsey Nicolay
The Otherness Factor
by Alex Lester
Addressing the Needs of Seniors
by Barbara Pierce
Dots from Space!: A Mysterious Quest Begins
by Amy Mason and Anna Kresmer
Assuming They Know What I Want
by Justin Salisbury
Reflecting the Flame in Utah Rehabilitation for the Blind
by Brian Dulude
The Kenneth Jernigan Convention Scholarship Fund
by Allen Harris
Independence Market Corner
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
[PHOTO CAPTION: Holly Carneal and Amy Plumlee pose as they practice the art
of mingling on Friday evening.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Bryan Schulz and Josh Goff enjoy the fine dining of a
business lunch.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Members of the NFB of Missouri discuss difficulties of
getting hired as a blind person.]
Connecting Blind People and Jobs
In Missouri the state agency for the blind is Rehabilitation Services
for the Blind. It believes its most important goal is to get blind people
working, so it helps by sending people to training centers; helps with the
cost of training schools, colleges, and universities; and generously helps
in the equipment it provides. But the agency shares a frustration with many
state agencies: helping people jump from being ready to be employed to
having that first job.
The NFB of Missouri hosted an employment seminar called Empowering
Yourself to Success, and from Friday evening to Sunday at noon students
participated in mock interviews, learned about writing cover letters and
resumés, discussed filing online applications, and strategized about how to
learn about companies where they would like to work. Students learned how
to mingle while using one hand for cane or dog while carrying food and
drink in the other, and practiced juggling all that while introducing
themselves, shaking hands, and making small talk. Students and presenters
alike were treated to table etiquette for fine dining and learned about
traditions and manners we had never heard of before. The event drew
thirteen potential employees, and we are hopeful it will live up to its
title.
Belief
A keynote address delivered by Jonathan Mosen
to the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired
November 3, 2016
From the Editor: Dan Frye edited the Braille Monitor before me, and
this magazine is the beneficiary of things he sees, hears, and sometimes
writes. Dan currently directs the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and
Visually Impaired, and recently he called on Jonathan Mosen to deliver a
speech to the commission's staff. I will let Dan introduce Jonathan in the
memo the director sent to his staff to commemorate Thanksgiving and to
express his gratitude for their service and accomplishments. Here is what
Dan said:
From the Director's Desk
The season of Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday of the year) is again
upon us this November. During the late autumn I generally try to find time
to reflect on those achievements (both professional and personal) for which
I am grateful. This year represents no exception to this practice on my
part, and fortunately again this year we enjoy an abundance of
accomplishment that may be celebrated by us all.
Instead of focusing on the array of programmatic and strategic
progress that we have realized at the New Jersey Commission for the Blind
and Visually Impaired (CBVI or Commission) during this last year, I want to
offer to our readership the text of the keynote address that Jonathan
Mosen, owner of Mosen Consulting, respected international leader in the
field of Assistive Technology, and recognized broadcaster and thought-
leader among the world's blindness community, delivered during CBVI's
second biannual State-Wide Staff Development Seminar on Thursday, November
3, 2016. Jonathan's focus on the concept of belief and his charge to our
professional community to lift up the consumers that we serve represents
the essence of why the Commission exists. This call, animated by his
personal life experience, is at once a classic and definitive piece that
describes our responsibility to our constituents and urges us to meet these
professional obligations with a positive and transformative spirit. I am
grateful to Jonathan for his insightful perspective, conveyed in a
creative, entertaining, and inspirational fashion.
As we move forward with concerted momentum to fulfil our
organizational mission and deliver high-quality services to our consumers,
I feel confident that the text of his keynote address will remind us of our
commitment and duty. For those of you who were privileged to be present for
our State-Wide Staff Development Seminar, I invite you to re-read and
digest Jonathan's message; for those of you who were not able to be with
us, I am pleased to be able to share with you a remarkable and moving
address. Here it is:
It's an honor to be with you today, to be in the presence of so many
people who are changing lives and facilitating opportunity.
I'm mindful that there's a lot going on as I visit the United States
this time. As I talk with taxi and Uber drivers, listen to the
conversations at restaurants, and spend quality time with friends, it's
clear that some have been experiencing very tense times of late. Some
people who usually get on with one another are finding that their
friendship is strained almost to the breaking point. The process of finally
determining the outcome seems to have been going on forever. But I'm
confident that the wounds will heal, and people will be able to move on and
reunite-now that the world series is over.
But I promise not to talk about any contentious current events in the
news during this address. Sadly, I'd have to sit down pretty quickly if
this address were about baseball, since I have only fractionally more
knowledge of baseball than I have sight. Instead, I want to say thank you
for the difference you make.
I used to be a frequent international traveler. A long time ago I sat
next to a fellow passenger on a twelve-hour flight, and we got talking
about our work. It turned out that he was an executive for one of the most
successful fast food chains in the world. He said to me, "What business do
you consider us to be in?" I was beginning to wonder if I was sitting
beside one of those people who conclude that because your eyes don't work,
you're also cranially impaired. But I decided to play along and said that
obviously the company was in the fast food business. His reply caught me
off-guard. He told me that everyone says that, but in fact their primary
business was real estate. What made the company successful, he said, was
the prime real estate it owned around the world, and the fast food was a
means to that end. So it wouldn't be an inaccurate statement for this
executive to tell people he was in the fast food business, but he was
looking deeper, perhaps searching for more meaning in his life given the
harm a lot of fast food is causing.
When you provide education and rehabilitation services to blind
people, it's true that the practicalities of that involve assisting someone
to travel safely, perform household tasks well, read using the priceless
gift Louis Braille left us, and so much more. All of those things are
worthy vocations in themselves. Every night you can end another precious
day on this planet knowing you did something to change a life for the
better. Not every profession offers that satisfaction. But, in my view,
there's one prerequisite without which none of these specific tasks would
be possible-belief. It may be that someone comes to you with a well-
grounded sense of belief in themselves, perhaps due to positive parenting,
the support of fellow blind people through a consumer organization, or
simply because the person is inherently optimistic by nature. But self-
belief is often hard-won, fragile, and easily lost. How you as blindness
professionals deal with that challenge of instilling self-belief can
fundamentally set the direction of someone's life for better or worse.
When I was twelve years old, a group of blind students of which I was
a part met with a vocational guidance counsellor from our blindness agency
in New Zealand. We were all asked to talk about what options we might be
considering for a career. I didn't hesitate. The answer was the same as it
had been since the moment I could talk. I wanted a career in radio. This
meeting predates the wide availability of the internet; we're talking the
early 80s, so networking with other blind people overseas who were in
broadcasting was difficult. Yet I was determined to make my dream a
reality, and I knew that there were indeed other blind people out there
doing radio successfully.
To my disappointment, the counsellor was discouraging. He told me
he'd recently been into some radio stations and that they were starting to
move to systems that were visual and inaccessible in nature. Not only did
this meeting take place before the internet, it took place even before
computers were accessible for most jobs. Perhaps I was just an arrogant kid
who wouldn't accept reality from a grownup who knew, or perhaps I was
showing a determination to succeed at whatever I put my mind to. But I
refused to be told it couldn't be done. To help make sure it could be done,
when I was seventeen I set up a radio station staffed by blind people which
broadcast for two weeks during one of our breaks from school. The station
had city-wide coverage. We sold ads to pay for hiring the broadcast
equipment and the construction of the tall AM transmitter mast. When it was
up and running, I phoned the manager of every radio station and all the
popular radio personalities of the day, inviting them out to look at what
we were doing. That way, I instantly established my own valuable network of
contacts in the industry, and I helped change their expectations. Sure, you
can wait for opportunity to knock, but there's no harm in putting a neon
sign on your door to make it harder for opportunity to miss you.
I was assisted in that endeavor by the principal of the school for
the blind, who would take a bunch of us in his car to attend meetings. He'd
encourage us, clearly taking pride in the initiative. I have never
forgotten the attitude of the counselor who may have derailed my dream.
Because, had I not been as resilient, maybe the discouragement I received
would have prompted me not to follow my dream. But I don't think of him
often. Instead, I think far more often, with considerable affection and
gratitude, of the principal who believed in me: the man who went out of his
way in his free time to show me that I could do anything I put my mind to;
the man who, as I navigated the bureaucratic minefield of obtaining a radio
license, reminded me that investing in hard work pays dividends, and that
few things worth having come easy.
It worked. I worked in commercial radio for a number of years. In
that role I frequently had to be my own advocate, assuring potential
employers that I could work in their studio without sight.
So sometimes a professional may inadvertently discourage, when
encouragement is appropriate. But it's not as simple as that. Because
sometimes blind people can stomp on the dreams of other blind people too.
At that same meeting, when the counselor was going around the table asking
the kids present what they were considering as career options, one of the
kids said he wanted to be an astronomer. This comment was greeted by the
rest of us twelve-year-olds present with howls of derisive laughter, and I
was laughing as hard as anyone. You're blind! You can't look at a
telescope! How on earth do you expect to be an astronomer! And for weeks
and weeks we laughed at this kid-we teased him mercilessly about wanting to
be an astronomer. Kids can be cruel sometimes.
I didn't really think about this much after we'd all moved on to
other things, until a few years ago, I met a blind man, Kent Kullers, who'd
worked for NASA. Now obviously he hadn't been looking through telescopes,
but he had worked in some fascinating areas, including the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence. He talked knowledgably and fascinatingly
about stars and black holes and the wonders of the universe. I don't know
whether anyone ever laughed at him when he set out to be an astronomer. But
it's a cautionary tale, because sometimes it's other blind people who seek
to stop one of their own from reaching for the stars.
When I was in my late teens and still determined to achieve my radio
dream, someone told me about an ad in the paper they'd seen for a
broadcasting course run by professional broadcasters. I thought that having
a piece of paper to say I'd done the course might help me, so I did what
the ad said and sent them a demo tape. They called me back in short order,
offering me a place on the course. They also told me the price tag, which
was way beyond my abilities as a penniless student. On that basis, I
declined. But to my astonishment, they called me back again. The man from
the course said that my tape was so good that they would offer me the
course for half price, because it was in their interests to have me
graduate from their course. They were sure I would be going places in
radio, and they wanted to be able to say that Jonathan Mosen had graduated
from their course. So I said, cool! I'll pay half price, and can I come in
a little early as I want to get familiar with the equipment and put Braille
labels on the media being used. And the attitude instantly changed. He
asked me what I was talking about. I told him that I was blind, so I'd just
make a couple of simple modifications, and I'd be up and running. He said,
look, really there's no point doing the course, since a blind person could
never have a future in radio. I never did the course, and a few years later
I became his boss.
I tell this story because this incident would have been enough to
break some people whose self-belief was at a low ebb or nonexistent. One of
the saddest things I come across is someone who has had one setback too
many and is finding it hard to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and
keep trying. Blind people like me will face ignorance and discrimination;
it goes with the territory when you're a member of a minority. Where
appropriate, of course, we should fight it with litigation. But mentally we
need to fight it with determination, education, and belief.
It is never, never too late to give your attitude a software upgrade.
It's easy for us to become angry with the world. But anger is a choice.
Viewing something as a setback or a challenging learning experience is a
choice. Taking steps to become more employable, more presentable, more
capable is a choice. Thinking that opportunity will simply fall into our
laps is a choice, albeit a foolish one.
The praise and feedback we get influences our aptitude at something.
If someone is told or tells themselves that they aren't good at something,
chances are they won't be. If some event causes them to revisit that same
thing with a different attitude, the results can be very different. Blind
people are exposed to a lot of negativity. No doubt many of you have seen
the literature indicating that more people fear becoming blind than
acquiring any other disability. Sight is a dominant sense, so if you have
it in full measure, of course it's natural to use it and depend heavily on
it. But that's quite a different thing from concluding that one can't
function effectively without it, a conclusion many simply believe to be a
truism. It's a conclusion sometimes reinforced by people and organizations
who should know better, making the work of rehabilitation and education
professionals like you more difficult.
Only recently, a US organization raising funds to research cures for
various eye conditions asked people to record videos of themselves
performing common tasks while blindfolded and upload them to YouTube. Now
if you're suddenly deprived of a valuable faculty on which you depend and
have had no instructions about how to perform tasks in an alternative way,
you're going to function as well without that faculty as I'm going to do if
I talk at length about baseball. So most people walk away from a simulation
experience like that frightened about blindness and misinformed about how a
blind person who has received appropriate training can function in the
world. It's a serious matter, because some of those people will be
employers who eventually encounter a blind job applicant. They'll instantly
recall their own experience of blindness, and that may contribute to their
assessment of the blind job applicant's skills.
Let me be clear, as someone whose blindness also comes with the added
limited time bonus of a degenerative hearing condition included absolutely
free-I understand the insidious nature of degenerative conditions.
Something that was once easy gradually becomes tougher. It's horrible, and
its demoralizing. Blindness has been my constant reality all my life. I'm
used to it, and I personally have no desire for sight, although many other
blind people feel differently. But I'd give anything to have my hearing
restored to normality, and I know that's exactly how many people with
degenerative eye conditions feel about their sight. I strongly relate. But
it's foolish to put our lives on hold or sabotage public perception while
we await a cure that may or may not ever come. That's a recipe for a wasted
life, one full of missed opportunities and regrets.
There are little proverbs, aphorisms, and clichés that are so
ingrained in our culture that few people seem to question them. My favorite
is this little piece of absurdity: "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-
eyed man is king." This one was triumphantly proclaimed to me by a
supposedly learned lawyer who was on a nationwide TV show with me back in
New Zealand to justify why no blind person should ever be allowed to serve
on any jury. The origins of this phrase are unclear. Some attribute it to
Erasmus of Rotterdam, a 16th-century Dutch Renaissance humanist, but there
are variations of it in numerous languages. Another variation, translated
from the French, is "When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who
follow."
These antiquated little pieces of ablest nonsense put forward the
view that disability in and of itself makes you inferior, and further, the
more disabled you are, the more inferior you are. But I sometimes find
myself wondering, what would the kingdom of the blind actually look like? I
mean if everyone were blind other than a single one-eyed person, or even a
minority of one-eyed people, we'd have a very different world. So please
accompany me for just a little while to the kingdom of the blind.
Welcome! Vehicles provide a lot of auditory and tactile information
here, so a blind person can drive them-we are the majority in this kingdom
after all. Normal drivers, they being blind, are concerned about their
safety because one-eyed people are being distracted by all the auditory and
tactile feedback the vehicles are offering. On radio (there is no TV in the
kingdom of the blind of course) debate is raging about whether it's safe
for one-eyed people to be given driver's licenses.
An organization has recently been formed, the National Federation of
the One-Eyed, to champion the rights of this minority.
Over a century ago a new form of writing using symbols was developed
by a clever one-eyed inventor. He says it's more efficient for one-eyed
people to use this new form of writing called print. A limited supply of
print books are available, and recently an agreement was reached to
transcribe standard Braille books into print without first having to seek
the permission of the copyright holder.
In recent years computer and smartphone manufacturers in the kingdom
of the blind have, as a matter of human rights, added a new accessibility
feature to their devices, known as a screen. Sure, all the computers talk
and come standard with full-page Braille displays, but the National
Federation of the One-Eyed have been fighting in the courts, where blind
justice is practiced faithfully, for the rights of this minority to be
accommodated. And this thing called a screen is seen to be essential
assistive technology. Since the cost of production has to be spread across
a very small user-base of one-eyed people, screens are hideously expensive.
There's a long way to go before screens are affordable to everyone and work
equally well across platforms, but a start has been made, and the one-eyed
just need to be patient and grateful for what they have.
I could go on, but let me try and sum up on this point: "In the
kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king?" Seriously? Poppycock. It
is society and its majority that disables us with attitudes and decisions,
not the disability itself.
But these outmoded and misinformed attitudes all make your job as
rehabilitation professionals and educators more challenging. They eat away
at the very core of what is required for success-belief. No one says it's
easy or that it doesn't require some grit and determination, but plant the
belief, and with the training provided by teams like this one, blindness is
not the end of the story; it's a new beginning.
In my view, exposing blind people to adult blind mentors from an
early age is a must. But equally, I think parents of blind children need
adult blind role models in their lives too. Many people have had little to
no meaningful interaction with a blind person before. Then they find
themselves a parent of a blind child with the questions and grief that that
often brings. What can I expect of a blind child? How should I treat them
differently? What's going to become of them when they're grown? As a father
of four children myself, I know that it's instinctual to try and keep our
kids from harm, and for many, those emotions are super-charged when they
have a blind child. I grew up with kids who were wrapped in cotton wool,
mollycoddled, not allowed to just be a kid who happens not to see. It was
done with love; yet some of them are still paying the price as adults. When
I was a kid, I was fortunate. I had an older brother who was blind and
through him had access to a lot of great blind role models. Also, my
parents let me be a kid. I rode bikes and even a skateboard. I had more
than my fair share of bruises, just like any other kid. So parents and
children alike need to meet blind people who are just getting on with life
and successfully doing what people do. It all fosters belief.
I don't know whether this is a uniquely New Zealand thing, but when I
was the chairman of New Zealand's blindness agency, I came across this term
super blind. As far as I can tell, it seems to relate to any blind person
who doesn't conform to the expectations the user of the term has of what a
blind person should do or how they should act. I gave an entire address to
a group of parents in New Zealand about the importance of parents setting
up mentoring programs both for their benefit and the benefit of their blind
children. When I checked in afterwards to find out how the speech was
received, the president of the group said that one of the agency staff
present said that I had set unrealistic expectations and that we can't all
be super blind. So I had to explain that blind people are a microcosm of
society as a whole. You name it, we've got it: blind people doing a wide
range of professions, some of us nicer than others, some more ethical than
others, and with a wide range of skills. In some cases our professions or
attributes will gain us more attention than others. But sighted people are
no different. If someone eventually becomes chief executive of their
company or president of the United States, I've never heard them described
as super sighted.
We must believe in our kids. In the United States parents tell their
children: This is America; you can be anything you want to be, even
president. Blind kids need to believe that as well, because it's true.
Incidentally, while we're on the subject of parenting, when my first
child was born, a daughter, I had lots of people asking me, in sort of
hushed, whispering tones, "Is she, you know, like you?" This was an odd
question to me since I'm clearly male, and she wasn't dressed in pink to
make any kind of political statement or anything. But then I realized that
they wanted to know if she was blind. When I'd answer the question
straight, that no, she was sighted, they'd sound relieved and say that that
was great and she'd be able to look after me. And of course, once I retire,
I hope she will help keep me in the style to which I've become accustomed,
since she's now an electrical engineering student and I hope will earn lots
of lovely money. But I realized that if I could just find a way, there was
an educational opportunity here. There had to be a way for me to gently
point out that actually, blindness is OK. So I began answering the question
by saying, actually she's sighted, but we love her just the same. And that
seemed to make the point to most people.
We've come a long way. New Zealand, like the United States, now has
legislation making discrimination on the grounds of disability illegal. The
incident I described with the radio course couldn't happen now. Of course,
sometimes this causes the discrimination to go underground, and it's harder
to prove, but for the most part it's great news. Yet such legislation is no
panacea. It legally protects our right to equal consideration and
reasonable accommodation. But in a difficult job market, we have to be
prepared to put the work in. If we write poorly crafted job applications
riddled with spelling mistakes because we haven't used a spell checker, why
are we surprised when nothing ever comes back? If we turn up to a job
interview and we're not well presented, we don't make an effort to try and
look at the person we're talking to, we're not ready to educate and try and
put people at ease, our hygiene is poor, then we can't expect jobs to fall
into our lap and aren't entitled to get frustrated at the world when
nothing happens.
I'm sorry for the use of what is clearly a buzz word, but when you
believe in yourself, it really does affect your personal brand. If you can
imagine yourself in a role you really want, then you start to act the part:
you write more professionally, you conduct yourself better. It's hard to
maintain that level of self-belief when the rejection letters keep on
coming in: sometimes because you were legitimately beaten by a more
suitable candidate, sometimes undoubtedly because you're a victim of
inaccurate stereotypes. But, if you don't believe in yourself, how can you
expect others to believe in you? People who live life boldly and daringly
will fall short and make mistakes sometimes. But personally, I'd rather go
to my grave having made mistakes and learned from them than be tormented
with a series of "what if" questions. The letter you don't write, the
chance you don't take, the phone call you decide not to make could be the
one that changes everything. The Beatles felt they were out of options;
then an obscure record label took them on, and the world changed forever. A
penniless single mother wrote a book, sent it off, and was rejected by
twelve publishers until one company finally took her on and published the
first Harry Potter book. Thomas Edison had many more failures than
successes. What kept them going? Belief. A belief that they had something
to offer, even if others couldn't see it yet. And in the jobs that you do,
you're uniquely positioned not just to provide valued essential blindness
services. You make sense of the need for such services by fostering belief.
So when the admin seems unconquerable, you're dealing with someone
with whom you're having difficulty establishing a rapport, and it all
starts to feel like a daily grind, take some time to give yourself a pat on
the back. You may sometimes feel like you're knocking your head against a
brick wall with all the bureaucracy and some difficult people, but you're
making a difference and changing lives. It's up to each individual blind
person to make a go of their own lives in the end. Agencies and the people
who run them can only be facilitators. But when you believe in a client and
you demonstrate that belief, you can help plant the seed of self-belief, or
reinforce it when it's at a low ebb. When you can have that kind of impact
on the world, it's a very special thing. Thank you for all you do.
----------
Answering the Spelling Conundrum
by Gary Wunder
Back in June of 2016 we discussed problems some blind people have
with spelling. A main cause of this problem is that the majority of our
reading is done using audio, a wonderful way to get information and
entertainment but a poor way to observe spelling, punctuation, and
formatting to communicate headings, paragraphs, subordination in an
outline, italicizing, bolding, underlining, and other attention-getting
information. The question posed was how blind people deal with this deficit
and what suggestions they offer to others.
The Monitor received about ten responses, for which we are grateful.
Not surprisingly, the advice in many of these can be distilled into the
recommendation to read all the Braille one can. Several observed that they
have heard Braille used as an excuse for being a poor speller. Certainly
there are some words for which Braille allows the use of a sign, a letter,
or a letter preceded by prefixed dots. As far as we can determine there are
148 words one must learn for which contracted Braille would give no clue.
One would think that in any instruction in Braille and spelling would place
such words on a spelling list and test, the rule being that any answer is
always written letter for letter. Certainly most words can be deconstructed
by looking at the signs used to write them. Congratulations is written as
the con sign, the letters g r a t u l a, and the sign for the letter
combination tion, and s, but is easily understood to be the letters c o n g
r a t u l a t i o n s. Most of us carry around a memory of what words feel
like in the same way print readers say they often spell words by
visualizing them.
All of this advice for readers of Braille is of no value to the
person who doesn't know it, isn't proficient in it, or cannot read it
because of physical problems. So, while Braille is a very helpful tool,
lacking it does not condemn one to remaining a poor speller. The
suggestions that did not rely on Braille were:
1. If you use a word processor or an email client with a spell checker,
use it as more than a tool to ensure your latest document has no
misspellings. Don't just search for and accept the right word and move
on. Write the words it corrects and practice them like you did when
getting a spelling list on Monday and preparing for the test on
Friday. Mrs. Smith won't be there to grade you, so your success won't
mean a good grade or a treat. Instead, your vocabulary will grow with
each new word you master, your confidence in writing a quality
document will increase, and your reliance on there always being a high-
tech device at hand will diminish.
2. When reading with audio using a screen reader, concentrate not only on
the content but do a mental check to see if you know how to spell the
words being heard. If not, use your screen reader's review functions
to spell the words you are unsure of and add them to your list. Note
that not everyone who writes to you is a good speller, so before
adding his or her word to your list, verify it is spelled correctly
with a spell checker or a dictionary. This will increase the time it
takes to read some of your email and other materials, but the benefit
in what you learn is well worth it. Many blindness products have a
built-in spell checker, and there are several dictionaries available
to use online, including dictionary.com, the Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary, and more.
3. For words encountered while reading a book from NLS, Learning Ally,
and other audio sources, here are some strategies for learning the
spelling and meaning of a word. Most online or electronic dictionaries
allow the partial entry of words and special characters for those
letters one doesn't know. Suppose one knows the meaning of miraculous
but doesn't know the spelling. If only one letter is in doubt, most
online dictionaries will allow the substitution of a question mark and
will return the word. So, entering m i r ? c u l o u s will return the
correctly spelled word and reveal the mystery letter to be an 'a.' If
you only know that the word miraculous begins with an 'm' and ends
with an 's,' you could enter 'm*s.' The star indicates one or more
letters which are found in the word being sought. Given the number of
words which begin with 'm' and end with 's' (819, in case you were
wondering), the more letters you know, the better.
4. For those with iPhones, when coming across a new word, tell Siri to
spell the word you hear. If you are unsure about the definition, Siri
can also be asked to define the word. If the word in question is
catastrophe, say, "Spell catastrophe." If you want the definition,
say, "Define catastrophe." This is a fantastic feature, but it is only
a crutch unless you take the extra step of keeping a list and learning
what you have heard.
5. One person recommends using the web to improve spelling, and a simple
Google search of "learn to spell" will turn up a number of sites to
visit.
Another word of caution about learning words from emails from others:
there are some spelling pitfalls that print and Braille readers struggle
with together, so they are worth keeping in mind when reading emails or
looking up words that your screen reader has told you: words that are
spelled similarly regardless of how they are pronounced, and words that
sound very similar but are spelled differently. Some common examples are
loose and lose, accept and except, recent and resent, there/their/they're,
to/too/two, and your/you're. When you use an online dictionary to check a
spelling, glance at the definition of the word, and make sure that you have
the correct word for the meaning you intend. Though these are common
mistakes, they can have a dramatic impact in a professional setting.
Remember that learning anything challenging takes time. Becoming a
better speller takes time, but that time is rewarded with new-found
confidence, one less thing to be defensive about, and feeling good about
exercising a part of one's mind that has been shown to forestall the onset
of age-related brain problems. The goal is not to become the next champion
at the spelling bee nationals but to feel more confident in what you write,
to lessen the apprehension when you do, and to better represent the
thoughts and experiences your intellect and drive have provided. With
patience and perseverance, you can hear or quote Thomas Jefferson's quip:
"I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word only one way"
and can smile, remembering the day when you spelled words many different
ways.
----------
Breaking the Ceiling for Blind Actors
by Gary Wunder
As you can tell from the table of contents, a number of articles in
this issue deal with blind performers and how little visibility we have on
television and in the movies. When blind people are featured, too often our
characters do not represent life as we know it. Characters are obnoxious
dolts who represent people most would rather avoid. When blind characters
do appear, seldom if ever are they played by blind actors.
As with so many issues in our lives, those of us who are blind have to
determine why we do not have the same opportunities as others. Generally we
find that lack of opportunity springs from low expectations and
significantly wrong perceptions on the part of the public and occasionally
by the blind. Of course, sometimes obstacles we face are caused by the
physical lack of sight and situations when there is no substitute for it.
The glass ceiling faced by blind performers is but one example of how
difficult it is to make this determination and how broadly to apply it.
Should blind people be cast in roles in which the characters are blind?
Should blind people appear on screen more than they do given the percentage
of the population we represent? I suggest that the answer to both of these
questions is yes. Can blind people act in roles in which the character has
sight? This is a harder question and one that leads to so many others that
it could certainly merit an article of its own.
It is our hope to run an article later this year which represents the
views of the National Federation of the Blind Performing Arts Division on
these and other issues. For now, here is what two mainstream magazines and
a blind performer have to say about the issue of people with disabilities
in movies and on television. After you have had time to think about the
opinions expressed here, share how you feel with the readers of the Braille
Monitor. Collectively let's figure out how to meet yet another challenge
and the strategies we will use in doing it.
----------
In Hollywood, People with Disabilities are Almost Nonexistent
by Alyssa Rosenberg
From the Editor: This article first appeared on September 7, 2016, in
the Washington Post. The National Federation of the Blind does not believe
that blindness is the characteristic that defines a person, but it is one
of a number of characteristics that work together to form a person's
identity. There has been a lot of discussion so far this year about
mainstream Hollywood's diversity, or its failures in that department. But
the controversies over the all-white slate of Oscar nominees, or the
casting of white actresses as characters of Asian descent or origin, does
not address the full range of diversity. Alyssa Rosenberg brings up a very
timely reminder that diversity is not just about race but also includes
disability as well. Here is what she has to say:
I didn't need a study to tell me that people with disabilities are
woefully underrepresented in the entertainment industry, but a new report
from Stacy Smith and her colleagues at the Media, Diversity, and Social
Change Initiative casts a dispiriting new light on just how badly Hollywood
is doing. And Smith's latest deep dive into whose stories get told on
screen offers us an important reminder: fewer stories about people with
disabilities mean a narrower vision of life in general.
Smith and her coworkers have been tracking who appears and who gets
to speak in the most popular movies released since 2007. In 2015, the first
year Smith analyzed movies for the representation of people with
disabilities, she found that just 2.4 percent of characters in the top one
hundred movies who spoke or had actual names had disabilities. That's a
significant gap between fiction and reality, since the Census Bureau has
found in 2010 that 56.7 million people, or 18.7 percent of Americans, have
disabilities.
Characters with disabilities appeared in fifty-five of those one
hundred movies. And of those characters, 61 percent had physical
disabilities, 37.1 percent had mental or cognitive disabilities, and 18.1
percent had communicative disabilities. Characters with disabilities were
overwhelmingly male; just 19 percent of characters with disabilities were
female. Characters with disabilities were likely to be relatively
marginalized in the movies in which they did appear: ten of the one hundred
top-grossing films from 2015 featured characters with disabilities as leads
or co-leads. Of the eleven movies that Smith and her colleagues classified
as ensemble, two featured characters with disabilities as part of the core
ensemble.
As Smith and her co-authors put it, tartly: "Overall, the vast
majority of characters with disability were featured in supporting (54.3
percent) or inconsequential roles (32.4 percent)."
Some of the consequences of Hollywood's exclusion of people with
disabilities are obvious. The entertainment industry's lack of interest in
these stories makes disabilities seem less common than they actually are.
And its tendency to tell stories that emphasize the struggles associated
with disability limit the range of things that people with disabilities get
to do in fiction. The result is not merely a limited number of roles
available to actors with disabilities, but a limited range of roles.
Smith's report also points to other troubling signs in Hollywood
storytelling. Of the already small number of movies that feature characters
with disabilities, just 2 percent of those characters appear in animated
movies. In other words, Finding Dory, Pixar's movie about a fish with a
cognitive disability, may be a smash hit, but otherwise "content targeting
the youngest viewers all but erases this community."
And the paucity of images of people with disabilities interacts with
other ways in which Hollywood is profoundly and persistently unequal.
Take, for example, gender. Women are already underrepresented in the
movies: of the top one hundred films of 2015, just 32 percent had women as
leads or co-leads, and 31.4 percent of characters overall were female.
As I noted earlier, those proportions get even more skewed when it
comes to characters with disabilities. As Smith notes, "For females, it is
clear that Hollywood's preference skews toward youth, beauty, and ability."
The lack of female characters with disabilities reinforces the pernicious
notion that women with disabilities are somehow not young, beautiful, or
capable. And the general exclusion of female characters with disabilities
contributes to Hollywood's already narrow definition of what women are,
what we look like, and what we can do.
Similarly, the authors wrote, "For individuals who are LGBT and/or
living with a disability, film is also a representational wilderness," in a
year where no movie character with a disability was also anything other
than straight. And 71.7 percent of characters with disabilities were white.
These skewed statistics work in two directions. When it comes to
sexual orientation, a lack of LGBT characters who also have disabilities
contributes to a vision of the world in which disability is not part of the
LGBT experience and where people with disabilities are often presented as
sexless. In a similar way, the overwhelming whiteness of fictional people
with disabilities suggests both that people of color do not have
disabilities and that people with disabilities are not affected by the many
issues that also face people of color in the United States.
Stories about people with disabilities aren't just about one
community or employment for one group of people. As Smith's report points
out, these portrayals have implications for all of us.
----------
In Hollywood, Diversity Tends to Ignore the Disabled
by Tre'vell Anderson
From the Editor: This article first appeared June 15, 2016, in the
Los Angeles Times and is gratefully reprinted with permission. Here it is:
The story at the heart of Warner Bros.' recently released film Me
Before You is what fairy tales are made of. An adaptation of Jojo Moyes'
2012 book of the same name, the movie follows the relationship between a
young banker (The Hunger Games' Sam Claflin) left paralyzed after an
accident and his caregiver (Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke). But to
some, the choice of the able-bodied Claflin is yet another example of the
film industry limiting the roles actual disabled actors get to play.
Diversity has been the talk of Hollywood, but for the most part, the
conversation has centered mostly on race and gender. Some have brought in
issues of sexuality, but many feel the discussion should expand to include
the disabled.
"If you're going to discuss diversity, it has to be completely
inclusive of the groups that really define diversity, not just a select
group that is popular," said actor Danny Woodburn. "It's popular to say
LGBT groups, women, people of color define diversity. It's not so popular
to say people with disability define diversity. But the reality is that
disability puts the 'D' in diversity."
Hollywood has long received criticism over its lack of diverse
representations of people in front of and behind the camera. The most
recent critique came earlier this year when the film academy announced an
all-white slate of acting nominees for the second year in a row. The
hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, created by April Reign, immediately trended on
social media. In an interview with the Times, Reign verbalized her stance
on what she called "the erasure of marginalized communities" and posited a
definition of diversity that included differently abled people. Most of the
advocacy thus far, however, has centered on women, people of color, and
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Even when the film academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, announced
the organization's commitment to diversity post-#OscarsSoWhite, only women
and people of color were singled out. Additionally, the Times' list of one
hundred people who could help broaden diversity in the academy-and in
Hollywood-was focused on race, gender, and sexuality.
To Woodburn (Jingle All the Way, Seinfeld, and Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles), who as a little person counts himself as a person with a
disability, such an exclusion puts forth "dangerous rhetoric" that ignores
a significant group of people.
According to the US census, about 19 percent of the population
identifies as differently abled-that's 56.7 million people. Their
conditions range from intellectual disabilities such as Down syndrome to
physical disabilities such as paralyzation or cerebral palsy. Others'
sensory perceptions could be affected, such as those with autism,
blindness, or hearing loss. A 2012 census report noted that this community
has a lower likelihood of being employed and a higher likelihood of
experiencing persistent poverty. As such, any diversity conversation that
doesn't make room for disabled people is "dangerous," Woodburn said,
considering the economic and policy-oriented ramifications.
One way policy is affected by such exclusion can be seen in New York,
where the Writers Guild of America East has endorsed and lobbied for
modifications to the Empire State Film Production Tax Credit to include
television writers and directors who are women or people of color.
Woodburn, as vice chair of SAG-AFTRA's Performers With Disabilities
Committee, is working to get disability added to the potential list of
supported diversity.
"It's that same separate but equal phraseology of the 1960s, that
it's not your turn yet," he said. "It gets my ire up. It gets me
activated."
Gail Williamson, a talent agent at Kazarian, Measures, Ruskin and
Associates, has been advocating on behalf of the differently abled for more
than twenty years. With 120 disabled clients on her roster, she believes a
number of them could have easily taken on the Me Before You role.
"We refer to it as cripface, as in blackface or painting Italians to
look like American Indians," said Williamson. "We're hoping in the future
that these films would hold up more if they indeed had an actor with a
disability."
Preempting retorts that disabled people don't have the talent,
training, or experience necessary to take on major roles-a similar refrain
used to justify inadequate representations of women, people of color, and
LGBT folk-Williamson, whose son is an actor with Down syndrome, echoed the
words of winner Viola Davis' speech at the 2015 Primetime Emmys about just
needing the opportunity.
"We've got them waiting, people who are trained, have done their
homework and have credits, but they won't open up the doors for them,"
Williamson said. "But my guys are never going to be able to come into the
room with the experience that these other guys have, because it's not
awarded to them. Someone is going to have to see it in them."
Marlee Matlin, who as a deaf actress was cast as the lead in 1986's
Children of a Lesser God, won an Oscar and instantly became a star for the
role, her first credited gig ever.
As for people the industry should be paying attention to, Williamson
and other community advocates highlight Ali Stroker (Broadway's Spring
Awakening, Faking It), Jamie Brewer (American Horror Story), JLouis Mills
(Heartbeat, The Tribe) and Robert David Hall (the CSI franchise), among
others.
But as Adam Moore, SAG-AFTRA's national director of equal employment
opportunity and diversity, added: "Not only do they not have the
opportunity for anything that is specifically written about [disabled
people], but when [the story does have disabled characters] they don't get
the chance to even compete for those jobs more than half of the time."
Moore likened the situation to casting experiences of people of color
where roles are slated for whites unless otherwise stated.
"It also means nondisabled, unless otherwise labeled," he said.
"[Disabled people] are excluded almost from the beginning because stories
aren't being thought of to be told in these ways."
Furthermore, Moore cautioned, the experience can be doubly or triply
oppressive for those living at the intersections of other identities
disadvantaged in the industry, such as a disabled woman of color. But this
is why disabled people need to be included in the industry's definitions of
diversity, Woodburn said. They too should be able to see themselves
reflected in society's cultural productions. "I don't want disabled people
to be a footnote in this discussion," he said.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Kelsey Nicolay]
Let's Dance: How I Dealt with Choreography
by Kelsey Nicolay
From the Editor: Since we are focusing on the blind in performance,
it is good to go beyond philosophizing and noting the poor state of the
representation of the blind. In addition, we should focus on the performing
opportunities blind people have had, and here is one as it was reported in
the fall issue of the Buckeye Bulletin, the newsletter of the National
Federation of the Blind of Ohio. Here is how it was introduced by Editor
Barbara Pierce:
Editor's note: Most of us know Kelsey from the Ohio listserv. She
lives in Medina, so she has no chapter near her. Here is a chance to get to
know her a bit better:
I have been singing in choir since the fourth grade without much
difficulty. However, one day in my freshman chorus the director gave us the
music we would be performing at the end-of-year show with choreography. I
was nervous about how it would go. How would I remember the moves? How
would I move around without my cane? What about getting on and off stage?
My choir director assured me that I would dance and participate like
everyone else and that they would find ways to make it happen. We ended up
having someone come in to help me. The choir director chose someone who was
in show choir and had more dance experience. It worked out really well once
the choir director found someone. The person the director found seemed to
know instinctively that I could do the moves on my own once I learned them
and made sure that, as soon as she felt I was ready, she insisted that I do
as much as I could without her holding onto my arms. After about a week she
said, "I'm not going to help you too much today because I want you to be
able to do it on your own during performance." I didn't do the moves
perfectly the first few times I did them alone, but I knew that with
repetition I would learn them, and I did. By two weeks before performance,
I could do almost all of it alone, and she could simply watch from a
distance and correct me if necessary. Performance weekend went pretty well.
While the first show time was mostly successful, I had a few
setbacks. For instance, like most students, I chose to take part in my
grade's student-led ensemble. We auditioned for the show and were one of
the groups selected. When it came time to learn our choreography, the
choreographer made a comment that he tried doing the ensemble's dance steps
with his eyes closed, and he couldn't do it, so he concluded that I
couldn't either. I felt devastated because I had been working hard in
choir, and then he told me I couldn't perform the student ensemble
choreography. The choir director decided to let me perform anyway and just
sing the number with the ensemble. I was grateful he let me do that, but at
the same time I felt robbed of an opportunity to prove myself. From this
experience I learned that it is important to stay positive and keep working
at your dream and trying to change minds even if others don't believe you
will succeed.
My sophomore and junior years, however, the performances were not as
successful. Again the choir director found someone to work with me.
However, this person did not have the same expectations that the former
student had had. Instead of encouraging me to do the moves on my own, she
stood behind me and moved my arms. It took a lot longer for me to learn the
choreography, and on stage during performance she had to help me with most
of it. The choir director allowed her to be on stage with me, but he
overlooked the fact that she was practically doing it for me. My teacher of
the visually impaired, family, and friends all commented that there was no
reason for her to be on stage helping me. My TVI helped me with costume
changes for one show so that my family could watch the performance. After
both my numbers she told me that I could have done most of that myself. The
same thing happened both years. My junior year I participated in the
student ensemble again. It was comprised of the people I had been in the
freshman group with, but they were all in higher choirs than I was. They
were familiar with my blindness, and it didn't seem like a big deal to them
until it was time to learn the choreography. The group leader chose to make
up the choreography herself instead of having our choreographer do it. When
it came time for dance rehearsal, no one bothered to teach me until the
week of performance. My choir director told me one person was teaching me,
my assistant told me something different, and another student in my choir
said she was teaching me. I finally decided to call one of the members whom
I knew from freshman chorus and who had helped me in that group as well.
Luckily she agreed to teach me the next day. However, because it was so
close to performance, I ended up dropping the group at the last minute
because I could not learn the arm movements in time.
My senior year I was determined to make this the best performance
since it was my last one. I told my director that I wanted an assistant to
help me learn the choreography but that I did not want him on stage with
me. The director had a hard time finding someone who was free during the
first period of the day, but she eventually found someone, and, once she
did, it worked out fine. This person seemed to know instinctively that I
could do the moves by myself. Once I felt confident, I did everything by
myself. He was right there, but he never helped me when I didn't need it.
It also helped that my sister was in the same choir as me, so she sometimes
worked with me at home to correct my mistakes. I also participated in
senior ensemble since it was my last performance. That started off shaky,
but, once I was taught the dance, I was ok. One of the girls in my choir
was also in the group, so she started teaching me. However, this person
seemed to have the expectation that I needed constant help and therefore
stood behind me and moved my arms. Two students whom I knew from middle
school told me that they had decided to teach me instead. I met with them
one-on-one, and we went through it. I learned the routine in about an hour,
and by the end of our time I was doing pretty much all of it with very
little assistance. The performance went really well, and my family told me
that I fit right in, which is what I wanted.
Based on these experiences, I have several suggestions for students
dealing with a similar situation. The most important piece of advice is to
be confident. It may be difficult at times, but try to stay positive
through performance. Second, self-advocacy is critical. If you feel you are
not getting the help you need, speak up. Try to talk to the person helping
you and let him or her know that you want to do the moves on your own. It
may be uncomfortable to bring this up with the student, but as long as you
do it tactfully, there should be no problem. You can also ask your
orientation and mobility instructor or TVI for help. She may be able to
help if there is a particular dance move you are struggling with. Either
way, speak up if things aren't going the way they should. Finally, show
appreciation. For example, giving the people who helped you learn the
choreography a gift card to their favorite restaurant or just some flowers
go a long way. People will be more likely to help you in future ensembles
if they know their work is appreciated.
----------
Leave a Legacy
For more than seventy-five years the National Federation of the Blind
has worked to transform the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people
into reality, and with your support we will continue to do so for decades
to come. We sincerely hope you will plan to be a part of our enduring
movement by adding the National Federation of the Blind as a partial
beneficiary in your will. A gift to the National Federation of the Blind in
your will is more than just a charitable, tax-deductible donation. It is a
way to join in the work to help blind people live the lives they want that
leaves a lasting imprint on the lives of thousands of blind children and
adults.
With your help, the NFB will continue to:
. Give blind children the gift of literacy through Braille;
. Promote the independent travel of the blind by providing free, long
white canes to blind people in need;
. Develop dynamic educational projects and programs that show blind
youth that science and math are within their reach;
. Deliver hundreds of accessible newspapers and magazines to provide
blind people the essential information necessary to be actively
involved in their communities;
. Offer aids and appliances that help seniors losing vision maintain
their independence; and
. Fund scholarship programs so that blind people can achieve their
dreams.
Plan to Leave a Legacy
Creating a will gives you the final say in what happens to your
possessions and is the only way to be sure that your remaining assets are
distributed according to your passions and beliefs. Many people fear
creating a will or believe it's not necessary until they are much older.
Others think that it's expensive and confusing. However, it is one of the
most important things you will do, and with new online legal programs it is
easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do decide to create or revise
your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as a partial
beneficiary. Visit <www.nfb.org/planned-giving> or call (410) 659-9314,
extension 2422, for more information. Together with love, hope,
determination, and your support, we will continue to transform dreams into
reality.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Alex Lester]
The Otherness Factor
by Alex Lester
From the Editor: Alex Lester was the tenBroek Library's first intern
during the summer of 2016. He is now a senior studying psychology and
ethics at Misericordia University near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the
birthplace of the NFB. In exchange for course credit, living quarters, and
a stipend generously provided by Misericordia, Alex spent six weeks working
on preservation projects with NFB archivist Anna Kresmer. His dedication to
the work of the library, as well as his positive attitude and enthusiasm,
were appreciated by all. However, the space where Alex truly excelled was
in embracing the history and philosophy of the NFB and applying it not only
to his own life, but to his research and thought processes as a philosophy
student. As part of the requirements for his internship, Alex was asked to
submit this article, which perfectly reflects his absorption of the
Federation's philosophy. We gladly welcome Alex to the Federation family
and wish him continued success as vice chair of the Human Relations
Commission of the City of Scranton. Here is what he has to say:
"Television could perform a great service in mass education, but
there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds."
- Tallulah Bankhead
Television is a part of millions of Americans' everyday lives. In
fact, "According to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American watches
more than four hours of TV each day (or twenty-eight hours per week, or two
months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a sixty-five-year life, that
person will have spent nine years glued to the tube," according to an
article by N. Herr. That's a lot of time to influence what everyday people
are exposed to and how they behave. However, this puts producers in a
position of great power and creates a moral dilemma since they are able to
either inspire equality for all or create divisions where there aren't any.
This also creates a specific issue for the viewers. How should one hold
content creators accountable for their actions, and do we have an
obligation to only view projects that promote equality? To wrestle with
this issue, we must look to ethics. Ethics is the philosophical study of
what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, and is concerned with how one
should act.
In ethics there are many different theories, but I want to focus on
only one. This is a theory that Americans unknowingly use to judge daily
actions. It is called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a theory in
normative ethics (the branch of ethics that focuses on how we should act)
which holds that the best moral action is the one that maximizes utility.
Utility is defined as what will cause the least amount of suffering and
promote the most happiness. How does one measure utility? Utilitarianism is
in a category of ethics known as consequentialism, which simply means that
you can only judge an action's morality by the consequences it produces.
There are two types of utilitarian ethics practiced but here I am just
focusing on one, and it is called Act Utilitarianism. Act Utilitarianism
requires that for a person's act to be morally right, it must produce at
least as much happiness as any other act that the person could perform at
the time of the action.
Instead of using this system of mass media influence to promote
people with disabilities as equals to their nondisabled counterparts,
television and film producers constantly find new and creative ways to
depict people with disabilities by employing something I call the
"Otherness Factor." The Otherness Factor is where a character with a
disability is only represented via an archetype character (1) who is
somehow "othered" or different in some way. An example of this would be if
a character is blind, they either have a super power that romanticizes
their disability as something mystical (such as the superhero Daredevil's
radar sense), or they are represented as something undesirable or evil
(such as the bumbling idiot or a serial killer). There are no depictions of
an average blind person. The one unifying trait of the Otherness Factor
Character (OFC) is that each and every OFC is defined by their disability
and lacks any sense of being a well-rounded character.
Now knowing what the OFC is, we must ask what the effects of the
Otherness Factor are. Quite a few studies have been done on children's
exposure to unhealthy food television advertisements and children's food
choices, ultimately showing that "considerable scientific evidence
establishes a link between unhealthy food marketing and children's food
choices, purchases, and consumption," according to a 2016 article in the
American Journal of Public Health. If advertising food to children can have
such an impact on their actual behavior, what effects do depicting people
with disabilities as othered and ultimately advertised as a person's
defining factor have on both the disabled and the general public? With a
lack of role models, disabled people are missing out on psychological
benefits that their nondisabled peers have. A study published in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people with role
models who exhibited certain traits (traits that are not depicted in an
OFC) were likely to enhance motivation in a person.
The continued reinforcement of the negative and misguided stereotypes
of disabled people starts to become applied to the disabled community as a
whole, not just to a person who has the disability with the promoted
stereotype. For example, people with disorders that are not severe
developmental disorders are treated as if they had them anyway, like a
waiter asking a sighted or hearing person what the blind and/or deaf person
wants to eat.
In addition to these two negative consequences, the focus of over- or
underachievement means that disabled people are exposed to rhetoric that
they can never be who they are without striving to overcome their
impairment. However, disability across the board does not have to define a
person. The National Federation of the Blind's one-minute message states
that, "We know 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." I think
that in the one-minute message, the word blindness could be replaced with
the names of other disabilities. People are more than just their
disability. It can be hard to believe that when the rhetoric is
discouraging you from separating truth from fiction; when the distance
placed between disabled people and the intended audience (nondisabled
people) reinforces a socially constructed gap between disabled and
nondisabled people. That gap creates stress not just for the disabled
person, but also for the nondisabled person who then doesn't know how to
treat a disabled person when they encounter them in the real world. The
distance makes it hard, if not impossible, for them to interact with them
as regular people.
An Act Utilitarian would say that Americans and content creators
would act morally if they snuffed out the Otherness Factor Character
archetype from all films and television shows and replaced it with complex,
well-rounded characters who promote the positive representation of disabled
people. The Golden Girls is one example of a past production whose social
influence was so great that it "inspired older women to dress and behave in
a way they have always felt inside," by representing older women in a way
that was unheard of during the 1980s according to Rue McClanahan in an
interview in 2000. If a new show could pull off a similar stunt with its
depictions of blind or disabled people, we would no doubt see a change in
how disabled people are treated as whole people in real life, resulting in
both disabled and nondisabled people becoming happier. This happiness would
be greater than creating content that ignores an entire group of people and
causes stress for another. Creating more complex disabled characters is the
moral thing to do. Although Act Utilitarianism states that the act must
create the most happiness at the time, their past actions cannot be
condemned as non-moral unless they were aware that the project would cause
such harm. One case where filmmakers can be held accountable with this
theory would be when the filmmakers of the 2008 film Blindness, which
contained a gross depiction of blind people, were made aware by the NFB
that it would cause damage in representing blind people the way it did.
Still they chose to release the project and by doing so perpetuated a non-
moral representation of disabled people.
Knowing that the moral thing for content creators to do is to create
complex disabled characters and get rid of the OFC, what should viewers do
to encourage moral representation? Act Utilitarianism also has something to
say about this. The theory says to act only in a way that will create the
most happiness, which means that viewers have a moral obligation to not
purchase or watch films that feature OFCs, thereby using one's money as a
means of social pressure. Political action is also extremely important;
organizations such as the National Federation of the Blind lobby and engage
in discourse with the local, state, and federal governments, production
companies, and anyone who needs to be educated to advocate for just
treatment of the disabled.
It's important to understand that cutting off funding to these
projects by not watching them and by advocating for equality by writing
letters and starting discourse with friends, family, film producers, and
the government-be it through an organization or on your own-will help
millions of people benefit by getting rid of negative representations and
an increasing positive representation. These actions will encourage
positive depictions and a better understanding of what people with
disabilities are capable of doing. Using Act Utilitarianism as a way to
judge morality and conduct behavior can cause both great and tangible
change as well as promote a great happiness for all of humanity.
Footnote:
(1) Although the Otherness Factor Character may be recognizable, it is
an archetype character and not a stock character.
References:
Bankhead, T. (n.d.). Tallulah Bankhead Quotes. Retrieved July 26, 2016,
from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tallulahba393219.html
Herr, N. (n.d.). Television & Health. Retrieved July 26, 2016, from
https://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html
Jordan, C. (2002, November). Motivation by positive or negative role
models: Regulatory focus determines who will best inspire us. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 83(4): 854-64. Retrieved July 26, 2016,
from http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/lockwood/PDF/Lockwood 2002
Motivation.pdf
Kelly, B. (2010, September). Television Food Advertising to Children: A
Global Perspective. American Journal of Public Health, 100(9). Retrieved
July 26, 2016, from
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2009.179267
Rue McClanahan [Television series episode]. (2000, June 19). In Intimate
Portrait. Lifetime. Retrieved July 26, 2016, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLmMZZrFGCw
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Barbara Pierce]
Addressing the Needs of Seniors
by Barbara Pierce
From the Editor: No name is likely to be more familiar to Monitor
readers than Barbara Pierce, she having served longer than any editor in
the history of this magazine. She now edits the Buckeye Bulletin, a
publication of the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio. It is always a
pleasure for me to read what she writes, and I think what she has to say
about addressing the needs of senior citizens is both timely and important.
Here is what she says in an article entitled "Editor's Musing," which
appeared in the fall issue of the newsletter:
On September 1 Bob and I celebrated our first year of living at
Kendal at Oberlin, a residential community for seniors. We have a lovely,
air-conditioned cottage and one delicious meal a day in an upscale dining
room. The tradeoff is that we spend most of our time with senior citizens,
thinking about issues of interest to them. One of these is vision loss.
Recent statistics suggest that 6.8 percent of people over sixty-five
are losing vision. That is from the NFB website. The AFB says that 12.2
percent of people between sixty-five and seventy-five report vision loss
while 15.4 percent of those over seventy-five are losing sight.
Not surprisingly a number of people here are struggling with macular
degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Also not surprisingly
people watch me very carefully. They are always worrying that I may trip
someone with my white cane. They also want to know how I do things, and
they worry about how I am going to get where I am going.
I am also president of the NFB of Ohio Seniors Division. I am sorry
to say that I have not done much with this job this year, but I have been
thinking about the NFB's general responsibility to reach out to seniors
losing vision. This is or should be a concern for every chapter across the
state. All of us have competent people in our communities who are losing
vision and who could be helpful members of our chapters. Retirement centers
are a good place to search for these folks and recruit them to join us.
In August I spoke to the Vision Support Group at Kendal. This is a
group of people who meet monthly, mostly to learn about cutting-edge
research in their particular type of blindness. Once a year they have
Magnification and More come out to show them technology, and they are
linked with an international group addressing senior low-vision issues. I
have not attended a single meeting of this group this year because none of
what they were doing was of any interest to me. But the guy who runs the
group asked me to come in August and talk to them, and it seems to have
been a great success. They had twice the number of people attend the
meeting as the previous record, and they were quite interested in what I
had to say. My title was "Exploring the World of the Other Four Senses." I
began by suggesting that focusing intensely on what they could see had
disadvantages. Their vision was failing, so they necessarily got less and
less satisfactory visual information. I also told them that they were
always getting information from their other senses but that their brains
could concentrate only on a certain amount of data at once. If they were
busy concentrating on vision, they did not have brain power left over to
assess the other, more useful information coming in.
I went through what they could learn from touch, hearing, smelling,
and the kinesthetic sense of where their bodies were in the world. I
covered what one can learn through feet on the ground, what temperature
changes or sunshine or the breeze on a cheek can tell you, how to use the
balance and weight of what is on the fork to help you eat efficiently, and
how the weight and balance of papers can help you find things that are
buried in a pile of junk. We talked about marking things with rubber bands
or safety pins. I told them about listening for walls, doorways, bushes,
and wide open spaces. I answered lots of questions and talked them through
how I find my luggage on a carousel at the airport. I also put in a word
for accessible voting machines. They asked good questions and begged me to
come back again next summer, when I suspect they will have forgotten
everything I talked about, so I can easily do it all again.
I have bothered to describe all of this because I hope to inspire
some of you to go and do likewise at retirement facilities near you. One
could have done a lot more of course. This is a great opportunity for
mentioning the NFB's vehicle donation program. One could urge them to come
to chapter meetings or events or join even if they don't want to come to
meetings.
I also want to urge members who are seniors to join the Seniors
Division by coming to our meeting at convention Saturday at lunch. Susan
Day will be talking with us about how to stay safe in our homes. We will
also be planning activities for the coming year. It would be great to hear
that some new folks have made arrangements to talk with seniors in their
communities. Seniors too can live the lives they want; blindness is not
what holds them back.
----------
Dots from Space!
A Mysterious Quest Begins
by Amy Mason and Anna Kresmer
From the Editor: At the 2015 National Convention a new activity was
introduced: the NFB Quest. It was designed to be a fun game that would
challenge Federationists to learn more about the organization and help
break the ice between members who had never met in person before. It made
the players active participants rather than passive observers of articles
and speeches. Monitor readers who did not have the opportunity to attend
the 2016 Convention don't have to feel left out, however, since the Monitor
will be running a serialized version of the NFB Quest from this year. Here
is how Amy Mason, access technology specialist, and Anna Kresmer, archivist
for the tenBroek Library, introduce it:
Dots from Space! was the second annual NFB Quest. The quests are
built to encourage both newcomers and Federation veterans to experience our
national convention in a whole new way. They incorporate puzzle-solving,
trivia, social challenges, and travel to many of the beloved events and
locations that are integral parts of the national convention.
Lisamaria Martinez, co-winner of the inaugural "NFB Diamond Quest" in
2015 said that the coolest part of playing "was that it got people up and
moving, talking to each other, and learning really neat things in order to
move on to the next round. I found myself visiting the Presidential Suite
for the first time in seventeen national conventions. My husband talked to
many blind people to ask them questions about trivia or to ask them to read
something in Braille for him. We had a blast!"
For its second iteration, the game wizards hoped to see the
convention quest participants boldly go where no Federationists had gone
before. This meant creating a bigger game with new challenges that would
appeal to more players while weaving in a greater opportunity for
collaboration. As part of this expanded game universe, we introduced the
Dots from Space, a friendly and curious alien race. The story of these
intrepid explorers allowed us to present the Federation philosophy in a
refreshing new way while highlighting some forgotten gems from our history.
In order to share some of the fun with members who were not able to
participate in the game, the Braille Monitor will present the storyline of
Dots from Space! as a series of articles over the next several months. We
hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it, and we welcome
you to participate in next year's NFB Quest!
To read more of Lisamaria's blog post on winning the first NFB Quest
with her husband Joe Bakker, visit <https://nfb.org/blog/vonb-blog/>.
Here is the first episode:
It is the year 2525. The Earth lies abandoned and still. A
spacecraft, lured by the silent monuments of Washington, DC, looks for a
landing spot on the edges of the Chesapeake Bay. The terrain is rough and
uneven, with the remains of empty buildings partially submerged in the
frigid water. The large, flat roof of one building in particular seems to
provide a good spot, and the ship touches down.
Later, inside the scout ship known as the Particle, the officers
prepare to investigate the planet's surface. Captain Dottie orders a survey
of the surrounding terrain, and the ship's computer instantly produces a 3D
model of the immediate environs. Intrigued, the science officer rolls
forward and flattens himself over the model like a giant ball of silly
putty. Reforming into a ball, he exclaims, "Fascinating."
"What is it, doctor?," asks the captain.
"Most interesting, captain. It appears that the majority of the
structure is still intact. I would recommend that we begin our
investigations with the very building upon which we have landed."
The captain considers for a moment before saying, "Very good. Let us
proceed."
The crew begins to prepare to disembark from the ship by running
additional scans of the interior of the building, checking the atmospheric
conditions, and readying their gear. Suddenly, one of the spherical aliens
conducting one last scan cries out, "Captain! We've found something!"
The captain sighs gustily, "Yes, ensign? What is it now?"
"A game!"
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Justin Salisbury]
Assuming They Know What I Want
by Justin Salisbury
From the Editor: Justin Salisbury is now an orientation and mobility
instructor with Ho`opono Services for the Blind. He graduated from
Louisiana Tech University in March 2016 in the first cohort of the
Rehabilitation Teaching for the Blind master's program and the first cohort
to receive the National Certification in Rehabilitation Teaching for the
Blind (NCRTB) in addition to the NOMC and NCUEB. His experiences in the
states of Connecticut, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Louisiana have helped
prepare him to empower blind people in Hawaii. Here is what he says:
The Walmart near my apartment faces into its parking garage rather
than facing the street. In order to enter the building, I climb a short
flight of stairs and then follow a zigzag sidewalk past a Starbucks and a
few other restaurants built into the side of the Walmart until I finally
get to the door. Without fail, after I finish climbing the stairs, I get a
few steps before I hear, "Sir, you're about to run into a wall." If I'm
lucky, I even get to hear it again for one or two of the other walls in the
zigzag pattern. I usually ignore it, but the other day I stopped and asked,
"Have I walked anywhere that sighted people don't normally walk?" The man
replied, "No, you're doing fine. It's just that you were about to run into
a wall." I was not sure how he reasoned that I got myself all the way to
the Walmart from wherever I had been only to risk it all by potentially
running into a wall. I told him that it was actually not normal for people
to run into walls, and I left him with that bit of genius.
As blind people we often have experiences where we are out traveling,
just going through our normal day, when well-meaning sighted people jump in
to rescue us with an important piece of information to which they assume we
are completely oblivious. They mean well, and their hearts are in the right
place. Their expectations of us, however, bear a noteworthy degree of room
for improvement. It can be valuable for us to take a moment to reflect on
the foundations, shaky and inaccurate as they may be, and the consequences
of these acts of kindness.
When I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the doctoral
students were always included in the Friday faculty coffee hours, and I
grew a lot from those experiences. Sometimes the coffee hours were shared
between two colleges, which generally meant more serious catering and a
wonderful array of dessert items. One day, when we shared coffee with the
College of Human Ecology, I met a faculty member who took particular
interest in my blindness. In these gatherings, it was quite customary for
people to talk about research interests, publication efforts, travel
destinations in faraway places, and the newest fun things to do in Madison.
In the general public, blindness is usually the first conversation topic
most people try to breach with me, but this gentleman actually stood out
for that in this setting. After we introduced ourselves, he jumped right in
with a question.
"So what should I do when I see a blind person?" His question was
very simple. It was well-intended, and it even demonstrated an eagerness to
learn about blindness and the needs of blind people. If anyone has a
question like that, I want them to feel comfortable asking me. Why do so
many members of the public, including some blind people, believe that blind
people need something special? I suppose it helps if communication is
nonvisually accessible, rather than just a wave or a peace sign, but what
really makes us so different that we would need anything beyond that? I
asked the professor what he meant when he asked what to do.
When he would see a blind person on campus, he would often feel the
urge to help the blind person, but he never really knew how, so he held
back. He was generally uncomfortable with blind people. I told him that he
ought to just do whatever he would do if he saw a sighted person. It would
probably be a good idea to say hello, just as it would be for anyone else,
and carry on as he would naturally. It is perfectly acceptable to approach
a blind person to ask a question about something he or she is wearing or to
introduce yourself for any of the normal reasons. It is not beneficial,
however, to approach the person to offer help just because the person is
blind.
There is a common presumption that the sighted bear a responsibility
or even a sense of authority to know what information a blind person needs
and lacks. Even though that professor meant well and even made an effort to
become more educated about blindness and the needs of blind people, he held
the belief that he needed to be ready to do something for the blind people
he encountered.
In Honolulu people with low expectations for blind travelers have
implemented the installation of an auditory traffic signal that we
unaffectionately call "clickers." The button to push for the crosswalk
signal emits a soft and slow clicking sound. Once pushed, and when the
traffic light changes appropriately, the clicking becomes much faster and
louder on both sides of the street. Custodial orientation and mobility
specialists will teach students to choose their placement, alignment, and
time to cross the street based entirely on these clickers. I have to teach
my students how to ignore the noise pollution that they create and to
refute the low expectations that their implementation demonstrates. My
students aim to cross based on the sounds of traffic, which is, of course,
safer and more reliable than audible crossing signals. When approaching the
streets, we are often greeted by well-meaning sighted people who think they
are helping us by telling us that we are about to cross the street. It must
not occur to them that this might be our intention. Many times, when we are
standing at an intersection waiting to cross, well-meaning sighted people
will walk up or get out of their cars just to push the button for us to
initiate the clicker crossing signal. They take time out of their day to do
something that they think will help us get what we want and that they think
we cannot do for ourselves. They assume that we want the button to be
pushed and that the problem is that we are unable to push the button
ourselves. They assume that we want to cross the streets using the audible
traffic signals. Instead, we are then faced with the choice of either
crossing with the distraction of all the noise pollution created by the
clickers or to wait for a future cycle without the clickers. When they push
the button for us, they make it harder for us to pursue our own objectives,
even though they think they know what we want.
When I was leaving a state convention of the National Federation of
the Blind, I arrived at the airport about two hours and fifteen minutes
prior to my departure, thanks to absolutely no traffic delays. As I was
approaching the security checkpoint, a TSA agent decided to walk with me up
to the podium where another agent would check my identification and
boarding pass. I let her know that I didn't expect to need any help but
thanked her for her kindness. She followed me anyway, marveling at how
independent I was. I am not accustomed to custodial members of the general
public mentioning independence on their own. After the man at the podium
had returned my boarding pass and identification, the female agent told me
to come with her. Now, I was at the back of a line which seemed to be about
twenty feet from the conveyor belt, so I asked her where we were going. She
told me that she was going to take me to the front of the line so that I
could go through security. I had plenty of time, so I decided to take
advantage of a teachable moment. I explained to her that I did not mind
waiting in line, that I had plenty of time to catch my flight. She
persisted, and the man at the podium asked what the problem was. They
expressed to each other that they could not believe that I did not want to
go to the front of the line, that I actually wanted to wait in line. Even
though they each had jobs to do, they decided to focus themselves on
talking to me about this seemingly irrational decision that I was making.
If we blind people want to have rights equal to those of our sighted
counterparts, we must bear equal responsibility, and this applies to
waiting in line. I explained this to them. Then, we discussed how the
members of any minority, if they wish to achieve rights equal to those of
the majority, must bear responsibility equal to that of the majority. They
informed me that they were both black, and that they knew very well that,
as a minority, they must each take every special opportunity they could
get. I told them that I did civil rights work for the blind for my career
and that I was not going to contradict my job while on my personal time.
"I'm going to bring you to the front of the line, and then I'm going to
treat you equally," she said. I explained to her that equality is not
something that can be switched off while cutting the line and then switched
back on once I'm at the front. She finally let me go so I could stand in
line like everyone else. She had been so sure that she knew what I wanted,
but she made it harder for me to do what I wanted. I cannot think of any
other subset of the population, except maybe children, who might have their
priorities questioned to that degree.
They think that they know what we want. They assume that they know
our priorities, our hopes, and our dreams. If they try to act in pursuit of
the priorities that they assume that we have, this takes our plans and our
dreams out of our hands. In the National Federation of the Blind, we work
to support the self-determination of blind people, which enables us to live
the lives we want. The Federation continues to teach me that I should be
able to pursue my own goals, which starts with being the one who knows what
I want. Many well-meaning sighted people have attempted to help me while
assuming they knew what I wanted, but the messages they sent in the process
told me that they thought they were the ones with the capacity to know and
pursue what I wanted. If I walk up to a street, it just might be
intentional. If I walk up to a wall before turning, I might mean to do
that, too. If I wait in line, it just might be that I am content there. My
priorities, just like those of anybody else, can be more complex than what
people who do not know me can perceive. The National Federation of the
Blind is teaching me that I am the keeper of my own priorities, that I can
live the life I want.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Brian Dulude]
Reflecting the Flame in Utah Rehabilitation for the Blind
by Brian Dulude
From the Editor: Dr. Brian Dulude is a longtime member of the
National Federation of the Blind who currently serves as the treasurer of
the National Federation of the Blind of Utah. He can boast of a number of
educational accomplishments including a PhD, CRC, LVRC, and NOMC. Before
leaving Utah to work as the assistant director for BLIND Inc. he worked as
the vocational rehabilitation coordinator for the Division of Services for
the Blind and Visually Impaired in Utah. Here is what he says about trying
to improve the state agency and the efforts of other like-minded men and
women, many of whom are a part of the NFB:
In 1991 Dr. Marc Maurer gave a banquet speech entitled "Reflecting the
Flame." In this speech, Dr. Maurer pointed out that three things are needed
for an idea to move forward and not die: it requires an idea, a leader to
promote that idea and defend it, and it finally requires others with the
same idea to reflect the flame so that it continues to burn. I listened to
this speech recently, and I felt I needed to tell my story of working in
blind rehabilitation here in the state of Utah and how the blind of our
state have endeavored to reflect the flame.
Our blind rehabilitation program is a combined agency under the Utah
State Office of Rehabilitation. Our title is the Division of Services for
the Blind and Visually Impaired. We have a blindness training center, low
vision services, deaf/blind services, an older blind program, vision
screening for young children, and, until recently, vocational
rehabilitation services.
I started working for the Division of Services for the Blind and
Visually Impaired (DSBVI) in May of 2010 in the blindness training center
as a cane travel instructor. I had previously worked for the Louisiana
Center for the Blind in Ruston for over five years. Ray Martin is a long-
time Federationist and had the dream of developing a training center that
had the same philosophy as the NFB training centers. This philosophy
centered around teaching the structured discovery method of training.
As director, Ray experienced strong staff resistance to training under
sleep shades, using the long white cane, and using the word blind. As
director of the center, however, he hired many qualified blind instructors
who had the same philosophy and dream that he had.
When I started working at DSBVI, Ray had already hired Deja Powell as
a cane travel instructor. He experienced staff criticism and hostility for
hiring a person who is blind to teach cane travel. He also hired Brook
Sexton as a cane travel instructor. Brook is a longtime Federationist, and
she, as well as Deja, had been trained at Louisiana Tech University's
master's degree program. Previously Brook had been working in Hawaii in the
training center there and had seen a training center change its philosophy
of blindness.
Fellow Federationist Everette Bacon was an employee in Assistive
Technology Services. At that time he was chapter president of the Salt Lake
Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Utah. Later he became
president of the affiliate. Adam Rushforth was also working in the training
center when I started. Adam was chapter president of the Utah Valley
Chapter. He was also treasurer of the affiliate and director of our Project
Strive program.
So, as you can see, Ray had a dream of developing an effective
training center that would change the lives of the blind of the state. He
was a leader who promoted that dream along with Everette Bacon, me, and
others that I have mentioned and many whom I have not mentioned.
I feel it is important that I point out here that I have not mentioned
the division director at the time as one of the leaders who held the same
dream as Ray. The director at the time was Bill Gibson. Ray received no
support from Mr. Gibson. In fact, he went so far as to remove Ray from
being director for a period of four months in the later part of 2010. It
was only the intervention of the National Federation of the Blind to the
state administrators that made them reverse their decision.
As I stated earlier, Ray and those of us who believed in structured
discovery training were resisted at almost every turn from staff who did
not believe in sleep shades, using the long white cane, or using the word
blind. We would develop policies regarding these topics but were never
fully supported by Bill or his supervisor, Don Uchita.
I finished my doctorate in rehabilitation education from the
University of Arkansas in 2011. I was certified as a rehabilitation
counselor in the fall of that year. In 2012 DSBVI had an opening for a
transition vocational rehabilitation counselor. I applied for the job and
was hired. Later that year the vocational rehabilitation coordinator
resigned, and I was asked to fill the position. I directed vocational
rehabilitation for the blind for four years.
During this time Ray still had the dream and continued to hire
qualified employees who had the right philosophy of blindness. Some of
these included Marla Palmer, a longtime Federationist in the Parents of
Blind Children Division for the state of Utah. Amber and Chase Holiday were
hired from Louisiana. Mike Harvey and Jim Reed were also hired.
For the first two years as rehabilitation coordinator I had the
privilege of being part of a management team alongside Ray, and I listened
to him and supported his dreams for an effective training center. One of
Ray's triumphs was incorporating cross-training or immersion training for
newly hired employees of the training center. This was met with resistance
by Bill and Don, but we were allowed to train our staff for those in the
training center. Ray was permitted to have his staff trained for over three
months. New vocational rehabilitation counselors and low vision specialists
could train for only six weeks, and support staff could train for only two
weeks.
For those two years we battled regularly with staff who did not share
our philosophy. Everette Bacon became a member of the management team near
the end of that two-year period. Ray Martin retired at the end of my second
year as supervisor. He felt he had fought the good fight, and he passed the
torch to Everette and me to continue the dream. He had hope that we would
receive more support from his supervisor than he had received.
What did Ray accomplish in his tenure at the training center as
director? He had hired enough staff with the right philosophy that the
dream would not die with his retirement. Adam Rushforth was hired as the
new blindness training center director. We now had three members of the
management committee who had a good philosophy of blindness. We continued
to try to be the leaders that Ray was and continued to hire counselors and
training center staff who had the proper philosophy. These staff were
reflecting the flame to their students.
Jennifer Kennedy from Virginia was hired as a cane travel instructor.
She is a former national scholarship winner and another graduate of
Louisiana Tech. We also hired Barbara Elliott as home management
instructor. When she was a blind homemaker, she was elected as chapter
president of our Weber Davis chapter.
Although Everette, Adam, and I were on the management team and could
express our opinions on critical hiring and administrative policy, we were
never fully supported by Bill Gibson or his supervisors. In November of
2014 the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation (USOR) realized that they had
mismanaged the budget and needed to make drastic changes. One significant
change was for vocational rehabilitation to go on an order of selection.
This included vocational rehabilitation for the blind as well.
Federation membership and leadership represented themselves well in
public meetings that were held by USOR. Although it was pointed out that
DSBVI was not the cause of the shortfall, because we are a combined agency,
we were lumped together with the general agency. The director of USOR
resigned during the legislative session in which USOR had to ask for six
million dollars to cover the shortfall. Bill Gibson retired in the middle
of that year.
During the first six months of the implementation of the order of
selection no clients were removed from the waiting list. Word spread among
the blindness community that there was an order of selection, and
applications for services declined. As a result, caseloads for the blind
declined. As part of conditions from the legislature for the six-million-
dollar bailout the legislature required USOR to be audited. DSBVI was
specially targeted for this audit based on reports from angry clients or
staff who left messages on a recently developed hotline for the agency
where individuals could report fraud, misuse, and abuse of public funds.
Many of the targeted client files which were audited for DSBVI were found
to be out of compliance with USOR policy. In nearly every instance Bill
Gibson was involved in the rehabilitation decisions that were out of
compliance or an exception to policy. Some were due to counselor error, for
which I take responsibility.
Based on the results of the audit, USOR decided to consolidate blind
vocational rehabilitation into general rehabilitation. Vocational
rehabilitation counselors who were under the supervision of DSBVI would now
be supervised by a general rehabilitation supervisor in their geographic
area. I was reassigned from being a supervisor to working as a
rehabilitation counselor for a general caseload.
Public meetings were held at DSBVI explaining the decision. Members
and leaders of the NFB of Utah gave public comment expressing their
displeasure over the decision and the effect this would have on blind
services. They also wrote a resolution which was passed by its state
convention.
Ray Martin had the dream of good rehabilitation for the blind of Utah.
As a leader he hired us to reflect that flame. Although Ray has retired, I
have been reassigned, and vocational rehabilitation for the blind has been
consolidated into general rehabilitation, we who have the right philosophy
will continue to reflect the flame. As members of the National Federation
of the Blind, we can do nothing less. Rehabilitation for the blind here in
Utah has had some setbacks, but there are still many employees who will
continue to reflect that flame and change the lives of the blind of Utah.
----------
The Kenneth Jernigan Convention Scholarship Fund
by Allen Harris
From the Editor: Allen Harris is the chairman of the Kenneth Jernigan
Fund Committee and was one of the people who came up with the idea of
honoring our former president and longtime leader by establishing a program
to promote attendance at the national convention, where so much inspiration
and learning occur. Here is Allen's announcement about the 2017 Kenneth
Jernigan Convention Scholarship Fund Program:
Have you always wanted to attend an NFB annual convention but have
not done so because of the lack of funds? The Kenneth Jernigan Convention
Scholarship Fund invites you to make an application for a scholarship
grant. Perhaps this July you too can be in the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel in
Orlando, Florida, enjoying the many pleasures and learning opportunities at
the largest and most important yearly convention of blind people in the
world.
The three biggest ticket items you need to cover when attending an
NFB national convention are the roundtrip transportation, the hotel room
for a week, and the food (which tends to be higher priced than at home). We
attempt to award additional funds to families, but, whether a family or an
individual is granted a scholarship, this fund can only help; it won't pay
all the costs. Last year most of the sixty grants were in the range of $400
to $500 per individual.
We recommend that you find an NFB member as your personal convention
mentor, someone who has been to many national conventions and is able to
share money-saving tips with you and tips on navigating the extensive
agenda in the big hotel. Your mentor will help you get the most out of the
amazing experience that is convention week.
Who is eligible?
Active NFB members, blind or sighted, who have not yet attended an
NFB national convention because of lack of funding are eligible to apply.
How do I apply for funding assistance?
1. You write a letter giving your contact information, and your local
NFB information, your specific amount requested, and then explain why this
is a good investment for the NFB. The points to cover are listed below.
2. You contact your state president in person or by phone to request
his or her help in obtaining funding. Be sure to tell the president when to
expect your request letter by email, and mention the deadline.
3. You (or a friend) send your letter by email to your state
president. He or she must add a president's recommendation and then email
both letters directly to the Kenneth Jernigan Convention Scholarship Fund
Committee. Your president must forward the two letters no later than April
15.
Your letter to Chairperson Allen Harris must cover these points:
. Your full name, and all your telephone numbers and label them-cell
phone, home, office, other person (if any).
. Your mailing address and, if you have one, your email address.
. Your state affiliate and state president; your chapter and chapter
president, if you attend a chapter.
. Your personal convention mentor, and provide that person's phone
number.
. Your specific request:
Explain how much money you need from this fund to make this trip
possible for you. We suggest you consult with other members to make a rough
budget for yourself.
The body of your letter should answer these questions:
How do you currently participate in the Federation? Why do you want
to attend a national convention? What would you receive; what can you share
or give? You can include in your letter to the committee any special
circumstances you hope they will take into consideration.
When will I be notified that I am a winner?
If you are chosen to receive this scholarship, you will receive a
letter with convention details that should answer most of your questions.
The committee makes every effort to notify scholarship winners by May 15,
but you must do several things before that to be prepared to attend if you
are chosen.
1. Make your own hotel reservation. If something prevents you from
attending, you can cancel the reservation. (Yes, you may arrange for
roommates of your own to reduce the cost.)
2. Register online for the entire convention, including the banquet,
by May 31.
3. Find someone in your chapter or affiliate who has been to many
conventions and can answer your questions as a friend and advisor.
4. If you do not hear from the committee by May 15, then you did not
win a grant this year.
How will I receive my convention scholarship?
At convention you will be given a debit card or credit card loaded
with the amount of your award. The times and locations to pick up your card
will be listed in the letter we sent you. The committee is not able to
provide funds before the convention, so work with your chapter and state
affiliate to assist you by obtaining an agreement to advance funds if you
win a scholarship and to pay your treasury back after you receive your
debit or credit card.
What if I have more questions? For additional information email the
chairman, Allen Harris, at <kjscholarships at nfb.org> or call his Baltimore,
Maryland, office at (410) 659-9314, extension 2415.
Above all, please use this opportunity to attend your first
convention on the national level and join several thousand active
Federationists in the most important meeting of the blind in the world. We
hope to see you in Orlando.
----------
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Shown here are a slate and stylus and a Braille label
maker, two low-tech items that significantly contribute to the independence
of the blind.]
Independence Market Corner
The National Federation of the Blind Independence Market is the
conduit through which our organization distributes our empowering
literature to our members, friends, and the general public. As a service we
also operate a blindness products store, which sells mostly low-tech items,
designed to enhance the everyday independence of blind individuals. We plan
to publish regular updates about what the Independence Market has to offer.
This month we focus on Braille since January 4th is Louis Braille's
birthday, and Braille is such an important tool for blind people to
function independently at home, in school, and on the job. We sell various
types of Braille paper and notebooks as well as a large selection of slates
and styluses for writing Braille. The newest slate we just started carrying
is the thirty-two cell Write and Read Slate, which allows the user to write
from left to right with a special stylus which pushes paper over the pins
in the Braille cell. This means that one forms Braille characters the same
way one reads them. And, if one advances the paper with the roller, one can
read what one just wrote. Those who have struggled to master a traditional
slate may wish to try this writing tool.
We also carry a variety of Braille labeling supplies so one can stay
organized. Our transparent labeling tape and labeling sheets with a self-
adhesive backing make it easy to label many things around the house and at
work from spice containers to file folders. Our magnetic labeling tape for
cans and our Brailleable food labels, which attach to cans and packages
with an elastic and work well on frozen items, are truly useful in the
kitchen. We also offer different sets of metal Braille clothing labels,
which are sewn or pinned into garments.
Of course, Braille is also fun and makes many games accessible. We
sell various card games which have been labeled in Braille from a regular
poker deck to Uno, Phase 10, Pinochle, Quiddler, Rook, and Skip-Bo. We also
have some Brailled board games such as a Sudoku Board which enables one to
solve Sudoku puzzles using magnetic Brailled tiles, and Megaword, a word
game similar to Scrabble. Many of these games come with Brailled
instructions.
And if someone would like to learn Braille, we can help there as
well. We carry The McDuffy Reader: A Braille Primer for Adults by Sharon
Monthei, which was the first Unified English Braille curriculum for adults
available in the US. If one wants to learn to write with a slate and stylus
or simply wishes to sharpen one's skills, The Slate Book by Jennifer Dunnam
contains many helpful tips and ideas for writing practice.
For more information about the products discussed here or to request
a catalog in Braille or in print, visit us online at
https://nfb.org/independence-market. You may also contact the Independence
Market using email to independencemarket at nfb.org or by phone at (410) 659-
9314, extension 2216, Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
eastern time. Our staff will be glad to assist.
----------
Recipes
In the twenty-five years that the Monitor has been running groups of
recipes monthly, hundreds of delicious ones have been printed. And we've
decided to take another trip to the archives to bring up a few recipes we
think are too appetizing to let them be forgotten.
Baked Pineapple
by Ada M. Stokes
This recipe first appeared in December 2000. Here's what we had to
say about Ada at the time: Ada Stokes is the wife of Ed Stokes, a lifetime
member of the NFB of Delaware. Cooking is one of her favorite hobbies.
Ingredients:
3 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple with syrup
4 slices bread, diced
1 stick margarine, melted
Method: Beat eggs thoroughly. Add flour and sugar, mixing well. Stir
in pineapple. Pour into 1-1/2-quart baking dish and place diced bread on
top. Drizzle with melted margarine. Bake at 350 degrees for forty-five
minutes.
----------
Dudley's Doggie Donuts
by Betty Walker
This recipe first appeared in July 1994 and was provided by Dave and
Betty Walker, active Federationists in Missouri who are now deceased. They
loved giving this special treat to their dog.
Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons oatmeal
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg, slightly beaten
2/3 cup boiling water
1 bouillon cube, any flavor
Method: Dissolve bouillon cube in boiling water; set aside. Mix
together dry ingredients and stir in egg. Stir in bouillon with fork until
dough forms a ball. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; roll or press
to about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut with donut cutter. Gather together donut
holes and scraps, flatten again, and cut more donuts. Place in
microwaveable baking dish; cook on high for ten minutes. Donuts will harden
as they cool. Makes twenty donuts. If all donuts will not fit in baking
dish, place half in dish and microwave on high for seven minutes; repeat
with remaining half.
----------
Spiced Beef
by Linda Snider
This recipe first ran in October 1999. Linda Snider was a member of
the Masonic Square Club, a division of the National Federation of the
Blind.
Ingredients:
1 8- to 10-pound round of beef
1 gallon water
1 teaspoon saltpeter
1/2 box allspice
2 sticks cinnamon
1 dozen cloves
1 cup sugar
1 quart salt
Method: Bring all ingredients (except beef) to a boil and cook for
ten minutes, then remove from heat. When cool, add round of beef and store
for two weeks. Weight it down. Turn meat over after first week. No harm
will result if it remains in the mixture longer. To cook, place beef in
stout kettle with lid and cover with liquid consisting of half spice
mixture and half water. Cook slowly fifteen to twenty minutes to the pound
or until thoroughly tender. Serve cold, carving in very thin slices. I
recommend serving with thin slices of homemade white bread, although
biscuits or rolls may be used.
----------
Cheesy Spinach Pie
by Eileen Rivera (Ley)
This recipe first ran in the April-May 1989 issue. It was introduced
at that time like this: Eileen Rivera is a former NFB scholarship winner
and is now a resident of Maryland, where she actively participates in
Federation work and holds (see elsewhere in this issue) a responsible
position with the Wilmer Eye Clinic at Johns Hopkins.
Ingredients:
1 single pie shell
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar and/or swiss cheese
1 chopped onion
2 minced garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 packages frozen spinach
2 tablespoons crushed oregano
1 teaspoon each: pepper, sweet basil, salt
3 beaten eggs
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 cup cottage cheese
Method: Prepare pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for twelve minutes.
Remove shell from oven and spread grated cheese in the hot shell. In a
large sauce pan, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil. Next add the
defrosted spinach and spices. Stir the mixture over medium heat for about
five minutes. Then combine the eggs, milk, and parmesan and cottage cheeses
in the pot. Stir until mixture thickens. Pour filling into the pie shell
and bake for thirty to forty minutes. Great with a crisp garden salad and
warm rolls.
----------
Pasta Fagioli
by Madeline Moreno
This recipe first ran in March 2003 with this introduction: According
to Joe Ruffalo, president of the NFB of New Jersey, Madeline Moreno is the
"label lady" and ultimate volunteer; she is always ready to help. She and
her husband Jerry are members of the Northern New Jersey chapter and
dedicated Federationists. Madeline says that this dish is often pronounced
"Pasta Fazool" (fa zool). Some make it more liquid, like a soup, but she
makes it more like a pasta dish. If you like it soupier, don't drain the
beans.
She and Jerry are now active in the NFB of North Carolina.
Ingredients:
1 16-ounce box elbow macaroni
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
16 ounces water or chicken broth
1 16-ounce can cannellini beans or chick peas (drained)
Garlic cloves (as many as you dare)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
Pinch of basil
Salt and pepper to taste
Method: Cook macaroni according to package directions. While you are
waiting for the salted water to boil, place olive oil in a three-quart
saucepan on medium heat. Brown garlic (some prefer to mince it finely).
When the garlic is browned, add the can of tomato paste to the pan.
Occasionally stir for a couple of minutes, then add water or chicken broth.
Bring liquid back to a boil, add beans and remaining ingredients, cover pot
and lower heat to simmer. Cook for about twenty minutes. Serves three to
four.
----------
Monitor Miniatures
News from the Federation Family
[PHOTO CAPTION: Fred Schroeder, Joe Cordova, Christine Hall, Art Schreiber,
and Adelmo Vigil]
New Mexico Affiliate Holds Leadership Conference:
The NFB of New Mexico held a full-day leadership conference on
Saturday, October 30, 2016, in Albuquerque to set priorities for the
upcoming year. Fred Schroeder, a former New Mexican, was on hand to speak
to the fifty affiliate members who, by attending, committed themselves to
taking a leadership role in our affiliate for the upcoming year. Fred
recited some history about the NFB and in particular the accomplishments
that enliven our past and make our present a better place to live. He
recognized with pride past leaders and hard-working members who made many
of the accomplishments possible.
During the afternoon session, four working committees were formed.
Each committee set its goals, assigned tasks, and set timelines to hold
each other accountable for making the progress we want in 2017.
At the conference, we had our current president, Adelmo Vigil, and all
of the past affiliate presidents who served during the last thirty-four
years. Pictured are Fred Schroeder, 1982-1986, Joe Cordova, 1986-1996, Art
Schreiber, 1996-2008, Christine Hall, 2008-2012, and Adelmo Vigil, 2012 to
present.
Elected:
At their September meeting the National Federation of the Blind of
Montana Electric City Chapter elected the following officers: president,
Sheila Leigland; vice president, Harold Leigland; secretary, Ted Robbins;
treasurer, Joy Breslauer.
Elected:
The Kansas City Chapter is excited to announce our 2017 Board of
Directors: president, Ruby Polk; first vice president, Daniel Garcia;
second vice president, Jeff Giffen; secretary, Ben Blagg; treasurer, Jeff
Wright; and board members Sarita Cann and Willa Patterson.
Elected:
The Greater Portland Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind
of Maine would like to announce the following election results: president,
Walter Woitasek; vice president, Bud Buzzell; secretary, Mark Hodgdon;
treasurer, Randy Bellavance; and trustees John Lee and Gerard Landry.
Elected:
On Saturday, November 19, 2016, the National Federation of the Blind
of Missouri Columbia Chapter elected officers and board members for 2017:
president, Debbie Wunder; vice president, Dacia Cole; treasurer, Carol
Coulter; secretary, Gene Coulter; and board member Brittany Berk. The board
and the members who elected us have much work to do and are determined to
get it done.
Elected:
The following people were elected at the 2016 National Federation of
the Blind of Washington convention: president, Marci Carpenter, reelected;
first vice president, Mike Mello, reelected; second vice president, Maria
Bradford, reelected; secretary, Andrea Travis, newly elected; treasurer,
Corey Grandstaff, newly elected; and board members Noel Nightingale,
reelected, and Doug Trimble, newly elected.
We had 111 people in attendance at our convention this year. We are
building the Federation in Washington state!
Elected:
At their November meeting the Mineral Area Chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind of Missouri held their election for the new slate
of officers: president, Roger Crome; vice president, Bob Stamm; secretary
and treasurer, Wendy Crome; and board member, Donald Goosens.
Elected:
The members of the board of directors of the Iowa Affiliate were voted
in at our business meeting on Sunday, October 9, 2016, at our convention in
Urbandale, Iowa: president, Jerad S. Nylin; first vice president, Karen
Clayton; second vice president, Darrel Kirby; secretary, Scott Van Gorp;
treasurer, David Hammel; and board members Cindy Ray, Tai Tomasi, Donna
Prime, and Michael Barber.
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.
DOT and Southwest Airlines Reach Historic Agreement:
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced today that it has
reached an agreement with Southwest Airlines in which the airline will
ensure that at least 50 percent of its kiosks at US airports are accessible
to passengers with disabilities by September 30, 2017. In addition, any
automated kiosk that Southwest installs after that date will be an
accessible model, so that in the future, 100 percent of its kiosks will be
accessible to passengers with disabilities.
Kiosks installed at US airports are used for a variety of functions,
such as printing boarding passes and baggage tags, scanning passports to
check-in, and canceling or rebooking tickets.
"This agreement will enable people with disabilities to travel more
independently by ensuring that there are significantly more accessible
airport kiosks available for their use," said US Transportation Secretary
Anthony Foxx. "The Department is committed to ensuring that our air
transportation system is accessible for everyone. We commend the efforts of
all airlines that are actively working to ensure that they meet the
Department's accessibility requirements for automated kiosks, and credit
Southwest for instituting additional measures under this agreement to
improve accessibility for its passengers."
The agreement is available at <www.regulations.gov>, docket DOT-OST-
2016-0202.
New Way to Use Uber and Lyft Without a Smartphone:
GoGo is an automated hotline that lets people use Uber and Lyft
without needing a smartphone.
Uber and Lyft are available nationally; when you use GoGoGrandparent,
we'll send you whichever one is cheapest at the time that you make your
request for a ride. Their prices are typically up to 40 percent less than
the cost of a cab.
Using GoGo is simple: callers call from a number they have registered
with us and hear a menu of options. They can press 1 for a car to be sent
to pick them up from their home, 2 for a car to be sent to pick them up
where we dropped them off last, or 0 to speak with an operator for a custom
pickup location. Once the driver arrives, they tell the driver where they
want to go. When you make a request, a car shows up at your door within
fifteen minutes, typically less.
To register free of charge, please call (855) 464-6872 or visit
<gogograndparent.com/register>.
----------
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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