Tuesday Topics

we will be discussing our twentieth topic! Time flies when you are having fun! Thank you so much, Rick as in Morin! You are what makes this little plane fly, sir! This week we are going to discuss getting older which all of us do! However, we will focus on those blind people who are old enough to call themselves seniors. Some of us become seniors having been blind most or all of our lives. Others only get to find out what it's like to be blind after they are seniors themselves. All seniors who are blind share the reality that there are very few services for them compared to those available for people who are going to work. They are also a part of a population that is expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. As people live longer, they are more likely to lose all or some of their vision. How can ACB and its affiliates help seniors get better served? How can we recruit more of those seniors new to blindness? I have three guests on Tuesday Topics. Sandra (Sandy) Troiano has only been blind for ten years and she is barely a senior. Jeff Thom is President of the ACB special interest affiliate dedicated to the needs of this population: the Association on Aging and Vision Loss (AAVL). Terry Pacheco has recently started a series of community calls on aging and how we can adjust to it. I am also a senior! I will be seventy-five this year. Many of you who listen and participate can also take pride that you, too, have reached senior status.

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For long term, happy partnerships which is better; a relationship between two blind people or a relationship between a blind person and a sighted partner? I believe there will be strong opinions on both sides of this question. For the purposes of this debate, two partials equals two blind people. Do join us for our first "great debate".

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Tuesday Topics takes a look at people who have hearing loss as well as vision loss. Deborah Kendrick has written a new book about people who are blind who have hearing loss. She explores the problems multiple disabilities create and also looks at resources that are out there for people who must operate with two disabilities. We will also have a representative from SASI (the Sight and Sound Impaired committee of ACB). They are the group that is responsible for dealing with folks who have hearing loss and blindness at our conventions and elsewhere. Lori Scharff will be their representative and will tekl us what SASI does between conventions and what plans they have for the future.

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My guests on this week's Tuesday Topics have recently lunched a new podcast called "picture this". Brian Charlson, current President of the Bay State Council and immediate past President of Library Users of America and former First Vice-President of ACB, has been an active advocate for audio description since it began. Carl Richardson is Co-Chair of ACB'S audio Description Project Committee. He knows more than most of us ever knew about audio description. Both of them will talk about their podcast and be grilled about other aspects of audio description. What are the current options that are out there? What is in our immediate future where description is concerned? What are the problems we face? How can we solve them? What can ACB and its members do?

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Tuesday Topics is excited to welcome a distinguished duo to discuss the ADA at 30. Chris Bell is a distinguished attorney who was directly involved in writing the ADA and worked for many years for the government and later as a law partner to oversee its implementation and enforcement. He has published several seminal articles on the ADA and is acknowledged to be an expert on this subject Claire Stanley works as an advocacy specialist for the American Council of the Blind and was hardly born when the ADA came into effect. She is a trained attorney and, despite her youth, has a long history of advocacy work. I have spent thirty years trying to make sense of the ADA and, with the three of us available for conversation and questions, by the end of our two hour show, we should know a good deal about where the ADA stands.

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Tuesday Topics is now two hours which should give people lots of time to talk about their likes and dislikes concerning the ACB convention. My co-producer of Tuesday Topics will be featured during the first hour to tell us more about how he herded cats and juggled streams during the convention. Rick Morin was awesome and I want him to tell us more about how he did what he did and I hope he will tell us about some of the scary moments that we didn't notice because he fixed them just in time. It seems ridiculous given the avalanche of information we are getting this week at the convention for me to be suggesting that you plan to listen to something else next week. Nevertheless, Tuesday Topics will be back on the air on Tuesday, July 14th, Bastille day! I thought it might offer us a chance to talk about the convention that has just happened. I don't plan to have a guest. I want ACB folks to talk about the convention. Do you have suggestions for making it better? Were there things you didn't like? Were there things you thought were stupendous? I am not really interested in a love fest though I think that the accomplishments of those who made the convention happen are amazing! We can almost take their effectiveness for granted! What can we learn from this? What would you like to see next year? What about the program document? How was it? How about the codes? Were they distributed appropriately? Should people who registered receive other things? I hope lots of you will turn up to explore some of these questions.

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This is a reminder to everyone to tune in tomorrow when Tuesday Topics will give you a chance to hear what will be broadcast where during the convention. I think that we will be able to tell which elements will be on which ACB Radio channels. The schedule for the virtual tours that will appear on the treasure Trove channel has already been published. But where will the exhibit hall be and what about affiliate meetings? My guest this week on Tuesday Topics will be Janet Dickelman, convention queen. Our show will occur three days before the convention starts and most of the infrastructure should be in place. So Janet should be able to tell us what will appear where and how we can do whatever we need to do during the convention.

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This week on Tuesday Topics we explore a question that demands attention. Do black blind lives matter enough? We know there is less likelihood that black blind people will be working and we know that blind black women fare even worse than their male counterparts. We think that ACB has fewer black members than we should but we currently have no way of knowing how many black members we have. Peggy Garrett and Cheryl Cumings from the Multicultural Affairs Committee will be my guests on the next Tuesday Topics and we will explore both what we believe and what we can do to make it better. We want you to join us with questions at 7:45 on Tuesday, June 23rd.

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My guest on the next Tuesday Topics show on June 16th is Cindy Hollis who has been known as Cindy Van Winkle. She works as the membership and affiliate specialist for the American Council of the Blind. We will be talking about the huge proliferation of community calls during the pandemic. But we will also talk about the problems of attracting and maintaining members in ACB and what we can do about it! How do we attract younger members? Are we doing a good enough job of encouraging minority members? Are there differences between what a state affiliate and what a special interest affiliate need to do? You, of course, you will have the chance to ask Cindy questions or raise membership or affiliate issues if you choose to participate in our zoom call. If you would like to do that, please arrive at around 7:45 Eastern daylight time on Tuesday, June 16th.

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This week on Tuesday Topics we are conducting an open forum on working from home. I am hoping that lots of you who are working during the pandemic will call in to talk about your experiences. What has been easy? What has been hard? What adjustments have you had to make? Would you like to continue to do it after the pandemic is over? Are there new technologies you have had to learn? How successful have you been at learning them? Where do you see "working from home" going when a vaccine has been developed and the need to work from home is ended? These are just some of the questions we will explore.

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