The contents of this column reflect the letters we had received by the time we went to press, Oct. 9, 2013. Letters are limited to 300 words or fewer. All submissions must include the author's name and location. Opinions expressed are those of the authors.
Re: 'Where's My Braille Forum?'
I just read the article "Where's My Braille Forum?" in the September issue, and yes, I, along with many other readers, had been wondering where the last three issues had gone. I was shocked, yes, and not at all happy with what I read in that article. We are an organization of blind people, and our literature should come to us in braille. Many blind people, especially older people, do not have access to electronic material, and some of us who do, including myself, prefer to read in braille. In the case of the Forum, there wasn't even a warning that there would be no braille copy, we were just left wondering why there was no Forum.
It is a sad day when even organizations of blind people do not put their newsletters, promotional material, and other information out in braille.
– May Davis, Doylestown, Pa.
May, thank you for your letter. The board of publications welcomes feedback and suggestions from our readers. There was an article in the February issue of "The Braille Forum" called "When Less Can Become More," written by Paul Edwards. It said in part:
"The budget committee informed us that we were going to lose an issue this year because ACB will be operating with a deficit budget, and there just was not enough money to publish the Forum with 10 issues.
"Some of us did some number-crunching and discovered that the difference between the cost of our 32-page issue and our 48-page issue was not very large. So we decided to propose a radical alteration to 'The ACB Braille Forum.' We will be producing six issues of the Forum this year, not the nine we were offered by the budget committee and board. However, each of the issues will be 56 pages long, which will allow us to publish more and longer articles than we could with such a small footprint as the one with which we operated. That will actually mean that we will be producing exactly the same number of pages as we did last year but for considerably less money. I think that decision by itself would have been a good one.
"However, that is not where we propose to stop. We will be producing the new and enlarged 'ACB Braille Forum' every other month, and we'll be producing a second magazine that will appear in the month that 'The ACB Braille Forum' does not. This magazine will be produced in electronic form and will not be size limited. It will be available as a Web-Braille file on BARD and, we firmly believe, as an audio download from BARD as well. ... You can receive a copy of the new magazine by e-mail and, in addition to all these places where you can find it, 'The ACB Braille Forum' and our new magazine will both be available through NFB-Newsline thanks to the good auspices of the NFB and state library systems who support it. ... For now, we are calling the other publication 'The ACB E-Forum.'"
We fully agree about the importance of providing our literature in braille, and seek to ensure that all materials sent out in hard copy are available in all formats. In making the decision to provide an electronic form that is not size limited, we saw this as an opportunity to give readers more information and a wider variety of articles.
– Denise Colley, chairperson, ACB board of publications, Lacey, Wash.
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