Twitter

The National Federation of the Blind regularly offers Twitter chats as a way to engage with our members and the public. Join the conversation.

Upcoming Twitter Chats

During the week of March 28, Dan Parker, a blind race car driver and machinist will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for fastest blind driver. Join us on Thursday, March 24, at 2:00 p.m., eastern, to chat on Twitter about the Blind Driver Challenge and autonomous vehicle technology. Below are the questions to prepare for the chat. 

March 24 Questions

Q1: Introduce yourself and share what the Blind Driver Challenge means to you. #CruisinWithNFB
Q2: Where is the first place you would go in an autonomous vehicle? #CruisinWithNFB
Q3: As a blind person, what is one feature or insight you would want autonomous vehicle makers to keep in mind? #CruisinWithNFB
Q4: What do you think that having access to autonomous vehicles would do for the blind community? #CruisinWithNFB
Q5: What’s your favorite song to cruise to while riding in a car? #CruisinWithNFB
Q6: .@QuestForTheSalt is turning his dream of racing while blind into reality. What is your dream? #CruisinWithNFB

Twitter Chat Tips

  • A Twitter chat is a scheduled, organized topical conversation on Twitter centralized around a specific hashtag.
  • Find the chat either by searching for the hashtag or going to the @NFB_Voice profile.
  • In every response during the Twitter chat, include the designated hashtag. 
  • Include the question number in your response. For example, question one may be, "Q1: Introduce yourself." Start your reply with A1 to coordinate your answer to the corresponding question.
  • Engage with others in the chat. The chat isn’t only for answering the set questions but also to encourage, support, and assist others who are part of the chat. Tweet, reply, retweet.

General Twitter Tips

The idea behind Twitter is to say what you are thinking or doing very concisely, in 280 characters or less. When you sign up for Twitter, you’ll create a username or handle. This is what people will associate with you along with the name you list. For example, our National Federation of the Blind username is NFB_Voice. In your profile, you’ll be able to add a little more information about yourself such as a brief bio, your picture, and your location. When you create a tweet, which is what posts are called on Twitter, it will be listed under your profile. By placing the @ symbol in front of a username, you can tag, or mention, another user in your tweet. 

  • A follower is someone who follows you on Twitter and sees your updates on their home feed; you can follow people back to see their tweets in your home feed.     
  • Your home feed displays a stream of tweets from accounts you have chosen to follow on Twitter.
  • Retweet (RT) is a way for someone to share a tweet from another user’s account.
  • A hashtag is when you use the # symbol in front of any word or phrase to tag your tweets. When someone clicks that hashtag, they see your tweet along with everyone else’s tweets using that same exact term.
  • Be sure to turn on the feature to compose image descriptions, or alt-text, which can be found in settings. If you create a post with an image, a field will then populate to include the description.
  • If you are using Twitter on your iPhone or Android, the Twitter app is fairly accessible. On iOS, Twitterrific is another popular app that has taken accessibility very seriously. On your desktop computer, you can use Twitter by going to the website twitter.com. You can also choose to download a client called TWBlue. Because of Twitter’s decisions about what to allow outside apps to access, these clients are not always up-to-date with your direct messages, but they do provide an ad-free and easy-to-access way of reading and writing tweets.

Past Twitter Chats

More Information

For more information, or if you have suggestions for future Twitter chats, please email [email protected].