Dear AccessWorld readers,
It has been one busy, action-packed month at AccessWorld!
We began the month with the 2014 AFB Leadership Conference, which was held in New York City February 27 through March 1. During that cold weekend in Brooklyn, hundreds of assistive technology trainers and specialists, rehabilitation professionals, and leaders in the blindness field gathered at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge where there were plenty of opportunities to make new connections, reunite with old friends, and learn from the best and brightest minds in the vision-loss field.
This year's conference theme was "Your Bridge to the Future," and our sessions (which were eligible for ACVREP and CRC CEUs) focused on technology, leadership, employment, education , orientation and mobility, and rehabilitation.
At the conference, AccessWorld was proud to sponsor the AccessWorld Technology Summit. This full-day event was made up of presentations from technology giants including Google, IBM, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Panasonic.
AccessWorld authors Janet Ingber and J.J. Meddaugh were also in attendance at the conference, and their coverage of the conference can be found in this issue.
As the 2014 AFB Leadership Conference closed, the technology conference of the year was just around the corner.
The 29th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, otherwise known as CSUN 2014, was held March 17 through March 22 in sunny San Diego, California. It's impossible to take in all of the pre-conference workshops, educational sessions, forums, technology exhibits, and group meetings, but the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and AccessWorld were there, doing our best to experience as much of CSUN as possible!
AFB staff members were involved in several educational session presentations and meetings with national leaders in the mainstream and access technology arenas. In order to help keep AccessWorld readers up to date with the goings on at CSUN, AFB was, once again, proud to sponsor the Blind Bargains podcast coverage of CSUN 2014. The AccessWorld team encourages you to log on to the Blind Bargains Audio Content page, which features great interviews, presentations, product demonstrations, and updates on the latest in technology news from the conference.
It's not too early to mark your calendars and save the date for the 30th annual CSUN conference, March 2–7, 2015, again being held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego.
The AccessWorld team hopes you enjoy this issue, which in addition to conference coverage, includes product and app evaluations by Deborah Kendrick and Bill Holton.
Sincerely,
Lee Huffman
AccessWorld Editor-in-Chief
American Foundation for the Blind
