AFB Blog

Last night, I had the great opportunity to attend the American Foundation for the Blind's Helen Keller Achievement Awards fundraising gala at the Marriott Downtown in New York City. This was my first opportunity to attend the event, as I was in the area for work. I thought I would share with you my impression of this outstanding occasion. The Achievement Awards were initiated in 1994 to honor our long-time employee and internationally recognized icon, Helen Keller. I cannot begin to explain…

"Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." - Helen Keller In 1964 Helen Keller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Next week—on Tuesday June 17th—the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) will hold its annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards honoring those who continue Keller's extraordinary efforts to improve the lives of those…

Ike Presley, wearing a bioptic device, at the driver's wheel of a 1929 Model A Ford Roadster replica There was a recent NPR story (one of the many lately) on self-driving cars, and some of the profound impact this imagination-captivating technology might have on people's lives: Is There A Driverless Car In Your Future? As in most of these stories, the expert made no mention of the impact these cars will have on the current non-driver. Why? Maybe because non-drivers are invisible. On…

Image: Helen Keller with children in Adelaide, Australia, 1948 The American Foundation for the Blind is committed to promoting the life and legacy of Helen Keller. We are the proud caretakers of her archival collection of over 80,000 items including documents, photographs, photograph albums, press clippings, scrapbooks, architectural drawings, artifacts and audio-video materials. The archives were first made available to researchers during the 1970s. Since then, historians, writers, film…

Everybody who works with people who are blind or visually impaired knows those reluctant technology adopters, or complete non-technology adopters. When the Pew Research Center says 15% of Americans are not connected, who are these people? They're in my singing group. Since I love technology more than singing, I at first found this puzzling. Technology is a tool to let me do things. I can listen to the songs I want to learn, record lessons and practice sessions, and listen to the key parts…

I learned a lot at the 2014 AFB Leadership Conference, but overwhelmingly people tell me that the conversation on leadership between AFB's CEO, Carl Augusto, and the J.W. “Bill” Marriott, executive chairman and chairman of the board at Marriott International, stood out as the conference highlight. Personally, I walked away from that session with some new tools in my career toolbox. Most of you know what a big fan I am of Marriott International and the Marriott family, but this conversation…

For today, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I'll try to answer a question I get a lot: "What can I send this webmaster to give examples of how to fix a broken site?" Here's what happens. You are a user of assistive technology, or a person who has low vision and benefits from well-designed, well-executed websites (have I described everybody? Who doesn't benefit from things being done right?). You visit a site that is important to you—your banking site, an e-commerce site where you want to…

I was delighted to see this article from the Nielsen Norman Group on why Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful. Placeholders are those words that lurk in your online forms, frequently an almost unreadable pale gray. The example the author provides in the article is a password field where the label "Password:" appears above the form field, and the hint "Must have at least 6 characters" appears as light gray placeholder text inside the form field. The intent is to help users, by giving an…

I like to talk about technology...but sometimes the outdoors just takes over. Last Sunday was the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, a fabulous event here in NYC, in which about 32,000 people ride bicycles through the city. I rode on the back of a tandem bicycle. See this great VisionAware article about tandem cycling to get inspired. So, what technology comes into play when cycling? Let's start with the bike. I rode with a new group in town, InTandem, which provided about twenty of us with bikes,…