by Christopher Gray
This is a ground-breaking edition of “The Braille Forum.” Included inside the magazine is something that can change the reality of blindness with regard to the burden we face whenever we attempt to travel to the places we want and need to go.
Inserted between the pages of this issue of “The Braille Forum” is the American Council of the Blind Transportation Survey. Changing the transportation realities for blind and visually impaired people living in the USA is an ambitious undertaking, and we can’t even begin to solve problems until we have first collected a lot of critical information. That’s why this is a pretty long survey. Completing the survey is how each and every blind member or friend of ACB can tangibly and truly support the effort.
The American Council of the Blind is so committed to a new transportation agenda for blind Americans that we are taking what many might see as a risk of distributing this ground-breaking, fact-finding survey in the Forum. It is my belief, however, that asking ACB members and friends to be responsive holds no risk. I am certain that each of you will do your best to get the information we need back to the organization.
The transportation survey leverages ACB’s computer power in a way that has never been done before by a consumer organization of blind people. Every survey, no matter how you fill it out, will be processed through the template that computer users see on the ACB web site and the answers from the survey will wind up in a digital repository where the data can be analyzed and reported to the organization, as well as decision-makers in transportation throughout the nation.
If you have computer access or have a friend that might help you with such access, use this survey document as a reference and prepare answers to enter on the ACB web site. If you do not have computer access, a number of options are available to you. Mark up these pages and return them to the ACB national office. If that doesn’t seem easy, write your answers on separate sheets in print or braille and return those to the national office. Another alternative is that volunteers are going to be in charge of telephone banks over the next two months in order to take your answers via phone and help you fill out the survey in person, well, almost. Check the Washington Connection and the 800 telephone system of ACB for details on where and when to call, in order to fill out the survey with a human assistant. What you tell us can make the difference in changing transportation realities in our country.