Deborah Kendrick
2020, the year synonymous with perfect vision, has brought changes to the world that none of us could have imagined. Events that seemed as certain as, say, the sun rising in the morning, were suddenly canceled. Weddings, graduations, even funerals. On the public front, we witnessed the cancelation of concerts, movies, plays, and Renaissance festivals. Then, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) both announced that their conventions in Chicago and Houston, respectively, would not be happening.
The decisions were, of course, inevitable. With the horrors of COVID-19 leading headlines day after day, a gathering of hundreds or thousands of people was clearly not safe. Given the nature of the adaptive techniques used by blind people— seeing objects and environments with our hands, maintaining contact or proximity to other people for information and direction—any such gathering might be even more dangerous than for a fully sighted crowd.
Just a few short months, then, before these enormous physical gatherings were scheduled to occur, the leadership of each announced that they would be going virtual.
By April, most of us were familiar with virtual gatherings—meetings with our colleagues, clients, family members, and friends. Many in-person meetings turned into webinars and new sorts of gatherings spawned.
But the national blindness conventions are enormous! Both organizations offer general or plenary sessions for a series of days. Both have a multitude of workshops and meetings, frequently many of them held simultaneously, and both draw a crowd with their packed exhibit halls—enormous venues showcasing the products, programs, publications, and services of companies large and small that are of interest to blind consumers. Certainly, virtual conventions would mean adjusting to scaled-down versions of the real thing.
That’s what many of us around the country and beyond believed—but we were wholly and deliciously mistaken!
What, When, Where?
For fifteen days, ACB (July 3-10) and NFB (July 14-18), conducted convention business almost the same as usual. Thousands of people from throughout the US and some from other countries gathered via technology. There were hundreds of hours of meetings, presentations, and performances.
While a relative few gathered in person, with masks and social distancing, in organizational headquarters or other related facilities, the majority of attendees joined from the relative comfort of their living rooms and kitchens, bedrooms and home offices. With a spouse or small family or entirely alone, members and interested observers attended a multitude of meetings. The customary crowd size doubled for both organizations so that, in all, some ten thousand people were learning and celebrating together. Many seasoned convention goers said they experienced a similar energy, elation, and exhaustion as they had in years past during the face-to-face format.
Although each organization had its own unique approach to getting the job done, both managed to include all of the usual convention elements: general sessions, breakout workshops, social gatherings, and exhibits.
Both the NFB and ACB attempted to provide captioning to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. The NFB utilized the live captioning feature on the Zoom platform. This form of captioning was not accessible to all braille readers, though, as the captions were very fast. Sometimes, captions were promised and not delivered, including during the meetings of NAGDU, LGBTQ, and others.
For its part, ACB provided accommodations for hard-of-hearing and deaf participants, which were much more universally accessible. ACB's captions were delivered through a platform called CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation). The advantage to this method is that slower braille readers can read at their own pace, which is also more comfortable for even the fastest braille reader. CART was available at all sessions where it was requested.
Each organization used tools already available to them and plenty of resourcefulness to incorporate new ones. Results were nothing short of dazzling.
American Council of the Blind 2020 Conference
Online registration was opened weeks before the 59th annual ACB Conference and Convention began. Cost was $25. You were asked to indicate every session you planned to attend and request the agenda in the format of your choice: beautiful hardcopy braille (two volumes), large print, or online. You could also pay $10 extra to receive an email edition of the convention’s daily newspaper.
When the convention began, you received an email each night containing Zoom links for the sessions you had selected. You also received the daily newspaper, a mix of session announcements and ads placed by companies and individuals for products and services.
Most meetings were conducted as Zoom webinars and some as Zoom meetings. If Zoom meetings and webinars are new to you, see this article in the December 2019 issue of AccessWorld.
Even if you hadn't registered for the conference, there were several ways to listen in and participate.
Turn Your Radio On
ACB Radio, launched over 20 years ago, is a system of seven Internet broadcast streams (channels) and the organization took full advantage of this platform during the convention.
At any given time, you might tune in to ACB Mainstream to hear a general session or workshop featuring one of the organization’s special interest affiliates (artists, teachers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, etc.) Alternatively, you could tune in to ACB Radio Special for various special sessions.
Mixing vacation with education, ACB conventions typically include a variety of site-seeing and informative tours. The virtual convention did not neglect this component. Virtual tours included an audio-described tour of the Houston Holocaust Museum, Mount Rushmore, the White House, a gallery of presidential portraits, a bell museum, and more. All tours, broadcast on the ACB Community stream, were audio described and professionally produced. I attended the two-hour Houston Holocaust Museum tour and found it to be every bit as riveting and memorable as attending in person might be.
If you didn’t want to hear speeches or go on a tour, you could visit the exhibit hall. The ACB exhibit hall, in pre-pandemic years, is a gigantic space with rows and rows of tables representing a variety of companies. All of the leading technology companies are there as well as those providing products and services of interest to consumers with visual impairments. ACB sold blocks of time. Exhibitors submitted recordings that were aired on a schedule on the ACB Community channel. How this time was used was entirely at the discretion of the exhibitor.
Companies like Vispero, HumanWare, HIMS Inc., American Printing House for the Blind and others were all there, sometimes demonstrating products, sometimes talking about features and price specials connected with the convention. National Braille Press conducted interviews with some of its authors and provided those recordings. The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled might be followed by Google or Microsoft or Amazon. Some exhibit hall recordings included the voice of a single individual explaining a product and extolling its virtues, while another might be interactive, featuring a conversational or interview approach.
You could tune into the general session on the ACB Radio Mainstream channel and hear speakers like AFB President Kirk Adams and then go over to the ACB Community stream to hear some of the exhibitors. You might attend a breakout session aired on ACB Radio Special or go on a tour. There were four or five streams being broadcast at any time, providing plenty of choices, but the ways in which you could listen to these streams was impressive.
So Many Ways to Listen
The ACB Radio channels had several access points. You could go to ACBRadio.org and choose the stream of choice on your computer. You could dial a number on your telephone. You could tell your Amazon Echo, “Alexa, play ACB Radio Mainstream” (or ACB Radio Treasure Trove or ACB Radio Community), or you could use the ACBLink app, which allowed you to participate in the entire ACB convention using just an iPhone. The ACBLink app offers complete comprehensive access to all things ACB Radio. When you first launch the app, the choices include Podcasts and Radio. Selecting Radio allows you to choose from all of the various ACB Radio streams mentioned above. During the conference, you could then move around from a Mainstream live session, to a tour on Treasure Trove, to exhibits on Community, to another special presentation on ACB Special, and back to Mainstream again, all by flicking through options and double-tapping your chosen stream.
Most of the hundreds of hours of content broadcast on the ACB Radio channels during the convention were then released as podcasts, which can be found under the Podcasts tab in the ACBLink app. (They can also be found by subscribing to the ACB Conference and Convention podcast in the podcast app of your choice, through your Amazon Echo, or your Victor Stream.)
If you missed the convention and would like to experience a sampling of presentations, here are a few that captured my attention:
-Friends in Art Showcase: a two-hour performance featuring musicians, poets, and comedians, replete with host banter and inserted applause. -An introduction to the Helen Keller collection, relocated from the American Foundation for the Blind to the American Printing House for the Blind, and presented by APH Museum director Mike Hudson. -Legos for the Blind, presented by ACB Families, introduced braille and audio instructions for building Lego structures inspired by a blind Lego enthusiast. -A discussion of the 1Touch Project, a self-defense program completely usable and accessible by blind people. -Wine Wise, Blind Pride International’s annual wine-tasting events have been wildly popular the last few years, and while the only wine sampled was the one you had in your own refrigerator or wine rack, the camaraderie and knowledge shared was a delightful alternative. -Banquet address by Roy Samuelson, audio describer of over 500 film and TV productions.
In just about 12 weeks, a convention that was intended to occur in a large hotel with multiple meeting spaces was transformed into an event with so many ways to join that anyone with a telephone could participate. Sometimes hosts floundered. Sometimes technology spluttered. All the work of planning and hosting and streaming and podcasting was done by volunteers, most of them blind. Many who have never been able to pay for an airline ticket and a hotel room to join a live convention were tuned to their radios, Alexas, and phones—and the overall effect was a virtual success!
(To find information and podcasts, download the ACBLink app from the iTunes app store, visit ACBRadio.org, or search for the ACB Conference and Convention podcast in your podcasting client of choice.)
National Federation of the Blind 2020 Conference
Just when it seems technology can’t dazzle us any further, it does. With hope, determination, and a gigantic scoop of intellect and tech savvy NFB succeeded in harnessing technology in ways that rendered attendance at the first ever NFB virtual convention a delight for the geekier among us and easy no matter what your level of technical expertise. Registration for the convention this year was free. The agenda was made available on the NFB website in various formats, and a “Rookie Roundup” event was held the week beforehand to familiarize attendees with the various components of the virtual convention.
The 80th annual NFB convention was supposed to be held in Houston, Texas, so the Texas affiliate maintained its status as hosting affiliate through the virtual event. As would be the case with an in-person convention, the hosting affiliate was periodically invited to introduce segments, bring some Texas news and banter and, well, be a host!
Registration was easy and free, and what a bonus it turned out to be! A day or two prior to the convention beginning, an email went out inviting registrants to download an iOS app called Crowd Compass Attendee Hub. Once installed, as is so often the case with iPhone apps, it showed up as simply Attendee Hub. Although it has a few accessibility glitches that need addressing, the experience of navigating a convention with this app was so excellent that I would be delighted to see it incorporated into every conference I attend in future.
The clumsiest piece of interacting with Attendee Hub was probably Getting Started. I logged in to my particular event with the password distributed to registrants by email: nfb2020. Next steps involved setting up a simple profile that was sufficiently aggravating in a few spots that my impatience almost persuaded me to forgo using it. Happily, I didn't yield to that impatience!
Once logged in, I could see all elements of the convention. The initial screen offered links to Agenda, Attendees, Speakers, Exhibits, and more. Double tapping Attendees pulled up a list, in alphabetical order, of every person who had registered and logged in with the app. From an attendee's entry, I could send them a message or request their contact information. (For privacy, complete contact information was not displayed until and the request was accepted.) Again, there were some accessibility issues; I personally only saw this feature working partially. That said, seeing the entire list of attendees even without the facility to connect instantly was more than most of us are accustomed to accessing at the outset of a conference.
Similarly, the app made it easy to pull up a complete list of speakers as well as a complete list of exhibitors and their contact information.
The scheduling feature was brilliant. Clicking on Agenda, you could see each day's schedule. As you reviewed the schedule, you could tap on a button to add an item to your personal schedule. This aspect of the app was completely accessible and made for an incredibly efficient path to quick access. Using this tool at the start of the convention allowed me to generate my own quick list of interesting meetings. Opening the schedule later included not only each convention day, but my personal schedule as well. Each Agenda item included an Open Zoom button that would take me directly to that particular meeting.
The components of the schedule held familiarity for those who had attended past NFB conventions. In other words, there were often multiple choices of where one could spend time. There might be a workshop for teachers at the same time as a presentation on technology and yet another on law. Following the Zoom links from within a personalized schedule in Attendee Hub, it was possible to sample simultaneous sessions with relative ease, dropping in for a portion of one workshop, then another, and then possibly visiting a few exhibits. The experience was astonishingly similar to the in-person conference. It lacked the warmth of physical contact with others, but made it easier, on the other hand, to drop in on more than one speaker or casual gathering, as well as link to the Exhibit Hall. One traditional feature of NFB's conventions is the Presidential Suite. At in-person conventions, this is an actual hotel suite where attendees can gather to meet new and old friends, relax, enjoy a beverage and snack, and perhaps schedule an appointment with the NFB president. Open several hours each day, the Presidential Suite is hosted by volunteers from throughout the NFB leadership.
While there may not have been any cookies or coffee, the Presidential Suite in the virtual convention operated otherwise as it does in a physical venue. During its scheduled hours, volunteers were on hand to greet newcomers, answer questions, schedule requested appointments with the president, and pop participants into breakout rooms for some casual conversation. Speaking of breakout rooms, this was a Zoom feature used to tremendous advantage in a variety of convention sessions. For NFB NEWSLINE demonstrations, for example, a newcomer seeking information on registering for the service, hearing how it works with the iPhone app or Amazon Echo, was paired in a breakout room with a volunteer expert on that particular aspect of the service. At a technology session drawing 300 to 400 people, all participants were popped into breakout rooms, each holding 10-15 other participants. It provided an excellent opportunity to meet and mingle with other technology trainers sharing similar interests.
Memorable Content
The array of topics and information presented in both general and breakout sessions in the five information-packed days was truly impressive. As always, the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children had its own entire track of workshops, activities, and gatherings for parents and children. Next, In addition to the business meetings and workshops hosted by such special interest groups as guide dog users, lawyers, educators, and technology trainers, there were sessions hosted by major technology companies inside and outside the assistive technology arena. In addition to presentations by HumanWare, Vispero, HIMS Inc., and the American Printing house for the Blind, news could also be gleaned from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. For those more interested in social justice than computers there were some brilliant presentations on topics such as Black leaders within the NFB, and the sharing of experiences by those representing a variety of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. The general sessions featured not only an update by the director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, but also one by the Librarian of Congress herself. Perhaps most memorable among presentations was a thrilling recall of the July 17 speech delivered by Congressman John Lewis to the NFB March for Independence in 2007. Later that same afternoon, the general session agenda included a prerecorded in-depth conversation between NFB President Mark Riccobono and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Canvassing Exhibits
My favorite piece of this app was the opportunity it afforded for interacting with exhibitors. From within the Attendee Hub link, if you chose the Exhibit Hall, the list of all vendors was there, each followed by a Zoom link. During exhibit hours, you could visit various exhibitors in this way, enjoying a one-on-one or small group discussion with the vendor. This is a feature that could probably be embraced as a component for any convention or conference in the future.
As is so often the case with face-to-face exhibits, there is simply not enough time to see them all, but visiting them without the pressing crowd and roar of voices and devices in the live exhibit hall was actually rather appealing!
If You Missed It
It warrants pointing out that for those not proficient with iPhone apps, there were plenty of ways to listen to the NFB Conference. The general sessions and banquet were available on Amazon Echo devices. Much of the convention was also streamed on NFB NEWSLINE.
If you missed all or part of it and want to check it out, many of the presentations will be posted to the NFB website..
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
Related articles:
- Highlights From the Much Smaller CSUN 2020 Assistive Technology Conference by Shelly Brisbin, J.J. Meddaugh
- ATIA 2020 Wrap-Up: What's New and Noteworthy at the Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference by Aaron Preece
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