AFB Blog

On June 27, the anniversary of Helen Keller's birth, you are invited to participate in a unique opportunity to honor the legacy of Helen Keller's beloved teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy, and to advocate for improved educational results for all students living with vision loss, including students who may have additional disabilities. Be a part of the National Call-In Day to support the Anne Sullivan Macy Act, and tell Congress to get moving on making America's special education system more…

Since July 1, 2012, America's leading broadcast and cable television channels have each been required by law to provide at least 50 hours of primetime or children's programming with video description in every calendar quarter, approximately four hours per week per channel. Video description (or simply “description”) is the narration of on-screen visual elements and actions spoken during natural pauses in program dialogue. Please take a couple moments and participate in AFB's Described TV…

You may have caught the recent New York Times about Charlotte Brown and Aria Ottmueller, two high school track athletes with visual impairments. They are not being publicized for competing against other athletes with vision loss, but against their sighted peers. These athletes are examples of the roads being paved in the United States for persons with disabilities. Many could not imagine athletes with limited sight competing and succeeding in the pole vault or high jump, yet they are doing it…

May 9, 1933 To the Student Body of Germany History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels, and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books to the soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love…

G3ict (The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs), an advocacy initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN GAID), is presenting the 2nd edition of the global conference and showcase, M-Enabling Summit on Accessible Mobile Technology for Seniors and Users of All Abilities next month. Organized by G3ict and E.J. Krause and Associates, in cooperation with the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Summit is the only program of its kind…

I consider myself lucky to attend a number of conferences specific to blindness, visual impairment, and technology. Well, at the 2013 AFB Leadership Conference, IBM Research just raised the bar for accessibility in my eyes. The innovative work they're doing to create accessibility options for educational videos got me out of my seat. I feel like I am now an IBM Research groupie. The work that Chieko Asakawa, Hiro Takagi, and Peter Fay presented on during the preconference and general…

Readers of AccessWorld know that I have written several articles over the years condemning the lack of accessibility found in Amazon's Kindle devices. A couple of their devices have had some half-baked solutions for accessibility, and their mobile apps have never been accessible or usable at all. However, on May 1 we learned that Amazon's new update for the Kindle app for Apple's iOS mobile platform has improved accessibility for people with vision loss. We took a quick look at it on an…

From April 18-20, AFB hosted its annual flagship conference (formerly titled the Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute), together with Illinois AER, in Chicago. With over two dozen exhibitors and more than 400 attendees, we made many new friends and reconnected with old ones. In spite of some initial bad weather, attendance was strong. A day of pre-conference sessions gave way to Friday morning’s keynote address from Chieko Asakawa, Ph.D., of IBM Research-Tokyo. Blind since the age of 14…

On May 1, I'll be attending the Reading and Literacy Summit hosted by our good friends, Lions Club International. This event presents a promising opportunity to share vital information on topics such as accelerating global literacy, improved reading material distribution, expanding inclusion, and overcoming illiteracy through technology. AFB has been working with the Lions over the past year to expand braille and technology literacy through the Reading Action Program. For the millions of…