On June 2 Tuesday Topics will try another new thing! As we take to the internet we will create a platform for some of our ACB scholarship winners to tell us a little about who they are and what they are doing. Amanda SELM, current chair of the ACB Scholarship Committee, is the prime mover in this process to share scholarship winners with the broader ACB community. During this show we will explore the lives of the winners who join us and we will also talk about the scholarship process with Amanda and perhaps other members of the scholarship committee. I am looking forward to understanding the process as well as those who have been chosen to be a part of ACB'S convention as scholarship winners!

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

At a convention of the Florida Council of the Blind a speaker from Vispero mentioned Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) which  happens on May 21, I think. It occurred to me that this might represent a good topic for us to look at. There are huge differences in accessibility even among developed countries. Some of those countries model what they do on what we do in the United States. Many have very different models. No country that I am aware of has a comprehensive accessibility infrastructure that is better than the one that operates here.

While we will talk a little about laws, I am more interested in what the consequences of inadequate accessibility are. How is braille affected? What are the consequences for mobility? Does poor accessibility affect employment? What should we do about it? What is being done now?

While blindness is an extremely low-incidence disability in this country, there are places where the proportion of blind people is larger. Nevertheless, there are many more people with other disabilities than there are people with vision loss virtually everywhere. In countries in the developing world are asked to make room in their laws and infrastructure and spending for accessibility, there often is simply neither the will nor the money to make it happen! Many countries still rely on charities rather than the government for much of what is done for people with disabilities! What this means is that there can be huge differences in terms of what is done from country to country. We will explore some of what is real about inaccessibility and what we can do to try to narrow the gap between what we take for granted and what other countries lack!

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

It is graduation season and we wonder how that goes for people who are blind. When you graduated from high school or college was that a good experience? Were you treated in a special way as a person with visual impairment? Was the experience memorable for you? Were there problems?

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

In the past we have done programs on autonomous vehicles. Recently several folks have had the chance to ride in vehicles with no drivers and we thought it would be fun to ask them about their experience and their impressions. We also want to explore where we are in the process of regularizing their ability to function on a permanent basis. How good are accessibility features? Are there likely to be issues for people who are blind when insurance is needed? When are states likely to approve autonomous vehicles permanently? Who are the basic players in the field? What should ACB be doing?

We hear about autonomous vehicles fairly often. We do not often enough get a chance to hear a full account of the experience. We will welcome three folks who have taken rides in autonomous vehicles and will share their impressions. We will also explore where we are in terms of making these vehicles permanently a part of our lives!

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

We will be continuing the discussion begun on our latest podcast concerning

the state of the blindness nation today and tomorrow. We have essentially finished painting what we think is a fairly accurate picture of how the blindness

system has changed over the last couple of decades and what some of the characteristics of the current system are.

We have begun to identify components of what we think might be a set of values that we should adopt moving forward. There is still a lot to say! If we

are to come up with priorities for the next decade we need to add to our list of absolutely necessary services and then try to do the much harder job of

staring ahead into an uncertain future. What will the constraints on services be like a decade from now? How much of the loss of Federal autonomy will

continue after this administration is over? What kind of success will people who are blind have selling a new paradigm of services to a country that may

not want to hear a word we say? What can or should we do to optimize outcomes ten years from now?

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

People who are blind have access to more information than they have ever had before! There is more technological choice for this population than there has ever been. Consumer organizations are advocating and so are organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind, the Vision Serve Alliance and the American Printing House for the Blind. What is the vision that advocating organizations have, if there is such a thing? What are the differences in terms of these various organizations who lobby the government, donors and the media?

If we were going to look at the state of expectations for people who are blind ten years from now what would we see? What ought we to see?

Clearly none of us on the team and not even you, dear listeners, can predict the future with any accuracy! We can extrapolate from where we are now! We can also imagine both the best and the worst scenarios. What would they look like?

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

On April 21, from 7 to 9 PM Eastern time, Tuesday Topics will once more take to the internet and other devices with a first look at the ACB convention coming up toward the end of July. We will be hearing about a new program aimed to attract young people to our convention. We will hear about a new and exciting component of the scholarship program and we will hear from our fearless convention leader Janet Dickelman and her tours sidekick Rhonda Trott. Once registration is open they will be back but this Topics will serve as a chance to get a sneak preview into what's in store in St. Louis.

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

We are excited about this program because we will get the chance to have three guests who we will get to know better. All of them are ladies who have recently begun working for the American Council of the Blind. The first of them that I met was Caitlin Lee who was waiting for a shuttle to the hotel in Washington DC with me at the airport. She is working on finding funds for ACB so we can do the important things that are in our budget and beyond.

Dianna Leonard was met soon after my arrival at the hotel and there were lots of ACB folks who already knew and admired the new custodian of audio description.

Grace Hart I was introduced to but barely got to know as the weekend proceeded. She has a complicated job in that she works with our advocacy department, our access expert Kolby Garrison and for a boss not yet hired, the ACB atorney!

Who were these ladies before they became employees of ACB? What special skills do they bring to us and what are their days like now that they're here? Where are development and audio description going? Are there new directions ahead?

I am sure that many of you will join us to welcome the three newest folks to come to work for ACB! You may have questions yourself which there will be time to ask!

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

Tuesday Topics continues its exploration of devices available to purchase for less than a thousand dollars. We will look at several sets of ear buds and explore what makes them worth talking about. We will look at telephones. Some of them actually have buttons you can use to dial! We will explore players. These days they are a lot more than just players of music and books and we will explore some of the new options that are appearing in the player space. Most software does not cost a thousand dollars so we will explore new offerings that will work on phones or computers. This will include a glance at screen readers which do a lot more than just interpret what's on the screen! Chances are we will explore other devices not mentioned here. We were lucky enough to have a panel of experts join us and we expect most of  them to be back next week. Steve Bower, John Gassman and Michael Babcock enriched our discussion filled our program with information and surprises.

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

Everybody knows there is an unprecedented quantity of access technology out there. At CSUN three major new note takers were announced! They are at the forefront of what is new and innovative but most of them cost an arm and a leg and another arm! We thought it might be fun to explore the currently available tech that you can buy for under a thousand dollars! There are note takers, players, keyboards, software and more! We will tell you what we think of these products and we will talk about what they do and what makes them good or bad! You may be surprised by just how many items are out there and how many things they can do!

Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co