Volume 40 Number 1 Winter 2021
A magazine for parents and teachers of blind children published by
the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults in partnership
with the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children.
Deborah Kent Stein, Editor
ISSN-0883-3419
Copyright © 2021 American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults
For more information
about blindness and children contact:
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place, Baltimore, MD 21230 • 410-659-9314
https://nfb.org/nopbc • [email protected] • [email protected]
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
What Is the National Federation of the Blind?
by Deborah Kent Stein
SKILLS
Annie: The World's First Braille Self-Learning Device
by Prem Sylvester
Typing: An Essential Skill
by Treva Olivero
GROWING UP
Yes, I Made Mistakes, and I Lived to Tell about It!
by Karen Anderson
Navigating to Successful Transition: There's an App for That!
by Karla Antonelli and Anne Steverson
MENTORING
Mentoring Cultivates and Nurtures Relationships that Contribute to
Lifelong Learning and to Living the Lives We Want
by Maurice Peret
Mentors for My Son
by Carla Keirns
STEM
Two Milestones Reached at AIM Conference on Automated Nemeth Braille Translation
by Al Maneki
Remote Science Learning Advancements for the Blind
by Ashley Neybert
MUSIC AND ART
All Things Strings: An Interview with Leslie Hamric and Julia LaGrand
Tactile Pictures Made Easy
by Ann Cunningham
Building Community through Tactile Art
by Rishika Kartik
ADVOCACY
The Art of Fly Catching
by Briley O'Connor
PERSPECTIVES
A Climber of Trees
by Kaylee Nielson
On Privilege and Allyship
by Monica Wegner
WHAT'S NEW?
The 2021 Distinguished Educator of Blind Students Award
by Carla McQuillan
The 2021 Braille Readers Are Leaders Winners
The American Action Fund Needs Your Help!
Summer Youth Programs
by Pam Allen, Julie Deden, and Jennifer Kennedy
Announcements
Are you the parent of a blind/low-vision child? Don’t know where to turn? Have you ever wondered what your child will be capable of when he or she grows up? Are you concerned that your child’s future will be limited by blindness or low vision? Do you have questions about how to parent a blind child? We are here for you.
Founded in 1983, the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a proud division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), is a membership organization of families, friends, and educators of blind children. We have thousands of members in all fifty states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
We have a very inclusive definition of blindness which includes children who have some usable vision. Instead of focusing on what the child can or cannot see, we focus on the child and what she or he wants to be.
NOPBC is for families, educators, and friends of blind children, including those who have some usable vision. We welcome all families of blind children, and many of our children have both blindness and other disabilities.
We help families and blind children themselves maximize the child’s abilities and opportunities; we hold high expectations for all of our children, regardless of any additional disabilities they may have.
As a division of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the largest and most influential organization of blind people in the world, the NOPBC is well informed about the societal, legislative, and technological issues that affect blind people. We enjoy the resources, support, and expertise of fifty thousand blind people who can serve as mentors and role models for us and our children. When we as parents join the NOPBC, our children belong to the Federation family.
The NOPBC:
Most states have an NOPBC affiliate chapter. You can find your state chapter at http://www.nopbc.org. If your state does not have a chapter and you would like to start one, please contact us. We may be able to offer training and other assistance to start a state NOPBC chapter.
We have been where you are, and we want to support you and your blind child. We know that blindness does not define your child's future. We can connect you with other families and blind adults who can serve as positive mentors and role models. They can teach you the attitudes and techniques that will enable your child to become independent and to succeed in life.
The NOPBC offers hope, encouragement, information, and resources for parents, families, and educators of blind children. NOPBC provides:
We offer a wide variety of programs, activities, and training to families, children, and youth. One of our most exciting activities is our annual conference. Every year since it was established, the NOPBC has conducted an annual conference for parents and teachers of blind children as part of the national convention of the NFB. This conference has grown to include five exciting days of workshops, training sessions, activities for all family members, including sighted siblings, and countless opportunities to meet blind adults and other families and children from around the country.
Contact Us:
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
[email protected]
www.nopbc.org
by Deborah Kent Stein
From the Editor: As we launch this brand-new year, Future Reflections reaches a milestone. In 2021 this magazine celebrates its fortieth anniversary. For the past four decades Future Reflections has shared information and ideas with parents and teachers of blind children, promoting the programs and initiatives of the National Federation of the Blind, and spreading a positive philosophy about blindness. You can browse through nearly forty years of our back issues at https://www.nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/future-reflections.
Today Future Reflections is sponsored by the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults and by the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), a division of the NFB. The NOPBC is deeply committed to advocating for parents. Training parents to advocate at state and local levels is a core component of its mission. Each year parents from across the country attend the Parent Leadership Program (PLP) at Washington Seminar and the NFB National Convention to build connections and share ideas.
Ten years ago, at the 2011 Washington Seminar, NOPBC Past President Carol Castellano invited me to talk to the Parent Leadership Program on the topic "What Is the NFB?" In celebration of forty years of Future Reflections, here is my answer to Carol's question. I believe it is as relevant today as it was ten years ago.
When Carol asked me to give a talk called "What Is the National Federation of the Blind," I thought, this will be easy! I've been active in the NFB for almost twenty-five years; I can answer this question.
But when I started to think about it, I realized that defining the NFB is kind of like describing your brother or your best friend. It's very hard, at least it is for me, to describe someone I know really well. I know so many aspects of that person that nothing I say really does them justice. Defining the NFB is a lot like that.
Not long ago I gave a copy of Future Reflections to someone who was completely unfamiliar with the NFB and blindness. After she read most of the articles, she commented, "This magazine is about community." The NFB and the NOPBC are many things to many people, but I think the idea of community is core to who we are and what we do.
As I'm sure you're well aware, blindness is a low-incidence disability. If you have a blind child, your kid is probably the only blind child in your neighborhood. They may well be the only blind student in your town, or even in your whole school district. Raising a child who experiences the world in nonvisual ways, when nobody around you ever has had to figure out solutions to the challenges you face, can leave you feeling terribly isolated at times. When you attend an NFB or NOPBC event, suddenly you're not alone anymore. All around you are people who have asked the questions you're asking, who share many of the struggles you're living through, and who have found solutions to some of the problems that baffle you.
Still, there are other places and organizations where you can make connections with families that have blind children. What makes the NFB and the NOPBC unique?
I'm sure you've heard that the day before yesterday [January 29, 2011] a blind man, Mark Riccobono, drove a car adapted with a tactile interface at the Rolex 24 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Maybe you've also heard that a few years ago another blind man, Erik Weihenmayer, climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. The NFB promoted the research that built the car that could be driven independently by a blind person, and the NFB helped sponsor Erik Weihenmayer's mountaineering team on the Everest expedition. The NFB dares to think big when it comes to the abilities of blind people. We believe that, with the proper training and technology, and with a positive philosophy about blindness, a blind person can accomplish just about anything.
We're not just talking about the big, glitzy feats that get attention in the press. We know that blind people can be teachers, doctors, attorneys, accountants, scientists, parents, machinists, and artists. We want that full range of possibilities to be available for your children. We want your children to grow up knowing that their life choices do not have to be restricted because they are blind.
Most people in the blindness field talk about independence as the goal for every blind child and adult. But independence means different things to different people. For people who have a narrow view of what blind people can do, people who don't really believe in the abilities of blind people to live full and productive lives, independence might mean the ability to keep track of one's clothes and the money in one's wallet, to prepare a simple meal, and to walk to familiar places around the neighborhood. Those things are fine, if that's what a person chooses. But in the Federation, we want blind people to know that they have many, many choices beyond the bare bones of independent living. True independence means taking for granted that blindness will not stop you from doing the things you want to do. It means you will be comfortable trying on new experiences, meeting new people, and stretching beyond the safe and familiar.
We often hear people say that the Federation is a radical organization. That comment has always puzzled me, and I'm still not too sure what people mean. But there is one basic tenet of our philosophy that I think seems radical, maybe even preposterous, to a large part of the public: our conviction that it's okay to be blind. Just five little words—it's okay to be blind. Sometimes it's really, really hard for people to take that in! In the NFB we don't believe that blindness is a tragedy. We don't think it's frightening or distressing or heartbreaking—any of those things people tend to think when they haven't had the chance to get to know us.
We recognize that blindness is just one of the myriad characteristics that are part of the human condition. It may cause us inconvenience at times, even frustration, but if we have a positive philosophy about blindness, it also can be a teacher. Blindness can teach us to be resourceful. It can teach us to think creatively. It can teach us to be assertive, to advocate for ourselves and for others. It can teach us to think for ourselves and not to take assumptions as truth.
So this is the NFB, as I see it: a community of blind people and our families and friends, a community drawn together by a belief that blind people are as capable as anyone else of working and playing and making contributions in every field of human endeavor. We are a community of people who believe that it really and truly is okay to be blind.
Welcome to the Federation. We're very glad you are here. We hope you will be with us for a good long time!
by Prem Sylvester
From the Editor: In the United States and around the world, the education of blind children is hampered by a critical shortage of properly trained and qualified teachers. A team of engineers and programmers in India has developed a promising new system for teaching Braille that can be used remotely or in the classroom. In this article Prem Sylvester recounts the development of Annie and explains how it may help increase Braille literacy throughout the world.
Anne Sullivan Macy, the passionate educator who guided Helen Keller's learning of Braille, has a legacy that reaches through the years. This legacy inspired us at Thinkerbell Labs to create Annie, the world's first Braille self-learning device. This legacy also spoke to the blind child at the National Association for the Blind in Goa, India, who, upon learning the history behind Annie's name, insisted that she would learn Braille only from "her."
Annie's story has been a rewarding one for the past four years. As developers we are driven by the belief that our work can contribute to Braille learning in a significant way. The story of this learning begins, as it does for us all, with the alphabet.
In 2014 Sanskriti Dawle and Aman Srivastava, students at BITS Pilani in Goa and cofounders of Thinkerbell Labs, had a unique project on their hands. Made with a Raspberry Pi and coded in Python, Project Mudra was Annie's simple predecessor, a dicta-teacher designed to help teach the Braille alphabet. However, they realized that the device had the potential to be much more than a student project. There was, in fact, a very real need to improve the modes of Braille teaching and learning.
Braille literacy rates are at worrying lows all over the world. In the US Braille literacy is at around 10 percent, and in India it's at less than 1 percent. A shortage of trained educators is a major impediment to promoting Braille, a script that typically is taught through close engagement between the teacher and the learner. The fewer the teachers, the harder it is for blind children to get the attention they need for a truly beneficial education.
The modes of teaching and learning Braille have remained surprisingly unchanged for several decades. There seemed to be value in using technology as a means to improve how blind children engage with Braille by themselves and in their classrooms. As Sanskriti puts it, "I grew up with better educational games in the Nineties than blind children [have access to] today . . . That had to change." It was time to build the technology for Braille learning that would come to be known—and loved—as Annie.
Annie was built to be a comprehensive Braille self-learning device, one that could make learning fun, engaging, and intuitive for blind students. It was important to develop child-friendly hardware that had a sense of playfulness, a device that encouraged the learner to have fun. At the same time, the learning materials on Annie had to engage the attention of children through a mix of Braille lessons and games to improve their performance in reading and writing Braille.
With these needs in mind, Annie was designed to engage with children through both touch and sound. With the guidance of encouraging voice instructions, kids can figure out how to interact with the lessons and games on the device by themselves. The large Braille display makes learning by touch even easier. By exploring Annie and its different learning opportunities, kids are keen to try out the content and learn at their own pace.
One of the major challenges lay in creating this tactile and auditory user experience, known as the UX. As sighted developers, we needed to understand for ourselves what blind learners required from their learning tools in order to have an effective educational experience. In 2017 we conducted field trials for gathered learner feedback on the hardware, software, and content of Annie at the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities at Dehradun and Shree Ramana Maharishi Academy for the Blind, Bangalore.
While designing the learning experience, we prioritized learner retention as well as sustained engagement with Annie's contents, be it from the software, content, or hardware perspective. Annie's content draws on Hands On, an introductory Braille reading scheme from RNIB (Royal National Institute of the Blind) in the United Kingdom. Hands On is widely known and well regarded. Our content reflects the best of the Hands On scheme and the founding team's experiences learning Braille, as well as our collective knowledge from the development of Annie.
Our team's advocacy for Braille literacy comes from personally witnessing the difficulties Braille educators faced in imparting quality education to their students and recognizing that many more blind children could participate in self-learning, given the right resources. Sanskriti recounted her experiences with a blind entrepreneur friend from Austria who actively used Braille and assistive technology. She notes that for blind children, "Braille learning needs to become available by default, for people to make real choices not defined by [external] constraints." Learners and educators may not even realize that there are better ways to teach and learn Braille. The onus for filling this gap with the innovations of Annie lay with us.
We based Annie's pedagogy of interactive learning on two lessons that we understood early on. First, Annie is, after all, meant to help children. Children like to play and learn from their surroundings. They like to compete with their peers, and they can get frustrated by the mundanity of a classroom. Second, we recognized that blind children's learning is not limited by their disabilities but by the conditions of their education and the often outmoded forms of engagement with Braille, engagement that sighted children often enjoy as they learn to use print.
In April 2016 Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton were among the first people to interact publicly with Annie at an event for the awardees of the Great Tech Rocketship by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). Our team fondly remembers their delight in learning to spell their son George's name in Braille. It came as an early validation of our mission.
Annie was launched globally in March 2018 at the VIEW Conference in Birmingham, UK. We received strong interest from educators and institutions interested in enhancing Braille learning with Annie. Such interactions led to the conceptualization of Annie Smart Classes. Multiple Annies could be set up in virtual classrooms supervised by teachers. Learners could make the most of the collaborative and competitive learning materials on Annie. To empower teachers and parents to track kids' performance and plan their lessons, we also built Helios, a digital suite to work in tandem with Annie.
India's first Annie Smart Class, and our first deployment of the Annie ecosystem, took place in June 2018 at the Rajyakrit Netrahin Madhya Vidyalaya, a school for the blind in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Our most important triumph here is the fascination the children have with Annie, and their excitement to learn with it. Since this deployment we've logged hundreds of hours of learning in the classroom. Shivam Agarwal, a member of our engineering team, remembers an incident where the teachers from a future deployment at Jashpur visited Ranchi, curious to see how students were learning on Annie. He says the visiting teachers were surprised to find that the kids were the ones teaching them everything about Annie, instead of the teachers. One child even corrected a teacher when they went wrong, saying, "Arre yahan nahi hain games, mujhe do." (This isn't where the games are, give it to me.) The child then directed the teacher to the game on their Annie.
We have since set up twenty Annie Smart Classes across India and partnered to have Annies at inclusive schools across the world. In later deployments, too, the attachment and affection children—and even teachers—have for their Annie, treating it as a companion rather than simply as a teacher or learning device, is one of our greatest achievements at Thinkerbell Labs. The team recounts several incidents where children grew personally fond of Annie. In the Government Blind School at Karimnagar, children who showed little interest in sitting in class began asking to skip lunch breaks so they could continue learning Braille on their Annies. At the Silver Linings School in Chandigarh, a seemingly shy student soon could be heard cheerfully reciting the alphabet with Annie's Letter Story. The children at Belaku Academy in Bangalore hummed Annie's Alphabet Song even while they played outside the classroom.
To many children, Annie is not something but someone talking to and learning with them. Dilip, our CTO, remembers an incident from Chantry Private Academy in Luton, England. A student grew emotional when Annie politely pointed out an error in his work. He was invested so quickly that the school wanted to have an Annie for him immediately. During an exhibition of assistive technologies, one of the visiting children from a school for the blind breezed through Annie's introductory lesson on Braille typing, recollects Nandakrishnan, one of our business development managers. When Annie's voice congratulated her for completing the lesson, she leaned in and whispered, "Thank you, Annie."
The fondness for Annie that our team shares with the children isn't limited to their learning Braille. We intend our work with Annie to demonstrate that the education, needs, and wants of blind children are just as important as those of anyone else. Braille learning can be state-of-the-art, it can be fun, and it can and should make a difference in many lives.
Annie has helped hundreds of blind children learn Braille reading, writing, and typing in schools across the world, from India to the United Arab Emirates to the United Kingdom. It teaches through interactive lessons across contracted and uncontracted Braille. Students have enjoyed hours of multiplayer games. We think this is just the beginning. We dream of taking Annie to more and more blind children everywhere, to reach the children who would benefit most from everything the marvels of technology bring to Braille learning.
by Treva Olivero
From the Editor: This article is based on a workshop held at the NOPBC Conference during the 2020 NFB National Convention. Treva Olivero is a teacher of blind students and serves as president of the Northern Central Chapter of the NFB of Louisiana.
Typing, sometimes called keyboarding, is an essential skill. Everyone who uses a computer for work or for school needs to know how to type. In this workshop I'm going to talk about why typing is so important, and I'm going to review some typing programs that are available to teach blind students.
I am not a speed demon when it comes to typing. Some people out there can type more than two hundred words a minute, but that's not me! However, even if you're not a fast typist, typing can help you be more efficient. When you know the layout of the keyboard and understand where to place your fingers, you don't have to hunt and peck. Touch typing, as it is called, is intended to work nonvisually, whether the typist is blind or fully sighted.
You may be thinking: My blind child has a Braille device. Why does she need to learn to type?
Even if your child has a Braille device such as the Braillenote Touch, typing is essential. The computer is the mainstream device that your child will need in order to be productive in school and in the workplace. When I meet a new blind student, parents often tell me, "My child needs to learn to use a screen reader." The first question I ask is, "Does your child know how to type?" In order to use a screen reader such as JAWS effectively, you have to be able to type accurately. Braille is important, too, and it definitely has its uses in technology. But I believe that typing is as important as Braille.
Typing allows blind students to use mainstream devices. They can use a laptop or desktop computer, or they can connect a keyboard to a tablet. When I use my iPhone and type in text messages, my keyboarding skills help me use the screen, even without a Braille display.
In touch typing, the typist always begins by placing the hands on the row of keys known as the home keys. Every keyboard I've encountered has built-in tactile indicators on the F and J keys on the home row. Those markers are there to help typists—sighted and blind—position their hands correctly. The keyboard doesn't require any special adaptations for a blind typist. In fact, I highly discourage the use of large-print key caps or Braille stickers on the keys. With practice, you'll remember where all of the keys are located.
To type efficiently you have to have the correct posture. You need to sit up straight. Any typing instructor will strongly discourage a person with low vision from leaning forward to try to look down at the keys. The whole idea behind touch typing is for a person to type strictly by touch, learning where the keys are through practice.
Several software programs work very well for teaching typing on laptop and desktop computers. Some other programs out there may not work as well for blind and low-vision students.
When you teach typing, make sure the touch pad on your computer is turned off or cover it with something such as a piece of cardboard. Adults can usually remember to keep their wrist up so they don't touch the touch pad by accident, but kids may not get the hang of that right away. Turning off the touch pad prevents kids from writing text or giving commands on the computer accidentally.
A great thing about a lot of typing programs is that students can use them independently. With so many schools operating online, now is a great time for students to work on typing skills.
You can start teaching the keyboard to children as young as three years old. Sighted kids start learning to use a mouse when they're in preschool and kindergarten. Blind kids need to start learning to type at the same time sighted kids are learning to use a mouse.
I recommend that children achieve an accuracy level of 90 percent before they move on to the next level. I try to get them to 20 words per minute before they move on. However, I feel that accuracy is more important than speed. Whatever typing program you use, practice is essential.
Ballyland Keyboarding
https://www.sonokids.org/ballyland-early-learning/ballyland-keyboarding
One program I'm very excited about is called Ballyland. It's designed for children to use with a laptop or desktop computer. Ballyland is produced by Sonokids, and it teaches basic knowledge of the keyboard. It doesn't necessarily help kids learn proper finger placement, but it's great if you want to get your child started on the computer. To reinforce learning, each key makes a distinct sound. The punctuation marks make animal sounds, and the letters make very recognizable sounds from around the house.
The Ballyland manual suggests ways to use the program in order to teach various aspects of typing. The program also includes keyboard commands for blind teachers. I've used it with JAWS, but it's actually a self-voicing program, which means it has its own built-in voices. If a computer is running a screen reader, Ballyland turns off the screen reader voice. If you have a young blind child or a blind child with some additional disabilities, this program can be a great introduction to the keyboard.
TypeAbility
yesaccessible.com/typeability.html
My favorite program to teach typing to older children and adults is called TypeAbility, by YesAccessible. It uses the JAWS screen reader, and it's very easy to use. Once I get them started, many of my students learn very independently with this program. The program is a lot of fun. It gives great feedback to the kids; for instance, when they do well it will say, "Fan-tabulous!" It's well-known for its built-in jokes!
TypeAbility builds upon things the student already knows. For instance, it starts by teaching the function keys. The function keys are then used to operate the program. Instructions might say, "Press f-1 twice to hear a joke."
TypeAbility includes ninety-eight lessons. It's very good about teaching proper finger placement. Teachers can customize features such as dictation tasks.
One downside of TypeAbility is that it's not clear what happens when a student doesn't finish a lesson. Another disadvantage is that it's only for the PC. There isn't yet a version for the Mac.
Typio Online
https://www.accessibyte.com/typio-online-page
Another program I like is called Typio Online by Accessibyte. You can purchase a 365-day license, but there's a two-week free trial. I haven't investigated this program fully, but I like the idea that it can be used with a tablet, a PC, or a Mac. Another plus is that the student simply logs into a website rather than downloading a program onto the computer. Typio gives great audio feedback, and it has good sounds. The program was created by teachers and meant for teaching children. In Explore mode, the student can type on the keyboard, and it will announce the name of each key.
Talking Typer
https://tech.aph.org/tt_info.htm
Talking Typer is a program from APH (American Printing House for the Blind). This program is free if you use Quota Funds, which provide materials from APH to school districts. Talking Typer works with the computer and also with the tablet. A free beta version is available at [email protected].
Talking Typer is self-voicing, meaning that it does not work with JAWS. You have to turn off your screen reader before you can get the program to start. You can control the speed of the speech that gives the instructions. Talking Typer is very, very repetitive! It's not super exciting, but it teaches students to type! One feature is called Hurry Scurry, which helps students build up typing speed.
Typing Club
https://www.typingclub.com
The last program I want to discuss is called Typing Club. A lot of schools use it. Go to typingclub.com and sign up for free. A teacher can set up a profile for a student who is blind or has low vision.
Typing Club is a free program that was designed originally for sighted students. Later the company made the program accessible for blind students, too. Typing Club is accessed from the web, so the student uses a browser. I find that it works best with Chrome. It works well with JAWS, but it is self-voicing. The program recommends that you turn JAWS off, but JAWS may help students work more independently.
Typing Club gives some audio feedback, but it's not very exciting. One nice thing about the program is that it includes 684 lessons. There's a lot of opportunity for students to practice!
Now, does anyone have any questions?
Diane: I'm teaching an eighth grader who uses a BrailleNote Touch. Should I teach typing on a laptop?
Treva: Absolutely! The BrailleNote Touch is a wonderful device, but for success in college and beyond, your student will need access to mainstream programs. Blindness technology tends to be behind when it comes to accessing recent versions of programs, even those that are most widely used. If your student knows how to type and use a laptop, the screen reader is likely to provide access, even if the blindness technology is not up-to-date. The BrailleNote is kind of a sheltered place; it's comfortable and easy. With a laptop and screen reader your student will be able to use programs and websites in the mainstream environment.
Jane: When do you suggest students switch from Brailling to typing their assignments? My daughter is in third grade, but she does not use a computer yet.
Treva: Students should start submitting assignments on the computer when they're comfortable with the screen reader and with Word. They need to be able to open, edit, and save a document. Even after they learn the position of all of the letters, they have to learn to use the screen reading program to open, save, and close a document.
Brittany: When is it best to start teaching typing?
Treva: As young as possible! With the Ballyland program children can start to learn at three and up. They may not yet have the motor skills, but they can start to develop keyboard awareness. I've seen students who don't start typing until sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, and they still become successful typists. So don't worry if you didn't start earlier! Just start now!
Casey: I think it's safe to point out that we start sighted kids typing in first and second grade.
Treva: Yes. When sighted kids start, your child should start, too.
Alex: Will learning to type confuse students who are also learning the Braille code?
Treva: I don't think so.
Casey: I teach both Braille and typing to my students. They're two different skills. Students can distinguish clearly between the Braille code and typing on the computer. The skills are separate enough that students don't get confused. They get equally excited about learning both. They think it's fun when you teach them something in Braille and then you say, "Now we're going to learn to write that on the computer."
Treva: If you don't make a big deal out of the fact that they're learning two different ways to write, they won't think it's anything unusual. Just encourage them to learn, and you'll see the results.
by Karen Anderson
From the Editor: This article is based on a presentation by Karen Anderson at the NOPBC board meeting during the 2020 NFB National Convention. Karen Anderson serves as coordinator of education programs at the NFB, including the BELL Academy® (Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning).
Hello, it's great to spend some time with you parents. I get to spend a lot of time with your kids, and you're their first and best teachers. Being here with you is awesome!
Failing out of college is the best thing that ever happened to me!
That sounds weird, I know. I'll explain why it's true.
I grew up as a blind child with a blind mother, so I had a lot of advantages. I learned Braille early; my mother knew that was important. Both of my parents believed I could be successful. I did pretty much all of the things sighted kids did. There's a story about how, when I was three, my dad looked out the window and saw me climbing on the porch railing to get onto the roof of our garage! He came and got me down, and we had a discussion about why that wasn't a good idea—not that my three-year-old mind grasped what he meant.
Then there was the time when we went over to my friend's house. My friend Nickie had just gotten a new gymnastics bar, which was mounted in her room. I thought it looked like super fun! When we got home I decided I was going to do gymnastics, but I was going to use our back porch railing, which overlooked a concrete patio. I ended up at the hospital getting x-rays.
I was a typical kid with typical opportunities to have fun and play and sometimes get hurt. But I also got the message that I shouldn't fail. I really couldn't make mistakes. Sometimes that was because it was inconvenient for other people. At one point I was trying to learn to ride a two-wheel bike. I was out on my grandparents' farm—I grew up in Nebraska—and I was riding down the hill on a bike that we were considering buying. I wasn't going very fast, but the front wheel of my bike bumped into one of the poles of my aunt's tent. She was really frustrated! The tent was fine, and the pole was fine—I didn't break it, but she was really annoyed. I got the idea that when you're learning something new and you make mistakes, it's inconvenient and frustrating for other people. The lesson was, don't make mistakes.
Sometimes I understood that making mistakes was not only inconvenient to others, but it could be problematic for me. When I was twelve I had O&M class every week. It was super fun! My travel teacher was showing me how to get to places like the Texaco gas station by myself, and I could buy snacks there. We went to the new shopping center where the Panera was. That was super cool! I remember being really proud when my instructor said, "Okay, I think you've got it. This is probably the last week we're going to do this."
But I remember the many times I made one mistake. I might cross the street just a little bit crooked, or I would make one wrong turn, and my instructor would say, "Okay, I guess we need to do this again next week."
In some ways this was fine with me, because it meant I got to go to the Texaco more often. Every time I went I could buy more watermelon bubble gum! But that experience of having to do everything perfectly wasn't teaching me how to make mistakes. It taught me that failure was bad. Instead of working through it, you had to do it over again from the beginning. I wasn't learning how to get lost and figure it out. I was learning how to give up and start over from the beginning. If you couldn't start over, it meant you just failed.
I was good at a lot of things, or at least that's what I was told. I got pretty good grades in school. I was a singer, and I sang in my dad's band, which was a lot of fun. But a lot of people's response to the things I did was, "She's blind! I couldn't do that if I was blind! She's amazing!" I felt that if I failed, if I made mistakes, I would end up letting people down.
The summer between my junior and senior years of high school I went to the WAGES program, which stands for Work and Gain Experiences. My counselor for the blind and visually impaired had been trying to get me to go to this program for several years. He finally convinced me that if I went I could get a job and earn money. I was a teenager, old enough to find some appeal in spending time on a college campus away from my dad, getting to eat in the college dining hall.
I knew there would be blind participants in the program—that was the point! We were supposed to be gaining work experience as blind teens. But I didn't realize I was going to have counselors who were blind. These were college age kids, just a few years older than I was. In a lot of ways they had it much more together than I did, even more than I thought was possible. Two of them had just gotten married, and they walked from their apartment to the campus. And they walked other places. It was just normal for them. These were some of the coolest people I had ever met, and they wanted to be my friends—actual friends, the kind of friends who kept in touch with you, even after the summer program was over. That blew my mind!
These guys were members of the National Federation of the Blind. They were in the Federation, and they were cool, so I figured it was worth checking out this organization. My friends pushed me to apply for a scholarship through the NFB of Nebraska, and I won. That was pretty exciting to me! I attended my first state convention because I was a scholarship winner. At the convention one of my friends asked me to consider running to be the secretary of the Nebraska Association of Blind Students, which was a division of the National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska. This friend was on the Nebraska scholarship committee, so I wasn't about to say no! I figured I'd serve for a year and then I could leave.
I was elected, and I started attending meetings and events. I started to think that maybe the Federation had something to offer me. My friends pushed me to apply for a National Federation of the Blind Scholarship. I won, and I got to attend my first NFB National Convention in 2007. I realized that I had found people who believed in me, who thought that I had potential—not potential because I am blind, and not potential despite the fact that I'm blind. Blindness was just part of the equation for them, it was just a characteristic. It was part of who I was, but it didn't define what I could do. They saw that I could be someone—and that was terrifying! I was terrified of making mistakes and letting down these people who thought I could be something.
For as long as I can remember I'd had a plan. I was going to graduate from high school, I was going to go to college, I was going to get a job, and some day I'd get married and have two point five kids and a picket fence. There wasn't room in my plan for detours. My new blind friends, those members of the Federation, encouraged me to get some training in blindness skills between high school and college, but I didn't think I needed it. I'd been told my whole life that I had the skills I needed. I was ready for college. And that was the plan! If I deviated from that plan, it would mean I had failed, and I couldn't do that.
I got accepted into college, and I enrolled at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Before my first semester started, my high school O&M instructor showed me around the campus. It was a pretty big campus, but she showed me how to get from my dorm to my classes. I could definitely get from my dorm to my English class and back to my dorm. I could get from my dorm to my sociology class and back to my dorm. And I could find the cafeteria. I figured I was set. I didn't think through what would happen if I wanted to go somewhere else after my English class, but everything was fine. It worked out.
I did really well during my first semester of college. My second semester I ended up having classes in all of the same buildings I already knew how to get to. One could say that was incredibly lucky, or one could say that possibly I looked for classes in my major that I knew I could find. You decide which you believe.
The summer after my freshman year of college I was asked to go teach skills to blind teenagers in a program similar to the one I had attended, though this one was out in Baltimore. These kids weren't much younger than I was, and it was awesome to recognize that I could have the same level of impact on them that my friends had had on me. Being in Baltimore and working with other blind people, I started to realize that maybe I didn't have all the skills I thought I had. Maybe I should consider training. But no, no, I had a plan. Letting go of the plan would be failing.
Back in Nebraska for my third semester of college, most of my classes were in the same buildings that I knew how to get to. I was in the same dorm, too, which was great. That dorm also had the best cafeteria food! But I did have one class in a new building. A friend and I had decided to take Chinese together. Fortunately we were in the same class, and often we studied together before class started. She would meet me at my dorm, and we'd walk to class together. It was interesting that if she was sick and couldn't go to class, I was sick, too. I've never before or since had a friend who was sick at exactly the same time as I was, on exactly the same days. It couldn't have been that I didn't know how to get to class by myself and didn't want to admit it! That would be failing!
I did pretty well that third semester. But then I got to my fourth semester, and every single class was in a new and unfamiliar building. I had no idea what to do!
I knew that blind people figure out how to get wherever they want to go. But I didn't know how to figure it out. I felt really, really stupid asking my classmates for directions during my fourth semester! If I didn't look like I knew exactly what I was doing, if I was out in the world making mistakes, I was going to let people down.
One day we were scheduled to watch a video in one of my classes. I really didn't care about the video. Nobody would notice if I skipped one day of class.
Then I skipped another day. Then I skipped a week of classes. Then I skipped a month of classes, and then I failed out of my sophomore year of college.
My dad was less than pleased. My rehabilitation counselor asked me what came next. Okay, you did college. You didn't succeed. Now what?
Well, maybe it was time to try that training thing. What did I have to lose? All the people I knew who had awesome skills had gone to the Louisiana Center for the Blind. I submitted my application, got accepted, and got my state rehab agency to pay for me to attend the program.
That August my dad drove me down to Ruston, Louisiana. He was not happy about doing it! It was a pretty silent drive, which was really impressive, considering that it's a twelve-hour trip if you don't get lost—and I like to talk. Picture twelve hours in a car with one other person and nobody saying a word!
I figured training would teach me the skills I needed so that I wouldn't fail again or make mistakes. That is not what happened, not even a little bit! I'm pretty sure I made more mistakes in training than I had made in my entire life before. I remember getting lost on travel routes and coming in so incredibly soaked with rain that I had to borrow another student's extra clothes so I could throw mine in the dryer. I made a lot of mistakes! But they helped me figure out that I was allowed to make mistakes. Making mistakes didn't mean that I had let anyone down.
I used my new skills when I went back to college. I didn't feel that, because I had made a mistake, everything else I did was worthless. I spent a lot of time learning a new city and now and then getting lost. I knew I wasn't failing—at least, sometimes I knew. Sometimes it's still really hard for me, but without training it would have been absolutely impossible.
One thing that was very helpful was recognizing that sighted people make mistakes, too. Sighted people get lost and drop things and spill things. As a blind person I can't look around and see that So-and-so just totally face-planted into that pole over there! Pointing out some of those things can help your kids feel less awkward about their own mistakes. You don't have to scream out in the theater, "Oh my God! This woman in front of us just dropped her popcorn all over the floor!" But you can lean over and whisper, "Guess what just happened!" It might help your child feel a little less like they're on display all the time.
I love to bake, and I've gotten pretty good at it. But my last loaf of sourdough bread was kind of flat. I don't know what went wrong, but I'll try again and see if I can figure it out. I continue to make mistakes and grow through the process.
I want to leave you with this: Give your kids room to fail. If they're not doing their homework, let them get a bad grade. We don't learn best through our successes. We learn best by failing and figuring out how to do better.
by Karla Antonelli and Anne Steverson
From the Editor: Blind and low-vision children are not eligible for rehabilitation services until age fourteen, but the road toward independence must begin far earlier. In this article, the authors describe the development of an app that can help parents chart their children's progress and guide them along the way.
Authors’ Note: The contents of this report were developed under a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services, NIDILRR grant 90RT5040-01-00. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Health and Human Services and should not indicate endorsement by the federal government.
It takes a lot to navigate this big, wide world, and knowing where to get good information and guidance for the journey can be a huge help. For any parent, having information about their child's milestones and resources is key. This can be especially true for the parents of a child who is blind or has low vision. Information comes from many sources—doctors, schools, other families, and blind adults. In some cases, however, these sources may be scarce or may not yet have the latest and best information available. What is the solution?
One new resource to help meet this challenge is an informational app called 4to24. We developed the app here at the National Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision (NRTC) at Mississippi State University. The idea grew from another popular resource offered by the NRTC, the Transition Activity Calendar (TAC). The TAC offers activities for young people to accomplish at particular times through middle and high school in order to prepare for college. The 4to24 app greatly expands upon this idea. It goes beyond strictly "transition" topics to include such areas as academic progress, social skills, technology skills, and independent living milestones—almost everything you need to know to become a successful, independent adult.
At the NRTC we believe that transition success starts early. We created app content that parents can begin to use when their child is four years old. It continues all the way through high school, college prep, college or other training, and early career—all the way through age twenty-four.
What does the app provide over all that time? A team of knowledgeable writers who are teachers and service providers created more than four hundred informational modules on all kinds of topics like those mentioned above. That's enough to have around two per month delivered over time, based on the child's age, grade level, or progress in a particular topic area. To help us determine the best information to include, we met with an advisory board that recommended topics to consider. We also met in focus groups with parents of blind and low-vision youth to ask for their input.
Our meetings with parents focused on how parents received information related to transition and transition planning, whether they felt they received enough information, and which areas related to their child's development were of greatest concern. Their concerns included helping their child develop social skills such as communication and making friends, talking with their child about puberty, and preparing their child for college. Concerns related to employment included disclosure of blindness, self-advocacy, and accommodations. As a result, we included modules about these topics in the app at varying skill or age-appropriate levels.
The focus groups highlighted the need for us to make sure the information in the app is relevant to the family's or child's stage in life. We created a benchmarking process to estimate the child's skill or experience level in particular areas. This process helps determine which modules are most relevant when parents start the app. Many children and young adults are at widely varied levels in skill areas. Some may have amazing technology skills but need to work on their travel skills. Others may be doing great in academic areas but could use some focus on managing their daily schedules. Rather than using a one-level-fits-all approach, the app includes a set of skills to check off when the user first creates the app account. The app has an automated system that will take the completed checklist and determine the user's starting point for the first module in each topic area. It will then allow the user to progress from that point forward as he or she uses the app.
Now that we have good information to provide and can start the user at a point appropriate for the child's skill level, how do the modules work? Each module offers a brief description of a topic and explains why it's important. (Why learn to pick out your own clothes, use PowerPoint, or learn about bus routes?) The module then provides a list of activities the parent and child can do to learn or practice skills. Finally it links to more resources and information on the subject.
Once finished with a module, the user marks it as complete. Another module will be delivered to his or her app in the next day or so. Families can track their progress over time and look back at areas they've completed, or they can do a refresher on a topic at any point. When a new module is available, users will receive a push notification to their phone as a reminder to check in. Notifications can help keep them engaged.
The 4to24 app isn't a curriculum, and it doesn't replace school or services provided by teachers, instructors, counselors, or mentors. Instead, it offers information about which services and resources are out there, and it suggests what kinds of activities and milestones are recommended at a given age or skill level. It offers parents and youth some things they can do on their own or things they can talk about and plan to work on with their school, teachers, counselors, instructors, or other service providers.
With some user testing done with parents and youth along the way, we finished the first version of the app early in 2020. We then began a six-month field test with parents and youth who used the app in real time and let us know what they thought. We've received some great feedback, and we're working on final edits before the app goes public. So far the overall response has been quite positive.
Parents who participated in the field test commented that the information provided in the app was helpful and needed. One parent told us, "I have a better understanding of how to help my daughter become more independent as she ages. She can now order and pay for her own meals in a restaurant and is so happy about being able to be independent when she goes to a restaurant with her friends from her youth group." Another participant said, "Parents need this information badly—there are so many parents who just don't know all the hurdles for our kids and just hope the school is doing what it should be; sadly, they aren't either sometimes."
Parents also found the modules provided opportunities to have conversations with their children and reinforce ideas previously discussed. For instance, one parent commented, "I love that this app helped provide activities and talking points with my child." When asked about what was helpful, another parent said, "Self-determination and goal setting. It was good for him to see another resource encouraging this."
We expect the 4to24 app to be ready for public release early in 2021. Like all products created by the NRTC under federal funding by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, it will be free of charge. The app will be available to parents of youth ages four to twenty-four and to youth ages sixteen to twenty-four. It will be available on iOS and Android native platforms for smartphones and other devices, and as a web app for use on computers. We hope the app will be a useful and timely resource for youth who are blind or have low vision and for their parents, who are doing that whole life-navigating thing through these interesting times.
For more information about the 4to24 app or to receive updates on this project, contact Karla Antonelli from the NRTC at [email protected]. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karla Antonelli, NRTC on Blindness and Low Vision, PO Box 6189, Mississippi State, MS 37962. Call 662-325-2001 or email [email protected].
by Maurice Peret
Reprinted from Braille Monitor, Volume 64, Number 1, January 2021
From the Editor: In the National Federation of the Blind we long have recognized that mentoring is a key factor in the success of blind youth. Now a federal program under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is developing and supporting mentorship programs across the country. In this article Maurice Peret describes this mentorship initiative and explains the key role played by the National Federation of the Blind.
The National Federation of the Blind Career Mentoring Program is bounding into our third year of collaborative work with state agencies. The program provides pre-employment transition services as outlined in the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014. These critical services are offered through the powerful vehicle of mentoring with a positive philosophy of blindness that says that it is okay to be blind. It highlights the necessity of mastery of essential alternative techniques of blindness, facilitates learning how to cope gracefully and respectfully with the myriad public misconceptions about blindness, demonstrates blending in equally with and rising up to the high expectations of our sighted peers, and recognizes that giving back to society serves as a quantifiable demonstration of the value of our contribution. These are the foundational principles of our program. Several state agency directors and administrators around our nation are taking advantage of this strategic partnership with the NFB, and many are reaching out to replicate it in their regions.
To date, the NFB Career Mentoring Program has provided pre-employment transition services and mentoring to some ninety-two transition-age youth from Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Virginia. Seventy-five active mentors have been integrated into the program, as well as three local coordinators who provided support for various activities. These activities included personal interactions through monthly mentee Zoom meetings and separately occurring mentor Zoom meetings. Nine in-person and three virtual Career Quest retreats featured activities in career exploration, work-based learning experiences, tours of college campuses, and exposure to job readiness skills including nonvisual techniques for independence. Self-advocacy skills were taught in conjunction with our annual Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill in collaboration with the National Association of Blind Students and NFB of Virginia's Project RISE.
Several mentees have matriculated successfully into postsecondary college and university programs. Others are actively pursuing employment, and the balance are still enrolled in high school. We have held eight Career Quest weekend retreats so far, with the number of transition youth participants ranging from eight to twenty-four. Quarterly retreats were held in cities including Pearl and Starkville, Mississippi; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; and Baltimore, Maryland. In fact, the program reaches virtually anywhere and everywhere.
These intensive weekend retreats focused on themes ranging from career exploration to enrollment in postsecondary education and training opportunities. They incorporated hands-on, work-based learning experiences that included:
Our robust and innovative programming is delivered in three key ways. The first and most important component of our Career Mentoring Program is our vast network of blind adult role models that are matched with our mentees based upon common career interests, educational pursuits or background, creative hobbies, and similar experiences. As a nationwide membership organization that encompasses numerous committees and divisions, we offer our young consumers access to state and national leaders of blind students, state and national conferences and conventions, a vast array of helpful resources to build a peer network, and a knowledge base for collective problem solving and advocacy. It is our sincere belief that the mentoring relationships that are cultivated and nurtured contribute substantively to lifelong learning and toward helping our blind and low-vision consumers live the lives they want.
Largely because of our sustained engagement with these mentees beyond the audio/video conferences, the impact of the program is readily observed from the first weekend retreat until the present. In addition to learning through the specific pre-employment transition services that transition consumers were offered through the Zoom conferences, many developed new skills while traveling, some for the first time ever, through an airport and on an airplane. Following discussions, for example, at the "Take Charge of Your Voice and Your Choices" Career Quest conference, mentees from Mississippi noticed and remarked on how they were treated by the public in the form of an imposition of over-the-top assistance. This sparked a lively conversation about self-advocacy during the monthly mentee Zoom meeting the day after their return from the retreat.
The second component of our NFB Career Mentoring Program consists of hosting monthly audio/video conferences. Using the Zoom platform, we work on the development of specific employment transition skills with targeted objectives. We use a combination of pre-recorded presentations, open-ended questioning, knowledge-based assignments, and active engagement between the coordinators and students. The following are examples of some of the audio/video conferences.
This session featured a recorded presentation from Nimer Jaber, a blind mentor from California who works for the Google Corporation. He provided students with a project management framework that they could use in pursuit of their vocational and postsecondary pursuits. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), "Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to a broad range of activities in order to meet the requirements of a particular project." There are five phases of project management, and if the life cycle provides a high-level view of the project, the phases are the roadmap to accomplishing it. The five phases of project development/management are:
Mentees discussed each phase and applied their ideas to their individual projects. For example, one student related the project management structure to a final assignment in a physical science class, due by the end of the summer. The assignment involved research and a presentation on the COVID-19 pandemic. This student is pursuing her studies in criminology forensics. Another mentee related the execution phase to distributing tasks and roles in a team collaboration, dividing participants into workgroups and organizing resources such as money, budget, and costs. She applied this to her endeavor of writing a book.
This session on the importance of advocating for accommodations in high school and college featured a recorded presentation from blind mentors Trisha Kulkarni, president; and Elizabeth Rouse, member of the board of directors of the National Association of Blind Students, a division of the National Federation of the Blind. This presentation included short role-playing scenes that provided students with techniques and strategies to self-advocate for appropriate accommodations. It also showed students how to distinguish appropriate accommodations from unnecessary special treatment in high school and college.
A college student studying to become a teacher found one of the scenarios quite relatable to her own school situation. She described the career mentoring program as essential in filling the gaps of support from her community and family. She found the mentors and coordinators to be useful resources for answering questions and providing advice on how to deal with critical life circumstances. Discussion questions included:
One student described how she was exempted from taking an exam in elementary school because it was unavailable in a format accessible to her. Were she confronted with a similar incident today, this young woman said she would refuse this form of special treatment, recognizing that she was being denied an important learning opportunity.
Mentees discussed the value of being an active participant in their own IEP and IPE meetings and learned how to advocate effectively for reasonable college or other postsecondary accommodations. Mentees were encouraged to describe specific accommodations or tools that they planned to add or reinforce in their own IEPs or accommodation meetings in the upcoming school year. They were asked to describe the strategies they would use to advocate for these accommodations.
Mentees applied lessons in leadership development and workplace readiness training to their identified academic and career goals. Discussion was based upon a published article by Dr. Fredric K. Schroeder, a recognized leader in the field of education and vocational rehabilitation of the blind, entitled "Nurture the Ability, Sustain the Confidence."
After listening to a presentation on job shadowing from Rasheta Bunting, a mentor from New York City, mentees discussed their past job exploration counseling and work-based learning experiences. They identified potential opportunities for job shadowing in line with their career goals. They discussed essential elements that included preliminary research, preparing questions ahead of time, dressing professionally according to the corporate culture, bringing appropriate notetaking equipment such as Braille notetaking devices and refreshable Braille displays, laptop or notebook, or portable recording devices. Legal and courtesy considerations were discussed regarding the use of recording in a professional environment. Consumers also discussed arranging optimal times for both the person job shadowing and the person/persons being shadowed and the importance of following up after the job-shadowing experience. This was emphasized not only as a courtesy but also as a way of building one's network, which might result in a positive professional reference.
After listening to an interview with Pam Allen, executive director of the Louisiana Center for the Blind, consumers engaged adult students who were presently in training in a discussion about the value of mastering blindness skills as they relate to instruction in self-advocacy. Specifically highlighted were counseling on opportunities for enrollment, workplace readiness training, blending into society on terms of equality of expectations, giving back, and being comfortable with their blindness. Students also learned how mastering blindness skills positively contributes to their productivity as well as to how competent they are perceived to be by others.
After listening to a pre-recorded presentation related to counseling on opportunities for enrollment and workplace readiness training from Kimberly Scherbarth, a mentor from Nebraska, consumers engaged in a discussion about letters of reference. The discussion covered student recommendation letter samples, academic references, reference lists, and writing tips. Students discussed why letters are important and how to make the ask.
In order to address effectively the impact of COVID-19 on the lives and learning environments of the students, we were dynamic in restructuring the focus and format of our Zoom conferences. During our monthly audio/video conferences we engaged with the mentees to help them deal with the new reality of remote learning by taking inventory of how they were accessing these educational tools and whether accessibility barriers existed. We learned that most of our college-enrolled mentees were accessing their coursework through the Canvas learning management platform as well as the Zoom audio/video conferencing tool.
Several mentees referenced their struggle to focus on their academics during COVID-19. They were encouraged to pace themselves and create a schedule for their daily tasks, including tracking daily accomplishments using lists labeled Completed, In Progress, Deadlines, and Challenges. Mentees also were encouraged to notify their mentors as well as program coordinators if their grades became adversely affected by inaccessibility due to COVID-19.
Our local coordinators used the time prior to the Zoom meetings to connect with each of the mentees to assess how they were coping with interruptions in their educational programs and to help them implement strategies to maintain a reasonable and practical momentum. In addition, we shared a free download resource, the three-hour audiobook on Zoom, Meet Me Accessibly—A Guide to Zoom Cloud Meetings from a Blindness Perspective by Jonathan Mosen.
The third component of our NFB Career Mentoring Program consists of retreats that combine several learning modules into chunks of interactive sessions over a weekend. These sessions were previously held in-person, in-state at a local conference center. However, as the proverbial saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Our new reality has required us to develop virtual learning modules to approximate a comparable level of engagement and learning that we would have achieved from the in-person experience.
An example of this is our fall 2020 Career Quest retreat entitled "Self-Advocating on the Job and in Life." The retreat consisted of virtual modules that engaged the students in group improvisational role-play scenarios and debates. The retreat took a deep dive into self-advocacy and self-determination. It featured a dynamic panel of young blind professionals and involved discussion and completion of a work-values inventory, exploration of career goals and planning next steps, and mentee journaling throughout the weekend.
Although present circumstances have forced us to alter how we do our work, we have neither ceased nor slowed down a bit. Since schools across the country were closed and instruction moved into virtual learning platforms due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our blind and low-vision students needed the support of blind mentors more than ever before. Thankfully, our monthly mentee Zoom meetings had already been in place for some time. We look forward to taking our programming to the next level in 2021. We plan to maintain and nurture a momentum that we believe will continue to equip these young blind and low-vision consumers with a competitive edge in education, employment, and personal success and independence. We are ramping up our Zoom learning platform, and we plan to expand our Career Quest retreats to additional states, beginning with Illinois. We welcome all interested transition youth to complete our online mentee application at https://nfb.org/menteeapplication. Also we are constantly in search of positive blind mentors. Candidates should complete the online application at https://nfb.org/mentorapplication.
Without the incalculable volunteer time and energy of our mentors, the NFB Career Mentoring Program could not thrive. Additionally, a tremendous debt of gratitude is owed to those who have served tirelessly as local coordinators: Ellana Crew from Maryland, Chelsea Page and Carrie Johnson from Mississippi, and Shane Buresh and Kelly Coleman from Nebraska.
by Carla Keirns
From the Editor: Carla Keirns is president of the Missouri Parents of Blind Children. She serves on the board of the NOPBC.
My little boy was fourteen weeks old when the doctor told us he was blind.
Blind.
It was Halloween. We had arranged to see an eye doctor because both my husband and I had worn glasses as babies, mine with cute silver frames, his with dark plastic. We thought our son might need eye surgery, as two of his aunts had surgery when they were babies. But we were completely unprepared to hear that our son was blind. We were also confused, because clearly he had some sight. What he could see, we could not tell.
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of early intervention evaluations and meetings with doctors and case managers. We lived in New York at the time, so we met with the children's specialist for our region from the New York State Commission for the Blind. He was full of information about assistive technology, working with schools, summer camps, and the importance of social skills training.
One Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, we made our way to a neighborhood library and met David Stayer, a social worker who was blind from birth, and the rest of the NFB of Greater Long Island. We explained that we were new to blindness. As sighted parents we were eager to find help for our son, but we didn't know what he would need.
David said, "Your children are our children. We know. Don't worry about that."
My heart melted.
Russell is seven now, and I have seen David's promise in action again and again in working with NFB. Russell was voted into our local NFB chapter this spring, and he was excited to receive his membership coin. He loves that he has friends in the NFB and so many aunts and uncles to help show him the way. We have been to BELL Academy in St. Louis for two summers, and last summer we participated in BELL At Home Edition. Russell lists "my blind friends" among his most important people.
In St. Louis Russell learned to take public transportation from his teachers on their way to get a special tactile tour of the museum under the Gateway Arch. He has seen films with audio description. He has learned to love Braille. When he was asked to spell the word "mother" last week, he insisted he wanted to spell it in Braille. The teacher didn't know that he was sneaking in a dot-5 m contraction because he wasn't quite sure how to spell the word out.
I have been to Washington, DC; Albany, New York; and Jefferson City, Missouri, with NFB, and I have learned so much about how to change laws and policy. Russell came to Albany when he was twenty months old in the tiniest blue blazer you've ever seen, accessorized with a sippy cup. He is looking forward to a chance to go to Jefferson City with us soon.
I have learned a lot about law and advocacy in relation to special education, disability services, accessible transportation, and dozens of other topics that are crucial for Russell to develop to his potential. I first learned about many of the challenges we face from NFB and NOPBC trainings, leaders, publications, and Facebook groups. I never would have known to ask how the school was going to get my son's textbooks in Braille if I hadn't read about the struggles of other families. When I needed to know how to get sheet music in large print for my budding piano player, I posted my question to the NOPBC Facebook group. Within a few hours I had a dozen options.
I keep telling my sighted friends that Russell can do anything he wants to do except fly a plane. And our blind friends keep reminding us that you can fly by using instruments.
We look forward to seeing Russell grow up in the Federation. The way to a mother's heart is through her children. And you have earned the way to mine.
by Al Maneki
From the Editor: Al Maneki is a mathematician who is deeply committed to enhancing access to mathematics education for blind students. His article "Math that Feels Good: Enabling Sighted and Blind People to Share the Mathematical Experience" appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Future Reflections. In that article he explained how a team of mathematicians launched an effort to develop automatic translation of mathematics materials into Nemeth Code. In this article he updates our readers on some exciting new developments.
Author's Note: I wish to acknowledge the valuable assistance of my fellow team member Karen Herstein, who verified most of the facts and citations given here. I want to thank all of the participants at the AIM Workshop on Automated Nemeth Braille Translation for reviewing the first draft of this article and making suggestions and corrections. In writing this article, I relied heavily on the workshop summary that was prepared by Alexei Kolesnikov. I assume full responsibility for any errors, misrepresentations, and oversights.
In 2019 the Automated Nemeth Translation Team (ANTT) applied to hold a workshop at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). AIM hosts workshops in all areas of mathematics, including mathematics education and accessibility in mathematics. One of six institutes sponsored by the National Science Foundation, AIM fully funds all costs associated with the workshop. The goal of our team's workshop was to bring together software developers, mathematicians, and blind consumers to advance our expertise in automated Nemeth translation of mathematics text. Workshop proposals were evaluated by an external advisory committee and were funded on a competitive basis. Fortunately, our proposal was selected based on merit and the qualifications of our team members. This workshop was held from August 3 to August 7, 2020.
The purpose of the workshop was to expand the availability of mathematics textbooks in Braille to students and professionals who are blind or have low vision. The goal was to develop a user-friendly software workflow using open-source software to translate mathematical texts automatically, or nearly automatically. Volker Sorge further suggests, "An important goal of our work is also to provide the means of translating content into Nemeth to blind users directly, which will give them greater independence from publishers or transcribers. It will also empower blind students and researchers to get real time access to material given to them by their professors and peers."
This was the first AIM workshop to run virtually after the closure necessitated by COVID-19. The organizers are grateful to AIM staff for thinking through the logistics of such meetings. Due to differences in time zones (the participants on the West Coast of the United States were separated by nine time zones from the participants in Europe), the daily meeting period of the workshop was somewhat reduced compared to the usual AIM workshop.
The workshop participants were selected from a list of respondents to our open invitation that was included in the public announcement when our workshop proposal was selected. They came from various parts of the US and Europe and brought a wide variety of skills, backgrounds, and insights to the solution of this problem. What was most important was that none of us held particular biases about the difficulties and challenges of this problem. We came to the workshop with open minds and positive attitudes. Although this workshop did not solve the problem of automated Nemeth translation completely, we can cite two major accomplishments.
A gentle warning: As you read this article please do not be discouraged by unfamiliar terms such as LaTeX, TikZ, SVG, and MathML. A familiarity with these terms is not critical for you to grasp the significance of this work. I have included them to convey the level of technical detail that was needed to solve the problems of automated Nemeth translation. Frankly, many of the technical details involved here are also beyond my comprehension.
The support and commitment we have received from the general mathematics community is unprecedented. At the same time, let us not forget that we, the blind community, were able to harness and use this support to our advantage because we were ready when the opportunity presented itself. For a long time we have been articulating the need for automated Nemeth translation. We laid the groundwork for external cooperative efforts when this help was forthcoming. The work could not have taken place without the leadership and direction of the National Federation of the Blind and the NFB Jernigan Institute.
Before reviewing the two milestones listed above, we need to introduce the participants and to review the subject matter of the workshop itself.
Sixteen persons took part in this workshop. Rob Beezer, Karen Herstein, Alexei Kolesnikov, Martha Siegel, Volker Sorge, and I were members of the original team. I'd like to share a bit of background about the other team members.
Michael Cantino, accessibility specialist, Portland Community College, Portland, Oregon. Michael is a certified transcriber of literary Braille, and he has completed the NFB’s course for Nemeth Braille certification. He is passionate about tactile graphics, and he has worked with 3D printers, vinyl cutters, laser cutters, and other advanced production methods.
David Cervone, professor of mathematics, Union College, Schenectady, New York. David is the primary author of MathJax, a program that has always made accessibility a priority.
John Gardner, formerly professor of physics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. John became totally blind after an eye operation in 1988. He continued to teach, but he no longer could evaluate the data from experiments. To overcome this problem he established a university team to research methods for better accessibility to graphical information. In 1996 his team developed and patented a high-resolution embossing technology. The ViewPlus Tiger Advantage embosser, built on a dot matrix printer, was released in 2000.
Chris Hughes, staff tutor, Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Open University, Milton Keynes, England. Chris serves as accessibility lead for maths and stats at The Open University. He is eager to learn more about converting mathematical content into Braille.
Alex Jordan, professor of mathematics, Portland Community College, Portland, Oregon. Alex is a contributor to PreTeXt development. He has been involved with several PreTeXt books as author, coauthor, or editor. He brings concern for accessibility issues to several projects, including PreTeXt, WeBWorK (an open online homework platform), and miscellaneous issues as they arise in his department.
Mitch Keller, assistant professor of mathematics, Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa. Mitch wrote the open-source text Applied Combinatorics with his PhD advisor, William T. Trotter. His interest in the AIM workshop stems from a desire to further enhance the quality of open-source math textbooks, particularly those authored in PreTeXt. The PreTeXt HTML is designed to be accessible to screenreader users, but he knows that Braille and tactile graphics can provide a better reading and learning experience for blind readers.
Peter Krautzberger is a mathematician by training who works as an independent consultant and developer in Bonn, Germany. He works to help academic publishers improve their content conversion workflows for STEM content. Peter managed the MathJax Consortium from 2012 to 2017, and he currently leads the work on the American Mathematical Society's HTML platform, including "MathViewer" for journal articles and EPUB production for textbooks and monographs. He is an invited expert with the W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG).
Oscar Levin, associate professor of mathematics, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado. Oscar is one of the authors of an open source textbook in PreTeXt (Discrete Mathematics: an Open Introduction), and he is an occasional contributor to PreTeXt development.
Michael Reynolds, associate professor of mathematics, Indian River State College, Stuart, Florida. Michael is very interested in making all mathematics materials accessible to all learners and all readers. His research areas are the history of mathematics, mathematics education (particularly math anxiety), and graph theory. He had had no experience with Braille or blind learners, but he found the AIM workshop fascinating, both because of the complexity of the processes involved and because of the important issues of equity and accessibility.
Richard Scalzo, US government, retired. In the mid 1960s Richard was active in reading mathematics textbooks and research papers to blind students at Illinois Institute of Technology. Richard's interest in automated Nemeth translation and the production of automated tactile graphics was stimulated in 2010 when he and I began to read and discuss Foundations of Geometry by Gerard Venema. Karen Herstein was asked to reproduce the diagrams in Venema's book in tactile form. She first traced the diagrams with a needlepoint tracing wheel. These diagrams had to be constructed in "reverse order," since the raised lines appear on the reverse side of the paper. Braille labels were then affixed in their proper positions. This exercise brought back our painful memories of creating and comprehending very complex mathematical diagrams. We groaned in agony, "There must be a better way!"
As we planned this workshop, Martha Siegel encouraged us to invite persons who did not necessarily have relevant backgrounds or expertise in Nemeth translation, but who could view these problems with fresh insights and contribute with truly original solutions. "We don't want to be talking to ourselves in this workshop," she cautioned. Considering the backgrounds of these ten participants, we have followed Siegel's advice.
It is worth noting that none of the workshop participants were intimidated by Braille. They did not view Braille as a mysterious system of writing that was difficult to learn and inconvenient to use, criticisms that we have heard from many professionals in work with the blind. Ignoring the need to sensitize the fingers to recognize Braille characters, they took Braille for what it really is, just another programming language with its well-defined rules for constructing meaningful sequences of 6 dot characters.
AIM workshops generally consist of lectures to the entire group to provide relevant background information, followed by smaller breakout sessions in which participants may focus on specific problem areas. Martha Siegel advised the lecturers to start with the most basic information, since most of the participants were not familiar with PreTeXt or automated Nemeth translation. We will summarize the general lectures and the work of the breakout sessions.
Rob Beezer introduced us to his PreTeXt authoring tool and pointed out its advantages over the many versions of LaTeX currently in use. PreTeXt is ideally suited for Braille translation when used in combination with Liblouis and Volker Sorge's Speech Rule Engine (SRE).
John Gardner stressed the importance of audio tactile graphics, since very few blind people are competent Braille readers. His company, ViewPlus, has developed IVEO, audio-tactile graphics software in which enriched SVG files can be embossed and then placed on a touchscreen. After simple calibrations, the associated text is read by a screen reader as the user touches the various graphic elements.
Volker Sorge presented an overview of his SRE that was initially built to produce spoken math output through a screen reader. The input to SRE is the math content of MathJax, an open-source JavaScript display engine for use with LaTeX, MathML, and AsciiMath notations. Instead of writing a separate rule engine for Nemeth output, Sorge decided to incorporate Nemeth output into his SRE.
Alexei Kolesnikov spoke to us about his work on automatically scaling print diagrams to fit on an individual Braille page. Proportional scaling of an entire diagram may be sufficient to provide the blind reader with comprehensible tactile graphics in the simpler cases. This turned out to be true for the embossed diagrams I examined before and during the workshop. However, for more complex diagrams, more sophisticated scaling and positioning of the labels will be needed.
Susan Osterhaus, a statewide mathematics consultant and a long-time math teacher at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, was a guest lecturer. She serves on the Nemeth Code Technical Committee and Tactile Graphics Technical Committee of the Braille Authority of North America (BANA). She spoke to us about forthcoming updates that BANA plans to make to the Nemeth Braille code. She invited us to submit our recommendations to BANA.
Jonathan Godfrey, an invited lecturer, received his PhD in Statistics from Massey University, New Zealand. He created and maintains the Braille R statistical package. The R package is a complete and powerful set of general statistical routines that can be used in many applications. His discussion served as the basis for developing navigation-enriched diagrams for files produced by other scientific software.
Our breakout sessions focused on much more than tactile graphics and Nemeth translation. There was considerable interest in producing audio-described graphics as proposed by John Gardner. There was also discussion about providing advice to authors on creating easily enlargeable print graphic images that can be converted into tactile form.
Tactile Graphics: Producing raised versions of print graphs and diagrams is a difficult problem because tactile legibility and print legibility are quite different. A way to automatically convert diagrams written in the LaTeX package TikZ (pronounced tik-zee) to a PDF file with Braille labels was known before the workshop began. However, due to the shortcomings found in this conversion and the inherent limitations of the PDF file format, we knew that we needed to turn to a different file structure.
The participants outlined a way to convert from a TikZ to a more versatile SVG file format with Braille labels. A sample SVG file was tested on an embosser and its output was satisfactory. However, shortcomings were also identified for the conversion of other SVG files. This group continues its work on SVG file conversion.
Audio Description of Graphics: The capability to produce an SVG file with Braille labels from a TikZ file was further enhanced during this workshop when we developed the ability to navigate through an SVG file with a screen reader. The navigation can allow a user interacting with an image on a computer screen to move between different components of the image. This technology can further be integrated with audio-tactile graphics software, IVEO.
Chemistry Diagram Demonstration: Accessible chemistry diagrams developed by Progressive Accessibility Solutions were demonstrated in another breakout session. Enriched SVG files allow the user to navigate around the skeletal formulas of molecules, from group level to individual atoms and the bonds between them. Similar technology is available for navigating complex mathematics formulas.
Advice for Authors: A group of participants met to discuss the advice that could be given to authors to design graphics that would be more comprehensible to blind readers upon initial translation. Conceivably, properly designed graphics should have a simpler appearance and be more appealing and comprehensible to the sighted reader as well. This group has also compiled a list of previously developed documents (including those produced by Benetech and BANA) containing graphics guidelines. The advice for mathematical graphics includes general design principles as well as specifics such as spacing guidelines for graphics elements. An understanding of these guidelines should help us develop more effective programming rules to produce more comprehensible tactile graphics.
Nemeth Braille Code: On our work with the SRE we found that there are no Nemeth equivalents for some symbols in common usage today. For example, there are no Nemeth code representations for blackboard-bold and calligraphic fonts, for the equals sign with a vertical bar on the left, for the hyphen with a vertical bar on the left, or for the letter x with a vertical bar on the right. These are commonly used mathematical symbols that did not exist in 1972, the last time revisions were made to the Nemeth Braille Code. Nemeth rules describe how to transcribe complicated fractions and large matrices. Similar guidelines are needed for other 2-dimensional mathematical expressions that frequently occur in undergraduate texts, such as commutative diagrams and logical inference rules.
There is much cause for joy when we reflect on the many accomplishments of this workshop. Primarily, we got away from the mindset that automated Nemeth Braille translation and the production of comprehensible tactile diagrams were the most difficult problems. This idea has been so ingrained in our thinking that it simply stymied us from making any progress at all. However, among the new participants, there was never the thought that these problems were unsolvable.
From my years of academic and government problem solving, I have learned that solutions are difficult to come by if we first decide that a problem is hard. When we examine a problem, it is always best to take a first step toward a solution to see if a fresh perspective or further insights can be gained.
During our first session, as we introduced ourselves, Martha Siegel and Alexei Kolesnikov admitted that Braille translation turned out to be more difficult than they originally thought. Siegel and Kolesnikov are experienced researchers in their own right, and they never let negativity creep into their modes of thinking. All of the workshop participants followed their lead of thinking positively.
We did not solve all of the problems related to automated translation. However, the two milestones mentioned in the introduction deserve further elaboration.
We developed a framework and methodology for producing comprehensible tactile graphics. The ability to produce enlarged graphics with Braille labels will soon be solved. However, this ability alone is not sufficient for producing comprehensible tactile graphics for more complicated print diagrams. What is needed is an enlargement in which more space is allotted to the most critical portions of a diagram, i.e., "spreading out" the more intricate parts to increase comprehensibility. In some cases, this may mean that portions of a diagram have to be discarded to simplify the graphic. These elements may be reintroduced in a later diagram. How this is to be automated is not yet completely understood. Perhaps with experience, and by examining the guidelines of the Benetech and BANA documents, we may be able to develop program coding rules to accomplish these tasks. Karen Herstein suggested that one possibility is to consider the strategy employed in designing street maps in which the more detailed sections are enlarged to show complex street patterns more clearly.
In his review of the first draft of this article, Richard Scalzo makes a further suggestion. "Even with fully automated translation from text formats, there will be maintenance issues. These issues include incorporating new text and graphics formats and extending Nemeth Braille to include new symbols. The question of automating the labeling of graphics with Braille is one of the long-term issues. Enabling the automated labeling of graphics files may require modification of standards for graphics file formats. So, at some point in the future, the project should investigate gaining support for enabling the automated labeling of graphics files."
We were presented with a list of all of the symbols and notations used in the abstract algebra textbook by Thomas Judson and in the calculus textbook that is being used at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. From these two lists, we identified the symbols that have no Nemeth equivalents. These symbols have already been submitted to BANA for inclusion in the forthcoming revisions to the Nemeth Code.
Our work of automatically translating the Judson textbook remains largely unfinished. I am hopeful that we will soon be able to make considerable progress on it because of the progress that the workshop has made on tactile graphics and because of the enhancements to the Nemeth Braille code. Rob Beezer will also be writing an article for this publication on PreTeXt, in which he will describe the success he has had in producing a Braille calculus textbook for a college student in Nebraska.
Although this workshop did not necessarily have audio tactile graphics under its purview, it seemed rather natural for us to take up this topic. We live in a multimedia world, and we should seize every advantage that multimedia offers us. At this time, however, I should point out that in so many mathematical instances, there is no substitute for Braille. Often in a mathematical diagram, points are labeled with letters or numbers. The best an audio description can give you is the label for that point. However, what is important about a diagram may be the paths and connections between points. The reader examines these possible paths, and for whatever reason, decides which paths are most significant.
Here is a classic example from high school geometry. Starting from an arbitrary triangle one constructs a set of line segments relating to this triangle. In this way, we define a set of nine points. By examining these nine points, i.e., running one's fingers from one point to the next, one may conclude that these nine points lie on a circle. In my case, as I lacked sufficient geometric intuition, the circularity of these nine points was explained to me. The circle formed by these points is known as the Feuerbach Nine-Point circle. For a description, see the article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-point_circle.
We did not have time to investigate the use of 3-D printers to construct tactile diagrams. I believe that the advantage of using 3-D printers is their ability to produce solid raised lines as well as dotted lines. Also, they offer a greater variety of textured surfaces.
With regard to automated Nemeth translation, where do we stand today? I think that in the very near future, given a textbook written in PreTeXt, it will be possible to produce separate BRF files for the text itself and SVG files for the diagrams. These diagrams may be of limited use because they will not be "smartly" scaled. However, having these diagrams in tactile form may be better than having no diagrams at all.
I am intrigued by Volker Sorge's suggestion that our automated Nemeth translation software should provide blind persons with the means of translating their own content into Nemeth. This means that blind users will have to acquire the additional skill of writing PreTeXt code. This is not an unreasonable demand. It also suggests the possible need for a reverse Nemeth to PreTeXt translator.
The automated translation to Nemeth Braille, including tactile diagrams, is a huge challenge. While we have made a start at this workshop, this work is by no means complete. Even when we have arrived at a solution, I think we will find certain aspects of that solution to be unsatisfactory. We will be forced to make improvements and refinements, leading to better solutions. The persons involved in this work will not be limited to those who took part in this workshop. There is still enormous opportunity and need for others to help in this effort. Anyone who is interested may feel free to contact me. We can make all of the workshop documents available to you.
Additional help is needed! Please contact me if you are:
While we might not currently be able to render all of the assistance you need, we would like to discuss your situation in order to understand the future needs for our Nemeth translation software.
For blind students studying mathematics and the other STEM subjects, the future has never been brighter. My modest accomplishments in the mathematical sciences will pale in comparison to what future blind scholars and scientists may achieve. So be it!
With questions or ideas, you may contact Al Maneki at [email protected].
by Ashley Neybert
Reprinted from Braille Monitor, Volume 64, Number 1, January 2021
From the Editor: Ashley Neybert is a student who enjoys the study of chemistry. In the National Federation of the Blind one of her missions is to encourage other blind people to enter the field. In this article she writes about the challenges of virtual learning for the blind chemist and describes some paths to a solution.
The National Federation of the Blind has been at the forefront of leveling the playing field for the blind in science through programs such as STEM-EQ, the Science and Engineering Division, and several scholarships for blind students seeking careers in the sciences. We appreciate the pioneering spirit of those who have come before us and who now are blind chemists and members of the Federation. Their proud ranks include Dr. Jacob Bolotin, also known as the blind doctor; Dr. Cary Supalo; Dr. Ned Lindholm; and Dr. Alfred D'Agastino. I suspect there are others. All have made a measurable contribution to blind people as scientists by functioning in the field and by encouraging others who have the determination to do the same.
As the coronavirus continues to keep us in our homes and to keep us socially distant, many blind students face a brand-new challenge in science. That challenge is remote learning. Since the pandemic began, sighted students have turned to inaccessible web-based science simulations, nondescriptive or even silent videos, and in-the-home designed laboratory activities using household materials. These are all largely inaccessible, leaving blind students behind their sighted counterparts in terms of their science learning experiences.
Our students want to be involved and not to be consigned once again to the back seat of science learning that we have worked so hard to escape. However, many of our traditional learning methods in the sciences are difficult to access during this time. Many teachers have turned to inaccessible videos. Luckier students have teachers that use some accessible science simulations such as Labster or PhET, two of the web-based science resources widely used around the world. Recently these companies have made a concerted effort to make their online science simulations more accessible to blind students. In addition, a few students have been lucky enough to get accessible at-home science experiments to complete. Unfortunately, all of these opportunities pale by comparison to a true hands-on laboratory experience.
Recently, though, the opportunity for blind students to have an improved remote laboratory experience has arrived. In order to achieve this experience, the teacher must have a computer with the JAWS screen reader from Vispero installed, including an external speaker; a Sci-Voice Talking LabQuest from Independence Science with associated probes; any necessary experimental equipment, such as beakers; and the LabQuest Viewer program from Vernier Software and Technology. The student needs only a computer with the JAWS screen reader installed.
First a teacher in a laboratory or other experimental area will turn on the LabQuest Viewer software while JAWS is running on their computer. The teacher needs to have the Talking LabQuest, probes for the experiment, and any other necessary experimental equipment. The Talking LabQuest will be interfaced with the LabQuest Viewer program on the teacher's computer. The LabQuest Viewer shows everything that is shown on the Talking LabQuest device on the teacher's computer. The teacher then allows access to their computer via a JAWS Tandem session and gives the student the access code for their end of the JAWS Tandem session. Once this is done the student assumes a directed assistant approach where they tell the teacher what they want done on the experiment. The student operates the Talking LabQuest using the same keyboard commands that they would use if they were doing the laboratory work themselves.
Not only is this system useful in remote learning situations, but it also opens up possibilities for blind students to interact with advanced technology that is not available in the school setting. For several years it has been common practice for sighted students to interface with equipment remotely in a professional laboratory environment. This system provides students with a glimpse into a professional environment while allowing companies to scout bright students to become their future employees. With this new capability for remote learning, a blind student can now take part in such job scouting activities. This technology can further prove to the public that the blind can be effective science employees while allowing students in economically challenged school districts to work with equipment that previously was not available.
While this system does not replace the hands-on experience, it is a huge step forward toward equalizing the field of science for blind participants. While the author of this article is an employee of Independence Science, she is also a blind chemist herself and has hopes that this leap forward will inspire other companies to make their equipment more accessible to the blind.
An Interview with Leslie Hamric and Julia LaGrand
From the Editor: This article is based on an episode of "Scene Change," a podcast of the National Federation of the Blind Performing Arts Division. Leslie Hamric, a cellist, and Julia LaGrand, a violinist, discuss their training, their aspirations, and their challenges as blind performers. On February 15 Julia, an eleventh-grader, was featured on From the Top, a syndicated program that is broadcast on National Public Radio. You can hear the program at https://fromthetop.org/show/show-395. The interview below was conducted by Lizzy Muhammad-Park, secretary of the Performing Arts Division.
Introduction by Lizzy Muhammad-Park: We're fortunate to have one of our board members here today. She is a cellist and a Federationist from Illinois, Leslie Hamric. We also have one of our newest members of the Performing Arts Division, a violinist from the great state of Michigan. Julia LaGrand is a high school student who has been playing violin since age five—am I right?
Julia LaGrand: Yes, I started playing violin at five. My sister began cello at around the same time. She's four years older than I am, and she's currently a cello performance major at the University of Michigan. Our parents are pretty musical. My mom played a lot of piano in high school and college, and she invested a lot in helping us become more musical.
Lizzy Muhammad-Park: Do you play piano as well as violin?
Julia: I played piano for two years when I was very young and for two years in middle school. I did a lot of jazz piano, and then I transferred to violin jazz. I don't do much jazz anymore. I'm mainly classical now.
Lizzy: Leslie, I read that you met your husband at a summer music program. Tell us a bit about that.
Leslie Hamric: I met my husband at the Meadowmount School of Music, which is a seven-week summer program in Westport, New York. He was a graduate assistant at the camp, so he was assigned to help the new students out. It started out that he was my reader, and he helped explain some of our teacher's methods. That was in the year 2000, and as they say, the rest is history.
Lizzy: As I understand it, you would have a reader play the music, and you would listen to it on a recording and learn it that way.
Leslie: I had two graduate assistants when I was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University. Both of them were cellists. One of them would play the piece and record it, calling out fingerings, bowings, and dynamics. When I got to Meadowmount, my teacher, Tanya Carey, said, "No, you're going to learn to do this yourself. You have the music." She was pretty insistent about not letting anyone record anything for me. I felt like my world had turned upside down! But it was the best thing she could have done for me. Now I can pick up a piece of music and learn it without any assistance.
Lizzy: And you can interpret it how you want. That's the power of Braille music! Julia is actually one of your Braille music students. Julia, how's it going, learning Braille music? How experienced are you with it?
Julia: I began learning Braille music when I was very young. I was self-taught out of some books, with some assistance from my mother. I didn't use Braille music much for violin. I used it some for piano because my piano music was very simple. But really those skills sort of languished. Then recently I read an article by Leslie in the Braille Monitor, and I got inspired to work on Braille music again. It was pretty difficult at first, but it's been amazing! It's incredible to actually read what I'm playing and not just listen to other people playing it, not to depend on other people's imprecise interpretations. At my fingertips I have exactly what the composer wrote. It really enhances my ability as a performer to be able to convey what is supposed to be conveyed and to make my own artistic decisions. I look forward to how Braille music will improve my performances.
Lizzy: What made you choose the violin?
Julia: It was offered to me—that's the simplest answer. My mother asked me if I would like to play music, and she suggested the violin. I didn't know much about it—I was five at the time!—but I really wanted to play music, so I got started.
Lizzy: What was it like for you, starting so young, and as a blind child? Did you ever face any discrimination from a teacher?
Julia: Only in the past few years have I thought about my blindness in relation to my music. I always knew I was using some adaptive techniques, but my teachers were extremely accommodating. I was fortunate to have really great teachers, so blindness was never really an issue.
Lizzy: How about you, Leslie? How did you decide to play the cello, and did you run into any discrimination?
Leslie: I started playing cello when I was eight. My mom suggested the cello because my brother already was playing violin. My brother and I used to play duets. We would put on concerts on Saturday nights for our parents. We called them mini-concerts, and it was a lot of fun. I'd already been playing piano for two years when I started cello. Then when I was fourteen I started voice.
When I was a senior in high school I decided I wanted to major in cello. I loved the sound of the cello—it really clicked with me. I felt like it was a part of me, and I still feel that way.
Lizzy: Did anyone ever try to discourage you?
Leslie: I was fortunate to have really good teachers. When I was sixteen I auditioned for the Chicago Symphony Youth Orchestra. At that time I was starting to have tendinitis, and it wasn't going away. When I auditioned, the person who heard me play said, "If you don't relearn your technique, in a year or two you're not going to be able to play anymore." He ended up taking me on as a student.
My first cello teacher taught me to play expressively, but I was always very tense. This new teacher, Wyatt Sutherland, made me relearn my technique. I had to change everything—how I sat, how I held the cello, even the way I positioned my feet on the floor. It was tough, but it was well worth it!
Lizzy: What's your first memory of the cello?
Leslie: My aunt got me a record of Yo-Yo Ma playing the First and Second Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. I remember thinking, "I want to play like that!"
Lizzy: How about you, Julia? What's your first memory of the violin?
Julia: I clearly remember bits and pieces of my very first violin lesson. I remember being thrilled to be starting! I think my first memory of the sound of the violin was when I was considering a new half-size violin. I was moving up from a quarter-size to a half-size. I remember trying out several new violins and being overwhelmed by the beauty of the sound. It was an amazing experience!
Lizzy: Julia, tell me about your first experience playing with an orchestra.
Julia: I started playing in a youth orchestra through a local music school when I was in third grade. It was a cool experience to play with such a large body. But this brings to mind a story about being denied a concert master position. I remember very clearly the conductor saying, "Her audition was the best, but she can't sit first [chair], we can't do that." That was probably my first major encounter with discrimination.
Lizzy: What was the reasoning behind that? What would your duties be?
Julia: You're supposed to present as very competently applying all the correct bowings and notes and rhythms, and you're supposed to lead to some extent. I think she had some concern that I couldn't fulfill that role. The next year she changed her mind, and I was able to play first chair.
Lizzy: It's great that you were able to get your rightful place. How about you, Leslie? What's your earliest memory of playing in an orchestra?
Leslie: I remember the first rehearsal, everybody playing together. I had learned some of the music ahead of time with my teacher recording it so I could play it back. I'd have the recorder on during the whole lesson. She'd play a phrase, and I'd play it back. At the orchestra rehearsal I remember thinking, "This is so cool when you put everybody together!" It sounded so beautiful and so full and warm! My mom always said I never wanted to leave rehearsal. She had to fight with me to go home because I didn't want to leave.
Lizzy: I suspect that somewhere out there is someone who thinks that blind people can't keep up with an orchestra. What tips do you two have for keeping track of the music? What sound cues do you listen to? What alternative techniques are you using when you're on the stage?
Julia: Most of my experience is as a solo performer or a performer with small chamber groups, although I've also done a fair amount of orchestra. One thing I have found particularly challenging as a blind musician is figuring out a lot of things about stage presence. As a soloist I have to figure out how to move my body in a way that is conducive to the music and not distracting. I don't have the experience of watching other performers to see how they move their bodies to convey certain things. It's something I've worked on a lot with my teacher. It's easy to get bogged down and feel like it's impossible! I think it's important to use the resources around you and keep trying to improve that skill, even though it might feel daunting. It's quite a lot to work through, but it's really important, and I think it's possible. You can do wonderful things with it, but you have to keep trying.
As a chamber musician, I've worked a lot on communication with other participants in the chamber group. Both blind and sighted musicians learn to focus on the breathing of their fellow musicians. Blind musicians particularly can benefit from really, really listening to the breathing of their colleagues. Often people say, "Look at that person to know what's happening," but there's a lot you can get by listening to their breath, and also just picking up the atmosphere. There are lots of ways to communicate with colleagues that don't require sight.
Lizzy: How about you, Leslie? What techniques have you learned from your years of playing?
Leslie: Lots and lots of listening! I can't emphasize it enough! Another thing is counting, but if you have to count sixty measures you're going to get very bored!
When I learn a new piece, the first thing I do is get a recording on YouTube or iTunes. I listen to it over and over again. By the time I get my Braille music from the transcriber I pretty much know the piece backward and forward and upside down. If I have to sit out sixty measures, just waiting, I'm not going to count measures! I'll be listening for a sound cue. Is it the winds? Is it the first violin? Is it the percussion?
Another thing that helps me—in rehearsal I get some verbal cues from my stand partner. For instance, if we all have to come in at the same time, she'll whisper, "He's getting ready!" She'll whisper very quietly so nobody else can hear her.
As blind musicians we come to rehearsal well prepared. We have to memorize everything, whether we're learning from recordings or from Braille music. The way we take in the notes is different if we read the music as opposed to learning from a recording, but we still have to have the music in our heads when we perform.
Julia: With a lot of the more complicated things I've done in youth orchestras, I've relied heavily on the recording of the full orchestra part. In terms of solidifying memorization, that's been very useful! One thing I've done, I'll take recordings and slow them down as I work on the memorization process. That's been a very useful trick.
Leslie: I agree. I often turn up my Alexa to Volume 10 and play with the piece.
Lizzy: One of our members asked how you keep your bow straight. I think that's especially hard at the beginning.
Julia: From my experience, it's not just at the beginning! It's a constant journey. It's about listening for the perfection of the sound. There's a certain sound when your bow is even slightly crooked. You can tune in to what that perfect sound is, and that's hugely important to figuring out whether your bow is straight. I also think there's a feeling in the fingers. You can kind of feel the straightness of the bow. When you are on the perfect path, there is a balancing of the fingers. It only occurs when the bow is perfectly straight.
When I've worked on it I have used sighted help, especially about two years ago when I started diving deeper into this area. I need to know when my bow is straight so I can memorize what straight feels like. I used a fair amount of sighted help at the beginning of that journey, but now I know the clues myself.
I think sighted musicians also have different ways of knowing whether the bow is straight. They might look in a mirror or look in their Zoom cameras. Sight might make the task approachable in a different way, but it's difficult for sighted people, too.
Leslie: My teacher at Meadowmount had a really cool trick called "T for Tone." She showed me that when your bow is straight on the cello, it looks like a letter T formed with the string and the bow. The sound opens up—it's kind of like a flower that blooms. The sound gets louder and fuller, and you don't have to work so hard! It's all about the weight of your arm and letting the string hold you up. If the bow isn't straight you have an X between the bow and the string, and it sounds very different. It sounds quieter. It sounds scratchier. With my students I can say, "I think I hear an X. Where's your T? Find your T." I say that to my son—my ten-year-old son, Michael, is a cellist.
I also can tell a person's position when they're out of tune. Maybe the left elbow is too low, or the hand isn't balanced. It's something I've had to learn to listen for.
When I'm teaching I've had to minimize my touch, how often I touch a student. At first I didn't realize how much I could get from hearing, but the ability is only getting stronger.
Lizzy: So you can tell all these things by listening to your students? That's really cool!
Leslie: I might say, "Is your wing up?" meaning, "Is your elbow up?" The student corrects it, and all of a sudden the note's in tune! It works great with my fourteen-year-old student whom I'm teaching online, but it might be harder with a younger student.
Lizzy: It's good that you started using less tactile feedback with your students, now that you're teaching online.
Julia: Obviously I don't have experience teaching, but I can attest to the importance of intonation and being able to tell when things are out of tune. When I practice I think about how I would address a problem in a student.
Lizzy: Is that what you want to do, Julia? Do you want to be a violin teacher?
Julia: I definitely want to be something related to professional violin playing, but right now I'm geared toward performance. I can definitely imagine teaching as a supplement, or maybe even as my primary career. I still don't know.
Lizzy: I would be remiss if I didn't mention Leslie's credentials. Where did you study?
Leslie: I received my undergraduate degree in cello performance from Northern Illinois University, and I have a master's degree from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. I also completed the coursework for music therapy at Western Illinois University, but I didn't do the internship. In addition to teaching I perform with the Elmhurst Symphony.
Lizzy: We're so lucky to have these two amazing performers with us today! They both have many accolades, and many more to come. Do either of you have any final advice for blind string players?
Julia: I think the most important thing I have to say is to reiterate what Leslie said earlier about the power of listening. It's crucial for blind musicians and for all musicians! It's wonderful to embrace that as much as possible.
I've been fortunate to have wonderful teachers who have worked to adapt things for me. I know not all teachers will do this. I encourage blind musicians to seek out teachers who are willing to teach adaptively.
Lizzy: Leslie, what final advice do you have for our listeners who might be interested in playing the strings?
Leslie: I would say you should learn Braille music at an early age, preferably when your sighted counterparts are learning to read music, so you don't have to play catch-up. Follow your dreams. If you run into a teacher or colleague who is doubtful about your abilities, try to educate first. If you get someone who doesn't want to learn from you, then they're not worth your time. Keep moving forward, and you'll find what you need eventually.
When you go to an audition, be as prepared as possible. Go in with confidence. The rest is out of your hands. As long as you know you've done the best you can, that's what counts.
Editor's Note: You can listen to the full episode of Scene Change at https://youtu.be/2LD9dZ3H0wM. For more information about the Performing Arts Division, please visit www.nfb-pad.org.
by Ann Cunningham
From the Editor: Ann Cunningham is a co-owner of Sensational Books, a company that creates tactually accessible books and the Sensational BlackBoard, a raised-line drawing board. Currently she is focused on publishing a collection of books that are designed to introduce young children to tactile graphics.
Over the past twenty years I have talked with a lot of people about the importance of pictures. Images are an ever-present form of communication in our world. Yet blind children seldom have access to even a few tactually illustrated books. While their sighted peers are bombarded with images that amuse and inform, getting images into the hands of blind schoolchildren remains a hit-or-miss proposition.
Because blind children grow adept at getting information from verbal descriptions, adults may conclude that they really don't need access to pictures. I strongly believe that a great deal of valuable incidental learning is missed when images aren't provided. Verbal descriptions are highly subjective, and they often overlook the subtle nuances that pictures provide.
Let's examine an instance where people use pictures to learn important information quickly and accurately. A road sign uses arrows because they are unlikely to be misunderstood. How many times has a person given you directions and said, "Turn right" when they meant "Turn left"? How often does a person hear, "Turn left" and mistakenly turn right? It happens all the time!
This kind of miscommunication can lead to some unfortunate outcomes. To minimize accidents, traffic signs depend on pictures to represent on and off ramps, merging traffic, and curves. A road sign with a bold black arrow indicating the road is going to turn to the right is unlikely to be misunderstood. But even more information is being shown in the sign. Is it a slight right turn, a sharp right turn, a Y in the road, or a U turn? This is all important information, and a simple picture can give it to you quickly.
Try to describe a sign that shows a series of mountain curves. Probably you explained that there are three curves in the road. Beyond the number of curves, did you describe the difference in distances between the three curves? Did you think to explain how a large, sweeping curve precedes two close, tight curves? How long did it take you to organize your thoughts and describe the image?
Regardless of how old a person is, it is never too late to start using pictures. And a person is never too young to start, either. So don't worry about age—this is going to be fun!
There are easily a million ways to make a tactile image, but I have come up with some techniques that can quickly get you on the road to drawing tactile pictures. Try out your own ideas as soon as they come to you!
You will need:
Armed with these three supplies you can introduce pictures into your child's life. Let's start where kids' interests naturally are. Draw a baby's face.
Draw a circle about two inches in diameter. When you are creating a drawing, make it large enough so that the features are not too close together. It can be confusing for a small child to know where one feature stops and the next begins if their fingers are touching them both at the same time. However, don't draw the picture so large that it is hard to find all the parts. Just try something, see what the problems are, and then fix them. Once children can talk you can discuss your images and get clear on what is working for them and what isn't. You will need to observe younger children to determine what they are able to understand. If your child is very young, it may take a while before they even begin to notice the pictures.
For this simple smiley face two inches will do. The circle does not need to be perfect. You can draw the shape freehand, but try to make it smooth. The technique I suggest is to place your paper on the foam and draw the circle by going over the line gently a number of times. This way the paper fibers are encouraged to take on a new shape without ripping apart. When you flip the paper over, you will have created a smooth raised line.
If your circle is smooth and easy to feel, move on to the eyes. But if the circle is lumpy or torn or not clear to read with your fingers, try again. This is an acquired skill. With a little bit of practice you can quickly learn how to handle the pen and make it do what you want it to do. In fact, I always keep a piece of paper handy so I can try out the next feature before I add it to the picture I want to keep—sort of like a practice swing with a golf club.
Draw two solid circles for the eyes. This makes nice, smooth dots. Draw a small circle for the nose and a nice curve for the baby's smiling mouth.
If your child is fussy, you can draw a fussy baby with an open mouth and tears running down their face! As you add more details, be sure to enlarge the picture size to fit them.
When you and your child look at the picture together, point to the picture and talk about what you are touching. Capture your child's attention by tapping where you want them to touch. When they find the picture, give them a big cheer, "You found it!"
One day it will click. Be sure to refer back to your face and your child's face when you attach words to the image with questions such as, "Where is the baby's mouth?" "Where is my mouth?" "Where is your mouth?"
You can view a short video about creating tactile drawings at https://youtu.be/-OZ6yEYEr08.
Search for read-aloud infant board books and children's books on YouTube.com for inspiration. Also check out books from the library and create some tactile images for your child to explore as you read the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoSELY1CMuQ
Hello Baby Faces by Priddy Books is a very basic book that might inspire you. Search for Mo William's books about a pigeon that gets into comical situations. The illustrations use basic shapes very expressively.
Look for images that have simple forms. For instance, Baby Shark might already be in your library. Trace an outline of one shark. Only add important details such as the eye and teeth on that picture. A good second illustration could be the shark family, showing the difference in size among the baby, mommy, daddy, and grandparents.
If you have a plastic or rubber model of a shark, you can explore it and even put it in the tub at bath time. Talk about it being in water. Then add some waves to the top of the picture of the baby shark! Now it is in the water, too.
You might want to color in the pictures so that you create high-contrast images. Or better yet, give the colors to your child and let them color inside and out of the lines! This can be a very socially engaging activity that almost every kid enjoys.
You can use crayons, colored pencils, or permanent markers. (Water-based markers might wrinkle the paper, so test on your scrap first!) You also can cut the basic shapes out of contrasting paper and glue the images together. Be sure to watch your child as they play with collage books, because there is a chance they will pull the book apart and put small pieces in their mouth. Once your child has passed the stage where everything goes into their mouth, you can determine when it is safe to add more embellishments to the pictures.
A lot of books have simple pictures for children. Use their style to inspire a book picturing objects in your home that your child is familiar with. In this way your child can start making the connection between real objects and symbols, the simple images used to represent those objects. This is a critical first step toward literacy.
If your child is older, add Braille and pictures to the books they already love to create a more engaging activity. Even if you only add one picture to a book, it can spark more interactive engagement among you, your child, the book, and the world your child lives in.
Feel free to contact me with your questions and ideas at [email protected]. You may visit my website at http://www.acunningham.com or http://www.sensationalbooks.com.
by Rishika Kartik
From the Editor: Rishika Kartik leads art activities as a volunteer at the Colorado Center for the Blind. She also conducts art workshops with blind and low-vision students from the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind (CSDB) and in school districts across the state. In 2019 she received a two-year grant to expand her work from Arts in Society, a Colorado foundation that supports arts programs in underserved communities. Rishika has the distinction of being the youngest person ever to receive an Arts in Society grant. At the time her grant was awarded she was fourteen years old! In this article Rishika describes her work and the ways it enriches her life.
On a cool autumn night in 2008, the specks of color on my canvas ignited sparks of passion within me. Painting a self-portrait in my home, I was enthralled by the sleek lines on my canvas, the subtle fusing of hues, and the carefree whimsy of the brush in my hand. Blank pages became a sea of possibility, and with every stroke I became liberated to create a world of my own. Ever since then art has become the way I connect with others, express myself, and make sense of the world.
I started volunteering with the blind and low-vision community in 2018. I was searching for a way to broaden my perspective and interact with diverse individuals. Immediately, I fell in love with the sense of community at Anchor Center for the Blind, the Colorado Center for the Blind, and the Colorado Center for the Deaf and the Blind. I will proudly say that each blind individual I've been fortunate to meet over the past two years has given me my vision and illuminated insights I never would have considered. One of the most notable insights I have gained is the importance of tactile art and accessible creative outlets. Art is such an essential part of my life, yet I saw so many individuals being deprived of it consistently.
As a sighted artist, I realized that public perception of art is unfortunately unidimensional. It became evident to me that tactile art is just as important as visual self-expression. Visual art is ingrained within every aspect of modern culture, from coloring books in early childhood education and murals on street corners to museum visits and household paintings. Therefore, making art more accessible and inclusive involves fostering community, developing therapeutic approaches, sparking creativity, and encouraging holistic wellbeing.
When I started to incorporate tactile art into my volunteer work, the impact was ubiquitous across cultures, age groups, and backgrounds. This revelation has changed my life. It has empowered every aspect of my allyship.
I am profoundly grateful to the Colorado Center for the Blind and my inspiring mentor, Ann Cunningham, for giving me the opportunity to become the president of the Tactile Art Club in January 2020. Coordinating the Tactile Art Club completely revolutionized the way I perceive art and allowed me to look at creativity in a multisensory, nuanced way. What started as a small group of about five enthusiastic artists soon grew exponentially in participation, with teachers of blind students, blind children and teens, and allies of all ages coming together to explore new artistic possibilities. At the end of February club meetings averaged around fifteen dynamic participants. We focused on providing enriching creative experiences with ceramics, using tools to create a variety of forms and textures.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the entire structure of the club changed in March. Continuing to explore tactile art remotely proved to be a previously unaddressed challenge. However, that certainly did not stop the club from flourishing! The online format eventually broadened participation from the local Colorado group to all parts of the country and the world. We were thrilled to have twenty-eight participants join our December Tactile Art Club meeting. The international community soon became vital to the experience, as club members learned as much from the diverse participants as they did from the media they used. While we were physically distanced, we became more socially connected than ever.
As I witnessed an international community develop, I realized that art not only has aesthetic and practical functions, but it brings socioemotional and cognitive benefits as well. Having the opportunity to teach online also changed my concept of "works of art." In order to address learning inequities and to ensure an affordable, equitable, and convenient experience for everyone, we shifted from using traditional media to creating with household objects. This development allowed us to experiment with a variety of intriguing materials—paper, tinfoil, pipe cleaners, and more. It made me appreciate the beauty of "ordinary" items in a new way.
I am so appreciative of the dedicated members of this club who have had a deep impact upon my view of accessibility, creativity, and, broadly speaking, the way I interact with my world. Meeting inspiring individuals through Tactile Art Club reinforced the importance of this cause, impacting the virtual execution of my project, Vision of the Artist's Soul. I am so thankful to Arts in Society for giving me a generous grant to create a comprehensive Tactile Arts education program for blind and visually impaired youth. Tactile Art Club has given me the confidence and experience to create holistic education and artistic outlets virtually. It has also inspired me to apply for further grants to reach more people and create new possibilities in this field.
These experiences also have motivated me to expand my work to other facets of accessibility. The National Federation of the Blind has graciously allowed me to start a Museum Accessibility Committee with blind and sighted industry leaders. During our meetings we have discussed best practices for accessible museums and inclusive public spaces. I began reaching out to local museums such as the Denver Art Museum, Museo de las Américas, and the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Denver, to partner with them and implement the insights I gained from the NFB committee. Subsequently, I founded Touch and Create Studios, a program that works one-on-one with museums to improve inclusivity and conducts workshops for students of diverse ability levels. The Museum of Contemporary Arts generously gave me the chance to conduct my first workshop for blind and low-vision youth, featuring the practice of phenomenal blind artists such as Marguerite Woods and Emilie Gossiaux. The workshops were an uplifting success, and I look forward to implementing similarly inclusive programs with other museums and organizations.
Finally, I am thankful to have learned more about how best to be an ally to this community and challenge my notions as a sighted person. I am so lucky to gain more knowledge and grow with every experience. I attended the 2020 National Federation of the Blind National Convention virtually and met a diverse group of people with such solidarity, independence, and optimism. At the state convention of the NFB of Colorado I was fortunate to conduct a pumpkin carving art studio with Ann Cunningham. My time at both the national convention and the state convention made me so grateful to be part of this community! I cannot thank the NFB of Colorado and the Colorado Center for the Blind enough for welcoming me with open arms and making me feel like a part of the Federation family.
I also got the opportunity to attend the 2020 Washington Seminar with the Federation to advocate for legislative initiatives. That experience inspired me to pursue advocacy by creating the design for the 2020 White Cane Day celebration and starting the social media campaign, #MyCaneMyIndependence. The mission of #MyCaneMyIndependence is to raise awareness for White Cane Day and to advocate for the right of individuals who are blind and visually impaired to travel independently. It also aims to celebrate the achievements of blind individuals and advocate for policies and infrastructure to build a more accessible and inclusive society.
Ultimately, this year has taught me to approach my interactions through an abundance mindset that aims to enrich the preexisting assets of a community instead of acting as a "savior." I now know that solutions must be human-centric and must work directly with the population that they are trying to benefit. I truly believe the blind and visually impaired community has given me so much more than I could ever give them, and I am thankful for the ability to see service and advocacy in a new way.
by Briley O'Connor
Reprinted from Minnesota Bulletin, Fall 2019
From the Editor: Briley O'Connor serves as vice president of the Metro Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Minnesota. She works as an advocate for blind students as a teacher and parent. In this article she shares some tips for working with rehabilitation counselors. Her suggestions may be helpful in working with professionals in any field.
Being a student is hard. Balancing several deadlines, plus figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life can be stressful. Add to that obtaining accessible textbooks, communicating with professors about accommodations, acquiring assistive technology, and navigating the confusing vocational rehabilitation system as a blind student, and you can feel like you're juggling three truck tires while reciting the Declaration of Independence. I have experience with this circus act as a blind college student, a blindness rehabilitation professional, and a disability advocate.
One of the most important (and overlooked) allies you have through this process is your vocational rehabilitation counselor.
"But you don't understand," you say. "I didn't get my notetaker on time."
"I never hear from them." "My tuition was paid late, and all of my classes were dropped."
All of those things have actually happened to many of my clients. That last one happened to me after I transferred universities my junior year. I understand that working toward a positive relationship with a counselor where one may not currently exist can feel practically impossible. But my sweet Southern grandmother always says, "You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar." While I never understood why on earth Meme wanted to catch flies, I have found that advice to be wise. Taking the time to do these few things will go a long way toward establishing a good relationship with your counselor, or improving a contentious one.
The bedrock of any solid relationship is communication. Sadly, many students have a lot of ideas about what a counselor should be doing. While students may not be entirely incorrect in their assumptions, what they are often missing is their end of the bargain.
Each state may operate somewhat differently, but one commonality is that the counselor is the intermediary between you and the people funding your services. When a problem arises, contact your counselor immediately. Do not wait for someone else to do it for you. If there is a gap in payment, the university is not going to call your counselor. The disability resource center is not going to call your counselor. It is your job to call your counselor. Letting a problem sit for an extended period of time before addressing it does not show that you are being proactive.
I recognize that when issues arise it can cause anxiety, and you can feel overwhelmed. But try to approach your counselor in that moment as your ally, not as your enemy. Even if a mistake on their part led to the problem, approach them as calmly as possible, asking for their assistance in coming up with a solution.
If you show the initiative to schedule a phone call or in-person meeting every six weeks with your counselor, that goes a long way toward demonstrating that you take your education seriously. You don't have to wait for these meetings to ask questions of your counselor, but the meeting is a great time to update them on your academic progress. You can discuss upcoming technology or training needs for the next semester and touch base about anything you need to know to ensure your success. Take notes at these meetings. Recap your notes in an email afterward to make sure you and your counselor are on the same page about what was discussed. If you are invested in your success, the other person in the relationship is a lot more likely to be invested, too.
This one is a lot easier said than done, particularly in contentious situations, but the effort is worth it. Showing kindness is not just about getting what you want or making the other person feel good. It also engenders positive feelings within you about the other person. Sometimes, in high stress situations like these, positive feelings are few and far between.
I was working with one client in Texas who was having a horrible time receiving the technology she was promised. Her counselor was not returning calls. Contacting the supervisor was not helping, and the semester was starting in a few short weeks. In the midst of a call with this frustrated student, I asked her, "Hey, when is your counselor's birthday?"
Needless to say, this question was met with icy skepticism to put it mildly, which I understood. But after some convincing, the student asked around and found out that the counselor's birthday happened to be in the next week. I somehow convinced her to send the counselor a birthday card in print and Braille, including the counselor's name in Braille on the envelope. My client had the technology she needed before school started, and the door was opened for an improved relationship.
Was it perfect because of a birthday card? No. But it helped the student remember that the counselor was a human being, not just someone making her life hard. It reminded the counselor that this person was more than a number on her incredibly large caseload.
Kindness doesn't have to be complicated. Send a birthday card, write a thank-you email when things are going smoothly, congratulate them on their professional accomplishments. Even if initially you have to dig deep for nice things to say, do the digging. Counselors are human beings with a lot on their plate just like you. This is not an excuse for not doing the things that they should, but it is a place of understanding and empathy you can operate from when you are feeling angry and frustrated.
When people hear this one, they automatically assume that it has a confrontational connotation, but it doesn't. Knowing your state's policies and procedures for how technology is procured, how services are determined, and what the appeal process is in the event that a decision is reached with which you disagree only helps you feel equipped. If you know what to expect, what should be on your Individual Plan for Employment (IPE), and how to justify the things you feel are necessary for your success, you will be able to stay calm when things get difficult. Respect yourself and your counselor enough to know your rights and responsibilities. Discuss these openly with your counselor, ask for them in writing, and ask questions when there's something you don't understand. This has the added benefit of equipping you with the knowledge you would need in the unlikely event these tricks do not work and the relationship does not work out.
In all likelihood, if you communicate, show kindness, and learn your rights, you'll establish a positive working relationship with your vocational rehabilitation counselor that will last you through your search for employment. These skills are transferable outside of this context as well. Knowing how to work with people you don't necessarily like is valuable, and learning how to like people you previously did not appreciate is the true art of fly catching.
by Kaylee Nielson
From the Editor: "Live the life you want!" is our motto in the NFB. In this article Kaylee Nielson explains how she approaches vision loss as an adventure in a life that welcomes challenges. Kaylee won an NFB National Scholarship in 2019. She is now a sophomore at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
I was a tree climber as a kid. I would stand at the bottom of trees that were five times my height, analyze the branches, and say, "I got this," a mentality that caused worry lines on my parents' foreheads as I looked down at them from twenty feet. I lived for the challenge, for the calloused hands and scraped knees, and for seeing the world from a new perspective, looking out from the treetops—what a rush of adrenaline!
The older I got, the less cool it became to define my identity as a tree climber. Perhaps in anticipation of the day when my middle-school self would become too proud to tell the world that I was a tree kid, I was given another path that offered many of the same benefits. The summer before my seventh-grade year I lost my central vision, causing me to become legally blind. Though not as much fun as standing in a treetop, this new path also offered me challenge, scraped knees, and a new perspective on the world.
My vision loss was the result of a mutation on the ABCA4 gene, which I had unknowingly inherited from my parents. Despite my attempts to memorize the E chart and pretend that nothing had changed, my sudden inability to read my textbooks, recognize my soccer teammates, or make eye contact with my parents made it a little difficult to ignore what was going on. Though the journey ahead of me seemed completely foreign, I soon learned that, unlike climbing a tree, in order to conquer this new challenge, I was going to need help from anyone willing to give it. The blind and low-vision community was quick to welcome me, and in time I learned to welcome it back. I found people who could relate to what I was going through, technology that made my schoolwork possible, researchers that have dedicated their lives to finding a cure for my disease, and teachers who were eager to support me in everything from accessibility to advocacy. I refused to let my visual impairment define me, and, even more difficult, I found a way to embrace this part of my narrative.
Thanks to my vision loss, most of my pride and grace went out the window a long time ago. I have fallen down stairs and have been asked to read aloud in class by teachers who forgot I could not see the page. I have failed presentations because I had to memorize every slide while my peers could read off notecards. I have said "hi" to people who were not talking to me but rather to the person next to me. But making a fool of myself so many times has given me the courage to try new things, put myself out there, and become the person I most want to be. I have found the confidence to walk tall, my white cane in my hand.
I am a tree climber, and I am blind, in that order. I am the person who took the stairs just because you asked if I would prefer an elevator when you saw my cane. I am the girl who does handstands against her bedroom walls because it is fun. I am the person who sits down at the piano with my eyes closed to make sure I can still play my favorite song, even if my vision degenerates further and I lose my peripheral vision as well. I am the person who stands at the bottom of a tree five times my height, analyzes the branches, and then looks down at you from the top to wave and say, "I told you—I got this."
by Monica Wegner
Posted on The Student Slate, November 15, 2020
From the Editor: The Student Slate is an online publication of the National Association of Blind Students (NABS), found at https://thestudentslate.wordpress.com. It covers a wide range of topics pertinent to the lives of students in secondary school, college, and graduate studies. Monica Wegner is a third-year law student. She serves as a NABS board member and chairs the NABS Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
In the diversity and inclusion space, we often use the term privilege. It can apply to many things: race, gender, national origin, even disability.
I was part of a conversation about privilege recently in which the discussion centered around white privilege. Someone in the discussion let us know that they didn't feel they had any privilege because they worked for everything they had achieved. The conversation made me think, maybe we need to step back and explain exactly what we mean by "privilege." I hope to contribute to that discussion through my own experiences as a blind student.
Back before COVID-19 when classes were held in person, I had a new professor in one of my law classes. As participation was part of each student's grade in the class, I occasionally raised my hand to signal that I wished to speak. Unfortunately, I was never acknowledged by the professor in a way that I was able to understand. It turned out that the professor used a visual means, eye contact, to signal to a student that she wanted to hear from them. That did not work for me, because I could not see the eye contact.
My first recourse was self-advocacy. I arranged to speak with the professor outside of class and informed her that I was unable to engage fully with her communication style. I asked her whether she would be willing to acknowledge me verbally in the class, and of course she agreed. But old habits die hard, and the verbal acknowledgements never materialized.
You will find quite a few complex definitions of privilege out there, but the concept is pretty straightforward. Privilege is "an unearned benefit or advantage that one receives in society by nature of their identity" (Ebbitt). Identity includes, but is not limited to, race, gender, socioeconomic status, national origin, and disability.
Though privilege signals that an inequality exists, having privilege in no way makes one a bad person. As is readily apparent from the definition above, we all can be said to have privilege in certain situations and to lack it in others. It is what we do with the privilege we have that is important.
I was not willing to approach my professor again on this issue, nor did I feel that the matter was important enough to take it beyond the classroom. But in that situation every sighted student in the room had a sort of privilege—privilege they no doubt had no idea they even possessed. It turned out, though, that another student noticed what was happening. That student started catching the professor's eye and verbally redirecting the conversation when she realized that I was seeking the floor.
In that relatively low-stakes situation, I realized that this student had used her own privilege to empower me. We all can do this for others at times.
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an African-American woman, was shot and killed in her home by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky. Her killing sparked demonstrations in the Louisville area that were widely attended by white and black protestors alike. According to photographer Tim Druck, white protestors were asked to defend the space. A line of white women locked arms, creating a barrier between police and black protestors.
Those women understood their privilege in that situation. They knew that white women were likely to be treated very differently by police officers than people of color. Indeed, the practice of whites protecting black protestors continued throughout 2020. In one of the more famous examples, a group of white mothers formed a "wall of moms" to protect people of color who were protesting in Portland, Oregon.
As a blind person, I have experienced a different kind of intervention. It happens when a well-meaning individual attempts to act or speak for me in a situation where I can act for myself. I can illustrate this experience through a simple example. I am in a restaurant with a sighted colleague, and I want to order a beverage. I might ask my colleague whether they would be willing to catch the eye of our server. Once this happens, one of two outcomes normally takes place. My colleague might order a beverage on my behalf. Alternatively, they might realize that they did all they needed to do by summoning the server. From there they might allow me to order my own beverage.
As blind people, we strongly prefer the latter outcome. Likewise, when we are called upon to be an ally, it is important that we practice awareness.
Awareness is one of the most difficult skills to develop when thinking about privilege. It requires us to look at the world through a different lens, one other than our own. Being blind comes with inequities in employment, education, and even social tasks such as ordering a beverage. However, identifying with a gender binary also provides us with advantages, such as the ability to use a restroom appropriate to our gender identity. Recognizing the inequities that exist for ourselves is easy. Recognizing the advantages we have relative to others is quite the opposite.
As members of the National Federation of the Blind, we have privilege, too. If blindness is our only disability, we have a unique opportunity to create spaces for those for whom that is not the case. If we are cisgender, white, or male, we have similar opportunities to recognize those of us who are not.
To be an ally is to use the privilege we have to advocate for another. But as you read above, it is not easy. I can only imagine the fear those women in the Wall of Moms must have felt. But it is so much better than imagining the alternative.
The NABS Diversity and Inclusion Committee strives to make the National Association of Blind Students a welcoming place for all who wish to participate. If you would like to get involved in this work, please join our group chat.
Kathleen Ebbitt, "Why It's Important to Think about Privilege—and Why It's Hard," Global Citizen, February 27, 2015, https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/why-its-important-to-think-about-privilege-and-why/
by Carla McQuillan
From the Editor: Carla McQuillan is the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Oregon and a member of the NFB national board of directors. She is the owner and executive director of Main Street Montessori Association, operating two Montessori schools. She also chairs the Distinguished Educator of Blind Students Award Committee.
The National Federation of the Blind will recognize an outstanding teacher of blind students at our 2021 National Convention, taking place from July 6 through July 10, 2021. The winner of this award will receive the following:
The education of blind children is one of the highest priorities of the National Federation of the Blind. We are committed to offering and supporting programs that enhance educational opportunities for blind children throughout the country. Please help us recognize dedicated and innovative teachers who provide quality education and meaningful experiences and opportunities for their blind students.
Q: Who is eligible for this award?
A: Anyone who is currently a teacher, counselor, or administrator of programs for blind students.
Q: Does an applicant have to be a member of the National Federation of the Blind?
A: No, but attendance at the NFB National Convention is required.
Q: Can I nominate someone else for this award?
A: Yes. Applicants can be nominated by colleagues, parents, supervisors, or friends who have firsthand knowledge of the individual's work with blind students.
Q: How would I apply?
A: You can fill out the application at the end of this article or find it on our website at https://nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/pdf/distinguished-educator-of-blind-students-award-form-fillable.pdf
Q: What is the deadline to submit an application or make a nomination?
A: All applications must be received no later than May 1, 2021.
Please complete the application and attach the required documents specified in the application. If you are submitting a nomination for someone other than yourself, please answer the questions to the best of your ability. Your experience and observations of the nominee will assist the selection committee in their decision.
Questions? Contact Carla McQuillan at 541-653-9153 or by email at: [email protected].
Deadline: May 1, 2021
Name: _______________________________________________________
Home Address: _________________________________________________
City, State, Zip: _________________________________________________
Phone: (H) ____________________ (W) ____________________________
Email: ______________________________________________________
School: ______________________________________________________
Address: _____________________________________________________
City, State, Zip: _________________________________________________
Please list any awards or commendations you have received.
How long and in what programs have you worked with blind children?
In what setting do you currently work?
Briefly describe your current job and teaching responsibilities.
How would you describe your philosophy of blindness as it relates to the education of blind students?
What are your thoughts on teaching Braille and cane travel? When and at what age would you begin? How do you determine whether to teach print or Braille?
What was your most memorable experience working with blind students?
Why should you be selected to receive this award?
Email is strongly encouraged for transmitting nominations; letters of support and other relevant materials should be included as attachments. Applications sent by mail and postmarked by the deadline will also be accepted. Send all material by May 1, 2021, to Carla McQuillan, chairperson, Teacher Award Committee, [email protected] or by mail to 522 65th Street, Springfield, OR 97478; 541-653-9153.
On December 1, 2020, enthusiastic readers began to log the Braille pages they read as participants in the 2021 Braille Readers Are Leaders contest. For the next seven weeks, until January 18, 2021, contestants kept careful records of the Braille pages they read.
Sponsored by the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults in partnership with the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children, the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest was created as a way to encourage Braille literacy among blind children and adults. School-age participants entered the contest in any of five categories: grades K-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12. The adult category was open to anyone beyond high school. Some 120 participants from twenty-eight states and Canada took part in the competition.
At the close of the seven-week reading period, contestants submitted their reading logs. Based on the number of pages read, three winners were declared in each category. First-place winners are awarded $25, second-place winners will receive $15, and third-place winners and honorable mentions are awarded $10. Every participant will receive a T-shirt and a packet of Braille-related gifts.
In addition to the regular competition, participants could be nominated to receive a Breaking Reading Limits Award. These awards are given to readers who face special challenges in their effort to master Braille reading. Such challenges include, but are not limited to, being an English-language learner or having disabilities in addition to blindness.
For many participants the Braille Readers Are Leaders contest was an inspiring challenge. "My son is so excited that he is a winner," one mother wrote. "Thank you for all you do; it is because of the NFB that he has these critical Braille-reading skills." "I am so proud of this student!" wrote a teacher. "She is the most dedicated and consistent reader on my caseload." The mother of a kindergartener wrote, "Thank you for encouraging kids to read and love Braille."
The top reader in this year's contest was Sierra Carreiro, a high school student from Clarksville, Tennessee. Sierra read a staggering 8,461 Braille pages during the contest period.
Following is a list by category of the 2021 Braille Readers Are Leaders winners:
First Place: Judy Sanders, Minneapolis, MN, 3,902 pages
Second Place: Lori Parker, Belgrade, MT, 3,380 pages
Third Place: Tara Chavez, Albuquerque, NM, 2,597 pages
Honorable Mention: Angela Randall, Carrollton, OH, 2,596 pages
First Place: Hank Genelin, Springfield, VA, 2,409 pages
Second Place: Mila Chow, San Ramón, CA, 1,074 pages
Third Place: Emma McDermott, Dansville, NY, 380 pages
First Place: Ellie Mason, Wausau, WI, 521 pages
Second Place: Narjis Karimipour, New Orleans, LA, 496 pages
Third Place: Emma Atkinson, Lincoln, CA, 478 pages
First Place: Nadiya Albrecht, Finksburg, MD, 975 pages
Second Place: Passion Augustus, Ruston, LA, 608 pages
Third Place: Keaton Hamilton, Newmarket, ON, Canada, 588 pages
First Place: Jonah Rao, Columbia, MD, 4,193 pages
Second Place: Isaiah Rao, Columbia, MD, 4,191 pages
Third Place: Faith Switzer, Las Lunas, NM, 3,462 pages
First Place: Sierra Carreiro, Clarksville, TN, 8,461 pages
Second Place: Holly Connor, Clayton, MO, 6,474 pages
Third Place: Samuel Thurston, Chesapeake, VA, 3,282 pages
Nadiya Albrecht, Finksburg, MD
Stella Alford, Indianapolis, IN
Olivia Buck, Bryant Pond, ME
Noah Gohlke, Port LaVaca, TX
Evie Hefty, Sparks, NV
Grace-anna Sullivan, Prescott, AZ
Lily Taylor, Marysville, OH
Luis Villanueva, Kensington, MD
Paul Wales, Silver Spring, MD
Congratulations to all of these winners! Braille readers are leaders!
Between December 1, 2020, and January 18, 2021, some one hundred and twenty blind children and adults took part in the 2021 Braille Readers Are Leaders Contest sponsored by the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults. Participants recorded their reading on Excel spreadsheets, competing against one another and pushing themselves to build their Braille reading speed and fluency. Cash prizes were awarded to first-, second-, and third-place winners in each reading category (grades K-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-12, and adult). In addition, each participant who submitted a reading log received a packet of Braille-related gifts.
The Braille Readers Are Leaders Contest is one of the many ways that the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults works to enrich the lives of blind people in the United States. For more than a century the American Action Fund has brought Braille to thousands of blind children and adults. The Action Fund ships free books each month to any blind or deaf-blind child who wants them. Future Reflections is supported by the American Action Fund in partnership with the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC).
If you enjoy receiving Future Reflections, if your child receives Braille books through programs of the Action Fund, or if you have benefited from other programs of the Action Fund over the years, we humbly ask for your help.
You can donate online to the American Action Fund by visiting https://actionfund.org, or you can send a check made out to American Action Fund, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, MD 21230.
Your gift will make a real difference. Please help by giving a tax-deductible gift so the American Action Fund can continue to provide Braille books to children, publish Future Reflections for parents and teachers, and more.
Often the simplest and most significant way to make a charitable contribution is to plan to give a legacy gift. It is easier than you might think. You can plan to give all or part of a bank account, insurance proceeds, investment assets, real estate, or a retirement account. You can even give a required minimum distribution from your IRA directly to charity and avoid taxes on that money. After providing for your loved ones, you can bequeath a specific dollar amount or percentage of your estate to an organization whose mission is important to you. Your bequest carries with it the values and ideals that have been important to you throughout your lifetime and supports an organization whose mission you hold dear.
In addition, planning for a legacy gift may reduce the total amount of your taxable estate, which can have a positive impact on any amounts you have designated for your heirs.
The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults Legacy Society honors and recognizes the generosity and the vision of special friends of the Action Fund who have chosen to leave a legacy through a will or other planned giving option.
If you wish to give part or all of an account, simply fill out a P.O.D. (payable on death) or T.O.D. (transfer on death) form. For pensions and insurance assets, simply designate a charity as a beneficiary. If you would like to leave a legacy to the Action Fund in your will, please include the following language:
"I give, devise, and bequeath unto the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, 1800 Johnson Street, Suite 100, Baltimore, Maryland 21230, a Maryland nonprofit corporation, the sum of $______________ (or) _________ percent of my net estate" or the following stocks and bonds: ____________________, to be used for its worthy purposes on behalf of blind persons."
If you have any questions or would like more information, please reach out to Patti Chang at 410-659-9315. If you have included the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults in your will or have made some other provision for a future gift to us and would like to tell us about it, please contact Patti so we can recognize you as a member of our Legacy Society.
by Pam Allen, Julie Deden, and Jennifer Kennedy
As many of you are reading this, it may be cold and snowy where you are, but we are thinking ahead to the sun and warmth of the summer! Summer will be here before we know it, and we are excited to provide virtual opportunities for learning and growing and connecting at the three NFB training centers. Please contact us to learn about dates and plans for specific programs.
Louisiana Center for the Blind
101 S. Trenton St.
Ruston, LA 71270
Contact: Pam Allen, [email protected]
Colorado Center for the Blind
2233 W. Shepherd Ave.
Littleton, CO 80120
Contact: Julie Deden, [email protected]
BLIND Inc. (Blindness: Living in New Dimensions)
100 E. 22nd St.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Contact: Jennifer Kennedy, [email protected]
NFB National Scholarships
https://nfb.org/scholarships
Contact: [email protected]
Application Deadline: Midnight EDT, March 31, 2021
The annual scholarship program of the National Federation of the Blind is the largest of its kind in the United States. Every year more than $120,000 is awarded to blind scholars across the United States and Puerto Rico in recognition of their achievements and professional aspirations. Thanks to our generous partners thirty merit-based scholarships are available, ranging from $3,000 to $12,000. All scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence, community service, and leadership. Scholarship finalists must attend the NFB National Convention in July 2021, when the winners will be presented with their awards. Scholarship winners have gone on to succeed in careers ranging from computer science and engineering to civil rights law and international diplomacy.
Scholarship applicants must be legally blind in both eyes; must reside in the United States or Puerto Rico; must be pursuing or planning to pursue a full-time, postsecondary course of study in a degree-granting program in the fall of 2021; and must participate in the entire NFB national convention and all of its scheduled scholarship program activities.
The NFB once again is excited to be offering our National Federation of the Blind BELL® Academy, In-Home Edition, for the summer of 2021. BELL stands for Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning, and for more than a decade BELL participants have enjoyed learning and using Braille by following recipes, conducting science experiments, doing crafts activities, reading stories, and more. This year students will be organized into classes based on their prior knowledge of the Braille code, which means we will be better able to offer challenging and fun content for Braille learners of all levels. The NFB BELL Academy is appropriate for students ages four through twelve; applications for the 2021 program are now open and available in English and Spanish at https://www.nfb.org/programs-services/nfb-bell-academy.
Seedlings Braille Books for Children
http://www.seedlings.org/bkangel2009.php
Through the Book Angel program blind and low-vision children in the US ages birth to twenty-one are eligible for three free Braille books of their choice per year from Seedlings. The child must be registered each calendar year to participate. Orders will be filled as time and materials allow and will be sent as Free Matter for the Blind through the US Postal Service.
Free Children's Braille Book Club
National Braille Press
https://info.nbp.org/cbbc-info
Contact: 800-548-7323
Since 1983 the Children's Braille Book Club (CBBC) has been a subscription-based program through which National Braille Press sends a new print/Braille picture book every month for a small fee. Thanks to a generous matching program from the NewCo Foundation, NBP has started fundraising to kick off a new chapter in the Children's Braille Book Club. In 2021 free one-year subscriptions will be available to 125 eligible families. Members will need to reapply each year. The CBBC program is available to blind children from birth to age ten and to parents/legal guardians who are blind and have children ages birth to ten. NBP hopes to make the Children's Braille Book Club free to all subscribers in the next five years.
2021 Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards
https://www.nfb.org/programs-services/scholarships-and-awards/dr-jacob-bolotin-awards/application-information
Application Deadline: April 15, 2021
The Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards honor individuals and organizations that are a positive force in the lives of blind people. Winners break down barriers facing blind people in an innovative way, change negative perceptions of blindness and blind people, and push past existing boundaries to help blind people achieve new heights. An application may be made directly by the applicant or by a third party. Each application requires an essay describing the work or project to be recognized and must include at least one letter of recommendation. Winners will receive a cash award and a handsome plaque at the 2021 NFB National Convention.
2021 Schneider Family Book Awards
On January 25 the American Library Association (ALA) announced the recipients of the 2021 Schneider Family Book Awards that honor authors or illustrators for their artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences. Recipients are selected in three categories: younger children, ages 0-8; middle grades (ages 9-13), and teens (ages 14-18).
Younger Children
All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything, by Annette Day Pimentel, illustrated by Nabi H. Ali (Sourcebook eXplore
Itzhak: A Boy Who Loved the Violin, by Tracy Newman, illustrated by Abigail Halpin (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
I Talk Like a River, by Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House)
Middle Grade
Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen! by Sarah Kapit, (Dial Books for Young Readers)
When Stars Are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, illustrated by Victoria Jamieson (Dial Books for Young Readers)
Show Me a Sign, by Ann Clare leZotte (Scholastic Press)
Teens
This Is My Brain in Love, by I. W. Gregorio (Little Brown and Company)
Teachers of Tomorrow
The National Federation of the Blind is excited to announce the Class of 2021 Teachers of Tomorrow. Teachers of Tomorrow is an immersive professional development program that connects teachers of blind and low-vision students to the lived experiences of blind people, equipping participants with knowledge about the skills and attitudes that can help students thrive in school and beyond. This list includes the student's name, the state they come from, and the school they attend or from which they recently graduated. Meet our 2021 Teachers of Tomorrow:
Andrea Amestoy, Idaho, Texas Tech University
Megan Becker, West Virginia, Marshall University
Kelsey Bink, Missouri, Missouri State University
Annie Biondi, Texas, Texas Tech University
Leslie Borton, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Upstate
Madison Caldwell, Georgia, University of Alabama
Anne Marie Chambers, Missouri, Missouri State University
Rebecca Colagreco, Pennsylvania, Kutztown University
Danielle Driscoll, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Upstate
Stacy Lee Durant, California, San Francisco State University
Kaitlin Fleet, South Dakota, University of Northern Colorado
Martha Hazen, Maryland, University of Massachusetts
Kyra Hoehn, California, San Francisco State University
Sarah Kassim, Louisiana, Louisiana Tech University
Rebecca Kirsch, Texas, Texas Tech University
Jennifer Macías, California, California State University/Los Angeles
Jasmine Motley, California, San Francisco State University
Dorit Resnikoff, California, San Francisco State University
Sarah Scapardine, New Jersey, The College of New Jersey
Dori Senatori, Texas, Texas Tech University
Ashley Walley, Alaska, Stephen F. Austin University
Helen Wright, Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts
Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP)
www.dcmp.org
DCMP supports families and educators with free remote learning resources. Families and educators who have at least one child or student with a disability can register for free membership and access over eight thousand captioned and described educational videos. Teachers can create student accounts, group students together, and assign videos to classes. Users can choose "Captioned" or "Described" with the language/accessibility button found under the video player. Many videos are available without registering. DCMP is funded by the US Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf.
Keiki Story Hour
Contact: [email protected]
The NFB of Hawaii is restarting their Keiki (Children'ness) Reading/Story Time, which will take place on the last Saturday of each month. Children across the country are invited to join in the fun and read stories aloud to their friends and families over Zoom. Contact the NFB of Hawaii for information about scheduling and how to join.