THE Braille Forum Vol. XXXVI October 1997 No. 4 Published By The American Council of the Blind THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND STRIVES TO INCREASE THE INDEPENDENCE, SECURITY, EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, AND QUALITY OF LIFE FOR ALL BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE. Paul Edwards, President Oral O. Miller, J.D., Executive Director Nolan Crabb, Editor Sharon Lovering, Editorial Assistant National Office: 1155 15th St. N.W. Suite 720 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 467-5081 Fax: (202) 467-5085 THE BRAILLE FORUM is available in braille, large print, half- speed four-track cassette tape and computer disk. Subscription requests, address changes, and items intended for publication should be sent to: Nolan Crabb, THE BRAILLE FORUM, 1155 15th St. N.W., Suite 720, Washington, DC 20005. Submission deadlines are the first of the month. Those much-needed contributions, which are tax-deductible, can be sent to Patricia Beattie at the same address. If you wish to remember a relative or friend by sharing in the council's continuing work, the national office has printed cards available to acknowledge contributions made by loved ones in memory of deceased people. Anyone wishing to remember the American Council of the Blind in his/her Last Will and Testament may do so by including a special paragraph for that purpose. If your wishes are complex, you may contact the ACB National Office. For the latest in legislative and governmental news, call the "Washington Connection" toll-free at (800) 424-8666, 6 p.m. to midnight Eastern time Monday through Friday. Washington, D.C., residents only call 331-2876. Copyright 1997 American Council of the Blind TABLE OF CONTENTS President's Message: A Chance Of A Lifetime, by Paul Edwards ACB 1997 Convention Summary, by Sharon Lovering and Nolan Crabb ACB Announces 1997 Award Winners, by Sharon Lovering Calling Stops Is A Civil Right: ACB Grant Project Expands, by Jenine Stanley Ask The Advocates: Getting Acquainted With ACB's Advocacy Services, by Mark Richert Affiliate News Here And There, by Elizabeth M. Lennon High Tech Swap Shop CORRECTIONS Due to an editing error, the incorrect dates were given for the 1998 convention ("The Braille Forum," August 1997). The correct dates are July 4-11, 1998. The name of the prime minister for education and employment in Great Britain was misspelled ("British Parliamentary Elections Result In Firsts For Disabled Office Holders," August 1997). The correct spelling is David Blankett. ELECTRONIC JOB BANK UP The advocacy services staff at the ACB national office is proud to announce the establishment of a new, electronic Job Bank. The Job Bank is posted on the internet and contains job listings sent to ACB and other appropriate listings. This service is available now! To access the Job Bank, please contact our web site at http://www.acb.org, and then click on the ACB Job Bank link. Thank you, and good luck. PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE: A CHANCE OF A LIFETIME by Paul Edwards On September 4, I received a call from Fred Fay, a disability activist in Massachusetts, followed almost immediately by one from Bill White, White House liaison on disability issues, asking whether I could attend a meeting the following Wednesday with President Clinton. There would be a conference call of disability leaders on September 8 to set up the agenda and I was scheduled to be one of the speakers on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Obviously it's not every day that one gets invited to the White House, far less to meet with the president; and, even less frequently is that meeting long enough and with a small enough group for the meeting to be more than a photo op! By the time the conference call occurred on Monday, I was beginning to be quite nervous! In the first place, I had specifically requested that both the agenda and my role at the meeting be changed! I wanted to talk about information access and federal employment and, while I could certainly do that in the context of the ADA, I could cover more of our issues under employment. I was also nervous because I had discovered that this meeting would include most of the major disability consumer organizations in the country! Essentially, the meeting would be comprised of a virtual Who's Who of disabilities and me! I was to be the only representative of people who are blind and indeed the only person associated with the blindness system. That was a daunting position to be in! I must tell you that the conference call was a huge relief. There was a spirit of cooperation manifested on that call that renewed my hope and faith in coalitioning. There was a commitment on the part of all organizations to raise issues that were broadly based and relevant to the broader disability community. Thus, the subjects divided among us were the ADA, IDEA, the impact of SSI changes on children, personal attendant care and employment. There was an acceptance on the part of the whole group of my request to include the issues I felt needed to be there and one could sense a mounting excitement on the part of all the participants over what was clearly becoming recognized as a meeting where we would truly have an opportunity for dialogue with the President of the United States on disability issues. Throughout the week leading up to the White House meeting, I worked closely with Julie Carroll, our director of governmental affairs, but, until we could be sure that the changes I wanted to make in the agenda were approved, she could not begin to prepare materials. Essentially, then, Julie and her assistant Krista Dubroff had to produce two major papers in just over a day and have them proofed and ready to present to the president. I want to express my appreciation to both Julie and Krista for their outstanding efforts. The meeting at the White House was scheduled for 11 o'clock on Wednesday morning and I was fairly confident that I would make it on time given that my plane was scheduled to arrive about 9:30 and Washington National is relatively close to the White House! Imagine my shock when around ten the previous evening I received a call from Bill White telling me that the meeting time had been moved up to 10:30. I was extremely glad that I had arranged to have Julie and Krista meet me at the airport so we could share a cab back into Washington. I had originally done this so that we could go over the papers that were hot off the presses but it turned out to be providential because, wouldn't you know it, the plane was late. Actually, it left Miami right on time at 7:00 but bad weather over Washington led to an announcement that the captain was considering diverting the flight to New York! He indicated at 9:15 that he would circle for a few minutes before making his decision. I was, as you can imagine, a nervous wreck! By 9:30, the weather had cleared sufficiently for him to land and by 9:40 we were on the ground. Krista and Julie were waiting for me at the gate and we broke Olympic records racing out to the front of the terminal where we jumped into a cab and headed for Pennsylvania Avenue. Armed with the precious position papers, I arrived at the White House by 10:15 and there was a young lady waiting at the security check point right at the gate to escort me up to the Cabinet Room where we were to meet. After my briefcase and I went through the metal detector, we walked into the White House, took an elevator to the second floor, and walked down a carpeted hallway to the Cabinet Room. I was shown to my seat to the left of Marca Bristo, Chair of the National Council on Disability! To my left was Becky Ogle, perhaps the best-known Democratic disability activist. Immediately to her left was an empty chair where the president would sit! I am indebted for some of the details that follow to Marca Bristo who does a wonderful job of describing things! Thanks Marca! The table I was sitting at is unquestionably the largest I have ever been at. It was probably 35 feet or so long and at least 12 feet across. The chairs around it were leather- covered with that rich, polished brittleness that only leather that is old and well-used acquires! I was served coffee and cookies on china that had the White House monogram on it! I couldn't help being awed by imagining the history that had been made in that room. I was around the same table where the president regularly met with his cabinet in a room that was big enough that the huge table didn't seem to fill it at all. The ceilings were well over 15 feet high. Huge chandeliers (suspended from the ceiling over the table) and, on the walls were presidential portraits in ornate, wooden frames. To my right was a huge fireplace with presidential busts flanking it and more decorations on and above the mantel piece. It was nearer 11 o'clock after all before the president arrived and, to the surprise of all the planners of the meeting, Bill Clinton was followed into the room by Vice President Al Gore who was also able to join us for the whole meeting. Both the president and the vice president went around and shook hands with all of us who were present there while White House photographers clicked away so that, eventually, we would have pictures that would commemorate our historic visit! I have spent a long time describing the preliminaries to our meeting and I can tell you that, as we all settled to begin our discussions, I was very glad that I was pretty far down the agenda because I had suddenly been overcome by a sense of pride and humility that would have made it very difficult for me to speak! My organization, the American Council of the Blind, was one of the 10 or so groups that was chosen to represent disability concerns with the White House and I was two seats away from the chief executive of my country and perhaps the most powerful person in the world! Around the table are people like Justin Dart, Marca Bristo, Gina McDonald and a host of other disability luminaries. Against the far wall were people like Judy Heumann and Susan Daniels, the disability stars of the administration. It would have been very easy for the meeting to have been an anti-climax! It was not! I think that all of us who attended the meeting believe that this was the most meaningful meeting of people with disabilities with a president of the United States ever to occur. It was small enough that it could almost be described as intimate. The format had a few people providing the president and his team with background on an issue followed by open discussion between the disability community and the president and his people. The meeting lasted for well over an hour and I think that all of us who were there were convinced that we had gone a long way toward assuring that the administration truly does have a sense of where the disability community stands. We got well beyond the rhetoric and immersed ourselves deeply in the issues that are truly at the heart of the continuing isolation of people who are disabled! There is not space here to describe all that occurred at that meeting. Let me spend a few minutes describing my presentation. I did not record it or use notes but I followed the script I had set for myself and, I think, in spite of my nervousness, I did a good job representing ACB. I was part of a segment on employment and was fortunate to be the second speaker on employment and immediately preceded Marca Bristo who summarized our concerns and wrapped up the meeting. The speaker who preceded me on employment was Tony Coelho, a former congressman from California and currently in charge of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities. He did a masterful job of setting the stage for my presentation by providing a whole host of statistics that clearly demonstrated to everyone present that people with disabilities are still being discriminated against in a big way in terms of being able to go to work! My presentation was divided into three major areas. First I discussed information access as a barrier to employment. I talked about the failure of the Federal Communications Commission to publish a rule implementing the disability sections of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and discussed the plight of employees of the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service who are having to adapt to a whole new operating system where there is little adaptive technology that has been tested. I raised the issue of Section 508 and the need for greater enforcement and monitoring of that whole area. My second area of concern was transportation. I indicated that many people with disabilities consider this the most serious barrier to employment and urged the administration to do what it can to assure that more money is allocated to public transit and to paratransit. Third, I discussed federal employment. I suggested that down-sizing might well be having an adverse effect on the ability of the federal government to employ people with disabilities and also indicated that I felt there was a disability backlash in terms of employment that has followed the implementation of the ADA. I urged the administration to consider making federal employment the model that others could emulate in actively seeking new applicants with disabilities. Both during the meeting and afterwards in informal conversation with both the president and vice president, I am satisfied that our positions were heard and understood. I have already received calls from the vice president's office on the FCC issue and there is now renewed talk of the president issuing an executive order concerning employment during October. After the meeting I was able to have some very frank and open discussions with some disability leaders from other groups and, in addition to the tangible recognition that the American Council of the Blind gained by this meeting, I believe that other disability organizations have a better notion of what some of our concerns are and that their leaders will now feel free to contact me if they have questions. I don't expect to visit the White House very often! It won't surprise me if I never get back there again! As president of the American Council of the Blind I had a chance to get to know both the president and vice president up close and personal. I was able to spend well over an hour communicating our issues in a setting I had never dreamt of seeing! Thank you ACB! Without you I never would have got there! ACB 1997 CONVENTION SUMMARY by Sharon Lovering and Nolan Crabb Basking under the warmth of a Texas sun and the warmth of the hospitality of the American Council of the Blind's Texas affiliate were just some of the rewards enjoyed by those who attended the ACB 36th annual national convention in Houston in July. SUNDAY: Paul Edwards conducted the now-traditional Sunday night opening session on July 6. He introduced Dr. Ed Bradley, president of the American Council of the Blind of Texas. "Welcome to the ... cool state of Texas," he quipped. "Well, it's cool to us; we like it." Following Bradley's remarks, ACB President Paul Edwards delivered his annual "State of ACB" message. (A full text copy of that report appeared in the August issue of "The Braille Forum.") "We categorically believe that services can best be delivered by separate agencies for the blind," Edwards said, speaking of ACB's battle throughout much of 1997 with those who would merge state agencies for the blind into umbrella organizations. He expressed the belief that in coming months, ACB will forge an alliance with the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind that will be "rock solid." He reviewed ACB's participation with others in the area of enhancing information access for blind and visually impaired people. He said the group would continue to watch Microsoft and others carefully to ensure that promises they make will be kept. He pointed to a recently completed membership survey which indicates that "we have much work to do" regarding membership growth and retention. Edwards named ACB Executive Director Oral O. Miller to the position of co-chair of the convention committee, citing the need for greater involvement by the ACB national office staff as the conventions continue to grow. Some of the issues that ACB must face regarding future conventions include: Should professional planners be hired to help assemble the convention? Should multi- year contracts be executed with hotel chains in an attempt to keep pricing as low as possible? How does ACB ensure that it holds its meetings in places easily accessible to all who would attend? He commended state affiliate members for their ongoing work and expressed the pleasure he gains from attending various conventions. He also commended special-interest affiliate leaders for their efforts in promoting educational activities that pertain to their affiliates. He said a trip to Australia in June was a major highlight of his year. As a result of that trip and some ideas he gained there, he plans to make some changes in the way ACB's committees are headed. ACB officers will be given very specific assignments. "They'll be reporting back to you next year at our convention in Orlando," Edwards said. "What I want to do immediately is find a way to create more shared leadership than I've been able to do for the first two years of my presidency." Following presentation of awards by Carol McCarl, chair of the board of publications, (see "ACB Announces 1997 Award Winners," this issue) Edwards introduced Eleanor Holmes, a Limestone County (Texas) judge. Holmes offered some Texas-style homespun observations about life in general, and particularly her life in rural Texas. Holmes, known as Grandma from Groesbeck, offers such observations to various groups where she speaks. In her remarks, Grandma Holmes characterized Texas as a place of "cowboys, 10-gallon hats, boots, boot-scootin', barbecues, beautiful women, ruggedly handsome men, six-shooters, a lot of bull, and hot air, and some of the friendliest people in the United States." "Dr. Bradley called my office a few months ago," she recalled, "and asked if I believed in free speech. I said, 'Of course I do.' And he said, 'Why don't you come to Houston and give us one?'" A native of Donie, Texas, Grandma insisted her hometown is so small it has only one heavy industry -- a 300-pound Avon lady. She lived so far out in the sticks, she declared, that her neighbors "got June bugs in July." "We were so poor, we had to ride double on a stick horse." She reminisced about the importance of the Sears catalog in her young life. "It was our education. We'd look through it, and Dad would tell us about Chicago ... and the things that happened there. We'd look through it and we'd see fine furniture and clothes and rugs and all these things we didn't have. It was our entertainment. We'd cut out paper dolls and put 'em under our bed in boxes and play with them for months. Mama always said it didn't hurt to use them old slick color pages, 'cause they weren't any good for the final use of the catalog anyway. "Our grandmother lived with us when we were kids. One Sunday afternoon the preacher was at our house visiting, and he looked at my grandmother and said, 'Could we share a few words of scripture before I leave?' and Grandma looked at my little brother and she said, 'Sonny, go get Grandma that big book she reads every night.' He brought her the Sears catalog." The Sunday night session concluded with presentation of life membership certificates and the first roll call of the states. MONDAY: The Monday session began with opening remarks by Al Calloway, executive assistant to Houston Mayor Bob Lanier. "We hope you enjoy yourselves and we hope you leave Houston with a very sound message, a very clear message, as to whether this city is making progress toward becoming an accessible city for all of its citizens." Following the conclusion of some convention business, attendees heard a panel moderated by Mark Richert, ACB's director of advocacy services, on voting accessibility. Panelists included Debbie Grubb, president of the ACB of Maryland, Olivia Schoenberger, vice president of the El Paso Council of the Blind, and Jim Harrington, legal director for the Texas Civil Rights Project. Schoenberger said she felt with technology in place as it currently exists, there was no reason for blind voters to be dependent on others to help them vote. Grubb said her interest in accessible voting was sparked in 1996 when she arrived at the polling place only to learn that a new balloting system had been implemented that included print ballots and desks or chest-high structures that didn't ensure privacy in voting. She expressed anger that a new system had apparently been put in place without much public fanfare and without the election officials consulting groups who might be adversely affected by the change. One angry member of the Maryland group contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Maryland Disability Law Center. As a result, meetings occurred between the blind voters and the Maryland State Board of Election Law as well as other interested parties. Harrington said ACB members in El Paso, Texas sued both the county and the Secretary of State. El Paso County quickly agreed to provide an accessible ballot consisting of a paper ballot with a plastic template for marking and a walkman-type cassette player to hear the taped instructions. He said while the county cooperated, the secretary of state continued to fight. The lawsuit called for accessible ballots and accessible polling places for disabled voters. Conservative judges were nonplussed by the demands of the lawsuit, expressing stereotypes like "tell us how the secretary of state actually prevented someone from voting." "The judges actually did not have an understanding of the issues of what it means to vote independently, and I don't think frankly they much cared to get the understanding from the way the argument went," Harrington said. "As a result of this lawsuit, San Francisco is buying a new voting system and is insisting that the ballots be set up so that people who are blind vote independently." Panel moderator Mark Richert pointed out that in both cases, voter independence is being pushed by members of relatively small affiliates. Grubb explained that a system used in one Baltimore County precinct involved a mylar folder cut so that a pen could mark specific places on the ballot. The folder and ballot were held in place by a metal frame. A braille ballot was used to actually read the ballot, but the printed one was marked independently. "The only help required from a sighted person," Grubb said, "was done initially. A sighted person had to make sure the ballot was properly placed in the folder." She said while the scanner which scanned in votes rejected some of the ballots scanned in by sighted voters, her ballot was accepted without problems. Baltimore City is considering the purchase of voting machines that include audio feedback that would allow blind voters to vote without assistance. Grubb questioned whether the National Federation of the Blind is truly interested in independent voter access. She said James Gashel, the NFB's governmental relations director, said the template was too confusing. "I asked how this could be, considering blind people can do anything, and if you talk like that, it enforces attitudinal barriers," Grubb recalled. "He sidestepped that issue and said that there was a better way for blind people to vote." Grubb agreed that there might be a better way, but refused to simply wait until the contract runs out with the company which currently provides the balloting system for Baltimore County. "The issue isn't whether a machine with buttons or a keypad would be more accessible. We've got to deal with what we have." She said at a meeting in Baltimore where the audible voting machine was introduced, Gashel interrupted remarks by an election board official "and began to talk about the necessity of using their on-line voice system with a telephone keypad. The presentation of this voting machine was completely derailed. As a blind person and an advocate, I was not only infuriated, I was embarrassed and disheartened by what the National Federation of the Blind did at this very crucial moment in Maryland history. When we began to ask questions about how the telephone keypad would work and how it would grant better access than the machine already available and already certified by SABEL, there were no answers, just that, again, this machine was going to be confusing to blind people. The machine is not confusing to us. ... It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that the National Federation of the Blind is going to use Maryland ... as a test site to stall out our accessible voting process until their keypad dial online news system is up and running so they can sell it to vendors that make voting equipment all over this country. They are already meeting with entities that sell voting equipment as well." Harrington said, in response to a question regarding cost, that the El Paso system had been relatively inexpensive. It cost some $20,000 for some 150 polling places, but much of that was start-up money. "I think we're looking at about $5,000 per election. In reality, the county never challenged the money," Harrington said. Grubb compared the voting rights battle in Maryland to that of the subway platform detectable warnings battle in Washington, D.C., where the National Federation of the Blind advocates for an unworkable electronic edge detection device which it offered to design and build for the subway system. "This is the same issue all over again. These people see a way to make some money. They don't care about accessible voting, and ... all of us across this country have got to be meeting with the vendors and saying ... there's not just this one solution." Grubb said some Maryland officials asked why she couldn't simply cast an absentee ballot. She pointed out that sighted voters are not asked to do so unless they are truly absent from their polling place. She also reminded them that an absentee ballot is not a secret ballot. Harrington said elections can change in the final weekend prior to the vote. Absentee ballots, he said, are not the final answer since they could be cast before information about a candidate is brought forth which could change the vote. Frank Kurt Cylke, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress, followed the voter access panel. He said recent changes to the copyright law which allows organizations producing material in alternative media for blind readers "was probably the most significant law that has been passed in the area of access to information library services in the history of the talking book program." He said there will no longer be long delays waiting for publishers to provide permission to reproduce books. "It sometimes took as long as six or seven months to get permission to do [a book]," Cylke said. Regarding a digital talking book system, Cylke said such units won't be available for another 10 years. He explained that there are 780,000 machines in the hands of users at present. There are currently 16 million books in warehouses and libraries around the country. He said it would cost $190 million to instantly change from the current cassette-based system to a digital talking book player and digital books. NLS is already working to develop standards for the digital player and books. "Bear in mind that we, with assistance from actual members of your organization, are out there working and building machines that will meet our satisfaction," Cylke said. He said beginning in January, NLS will produce some new braille and audio magazines while dropping others from the list. Braille magazines available after January in the young adult category include: "Boys Life," "Muse," "Seventeen," "Spider," and "Stone Soup." In the adult category, braille titles include: "Cooking Lite," "Harpers," "Health and Nutrition Newsletters," "Inside Sports," "Kiplinger's Personal Finance," "Ladies' Home Journal," "Martha Stewart's Living," "National Geographic," "New York Times Large Type Weekly," "Parenting," "PC World," "Playboy," "Poetry," "Popular Communications," "Popular Mechanics," "Rolling Stone," "Science News," "Washington Post Book World," the two music-related magazines already being produced, sports schedules, "Braille Book Review," "News," "Update," and four British magazines: "Braille Chess Magazine," "The Braille Music Magazine," "Conundrum," and "Short Stories." "The flexible disc magazines will all eventually be converted to cassette," he explained. At present, only children's magazines and foreign language magazines will be available. Young adult magazines available on cassette include: "Cricket," "National Geographic World," "Seventeen," "Spider," "Sports Illustrated For Kids," and "The Young Adult Magazine of the Month." "Within two years, you will be receiving the other adult magazines on cassette," Cylke said. He said in January, the following titles will be available on flexible discs: "American Heritage," "Analog," "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine," "Atlantic Monthly," "Civilization," "Computer Life," "Consumer Reports," "Diabetes Forecast," "Discover," "Eating Well," "Ebony," "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine," "Good Housekeeping," "Health and Nutrition Newsletters," "The Magazine of the Month," "Money," "The Nation," "National Geographic," "The National Review," "New Choices," "The New York Times Book Review," "Outdoor Life," "People," "QST," "Sports Illustrated," "Travel Holiday," "True West," "U.S. News and World Report," and "Working Woman." Musical magazines include: "Contemporary Soundtrack," "Musical Mainstream," "Quarterly Music Review," and "Stereo Review." NLS will continue to produce "Talking Book Topics." Conventioners turned their attention from library services to the future of information access with remarks by Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden, director of the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Edwards characterized Vanderheiden as a man who has "single-handedly done more to advance access to information for people with disabilities than any other single person in the United States." Vanderheiden touched on the future and the present status of appliances that increasingly use touch-screen and programmable technology. "There are now coffee pots you have to program," he said. "They used to be the kind where you could put in the coffee and plug it in." He described new automatic teller machines that establish your identification by scanning your iris. "It actually flashes a little light to see whether your iris changes in response to the light. So you have to have an iris that responds to light in order for it to work," Vanderheiden said. He said in the future, food stamps may come on little cards that will be computerized. On-line shopping where you point and click at something on your television set is coming. "Many of you use e-mail now," he observed. "You'll be delighted to find out that they are very quickly introducing full-text formatting in the e-mail. So soon, your e-mails can look just as complicated as a web page with pictures and fonts and colors and underlined text, etc. You may find that some of those features may pose problems for you very soon." He described future Internet web page interfaces that look like a tiny merry-go-round spinning on your screen where you would point the mouse at a particular horse and click it to pick your choice. "That's completely unaccessible to you," he said. He said phones are changing as well. More and more touch screens are appearing on small portable phones and video phones are coming with buttons at the bottom of the video screen which are visual in nature. He said despite the bleak tactile future of appliances, there are some promising things under way that will help. Agencies including the Trace Center are working feverishly on these issues, according to Vanderheiden. The World Wide Web Consortium is an organization which seeks to devise accessible interfaces to the World Wide Web. It's comprised of industry leaders, consumers and others who are launching an effort to make the web more accessible. Vanderheiden said the requirements for computer access by blind and disabled people are the same as those required for nomadic computing -- the ability to use your computer wherever you are. He described the scenario of an employee working on a memo at his desk. Suddenly he's called down the hall, so he grabs a thin unit from his shirt pocket and continues working as he goes. He then rushes to his car, where he can't or shouldn't be looking at a display, throws the pocket-sized machine on the seat and continues to work on his memo by speaking and listening to the device in the seat next to him. His interaction with the computer at this point is all verbal and auditory. He looks up information in the car, makes a new reservation for the plane he's now missed, rushes into the airport and boards a plane. Still frantically working on that memo, he can no longer hear the verbal and audible interface he used in the car. He now uses the visual interface that includes lights to let him know what sounds are being made by his machine. "So we see that different parts of an individual operating a computer nomadically provide all the same requirements you would have for individuals with different types of disabilities," Vanderheiden explained. He said talking portable navigation devices are coming that will make mobility easier for many blind people. Touch screen kiosks are now accessible with the right kind of software in them. He described the implementation of a button on kiosks that would read the displays on those appliances aloud to a blind user and could tell the user what the other buttons on the appliance were used for. He described an instantaneous visual aid which allows the blind person to function on his own for the most part. "At that point where you needed instant visual assistance, you would call a number on a cellular phone and the person at the other end would be able to see your environment and answer your question. You could then disconnect the call, and they'd be gone. So you have someone who's with you when you want them, and gone when you don't need them." Ray Joyce, representing the Descriptive Video Service in Boston, told the convention that ACB's resolution 96-09, passed last summer, was beginning to bear fruit for described video productions on public TV. That resolution called for the inclusion of a line item for video description in budgets at WGBH's national television productions. "Our board of trustees has adopted a policy to include video description in the production budgets of all appropriate national productions," Joyce said. This will be phased in over three years, he explained. DVS has also received support from CBS for a grant which it has applied for that would bring audio description to a limited number of CBS programs in the future. Joyce said the Digital Video Disk will rapidly replace VHS video tapes in the very near future. These new digital machines will give blind users the capability to turn on or off audio description at will. TUESDAY: The Tuesday morning session of the convention found attendees engrossed in a discussion regarding the importance of separate state agencies for blind and visually impaired people. Charles Crawford, the executive director of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind and the president of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind, spoke first. Crawford warned that a divided blind community would result in disaster for separate agencies. He said there are three components to the partnership that exists to provide services to blind consumers -- the federal level, the state level, and the consumer. "If the blind community in a particular state sees itself as a blind community, understands its own needs, and presents those needs in a forceful and articulate fashion," Crawford said, "joining together with other blind people across the state, there is nothing that can stand in the way of their success." He urged the consumer community to care about each other. "If we don't give a damn about what happens to other blind people in our state, then we don't deserve to call ourselves an organization," he said. He said comprehensive policy must be developed that includes all blind people regardless of age and employment status. Crawford called the independent living philosophy "fundamentally flawed." "By the numbers," he explained, "and by the reality of human history, there is no way that you can present an ideological model and expect it to work in a real human environment." He described a letter he got from a blind consumer of independent living services who had tried for years to get a center to buy braille printers and do community outreach with braille that would include restaurant menus. The only menus found in the area were those done by the Massachusetts Association of the Blind. When the center was called, it simply said blind people would have to wait. They weren't a high enough priority. "And that sums it up in my view for what the problem is when you try to have a system in which there's no way in hell a small minority of people can be serviced properly if they're only a tangential part of the whole, despite the best of wishes," he said. Crawford said he feels a change in the wind. "Amongst people with other disabilities now there is a growing recognition that 'we can't do it all in the models that we've had in the past; and maybe, just maybe, there might be some real value of listening to individuals with disabilities and developing new models that essentially uphold those people rather than forcing them to be a part of some crazy equation that could never work." Speed Davis, executive assistant to the chairperson of the National Council on Disability, began his remarks with a brief history of various successes that occur when disability groups come together. He also reviewed recommendations put forward by the national council which urge a General Accounting Office study on the merits of specialized or categorical services to blind people. Bonnie O'Day, chairman of the Public Policy Committee of the National Council on Disability, began by commending ACB for its willingness to allow alternative viewpoints to be aired at its convention. "I am certainly aware that the organized blind movement has taken a particular position on separate agencies for the blind. However, I think I can speak with confidence that this is the only organization that would have a fair and open hearing on these issues within its membership." She said some organizations have looked at whether blind people receive better service from separate state agencies than from the more generic or combined agencies. "That research has been pretty inconclusive. The conclusive portion of that research says that blind individuals who receive blind division or a separate blind caseload do get better services, and that only makes sense," O'Day admitted. She said a study done by the National Accreditation Council on Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped indicated that blind people with no other disability may have been better served by a single-disability agency. But those with multiple disabilities including blindness, about 51 percent of the blindness population, according to O'Day, may do better under the cross-disability approach. She said while separate state agencies were necessary in 1940, they may not be necessary now. She urged agencies to look at new models of service delivery. She advocated for the idea of blind counselors working with blind consumers in cross-disability agencies. She asserted that costs of serving people in separate state agencies is higher. Those who advocate for categorical services would point out that the individuals get better service or more service. She said no one knows for sure what drives up those costs. James Neppl, North American representative to the International Blind Sports Association, was the final speaker of the separate agencies discussion panel. Neppl said his organization comes under the umbrella of the International Paralympic Committee. He described a situation in the arena of athletic competition in which a group of non-disabled people wants to set rules for blind competition. "We are happy to report that in February of this year, the International Paralympic Committee and the International Blind Sports Association ... signed a letter of understanding wherein they agreed to recognize the autonomy of the International Blind Sports Association, including the right to make our own rules in medical classifications. Now the reason this is so very important is ... what they really want, the Swedes and Scandinavians, is to have one competition wherein blind people compete against cerebral palsy against wheelchair people against amputees, and the differences in their times will be graded by a computer and there will be one winner only." Carl Augusto, executive director of the American Foundation for the Blind, pointed out in a question-and-answer session following the panel that the unified concerns of blind people had fallen upon deaf ears at the National Council on Disability. He called on ACB to continue to work toward the preservation of separate state agencies. The convention next focused on the merits of on-line or alternative shopping techniques. The panel covered on-line shopping, recorded catalogs, shopping via telephone, and using personal shoppers at stores. Panel moderator Laura Oftedahl, producer and host of "ACB Reports," briefly described the services of Waggin' Tails, a home delivery service for pet food. Call (800) 946-0245. She also described food delivery services that bring the food to your house. She pointed out the merits of radio reading services to get grocery and other ads and citywide recorded yellow pages services available in some communities. She also referred to Ed Potter, a former member of ACB's board of publications and proprietor of Playback Marketing, who offers a variety of catalogs which include hundreds of items. For information, call toll-free (888) 217-2312. His catalogs are available on cassette. She also mentioned Ann Morris Enterprises, a Long Island, N.Y., company which offers recorded catalogs. She discussed briefly a business known as Home Readers, a company which offers recordings of print catalogs. The company's four-track tone-indexed catalogs cover a variety of mail-order shopping outlets. For additional information, call (913) 893- 6939. Panelist Judy Dixon of Arlington, Va. said shopping via computer is convenient, but it's not necessarily cheaper. She buys CD's, books, and more. She buys from a company whose web site is http://www.flyingnoodle.com. It offers a pasta-of-the- month club where subscribers can get two pastas and two sauces sent to them for $19.95 per month. The company sends e-mail detailing what the pasta looks like before you get it, and it offers various recipes for using the pasta and sauces. Dixon said credit-card shopping on-line isn't risky as long as the shopper checks the credit card statement carefully when it comes. "I, and a lot of other people, believe that it's very safe to put your credit card number on line," Dixon asserted. Dixon said on-line shoppers can further reduce their risks by looking for a street address and phone number on the web site. "I don't buy anything from a site where I can't find the telephone number or street address." Oftedahl introduced a personal shopper from Macy's By Appointment, who described the services she provides at a Houston-area Macy's department store. ACB's international speaker for 1997 was Ivan Ho Tuck Choy, executive director of the National Council for the Blind in Malaysia. He began by describing the geographic elements of Malaysia, a nation with a population of about 20 million. The official religion is Islam; about three percent of the nation is Christian. He said work for blind people began in about 1926. Blind children today are educated in residential schools as well as integrated into regular classes. Blind people there work in factories and as telephone operators; they are also massage therapists. Some are executives and educators. The National Council for the Blind is an umbrella body which oversees activities of five blindness-related organizations. WEDNESDAY: The Wednesday session began with some convention business, which was followed by a panel discussion regarding the education of blind children and some of the trade-offs and compromises involved. Dr. Philip Hatlen, superintendent of the Texas School for the Blind, was its moderator. "I assume that this title refers to the ongoing issues of full inclusion, local school services and the future roles of schools for the blind," Hatlen stated. "Before I make some remarks, I'd like to state that I believe the education of blind children is more healthy and promising today than it has been in many years. I believe that full inclusion is only one alternative of many ways to provide inclusive education and has taken its rightful place in an array of placement options. I believe that complementary roles between local schools and schools for the blind are being further developed, and that each has a role in the education of all blind children. I believe that the recent signing of IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, by the passage in Congress and the signing by Clinton, which has no changes in the provision for a continuum of placement options, is indicative of a growing realization that unless we have all kinds of alternative placements for blind children, we're not going to be able to meet individual needs." Recently, he said, he'd been thinking about his reaction to inclusion. "The past forty years have brought about tremendous change, but it has been carefully planned and gradually developed." One of the things that has changed is the insistence on making the program fit the child, not the other way around. Each child is an individual and should be treated as such, he noted. Then inclusion came along, Hatlen said, "and in my mind, it threatened everything that my colleagues and I had spent forty years building." His tone toward inclusion has mellowed over the years, he said, because some of inclusion's most ardent champions have adopted the position of needing a variety of placements depending upon the needs of the child. Inclusion is the goal, not the starting point. Patty Slaby was the first panelist. She is president of the National Association of Blind Teachers, and an itinerant teacher in the River Falls, Wis., public school system. She works with children from age 3 to 21 in the mainstream setting as well as students in other programs. She said she often has trouble getting the parents to understand that the children need to learn how to do things for themselves. Karen Bays, who works at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Columbia, S.C., said she had the best of both worlds: she was educated in public school and a residential school. She lost her sight when she was 6, attended public school for two years, and when her father's job was transferred to Colorado, she went to the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, which she attended through the first half of her freshman year. "I enjoyed it," she said. "I had a great time. It probably at that point was what I needed educationally to teach me the braille I needed and to provide me with the skills that would allow me to be mainstreamed again and to pursue some of the other things I have done." She went through the pluses and minuses of both systems. "For me, one of the benefits of a residential school was every teacher knew blindness, every teacher knew braille and knew the adaptive equipment. The other benefit was every teacher had high expectations for me, and that was helpful. Everybody expected you to succeed, everybody expected you to have your homework in, and they could grade it and hand it back to you the same day. One of the other real big benefits to a residential school was socially, I was on equal footing at all times. There were a lot of activities to be involved in." She was in cheerleading, the girls' athletic association, the band and the choir, and these enabled her to develop self-confidence and leadership skills. At the middle of her freshman year, her father was transferred to St. Louis, and she went to public school. "One of the down sides to my attending residential school is I had so many things to do that I would go months at a time before I came home," she said. Now most residential schools have students go home every weekend. Another downfall was that it was a very sheltered environment. "It's not the real world," she noted. Benefits of public school included: better college preparation, giving her opportunities she hadn't had in the school for the blind; and greater opportunity to interact socially with her sighted peers and concurrently educate people about blindness. Shirley McCormack, a Deer Park Junior High School teacher's aide for visually impaired students in Texas, was the next panelist. Deer Park Junior High School is an inclusive school, she said, and people come from all over Texas to see it. "Amazing things have taken place," she added. A student she currently helps "has grown academically ... and socially" since he started there. She read a paragraph he'd written about an event that had changed his life; the event was moving from one school to another where he felt he fit in. "Everybody was so nice and didn't care about my disability. They treated me like any other person. ... All my new friends ... thought my glass eye was cool." "To me that kind of illustrates a good situation of inclusion in a nutshell," McCormack said. "The whole attitude in the school stems from the fact that all students are included. To me, inclusion is allowing everybody to be in the same place, not necessarily doing the same work, but in the same area doing similar, if possible." She began working with high school students who were newly blinded, and "I am not convinced that they would not have been profited by time in a residential school immersed in braille skills. The public school did not equip them as they could have been equipped in a residential setting. ... " She would like to see more monitoring of public school students' progress to see if they're where they could be. The next panelist was Robert McKee, a student of the University of Houston, who'd been in the mainstream most of his life. He became blind when he was 8 due to detached retinas and glaucoma, and was on homebound instruction for about a year, after which the school system placed him in a fourth and fifth grade combination class in the mainstream. "There was no problem there, but I didn't have the skills I needed to hang with the rest of the kids, so I decided to go ahead and go to the school for the blind for a year," he said. "Upon my return from the school for the blind I was received with a lot of resistance as far as being placed in a school locally because they were in the process of moving the students with disabilities [to another school], and I didn't want to be placed like that, so I wound up going to my home school, which I excelled and graduated with honors from my middle school and high school." He believed that being included was beneficial for him socially, echoing Karen Bays' remarks about the school for the blind being a sheltered environment. "One of the worst things about being a part of the mainstream, or inclusion, was having the technology or the accessibility to the equipment that one needs," he said. One of his goals related to his computer engineering major: he would like to help blind and visually impaired students or individuals in everyday life, such as developing affordable adaptive equipment. "As far as inclusion goes, it's just like a democracy: it's not the greatest, but it's what we have now. So it's up to us to perfect the system." Hatlen set out a few goals: to have informed parents and advocates, and to have those who make the placements evaluate that placement's effectiveness. He also discussed the two myths about residential schools that he'd like help dispelling: that a chasm develops between the child and his family when he attends a residential school, and that life at a residential school is so sheltered that entering the real world is a traumatic shock. After a lively question-and-answer session, the convention heard from Ray Foushee, an award-winning talking book narrator from the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, Ky. "People ask me how I wound up doing this, especially my friends who find out that I get paid for doing this, and they say, 'Boy, what a deal!' and they're absolutely right," he said. "My roundabout answer always takes forever to tell because nothing I did in my earlier life led me to do this except for the fact that I developed a love of reading when I was a kid, and I did it through the usual means: I ate Hardy Boys novels by the dozens, and when I ran out of those I'd go next door and get the girls who lived next door, get their Nancy Drew books and read those. They were the same stories. I didn't realize that. You just kinda plug in different character names, which I find that authors today do too, but that's another story. The Bobbsey Twins, it didn't matter, comic books -- I was always a big comic book fan when I was a kid. Anyway, I got into the habit of reading for my own enjoyment early in life. And the other fact that kinda played into things is that my voice changed when I was about nine years old." He added that he didn't get into broadcasting or narrating until he was in his 30s. He wrote a column called "The TV Set" for a local newspaper, which led to opportunities at a TV station, where he met a man who narrated at APH. He auditioned and was accepted into the program. His first book was a Western called "Sam Bass." His second book was also a Western. His book total is close to 300 (since 1984), "some of which have been memorable experiences as far as just exposing me to great authors, great stories, things I never would have picked up before, some of which are better forgotten." He said he would never recommend everything he's read, because there are a few "stinkers" out there. He and some of his fellow narrators wondered how he managed to stay consistently employed, and he asked one day. The answer: "Well, you see on the annotation to the book there at the bottom where it says 'Contains some strong language and descriptions of sex'? They said, 'You've never expressed an unwillingness to do that. They have.' I said, 'No, I never have expressed any unwillingness to do that. It kinda comes naturally to me. I do it in my spare time, why shouldn't I do it for free?'" Foushee said he enjoyed meeting readers at convention, as well as receiving visits from them at the printing house. Another thing he has enjoyed is talking to the authors of some of the books he's read. He thanked the monitors, proofreaders, technical people who put the recordings together, and all the others who work at APH. Outside the studio, he works for WDRB-TV as director of advertising and promotions, as well as station announcer. He noted that he hadn't done any recording in the last six weeks, but would be going back once he got settled into the full-time position. "I have to continue reading," he said. "This is a job that I hope never to retire from." The convention departed slightly from the schedule after Foushee's presentation. Jim Olsen and Paul Edwards presented Linda Yacks of Wheat Ridge, Colo., with a life membership. "We lost someone real special to us in Colorado this year," Yacks said, "and many of you knew her. ... So I gave my lifetime membership in honor of Mary Macdonald." The convention next turned its attention to Amy Pais of Lions World Services for the Blind in Little Rock, Ark. "I've been a part of the center's staff for the last 30 years," she said. "I've been retired from the particular job of director of training for four days now, and I'm now field representative for the center, which means I have cane, will travel. And we'll be traveling around from state to state recruiting for the center." She presented a brief history of rehabilitation and the rehabilitation center in particular. LWSB is a private non- profit rehabilitation center, sponsored by the Arkansas Lions and Lions Clubs International. The center serves all states and 55 countries, and has served thousands of people in its 50 years. Training programs are individualized; those ages 16 and up are accepted for training. The center offers 24 skill areas and 14 vocational areas of training. The center has a success rate of about 95 percent in getting jobs; the main reasons people leave their jobs are cross-country moves, deaths, and marriage. The center is offering a transition program from school to work that teaches job-seeking skills, work awareness, appropriateness in and out of the office, and other such skills. It also offers training for older people to be able to stay in their own homes, rather than move to a nursing home, and for those who want to work part-time, such as in computers. LWSB also teaches job-specific skills for those who have jobs and need training in such things as assistive technology. For more information on LWSB programs, call (800) 248-0734. Following Pais' presentation, the convention heard the nominating committee report and amendments to the constitution and bylaws. THURSDAY: The Thursday session began with a roll call vote on an amendment to the constitution that would give the board and the convention committee the power to select sites for national convention. During the standing vote, attendees also heard another amendment to the bylaws and a resolution regarding SSI earnings limits linkage. The resolution was adopted; the amendment regarding site selection passed also, to take effect after the convention. Following the amendments and resolutions, Dr. John Buckley, chairman of ACB's scholarship committee, presented scholarships. (See "American Council Of The Blind Awards Over $50,000 In Scholarship Funds To 26 Outstanding Blind Students," September 1997.) John Horst then presented his convention report and the bids for the 1999 convention sites. Those cities interested were Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles, Calif. The convention ultimately selected Los Angeles as the site for 1999. Horst mentioned a change that the board had made that would take effect with the 1999 convention: it would be held from Friday to Friday. After the site selection, convention attendees dealt with resolutions and constitution and bylaws amendments. ACB Executive Director Oral O. Miller also gave his report. "Several months ago a new staff person in the national office came to me after being there approximately a month and said, 'I am absolutely amazed at the enormous number of subjects and topics that are dealt with in this office, everything from housing to Social Security, education, transportation, library services, sports and recreation, environmental access of all sorts ...' And if this question had been asked last week, we would have added to that, 'And the production of movies involving Mr. Magoo.' And this list goes on and on. Now what she was saying, of course, was that the office is dealing with the very subjects -- it mirrors the things that concern you every day of the year, things that certainly are important to all members of the American Council of the Blind." He mentioned staff changes at the national office and the leaking water from the building's heating system. He told how one new staff member had discovered the leak and sounded the alarm. "Fortunately, even though there of course was damage done, there was no loss of electronic information because it had been backed up in another area," he said. But projects were able to go forward. Miller also mentioned the battle with the National Council on Disability regarding changes in the Rehabilitation Act that would do away with separate and specialized services. "Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, it was the ACB president and staff who were the principal combatants in opposing those efforts," he said. But, he pointed out, attendees played a major role in that, too. "No, the battle is not over, the fight isn't over on this issue, as you heard the other day, because there is this disgraceful decision to have a GAO investigation concerning only the blindness agencies. But we must stay diligent, we must be prepared to do what is necessary, and based on the discussions you heard during the workshop, during the panel discussion a day or two ago, and based on the determination which has been expressed here, I'm confident as to how this controversy is going to come out." He compared advocacy to an iceberg: 90 percent of it is under water, "and it's not often seen. Advocacy, in its very broad terms, frequently includes a lot of meetings, preparing written comments, sometimes day-long regulation writing or the editing of regulations, strategizing with other organizations in the blindness and the broader disability field, and many other things. As a result, a lot of issues don't really come to the surface for a long time." One of those issues is detectable warnings on Washington's Metrorail system. He lamented the waste of money on electronic cuing systems and the foot-dragging of the Federal Transit Administration. Last September, ACB's patience wore out, and it filed suit along with the Pennsylvania Council of the Blind, Blinded Veterans Association, other organizations and several individuals in federal court against the Metro system, the Department of Transportation and the FTA. Metro continued to oppose the suit; between Christmas 1996 and Easter 1997, seven more people fell off the platforms. About two weeks before convention, an article in "The Washington Post" said Metro was junking its electronic cuing system and installing detectable warnings. "But we're not celebrating yet," Miller said. "We can't celebrate because the devil is in the details. The devil is in the details regarding such things as where are the detectable warnings going to be placed, what kind of material are they going to be made out of, what color are they going to be, the number of stations in which they're going to be installed, and many other issues." He pointed to the number of meetings staff members have attended, stating that those were wonderful opportunities to provide input on various issues. He also mentioned the Project Action bus driver training in Pittsburgh, teaching bus drivers to call out stops. "These projects, although they may appear to deal with what ought to be a fairly simple task, these projects are going to become and I think recognized to be more and more and more important because -- stop and think -- blind people are now being 'encouraged' more and more to use fixed-route transportation. Why? Because paratransit service is a little bit vulnerable, it's somewhat controversial in some communities, and it's subject to great variations in funding. So it's going to be important for blind people as much as possible to be able to use the fixed-route services." He mentioned ACB's growing international presence, based on participation in the World Blind Union, receiving international visitors in the national office, active participation in various conventions and seminars around the world, international correspondence with individuals and organizations, and responding to dozens of requests for assistance. It's also based on the goodwill friendship which ACB has received, derived from board and staff members' voluntary activities. He told about being asked to lead a delegation to China, and what the delegation did while there. He thanked those ACB members who had housed members of the Japan Federation of the Blind while they were in Washington, D.C. On the national side, Miller said that ACB is less dependent on thrift store income than before, but "we as ACB members want to make our organization OUR organization, not one that is paid for mainly by income that comes from outside sources. It needs our support, and it's going to continue to need our support." There are ways to support it that won't hurt, such as contributing generously via the fall fundraiser letter. He thanked ACB members for their support, and concluded his remarks by playing a segment of the older girls' glee club concert at the Nanjing School for the Blind in China. Following Miller's report, Paul Edwards announced that Penn Station in New York had decided to install -- permanently -- the first talking kiosk in the country. FRIDAY: The convention departed slightly from the program on Friday morning with a report from Kynderly Haskins of the Los Angeles Airport Westin Hotel. She offered information on Los Angeles and the hotel. "As you probably all know, Los Angeles is the place to go for Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, the Magic Castle, Universal Studios, Beverly Hills, shopping on Rodeo Drive, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Hollywood Park horse racing," Haskins said. "We have boating and sailing in the Marina del Rey area, which is just three miles from our hotel, and as you heard on 'The Beverly Hillbillies,' swimming pools and movie stars." She thanked the convention attendees for choosing Los Angeles, and said the hotel was looking forward to hosting them. Following a question-and-answer session, attendees acted on amendments to the bylaws. Both amendments passed. ACB Treasurer Patricia Beattie was next with her report. "Money, money, money, of course we can't do much without money," she said. "Volunteerism is wonderful, but paying for those bus tickets, paying for those plane tickets, paying for our wonderful national office staff and of course the American Council of the Blind Enterprises and Services staff in Minneapolis, and all of the things that we want to do ... For those of you who may not be familiar, let me just briefly describe the finances of American Council of the Blind. We have a budget of about $1.1 million this year, and we are in probably the best and most sound financial condition that we have been in a decade." Consolidated assets as of December 31, 1996 are $1,680,186; last year, consolidated assets were $1,375,000. She also mentioned the balance in the reserve fund of $400,000. After Beattie's report came elections. There was no change among the officers; all incumbents were re-elected. The remainder of the Friday and Saturday sessions were taken up with convention business. At the banquet, convention attendees laughed at the antics of the Theater by the Blind. CAPTIONS All photos copyright 1997 by Jowdy Photography. Ed and Linda Bradley welcome everyone to Houston and the convention. Billie Jean Keith and Kathy Megivern share a smile at the banquet on Friday. Megivern is the winner of the Distinguished Service Award. Scott Marshall receives the Durward K. McDaniel Ambassador Award as Dawn Christensen looks on, laughing. Nelson Malbone thanks the ACB board for awarding the Virginia Association of the Blind an official charter as Paul Edwards looks on. ACB ANNOUNCES 1997 AWARD WINNERS by Sharon Lovering During the July 6 opening ceremonies of the 36th annual national convention in Houston, Texas, the American Council of the Blind named the recipients of awards. Carol McCarl, chair of the board of publications, thanked Kim Charlson, Jay Doudna, Tom Mitchell, and Mitch Pomerantz for their work this year. She reminded her listeners that the Ned E. Freeman Excellence in Writing Award "enables you to be a participant if your article was put in and published between April [1996] and March [1997]." This year's winner was Deborah Grubb; Ken Stewart, author of "Runners High," was the runner-up. "Thank you so much for this honor," Grubb said. "A writer is rarely at a loss for words, and I am. My little article started out as an e-mail message on the guide dog users list, and Kim Charlson, who is one of the kindest and most loving and most helpful people, called me up and said, 'You have to write this as an article for the Forum.' And so my little effort has won me this award. And from the heart, I say thank you." The winner of the Vernon Henley Memorial Award was The Seeing Eye, for its public service announcements regarding restaurant and taxicab access. Accepting on behalf of The Seeing Eye was David Loux, the school's director of field services. "Thank you very much on behalf of The Seeing Eye, its board of trustees, its staff and its graduates, and really on behalf of all dog guide users, and I believe on behalf of all blind people," Loux said. "Because some of you are, and because some of you work with those who suffer creative genius, you can well imagine it was quite interesting working with someone like Stan Freberg: behind the scenes you don't see much different than what you see out front, what many of us have come to know as the Stan Freberg personality. But really, this award needs to be shared with Stan Freberg and with Betty White as well. It is indeed a pleasure to accept this on behalf of The Seeing Eye and really on behalf of all who take the step to move independently throughout this entire country." At the banquet on Friday night, the winners of the McDaniel and Distinguished Service awards were honored. "It is so much more fun to give awards than to receive them, because when you have to receive them you're usually crying and you've got your mascara running down your face," said Dawn Christensen, chair of the awards committee. "And when you're giving them, you can just smile and give the award and know that the person you're giving it to is so excited that they're not going to be able to talk and you expect them to talk, and it's just a lot of fun." The 1997 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Kathy Megivern of Alexandria, Va. Her nomination read: "For nearly 25 years, Kathy has worked and volunteered tirelessly on behalf of bettering the lives of blind people. In 1973 she worked for Durward McDaniel as administrative assistant for ACB. 'Durward and Aileen were like parents to me,' said Kathy, whose own parents had died. Because Kathy didn't have enough money for room and board while attending law school at night, she lived in the McDaniels' house during that time. This probably gave Kathy the understanding of what life is like every day for a blind person. "Following law school, Kathy remained at ACB and became ACB's staff attorney. Her job included directing ACB's lobbying efforts as well as assisting individual members with legal problems. She wrote on legislative issues for 'The Braille Forum' and traveled to many state conferences. "Since 1983, Kathy has been executive director of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired, an organization with 5,000 members who are professionals in the field of blindness education and rehabilitation. Even though she has all the responsibilities of managing a staff, developing/managing a budget, supporting activities of AER's president and board of directors; planning AER's national conferences; writing for the newsletter; and keeping up with all blindness-related issues on Capitol Hill, one always sees Kathy at meetings of and for blind people, and usually she is working as a volunteer behind a table. We also read articles she has written for 'The Braille Forum' on issues of national importance on blindness issues. "Long before I moved to the Washington area, I knew of Kathy as a national leader in the field of blindness, and an active advocate for blind people. After moving to the D.C. area, I also learned what a real friend she is on a personal basis. During the year when we were neighbors, Kathy volunteered to drive me to the grocery store and helped me do my shopping. She also drove me to meetings of the Alexandria Commission on Persons with Disabilities where she served as chair for several years. She has always been willing to pick up anyone in the area needing a ride to a meeting or local conference. These acts of thoughtfulness go far beyond her professional life. Despite her own battle with rheumatoid arthritis, Kathy Megivern has made a personal and professional career of improving the world for blind people." (This nomination was submitted by ACB member Billie Jean Keith.) "Thank you very much," Megivern said. "Thank you, my former neighbor Billie Jean [Keith] over there, who I know wrote the letter. This means a lot to me, obviously. I started out -- I had no idea when I answered that ad in The Washington Post back in 1973 how it was going to change my life, but the influence of a very special gentleman named Durward McDaniel made all the difference in my life, and I thank you very much." The winner of the Durward K. McDaniel Ambassador Award was Scott Marshall. "He is a tireless advocate both personally and professionally," Christensen said. "He also has been in the business for around 20 years. ... he has worked in virtually every aspect of making the lives of blind and visually impaired people better. He is a rare combination of a creative thinker and an activist on many issues. He always generates fresh ideas, and ... works with other organizations of and for the blind to ensure that whatever the needs of blind and visually impaired people are, there's someone out there fighting for those needs." "Thank you very much," Marshall said. "I cannot tell you what this award means to me -- I guess I just did. Usually I am not lost for words. I remember coming to Washington in 1981 to take over what is now Julie Carroll's job ... This is the greatest organization of blind people in the world, and I better stop while I'm ahead." Also at the banquet, the Virginia Association of the Blind received its official charter. The deadline for nominations for the Bray, Card, McDaniel and Distinguished Service awards is April 15, 1998. CALLING STOPS IS A CIVIL RIGHT ACB Grant Project Expands by Jenine Stanley "Excuse me, can you tell me which stop this is?" How many times have you asked a bus driver this question? Maybe you were checking on your position along the route, or maybe you had a horrible suspicion that the driver had just flown past the stop you firmly asked him or her to announce when you boarded the bus. How many times has that same driver grunted a reply of "Don't worry, I'll tell you when we get there," or "Oh sorry, I forgot your stop." Did you know that having stops announced on fixed route buses, subways and trains is a civil right under the Americans with Disabilities Act? But under what conditions should stops be announced? Stops at all major intersections, transfer points and major destinations should be announced, regardless of whether a rider with a disability has requested them. Any stop requested to be announced by any rider must be called out. The ADA does not define such things as major intersections or destinations. This is left to local authorities to decide. Does your local transit system measure up? If not, help is available. In 1997 ACB and Jim Flemming of JDF & Associates, Burtonsville, Md., received a grant from Project ACTION, the federally funded program on transportation and people with disabilities. Realizing that a deficiency in calling out stops was a major barrier to blind and visually impaired travelers on public transit, ACB's proposal took a more in-depth look at the issue. "Transit operations people like short-term, inexpensive answers," says Flemming, when asked about the public awareness campaigns that sound like the logical solution to the problem of drivers not calling out stops. "Calling stops is a change in behavior. Any time you expect people to change their behavior, you can expect a certain amount of resistance." The "Calling Out Stops" project takes a different approach, looking at a partnership between management, drivers and blind and visually impaired riders to assure long-term compliance. Three modules make up the training. These modules can be executed by transit personnel and revisited as a long-term solution for monitoring and enforcing stop calling. Two test sites were chosen based on a need for training on calling stops, transit systems seeking an amicable solution regarding union participation and the participation of ACB members. Pittsburgh and Cleveland proved to be excellent test sites. Both cities have large, active ACB chapters. Both transit authorities expressed an interest in making their systems more accessible but were looking for a way to work with their union drivers for more concrete training on stop calling. Some transit systems have cited union opposition as a reason why stop calling cannot be enforced. The announcement of stops is a provision of a federal law, the ADA. Unions cannot break federal law. The key to the ACB training is a system of fair monitoring and reward, the "give/get" principle. Drivers have incentives to "do the right thing." The blindness community of each city is also involved and takes responsibility for monitoring the system before and after the training. Managers, union representatives, drivers and blind riders are all involved in a one- to two-day training seminar that takes them through a series of exercises. Drivers' discomfort at speaking in public, misconceptions about the ADA and the experience of blind riders both when stops are not called and called appropriately, are all addressed. A support system from management and a commitment to uphold the ADA, a federal law, are also stressed. Reports from drivers in Cleveland and Pittsburgh are favorable. One driver even reported that once he got in the habit of calling out the stops, he found himself doing so in his personal car while driving in his bus route area. Does this program sound like something in which your community could take part? The success of this training and the maintenance of our civil right to stop announcement depends on you, members of ACB and blind or visually impaired bus passengers. It is very easy to say that the bus system is inaccessible due to a lack of stop announcements, making a case for inclusion on paratransit services. As paratransit roles are re-evaluated and anyone who can is encouraged to ride the fixed- route bus, blind people must work to make that fixed-route system as accessible as possible. In order to make that happen, you can take an active role on your transit system's consumer advisory committee. Your local ACB chapter can elect someone to serve on this body, depending on how people are chosen to do so. That person should report back to the chapter and take chapter concerns to the transit system. All too often, we complain among ourselves about the state of transportation but are a very small presence in local and national transit advocacy. For more information on how you can bring the "Calling Stops" program to your transit authority, contact: Jim Flemming, JDF & Associates, 3224 Hollyhock, Burtonsville, MD 20866; phone (301) 384-4749. Flemming is also gathering information on the activities of blind people in transportation advocacy throughout the country. He would appreciate correspondence to build an advocacy network so that the needs of blind and visually impaired people can be well-represented on ADA transportation issues. ASK THE ADVOCATES: Getting Acquainted with ACB's Advocacy Services by Mark Richert For nearly a year, I have served as ACB's Director of Advocacy Services. It has been my privilege to work with hundreds of ACB members and others, resolving their individual inquiries or discussing their options under the law, and learning from them about the real needs and concerns of our community. When I joined the ACB staff last November, I filled a position that had not existed before I came on board, and although it has been exciting to break new ground, it has also been challenging to learn how best to respond effectively to the widest possible audience of consumers. Many of you have expressed interest in routinely receiving practical information about the legal rights of people who are blind or have low vision. To meet this demand, "Ask The Advocates" will appear regularly in "The Braille Forum" and will provide answers to the most frequently asked questions. Knowledge is power, and my hope is that this column will empower people who are blind to be their own best advocates. Advocacy comes in a variety of flavors. ACB has long been active in the legislative and regulatory arenas advocating for changes to existing law, or for the preservation of provisions already on the books, that will protect the rights and priorities of blind people. Our successes in this regard are myriad. Moreover, ACB advocates for people who are blind before the courts in cases of national significance, such as our suit against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) for its failure to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to install detectable warnings along its subway platform edges. However, much more needs to be done, and we are meeting the challenge with determination and enthusiasm. ACB is providing a wide variety of advocacy services to our members and others. We provide information and referral services relating to virtually any issue in the field of blindness. We offer technical assistance to help navigate the maze of government benefit programs, such as Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI). We can help secure important services that are provided by vocational rehabilitation programs or mandated under special education law. We advise inquirers about their civil rights under federal law and can recommend the assistance of suitable advocates in matters involving state law. We can suggest courses of action to pursue if you believe that your rights have been limited or denied, and we offer help in the preparation of materials needed to file claims or complaints. When feasible and appropriate, ACB can arrange for representation or intervention by ACB staff and other appropriate advocates. As a lawyer, it is professionally rewarding to play a part in making these services available, but as a person who is blind, it is particularly meaningful to work hand in hand with ACB members and friends to accomplish objectives that matter to all of us. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to work side by side with parents to develop individualized education plans (IEPs) for their children who are blind. We have a tremendous responsibility to ensure that our children receive an education that is worthy of their potential. It has also been gratifying to assist older blind people to restore a measure of economic stability and security by helping them obtain or retain Social Security benefits. Unfortunately, it has also been incredibly frustrating to work firsthand with the pervasiveness of discrimination against people who use guide dogs. Additionally, there is much work to be done to protect the right of working-age blind people to reasonable accommodations in the workplace and to freedom from discrimination in hiring -- and so much more. Obviously, too many issues abound that require a great deal of attention, and we need to develop effective strategies to succeed. To help us better define our goals and to enhance the services we provide, ACB has created a Committee on Advocacy Services. Established at this year's national convention in Houston, Texas, the committee will consider the appropriateness and scope of involvement in activities such as mediation, representation, litigation, education and outreach to the private bar, and other services related to the enforcement and protection of civil rights and entitlements. Along with our president and executive director who serve as permanent members of the committee, ACB President Paul Edwards has appointed three additional members to this year's committee. Dawn Christensen is a member of the ACB board of directors and serves as an advocate for the Toledo Society for the Blind. Jim Kracht is a past president of the American Blind Lawyers Association and is a practicing attorney in Miami, Fla. Sue Ammeter, also an ACB board member, is president of the Washington Council of the Blind and serves as Disability Services Specialist for King County Government in Seattle. These outstanding advocates and ACB leaders will help us prioritize our advocacy efforts and set our course for the future. However, we have already undertaken a number of projects to enhance the advocacy services we currently provide. For example, we are developing training materials, such as an easy-to- understand handbook outlining the structure and operation of the SSI and SSDI programs, with special emphasis on those rules that apply strictly to blind recipients and provisions in the law that try to encourage work. Additionally, future installments of this column will focus on selected topics of interest and, using a question-and-answer format, will address specific inquiries raised by you. I look forward to getting your input about issues you would like to see discussed. We are very excited about the creation of ACB's job bank, currently accessed on the World Wide Web. Announcements about employment opportunities from around the nation are posted electronically and are accessible by job seekers who are blind. By making job announcements of interest to us available in media we can use independently, we are continuing to address the unconscionably high jobless rate in our community. The job bank can be accessed on ACB's web site at http://www.acb.org, and is updated regularly. If you have additional questions about this service, would like to post a job announcement, or if you would like further information about any of the jobs listed, please contact Sarah DeYoung at the ACB national office. We have great expectations for the job bank, and ACB continues to explore ways to make this important information accessible to as many consumers as possible. Now let me make a few comments about how you can help me make the most of ACB's advocacy services. Please feel free to contact the national office by mail, phone, or by whatever means are most convenient for you. Most of the inquiries I receive are in fact made by phone. Inquiries are kept confidential. Questions or issues raised should be blindness-related inquiries. Questions you might have do not need to be legal inquiries per se, but if you are seeking advocacy assistance from ACB, your concern should arise out of facts related to blindness or visual impairment. The fact that a caller may simply be blind does not mean that her question relates to blindness. Although ACB's staff might have some general suggestions for callers like these, such calls fall outside the scope of ACB's advocacy services office. A good number of blindness-related questions are asked repeatedly. These more common inquiries can be addressed by our national office support staff. If your concern cannot be addressed in this way, we are very interested in exploring the matter with you further. If you are asked to leave a voice mail message, please be as specific as possible about the circumstances surrounding your call. Doing so will help me be better prepared when your phone call is returned promptly. You will also want to contact ACB with time-sensitive concerns as soon as you possibly can. If you are given 60 days in which to appeal a decision made against you, contacting us on the 59th day will not allow us to give you the most effective assistance. Finally, successful advocacy requires teamwork. Those seeking assistance are full partners in the process. For example, if you are told that certain official documentation is required of you by an agency, and it is appropriate for such information to be obtained, ACB cannot hope to be of service when the biggest problem is a simple refusal to provide the paperwork. This is only to say that we need to work together in good faith, and we need to work hard. Working cooperatively, with each of us "owning" a part of the process, we will maximize our success. I hope that these comments have given you a better idea of the kind of services that ACB is providing. The American Council of the Blind is committed to strong and effective advocacy, and I look forward to working with you to continue to expand and improve the quality of our advocacy services. AFFILIATE NEWS NEWS FROM PENNSYLVANIA The Pennsylvania Council of the Blind will hold its state convention November 7-9, 1997 at the Brunswick Hotel in Lancaster, PA. The theme is "Training Plus Experience Equals Success." Presenters will include ACB President Paul Edwards, Michael Gravitt, president of the National Alliance of Blind Students, the new director of the Pennsylvania state agency for the blind, Douglas Boone and the director of Pennsylvania's non- governmental agencies for the blind, Valerie Weiner. Discussion will focus on reaching younger people and the need for continuing separate service programs. The Luzerne County Council of the Blind, located in Wilkes- Barre, celebrates it 70th anniversary on October 24, 1997. Founded in 1927 as the Luzerne County Federation of the Blind, it became the Luzerne County Council of the Blind in 1984. This was a pioneer movement since it was the first known organization of blind people. To celebrate this anniversary, chapter president Thomas Walsh and a committee of chapter members have planned a dinner, fashion show, and dance to be held at Genetti's Hotel in Wilkes-Barre. The public is invited. Tickets are $50 per person. For more information, call (717) 824-5305. CCLVI FORMING IN ATLANTA The Council of Citizens with Low Vision International is organizing a chapter in Atlanta to provide support, education and services for the community. All are invited to attend the next scheduled meeting. For more information, contact Darren Harvey at (770) 961-4744, Cyndi Kitchens at (404) 233-0297, or Beth Horton at (404) 894-9145. HERE AND THERE by Elizabeth M. Lennon The announcement of new products and services in this column should not be considered an endorsement of those products and services by the American Council of the Blind, its staff or elected officials. Products and services are listed free of charge for the benefit of our readers. "The Braille Forum" cannot be responsible for the reliability of products or services mentioned. CONGRESSMEN HONORED The American Foundation for the Blind recently honored senators Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Representative William F. Goodling (R-Pa.) for their commitment to braille literacy and the education of blind and visually impaired children. The three were instrumental in the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. RECORD-BREAKER Mitzi Friedlander has become the first person in the history of the talking book program to record 1,000 books, according to the NLS News. Her record-breaking book was "Beyond the Double Night," a biography of Hames Morrison Heady, a deaf-blind Kentuckian who was a writer, inventor and poet. Friedlander addressed the 1996 national convention in Tulsa. She was honored in a ceremony at the American Printing House for the Blind on May 28. CONVENTION TAPES Tapes of the 1997 ACB national convention are now available. The full set of 21 tapes includes all general sessions, the banquet, legislative seminar, diabetes seminar, and the internet seminar, and costs $25. Session tapes are available separately for $5. For more information, contact the ACB national office at (800) 424-8666 between 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Eastern. BRAILLE CARDS Shadows in the Dark's braille pictured greeting cards are available individually and in sets of 10 or 20. The company offers birthday cards, as well as anniversary, Easter, thank you, St. Patrick's Day, sympathy, get well, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Valentine's Day, teacher and friendship cards. Individual cards cost $2.50; a set of 10 costs $20, and a set of 20 costs $35. Mail orders to Shadows in the Dark, 4600 Pine Hill Rd., Shreveport, LA 71107-2716; phone (318) 459-1426; e-mail pmblind@aol.com. Hours are: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Central time). CHOCOLATE BRAILLE Choco-Braille has braille greeting cards made of chocolate reading "Happy Birthday," "Thank You," "Season's Greetings" and more. Each bar costs $2.50; bars with nuts cost $3.25. For more information, call (718) 359-4466. WINDOW-EYES According to a recent press release from GW Micro, users of Vocal-Eyes 3.0 can buy Window-Eyes 2.0 for a $100 discount. The company is also offering the discount to Window-Eyes 2.0 users purchasing Vocal-Eyes. For more information, check the web site, http://www.gwmicro.com or call (219) 489-3671. V-MAX GOGGLES V-max is a visual maximizer device that is worn on the head. It uses digital technology to capture, enlarge and enhance images for those with severe vision impairments. It can enhance distant objects as well as intermediate and close objects with the touch of a button. It can also be used as an auto focus color CCTV which magnifies up to 60 times when used with a 20-inch television. It costs $3,995. For more information, contact Enhanced Vision Systems at (800) 440-9476, or visit the web site at http://www.enhancedvision.com. COOK WITH FEELING "Cooking with Feeling" is a new book that explains adaptive culinary techniques for blind people, as well as gives recipes covering everything from appetizers to desserts. Some of America's chefs and restaurateurs have donated recipes for the cookbook. Order it from the author, Deborah DeBord, 81 Cree Ct., Lyons, CO 80540; phone (303) 823-0337, or e-mail deborah@indra.com. If you want to see a sample, check the web site at http://www.indra.com/~expression. ART OF THE EYE The Delta Gamma Foundation is sponsoring a multi-media exhibit of art created by professional visually impaired artists. From September 19 to November 2, the exhibition will be at Clowes Memorial Hall, Indianapolis, Ind.; December 19 through January 24 it will be in the Martin County Center for the Arts in Stuart, Fla. HIGH TECH SWAP SHOP FOR SALE: Perkins brailler. In good condition. $400. Contact Jeff Johnson at (205) 362-2407. FOR SALE: Aladdin magnifier. In excellent condition. Asking $900. Contact Charlotte Nolan at home, (912) 757-8797, or at work (912) 752-4109. FOR SALE: Braille Blazer, in good shape, $1,100. APH desktop cassette recorder, good working order, $150. Cassette albums holding one cassette ($1) or two cassettes ($2). Blank 50-60 minute cassettes, never used. Talking watch with male voice, like new, $45. Voice-It personal recorder, holds up to 3 minutes of messages, $40 (includes batteries; rarely used). Would prefer to sell the cassette recorder, tapes and album holders together; may be purchased separately. Contact Denise Avant at (773) 325-1117 between 7 and 10 p.m. Central weekdays and any time on weekends. FOR SALE: Artic Squirt, never used. $750. Call (303) 321-6997 between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. weekdays and weekends. FOR SALE: 3.5-inch drive for Braille 'n Speak 640. Used very little. Comes with leather case. Asking $325. Call (303) 370- 0049. FOR SALE: Romeo 40 braille embosser. Includes braille and print manuals, printer paper, computer cables and Duxbury braille translation software and its manuals. Asking $2,200 or best offer. Call Darian Hartman at (503) 253-9543, or write to her at 4335 NE 112th, Portland, OR 97220. WANTED: Donated CCTV in good condition. Am able to pay shipping costs. Call Robert at (304) 424-6919. ACB BOARD OF DIRECTORS Sue Ammeter, Seattle, WA Ardis Bazyn, Cedar Rapids, IA John Buckley, Knoxville, TN Dawn Christensen, Holland, OH Christopher Gray, San Francisco, CA John Horst, Wilkes-Barre, PA Kristal Platt, Omaha, NE M.J. Schmitt, Forest Park, IL Pamela Shaw, Philadelphia, PA Richard Villa, Austin, TX BOARD OF PUBLICATIONS Carol McCarl, Chairperson, Salem, OR Kim Charlson, Watertown, MA Thomas Mitchell, North Salt Lake City, UT Mitch Pomerantz, Los Angeles, CA Jay Doudna, Lancaster, PA Ex Officio: Laura Oftedahl, Watertown, MA ACB OFFICERS PRESIDENT PAUL EDWARDS 20330 NE 20TH CT. MIAMI, FL 33179 FIRST VICE PRESIDENT BRIAN CHARLSON 57 GRANDVIEW AVE. WATERTOWN, MA 02172 SECOND VICE PRESIDENT STEPHEN SPEICHER 825 M ST., SUITE 216 LINCOLN, NE 68508 SECRETARY CYNTHIA TOWERS 556 N. 80TH ST. SEATTLE, WA 98103 TREASURER PATRICIA BEATTIE CRYSTAL TOWERS #206 NORTH 1600 S. EADS ST. ARLINGTON, VA 22202 IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT LeRoy Saunders 2118 NW 21st St. Oklahoma City, OK 73107 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ELIZABETH M. LENNON, Kalamazoo, MI