THE BRAILLE MONITOR Vol. 43, No. 6 June, 2000 Barbara Pierce, Editor Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT National Office 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 NFB Net BBS: http://www.nfbnet.org Web Page address: http://www.nfb.org Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, orders for NFB literature, articles for the Monitor, and letters to the Editor should be sent to the National Office. Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about twenty-five dollars per year. Members are invited, and non-members are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to National Federation of the Blind and sent to: National Federation of the Blind 1800 Johnson Street Baltimore, Maryland 21230 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES ISSN 0006-8829 Vol. 43, No. 6 June, 2000 Contents Connecticut Attorney General Works with NFB to Make Tax-Preparation Web Sites Accessible by Curtis Chong Philosophy in Practice by Angela Howard New Computer Programs to Assist Blind Mathematicians by Christopher Weaver The Universality of a Nuisance The National Center: A First-Time View by Ruby Polk Mowing the Lawn by Thomas Bickford The New Impressionists by Blake Gopnik Gelding the Bull or Shoveling the Manure: It Just Depends on Your Perspective by Lisa LaNell Mauldin A Fundamental Lesson by Michael Baillif Cat-and-Mouse Games by Lynn Mattioli Between Kindness and Honesty by Gary Wunder Being a Role Model Is a Responsibility He Takes Seriously by Steve Dolan Hanging Up My Painter's Hat by Connie Leblond Doctor Finds a New Life Loss of Sight No Trouble Now by Jamie P. Olmstead A Compilation of Meaningful and Meaningless Typographical Errors on Blindness and Visual Impairment by Corinne Kirchner, Ph.D. Christmas in June by John and Mary Rowley Sharing the Vision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Donald C. Capps Draft Honor Roll The Campaign to Change What It Means to Be Blind. . . . . . . . Bill Gallagher Dies by Marc Maurer Recipes Monitor Miniatures Copyright (c) 2000 National Federation of the Blind [LEAD PHOTO DESCRIPTION #1: We can see down the length of the Materials Center, which is completely empty. The ceiling tiles are down so that the lights can be seen hanging from long cables with duct work visible above them. The weight-bearing pillars can be seen marching away down the length of the room. PHOTO DESCRIPTION #2: Pictured here is a large area crammed with cardboard boxes stacked one upon another. LEAD CAPTION: The Materials Center at the National Center for the Blind is housed in a room 250 feet long and 80 feet wide. It has gradually become clear that the heating and air conditioning system for the area needed extensive renovation. Tackling the project required first finding space outside the Materials Center to store the shelves, materials, and literature before everything could be moved out. Then the center was emptied and the ceiling taken down to expose the duct work and air conditioning units so that the necessary work could be done. The picture above shows the way the Materials Center looked in late April. If you were one of those who called hoping to purchase aids and appliances or order literature during April, this picture tells you why orders could not be filled until May. Below is a picture of the temporary storage area for the Materials Center. By the time you have this issue, the Materials Center should be fully restored to efficient order with air conditioning that will keep everything at an even temperature.] [PHOTO/CAPTION: Curtis Chong] Connecticut Attorney General Works with NFB to Make Tax-Preparation Web Sites Accessible by Curtis Chong From the Editor: In recent months we have heard increasing discussion about Internet access for people with disabilities. Some Members of Congress have raised questions about whether or not users of access technology have the right to surf the Web. Without considering those who use alternate methods of Web access, individual Web site designers are casually choosing construction features that prevent blind people from visiting their sites. So Curtis Chong, NFB Technology Department director, was understandably pleased when the Connecticut Attorney General's office contacted the NFB for help in fighting one battle in this ongoing war for access. Here is the story of what happened next as Mr. Chong tells it: The National Federation of the Blind has a long-standing commitment to access by the blind to information and electronic services. We created NEWSLINE(r) for the Blind so that blind people could read national and local newspapers; we created America's Jobline(r) so that the blind and other people could find jobs listed in America's Job Bank without having to use a computer; and we filed suit against America Online (AOL) so that the blind could use this large Internet service provider along with their sighted friends, neighbors, and colleagues. The AOL lawsuit attracted the attention of Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General for the State of Connecticut. We exchanged phone calls and e-mail correspondence and conducted meetings. It became very clear that, like the Federation, Mr. Blumenthal was keenly interested in promoting equal access by the blind to the information super highway--in particular, to information and services offered through the World Wide Web. While we were getting acquainted, it came to our attention that the Federal Internal Revenue Service had announced partnerships with a number of companies offering on-line tax preparation services through the World Wide Web. We decided to find out if these Web-based services were accessible to blind people using screen-access technology. We examined the Web-based tax return filing services of four companies: HDVest, Intuit, H & R Block, and Gilman & Ciocia. Despite all of the media attention devoted to Web-page accessibility in recent years, we found that not one of the Web-based tax filing services was completely usable with screen-access technology. Here are two examples of the problems we encountered. A portion of the home page of one company contained a screen of advertisements which was updated about once every fifteen seconds. Anyone trying to use a screen-access program to read the page would be moved back to the top every time the screen was updated--just about the time one found something interesting. Another tax-preparation site displayed links and buttons on the page which could not be reached or activated using the keyboard. They could also not be recognized as links or buttons by the screen-access technology. We talked over our findings with Mr. Blumenthal's office. We agreed to send a letter to the tax-preparation companies, telling them that their Web-based tax services were not accessible to the blind and asking for a commitment to redress the problem or risk litigation. We sent the same letter to all four companies. The following is the text as it went to one of the recipients: March 30, 2000 Mr. Herb Vest Chairman of Directors and CEO HD Vest, Inc. Irving, Texas Dear Mr. Vest: As a result of the publicity surrounding your partnership with the IRS for the filing of tax returns online, it has come to the attention of the State of Connecticut and the National Federation of the Blind that your online tax return preparation service, as well as your Web site as a whole, is inaccessible to the blind in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Based on the information we have on your site, we believe that it can be made accessible, with reasonable modifications, within six months. Please notify us by April 4, 2000, as to whether you agree to make your Web site accessible and, if so, whether there is any reason that this could not be reasonably accomplished by October 31, 2000. Unless we have received those assurances, and barring the discovery of any sound reason to the contrary, we will proceed immediately as necessary to ensure the accessibility of your site. Please feel free to contact Daniel Goldstein [the NFB's attorney] or Assistant Attorney General Seth Klein with any questions, including those that relate to the types of accessibility problems found on your Web site and/or the solutions to these problems. Sincerely, Richard Blumenthal Attorney General State of Connecticut Daniel Goldstein Attorney for National Federation of the Blind The companies responded to the letter in very short order. Along with the legal discussions there was an exchange of information between various technical personnel and me. It was clear that nonvisual access had never been considered during the design of the tax-preparation Web sites. Only one of the companies seemed to know that blind people use computers and obtain information from Web pages with the help of screen-access technology. Ultimately, after a lot of discussion, all four companies wrote back to the Connecticut Attorney General expressing their willingness to engage in reasonable efforts to make their Web sites accessible within six months and pledging to work cooperatively with the National Federation of the Blind to resolve nonvisual access problems. Mr. Blumenthal convened a press conference on April 17 to applaud the agreement. Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, and I were on hand to support the Attorney General, talk with the press, and demonstrate the techniques used by the blind to surf the Web. Here is the press release that was issued: Official Press Release Connecticut Attorney General's Office Attorney General, National Federation Of Blind Applaud On-Line Tax-Filing Services For Agreeing to Make Sites Blind-Accessible for 2000 Tax Season April 17, 2000 Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today was joined by Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), in announcing agreements with four companies--HDVest, Intuit, H & R Block, and Gilman & Ciocia--that provide on-line federal income tax filing services to make their Internet sites accessible to the blind. The four companies have agreed to work with the Attorney General and the NFB to change the coding for each of the five Web sites in question--, , , , and --to enable blind individuals to access the sites. According to the Attorney General, the changes will greatly improve the ability of blind individuals to access the sites through the use of standard screen-reader programs, which can translate screen information to Braille or computerized speech formats. These code changes will include implementation of recommendations by the World Wide Web Consortium, an international organization that works to develop universal standards for HTML coding. HTML is the computer language used to create and design Web sites. It allows users to move from page to page within and between Web sites. "The blind should have equal rights and effective access in traveling the Internet's information highway. Disabled Americans should not have to reinvent or reassert such basic rights in the new Information Age, just because the means of access is now a computer rather than stairs or sidewalks," said Blumenthal. "Filing tax returns electronically is one example--but only one--of essential access that should be guaranteed. Rights must be protected- kept real, not virtual--even in this age of new technology." "Blind people can and do make extensive use of computer programs and the Internet, so naturally we are thrilled these companies have decided to work with us to ensure that their sites are accessible to the blind," said National Federation of the Blind President Marc Maurer. "The world of technology is constantly growing and changing, however, so this is a first step in a longer journey." Each company's Web site was recently listed on the Internal Revenue Service's official Web site as an on-line partner for the purpose of electronically filing federal income tax returns. Each site, however, proved inaccessible to the blind upon testing by the Attorney General and the National Federation of the Blind. The Attorney General and the NFB alerted the four companies that their Web sites were in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires public accommodations to take reasonable steps to ensure accessibility to individuals with disabilities. The four companies have issued written assurances that they will work with the Attorney General and the NFB to make their Web sites accessible to the blind in time for the 2000 tax season. The National Federation of the Blind has found a new friend in Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General. Because of his willingness to work with us, four more companies are learning about the importance of nonvisual access to the services they offer through the Web. This is a good beginning. Let us hope that we can form similarly fruitful partnerships with attorneys general from other states. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Angela Howard Philosophy in Practice by Angela Howard From the Editor: Angela Howard is Second Vice President of the National Association of Blind Students. This article first appeared in the Fall/Winter, 1999, issue of the Student Slate, the publication of the NFB's student division. This is what she says: When Martin Luther King, Jr., was growing up in Atlanta, he rode the public bus across town to school every day. Segregation laws forced him to take a seat in the back of the bus, even if the seats in the front were vacant. Unable to do anything about the situation at the time, Dr. King decided to leave his mind in the front seat and promised himself that one day he would put his body where his mind sat. Years later Dr. King led African-Americans in a movement to put an end to segregation. The blind do not endure the segregation laws that once confined African-Americans to the back of the bus. But, due to negative attitudes about blindness, we continue to endure a kind of spirit-squelching segregation that has threatened to confine us to a world of high unemployment and social isolation. Members of the National Federation of the Blind have developed a philosophy that has directed us to move towards a life of complete integration and full participation in society. Our movement for equality demanded at one time that we march and campaign in order to be heard, and this is still sometimes necessary. But more often today our struggle takes place in the work and play of our everyday lives. As Federationists we struggle to put our bodies where the Federation has led our minds and spirits. We struggle for the opportunity to participate fully in our homes, schools, and communities. Recently my Federationism led me to a very special place. I spent the summer living with the homeless of Atlanta. The Open Door is a community of religious leaders and former homeless people who live together in service to those who are on the streets. I took part in this community as a resident intern. In the Federation we like to say that blind people possess the same range of personalities that any cross section of society would produce. I have become convinced that this holds true for every other group in society as well. I faced the same struggles against negative attitudes living with homeless people that I do in any new community of which I become a part. Most assumed that I would hold a marginal position in the community, and in the beginning no one expected from me what I was capable of contributing. It was up to me to break down those walls that threatened to steal my right to full participation. My struggle against negative attitudes began the first night I moved into the house. The woman assigned to be my spiritual advisor reviewed with me the general rules of the house. She then suggested, "We thought you would be good at handing out hard-boiled eggs to the homeless people at breakfast." When I learned what my schedule was to be for the following week, it became clear to me that passing out eggs during breakfast was the only job they thought I could handle. After three days of handing out eggs from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. and having nothing else to do for the rest of the day, I decided that things were going to have to change. I began to voice my belief that I could do much more than hand out eggs. I also developed another strategy for solving this dilemma. I was beginning to get to know many of the people living in the house and could sense which ones had the most faith in my ability. When I noticed that one of these people was doing a certain job, I would sneak over and ask him or her to show me exactly how the task was performed. I even got people to let me try. Then during breakfast and lunch circles, when certain jobs were delegated, I would raise my hand. "Are you sure you can do that, Angela?" they would ask. "I've done it before," I would say. My strategy worked. I found my schedule for the following week much more promising. Phone and door duty is one job frequently delegated to resident interns. The responsibilities of this assignment include answering phones, answering the door, and supervising our homeless friends as they pick out T-shirts and socks from the sorting room. As you can guess, the leaders of the community did not consider the possibility that a blind person might be capable of meeting this challenge. By the end of my first week they decided that I might be able to answer the phones. I assured them that I could write out the important phone numbers in Braille and deliver messages personally rather than writing them out. They agreed to let me give it a try. By the end of my second week they trusted me to answer the phones, but fulfilling the other responsibilities of phone and door duty was out of the question. Another helper was always assigned to answer the door for me. I am not proud to admit this, but even I was not sure that I could handle the responsibility of managing a room of people who are often under the influence of drugs and who are known to try to get out of the house with as many things as they can. Pretty soon, however, all of us in the house learned a valuable lesson about blindness. Phone and door duty is often a demanding job. I found myself quite naturally falling into the role of assisting the person in charge of managing the folks coming in and out. This gave me the opportunity to develop some alternative techniques for getting the job done. For example, I learned very early on, because it was not possible for me to describe someone visually, I needed to have another method of identifying the people I was letting in. When a homeless person would come to the door and ask to be let in to grab a T-shirt, I would ask for his or her name. This practice also helped me to develop good relationships with the regulars who came through our doors. I found that people appreciate being called by name rather than being directed by a finger. Developing relationships of mutual respect with many of the regulars put both them and me at ease. Soon supervising the sorting room no longer seemed like an impossible feat. My biggest challenge was figuring out how to keep people from taking more items than they were permitted. When people are struggling to meet their most basic needs, they are often forced to try to survive by manipulating others. Some of our homeless friends have been known to get out of the door with eight pairs of socks instead of one. I found that, since I couldn't monitor with my eyes how many pairs of socks someone was taking, it was easier for me to hand them the socks myself. I also learned to listen for clues that would tell me if someone were trying to get out with an extra shirt or two such as a bag rustling too long or too many coat hangers being moved. I do not think these alternative techniques were entirely theft-proof. I am sure that some of our homeless friends sneaked out with an extra shirt or two. But it is an understood rule at the Open Door that our friends will leave the house with extra things. The key is not to let it be excessive. My alternative techniques worked, and after a few weeks I was entrusted with all of the responsibilities of phone-and-door duty. Phone-and-door duty was the most unpopular job among the resident interns. I hated doing it as much as anyone else. But being expected to do the job gave me a sense of satisfaction that ran much deeper than my hatred of performing the task. Being assigned to phone and door duty meant that I was needed. It meant that expectations of me were as high as they were for any other resident intern. And, perhaps most important, it meant that I got the chance to complain about how grueling the job was right along with my peers. Creating allies in our friends and associates is an essential component of achieving full participation. Befriending the other residents of the Open Door, as well as many of the homeless people we served, helped me in my struggle for equality. Many volunteers stopped by the Open Door at random to help us out. Coping with the negative attitudes of new people day in and day out was a difficult challenge for me last summer. My roommates and I used to joke that we had to hear the amazing-blind-person speech every time someone new walked through the door. On several occasions a new volunteer assumed that I was one of the people she was supposed to help. I found, however, that as those living in the house began to understand my struggle, they participated in helping me to educate the new folks. Every morning, after we served breakfast to the homeless, we would sit down with our own breakfast and reflect together on how the morning had gone. We learned many lessons about blindness during these reflection times. One morning I had been assigned to hand out tickets in the yard to those who wanted to come in for breakfast. A volunteer, who had just arrived the night before, shared in her reflection time that she was amazed that I could go out into the yard and hand out tickets. She said, "I am afraid to go out there, and I can see." We in the Federation know that the even-I compliment is no compliment at all, and I was preparing to give a little speech on the subject. Much to my surprise and delight, however, my housemates in the group picked up on the fallacy of her logic and called her on it. One man said, "It ain't got nothin' to do with sight. You're just scared of homeless people, and we've gotta help you with that." At that moment I felt like the teacher whose student had won the National Spelling Bee. Not only did my friends inside the house help me to educate people about blindness, but I found that my homeless friends also helped me to educate others in the neighborhood. I had one friend on the street who was particularly special to me. His street name is Bear. Bear is a crack addict and the most widely respected and feared person in the community. As one man put it, "Every homeless person and policeman in the city of Atlanta knows Bear." Bear has a gift for being brutally honest and is a champion for justice in his own way. Once a man who had a reputation for paying homeless workers illegal wages came into the yard and asked who wanted a job. Many of the men began begging him to let them work, and it was Bear who said, "Don't let that man take your dignity." It came as no surprise to me that Bear would help me in my struggle for equality. Bear became my good friend and helped me to educate others. When someone would make a nuisance of himself by trying to help me too much, I would politely try to manage the situation. But Bear did not believe in sugarcoating words. He would say in his gruff voice, "Shut up, she don't need no help." Bear disappeared for several weeks in July, and when I saw him again, he was excited to inform me that he had seen people from our National Convention downtown. I had told them all about the National Federation of the Blind and about our convention. "I saw all them people you were talking about downtown last week," he told me with glee. Bear and the other homeless people I befriended at the Open Door made this a summer I will cherish for years to come. I am grateful to all of my friends in the Federation who continue to push me to put our philosophy into daily practice. Let us all continue to put our hands and feet where the Federation has taken our minds. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Chris Weaver] New Computer Programs to Assist Blind Mathematicians by Christopher Weaver From the Editor: Chris Weaver is a sighted mathematician with a strong commitment to helping blind math students. He believes firmly in the Nemeth code for mathematics. I know him from his lively, informed, and sensible posts to the listserv sponsored by the National Association of Blind Students. Chris recently posted the following notice to that listserv and agreed to modify it slightly for publication in the Braille Monitor. The programs he describes will be of interest to anyone facing an upper-level math course. This is what he says: Here is a hopefully brief, readable description of our project. Several months ago I sent a previous draft to Curtis Chong, and he sent it back to me wanting the rewrite to be in English rather than Techno-Speak. So with much assistance from Kelly Burns of our staff, I have tried to make it more comprehensible. If this is either too technical or not technical enough, please ask questions. I am happy to answer anything. Our group is called Mathematics Accessible to Visually Impaired Students, MAVIS, for short. Sandy Geiger and I started as a pair of math teachers at New Mexico State University. We had a blind student in a class that we were co-teaching. Sadly, we could not provide her the same quality learning materials as we could our sighted students. Consequently, we started looking into developing software that could make our math curriculum accessible. After roping half of the Computer Science department; the National Science Foundation; and MacKichan Software, a local math software company, into our efforts, we have three accessibility programs in various stages of completion. The first is our scientific notebook to Nemeth code converter. MacKichan Software's Scientific Notebook is a high-quality, print math-editing program. It allows a user to write and save both text and math. When it prints out, the typesetting of the document is professional quality. Our converter can read the files that it saves and, from those, generate formatted Nemeth Code (Braille mathematics) which is ready to be printed on a Braille embosser (we use a Juliet). It can also be read on a refreshable Braille display. For this ability it won the 1999 International Conference on Technology and Collegiate Mathematics Award for Excellence and Ingenuity in the Use of Technology in Collegiate Mathematics. We are very proud of that award. Nevertheless, to ensure the best quality Braille, we are currently having Braillists test it for accuracy. A portion of it will be embedded in Duxbury sometime in the near future. MacKichan Software's Jack Medd made a significant enough contribution to the code of this converter that we consider him the author. Unfortunately, despite Jack and our best attempts, Scientific Notebook is not yet accessible, so blind users cannot use it to write print math. This left us with the question, "How can we make it easier for blind students to write print math?" We have two solutions. The first is our Nemeth code to print math converter. This program is not yet as finished as the scientific notebook to Nemeth code converter. This program is being developed by Gopal Gupta, Haifeng Guo, and me. It is not yet as finished as the Scientific Notebook to Nemeth Code Converter. However, it promises to allow users to write math on a Braille Lite or similar note-taker and then convert their writings to a Scientific Notebook file, which can be printed out on a laser printer. Users will have to use a very slightly altered version of Nemeth Code for the benefit of the computer, but the alterations will be minimal. One slight drawback of the program is that it does not leave much room for errors. That is, if you want it to work, you have to write good Nemeth Code or else get a not-very-helpful error message when you go to convert. We are working on that problem, though. Our third piece of software, in development by Arthur Karshmer and Josh Shagam, is our second attempt to make life easier for the blind mathematics writer with a sighted audience. We are attempting to make an audio math browser that could work in conjunction with a screen reader to make math editing packages like Scientific Notebook accessible. Our prototype gives users an overall view of the mathematics they are looking at and then lets them decide which details they want to study. Our research has shown that audio presentations of mathematics that don't allow users to select details at their own pace go in one ear and out the other. Our method allows users to go back over anything that they might have missed, much as they would with written mathematics. Also we provide sounds that give users hints about where they are within a mathematical expression. However, this software still needs much work. We also test other math access programs' innovations that we think might help blind readers and writers handle math. We are currently working with Duxbury, Oregon State University, Arizona State University, Metroplex Voice Computing, and others. If you are interested in more details, please write to me or call me. I will answer your questions as best I can. You can find me at Mathematics Accessible to Visually Impaired Students (MAVIS), New Mexico State University, Department of Mathematical Sciences MSC 3MB, P.O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003, Voice: (505) 646-2664, Fax: (505) 646-1064, e-mail: . We also have loads of information available on the World Wide Web at . The Universality of a Nuisance From the Editor: The Internet listserv conducted by the National Association of Blind Students serves as an open forum for discussing ideas, seeking advice, and relating experiences. The discussions are often intriguing and thought-provoking. In the portions of the three posts reprinted below students discuss how to apply NFB philosophy in developing countries. How does one apply the NFB's philosophy of confidence, competence, and independence when opportunity is almost nonexistent and skills training can't be had? Mariyam Cementwala is a board member of the National Association of Blind Students. She travels frequently to India, and some of her most recent observations there inspired the following discussion. Mike Freeman is First Vice President of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington. Brian Miller is Treasurer of the National Association of Blind Students. He is an experienced traveler and contributed his perspective and reflections to the discussion. Here is what they have to say: [PHOTO/CAPTION: Mariyam Cementwala] January 6, 2000 Mariyam Cementwala: At present I am in Bombay, India. As I talk to various blind people, I am faced with questions which I feel I cannot fairly answer because people here see me as privileged. In the U.S. we have the luxury of acquiring and using access technology, so the slate and stylus is just another tool that a blind person can use. In India and in most third-world countries, where no Department of Rehabilitation exists to buy blind people laptops, speech equipment, scanning software, or reading machines, the slate and stylus is the only tool a blind person uses. People do use Braille writers, but computer technology is more difficult to obtain. The affluent might have it--not the average blind person. We in the NFB would like to think that problems caused by misconceptions, negative attitudes, and negative stereotypes are universal. We believe that with proper training and opportunity blindness can be reduced to an inconvenience and a physical nuisance. How do I advocate this philosophy to a person whose only reader throughout his schooling has been his mother? When I asked why this person didn't hire a reader by placing an ad either in the newspaper or in a college publication, he said, "You forget that the average person who would apply for the position may not even correctly pronounce the A in apple." I asked about books on tape or Braille books. Books on tape are difficult to get and have very poor sound quality, and Braille books are not readily available. In India there are no chirping traffic lights. In fact I am occasionally shocked to find traffic lights at all. The roads are a free-for-all. Cars, rickshas, taxis, buses, trucks, bicycles, and people move simultaneously any which way they can. In the U.S. pedestrians almost always have the right of way. In India there are no white cane laws that I know of to protect blind people. If such laws exist, it is certain that no one adheres to them. There is no such thing as parallel and perpendicular traffic; everyone just goes when they feel like it. There are no sidewalks or pedestrian crossings. People walk on the same roads that cars drive on. How do I say to someone here that blind people should travel independently when I find it an adventure to cross the average street? The difference is that I cross the street because I come from an environment in which people believe in blind people. In a country where the average sighted person is trying to fend for himself and is usually failing, is it possible for the blind person who is not from an affluent family to succeed? Is it possible for the blind of India to adopt a philosophy such as ours when all of their lives they've been told that blindness is tragic? Is blindness tragic in the third world and not tragic in the U.S.? The overall question is whether the NFB's philosophy is universal, or does it work only in the U.S.? Regards, Mariyam [PHOTO/CAPTION: Mike Freeman] January 6, 2000 Mike Freeman: To begin with, Dr. Jernigan always said that we couldn't fairly judge the problems of the blind in other parts of the world, and we shouldn't judge the merits of the solutions to those problems propounded by the blind in other parts of the world. In other words, what works for the blind of the U.S. and Canada should not necessarily be expected to work and might not be ideal for the blind of Burkina Fasso, Bangladesh, or Byeloruss. As you've discovered, Mariyam, the blind in many parts of the world are subject to very different conditions from those we face in North America. What Dr. Jernigan was saying is that we should not willy-nilly apply NFB philosophy in excruciating detail to other parts of the world though in broad outline it still holds. Remember we say that, given training and opportunity, the average blind person can do the average job in the average place of business as well as his or her sighted colleagues. Most of the blind of the world lack opportunity, if not training. Are Americans privileged? Is the East backward regarding blindness? Yes on both counts. Euclid Herie delivered a speech titled "Children of Lesser Wives" at an NFB convention about a decade ago. It speaks to the attitudinal difficulties faced by the blind in the third world. Though these attitudinal barriers prove insurmountable for the average blind person, this doesn't negate the truth of the NFB's philosophy; but it does temper its application. Your discussion of traveling independently in Bombay is a good illustration of the applicability and limitations of NFB philosophy. Certainly it is far easier for a blind person to travel in the U.S, where cities and countryside have some semblance of order, than it is for blind people to travel in such places as Bombay. You asked how you could credibly advocate that blind people travel independently when even you found traveling to be an adventure. You answered your own question in the next sentence. You must instill a belief by the blind that they can travel independently. As you've discovered, this is more easily said than done. One final comment: in "Blindness: Concepts and Misconceptions," Dr. Jernigan tacitly addressed this question. He wrote that in primitive times seeing meant survival. Sight gave a survival edge, and it was an advantage to be able to handle or dodge a spear. Light was equated with good; absence of light meant increased risk. Blindness was equated with darkness, risk, and evil. Dr. Jernigan wrote that in the present, when there is no great premium in being able to dodge a spear, these disadvantages and antiquated notions of blindness no longer hold. Thus by implication modern civilization has made it easier for the blind. It is hard to argue with this notion. Although some blind people in third-world countries have always succeeded, the average blind person in the West has it far better and is far more able to function with minimal assistance. Thank you, Mariyam, for your provocative post. Mike Freeman [PHOTO/CAPTION: Brian Miller] January 7, 2000 Brian Miller: I have traveled throughout the developing world, including China, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and some other locations. I have always found a direct correlation between the level of resources a society has to expend and the attitudes towards blindness and other disabilities. The reality is that for the vast majority of human beings life is a constant struggle merely to survive. Nearly two billion human beings live at a level of bare subsistence, where meeting the daily requirements for food, shelter, and potable water requires unceasing effort. It is important to speak of good cane travel skills, but what good are they when no one obeys traffic signals, no sidewalks exist, and basic pedestrian safety is ignored by the sighted, let alone the blind? What good is it to talk about competence on the part of the blind when given an opportunity, when even the sighted have no such opportunities? Our NFB history is a short one: a mere sixty years out of millennia of human history. However, despite the seeming bubble phenomenon, the most important component of NFB philosophy can stand apart from the burden of social and economic resources. I refer to proper attitude. We must start with the basic assumption that blind human beings have value, have worth, and can have meaningful lives despite limited resources. In some ways the lack of opportunity for all people in the developing nations is a great leveler. One can easily see how close to the margin of existence all humans live in places like Bombay. It is abundantly clear that human beings, blind or sighted, are fragile creatures. Dr. Jernigan told us the story of Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate of the Bow Street Court in London in the latter eighteenth century. Did Fielding have computers with speech? Did he have Braille? Did he have a telescoping cane? Were there traffic lights with regulated signals that directed the carriages and pedestrians alike? Of course not, but he still made a difference in his community, in his life, and in history. We have to start internally, keep it simple, keep it meaningful. We can't export all of our techniques, but we can export attitude. We can liberate the blind from the historic notions of blindness as a curse or divine retribution. Yours, Brian Miller [PHOTO/CAPTION: Ruby Polk] The National Center: A First-Time View by Ruby Polk From the Editor: Ruby Polk is Vice President of the St. Louis Chapter of the NFB of Missouri. She had always wanted to visit the National Center for the Blind since it is the headquarters of the organization she loves. Last fall she and her husband decided the time had come to make her dream come true. What follows is her story of that visit to the building that belongs to every Federationist. Her article first appeared in the Winter, 2000, issue of the Blind Missourian, the publication of the NFB of Missouri. This is what she says: What a thrill it was to see the National Center for the Blind for the first time. It was more awesome than I ever expected. My husband Larry and I planned to visit the National Center on November 11, 1999. We called three weeks before our departure and spoke to Ms. Patricia Maurer, who was more than happy to make us an appointment. With directions from Sandy Halverson, our Chapter President, we arrived at the National Center in Baltimore an hour early. From outside I used my cell phone and was connected with Aloma Bouma, who said she was expecting us because of our appointment, but she also said that she had received a telephone call from her friend and mine Sheila Wright to let her know personally that we were arriving. Ms. Bouma asked us to come right in so that we could start our tour. What a nice welcome! The building was quite accessible and pleasant. Upon entering, we turned left to the elevator, which took us to the fourth floor. Ms. Bouma welcomed us heartily and offered to show us anything we wanted to see. I first noticed that I was standing on a beautifully crafted marble floor. Ms. Bouma explained that the entire National Center had been renovated and that this marble floor was part of the exquisite workmanship. Portraits of Dr. Jacobus tenBroek, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, and Dr. Marc Maurer, with plaques indicating when they served as NFB presidents, hung in the reception area. I discovered that a reception and dinner in celebration of Newsline(r) for the Blind was to be held that very evening with 300 guests invited. So this was a very busy day for the National Office staff, preparing for all those guests. Ms. Bouma said we would be able to see how everyone on the staff came together to work toward a common goal. We started our tour of the Center with Curtis Chong, Director of the Technology Department, and Richard Ring, who runs the International Braille and Technology Center. Mr. Chong showed us all the equipment I was interested in. Mr. Chong even used his very own brand new twenty-dollar bill to demonstrate the Openbook scanning program. How nice it was to see all the newest technology under one roof. We went next to the Materials Center. I purchased a slate and a talking pedometer to use when I exercised. Also I bought a support cane for one of our chapter members who is ninety-two years old. Then we visited the Harbor Room, which has a six-foot-wide fireplace with a twelve-foot mantel. In that comfortable room guests can eat, visit, and relax. The exercise room, a brainchild of Dr. Jernigan, is full of all kinds of fitness equipment for the use of guests and the staff. The magnificent 5,000-square-foot deck was being enclosed and heated for the NEWSLINE(r) Night guests to enjoy a little later. The comfortable National Center conference room, with Braille books on every wall from floor to ceiling, also displayed a hands-on model of the new National Research and Training Institute to be built when we complete our capital campaign. The room measures forty by forty feet and has a large U-shaped conference table in its center with thirty-seven padded swivel chairs drawn up around it. The 120-by-70-foot Records Center houses all the files and other records of the NFB. This is where the history of the Federation is located. The book Walking Alone and Marching Together, which many of us have read, was mostly researched with the resources in this room. President Marc Maurer and Barbara Pierce, Editor of the Braille Monitor, were not available, but we did get to meet Craig Gildner, the voice of both the Braille Monitor and the Voice of the Diabetic. We also ran into Kris Cox, who spoke to a visitor from Brazil in our tour group in fluent Portuguese. That was a nice surprise for all of us. All the other staff members who greeted us along the way were informative and friendly. After viewing the spacious and gleaming kitchens amid all the hustle and bustle of preparations for NEWSLINE(r) Night, I was able to understand how three hundred guests would be superbly accommodated that evening. At last we looked at the fifty-two framed charters placed side by side alphabetically down a long hall. Each state name was displayed in Braille. I found the one for Missouri. It was wonderful to read the large framed charters stretching down the hallway. There was nothing, according to Ms. Bouma, that I could not examine by touch. That was important to me as a blind person. My visit to the National Center has given me a greater understanding of how local chapters and State Affiliates cooperate with the National Office to advance positive attitudes about blindness in the United States and throughout the world. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Tom Bickford] Mowing the Lawn by Thomas Bickford From the Editor: Tom Bickford is a frequent contributor to these pages. He takes his Federationism seriously. Here he talks about mowing the lawn. This is what he says: When I was ten years old, I didn't care who mowed the lawn as long as it was someone else. My parents had a different idea about it, so I pushed the lawn mower around and cut the grass. Yes, that was in the days of the boy-powered lawn mower, and I felt very much "put upon." After all, I had two older sisters living at home, but that was before the days of women's liberation. When I was thirteen, we lived in a different house with a bigger lawn, and, even though I got paid, I discovered too late that I had underestimated the price I should have asked. Result: bad feelings. Blindness came along in my late teens. Now that I am the home owner and feel some pride in home ownership and the appearance of the yard, things are different. For too many years I didn't think I could really do the job because I was blind. Then I went to my NFB state convention and heard Fred Schroeder tell about his experiences mowing his lawn as a blind man. It was a good story; he told it well; and I knew I had run out of excuses. At this writing several years later, Fred Schroeder is the Federal Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration. Yes, some people, blind or sighted, cut their own grass, and some people, blind or sighted, get someone else to cut their grass, but I decided that my time had come. The principle of mowing the lawn is quite simple: cut a swath. Move over, and cut another swath. Keep doing that until the job is done. With some practice you can learn how far to move without either cutting the same space again or leaving some grass uncut. Anytime I am in doubt, I hold the mower with one hand to keep the engine running and lean over to feel the area I think I have just cut. If there is tall grass that I missed, the only thing to do is to move back and make another pass at it, feel again for assurance, and then go on. The most efficient approach would be to cut long, straight strips which waste less time in turning around. My trouble is that I don't walk straight for more than six or eight steps while pushing a mower over slightly uneven ground. The grass between the sidewalk and curb is just right, ten feet wide and level. That is the easy part. The hard part is all the rest of it, about five thousand square feet. That is a moderate amount by suburban standards. The thing that makes the rest of the lawn hard is this. Even though the lot, the house, and all the areas covered by concrete are rectangular, there is a moderate hill along one side, and the house is set at an angle on the lot. In spite of all the straight lines, the lawn area has a very irregular shape. As you might expect, there are trees, flower gardens, and other things to bump into or avoid. I deliberately bump into trees and cut past them from all directions; then I put one hand on the tree and walk backward around it while pulling the mower as close to the tree as possible. There is a plastic strip marking the edge of the flower gardens which serves two purposes. It helps to keep the grass from invading the garden area, and I find that I can slide one foot along the strip as I walk backward while pulling the mower. With the first pass up against the plastic strip and the next pass a little farther out as I hold the mower by the corner of the handle, I have enough space to stand while I cut straight away from the garden. In case you wonder about my walking backward, I find that I am leading the mower when I go backward and can direct it better that way. Since I have a corner lot at the intersection of two streets, I have plenty of straight edge along the sidewalk to use as a straight starting edge. I can tell by feel if the two front wheels of the mower are going onto the grass at the same time. Then, as my feet come to the edge of the grass, I check again to make sure I am facing straight in. I walk in six or eight steps and back out as straight as I can. Sometimes I do move over a bit and try to cut some new grass on the way back, but I know I may be missing something, so I lean over and check the cut. Fortunately for me I can reach all the areas of the lawn by going in six or eight steps from each of the borders. The hill is the worst part, so I get plenty of exercise by going straight up and holding the mower as I back down. How do I know where I am? I first learned the shape of the yard while raking leaves in the fall. Raking covers the same area as mowing. I can hear the rustle of the leaves and feel the pull of the leaves against the rake, but it is not quite as critical in spacing as mowing is. With the lawn mower the grass must be very high for me to hear the swish of the grass as it is cut, but listening over the roar of the mower engine is one of the least efficient ways to know what I am cutting. One of the things I learned about moving over at the inner end of a cut is that, when I turn to move, I usually leave a small area right at the corner between the two cuts, so I angle back, go forward to be sure that the cut is square at the top, and then back out. When I am finished, or think I am, I usually walk along the more critical areas while leaning over to feel for spots I may have missed. I also usually have a sighted critic, my wife, check for spots I have missed. If I really did miss some small area and I didn't know about it, the worst thing that could happen is that it would keep growing until the next time. I think I would be unlikely to miss the same spot twice in a row. I am sure by now you have decided that some of my techniques would not work well for you, and you may even have thought of some others of your own that would work on your lawn. Happy lawn mowing. The New Impressionists by Blake Gopnik From the Editor: The following article first appeared in Toronto's The Globe and Mail, on Monday, April 17, 2000. Those interested in the psychology of perception or who have an interest in art will find it particularly intriguing. Here it is: A few years back some waggish art-history students were looking for a mascot for their departmental association. With much hilarity--a laugh a minute, we art historians--they settled on Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, a less-than-celebrated sixteenth-century critic and theorist. The joke? Lomazzo wasn't always right-on about art. What with him being blind and all. But turns out now the joke may be on them. John Kennedy, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, is busy showing that paying close attention to the blind may tell us a whole lot about art after all. Over three decades of experiments the Irish-born scientist has shown that the blind can make and understand pictures in ways that no one had imagined. And that fact forces us to rethink many of our preconceptions about representational art in general. "We can do an awful lot more with senses that we regarded as being limited," explained Kennedy, an inveterate enthusiast whose gift of the gab confirms his place of birth. "You'd have to be intellectually dead not to be excited by the idea that we may have thought about representation in much too limited a way for much too long." Kennedy's excitement about his research seems to be spreading to the broader academic community. In 1993 Yale University Press published his seminal book, Drawings and the Blind. Right now Oxford University Press is releasing an entire volume of original essays on the subject--including one by Kennedy, a pioneer in the fast-growing field. (Full disclosure: I became a Kennedyite some years ago when I was the token art historian in a research group of his.) If we tend to think of pictures as eye candy, it isn't hard to make them finger food as well. Take a sheet of plastic, set it on a soft support, draw on it with a ballpoint pen, and any lines you make turn into little ridges just ready to be explored by the fingers of the blind. Or better yet, give them the pen, and they'll make pictures just about anyone--sighted or blind--is likely to recognize, by sight or feel. A credible cat, a man standing or lying down, a water glass, a chair, a bathtub--all produced by blind people who've never looked at those things in their lives, who've certainly never seen a drawing or touched or drawn one before. Within a few minutes of taking up the pen, a person who has grown up without sight can move from the skills of a two- or three-year-old to the skills of a kindergarten kid, to those of a grade-schooler, even, for those with a special knack, to junior-high-school level. Their pictures may not seem impressive works of art, but when you think that they were made entirely by touch and show a world only ever known by feel, they become a minor miracle. Meeting me for lunch at the Art Gallery of Ontario--frequent field trips take the scientist out of the lab and into museums--Kennedy, a sprightly fifty-seven-year-old with a mustache and antic eyes, waxed eloquent about the many and varied implications of his work. "It always seemed that [pictures] should be anchored in vision, and that all our thoughts about them should be about them as visual matters." For generations of scholars and theorists--including Kennedy, who got his start at Cornell under the great perceptual psychologists James and Eleanor Gibson--the psychology of vision seemed the obvious place to go to figure out how pictures work. "What we're learning from the blind is that that's only half the story. Vision may be a route into the part of the brain that understands pictures, but it isn't the only route. . . . It seems that another road that leads to the center that understands pictures can be touch." Of course, like the sighted, not all blind people are particularly interested in the images that tickle that center. But when they are, there's no stopping them. One evening awhile ago Kennedy went to test a man. His subject began by pointing out what seemed like a no-brainer--"I can't draw. I'm blind"--and then spent two hours immersed in drawing. "My God, I can do it." At 9 p.m., when Kennedy suggested calling it a night, the man asked for more time. When 11 p.m. rolled around, he still wasn't ready to stop. "At 1 o'clock in the morning, he was willing to let us go," laughed Kennedy. Seems that a fascination with pictures may just be so natural, you'd have to be more than blind not to see it. And that is one of the crucial findings of Kennedy's research. Over the years various skeptics and relativists have tried to argue that realistic pictures are as artificial as, say, the shapes of the alphabet, and that culture--especially Western, imperialist culture--teaches us to use and understand pictures the way it teaches us that ketchup goes with fries. But Kennedy's work is the final nail in the coffin for such improbable conceits. "If a blind person who has not had a picture in their life before . . . produces a picture for the first time when we say, `Take up thy pen, and draw,' then that says whatever they're producing--if it's immediately recognizable to other blind people and to sighted people--is not arbitrary. It's a fundamental universal of perception and cognition." Picture-making isn't some artificial invention of oversophisticated elites. It ties right in to the deepest parts of the human brain--to a place so deep, in fact, that it's equally accessible to both sight and touch. And when we find out something's wired that hard and deep in the brain, we shouldn't be surprised that people get pleasure from fooling around with it--that they like exploring pictures and making them. One of the reasons we like representational art so much--and have since at least the days of our cave-decorator ancestors--is that we don't have to learn to grasp its basic content the way we do with texts or many other symbol systems. Images hit us "where we live, right away, intuitively, implicitly. . . . I've seen people look at pictures, and tears came to their eyes immediately." But the other reason we like it so much is that, no matter how automatically we all may get the subject of a realistic picture, it took hard, rewarding work for our ancestors to become really good at making them. (Whether artists should still win kudos for simply using those ancient inventions is another matter.) By studying the blind, Kennedy can watch the learning about picture-making that the sighted spread out over decades and that cultures spread out over centuries happen overnight. "I've seen blind people who begin to enjoy drawing coming up with systems, then discarding them and inventing a better system. I have seen one person move dramatically from 'I'm just showing the front of an object' to 'I'm showing foreshortening,' which is generally five or six years later in sighted people." That some blind people can actually understand the basic principles of foreshortening and perspective and even begin to apply them spontaneously in their drawings is one of Kennedy's most flabbergasting discoveries. One blind man called Ray made a picture of a table with its four legs splayed out, as though looming forward at the viewer, and the tabletop between them smaller, as though farther away. "He said expressly, 'This is from underneath.' And then he said, 'I'll give you another drawing,' and he drew it from up above. And then only the rectangle of the top was shown--no legs, he said, 'because the legs are hidden behind.' I realized that this man understands how to use a vantage point in a drawing." On the one hand this is extraordinary. Perspective--the set of precise rules that tell us how to draw nearby things larger than what's far away--is the ultimate tool for making realistic pictures, but it was invented only once, in Renaissance Italy. "Everybody gets it from them," said Kennedy. So you might expect it to be the last thing blind people would ever come up with on their own. On the other hand, the reason perspective works so well--and the reason many cultures have come up with informal versions of it--is that it capitalizes on our most basic understanding of where things are in the world around us and how they relate to where we are. "It's about the direction of parts," said Kennedy, explaining his crucial insight. "And that's not something inherently visual." For the sighted vision simply discovers the same things about the world that touch reveals to the blind. "Blind people understand a lot about the directions of objects in the world. They often have to judge where they are with respect to objects as they move around in the world and change their vantage points." A blind person who didn't have a rich idea about the way the world's laid out, and how things change around them as they move through it, would be permanently chair-bound. And that's something Kennedy is keen to help prevent. Kennedy's work with blind people started as an offshoot of his work on pictures by and for the sighted. But years of working with the blind and spelling out how rich their vision really is have made him something of an activist. The old idea that training for the blind should be about protecting them from the world has to give way to helping them explore it to the full. Giving them the chance to make and read pictures can have a part in this exploration, just as it does for the sighted. "Many of the blind people that I've been asking to participate in my experiments have then said to me, 'I would like to show you something,' and have taken the materials for making raised-line drawings and made drawings of subjects I would never have dared ask them to draw." One blind woman, having just discovered drawings, lamented the lack of picture books in her own childhood and asked for drawing materials so she could try her hand at making some for the next generation. "I remember one blind man who said 'This is wonderful. I've always wanted to make drawings. But people told me I was blind, and I couldn't do it. But I can do it.'" Only give them the chance to explore the magic of pictures and, like sighted people everywhere, the blind will jump at it. "Many blind people are very proud of the fact that they can get on the TTC, go to Pearson Airport, get onto Air Canada, fly to a foreign city, make their way around, use tactile maps, get tactile diagrams and pictures of things, go to seek things out. Go to art galleries, knock on the door, and say `I want to know what's in here.' Go to museums, and say, `Lemme know which things here I can grasp, and which things are too fragile and too precious for people to put their fingers on. I'm interested. I want to know about these things.'" [PHOTO/CAPTION: Lisa Mauldin] Gelding the Bull or Shoveling the Manure... It just Depends on your Perspective by Lisa LaNell Mauldin From the Editor: Lisa Mauldin is a Federationist who lives in Alabama. On April 6 she read an editorial in New York Newsday which annoyed her. She undertook a good deal of research before sitting down to respond. She first sent her article to the paper, inviting the editorial staff to use it as an op-ed piece, but to date New York Newsday has exhibited no interest in setting the record straight. Lisa then circulated her response to a number of listservs, and the Web site posted it almost immediately. Here it is as it was posted: One of the hottest topics inside the Beltway of our nation's capital these days is the digital divide. A techno-term created with the advent of the Internet, digital divide describes the ever-widening chasm that exists between the Internet access haves and have nots. As the debate becomes more heated, the access issue--like so many others--has fallen victim to the great legislation versus free-enterprise tug-of-war, which has colored our political palette from the beginning of time and shows no sign of dissipating any time soon. The firestorm surrounding this issue got a little hotter last week, however, as the anti-legislation army launched a major offensive through a newspaper article to which I would like to respond. The article in question was entitled "Federal Gorilla Is Loose in Silicon Valley," which appeared in the April 6, 2000, edition of the New York Newsday, (notes 1 & 2) written by staff columnist James P. Pinkerton (note 3.) Mr. Pinkerton begins by discussing the Microsoft verdict and its resulting proliferation of federal regulation (in his opinion) of computer and Internet companies. While this matter will no doubt be discussed for years in the hallowed, ivy-covered halls of business and law schools, as well as the mahogany-paneled board rooms of international conglomerates, I will move on to other issues, but not before I make one observation, the importance of which will become clear later. Mr. Pinkerton characterizes the federal government's activities both in the Microsoft matter and throughout the rest of Silicon Valley as "gratuitous meddling." In the meantime let's look at Mr. Pinkerton's position on federal legislation of Internet access for people with disabilities through Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Citing it as an issue that has the potential to "geld the bull market" (referring to the NASDAQ composite upon which most technology stocks are listed) Mr. Pinkerton opens his debate about Section 508 with these words: "Consider just one item: Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998. It requires federal agencies to make sure that the electronic technology they use is equally accessible to employees with disabilities. In addition, it requires that members of the public with disabilities have equal access to public information." Mr. Pinkerton goes on to add: "That sounds reasonable, but what about blind employees and computers--and the Internet? Or blind members of the public? How does one go about making the so-called graphical user interface accessible to those who can't see graphics?" It would appear that Mr. Pinkerton might have pulled a Rip Van Winkle, for his question about how one goes about making the GUI accessible to people who are blind raises the inescapable inquiry, "Where has he been for the past twenty years?" Mr. Pinkerton is asking a question that the disability technology community has already resoundingly answered. Blind people have been using screen-reading software to access not only the Internet but off-the-shelf e-mail, word processing, spread-sheet, and database software (just to name a few) for years now. At this point the article takes a nasty turn as Mr. Pinkerton appeals to the destructive attitude of racism, employing the see-how-you-got-taken? strategy as he gives the reader his historical perspective on civil rights enforcement. "But history suggests that civil rights enforcement starts small, grows big, and then grows burdensome. That process usually begins with Washington setting model standards, then rippling them out across society." Burdensome? Civil rights? To whom? ...only to those card-carrying members of the ruling class whose absolute power is somehow threatened by the equality of others? Color me enlightened. The reader will be comforted to know that Mr. Pinkerton goes on to cite the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission during World War II and its use by the federal government as a springboard to bring about racial integration and anti-discrimination laws as his supporting argument for "burdensome." Having dispensed his racial views, Mr. Pinkerton demonstrates that he is an equal opportunity discriminator, moving on to address people who are blind. "But it's one thing to argue that people of equal abilities ought to enjoy equal opportunity; it's quite another to argue that those who can't see must somehow be empowered to use an inherently visual medium." Blind individuals are not asking to be "empowered" to drive or perform brain surgery, but rather that Internet Web site developers use the well-documented Web Content Accessibility Guidelines created by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C - note 4) in the design phase so that blind "individuals with equal abilities can enjoy equal opportunities"--guidelines, I might add, that would benefit non-disabled Internet users as well. Section 508 and other legislation does not mandate that a solution be created but rather that demonstrated models of success be used and supported. Mr. Pinkerton would be shocked (apparently) to know that the Information Technology industry employs many blind people, who work in all facets of the business--even as Web-site developers. (You really should get out more, James.) In addition, the federal government is also a large employer of people with disabilities, including blind people. Is he now suggesting that blind employees are not entitled to the same access to information necessary to perform their jobs as their sighted counterparts? Even more ironic to me is the fact that he could ask such a question in such a prominent daily publication. Unfortunately, this disturbing development is a clear indication of just how pervasive and politically correct discrimination against people with disabilities has become in our society. Have we really forgotten this tone so quickly? If Mr. Pinkerton were asking, "But it's one thing to argue that people of equal abilities ought to enjoy equal opportunity; it's quite another to argue that those who are African-American must somehow be empowered to use an inherently white medium," the expression of outrage--African-American and white alike--would be overwhelming, and I would question if his inflammatory rhetoric would even have been printed in such a mainstream publication as New York Newsday. Finally we get down to the ultimate purpose for Mr. Pinkerton's article. (Pay close attention here. things are about to get political.) Mr. Pinkerton now quotes Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who asserts that, if these standards are ever enforced, "hundreds of millions of Web pages would have to be torn down." Walter Olson must be the foremost authority on the Internet and accessibility for people with disabilities, wouldn't you think? I mean, after all, based on the concise and authoritative statements made here, one gets the distinct impression that he would surely know best. I certainly did. So I went in search of answers. Well, according to the Bio page on the Walter Olson Home Page (note 5), he is...are you sitting down?...an attorney. And not just an attorney, but an attorney with an agenda. Investor's Business Daily called Olson "Perhaps America's leading authority on over-litigation" and the Washington Post dubbed Olson an "intellectual guru of tort reform." Olson has authored two books: The Litigation Explosion (reviewed favorably in the New York Times by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger) and The Excuse Factory, his book on litigation in the workplace, which has received rave reviews (A.B.A. Journal, "wittily scathing" and The American Spectator, "devastating and eloquent"). Do we detect a pattern yet? Hang on; it gets better. Mr. Olson is the Senior Fellow for the Manhattan Institute (note 6) which describes itself as "a think tank whose mission is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility,"..."an important force in shaping American political culture." How, might you ask, is this lofty goal accomplished? In their own words (note 7) "We have cultivated a staff of senior fellows and writers who blend intellectual rigor, sound principles, and strong writing ability. Their provocative books, reviews, interviews, speeches, articles, and op-ed pieces have been the main vehicle for communicating our message." Yes, it's true. Walter Olson is hardly an expert on Internet accessibility for people with disabilities, but rather he is an unashamed, "cultivated" mouthpiece for a conservative Manhattan think tank seeking to shape our government's public policy according to their own principles and standards. (Walks like a lobbyist, talks like a lobbyist...) I have no problem with that--that's the way our system works, but for Mr. Pinkerton to base a majority of his article on the propaganda of one individual representing a special interest group without clearly identifying his agenda is...well, I'll let you be the judge. It is true that Pinkerton mentions "Senior Fellow...conservative think tank Manhattan Institute," but this hardly constitutes full disclosure of the wide-ranging scope of Olson's underlying bias. Finally, Mr. Pinkerton sinks to the lowest point in his article, resorting to the tactic of presenting examples of abuses (in his opinion) of the Americans with Disabilities Act that can only be described as extreme and isolated circumstances as widespread and commonplace. Again the writer returns to his favorite source--his only source--Walter Olson, since this same example has been used by Olson repeatedly to support his position against Internet legislation (note 8). Citing a February Miami Daily Business Review article (which is actually a December 21, 1999, article - note 9), Pinkerton "suggests" that ADA lawsuits have reached epidemic proportions and represent a real threat to life as we know it. (Oh brother!) Let's take a rational look at the situation in question. The Review article opens with, "South Florida businesses big and small are under siege from a handful of litigious advocates for the disabled...." It goes on to say, "Plaintiffs, including a half-dozen non-profit corporations and associated individuals, have filed more than 600 federal suits in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach." Who are these plaintiffs? Again from the Miami article, "Nearly all those cases, generally brought by a few disabled people acting as surrogates for others..." and "At the forefront of this legal assault is a six-lawyer Miami Beach law firm, Fuller Mallah & Associates. Since May, 1998, state records show Fuller Mallah helped form a trio of nonprofit companies in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties respectively, the Alliance for ADA Compliance, Inc.; Advocates for the Disabled, Inc.; and the Boca Access Group. Today those nonprofits are plaintiffs in more than 300 ADA cases in South Florida. Advocates for the Disabled brought 276 of those cases." According to the article, "Advocates for the Disabled was originally incorporated by Ernst Rosenkrantz, seventy-two, of Miami Beach." The writer goes on to say of Rosenkrantz, "He is also a plaintiff in 323 cases, some in league with Advocates for Disabled. The Fuller Mallah law firm represents both Advocates for the Disabled and Rosenkrantz, a retired architect who has been confined to a wheelchair for fifty-three years." As it turns out, attorney John D. Mallah is Rosenkrantz's nephew. Handful? Half dozen? A few disabled people? One six-lawyer law firm? A trio of non-profits? One seventy-two-year-old man and his nephew? Surely Olson and Pinkerton are not holding up this tightly-knit group--for all practical purposes to be considered as a single entity--as their proof of widespread over-litifgation? It is widely held that there are about fifty-four million people with disabilities in the United States, and they are suggesting that this one example of seemingly bad behavior on the part of less than twenty individuals constitutes an epidemic? Talk about scare tactics. Using the high end of his figures ($20,000 per settlement) times even a ten fold exaggeration of 6,000 lawsuits, we have arrived at the grand total of $12 million. That wouldn't even pay one decent professional basketball player for a single year or a high-flying dot-com CEO (not including perks and benefits). For both Olson and Pinkerton even to hint that in the mind of every disabled person lies a lawsuit waiting to get out, as well as to raise the issue that maybe our society just can't afford accessibility, is irresponsible at best and outright deception at worst. While everyone is examining the bottom line, let's consider what it costs to support people with disabilities using tax dollars. With estimates for the blind population of the U.S. around 1.1 million and their unemployment figures estimated to be about 74 percent, that leaves 814,000 blind and visually impaired individuals without jobs. Figure conservatively that only half of that number collect some kind of SSI or SSDI benefit and that that benefit includes a monthly check for $500 (again conservatively), the U.S. tax-paying citizen is shelling out $203.5 million per month in cash benefits (not including Medicare and Medicaid.) That's $203,500,000, and that is only for people who are blind, making no consideration for people with any other kind of disability. And Pinkerton says we can't afford the Americans with Disabilities Act? Now that we have a pretty clear understanding of Olson's and Pinkerton's political affiliation, you may be more than a little surprised to learn that I, too, profess ultra-conservative political views, even going so far as to consider myself a civil libertarian, as do both of these gentlemen. Back in the beginning of this article, I told you that Mr. Pinkerton believed that the government's actions against Microsoft were unwarranted, and I have to confess that--at many levels--I too believe that to be true. I do not believe that the solution to every problem lies in federal legislation, and I too am a huge proponent of individual responsibility. However, unlike Mr. Olson and Mr. Pinkerton, I cannot afford to advocate for lofty ideals which are not practical in the real world. I guess it would be fair to say that what separates my civil libertarian views from theirs is the scope. I believe that civil liberties should be extended to include people with disabilities, while apparently they do not. The purist civil libertarian viewpoint says that accessibility should be voluntary, leaving the market to find and implement appropriate solutions. This sounds good in a political debate or as the topic of rousing dinner party conversation among individuals who have never experienced firsthand the devastating effects of discrimination, but when all is said and done--unlike Olson and Pinkerton--I have to live my personal politics and principles day in and day out in a reality that bears little or no resemblance to theirs. I am blind. I have been around the block enough times to know that in a market-driven society concerned almost exclusively with stock prices and shareholders, doing the right thing isn't always at the top of everyone's list. In fact, oftentimes it doesn't make the list at all. Had society in general been willing to do the right thing in the first place, the Americans with Disabilities Act--celebrating its tenth anniversary this year--would never have been necessary. The reality is that--like racial integration--Internet access to people with disabilities isn't going to happen by itself, and--like racial segregation--denial or delay of access has profound and nearly irrevocable consequences on the educational and economic opportunities available to people with disabilities. Walter Olson recently testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Judiciary Committee in a February 9, 2000, hearing on "The Applicability of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to Private Internet Sites" (note 10), where he argued that the government should not mandate that the Internet be made accessible to people with disabilities because in his opinion such action would limit or stifle that which may be enjoyed by other Internet consumers. In effect he was suggesting that it was okay to trample on the civil rights of one group in order to ensure that the privileges of another group would not be denied. If you're older than thirty, this attitude should sound very familiar. It wasn't all that long ago that segregationists argued that integration of our public schools would infringe upon the quality of education for white children and that integration of the work place would take jobs away from white workers, thereby justifying the continued educational and economic oppression of African-Americans because to do otherwise just wasn't convenient for the white establishment. Have we as a nation forgotten this so quickly? In closing let me say that reading Pinkerton's article reminded me of our old family home movies. Within the flash of a single frame the screen would switch from scenes of us sledding down the neighbor's steep front yard to building sand castles on the beach, from hunting for Easter eggs in our back yard to cutting the Thanksgiving turkey, from opening our Christmas presents to Mother's Day Sunday dinner. He jumped from disjointed subject to unrelated concept in the blink of an eye, and to follow his misguided logic from the Microsoft verdict to the Americans with Disabilities Act required some serious imagination. In the end my greatest regret is that many who read Pinkerton's flight of fancy will take it as gospel, never fully understanding the load of manure they have been dealt, and ultimately, the only ones who will pay for Pinkerton's actions are people with disabilities, who only want a chance to pursue our share of the American Dream. Is that too much to ask? Apparently Mr. Pinkerton thinks so. (note 11) (Author's Note: Every single Web site I referenced in researching this article--including the article itself--was fully accessible to me with no trouble whatsoever. I guess here are at least ten Web pages out of the "hundreds of millions" that won't have to be "torn down" in order to comply with emerging federal access legislation. Special thanks to Gregg and Kelly for technical and editorial advice and insights without which this article would not have been possible. My e-mail address is . Note 1: Newsday "Federal Gorilla Loose in Silicon Valley" Note 2: For the print-dependent, Thursday, April 6, 2000, Page A 49 Note 3: James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address is . Note 4: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Note 5: Bio Note 6: Manhattan Institute Note 7: About the Manhattan Institute Note 8: Olson on South Florida ADA Lawsuits Note 9: "Besieged by Suits" Note 10: Testimony Presented to Subcommittee on Constitution Note 11: Lisa LaNell Mauldin's e-mail address is . [PHOTO/CAPTION: Michael Baillif] A Fundamental Lesson by Michael Baillif From the Editor: Michael Baillif was a 1984 NFB scholarship winner. He had just graduated from high school. Even then it was clear that with the help of the NFB he was going places. Michael graduated from Claremont McKenna College, used a Watson Fellowship to travel around Europe, received his J.D. from Yale Law School, and earned an LLM at Georgetown. Today he is back in Washington, D.C., having been hired away from the New York law firm mentioned below. Michael and Lynn Mattioli, a 1987 NFB scholarship winner, were married on June 3 this year. The following story appeared in Reflecting the Flame, the seventeenth in the NFB's Kernel Book series of paperbacks. It begins with President Maurer's introduction. Here it is: Michael Baillif is a past President of the Student Division of the National Federation of the Blind. He is an up and coming New York lawyer and a Yankees fan, and he doesn't let blindness get in his way--not, at least, when he can help it. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way. In "A Fundamental Lesson" Michael shares with us an incident that started out wrong and ended up right. Here is what he has to say: I first arrived at my new apartment in New York City one evening last summer around midnight. The doorman, a hard-boiled seventy-year-old New Yorker named Leno, was somewhat taken aback to see, emerging from a taxicab at that late hour, a blind man laboring under the weight of several suitcases. That night, and for several days thereafter, Leno was constantly over-helpful, being quite concerned with the numerous disasters that could conceivably have befallen me in the lobby of the apartment building. After awhile, however, when I didn't tumble down the stairs or set off any fire alarms, the novelty of my blindness wore off. Before long we were talking of the weather, the Yankees, and Leno's children in Florida as I traversed the lobby of the apartment building on my way to and from work or recreation. Blindness soon ceased to be an issue in Leno's mind, so we never discussed it. We were both more interested in whether or not the Yankees, who were playing great fundamental baseball and getting all the little things right, would set the record for winning the most ball games in a single season. Although I would have been happy enough to engage in a conversation regarding blindness, the topic just didn't come up. One evening, after I had been living in the apartment building for a few weeks, I was returning from the theater in the company of a young lady I particularly wanted to impress. You can imagine my chagrin, therefore, when, upon pulling up in front of the apartment building, our taxi driver refused to accept any money for the cab ride. Now, if I had been short on funds, I might have been thankful for the gesture. Or, if the cabbie had offered money to be put toward the programs of the National Federation of the Blind to help all blind people, I would have been deeply appreciative. But in this case I had received a service for which I wanted to pay the going rate. Being fortunate enough to have a good job, I wanted to pay my fair share; that's what equality is all about. Besides, all philosophy aside, there was still the matter of this date on whom I wanted to make a good impression. Regardless of my protestations, however, the cab driver remained unwilling to take my money. There we were, standing out in front of the apartment building--he saying, "No money. No money," and me responding, "No, really. I want to pay." At this point Leno emerged from the apartment building and approached us saying, "Hey, what's going on out here? What's this about?" My first reaction was, "Oh, no. Now Leno's going to get involved. There'll be an even bigger scene, and I'm going to have to deal with him as well. He's going to want me just to let the cabbie drive off without payment." But, much to my surprise and delight, Leno accosted the cabbie and said, "Hey, that's not the way we do things around here." Pointing to me, he said, "He likes to pay and be treated just like anyone else. So you let him pay. He's the boss." The cab driver wilted under Leno's onslaught and relented, finally accepting my cab fare. As we walked into the apartment building, I thanked Leno profusely for coming to my aid and marveled to myself at the understanding of blindness he had acquired from somewhere in only a few weeks. This thought sparked in me a minor revelation. Using me as his vehicle for observation, Leno had quickly learned a great deal about blindness without my ever having had the intention, or even awareness, of teaching any lessons. Luckily, however, Leno, like the Yankees, had mastered the fundamentals and proved to be a champion. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Lynn Mattioli] Cat-and-Mouse Games by Lynn Mattioli From the Editor: Lynn Mattioli was a 1987 NFB scholarship winner. The following story of compassion and daring-do first appeared in Reflecting the Flame, the seventeenth in the Kernel Book series of paperbacks we publish to educate the public about the abilities of blind people. It begins with President Maurer's introduction: Not all of us have what it takes to stalk a mouse through the house. But, as Lynn Mattioli shows us in her story, "Cat-and-Mouse Games," blindness is not the deciding factor. Lynn is a registered dietitian employed by Harbor Hospital Center and is president of the Baltimore Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. Here is what she has to say: My cats, Ben and Jerry, are creatures of habit. We have a daily routine. When I come home from work, they greet me at the door and then expect to be fed their dinner. One evening I returned from work, but they did not greet me at the door. When I went into the kitchen, they were both sitting on the floor intently watching the refrigerator. I put out the cat food, but they did not want to eat. They wanted to keep their cat eyes on the refrigerator. Ben and Jerry are robust cats, so I know, if they did not want their cat food, something pretty intense was going on. I watched them for a while. Ben was sniffing under the refrigerator. The appliance sits in the corner of the kitchen, so he was able to get at it from two sides. From time to time he would move around the refrigerator as if to get at things from a different angle. Jerry was following his lead as if his big brother was teaching him something new. From the way they were acting I suspected we had a mouse in the house. It had not happened before, but, since I live in an older apartment building, I knew it was possible. I have never been afraid of mice, but I knew I did not want one to move in and start a family. At the same time I did not want to hurt it. I definitely did not want Ben and Jerry to have the mouse for dinner. I stood there for a while thinking, "How am I going to catch this mouse if I can't see where it is?" I decided that Ben and Jerry could help me corner the mouse so that I could grab it and put it outside. First we needed to get the mouse out from under the refrigerator. I have an extra long white cane that I use to fish cat toys out from under the sofa. I used it to check under the refrigerator, but no mouse came out. So I moved the refrigerator out from the corner, thinking that might scare it out. But again no mouse. At this point I started thinking that Ben and Jerry were sending me on a wild mouse chase. Maybe they were confused. Maybe there was no mouse. I waited to see what the boys would do next. Ben started sniffing the grill on the back of the refrigerator. He then tried to climb up the grill. I figured that had to be where the mouse was hiding. I felt around the grill but did not feel anything. But then I heard it scurrying up the grill. So I tapped on the grill. There was a "plop" sound, and the mouse had fallen to the floor. Ben and Jerry jumped into action. They chased the mouse right behind the stereo in the living room. This was not working well. I was worried I would spend the better part of the evening chasing the mouse from one appliance to another. The cats were guarding either end of the stereo so the mouse could not escape. I used my extra long white cane to direct the mouse out one end. Ben took charge and chased the mouse into the fireplace. Luckily the fireplace was free of ashes. Things were looking up. I thought Ben had the mouse cornered. Now my dilemma was how to grab the mouse so that neither of us would get hurt. I decided to use a plastic grocery bag to scoop it up. I figured the mouse would be unable to bite me through the bag. When I returned to the fireplace, Ben was dismayed. He was searching around the fireplace for the mouse, but it was not there. I searched with him. I felt around the fireplace, but no mouse. Where could it have gone? How could a mouse escape with two cats and me on its tail? I didn't think it could have gone up the chimney unless it was Santa Claus mouse. Ben came to the rescue again. He started sniffing the fireplace screen. I covered my hand with the bag and felt around the screen. There was the mouse, clinging to the top of the screen. I scooped it up and took it outside. I felt so bad for the mouse. It must have been scared. But at least I was able to get it outside unharmed. I learned something from this experience. Initially I did not think I could catch the mouse because I am blind. I thought the mouse would move too fast for me to find it. I did not think I could catch it without being bitten. But now I know I was wrong. I found ways to get the job done. Blindness won't stop me from keeping that mouse out of my house. To simplify the task next time, I think I will invest in a live mouse trap. But I would do this whether I was blind or sighted. It just makes practical sense. I doubt the mouse will be back, though, with Ben and Jerry on guard. They also keep the elephants away! You can create a gift annuity by transferring money or property to the National Federation of the Blind. In turn, the NFB contracts to pay you income for life or your spouse or loved ones after your death. How much you and your heirs receive as income depends on the amount of the gift and your age when payments begin. You will receive a tax deduction for the full amount of your contribution, less the value of the income the NFB pays to you or your heirs. You would be wise to consult an attorney or accountant when making such arrangements so that he or she can assist you to calculate current IRS regulations and the earning potential of your funds. The following example illustrates how a charitable gift annuity can work to your advantage. Mary Jones, age sixty-five, decides to set up a charitable gift annuity by transferring $10,000 to the NFB. In return the NFB agrees to pay Mary a lifetime annuity of $750 per year, of which $299 is tax-free. Mary is also allowed to claim a tax deduction of $4,044 in the year the NFB receives the $10,000 contribution. For more information about charitable gift annuities, contact the National Federation of the Blind, Special Gifts, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998, (410) 659-9314, fax (410) 685-5653. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Gary Wunder] Between Kindness and Honesty by Gary Wunder From the Editor: Gary Wunder is a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind. He is also a wise and gentle man who is not above using subterfuge to acquire the information he wants. The story he tells about his need to know appeared in Reflecting the Flame, the seventeenth in the NFB's Kernel Book series. Here it is, beginning with President Maurer's introduction: How does a blind person deal with things that are done primarily for visual effect? How does he know if he's done them right if his friends are hesitant to tell him for fear of hurting his feelings? These are the questions Gary Wunder, who is President of the National Federation of the Blind of Missouri, explores in "Between Kindness and Honesty." Here is what he has to say: One of the most difficult challenges for blind people is to determine how well we do things which are done primarily for visual effect. Does the bathroom mirror have streaks? Is the window clean? Is the shirt wrinkled or smoothly pressed? Is the fence well sanded and painted? There are several issues to address when we tackle some of these everyday chores. We must create an effect which, since it is visual, may be one about which we have very little understanding. Is the visual effect we're trying to create one which corresponds to something we can feel? In the case of sanding the fence, the answer is yes. But in the case of the window or the mirror, the answer is no. If we can use our sense of touch, will the act of touching to verify our work alter the positive outcome we seek? Touching the fence to inspect one's painting job will probably have no long-lasting effects if the paint is dry, but touching the mirror or the window to see that one's efforts have been successful will probably go a great distance toward undoing the good work which was intended. Striving to achieve a satisfactory visual effect isn't limited only to house cleaning and simple home repairs. Some of the clothing we wear is to meet a functional need, such as keeping warm. But a good deal of how we dress has to do with looking visually appealing as defined by the communities in which we live. When I was a boy growing up on a farm, being well dressed meant putting on a clean pair of jeans and a clean shirt every two or three days and occasionally dropping one's sneakers into the laundry. After high school, college, and eventually a professional job, I found that the rules for being well dressed had changed. Now the requirement was that I wear a pressed white shirt, a nice two- or three-piece suit, and freshly shined wing tip shoes. In my family buying a pair of wing tip shoes was quite an occasion. Wing tips were not a part of normal footwear in a family which made its living by running large dirt-moving machinery used in the construction of houses and other buildings. Wing tips were special-occasion, church shoes, which also made their appearance at weddings and funerals. I suspect that, in my eighteen years at home, I had never seen my father polish a fancy pair of shoes more than two or three times. Even then my experience of seeing him do it really meant listening to the noise he made while rubbing the shoes with a cloth, a foam rubber pad, or whatever it was he happened to be using. I was familiar with the smell of shoe polish and had a general idea that it was being applied to improve the looks of the shoes, but never had I tried polishing a pair myself. Any thought voiced about trying my hand at it brought forth the admonition that shoe polish was very messy and quite difficult to get off one's hands and that I would do well to avoid it. All of this changed, of course, when wing tips were transformed from fancy shoes to working shoes. Wearing them for two weeks on a daily basis was probably equivalent to a year of use such shoes would have had when I was a child. It soon became obvious that I had to figure out a way to maintain them if they were to add to rather than detract from my appearance. When I went to the drugstore for my first purchase of polish, I learned that it came in two forms--liquid and wax. Which should I get? A description by the druggist convinced me that wax would probably be easier for me to handle, so I handed over the money and went home to try my hand at the first polish. My initial assumption was that what improved the look of the shoe was coating it with polish, much as one would cover bread with peanut butter. I had the idea that the polish would serve as protection for the shoes, so I laid on as much protection as I dared. Remembering the warnings about getting polish on my hands, I applied it with a foam rubber pad and was very diligent in seeing that none of it got on me. >From the description of how hard it would be to remove if, God forbid, I ever got any on my hands, I came to think of the shoe polish as something close to toxic and held the conviction that, if I ever got any of it on me, I would be forever scarred, like those who, on a drunken impulse, have their bodies tattooed and then must carry the results of that mistake with them for the rest of their lives. When I presented my shoes for their first inspection by a sighted friend, he told me that it looked like I had failed to remove the polish. I had no idea what he meant, as you can understand from my previous explanation. As he explained it, the visual effect had something to do with applying the polish and then meticulously removing it, the end result being an improvement in the appearance of the shoe. So, with a new understanding of the art of shoe shining, I set to work on my shoes with a towel, rubbing vigorously to remove polish I had so generously applied. A second inspection brought me a higher score than had the first, but my shine still had major problems. Not only had I used too much polish, but I had applied it spottily and inconsistently. Worse than all of this, I learned (horror of horrors) that this time I had actually gotten shoe polish on my hands. For a few moments the condition of my shoes was of no consequence whatsoever. The only thing that mattered was figuring out how I could undo this terrible accident which would forever label me as the careless and hapless blind man who had disregarded the loving advice of his family and had experimented with--yes, had actually tried--shoe polish. Would it matter that I hadn't inhaled? Much to my relief, I learned soap, water, and several repetitions of vigorous hand washing would remove any trace of the stuff. So, when I went back to the task once more, I did so knowing that I had the freedom to use my hands, not only to apply the polish, but to help ensure I was spreading it consistently. After a time my shoe-shining efforts moved from unqualified failures to something more acceptable. Just what that something was I couldn't say, but I began to notice that shoes I paid to have shined at the airport brought me compliments, while shoes I shined myself seemed to bring only silence. If I inquired of family or friends about the condition of my shoes and explained that I had shined them the night before, invariably I was told that it certainly looked like I had worked on them. Thereafter the conversation would move from the appearance of the shoes to the virtues of cleanliness and attention to one's appearance. It was admirable that I cared about my shoes and bothered to shine them when so many, who were probably more able than I, completely neglected their footwear. Since I was aware that airport-shined shoes generated compliments while my own efforts did not, my assumption was that somehow the quality of my work just wasn't as good as that of the shoeshine experts. To try to learn how my shoeshines were different, I would ask friends to critique my work and give me suggestions for the improvement of the shine. Again the conversation would soon move from the work I had done to how wonderful it was that I cared and would bother to take the time to shine them. I almost never got suggestions about how to enhance the appearance of my shines, no matter how much I coaxed and pleaded, and no matter which of the trusted friends I asked. From time to time I would think about the problem of evaluating my shoeshines and would wonder whether there was really a problem at all. Perhaps I was just showing an unflattering lack of trust, and the real problem wasn't the shine on my shoes but a lack of confidence in myself. If people advising me were really my valued friends, why didn't I just take their word for the fact that my shoes looked okay? Wasn't it true that one always got more compliments on his hair on the day when it was cut and styled by a professional than on the days following his washing and combing it himself? My reservation about simply accepting the assessment of my shoeshines had its roots in an incident which occurred when I was a teenager. From time to time my parents would meet a blind person or would meet a person who knew a blind person and would ask if I wished to be introduced. On one such occasion my mother had the opportunity for us to meet with a blind couple who were visiting friends in our little town. My mother and I agreed that this would be a good thing. So on a Saturday afternoon we were escorted into the living room to wait for the blind couple to come downstairs. We were seated on furniture which the blind man had upholstered for his friends, and while his work was greatly admired, in whispered voices we were cautioned not to mention the defect on the arm of one chair. We were given to understand that the man took great pride in his work and that his friends were concerned that his feelings would be hurt were they to tell him about the mark or the scratch or the stain or whatever it was which marred this otherwise admirable work. Obviously I didn't pay much attention to exactly what the defect was, so flattered was I by being taken into the confidence of the grown-ups with our little secret. I felt some discomfort about knowing and keeping the secret, but the source of that discomfort didn't really come to me for some time. I was too caught up in being talked with like I was actually an adult (and at fourteen I certainly knew I was). If the adults thought concealment was the right path to take, far be it from me, the newest person in the room to be elevated to adulthood, to dispute with them about it. Besides, I too felt sorry for the blind man, somehow believing that he was very different from me, and only realizing long after that one day, if my luck held, I too would grow into a blind man. On the day I've just described, I met a nice blind couple, and we shared some food and drink. But what I really took with me went far beyond two new acquaintances and some cordial conversation. What I learned was that in the name of charity and kindness it would be considered unacceptable by many with whom I would associate for them to give me a candid and unbiased assessment of anything I might do. The charity which I was so willing to extend to that blind man was unwelcome when it came to me, but it didn't matter whether I welcomed it or not, for the decision whether or not to extend that questionable charity would be made by someone else. It didn't matter that the someone else was a good friend or that there were strong bonds of trust between us. In fact, the very friendship we shared might be the strongest and most compelling reason for the secrecy with which my friends would proceed. Given this as background, perhaps you can understand why I kept looking for a way to get a candid, unbiased assessment of my shoes. The inspiration came to me one morning while taking a cab to attend a National Federation of the Blind-sponsored event. The cab driver who drove me was one I knew quite well, he and I both sharing an interest in computers and baseball and politics and religion and any number of things one talks about to keep from being haunted by the ever-present clicking of the cab meter. When the cab driver greeted me with the question, "Well, young man, how has your morning been?" I said that it had been a busy morning for me, that I'd gone out to breakfast, had gone to get my shoes shined, and was now on the way to the airport. Glancing down at my shoes, the cab driver remarked, "Well, so you went and got your shoes shined this morning, did you?" I said yes, that I thought keeping them shined was important, and this seemed as good a day as any to do the job. The cab driver next turned to the subject of baseball and the rivalry between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals, who were, at that time, engaged in World Series play. Right in the middle of his commentary on the game, he hesitated, and almost as an aside said, "So you got them shoes shined this morning, did ya?" "Yes," I said, "I got them done early this morning when I would rather have slept in." Next the driver's commentary moved from baseball to computers, he being an amateur computer enthusiast, and knowing me to be a computer programmer. Often he had picked my brain for tidbits of information to make his system perform more efficiently. Again, right in the middle of his strongly held views about the dominance of IBM and the superiority of other systems on the market, the driver interrupted himself to say "Got them shoes shined today, did ya?" Again I replied in the affirmative. When we neared the airport, the conversation moved from computers to crime, as we talked about a recent murder which had shaken our small city. In the middle of his discourse on the sad state of the world when crime lurked just outside our door, the driver interrupted himself once again and said, "Tell me, young man, just who was the dirty ___ who charged you to shine them shoes?" I sputtered, realizing that, while I had probably just evoked an unbiased judgment on the appearance of my wing tips, I hadn't reckoned with the possibility that this angry man might want to go and settle the score for me. I danced around the question and asked what kind of job they had done. The cab driver had every bit as much to say about my shoes as he did about baseball, computers, and crime--which he was certain had been committed here. According to the driver, the negligent shiner seemed to believe that the only part of the shoe that would be visible was the toe. With great emotion he explained that the sides of the shoes still had streaks of polish on them, and the heels looked like they hadn't been touched at all. Yes, it was clear that from the cab driver's perspective we were still talking about the issue of crime, and I should avoid whoever it was who had given me that shoe shine. Now at least I had some data with which to work. We had moved beyond how wonderful it was that I cared and how brave I was to attempt the job myself. As bad as that review sounded at the time, I now had reason to believe I was capable of delivering a quality shine, if only on the toe of the shoe. I reasoned that, if I was more methodical in applying and removing the shoe polish, my work would indeed be acceptable. To my surprise and great benefit, I also found that, if I could tell my friends I knew I was having problems with certain areas of the shoe, then, for whatever reason, they felt free to offer constructive criticism of their own. It would be wonderful if I could end this tale by telling you that I've now become such an accomplished shoeshiner that I work nights and weekends to supplement my income so that my daughter can attend the best college in the United States. Well, I hope she can, but if it turns out that she needs income other than what I can provide from my day job, she'll have to find some way to earn it herself. The truth of the matter is that my shoeshines are something less than those offered by the professionals. Still, my ability to shine shoes at least now gets me an occasional compliment, and my work is normally free from those untouched spots and globs of polish which were once my trademark and signature. Sometimes in my work with the National Federation of the Blind I'm asked to attend state conventions where this story finds its way into my remarks. When I first started using it, the purpose was to introduce a fairly serious banquet address with a tinge of humor. Later the story evolved into a tool I could use to explain how we who are blind sometimes need to be clever to get at visual information which others are afraid to give to us. At other times I have introduced the story to interject some self-deprecating humor when I thought my lecture on some subject or other was causing me to come across as someone who thought he had great pearls of wisdom to dispense. Now, however, when I tell this story, my intent is to have it hint at the kind of balance we must have when dealing with one another. As blind people we need to realize that, in the name of charity, people will sometimes be reluctant to tell us things we think we need to know. If we want that information, blindness will require us to work at a way of getting it. Balance enters in when we simply accept this truth and cease to feel put out by having to make the extra effort to get the information we need. Balance comes into play when we realize that the charity and kindness which frustrate us in one situation are the same charity and kindness which reach out to us when we ask for a hand up and a chance to get an education, take a job, and live full lives in our communities. The suspicion that one may not be getting the whole truth has to live side by side with the knowledge that we who are blind are every bit as reticent about giving people information which may come across as critical as sighted folks sometimes are when we ask them for information that they think we cannot use or may not really want. Walking the line between kindness and honesty isn't easy for anyone, blind or sighted, but I leave the subject feeling grateful that both exist and that both serve their own distinct functions in helping us in our journey. [PHOTO/CAPTION: David House] Being a Role Model Is a Responsibility He Takes Seriously by Steve Dolan From the Editor: David House is Treasurer of the East San Diego Chapter of the NFB of California. The following article appeared in the August 31, 1999, edition of the Daily Californian. As David House sits behind the desk of his office here, he speaks about a vision he has as manager for House Properties. David would like to see the company, owned by his father, Mike, continue to be among the county's more successful commercial real estate operations. What separates House's vision from his competitors' is that he cannot see. He suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disorder characterized by a gradual degeneration of photoreceptor cells and a progressive loss of vision. Blind for half his life, House, forty-one, doesn't allow blindness to limit him personally or professionally. "I figure we all have crosses and burdens to deal with," he said. "As with anything else, it's how well you handle it mentally. I don't think blindness is most debilitating. If you have a positive outlook and forge ahead, you'll be successful regardless of what your handicap might be." House leads a remarkably normal life. He and Theresa, his wife of fifteen years, spent last week whitewater rafting and horseback riding with their four children, seven to fourteen, in the Klamath area near the Oregon border. The eldest of five children, House was diagnosed with RP at the age of five, when his parents took him to have his eyes examined. They thought he needed glasses. His next three siblings also suffer from RP, but his youngest brother does not. House's children are tested annually for the disease, but none have shown signs of RP. "You don't notice it each day," House said. "It's a slow process. As a kid I would sit close to the chalkboard. As soon as I got to high school, I relied more on large print. With the heavy work load in college I got cassette tapes, had someone read to me, and used Braille." House said he became aware of vision loss while in high school. "As a senior in high school I went to the movies with a couple of buddies and couldn't see the screen," he said. "I could never see well enough to get a driver's license. As a teenage guy, that was tough to deal with, but I overcame it." At work House said he offsets his lack of sight by using alternative techniques, such as one that makes use of the telephone and a mini-cassette recorder. When he completes a call, he transcribes the information from his cassette into Braille to create a permanent record he can consult later. House said he figured out some time back that he could get a ride to work each day if the maintenance truck were parked at his home, where an employee picks it (and him) up each morning and delivers them each night. House, one of 100,000 people in the U.S. suffering from RP, believes the disease has given him a special responsibility. "There's such a negative stereotype with the stigma of blindness that there needs to be a positive role-model to show others that you can be happy and successful, even with blindness," he said. "Believe it or not, the normal unemployment rate for blind people is 70 percent. If you are working full-time, you almost have a duty to help other blind people obtain gainful employment." To that end House hosts a monthly meeting of the National Federation of the Blind in his El Cajon office. Although the group doesn't specifically place people in jobs, it leads them to agencies that can help them gain employment. Patty Klimczyk, a bookkeeper for the company, said House is "just like any of us, pretty much. His attitude is good all the time. I haven't really noticed that his blindness has handicapped him." House said he does not believe blindness is a factor. "For the most part," he said, "people focus on the business aspects [of their dealings with House]. If, once in a blue moon, someone has a condescending attitude, it's advantageous for me. I feel I have them beat right off the bat because they've underestimated my situation. My blindness is not a problem in the business world." [PHOTO/CAPTION: Connie Leblond] Hanging Up My Painter's Hat by Connie Leblond From the Editor: Connie Leblond is President of the NFB of Maine. She is a wife, mother, and businesswoman. Like the rest of us she tackles home-repair jobs around the house with varying amounts of enthusiasm. Here she talks about a recent project the completion of which left her both satisfied and relieved. This is the story: Every home goes through renovations. Whether they are done by the homeowner or by contractors depends on the size of one's checkbook and one's ability to do the work. I have learned a lot about house repairs since we purchased our home in 1994. I had never painted, mowed lawns, fixed leaky faucets, laid linoleum, or applied caulking until then. The local hardware store employees are becoming quite good at describing various aspects of specific tasks to me. So it was when my son Seth and I decided to paint the ceiling in his room. Seth, who is now seventeen and who has never shied away from a challenge, was a little skeptical when I informed him that we were going to paint his ceiling. There weren't many alternatives since the paint was chipping, falling, and creating quite a mess. My checkbook could not provide the monetary cure, so Seth and I had to tackle the job ourselves. I made a list of the things I would need. We already had some tools since we had painted some exterior parts of the house the previous summer. The hardware store was the place to pick up a nine-by-twelve plastic sheet to cover the floor. That was the best size because it would collect all the debris. With paint, rollers, scrapers, paint pans, stirrers, and a positive attitude we approached the designated weekend for beginning our work. Seth was on vacation from school, so he was available to help me. We began early on Friday morning. He had removed most of his furniture, so we covered what was left with drop cloths. With me on the ladder and Seth on a step stool, we began scraping the ceiling. At first Seth and I enjoyed the sound of the falling paint. We felt like a demolition team. We were not particularly affected by the dust we stirred up. Being able to keep our eyes closed was certainly an asset. But no matter how hard we tried, some stubborn parts of the ceiling just would not give up their paint. At one point I stopped to sooth my throbbing blisters and telephoned the hardware store. I explained our difficulty and asked what we could do to make the job easier. I was told that I should use sand paper to smooth the areas that were not coming down. Time for reinforcements seemed to be at hand. I sent my husband Bob to the hardware store, and he returned with a sanding disk that attached to our drill. It was quite powerful, and, when I tried sanding, it almost threw me off the ladder. Seth took charge and quickly found the areas that required sanding by feeling the ceiling. The day was slipping away, and we both recognized that we could not go further with the project that day after the scraping was complete. We would wait until the next morning to begin the actual painting. By the end of the day we really had scraped the ceiling. When I had first entertained the notion of doing this job, I had wondered if we would be able to do it. Work tools were not our only means of getting this job done, however. The philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind, which for years has taught us to rely on our skills, our intuition, and our belief in the possibilities got us started and did not fail us. We really got to know that ceiling. We had also built on the foundation that our NFB colleagues helped us to create in ourselves. After the scraping, I taped the molding so that the following day we could begin painting without delay. Seth asked why I bothered with the tape because, after all, the molding was white. I laughed and said that this was not the time to mention such a detail to me; the tape was up, and it would stay. Saturday morning came, and I was anxious to tackle the painting. How bad could it be? I thought about the dimensions of the room and exactly where I would start and where I would finish. Because we had only one true ladder, I told Seth that I would do the actual painting. I began by opening the paint can, stirring the paint, and pouring it into the paint pan. I had my roller, my painting hat, and old clothes. I was ready. Everything began quite well. It seemed that I would be done quickly. But, as I began using the roller on the final section of the ceiling, chips of paint began to fall--not just fall--they were sticking to my roller. The chips must have been moistened by the paint, and now they decided to wreak havoc. I was perplexed. Should I stop, scrape, or what! I went downstairs to consult with my husband, who was busy meeting deadlines on a Web site he was developing, so I was certain he would be less than pleased to hear from me. He could see my frustration and went up to take a look. We decided to let the paint dry and get back to it the following day. Bob pointed out that there were two affected areas, and he showed me where they were located. We decided to scrape those two areas the next day, repaint the entire ceiling, and then do any touch-ups that were necessary. Sunday morning Bob said he would sand and get things ready. He then began painting and just didn't stop. It wasn't that he felt he had to; he just knew how much more work there was, so he jumped in to help. When the painting was finished, which really didn't take long, we let it dry for a couple of hours. Now the entire family had taken part in this project, and we all knew the end was near. Cleaning up was pretty easy. I have lots of experience with it. We sent Bob back to his desk before Seth and I rolled up the plastic room sheet, washed the paneling with Murphy's Oil Soap, removed the tape from the molding ever so carefully, folded up the drop cloths, and moved the remaining furniture out. After sweeping and vacuuming up all the debris, I washed the floor. Seth found the curtains we planned to put up and made sure the window shade was in place. Seth was anxious to arrange his room the way he liked it. By nightfall he and his possessions were back where they belonged. It didn't make any difference to the successful completion of this project that Seth and I were blind. Bob's lending a hand was merely another family member pitching in. As a team we are pretty terrific. If I had to scrape and paint with anyone, I am quite pleased that it was Seth and Bob. But I have realized that I don't actually enjoy painting. For now I am hanging up my painters hat until I must do it again. In short, I will be delighted when my checkbook becomes my most effective tool for home repair. In the meantime I will be content to get the job done, assured that I can do it. There is always something to do when you own a home, so I think I will order some home repair reference books in preparation for the next job. I figure that, with those books and my monthly issue of the Braille Monitor magazine from the NFB, I have a winning combination. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Donna Balaski] Doctor Finds a New Life Loss of Sight No Trouble Now by Jamie P. Olmstead From the Editor: This is the kind of pre-convention newspaper story that any state-convention organizer would give her eye teeth to get. This story appeared in the November 4, 1999, edition of the Waterbury Republican-American. On any given day one can find Donna Balaski outdoors tending to the orange, yellow, and rust-colored marigolds growing in beds bordering her home. Friends, family, and neighbors often comment on her green thumb, marveling at her Crayola-colored creations. Even more remarkable than her way with flowers is the fact that Donna Balaski can't see what she's tending. "My gardening has become a true passion for me," said Balaski, a Waterbury resident who lost her sight three years ago. Balaski, a facial trauma surgeon who earned her medical degree from the University of Connecticut, was finishing her residency at the Catholic Medical Center in New York state when she had trouble seeing. While visiting her parents in Waterbury for an anniversary celebration, she awoke to discover dark black spots clouding her vision. Balaski, thirty-three at the time, was diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy and retinitis pigmentosa. "Losing my sight was the farthest thing from my mind," she said. Falling into a depression, Balaski didn't return to work and despaired over living in darkness. "I took my sight for granted. I was depressed and didn't know where I was going in life or what I was going to do." At her doctor's office Balaski picked up a brochure featuring the National Federation of the Blind of Connecticut. That brochure changed her life. Through the Federation Balaski discovered options. She learned about the Board of Education Service for the Blind and the Louisiana Center for the Blind. With the organizational support she needed, Balaski headed south. "Just because you're blind doesn't mean you can't go on living," Balaski said. The Louisiana Center for the Blind taught her just that. Described by Balaski as a "progressive/aggressive school," the center doesn't take no for an answer. It was there that she joined the ranks of blind men and women in activities usually reserved for people with more than a modicum of sight: rock climbing, white water rafting, and firearms training. The center gave them an opportunity to keep active and the courage to live their lives to the fullest. Today Balaski leads a full life. Currently working as a vision rehabilitation counselor at Ophthalmic Surgical Associates in Waterbury, she counsels low-vision patients who find themselves in similar situations. "There is no reason for people to sit home as I once did," she said. "There is a whole host of wonderful resources out there, and I see to it that people are aware of all their options. Doing what I do, I can help so many people get their lives back on track." Much of her success in coping with blindness, Balaski said, is owed to the National Federation of the Blind. "If it wasn't for the NFB, I wouldn't be where I am today," she said. "I've learned that life goes on. I may have to do things a little differently than most, but I'm just an average person." She can even joke about her condition. "At least now I'm sure that every guy I date looks like Tom Cruise," Balaski said with a chuckle. In conjunction with Chris Boisvert, Balaski has organized the 1999 annual state convention sponsored by the National Federation of the Blind. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Corinne Kirchner] A Compilation of Meaningful and Meaningless Typographical Errors on Blindness and Visual Impairment by Corinne Kirchner, Ph.D. From the Editor: The following article is reprinted with permission from the April, 2000, issue of the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, Volume 94, Number 4, 2000, pp. 243-246, Copyright 2000 American Foundation for the Blind. All rights reserved. JVIB readers can find many interesting and sometimes astonishing things in its pages, but humor is not high on the list of the expected. Corinne Kirchner is Director of Program Evaluation and Policy Research for the American Foundation for the Blind. She is to be commended for this insightful compilation of information about our field. For decades a little-known research project has been underway at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) to collect the most outrageous and humorous typographical errors related to visual impairment. The effort has resulted in a bursting folder of source materials filed in the author's office. Although an important source of the data has been articles submitted to the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB), especially those not published, there have been other unexpectedly fruitful sources: grant proposals, books, speeches, newspapers, inquiries received by telephone, and envelopes. The Population A major concern in compiling demographic statistics on blindness is how best to identify which parts of the population merit attention. A letter sent to AFB a few years ago highlighted a special population that has been overlooked by services; the envelope was addressed to the American Foundation for the Bland (emphasis added here and throughout this report). National surveys do not measure the prevalence of blandness. Therefore it is not possible to estimate how many people in the United States are totally bland or severely bland, much less how many meet the criteria of legal blandness. Another needy population was targeted by an AFB researcher (former AFB researcher) while she was leading a focus group. She had apparently made one too many references to the sample that included blind and sighted people and therefore blurted that AFB was studying "blighted people." The blighted and the bland should be added to the traditional groups covered in the first edition of a book by the author, which referred to services needed by the undeserved. Another relevant group that is hard to pin down for statistical purposes was featured in a chapter on vocational issues. The title, as repeated on every page, identified that elusive group as "the Blind and Usually Impaired." After researchers or policymakers specify the population of concern, there remains the challenge of how to assess which people fit the population definition. One article submitted to (and rejected by) JVIB made the following hard-to-assail proposal: "The system should allow for the assessment of visual levels of functioning for people with visual vision." Causes and Type of Onset AFB usually refers questions about causes of blindness to organizations that specialize in medical matters. However, it seemed that a religious organization might be more appropriate to answer the consumer who inquired, "How many people are blind from immaculate degeneration?" At least it was clear that the questioner could not be referred to the Virginia Department for the Visually Handicapped, which (as reported by a former staff member in that agency) once received a letter addressed to the "Department of the Virginally Handicapped." It may be a revelation to epidemiologists that blindness is not only geographically linked, but may actually be geographically caused. The evidence comes from a listserv on which a new member introduced himself as "thirty-nine years old and blind since birth from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." Closer to AFB's expertise on social aspects of blindness are questions about types of onset; nevertheless, AFB was unable to provide statistics matching the category listed in one paper submitted to JVIB that referred to people who are "congenially blind." That group contrasted with another submission that referred to people who are "advantageously blind." Of course practitioners work toward the day when all blind people will be both congenially and advantageously blind. In line with these positive cultural depictions of blindness, a newspaper clipping referred to celebrating "Helen Keller Dear-Blind Awareness Week." Apparently multiple impairment is also cherished by the community. The sharp increase in age-related causes of blindness was recognized with particular sensitivity to problems of elderly persons in an invitation for this author to speak to an audience of practitioners. The letter explained, "We are interested in . . . the groaning population of older adults becoming blind or visually impaired." Problems of Low Incidence The sources for this project include ingenious solutions to the persistent problem of finding sufficient numbers of blind people for research projects. One forward-looking solution was suggested by an envelope addressed to the American Fund of the Blind. Unfortunately, the issue remains how to stock the fund. There are some rather drastic approaches. For example, a grant proposal for doctoral research (whose written report must be presented as a bound volume) included a budget item of $200 for "typing and blinding." Another researcher proudly credited her own work with creating its study population. She wrote, "We can look forward to obtaining very useful data on children who are blind or visually impaired from this study." (Full disclosure: That source material came from this very author.) Another timely and horrific idea for assuring a sizable blind population was inadvertently proposed by a respected leader in vocational rehabilitation, referring to employment possibilities in data collection for the 2000 U.S. Census. He saw great potential for people to be hired as "enucleators" (the job otherwise known as "enumerators"). Not all such ideas yield solutions to the need for more research subjects. There are other examples that, although equally shocking, would have the opposite effect. For example, at an advocacy meeting a representative signed in on behalf of "the Death Blind Coalition." And in one state that shall remain anonymous there is a "State School for the Dead and the Blind"--that is, according to an appropriately now-defunct mailing list at AFB. By contrast, it is amazing to learn that much of the blind population might not only be assisted but actually cured by modern information technology. That possibility is revealed in a newspaper that reported a blind Internet user's "sight on the Web"--a remarkable phenomenon. An inspiring note for increasing the supply of research subjects was sounded in a draft of an AFB policy paper. The paper implies that many more people could achieve visual impairment with the right motivation. It refers to "programs that serve only those who are determined to be legally blind." You too can become legally blind, if you are really determined. A totally different approach that could be adapted for recruiting volunteers as research subjects is to ignore visual status and simply require court-approved evidence of personhood. That approach was used by a nonprofit organization "looking for two legally people interested in serving on the board." Who Does What to Whom? Up to this point this report has focused on the recipients of services. Now it will turn its attention to types of specialized services and the practitioners who provide those services. Definitely the most exalted specialized service we have encountered is "Leader Gods for the Blind." It seems there is no training program for these rare specialists; they just miraculously appear. It is a sharp drop from the sublime to the ridiculous in a study report on orientation and mobility (O&M) services that dealt at length with training in use of the long can. As everyone familiar with the politics of detectable warnings can appreciate, that realm of services is a battlefield of opinions. Thus it is not surprising that one grant proposal described its plan to study detestable warnings, and another project was titled "Tactical Warnings in Curb Ramps." Now this report shifts from established service specialties like O&M to an emerging one. A grant proposal recently stated that there is a serious need throughout the country to help blind and visually impaired people acquire "assertive technology." One obstacle to providing needed services is the critical shortage of specially trained personnel. It is with mixed emotions, therefore, that the author reports on the attempt at recruitment of graduate students posted on the Internet by a respected university. To quote: "Enhance your career by becoming dully certified in the field of vision impairment with the addition of an O&M therapy certification." Of course acquiring both certifications is probably less dull than either one alone. As a closing note there is poetic justice in realizing that people who might choose to become dully certified will be ideally trained to serve the population mentioned at the outset--whose most severe impairment is blandness. [PHOTO/CAPTION: John Rowley] Christmas in June by John and Mary Rowley From the Editor: Early this year Joanne Wilson, director of the Louisiana Center for the Blind, passed along a Christmas letter that she and the staff had received in December from Dr. John Rowley and his wife Mary. John was a scientist who had lost his sight and turned to the Louisiana Center for advice and training in 1988. He got the training he needed and returned to his family and his busy life in the Far West. So what? Isn't that what our adult rehabilitation centers intend to enable people to do? Yes, of course, and the pattern is repeated across the country and even around the world all day, every day. That is precisely the reason for sharing the letter that the Rowleys sent to Joanne Wilson. It is a reaffirming reminder of the importance of the NFB's work training the minds and hands and spirits of blind people to go out and live their lives as fully as they can. This letter reminds us that our lives are the instruments we use to change what it means to be blind in the twenty-first century. Everything we can do to further this work must be done. Here, in the odd, Christmas-letter combination of first-person and third-person narrative is the Rowleys' letter to the Louisiana Center staff: Dear Joanne and Staff, We wish to express our heartfelt thanks for your cheerful, warm, and informative yearly newsletter at the holiday season. It is a wonderful and meaningful reminder of John's six months at the Center in 1988. This year it is especially important for us, and John especially, to recall this major event in our lives. It was, as you will perhaps recall, that training and introduction to the world of the blind that started John on a new career. Blindness training first made it possible to complete his professional service to the Los Alamos National Lab and to manage a two-year graduate course in independent living by living alone in Las Vegas, Nevada, and carrying out a rather difficult technical/scientific task for his employer. Then it was the normal time for retirement from what had been thirty-seven years of very rewarding and effective professional employment. During my six months of training at the Louisiana Center for the Blind I had many hours to consider and to reflect on my past life and to debate and decide on a future course. Because the Center had clearly taught me that I could very likely continue in science and technology, which had been my life-long vocation, we decided to set up a consulting-service company, and we have very successfully done so. A key skill has been the use of a computer with speech and access software. This training and technology has enabled John to hone his writing skills and made possible the major product for our consulting services. Because this approach was started by John's employer before retirement, we elected to purchase a computer system that John is still using today. The creation of technical reports on various scientific and technological subjects has been our major product. We had been working in the general field of energy resources and energy research and development (R & D) before retirement, so we continued in that field. We had become rather expert in the specific area of geothermal energy and associated technology R & D. So we elected to continue in that direction. Fortunately, since 1985 we had worked with and for several geothermal developers in Japan. They seemed to find our consulting services valuable, so we expanded that effort and used yearly travel to Japan to extend our client base. We have made at least one major--more than a month-long--trip to Japan each year since 1985. We have visited, inspected, and advised at nearly all the geothermal reservoir developments in Japan at one time or another. In addition we have met, interacted with, and made colleagues of many engineers and scientists working in geothermal energy in Japan. We have also learned a bit of the Japanese language and have formed some rather close relationships outside of the technical areas. For example, we know the individual at the Japanese Institute for Vocational Rehabilitation organization, who is charged with training the blind rehabilitation instructors to train Japanese blind people in job-related skills. Mr. Chuji Sashida is blind, now married, and has three children. We have visited with him several times at his offices and training center just outside Tokyo and stayed in their new home in Chiba City. In much of our extensive travels around Japan, John has sought to provide and demonstrate the skills of blindness that John initiated at the Louisiana Center and has sharpened ever since. Note: In Japan John always uses his cane in his left hand since they drive on the opposite side of the road from Americans. It is good to have a constant reminder of that fact. In Japan John has developed several strong collegial ties and has prepared and presented technical papers at Japanese conferences, seminars, and university lectures. On such occasions the approach has been to make use of all the skills of blindness to conduct affairs, travel, and all other activities in as completely normal, independent a manner as possible. This example has provided a valuable example to all our Japanese friends, colleagues, clients, and casual contacts in streets, parks, hotels, and transportation and in every aspect of our social interactions. Indeed John always conducts himself as he does in the USA, namely as though being blind is just a part of his busy life. We have made contact and become great friends with a family in the Wakayama Prefecture region of Japan. This is basically a rural area south of Osaka and has a long history. We met with a group that provides overseas tourists specialized tours of that region and visited and toured there each year from 1995 through 1998. We have become quite close friends with the organizer of this volunteer group, Mrs. Emiko Horikawa. She visited here in Los Alamos this past summer for eleven days, and her major interest was to learn about the spirit and functions of the many volunteer and service groups in the USA. This is because, in addition to the Wakayama Interpreters Volunteer club, she has also started a Social Welfare volunteer organization in her home town of Hashimoto, where she teaches English to high school students. It is still very difficult for her to understand the position of a blind person like John in USA society. Indeed the idea of private volunteer service organizations is rather new in Japan; there is now a movement called NPO (non-profit organizations). This grassroots movement had its origins in the spontaneous and rather unique efforts to help the victims of the horrible Kobe earthquake, which happened rather close to Wakayama in 1995. We have sought to demonstrate the skills of blindness in all our travels, but especially in our visits and venturing in Wakayama. During our visit in 1998 we planned a tour of several ancient temples (many founded in the late 600's and early 700's). These are part of a famous pilgrimage route of thirty-three Buddhist temples dedicated to that aspect (there are thirteen) of Buddha called Kannon, depicted as a woman, and seen as the goddess of mercy. During that tour we were able to visit the temple called Tubosakadera, located South of Nara (the most ancient capital of Japan); and dedicated to the blind. This temple was founded by a Buddhist sect from Northern India and has several branch temples and facilities throughout Japan. It featured a large hostel--dormitories for the care of the elderly blind. It was famous for a special herbal medicine sold at the temple and said to cure blindness. This is a very ancient idea. The staff, monks, and priests, and others were astounded by John's use of the long white cane. An interesting aspect of Japanese society and culture is that they do not ask about John's blindness since that would be a major discourtesy and very impolite. So any direct discussion on that subject must be initiated by us. It is interesting to note that, while we still seldom see blind people traveling alone (they usually use a sighted guide), we have recently seen several people using their canes and traveling independently. We believe that this is a result of the rather recent passage of the Japanese equivalent of our Americans with Disabilities Act. Well, this is the time of the year, decade, and millennium when we tend to look back to the past, consider our present status, and reflect on and plan for the future. We were very impressed, not surprised, to learn of the progress at the Louisiana Center and found the establishment of the educational opportunities at Louisiana Tech very important and a clear fulfillment of one of the Louisiana Center dreams, since O&M is at the heart of any true rehabilitation program. Great instructors are always needed and, more important, those who can teach and train instructors. We can imagine the excitement at the establishment of the new education center and a career center. What rewarding and important advances! We can almost visualize the start of the establishment of a new campus for the study, research, training, and furtherance of all issues for blind persons. We wish you all a most rewarding and productive New Year 2000! With all our love and warmest regards, John and Mary Rowley Graduate of the LCB in the class of July, 1988 PS: For the future and in Y2K we plan to carry on with our consulting business and have been participating in the organization of the technical program for a World Geothermal Congress 2000 (WGC 2K) in Japan from Mid-May to Mid-June, so we will be returning to some of our very favorite places and can meet with some of our colleagues, friends, and clients again. We have purchased a new computer system, which is Windows 98-based and has new voice and access software installed. John is attempting to learn how to use this new GUI [graphical user interface] world. We believe the mission has not changed; the mission is change. So we are dedicated to this idea and have helped a number of our clients in Japan to realize the need for change and to start the process of change. We can well appreciate the busy and effective year ahead for the Louisiana Center and its staff and for the many students and learners who will participate. We do wish you all a very rewarding, meaningful year and envy a bit those who will have the chance to participate and learn at the Louisiana Center for the Blind. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Don Capps] Sharing the Vision by Donald C. Capps From the Editor: As Monitor readers know, Don Capps is the senior member of the National Federation of the Blind's Board of Directors. He serves as President of the NFB of South Carolina, and in recent months he and his wife Betty have been tireless volunteers working to raise funds for our capital campaign. This is what he says: Dr. Kenneth Jernigan was unquestionably one of the greatest visionaries of the twentieth century. His service spanned a half century of selfless service to the blind of the nation and the world, and Dr. Jernigan has left a legacy which includes a myriad of unprecedented accomplishments. We remember him particularly for his masterful facility development. Having been blessed by more than four decades of close personal friendship, I marveled at Dr. Jernigan's ability to transform virtually useless things into substantive resources. More than forty years ago, when Dr. Jernigan assumed the leadership of the Iowa Commission for the Blind in 1958, one of his first major initiatives was successfully to renovate an old YMCA building, converting it into one of the nation's finest facilities. Twenty years later, in 1978, Dr. Jernigan continued to demonstrate his uncanny ability when he converted a building constructed at the turn of the century into what we now know as the National Center for the Blind, regarded as perhaps the finest facility of its type in the country. Most of us would have been willing to rest upon our laurels, but Dr. Jernigan possessed an incomparable fervor, envisioning still another needed facility. For most of the decade of the '90's, he discussed with many of us his dream of designing a much-'needed facility dedicated to research and training. His dream is now being carried out as we work together to raise eighteen million dollars to fund the construction of the National Research and Training Institute for the Blind. To demonstrate our total commitment to Dr. Jernigan's dream, Betty and I at the 1999 National Convention deeply felt that we wanted to make a sacrificial pledge of $25,000. Since that time it has been my heartfelt pleasure to encourage others to have a meaningful part in this capital campaign as well. At state conventions which I have attended since the Atlanta convention, I have strongly encouraged Federationists to do their fair share in helping to make this capital campaign a success. We've also encouraged members of the NFB of South Carolina to pitch in making their gifts. Recently, one officer of the NFB of South Carolina made a sacrificial pledge of $1,000. We have also had meetings with businesses and foundations as we continue to convert Dr. Jernigan's dream into reality. Dr. Jernigan enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of blind people, and we can honor his lifetime of service by getting involved in this challenging and meritorious capital campaign to honor the memory of a great American visionary. Remember that victories in life are not fashioned in the first mile, but in the last. Draft Honor Roll The Campaign to Change What It Means to Be Blind Thank you to everyone who has made a pledge to our Capital Campaign thus far. We've already raised $4 million from almost 200 contributors. We encourage pledges to be paid over five years to enable contributors to make the strongest gift possible. What follows is a preliminary draft listing of Capital Campaign contributors for whom we have a signed pledge form (as of May 2, 2000). This list excludes contributors who have asked that their gifts not be published. If your name is not listed as you prefer or if you believe that your name has been omitted, please let us know. If you have made a pledge but have not yet signed and completed a pledge form, please do so as soon as possible. Our goal is 100% participation. Every pledge is important! President's Circle, Program Builder $500,000+ Dr. Tim Cranmer, Deane & Marty Blazie, Ted & Mel Henter National Federation of the Blind of Utah Director's Circle, Opportunity Builder $250,000+ Mrs. Emerson Foulke in memory of Dr. Emerson Foulke Leaders' Circle, Independence Builder $100,000+ Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP Mr. & Mrs. W. Michael Gretschel, Mr. & Mrs. John Alahouzos, Jr., Mr. & Mrs. David J. Ganz Larry & Kathleen Sebranek Patrons $50,000+ Plextor (Shinano Kenshi) Primo Electric Company Mimi & Marvin Sandler in memory of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan Wilhelm Commercial Builders, Inc. & Wayne & Debbie Wilhelm Partners $25,000+ J.A. Ammon & Associates, Inc. Donald & Betty Capps Glenn & Norma Crosby Mitchell J. Diamond in memory of Irene C. Diamond Sharon Gold Guardian Mechanical Mary Ellen Jernigan Kurzweil Foundation Herbert Magin Marc & Patricia Maurer C. Frederick Muhl Gene Parker Wayne Rivera Tom & Joyce Scanlan Dr. & Mrs. Fredric K. Schroeder David & Carolyn Seymour Mr. James A. Valliant VisuAide, Inc. Charles & Ramona Walhof Kevan & Bridget Worley in honor of James & Darlene Worley Benefactors $10,000+ Charles & Betty Allen Stephen & Margaret Benson Charles & Jacqueline Brown John A. Cheadle Mr. Richard China Curtis & Peggy Chong Colorforms/Wallace, Inc. T.V. (Tim) Cranmer Duxbury Systems, Inc. Doug & Peggy Elliott James Gashel & Betsy Zaborowski Daniel Goldstein & Laura Williams Gary Grassman John & Sandy Halverson Mr. Daniel J. Harman Allen & Joy Harris Mr. & Mrs. Don Hudson Carl & Sally Jacobsen Clarence E. Mitchell/Mitchco International Don & Shirley Morris Monica Stugelmeyer Rosen, Sapperstein & Friedlander, Chartered (Sheldon J. Berman, CPA) Arthur A. Schreiber Joseph & Lora Van Lent Harold Wenning Melissa & Jon Williamson Fellows $5,000+ Lynn & Michael Baillif Douglas & Christine Boone Cheralyn Braithwaite Charles F. Brown, Jr. Ron Brown Mac & Denise Carnes in memory of Betty Niceley Anthony D. & Marie Cobb Vincent F. Connelly Enabling Technologies, Inc. Bob & Pat Eschbach Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Gardner Alice & Michael Gosse Herman & Penny Gruber Steve Hastalis National Federation of the Blind of Idaho The Jewish Braille Institute of America Mr. & Mrs. Charles W. Jorgensen Scott C. LaBarre Sharon & Al Maneki Marie & Michael Marucci Marie Marucci in honor of Cosimo & Anna Farace Marie Marucci in memory of Cosimo Farace Floyd W. Matson Thomas W. McKenzie The McQuillan Family Joseph & Patricia Miller John & Holly Mooney in memory of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan Gary & Karen Nelson National Federation of the Blind of Ohio Barbara & Bob Pierce Larry & Donna Posont in memory of Arthur Segal Policy Management Systems Corporation Primo Electric Employees Mr. & Mrs. Ray Raysor Lorraine Rovig Pamela J. Schnurr Dr. & Mrs. Harold W. Snider Dr. David A. Ticchi Mrs. Marionhelen Weiland in memory of Robert S. Jaquiss, Sr. Mr. & Mrs. James Welch Bernard & Patricia Werwie, Jr. D. Curtis & Doris M. Willoughby Fred & Mary Wurtzel Friends Gifts less than $5,000 Mrs. M. Anabelle Alexander Mr. Robert L. Anderson Adrienne Asch Mr. Robert F. Blackford Aloma Bouma Robert Braswell Mollie & Theron Bucy Carol Castellano & William Cucco, Jr. Mrs. Barbara Cheadle Mr. Walter L. Childs Mr. & Mrs. Cox and Family Mr. Robert Darling/Statewide Communications Justin & Yoshiko Dart Wayne & Carmen Davis Des Moines Chapter, NFB of Iowa in memory of Mrs. Glenys Israel Mrs. Revanne Duckett Marsha Woodward Dyer in memory of Ruth & Walter Woodward Priscilla A. Ferris Michael & Fatos Floyd Mr. James Fruchterman Mary Jane Fry Bruce A. & Rebecca L. Gardner Mr. & Mrs. Harry Gawith General Finishes Corp./George Adams Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Gingerich Sam & Vanessa Gleese Joyce Green David & Darlene Houck Barry Humphries Mr. & Mrs. William O. Jacobs in memory of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan Robert S. Jaquiss, Jr. in memory of Robert S. Jaquiss, Sr. Mrs. Tami Dodd Jones Allison Joyce Deborah Kent & Richard C. Stein Ann-Marie Laney National Federation of the Blind of Lorain County, Ohio Gary Mackenstadt Pat MacRae Ray & Diane McGeorge Mr. & Mrs. John Munson National Federation of the Blind of New Jersey Noel Nightingale & Jim Peterson Ms. Maureen O'Gorman Mr. & Mrs. James H. Omvig, Sr. Anne E. Orr Bill Pearce & Sue Monath Potomac Chapter, NFB of Virginia Rev. Melvin L. Ray, Jr. Barbara J. Reynolds Mark A. Riccobono & Melissa Lehman Richard & Donna Ring Mrs. Ruth I. Schroeder Ray & Marla Sewell Hazel Staley The Stayer Family in memory of Thelma Rosenfeld Mr. & Mrs. Charles (Tom) Stevens Dr. Jeff Stickel Ms. Joie Stuart Miss Sara Sunder Kelly Taylor Treasure Valley Chapter, NFB of Idaho National Federation of the Blind of Virginia Whittier Wood Products Joanne & Harold Wilson Bruce & Betty Woodward Gary L. Wunder Matching Gifts: CNA Have you made your campaign pledge yet? We need everyone's help. The construction cost of our projected National Research and Training Institute for the Blind is eighteen million dollars. Please take this opportunity to complete your pledge form. Without you our job will be just that much harder. The Campaign To Change What It Means To Be Blind Capital Campaign Pledge Intention Name:_______________________________________ Home Address:_______________________________ City, State, and Zip:_______________________ Home Phone: ____________________ Work Phone:_____________________ E-mail address:_____________________________ Employer:___________________________________ Work Address:_______________________________ City, State, Zip:___________________________ To support the priorities of the Campaign, I (we) pledge the sum of $___________. My (our) pledge will be payable in installments of $ __________ over the next ____ years (we encourage pledges paid over five years), beginning _____________, on the following schedule (check one): __ annually, __ semi-annually, __ quarterly, __ monthly, __ Pre-authorized Check plan (PAC) I (we) have enclosed a down payment of $ ________________ ___ Gift of stock: _____________________ shares of _____________ ___ My employer will match my gift. Please list (my) our names in all Campaign Reports and on the Campaign Wall of Honor in the appropriate Giving Circle as follows: __ I (We) wish to remain anonymous. Signed: ________________________________ Date: __________________ [PHOTO/CAPTION: William F. Gallagher] Bill Gallagher Dies by Marc Maurer A man who became a prominent leader in work with the blind in the twentieth century, William Gallagher, died at age seventy-seven on April 19, 2000. His career in the blindness field began in 1954 and continued for the next thirty-six years. In 1980 William Gallagher was appointed Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind. During the 1970's and early 1980's there was dramatic strife between organized blind consumers and certain of the agencies established to serve the blind. Mr. William Gallagher worked closely with Dr. Kenneth Jernigan to try to bring understanding between consumers and service providers. Mr. Gallagher, who was himself blind, recognized the importance of discussion with the National Federation of the Blind. Strife and bitterness do not change to harmony and cooperation without time and effort, but they do change. By the mid 1980's Dr. Jernigan nominated Bill Gallagher to serve as President of the North America/Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union, and he was elected. By the end of his tenure as the Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind, Bill Gallagher had come to have respect and affection for a great many leaders of the organized blind movement, and these feelings were returned. Bill Gallagher took the time and made the effort to understand the driving force behind the movement for collective action by the blind of America. He served an essential part in bringing harmony into the field. He could not have done it alone, but without him it could not have been done. He has made extraordinary contributions to the lives and the future of the blind. It is not too much to say of Bill Gallagher that he was a statesman. Recipes This month's recipes come from members of the NFB of Arkansas. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Chris McKenzie] Peanut Butter Brownies by Chris McKenzie Chris McKenzie is President of the NFB of Arkansas and Pulaski County Chapter Secretary. Ingredients: 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup brown sugar 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup all-purpose flour Method: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together salt and flour. Set aside. Cream peanut butter, margarine, and vanilla; stir in eggs and brown sugar. Add flour mixture and mix well. Pour batter into a greased eight-by-eight-inch pan. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes. Cool slightly before cutting into squares. Chicken Supreme by Chris McKenzie Ingredients: 8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs flour for dredging 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 2 cans cream of chicken soup 1 stick margarine, cut into pieces Method: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place margarine in a nine-by-thirteen-inch baking dish. Place in oven till melted. Mix salt, pepper, and flour together. Dredge chicken in flour mixture and place in pan in a single layer. Bake for fifteen minutes. Turn chicken and return to the oven for fifteen more minutes. Then pour soup evenly over chicken. Bake for thirty more minutes. [PHOTO/CAPTION: Pat Whitlow] Pat's Seasoned Rice by Pat Whitlow Pat Whitlow is president of the Jonesboro Chapter. Ingredients: 2 cups water 2 teaspoons (or 2 cubes) chicken bouillon 1/4 cup (or more) minced onion 1 tablespoon parsley flakes 1 tablespoon margarine 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/4 teaspoon salt (or more to taste) few dashes of garlic powder dash of celery salt pepper to taste 1 cup long grain rice, rinsed 1 cup (1/2 can) Spam or ham, chopped Method: Mix together the first ten ingredients, then bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for a few minutes. Return to a boil and add rice. Stir, then cover and reduce heat to simmer for about twenty minutes. Add the chopped meat and toss lightly. This goes well with chicken. If it is to be served with Teriyaki, use beef or chicken bouillon depending on the meat used and add soy sauce to the rice before cooking. Makes four to five cups. Cashew and Broccoli Salad by Pat Whitlow Ingredients: 8 cups raw broccoli florets 1 package (12 or 16 ounces) of bacon, fried crisp and crumbled 1 medium red or white onion, chopped 1 cup raisins 1 cup cashews, chopped Dressing ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/4 cup sugar Method: In a large bowl gently mix together all ingredients for salad. In a small bowl mix ingredients for dressing. Just before serving, pour dressing over salad and toss well. Butter Pound Cake by Pearl McKenzie Pearl McKenzie is Pulaski County Chapter Treasurer and Chris McKenzie's mother. Ingredients: 1 Duncan Hines Golden Butter Cake Mix 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup liquid margarine 1/3 cup oil 1 8-ounce container sour cream 4 eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla Method: Mix all ingredients well. Bake in greased and floured bundt or tube pan at 375 degrees for forty-five minutes. Let cake sit in pan on cooling rack for about ten minutes. Remove from pan to plate. Note: Chocolate cake mix may be substituted, but, if you do, omit vanilla. Seven-layer Casserole by Pearl Mckenzie Ingredients: Layer 1: 1 cup rice, cooked according to package directions Layer 2: 1 can whole-kernel corn, drained salt and pepper to taste Layer 3: 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce mixed with 1/2 can water Layer 4: 2/3 cup diced onion Layer 5: 2/3 cup diced bell pepper Layer 6: 1 pound browned ground beef salt and pepper to taste Layer 7: 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce, mixed with 1/2 can water 3 strips of bacon (optional garnish) Method: Layer ingredients as specified in nine-by-thirteen-inch baking dish, cover and bake at 325 degrees for one hour. Uncover and bake thirty minutes more, until the bacon is crisp. Monitor Miniatures Knock, Knock, Knock: Opportunity is knocking on your door. Job Fair 2000 is coming soon; make sure you are ready. The National Federation of the Blind will host its premier Job Fair at the 2000 National Convention. This will be an opportunity you do not want to miss. Where else can you meet with twenty companies in one setting? Explore different employment opportunities, talk to recruiters about your skills, make contacts, and interview for a job. We are constantly adding to our list of nationwide companies looking for experienced employees. If you want to work in high tech, customer service, general office, industry, or hospitality or travel departments, you must attend Job Fair 2000. To attend, submit a resume and cover letter outlining your skills and qualifications to the Colorado Center for the Blind, 1830 South Acoma, Denver, Colorado 80223 or e-mail . Space is limited; get your resumes in as soon as possible. If you have questions, call Jennifer Stevens at (800) 401-4632. ********** Y2K Wedding Bells: We recently received the following wedding announcement: A Crystal, Minnesota, couple celebrated the millennium by getting married on Leap Day, 2000. Eric Smith and Laura DeMarais were married at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, February 29, at the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul. About twenty family members and friends attended the ceremony, which took place amid the blooming azaleas, cyclamen, and assorted flora of the Conservatory's glass-enclosed sunken garden. An active member of the National Federation of the Blind for the past twenty-nine years, Smith currently serves on the Board of Directors of the NFB of Minnesota. He is a communications specialist for the Internal Revenue Service and was recently elected vice-chair of the Minnesota State Rehabilitation Council for the Blind, the advisory body for State Services for the Blind. DeMarais has done volunteer work for BLIND, Inc., the NFB's adult rehabilitation training center in Minnesota, and played a key role in designing the agency's Internet Web site . She is director of the Reading and Study Skills Center at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and currently serves as president of the Minnesota affiliate of the National Association for Developmental Education. According to Smith and DeMarais, they chose the date because it symbolizes the unique nature of their love and commitment to each other. February 29 happens infrequently, occurring once every four years under ordinary circumstances and just once every 400 years in century-change years such as 2000. Elected: On Saturday, March 18, 2000, the Capitol District Chapter of the NFB of New York held elections, and the following officers were elected: Gisela Distel, President; Charlie Richardson, Vice President; Joy Harris, Secretary; David Hoskinson, Treasurer; and Teresa Downie, Board member. For Sale: We have been asked to carry the following announcement: I wish to sell a DECtalk PC1 with an internal speaker system that requires a 5-1/4-inch bay. Asking $225 or best offer. Buyer pays shipping and can select shipping method. Contact Marty R. McKenzie, SCCB Outreach Program, beeper: (800) 420-1952, e-mail: , or SCSDB Web site: . New Chapter: The newly formed Suburban West Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Massachusetts is pleased to inform Monitor readers that the chapter, which covers the towns of Watertown, Waltham, Newton, and other surrounding communities within the suburban west area near Boston, held an organizational meeting on October 9. The following officers were elected: Mary Ann Lareau, President; Thomas Duffy, Vice President; Lucille Burkhardt, Secretary; and George Blake, Treasurer. Elected: The National Federation of the Blind of Greater Long Island has elected new officers. They are David Stayer, President; Christine Faltz, First Vice President; George Dominguez, Second Vice President; Lorraine Stayer, Recording Secretary; Sara S. Berger, Corresponding Secretary; Jo Anne Masgard, Treasurer; and Brad Greenspan and John Stevenson, Board Members. New Commission in Nebraska: Mike Floyd, President of the National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska, recently wrote to tell us the following joyful news: The National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska is pleased to announce that L.B. 352, Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired, was passed April 4 in the Nebraska State Unicameral by a vote of 37 ayes, 10 nays, and 2 not voting. Our special thanks go to Senator Lavon Crosby of Lincoln, who introduced and fought for our bill for many years. Then, on Monday, April 10, 2000, Governor Mike Johanns signed the bill into law, creating the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired. On July 1 the existing state agency providing vocational rehabilitation services for Nebraska's adult blind population will be separated from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. It will be established as a free-standing, independent commission, otherwise retaining its previously held assets. The Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired will by law henceforth be administered by a board of five commissioners, three of whom shall be blind and one of whom shall be a Federationist. Nebraska Federationists are excited, relieved, and looking forward to the challenges ahead. We offer thanks to the many who have worked hard here in Nebraska, and we also thank those of our Federation family outside the state who have shared their inspiration and their prayers. PHOTO/CAPTION: Edna Nemeth, March 14, 1909, to March 31, 2000] In Memoriam: We regret to report that on Friday, March 31, 2000, Edna Nemeth, the wife of Dr. Abraham Nemeth, died quietly. Mrs Nemeth was bilingual in English and Hungarian due to having lived in Hungary during the First World War. At the time of her death the Nemeths had just celebrated their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. Mrs. Nemeth had three children from her first marriage, nine grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren with two on the way. We extend our sympathy to Dr. Nemeth and his family in their sorrow. Elected: The San Fernando Valley Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of California held its election on February 12, 2000. The new officers are Tina Thomas, President; Robert Stigile, Vice President; Ron Smith, Treasurer; Shari Main, Secretary; and Donna Roysner, Board Member. APH Announces Math Flash: We have been asked to carry the following announcement: The American Printing House for the Blind's Math Flash software helps visually impaired or blind elementary students sharpen and improve math skills. This self-voicing program uses the computer's sound card to communicate instructions, drills, practice sessions, and games. Math Flash allows students to modify the presentation as well as control the difficulty of the math drills and tests. The easy-to-use Math Flash program allows students to select their favorite Math Mentor to lead the exercises. The Mentor's voice (created with professionally narrated human speech rather than computer-generated speech) guides the student through problems in addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. A free demonstration of this product is available on the APH Web site. Visit to download a demo. For more information contact American Printing House for the Blind, Inc., 1839 Frankfort Avenue, P.O. Box 6085, Louisville, Kentucky 40206-0085, phone (502) 895-2405, (800) 223-1839, fax (502) 899-2274, e-mail . Elected: The Kanawha Valley Chapter of the NFB of West Virginia elected new officers. They are Roland Payne, President; Eddie Greenleaf, Vice President and Board Member; Barbara Smith, Secretary; Barbara Olive, Treasurer; Mike Smith, Chaplain; and James Olive, alternate Board Member. Honored: On March 7, 2000, Eddie Greenleaf of Charleston, West Virginia, and an active member of the Kanawha Valley Chapter of the NFB of West Virginia, received one of Bell Atlantic's top awards. He was chosen from among 47,000 employees as one of six recipients of the Service to the Community award. He was flown to New York City, where he was wined and dined at Tavern on the Green and met top Bell Atlantic officials. Eddie has been active for twenty-five years in the NFB of West Virginia. He has served as an affiliate Board Member and as Vice President of his local chapter. He has raised funds for NEWSLINE(r) and educated legislators about the importance of Braille and access technology. He has also advised companies in the Bell System about effective access technology for blind employees. Congratulations to Eddie upon this well deserved honor. World Series Baseball Game: We have been asked to carry the following announcement: With the 2000 baseball season now underway you can play your own games and look up baseball facts by obtaining Version 14 of the World Series Baseball Game and Information System. Among the 269 teams that come with the game are all the pennant winners from 1901 through 1999, all-star teams, and Japanese and Negro league teams. You can also review the history of baseball, find out who is in the Hall of Fame, check out all the baseball records, and try out your knowledge of the game on a 1,000-question quiz. The game is being played by sight-impaired baseball fans of all ages in forty-eight states on IBM-compatible computers with screen readers and synthesizers. The price is still the same as when the game was first introduced in 1986, only $15 to new users, $5 for the annual update (which comes out after the World Series). Send your check to Harry Hollingsworth, 692 S. Sheraton Drive, Akron, Ohio 44319, or call (330) 644-2421 or e-mail . "Nickelodeon" Demonstrates Internet Access for Kids: We are pleased to report that on its April 30 broadcast the children's program "Nickelodeon" turned its attention to the problem of Internet access for kids who use access technology. A producer contacted Mrs. Maurer, who helped the staff identify Michael Forzano, age nine, of Yonkers, New York, to demonstrate the way he surfs the Net using his talking computer. Curtis Chong, director of the NFB's Technology Department, provided the voice-over. Both Michael and Curtis stressed the importance of having those who design children's Web sites include text tags labeling the many pictures. Congratulations to "Nickelodeon" for accurately covering this important subject. Green Thumb Seeks Older Workers to Honor: In an effort to identify blind seniors who are still contributing to their communities, we have been asked to carry the following announcement: Green Thumb, Inc., the country's oldest and largest provider of mature-worker training and employment, has launched its third national Prime Time Awards search for the Outstanding Older Worker to represent each state. The winners will be announced and recognized in their respective states and at the Prime Time Awards dinner on October 6, 2000, in the East Hall of the historic Union Station in Washington, D.C. To be recognized as an Outstanding Older Worker, nominees must work at least twenty hours a week in paid employment, be over age sixty-five, and be a resident of the state for which they are being nominated. To obtain the nomination form, entrants should visit the "Outstanding Older Worker" page of Green Thumb's Web site at . Deadline for entries is June 30, 2000. Entrants may submit their own names or be nominated by employer, family, or friends. Smithsonian Publications Available on Audio Tape: We have been asked to carry the following announcement: You can now choose to listen to Smithsonian's National Museum of American History exhibit brochures and the script texts recorded on audiocassette. The new audio tapes for people with disabilities are produced by the Smithsonian Accessibility Program's Voices to Access 2000 project. Voices to Access 2000 can provide audiocassette alternative format for most Smithsonian publications. This service brings the Smithsonian closer to its goal of making its publications readable by anyone in formats accessible to everyone. For information on the nearly 100 audio tapes currently available or to request taping of a particular Smithsonian publication, call (202) 786-2942. The audio tapes list will also be posted on the Web at . There is no charge to people with disabilities for the taped versions, and much of the related print material is free. However, audiocassettes will accompany only paid subscriptions to such publications as Smithsonian Magazine. New Tape Magazine: We have been asked to carry the following announcement: Disabled Christian Tape Fellowship is a monthly, non-charismatic Christian tape magazine. It is a forum in which you can share information or ask questions. The first issue is expected to be released in July, and it is free. After that you may subscribe for $5, August through December, 2000. It will then cost $12 for the year 2001. You can submit a cassette with your testimony, favorite Christian Web site, Christian libraries, your business, or music, etc., but your contribution must be five minutes or less. Send your request for the July issue to Disabled Christian Tape Fellowship, 610 B Avenue, Vinton, Iowa 52349, or e-mail your request to . Are You Prepared: Are you prepared for the challenge of finding a job? Job Opportunities for the Blind is hosting Success Every Step of the Way, an employment seminar. Come and learn about * Interviewing * How to access those hidden jobs * Best ways to disclose * Dressing to impress * What to do as a student to prepare for your career * Do you need blindness skills training? Bring your resume for review by employment staff of the National Federation of the Blind training centers. Learn about new and exciting jobs and much, much more. Attend Success Every Step of the Way at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta on Sunday, July 2, 2000, 12:30 to 4:00 p.m. See the convention pre-agenda for specific room assignments. NFB PLEDGE I pledge to participate actively in the effort of the National Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for the blind; to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to abide by its constitution. ----------------------- Internet Header -------------------------------- Sender: brl-monitor@lothlorien.nfbcal.org Received: from lothlorien.nfbcal.org (ns.NFBCAL.ORG [157.22.230.125]) by spdmgaac.compuserve.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SUN-1.9) with ESMTP id CAA19756; Thu, 1 Jun 2000 02:00:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from lothlorien.nfbcal.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lothlorien.nfbcal.org (8.9.3/8.8.4.nfbcal.org) with SMTP id WAA21882; Wed, 31 May 2000 22:25:42 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 22:25:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: Errors-To: buhrow@lothlorien.nfbcal.org Reply-To: brl-monitor@lothlorien.nfbcal.org Originator: brl-monitor@nfbcal.org Sender: brl-monitor@lothlorien.nfbcal.org Precedence: bulk From: David Andrews To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: The Braille Monitor, June, 2000 X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Comment: Braille Monitor subscription list