This privacy notice discloses the privacy practices for afb.org, administered by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). This privacy notice applies solely to information collected by this website. It will notify you of the following:

  1. What personally identifiable information is collected from you through the website, how it is used and with whom it may be shared.
  2. What choices are available to you regarding the use of your data.
  3. The security procedures in place to protect the misuse of your information.
  4. How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Information Collection, Use, and Sharing

The choice of personally identifiable information you disclose to us is completely at your discretion. It is not mandatory for you to answer any question, but you will have to provide certain information in order to complete transactions initiated by you.

AFB is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We only have access to/collect information that you voluntarily give us via email, online registration, or other direct contact from you. We will not sell or rent this information to anyone.

We will use your information to respond to you regarding the reason you contacted us. We will not share your information with any third party outside of our organization, other than as necessary to fulfill your request. Unless you ask us not to, we may contact you via email in the future to tell you about news associated with our organization or changes to this privacy policy.

When you visit afb.org, our web server automatically recognizes and collects your IP address or domain name. We collect aggregate information on pages you and other visitors access in order to analyze trends, administer the site, track movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.

Registration

You do not have to register in order to access any resources on this website. To receive e-mail updates from AFB, however, a visitor must first complete the Mailchimp registration form. During registration a user is required to give certain information (such as name and e-mail address). This information is used to contact you about the programs or services on our site in which you have expressed interest. At your option, you may also provide demographic information (such as gender or age) about yourself, but it is not required. For further information, here is Mailchimp’s privacy policy.

Transaction Processing

We request information from you when you make a donation or purchase products and services. To complete financial transactions, you must provide contact information (like name and billing address) and financial information (like credit card number, expiration date). This information is used only for processing transactions, for acknowledgment, and to contact you if we have trouble processing a donation.

We use an outside credit card processing company to manage transactions. These companies do not retain, share, store or use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes beyond processing your transaction. We employ other companies to provide specific services on our behalf, such as storing information or sending e-mail. We may share names, or other contact information that is necessary for the third party to provide these services. These parties are not allowed to use personally identifiable information except for the purpose of providing these contracted services.

Surveys and Contests

From time-to-time our site requests information via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and you may choose whether or not to participate and therefore disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and address), and demographic information (such as zip code, age level). Survey information may be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site or for research and policy development in the blindness field.

Your Access to and Control Over Information

Information is maintained as long as it is active (e.g. communications are being received, login credentials are in use) and for no more than a period of seven years after it is deemed inactive, or as required by laws or contractual obligations. When information is deleted or disposed of, it is done in a secure manner.

You may opt out of any future contacts from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via our Contact form or write to us at Customer Service, 1401 South Clark Street, Suite 730, Arlington, VA 22202:

  • See what information we have about you, if any;
  • Change/correct any information we have about you;
  • Have us delete any information we have about you; or
  • Express any concern you have about our use of your information.

Cookies

We use "cookies" on this site. A cookie is a piece of data stored on a site visitor's hard drive to help us improve your access to our site and identify repeat visitors to our site. For instance, when we use a cookie to identify you, you would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information on our site. If users reject AFB’s cookie, they may still use our site.

Remarketing

With your permission, we may use marketing services provided by Google, Facebook, and other third parties that allow us to deliver advertising to users after they leave our website that they will see elsewhere on the web. This is a common practice called “remarketing.” Users will not see more ads than they otherwise would see as a result of remarketing; rather, the ads they see are more likely to be ads for American Foundation for the Blind (AFB). These third-party marketing services providers use cookies as part of the remarketing service. This cookie does not in any way identify you or give access to your computer or mobile device.

If you do not wish to see personalized ads, you can opt out in several ways:

Security

We take precautions to protect your information. When you submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and offline.

Wherever we collect sensitive information (such as credit card data), that information is encrypted and transmitted to us in a secure way. You can verify this by looking for a lock icon in the address bar and looking for "https" at the beginning of the address of the Web page.

While we use encryption to protect sensitive information transmitted online, we also protect your information offline. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, billing or customer service) are granted access to personally identifiable information. The computers/servers in which we store personally identifiable information are kept in a secure environment.

Links

This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.

While AFB encourages and promotes the implementation of websites that are fully accessible to individuals who are blind, visually impaired, or who have other disabilities and we provide many links to other sites of possible interest to our website visitors, we are not responsible for the content or accessibility of any other sites and links to other sites are not intended to imply endorsement of them by AFB.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or feel that we are not abiding by this privacy policy, you should contact us immediately via telephone at (212) 502-7600, via our Contact form, or write to us at Customer Service, 1401 South Clark Street, Suite 730, Arlington, VA 22202.