How to Use This Directory
Table of Contents
Directory Subscriber Search: The Basics
This online version of the AFB Directory of Services for Blind and
Visually Impaired Persons in the United States and Canada allows you to look for organizations in the manner
that best suits your needs. When you first log on to the Directory,
the Directory Subscriber Search page is displayed. You may look up an organization
by name, obtain a list of organizations in a particular U.S. state or Canadian
province, do a selected key word search, or search for an organization by type or by
services offered in the United States or Canada or both.
The results of your search are presented alphabetically. They will contain
services in both U.S. states and Canadian provinces if your search has encompassed
both countries. Because listings are presented alphabetically by state and
province, organizations in Alberta, Canada, for example, will be listed after
organizations in Alaska, United States. The names of the organizations presented
in your search results are grouped under headings according to the states and
provinces in which they are located. If you are using a screen reader, note that
the state and province headings are active links and will therefore be read by
the screen reader when you tab through the results page. If you have the option
of listing all the links on the page, you may select a state or province name to
go directly to listings in that state or province.
The results page lists each organization with its city, state, and zip code
below its name. To display all the Directory's data about an
organization, simply follow the organization name link. An organization's profile
includes contact information about the organization and a detailed description
of the services it offers.
From the first results page, you have two additional options for viewing the
results of your search. These are "Show All Addresses" and "Show All Providers'
Information." The links to these options appear after the last entry in the
results page. "Show All Addresses" will display organizations with their full
street and web site addresses rather than just their cities, states, and zip
codes. "Show All Providers Information" will display the full profiles of all
the organizations that match your search criteria.
Return to Table of Contents
Searching by Services Offered or Type of Organization
The Directory Subscriber Search screen allows you to search for either one or
all organization types and one or all services offered at a time. If you wish to
search several organization types or several service categories at
the same time, see the Advanced Search feature.
The default setting for both "Organization Type" and "Services" is "All." If you
search for a particular type of organization, such as Low Vision Service/Clinic,
and select "All" in the Services field, the results page will list all
organizations classified as Low Vision Service/Clinic. This search might be
useful if you want to know about multiple services offered by this type of
organization. However, if you are looking for an organization classified as a
Low Vision Service/Clinic that offers services for elderly persons in particular,
you might want to narrow your search by selecting "Aging" in the drop-down menu
in the Services field. The results page would then list only organizations
categorized under Low Vision Service/Clinic that offer services to older adults
who are visually impaired.
Some organizations are classified as more than one organization type. For
example, it is possible for an organization to be both a Low Vision Service/Clinic
and a Rehabilitation Agency. To learn more about the services offered by a
particular organization, look at the organization's complete data profile.
The full profile of an organization will provide a detailed description of the
services offered by the organization. For an explanation of organization types,
go to Description of Organization Types, and for an explanation of service
types, go to Description of Services.
Return to Table of Contents
Searching by Geographic Location
To search for an organization by geographic location, select the U.S. state and/or Canadian province from the drop-down menu for the State field or Province field. The results page will list the organizations that match your search criteria by state and province in alphabetical order. In the alphabetical listing of organizations by state and province, U.S. states are not presented in a separate list from Canadian provinces. Therefore, if you search for organizations in the United States and Canada, organizations in Alberta, Canada will be listed after organizations in Alaska, United States.
Return to Table of Contents
Searching by Organization Name
To search for an organization in the United States by name, type the name of
the organization in the Organization Name field. If the organization you are
looking for is in Canada, you must select "None" in the drop-down menu for State
and select "All" in the drop-down menu for Province. ("All" is the default for
the drop-down menu for State and "None" is the default for the drop-down menu
for Province.) Then activate the "Submit" button. The Organization Name field
is not case sensitive, so you may use lowercase or uppercase letters, or a
combination of both.
If you do not know the full name of the organization for which you are looking,
you may type a part of the organization's name in the Organization Name field.
For example, if you are looking for a guide dog school and you know that Guide
Dogs is part of its name, you may enter those words to obtain all the
organizations in the Directory with the phrase Guide Dogs
in their names. You cannot use wild card characters, such as *
or ?, but you
will receive useful results if you use a portion of the word, such as dog
instead of dogs. This will result in a list of organizations
with both dog and dogs in its name. Note that
some words, such as National and Association,
may be part of the name of numerous organizations. Using only these words in
the Organization Name field may result in a list that is too long to be useful
to you. One of the other options described here may be a better choice
for narrowing down your search.
When searching by organization name, the exact order of words is important.
For example, if you are looking for an organization with the specific phrase
of the blind in its name, the result would be a list of organizations that
contain those three words in that order, such as the Association for Education
and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired. You would not obtain
organizations with names such as the Florida Association of
Workers for the Blind, even though their names might contain
all three words—"of," "the," and "blind"—because the words do not
appear in the specific order necessary. You may type in a string of words from
the beginning, middle, or end of the organization's name, and even end that
string in a partial word, but all the words must be in the exact order in which
they appear in the name of the organization.
Return to Table of Contents
Searching by Selected Key Words
You can use the selected key word function to search the following information: organization acronym, city,
state, or zip code. In addition, this feature can be used to search for individuals by last name. You may also search by certain key terms commonly used in the visual impairment field. You may want to check A Glossary of Common Terms
to help you find technical terms or synonyms that are frequently used in the field
of blindness and visual impairment.
Return to Table of Contents
The Advanced Search Feature
The Directory's Advanced Search provides users with additional options for
customizing and narrowing searches. By using the Advanced Search, you will be
able to make multiple choices in several of the categories displayed. Instead
of the drop-down menus used on the Subscriber Search screen, list boxes are
provided for each field shown, and these boxes display multiple choices.
Following are the steps for selecting multiple choices using a keyboard:
- Arrow down to the first item you want to select.
- Press Shift + F8.
- To continue selecting items on the list, arrow down and press the spacebar
to select additional items. To deselect, press the spacebar again.
If you move from one field, such as "Product Type," from which you have made
selections to another field, such as "State," you must press Shift + F8 again
when you move back into the previous field. You can then move up and down, using
the spacebar to select and deselect choices as before. If you do not press
Shift + F8 when you return to a field from another field before arrowing up or
down, you will deselect the items you selected before.
The Clear Form link at the bottom of the screen allows you to delete all your
previous selections and start again.
A note to users of screen readers: The entire list of choices for each field
box is not visible on the screen. Approximately four items in each list are
visible at one time. Therefore, if you use a command to read all selected items,
some screen readers may read only those selected items that are visible on the
screen and not all the items you have selected.
Following are the steps for selecting multiple choices using a mouse:
- Click on the list box of the field in which you want to make your
selections.
- Hold down the Control key for each item you want to select and left-click
on the item.
- Control-click on the item again to deselect it.
In the Advanced Search, you can also perform searches by "Product
Type." The drop-down menu for product types lists types of adapted products
for people who are blind or visually impaired. You may select a product type to
look for manufacturers or distributors of these products. For a full description
of product types, see Manufacturers/Distributors of Adapted Products in
Description of Organization Types.
Return to Table of Contents
AFB Directory of Services, Copyright © 2005 American Foundation for the Blind. All rights reserved.
If you would like to give us feedback on the data in the Directory of Services, or if you know about new organizations, please contact us at afbdirectory@afb.net.
