Perkins School for the Blind, Helen Keller National Center, and FableVision will Lead the iCanConnect Campaign
Many thousands of Americans who have combined loss of hearing and vision may soon connect with family, friends, and community thanks to the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program. Mandated by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established this new program to provide support for the local distribution of a wide array of accessible communications technology.
The FCC is also funding a national outreach campaign to educate the public about this new program. The iCanConnect campaign will be conducted jointly by Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, MA, the Helen Keller National Center in New York City, NY, and FableVision of Boston, MA. iCanConnect will seek to ensure that everyone knows about the free communications technology and training that is now available to low-income individuals with combined hearing and vision loss. From screen enlargement software and video phones to off-the-shelf products that are accessible or adaptable, this technology can vastly improve quality of life for this population.
iCanConnect seeks to increase awareness about the availability of communications technology for this underserved population, so people who are deaf-blind and have limited income can remain safe and healthy, hold jobs, manage their households, and contribute to the economy and the community.
Information about the new equipment distribution program is available online at the iCanConnect website or by phone at 800-825-4595. Additional information is available through the online FCC Encyclopedia.
"With the right technology, people with disabilities can link to information and ideas, be productive, and move ahead," said Steven Rothstein, President of Perkins. "Perkins' most famous student, Helen Keller, exemplified the potential of a person who is deaf-blind. We are proud to have a role in this transformational program."
The CVAA, championed in Washington, DC by Congressman Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, acknowledges that advances in technology can revolutionize lives. Nearly one million people in the United States have some combination of vision and hearing loss. People with combined loss of vision and hearing as defined by the Helen Keller National Center Act whose income does not exceed 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines are eligible to participate in the new program.
"The mission of the Helen Keller National Center is to enable each person who is deaf-blind to live and work in his or her community of choice," explains Executive Director Joe McNulty, adding, "This critical technology access program accelerates those efforts but only if people know about the resources. iCanConnect is poised to get the word out, coast to coast."
"FableVision's mission is to help ALL learners reach their full potential," said Paul Reynolds, CEO of FableVision Studios. "With this program we advance that mission, helping spread the word about equal access to tools that offer those with hearing and vision loss the transformational power of technology." Reynolds adds, "Now everyone is invited to the technology promise powering the human network."
New! Physical Education and Sports for People with Visual Impairments and Deafblindness: Foundations of Instruction
An important new resource from AFB Press gives you and the professionals you work with techniques, strategies, and information that will help individuals with visual impairments and deafblindness be full and active participants in sports and physical activities of all kinds!
Physical Education and Sports for People with Visual Impairments and Deafblindness: Foundations of Instruction, written by Lauren J. Lieberman, Paul E. Ponchillia, and Susan V. Ponchillia, promises to be the field's indispensable text on adaptive physical education, providing teachers, therapists, and other professionals with the necessary guidelines and strategies to integrate fitness and sports activities into educational and recreational programs.
Physical activity directly benefits everyone's health and fitness and also helps improve students' self-esteem, feelings of competence, and relationship skills. It is part of the expanded core curriculum that includes skills essential for students who are visually impaired. Three prominent educators and athletes have created this important new sourcebook on teaching the skills that will enable children and adults with visual impairments and deafblindness to be fully included in physical education, recreation, sports, and lifelong health and fitness activities.
Physical Education and Sports provides you with this essential information:
- Methods of modifying physical skills instruction;
- Techniques for adapting sports and other physical activities;
- Teaching methods and curriculum points for physical skills instruction throughout the lifespan;
- Information about sports and related activities, providing rules, adaptations, and information about competition options.
This is the ideal manual for physical educators, adapted physical education specialists, teachers of students with visual impairments, orientation and mobility specialists, occupational and recreational therapists, and anyone else interested in sports and recreation for persons who are visually impaired or deafblind.
Follow this link to order Physical Education and Sports.
Learning Ally Transforms Website, Launches New Services for People with Dyslexia and Visual Disabilities
Learning Ally, a nonprofit organization serving 300,000 children and adults across the US who have visual, learning, and reading-based disabilities, has transformed its website and launched new features and services to further benefit its members as well as parents and teachers.
The newly redesigned website offers distinct sections tailored for students, parents, educators, adult learners, and volunteers. It is more streamlined and user-friendly, making it easier than ever for members to access the organization's online library of more than 75,000 human-narrated audiobooks, including the world's largest library of audio textbooks. New features include the following:
- Improved browse and search functionality, enabling members to filter the audiobook library by subject, grade level, and title popularity as well as by author and title.
- The Parent Resource Center, a rich hub of information for families of children facing reading and learning challenges. Here, parents will find guidance addressing every stage of their journey — whether they are just beginning to explore the possibility of a learning difference or if their child has already been diagnosed and they are seeking accommodations and information about different learning styles. A comprehensive array of articles and fact sheets cover topics ranging from how to detect early signs of a learning disability, understanding a child's rights in the public school system, and much more.
- The Resource Locator, a national database of professional specialists who can provide parents with formal diagnosis and appropriate certification required for their children's accommodations.
- Free app and software, including the latest release of the Learning Ally Audio app for accessing audiobooks on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and ReadHear software for Mac and PC.
- VOICEtext, providing sentence-by-sentence highlighting of text on the screen in sync with audio narration. In its initial stages, this feature is being incorporated into a limited selection of titles in Learning Ally's library, will expand into more titles over time, and will benefit individuals for whom a multi-sensory approach to reading is recommended.
In conjunction with the new website launch, Learning Ally is also introducing a Web-based tool for educators to individualize instruction for students with print disabilities. Teacher Ally will enable special education teachers to easily assign audiobook reading materials to individual students or an entire class, provide individualized instruction, monitor student progress, generate detailed reports on the number of pages completed and time spent reading, and collaborate more effectively with parents.
ZoomReader is now available on the iPad, iPad Mini, and iPod Touch
ZoomReader is Ai Squared's OCR app for iOS devices. To use it, you snap a picture of anything with text, and ZoomReader turns that paper into electronic text and reads it aloud. This works well for grocery store signs, menus, handouts, newspaper articles, and magazines. Ai Squared still supports the iPhone (4, 4S and 5) as well. If you've already purchased ZoomReader for your phone and want it on your other devices, you can sync them with iTunes, and ZoomReader will appear as an app.
ZoomReader is available in the iTunes App Store for $19.99.
You can read more about it on AI Squared's mobile site, or watch this video.
The National Federation of the Blind Travel and Tourism Division Offers a Group Trip to Las Vegas and Some of the Great National Parks
Dates of the trip: October 9–13, 2013.
Pricing per person does not include round-trip transportation to Las Vegas, NV, but can be arranged. Should you want to arrive a day prior to the trip or stay an additional day after the trip ends, it can be arranged, and pricing will vary. Also, travel insurance is offered. Please ask pricing upon booking your trip.
If you are totally blind and are worried about not enjoying the trip because it might be too visual for you, we are working with Scenic Tours, which is willing to work with us to make sure everyone enjoys the trip. We will enjoy using all of our senses: touching, tasting, hearing, smelling, laughing, and so much more.
This trip is for everyone. If you know someone that is not part of NFB and would like to go, please pass this along to them (the more the merrier), and remember, October is "meet the blind month." What a better way to do this!
Pricing includes the following: tour bus, tour guide, hotels, all meals, entrance fees to the parks, taxes, and fees. The only thing not included is the tip to the tour guide at the end of the trip.
Payment structure: 20% of trip due at booking, full deposit due August 1, 2013, and final payment due September 1,2013. Once 20% of the trip has been paid, NFB is offering payment plans.
Single Occupancy: $860 per person ($172 per person due at booking)
Double Occupancy: $721 per person ($145 per person due at booking)
Triple Occupancy: $625 per person ($120 per person due at booking)
For more information and to book your trip, please contact Cheryl Echevarria, President of NFB Travel and Tourism Division and Owner of Echevarria Travel, at 631-456-5394 or reservations@echevarriatravel.com, or contact Maurice Shackelford, Vice President of the NFB Travel and Tourism Division and owner of peachtreetravel.net at 770-280-5029 or reservations@peachtreetravel.net.
Joint Statement by Creative Mobile Technologies and Lighthouse International Commending City Council Passage of Accessibility Measures for Blind and Visually Impaired Taxi Passengers
New York City's visually-impaired community recently gained a new measure of autonomy, independence, and security thanks to the passage of legislation, Intro 599, by the New York City Council requiring taxicabs to be accessible to people with visual impairments.
Creative Mobile Technologies (CMT), the nation's leading provider of in-taxi media and payment technologies, and Lighthouse International, a leading advocate for the blind and visually impaired, are proud to have worked hand-in-hand with the Chair of the Council Transportation Committee, James Vacca, to bring long-lasting benefits to New York City's visually impaired community. Earlier this year, CMT rolled out adaptive software that allows blind or visually impaired taxi passengers to hear the fare changing during the trip and to use payment functions through large easy-to-navigate sections on the media screen.
This groundbreaking initiative was the result of a truly cooperative effort on the part of industry, advocates, and government and will ensure that the nearly 400,000 people who are blind or visually impaired in New York will be a part of a community that benefits from independent payment and other technology in the city's iconic yellow taxicabs.
We would like to applaud Chairman Vacca and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn for their leadership.
