                       THE BRAILLE MONITOR

                     Barbara Pierce, Editor


      Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by

              THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

                     MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT


                         National Office
                       1800 Johnson Street
                   Baltimore, Maryland  21230
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              Web Page address: http://www.nfb.org



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                National Federation of the Blind
                       1800 Johnson Street
                    Baltimore, Maryland 21230



   THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION
 SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES


ISSN 0006-8829

THE BRAILLE MONITOR
PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

                            Contents
                                                   November, 1997

He Can't Buy An Island: Total Victory in the Sember Case
     by Barbara Pierce

Convention Bulletin 1998

Insights from an Instructional Assistant
     by Denise Mackenstadt

Around the Block, to the Mall, and Beyond

An All Too Familiar Story

From Bad Philosophy to Bad Policy:
The American Braille Illiteracy Crisis
     by James H. Omvig

The 1998 National Federation of the Blind
Scholarship Program

Blind Artist Sees Ways to Share Her Creativity
     by Barbara Tomovick

Of Numbers and Independence
     by Suzanne Rowell

Funding Closed Circuit Televisions
Through Medical Insurance
     by Greg Trapp

Magoo Debate Moves to UK

Delivering the Coffee
     by Mary Ellen Gabias

A New Sheriff in Town
     by Peggy Elliott

Reflecting on Fear of Blindness
     by Seville Allen

Recipes

Monitor Miniatures

       Copyright (R) 1997 National Federation of the Blind


[LEAD PHOTO DESCRIPTION: Mr. Maurer stands in front of an open
smoker. He is testing the cooking meat for doneness. CAPTION:
Every Thanksgiving the NFB Board Of Directors gathers at the
National Center for the Blind for its annual two-day meeting.
Everyone brings a favorite dish to share, and all hands rally
'round to help prepare a meal worthy of the holiday. President
Maurer's main contribution to this effort is superintending the
large smoker in the central courtyard. For Thanksgiving he
usually smokes a turkey, a capon or two, two rolled pork roasts,
and some beef. This year he will build his fire with hickory and
a little fruit wood (apple, pear, or peach) if he can get it. The
results are delicious--juicy, flavorful, and reminiscent of hazy
autumn days. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.]
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Barbara Pierce]
                     He Can't Buy An Island:
                Total Victory in the Sember Case
                        by Barbara Pierce
                           **********
     The word "libel" has a nasty sound. It means publishing
written untruths. In almost forty years of publishing, the
Braille Monitor had never been sued for libel--never, that is,
until Mary Ann and Tom Sember decided to do it in 1993. Many who
have had reason to regret our dedication to the principle of
printing the truth have muttered occasionally or even shouted
their threats to sue, but they always thought better of the idea
until the Sembers took exception to stories that appeared in the
March and July, 1992, issues of the Braille Monitor. They had a
neighbor and friend who was an attorney in a Pittsburgh law firm,
and for reasons best known to himself, he agreed to handle the
case for them.
     The resulting lawsuit would eventually drag on for more than
four years, costing the law firm hundreds of thousands in time,
travel, and fees, according to estimates made by attorneys
familiar with such things. Now it is finished. Somewhere toward
the beginning of the process Tom Sember reportedly told friends
that he intended to purchase a vacation island with the money he
and Mary Ann would collect from the NFB. Larry Israel, now
President and CEO of Telesensory, Inc., has been quoted as
commenting that the Federation would learn its lesson this time
around.
     In the end the lesson has indeed been made clear: when an
organization sticks to the facts and reports as honestly as it
can what is going on, it is possible to point out unpalatable
truths and urge reform. And if you publish those views in a
journal, the courts will support your right to argue for change.
     Since even those who read the original articles have
probably forgotten the details of the situation by this time, we
will begin with a brief summary of the problems as we described
them in the 1992 stories. We had received complaints from a
number of vendors of technology around the country saying that
they were finding it virtually impossible to compete with
Telesensory, Inc., for business with various state agencies
serving blind consumers. In two areas, including Pittsburgh, one
family member was working for the state agency, and another was a
representative for Telesensory. In Pittsburgh the people involved
were Tom and Mary Ann Sember. He was a counselor in the
Pittsburgh office of the Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services
(BVS), the state vocational rehabilitation agency for the blind
in Pennsylvania; Mary Ann sold and serviced Telesensory products
in the western Pennsylvania area.
     Mary Ann Sember's competitors reported that the Pittsburgh
office did not require bids before purchasing equipment. Stories
circulated of consumers who requested particular technology but
received Telesensory products instead. And, although we had no
access to office records, as far as we could tell, Telesensory
seemed to be getting just about all of the business generated by
the state agency in the greater Pittsburgh area.
     No one ever suggested that Tom Sember was overtly directing
business to his wife. Regardless of the circumstances, such a
thing would have been virtually impossible to prove one way or
another. The proprieties were apparently always maintained. In
fact, it was clear that, whenever his clients began moving toward
a technology purchase, Sember formally handed the case over to a
colleague for management during that phase of BVS involvement.
Nonetheless, Telesensory got the order. It would have been
surprising if anything else had happened. Sember was a colleague;
the counselors undoubtedly knew Mary Ann, not only because of her
professional relationship to the office as the person supplying
most of the technology the counselors ordered, but because of her
close personal ties to the staff through her husband.
     In this connection it might be noted that as soon as a
bidding procedure was imposed on the office, vendors of other
technology products began getting orders. But that did not happen
until after the Braille Monitor articles were published. All
these facts eventually emerged as lawyers began digging through
records and documents and interviewing potential witnesses.
     A little short of a year after the publication of the first
of the two articles, the Sembers went to court to serve summonses
on a whole string of people and organizations. By Pennsylvania
law the Sember lawyer could then conduct discovery before
actually filing complaints, which he did on July 20, 1993.
     In response the defendants then filed a motion for summary
judgment, which in effect asked the court to throw out the case
before it went to trial. Summary judgment is very rarely granted,
but to our gratification that is precisely what the judge
eventually did on January 31, 1996. Despite this indication of
the strength of the defendants' case, the Sembers appealed the
decision to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, but that court
upheld the lower court's ruling. Apparently still hoping they had
a chance to get their vacation island, the Sembers petitioned the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the summary
judgment. On September 2, 1997, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
gave its decision. It was another (and obviously a final) defeat
for the Sembers--no finding of libel, no violation of the law, no
island. In other words the Sembers' case was found to have so
little merit that, not only was it never tried, but three courts
refused to waste time even beginning the process.
     Dan Goldstein, the NFB's lead attorney in this case, wrote a
summary of the legal steeplechase that consumed four years of the
Sembers' lives and a great deal of their lawyer's time and money.
This is the way Dan Goldstein described it:
                         **********     
     On February 24, 1993, Thomas and Mary Ann Sember filed
summonses to be served on the National Federation of the Blind;
the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania; Theodore
Young, the President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Pennsylvania; his company, Young Opportunities, Inc.; Humanware,
a competitor of TeleSensory; Edward Smith, a salesman for
Humanware; Bob Jakub, a blind man in Pittsburgh who sold
Arkenstone and other computer products; and Bob Jakub's company,
Genesis Computer Services. Under Pennsylvania's unique court
rules, discovery may take place without a complaint's having been
filed if a summons stating the intent to file a complaint has
been served. Before filing their complaint and making their
claims, the Sembers wanted to know what information the
Pennsylvania Auditor General and the State Board of Ethics had
about them in their files. The Office of the Auditor General
produced its file, but the State Board of Ethics refused to do
so, contending and being sustained in its contention, that its
files were confidential and did not have to be produced.
     Finally, after waiting five months, the Sembers filed their
complaint on July 20, 1993. All the parties, they said, had
libeled them--that is, participated in publishing written
untruths about them that damaged their reputation. Moreover, the
parties had slandered them, they said--that is, uttered damaging
untruths about them. (Because the Sembers did not specify what
those oral statements were, the slander counts were promptly
dismissed.) In addition, the Sembers claimed that their privacy
had been invaded by their having publicly been put in a false
light. Ms. Sember also claimed that the defendants had
intentionally interfered with her contracts and those she might
have had and that the defendants had disparaged her goods and
services. Finally, this thirty-one-page complaint said that the
defendants had engaged in a conspiracy to harm the Sembers.
     When the court required the Sembers to dismiss the slander
count, the Sembers added, for good measure, a claim that the
defendants had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on
them, a claim normally reserved for conduct so outrageous as to
fall outside the bounds of civilized conduct! All of these claims
were based on two Monitor articles (one appearing in March, 1992,
and the other in July, 1992); a resolution by the National
Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania asking the Auditor
General of the state to look into the purchasing practices of the
Pittsburgh Office of the Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services
(BVS); and Ted Young's letter to the Auditor General following up
on the resolution.
     Bob Jakub had the questionable pleasure, as one of his last
experiences on Earth, of being deposed in this case. The day
before he was scheduled for surgery to amputate his remaining
leg, his deposition was taken by the Sembers in Jakub's living
room. Jakub, who had sold a grand total of two Arkenstone readers
to the Pittsburgh Office of BVS, said that he kept asking BVS why
it didn't even let him bid and that that is what he had told
Barbara Pierce. Bob Jakub entered the hospital the next day and
died following surgery. The Sembers then substituted his estate
in their complaint and continued the case against him.
     Edward Smith, the Humanware salesman, was deposed as well.
He said he did not get business from Pittsburgh BVS until after
the Monitor articles, despite making frequent presentations.
Smith explained that he had never talked to Dr. Jernigan or
Barbara Pierce about the Sembers or TeleSensory, but that when
Ted Young had called him, he told Young there were three times
when his equipment had been recommended, and each time
TeleSensory equipment had been bought instead. After the lawyers
for Ed Smith and Humanware sent an interrogatory (a written
question requiring a sworn written answer), asking the Sembers to
detail what Smith and his company had done that they could be
sued for, and after they did not get an answer and asked the
court to require an answer, the Sembers dropped Ed Smith and
Humanware from the case.
     As the case progressed toward trial, counselor after
counselor from the Pittsburgh Office of BVS acknowledged that
until the Monitor articles and the beginning of competitive
bidding, if TeleSensory sold the kind of product needed, they
went to Mary Ann Sember and bought it, although each offered
different reasons for doing so. The records of Pittsburgh BVS
(enough to fill a file cabinet) confirmed that Mary Ann Sember
had the lion's (or perhaps more accurately the lioness's) share
of the business of Pittsburgh BVS. Mr. Sember admitted that on
occasion he had some involvement with the selection of equipment
for his clients and that the equipment came from TeleSensory,
though not from his wife in every instance. Ms. Sember, when
asked under oath, said that the problem with the Monitor articles
was what they did not say. She could not point to a single
statement about her or her husband that she could say was untrue.
     Finally the matter came before the court on the defendants'
motion for summary judgment. A motion for summary judgment, when
granted, means winning without a trial. It is, accordingly, rare
since every citizen is entitled to have disputed facts resolved
at a trial. To win a motion for summary judgment, a party has to
be able to show not just that no facts that matter are in dispute
but that on the undisputed facts he or she is entitled to win.
The party must also show that, even giving every inference from
the undisputed facts to the other side, the moving party is still
unquestionably entitled to win. That is exactly what happened
here. The judge looked at the undisputed facts and threw out the
Sembers' entire case.
     The Sembers, unhappy with the trial court's decision, filed
an appeal with the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. The Superior
Court, just like the trial court, concluded that the defendants
had done nothing wrong and affirmed the trial court's decision.
     In a last-ditch effort to bring their case to trial, the
Sembers petitioned the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to hear
their appeal. On September 2, 1997, the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania denied their petition.
                           **********
     There you have Dan Goldstein's summary of what actually
happened over these four long years. The only assessment of the
substance of this case's merit was rendered by Judge R. Stanton
Wettick, Jr., of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County.
His January 31, 1996, ruling to grant summary judgment to the
National Federation of the Blind and others (the defendants)
against Tom and Mary Ann Sember (the plaintiffs) was clear and
definitive. But it was a great deal more than that. Because of
its importance to the NFB and to our commitment to protecting the
rights of blind people, we are reprinting the ruling in its
entirety, except that for clarity we have omitted the case
citations. Here is what the judge said:
                           **********
                                
                  MEMORANDUM AND ORDER OF COURT
                           **********
     Defendants have filed motions for summary judgment seeking
dismissal of plaintiffs' remaining claims. (Plaintiffs have
withdrawn their claims against Ed Smith and Humanware, Inc.
Plaintiffs have also withdrawn Counts XII (Slander), XIII
(Slander), XIV (Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress),
and XV (Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress). In
addition, plaintiff is not pursuing a claim that defendants
interfered with any actual business relationships--Count IX is
limited to intentional interference with prospective business
relationships.)
     During the relevant times plaintiff Thomas Sember was
employed as a counselor in the Pittsburgh Office of the
Pennsylvania Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services (BVS).
Counselors deal with the needs and concerns of visually impaired
clients which may include the evaluation, selection, and purchase
of adaptive electronic equipment.
     During the relevant times plaintiff Mary Ann Sember was the
sales representative for TeleSensory, Inc., in Western
Pennsylvania. TeleSensory is a national company whose business is
limited to the manufacture and sale of products for the visually
impaired; TeleSensory manufactures and sells adaptive electronic
equipment. During the relevant times the Pittsburgh office of BVS
almost always purchased TeleSensory's electronic equipment from
Ms. Sember whenever TeleSensory manufactured the type of
electronic equipment that would be appropriate for a client.
Competitors' electronic equipment was almost never purchased.
     Mr. Sember did not make purchases from his wife. Whenever he
determined that his client might need a product which TeleSensory
manufactured, he referred the client to another counselor in the
Pittsburgh office.
     This lawsuit arises out of publications that criticized the
Pittsburgh BVS office for doing business almost exclusively with
TeleSensory. The publications state that, whenever TeleSensory
manufactures a type of product needed by the client, the
Pittsburgh office almost always purchases the product that
TeleSensory manufactures; the office does not select products
offered by competing manufacturers that would also be
appropriate.
     These publications state that Mr. Sember is a counselor in
the Pittsburgh Office of BVS, that Ms. Sember is the TeleSensory
sales representative for Western Pennsylvania, and that Mr.
Sember and Ms. Sember are husband and wife. The publications
opine that this relationship is a reason why TeleSensory's
competitors cannot do business with the Pittsburgh office of BVS.
                           **********
                    COUNTS I, II, III, AND IV
                           **********
     These counts are defamation claims against the National
Federation of the Blind (NFB); the National Federation of the
Blind of Pennsylvania (NFB of Pa.); and Theodore Young, President
of NFB of Pa., based on articles appearing in the March, 1992,
and July, 1992, publications of the Braille Monitor. The Braille
Monitor is a national publication of NFB. Plaintiffs' claims
against Theodore Young and NFB of Pa. are based primarily on Mr.
Young's providing information utilized in the March, 1992,
Braille Monitor articles and encouraging NFB to publish these
articles.
     At pages 32-34 of their brief, plaintiffs set forth the
portions of the March, 1992, article that they primarily rely
upon to support their defamation claim.
                           **********
          In the instant matter [plaintiffs' brief states], the
     Defendants combined and conspired in publishing an article
     entitled "Concerning Integrity, Monopoly, and TeleSensory"
     in the March, 1992, edition of the Braille Monitor, a
     periodical distributed throughout the nation and the
     Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The first three paragraphs of
     that article read as follows:
                                
               "In Pittsburgh," as more than one person told us,
          "it doesn't matter how good your technology is or how
          low your prices. It doesn't matter about the quality of
          your service or the support you give your technology.
          If you aren't selling products made by TeleSensory, you
          can't do business with the state rehabilitation
          agency"--which is known as BVS, or the Bureau of
          Blindness and Visual Services. This is what we were
          told by a frustrated vendor of high-tech equipment for
          the blind and what we heard echoed by many others. What
          this vendor of technology did not say (but everybody
          knows) is that the TeleSensory sales representative in
          Pittsburgh, Mary Ann Sember, is married to Tom Sember,
          a counselor in the state agency's Pittsburgh office.
               In New Jersey the TeleSensory sales representative
          has a daughter who works for the state agency. The
          family relationship is different, but the pattern is
          the same. State business goes to TeleSensory regardless
          of cost, performance, or quality of service.
               The arrangement is cozy for those who are part of
          the inner circle, but if the same situation occurred in
          military procurement, it would be front-page scandal
          with everybody crying foul. Here, however, only blind
          clients are being hurt--along with small business
          operations (mostly owned by blind people). Since those
          who are being denied the right to compete are not big-
          time operators with major bucks and political clout,
          such complaints as have surfaced have largely been
          ignored.
                                
     Kenneth Jernigan & Barbara Pierce, "Concerning Integrity,
     Monopoly, & TeleSensory," the Braille Monitor, March, 1992.
                                
          The article later states:
                                
               At a time when rehabilitation money is in short
          supply everywhere in the country for the purchase of
          technology that blind people need to become or remain
          competitive, why do so many state agency counselors
          insist on buying equipment from a company with a
          nationwide reputation for slow and unresponsive support
          service and prices higher than those of the
          competition? Why is this done even when blind clients
          request alternative technology that they think will
          serve their needs better? Some say that the answer lies
          in a combination of history, sloth, and inertia--the
          fact that TeleSensory (formerly TSI) has been in the
          field longer than most of its competitors and is bigger
          than the rest of them. Others (whether correctly or
          not) cut through the niceties and call it collusion and
          skulduggery.
                                
          The article further states that:
                                
          For the most part, we are told, the Pittsburgh
          counselors buy TeleSensory equipment. And the only
          TeleSensory representative in the area is Mary Ann
          Sember, the wife of one of the office counselors. No
          one has suggested that money is changing hands, but old
          habits are hard to break--and pressures to conform to
          established practice do not have to be overt in order
          to be effective.
                                
          Finally, the article concludes with the following
     paragraphs:
                                
               TeleSensory is not the only game in town, and the
          blind users of technology will no longer settle for
          having their informed views ignored. When unsavory
          business practices exist, we will do our best to put an
          end to them.
               It is not appropriate to funnel state business to
          one producer, whose prices are high and whose service
          is slow to nonexistent. When that producer's sales
          representatives have direct family ties to the agencies
          of government that make the purchases, then the
          consumers, the competing vendors, and the general
          public will inevitably draw their own conclusions about
          what is happening.
                                
     [After this quotation from the brief of the plaintiffs and
their quotations from the March, 1992, Braille Monitor, Judge
Wettick continued as follows:]
     The July, 1992, issue of the Braille Monitor revisited the
subject of the March, 1992, article in a report titled, "The Pot
Boils and TeleSensory Stews." In their brief at page 35
plaintiffs cite an additional provision in this issue:
                                
          This article [the Sember brief says] also replied to
     TeleSensory's rebuttal to the original March, 1992,
     publication. This response stated, in part:
                                
          In the first place, what possible difference does it
          make whether "Mary Ann Sember is an independent
          distributor, not a TeleSensory employee?" The fact
          still remains that she sells TeleSensory equipment and
          that her husband is a counselor in the Pittsburgh
          office of the state agency for the blind, which buys
          the equipment. Quibbles and technicalities won't cut
          it. It may, as Bliss [Dr. James Bliss, head of
          TeleSensory at the time] insists, be true that "Tom
          Sember does not have any involvement in the purchase of
          products from TeleSensory"--but again, technicalities
          won't cut it.
                                
     [After these quotations from the brief of the plaintiffs and
from the Braille Monitor, Judge Wettick said:]
     In an action for defamation a court must initially determine
whether the challenged statements are capable of a defamatory
meaning. [citation] In making this determination, it is not
sufficient that a plausible innocent interpretation of the
statement exists; the issue must proceed to the jury if there is
an alternative defamatory interpretation. [citation] A statement
is defamatory if it ascribes to another "conduct, character, or a
condition which would adversely affect her fitness for the proper
conduct of her lawful business, trade, or profession." [citation]
     Plaintiffs contend that the portions of the articles quoted
above when read in conjunction with the entire text of both
articles are capable of a defamatory meaning. These articles,
according to plaintiffs, accuse plaintiffs of engaging in
improper conduct. In their brief plaintiffs state that the "clear
import of these statements is that business awarded through the
Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania goes to TeleSensory not based on cost, performance,
or quality of service, but rather as a result of complicity and
conspiracy on the part of both plaintiffs." [This quotation is
taken from the plaintiffs' Brief in Opposition to Defendants'
Motion for Summary Judgment at 35, as is the following.] The
articles insinuate "that she [Ms. Sember] and her husband
improperly influenced BVS purchasing policies and the supply of
equipment to clients." The March article implies that money is
"changing hands." The articles imply that Mr. Sember "was `in
cahoots' with the other BVS counselors, who may have been
receiving some sort of compensation for purchasing from Ms.
Sember." The articles imply that "the plaintiffs conspired
between themselves and colluded with other counselors to benefit
themselves." The articles insinuated that plaintiffs "exerted
influence to force BVS counselors to purchase from TeleSensory."
The articles' reference to collusion and skulduggery indicates
that the authors possess undisclosed defamatory facts showing
that plaintiffs are "engaged in dishonest, underhanded, unfair,
or unscrupulous behavior or activity"; that TeleSensory receives
BVS's business "because of a collusive agreement between the
Sembers"; and that there is "clandestine cooperation between the
Sembers."
     [After the quotation from the plaintiffs' Brief in
Opposition to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Judge
Wettick said:]
     I disagree with plaintiffs' characterization of the
articles. These articles state that TeleSensory obtains more
business from the Pittsburgh office of BVS than its products
deserve and that the distributor for TeleSensory's products in
the Pittsburgh area is the wife of a counselor who works in the
Pittsburgh office of BVS. In these articles the authors express
their opinion that plaintiffs' relationship as husband and wife
is a reason why TeleSensory receives more business than its
products deserve and that TeleSensory receives favored treatment
because it employs Ms. Sember to sell its products. However,
these articles do not suggest that Mr. and Ms. Sember are
engaging in any dishonest or unscrupulous conduct. The articles
are critical of the other counselors and staff members within the
Pittsburgh office for giving preferential treatment to
TeleSensory because its sales representative is married to a
counselor who works in the office.
     Ms. Sember is the representative for TeleSensory products
within the Pittsburgh area. Her job is to persuade counselors and
other staff within the Pittsburgh office of BVS to purchase
TeleSensory products. She is very effective; plaintiffs
acknowledge that at the time the articles were written the
Pittsburgh office of the BVS purchased almost no products from
TeleSensory's competitors. The claim that Ms. Sember managed to
dominate the market because she is the wife of a counselor does
not reflect adversely on her character or integrity. She is not
accused of engaging in any impermissible conduct. The only charge
is that the other counselors and staff give her favorable
treatment because she is married to a co-employee.
     It is not unusual [Judge Wettick continued] for law firms,
architect firms, and other businesses that provide goods and
services to governmental bodies to make political contributions
and to hire the political supporters and relatives of elected
officials. When these law firms, architect firms, and other
businesses obtain governmental business, newspapers regularly
report this fact. This is a typical example:
                                
          The ABC law firm was hired as bond counsel for the
          Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This law firm was a major
          financial contributor to the Committee to Re-elect the
          Governor. Sarah White, a senior partner in the law
          firm, was the campaign manager for the governor during
          last year's campaign.
                                
     At the most, such an article is suggesting that the law firm
obtained the bond business because it has a connection with the
Governor that other law firms do not have. The article cannot be
read as asserting that either the law firm or the Governor
engaged in any unethical or dishonest conduct.
     This is equally true in the present case. The articles are
accusing the Pittsburgh office of giving favored treatment to
Mary Ann Sember because she is married to a counselor who works
in the office. She is not being accused of engaging in any
unethical or dishonest conduct in order to become the recipient
of the favored treatment.
     Also the articles do not describe any unethical or dishonest
conduct on the part of Mr. Sember or suggest that the authors
possess defamatory facts regarding Mr. Sember that they did not
disclose. Mr. Sember is not accused of placing orders with his
wife. Neither is he accused of directing or persuading others to
place orders with his wife. It is not claimed that he has
supervisory responsibility regarding purchases in the Pittsburgh
office. The claim is that the Pittsburgh office has not developed
a bidding procedure. Consequently the staff gives favored
treatment to Ms. Sember because of her relationship with Mr.
Sember.
     Plaintiffs contend [the judge continued] that the statement
that no one "has suggested that money is changing hands, but old
habits are hard to break" insinuates that money is changing
hands. This is an incorrect reading of the statement. The
statement is made in the context of the Pittsburgh office's being
in the habit of recommending only TeleSensory products. This is a
habit, according to the article, that may have developed when
there were few competitors in the field. The article suggests
only that TeleSensory's use of Ms. Sember as its representative
in the Pittsburgh area makes it more difficult for the Pittsburgh
office to break its old habits.
     The statement that "Others (whether correctly or not) cut
through the niceties and call it collusion and skulduggery" is
not aimed at the Sembers. The statement refers to TeleSensory's
practice of utilizing family ties and other methods to dominate
the markets in Pittsburgh, New Jersey, and New York. The thrust
of this article is that TeleSensory utilizes sales methods that
permit it to obtain a greater share of various markets than the
quality of the products justifies. The Sembers are an example of
"family ties," which is one of the methods that TeleSensory is
accused of utilizing.
     Plaintiffs appear to be arguing that the articles suggest
that the authors know of defamatory facts concerning the Sembers
that they did not include. I disagree. These are not articles in
which the authors appear to be withholding any facts that will
support their opinions. The only fair reading of the articles is
that TeleSensory's sales methods described in the articles have
permitted TeleSensory to dominate the Pittsburgh market (as well
as other markets). The articles do not suggest that the Sembers
are engaging in any dishonest or unscrupulous conduct that the
articles do not describe.
     In summary [the judge said], most citizens believe that
governmental bodies should make decisions involving the purchase
of goods and services strictly on objective criteria through a
process in which every competitor has an equal opportunity to be
selected. A charge that one competitor appears to be receiving
favored treatment does not suggest that anyone is engaging in
dishonest or unscrupulous behavior.
     Ms. Sember is permitted to attempt to persuade persons in
the BVS office (other than her husband and persons whom he
supervises) to select TeleSensory products for their clients
provided that she does not involve her husband, directly or
indirectly, in the transaction or offer favors in return for the
selection of her products. The Braille Monitor articles cannot be
fairly read as insinuating that Ms. Sember is either involving
her husband in any transactions or offering favors to persons who
purchase her products. Consequently the articles do not accuse
her of any wrongdoing. They simply accuse the Pittsburgh office
of giving undue consideration to Ms. Sember because she is the
wife of a fellow employee.
     It is Mr. Sember's position [the judge continued] that under
the law he is permitted to provide services to his clients as
long as he removes himself from the case whenever his wife's
product is recommended for that client. There is nothing in the
articles suggesting that Mr. Sember remains involved in
transactions after his wife's products are recommended for his
clients. The articles do not claim that Mr. Sember is making any
purchases from his wife. The articles do not claim that Mr.
Sember is putting pressure on persons within the office to
purchase TeleSensory products. A reasonable reader would not
conclude [the judge said] that Mr. Sember is being accused of
engaging in such conduct because the entire thrust of the article
is that family ties, in and of themselves, will create an
atmosphere in which TeleSensory's products will dominate the
market.
     The articles criticize TeleSensory for using family
relationships and other methods that have, in the opinion of the
authors, resulted in its products' being selected for reasons
other than the merit of the products. The criticism against
TeleSensory is that it is taking advantage of the persons whom it
purportedly serves (the visually impaired) by utilizing these
methods.
     The articles criticize the Pennsylvania BVS for allowing the
situation to exist. The articles indicate that family ties will
not have the impact that TeleSensory desires if the Pennsylvania
BVS would require its purchasing agents to seek bids before
purchasing electronic adaptive equipment and if it would begin to
recognize that TeleSensory is no longer the only game in town.
     The articles do not criticize plaintiffs. They are described
as the beneficiaries of a purchasing pattern that is likely to
emerge if the largest manufacturer of equipment for the visually
impaired sells its products through relatives of employees of
state governmental agencies who service the visually impaired and
if the state agencies do not have in place a system for selecting
equipment that gives all competitors an equal opportunity to sell
their products.
     Because I conclude [the judge said] that the statements upon
which plaintiffs rely are not capable of a defamatory meaning, I
am dismissing Counts I through IV without considering defendants'
additional argument that recovery is impermissible except upon a
showing of malice and that plaintiffs' evidence would not support
such a finding.
                                
                   COUNTS V, VI, VII, AND VIII
                                
     These are invasion of privacy claims brought by both
plaintiffs against NFB, NFB of Pa., and Mr. Young.
     In their brief plaintiffs state that the cause of action for
invasion of privacy is comprised of four distinct torts: (1)
intrusion upon seclusion, (2) appropriation of name or likeness,
(3) publicity given to private life, and (4) publicity placing a
person in false light. [citation] Plaintiffs state that they seek
to recover under the tort of publicly placing a person in false
light. [citation] They rely on 652E of the Restatement (Second)
of Torts, which reads as follows:
                                
     One who gives publicity to a matter concerning another that
     places the other before the public in a false light is
     subject to liability to the other for invasion of his
     privacy, if
                                
               (a) the false light in which the other was placed
          would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and
               (b) the actor had knowledge of or acted in
          reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized
          matter and the false light in which the other would be
          placed.
                                
     Plaintiffs base their invasion of privacy claims on the same
statements upon which they base their defamation claims.
Plaintiffs cannot recover under 652E because of the requirement
that the publicity place them in a "false light" of a kind
"highly offensive to a reasonable person." As I previously
discussed, the facts in these statements regarding the Sembers
are accurate. Thomas P. Sember is a counselor in the Pittsburgh
office of BVS. He and Mary Ann Sember are married to each other.
Mary Ann Sember is the sales representative for TeleSensory
products in the Pittsburgh area. The Pittsburgh BVS office
purchases almost exclusively TeleSensory products.
     Furthermore [the judge continued] the statements regarding
plaintiffs are not highly offensive. According to plaintiffs, the
articles, when read as a whole, falsely accuse Mr. and Mrs.
Sember of engaging in very serious improprieties of a kind that
would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. I reject this
contention for the reasons set forth in my discussion of the
Defamation Counts.
                                
                            COUNT IX
                                
     This is a claim by Ms. Sember against all defendants for
interference with prospective business relationships. This claim
is based on the same publications upon which plaintiffs base
their defamation and invasion of privacy counts.
     The initial problem with this claim [the judge said] is the
absence of any evidence establishing that the publication of
these articles damaged Ms. Sember. In her brief at pages 90-91,
Ms. Sember refers to decreased sales to the Allegheny
Intermediate Unit ("AIU") and to the Pittsburgh, Erie, and
Altoona BVS offices. She testified that these sales have
dramatically decreased since 1992. She cites actual sales figures
to BVS/AIU of $289,000 in 1990, $273,000 in 1991, $202,000 in
1992, and $154,000 in 1993. However, Ms. Sember does not offer
evidence from anyone at BVS or AIU indicating the reasons why her
sales declined. For example, during this period the Pittsburgh
BVS office was moving to a bidding system for the purchase of the
higher priced products. This could be one of many explanations
for the decline in the sales.
     A plaintiff can prove actual harm [Judge Wettick continued]
by showing only that her sales declined where it is not possible
to identify the persons who may have been influenced by the
publication. But where the claim is made that the plaintiff lost
sales to specific customers, the plaintiff must introduce
evidence showing that these customers were substantially
influenced by the publication. [citation]
     The tort of intentional interference with prospective
contractual relations [the judge went on to say] requires that
plaintiff establish a prospective contractual relationship and
actual damages to the relationship resulting from defendants'
conduct. Plaintiff did not have a contract with the BVS or AIU.
Consequently her future sales depended upon the needs of BVS/AIU;
available governmental funding; the type, quality, and prices of
products that would be offered by TeleSensory and other
companies; the methods that BVS/AIU followed in making its
purchases; and the marketing approaches and services offered by
TeleSensory and its competitors. There are too many variables to
permit a finding that the articles in the Braille Monitor are an
explanation for the decline in plaintiff's sales to BVS/AIU.
     There are other difficulties with plaintiffs' tortious
interference claims. Pennsylvania recognizes a cause of action
for intentional interference with prospective contractual
relations. In order to recover, the plaintiff must establish the
following elements: (a) the existence of a prospective
contractual relationship between the plaintiff and a third party,
(b) the defendant acted for the purpose of causing a specific
type of harm to plaintiff, (c) the act was unprivileged, and (d)
actual harm resulted. [citation]
     Plaintiff may be claiming that she lost potential sales
because the articles prompted BVS to institute competitive
bidding. However, this would be a privileged act; defendants were
entitled to make statements intended to persuade a public body to
alter its purchasing procedures in a manner that would, in the
opinion of defendants, result in a more objective process.
     With respect to NFB, NFB of Pa., and Mr. Young, the evidence
does not support a finding that they acted for the purpose of
causing harm to plaintiffs. They were not seeking to dissuade BVS
or anyone else from doing business with Ms. Sember whenever the
TeleSensory product was the best choice for the client. They were
not asking that any competitors of Ms. Sember receive
preferential treatment. They simply wanted BVS to base its
decisions on the quality of the product and pricing.
     Plaintiffs' claim against Mr. Jakub and Genesis Computer
Services fails because any actions that they took were proper
actions of a competitor. [citation] Mr. Jakub was a competitor.
He believed that he did not have the same opportunity as Ms.
Sember to submit bids and to persuade BVS staff to purchase his
products. He never alleged that Ms. Sember had engaged in any
dishonest or unscrupulous conduct. His complaint was that BVS had
not given him the same opportunities afforded to Ms. Sember.
     He contributed to the articles in an effort to persuade BVS
to adopt a more objective system for purchasing products. As a
competitor, his conduct is proper.
     For these same reasons plaintiffs' claim against the Young
Opportunities, Inc., and Mr. Young as its principal owner also
fails.
                                
                  COUNT X--INJURIOUS FALSEHOOD
                                
     Ms. Sember has brought a claim against all defendants for
injurious falsehood. She alleges that the statements in the March
and July, 1992, Braille Monitors contained false and disparaging
statements that were designed to prevent others from dealing with
her to her business disadvantage.
     The provisions of the Restatement (Second) of Torts
governing a disparagement of title claim are set forth in 623A
and 624, which read as follows:
                                
     623A.    Liability for Publication of Injurious Falsehood--
               General Principle
                                
     One who publishes a false statement harmful to the interests
     of another is subject to liability for pecuniary loss
     resulting to the other if
               (a) he intends for publication of the statement to
          result in harm to interests of the other having a
          pecuniary value, or either recognizes or should
          recognize that it is likely to do so, and
               (b) he knows that the statement is false or acts
          in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity.
                                
     624.     Disparagement of Property--Slander of Title

     The rules on liability for the publication of an injurious
     falsehood stated in 623A apply to the publication of a
     false statement disparaging another's property rights in
     land, chattels, or intangible things that the publisher
     should recognize as likely to result in pecuniary harm to
     the other through the conduct of third persons in respect to
     the other's interests in the property.
                                
     Plaintiff [the judge continued] bases this claim on the same
publications. This claim fails for several reasons. First, for
the reasons that I previously discussed. The statements were not
published to harm the legitimate interests of Ms. Sember. Her
interest was in making sales whenever the TeleSensory product
would best serve the needs of a BVS client or other sight-
impaired person. Defendants were not intending to harm these
interests.
     Second, for the reasons that I previously discussed, there
were no false statements regarding Ms. Sember. She was not
accused of engaging in any dishonest or unethical conduct.
     Third, there were no false statements regarding the products
she sold as TeleSensory's sales representative (even assuming
that she could recover if there were false statements regarding
the quality of TeleSensory's products). The articles simply
expressed the opinions of the writers that, as to certain
products, TSI's competitors offered better service, better
prices, and/or a superior product. (Ms. Sember also states that
the articles cast doubt on the quality and propriety of her sales
ability. Even assuming that injurious falsehood as to her sales
ability could serve as the basis for recovery under 624, for the
reasons I previously discussed, the articles do not question the
quality or propriety of her sales ability.)
                                
                   COUNT XI--CIVIL CONSPIRACY
                                
     This count fails because there can be no recovery without
showing that two or more persons harmed plaintiffs through an
agreement to perform unlawful acts or lawful acts by unlawful
means. Since plaintiffs have not established that any of the
defendants engaged in any improper conduct, any concerted
activities in which they engaged were lawful.
     For these reasons, I enter the following order of court:
                                
 IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
                         CIVIL DIVISION
                                
THOMAS P. SEMBER and MARY ANN SEMBER, his wife,
                                
     Plaintiffs
                                
vs.
                                
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND, a corporation; HUMANWARE, INC.,
a corporation; GENESIS COMPUTER SERVICES; THE YOUNG
OPPORTUNITIES, INC., a corporation; ED SMITH, an individual; BOB
JAKUB, an individual; THEODORE YOUNG, an individual; NATIONAL
FEDERATION OF THE BLIND OF PENNSYLVANIA, INC., a corporation,
                           **********
     Defendants
                           **********
                         ORDER OF COURT
                           **********
     On this 31st day of January, 1996, upon consideration of
defendants' motions for summary judgment to plaintiffs' complaint
it is hereby ORDERED that these motions for summary judgment are
granted and that plaintiffs' complaint is dismissed as to all
defendants.
                           **********
BY THE COURT
WETTICK, J.
                           **********
     That was Judge Wettick's ruling granting summary judgment,
and with it the case was, for all practical purposes, finished.
The Sembers would appeal his decision to the Superior Court of
Pennsylvania, and their arguments would have to be countered by
our attorneys. But by that time the evidence had been gathered,
the depositions taken, and the documents combed for useful facts.
Such activity is exciting in John Grisham novels and is
apparently interesting to lawyers, but speaking as one who had
never before undergone the deposition process, I can report that
two and a half days of precisely answering rambling, ill-
constructed questions by opposing counsel was both tiring and
unproductive. I can't imagine that the Sembers enjoyed facing Dan
Goldstein's tough questioning either; yet, they were clearly
hoping that they could persuade the courts to send us all into a
trial--which even though it might be unpleasant and time-
consuming, would give them some money, as well as justifying past
BVS action. It didn't happen that way. If the vacation island was
ever a dream, it is still a dream--one that may have to wait for
some other engine of propulsion than the one that was employed.
     Happily, the courts of Pennsylvania understood that there
really was no case to be tried. The final judicial statement by
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on September 2, 1997, was the
shortest of them all, and possibly the most painful to those who
had pinned their hopes on the lawsuit. All the accusations of
defamation, libel, and the rest; all of the claims that the
Braille Monitor had twisted the facts and implied what wasn't so-
-all these dissolved into thin air with the ruling of the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania. Here is what it said:
                           **********
                              ORDER
                           **********
PER CURIAM
                           **********
     And now this second day of September, 1997, the Petition for
Allowance of Appeal is DENIED.
                           **********
     That was it--total victory for the National Federation of
the Blind. Those who contemplate suing the Braille Monitor in the
future should take note of what the courts of Pennsylvania said.
Castles in Spain, pie in the sky, and enchanted vacation islands
are hard to come by.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: The Lobby of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hyatt Regency
Hotel, site of the 1998 Convention of the National Federation of
the Blind.]
                    Convention Bulletin 1998
                           **********
     The time has come to plan for the 1998 convention of the
National Federation of the Blind. As Federationists know, the
1997 convention in New Orleans was the biggest (and many say the
best) we have ever had--excellent program, good facilities, and
wonderful hospitality. However, Texas in 1998 promises to be even
better.
     We will return to the Dallas-Fort Worth Hyatt Regency, where
our spectacular fiftieth anniversary convention was held in 1990
and where our fifty-third was held in 1993. Who can forget the
1950's atmosphere of Sullivan O'Shaughnessy's Restaurant, the
barbecue at Bear Creek, or the memorable Texas hospitality? NFB
of Texas president Tommy Craig promises that 1990 and 1993 were
merely an opener for the 1998 extravaganza.
     As usual, our hotel rates are the envy of all who know about
them. For the 1998 convention they are singles, $41; doubles and
twins, $43; triples, $45; and quads, $47. In addition to the room
rates there will be a tax, which at present is 12 percent. There
will be no charge for children in the room with parents as long
as no extra bed is requested.
     In recent years we have sometimes taken hotel reservations
through the National Office, but for the 1998 convention you
should write directly to Hyatt-Regency DFW, Post Office Box
619014, International Parkway, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, Texas
75261, or call (972) 453-1234. Hyatt has a national toll-free
number, but do not (we emphasize not) use it. Reservations made
through this national number will not be valid. They must be made
directly with the hotel. The hotel will want a deposit of $50 or
a credit card number. If a credit card is used, the deposit will
be charged against your card immediately, just as would be the
case with a $50 check. If a reservation is cancelled prior to
June 15, 1998, $25 of the $50 deposit will be returned. Otherwise
refunds will not be made.
     Federationists who attended the 1990 and 1993 conventions
will remember that the Hyatt Regency DFW is actually located on
the property of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and
the airport people-mover train makes a stop at the hotel. The
facility's 1,300 rooms are divided between two towers connected
by a quarter-mile-long corridor. Many of us found that walking
between the two towers provided welcome exercise, but if walking
is a problem, go to the desk, and you will be taken to the other
tower by van.
     There are four excellent and very different restaurants
within the hotel: Il Nonno's, an Italian trattoria, which
specializes in northern Italian cuisine and has servers who sing
to diners; Sullivan O'Shaughnessy's, which has already been
mentioned; and two other fine restaurants, Papayas and Mr. G's.
In addition the S.O.S. Bar in the West Tower serves sandwiches
and a limited menu.
     The 1998 convention of the National Federation of the Blind
will be a truly memorable event. Make plans now to be a part of
the Federation fun and hard work July 4 to 11. Hotel reservations
should be made early. Remember that seminars for parents of blind
children and for blind job-seekers, as well as several other
workshops and meetings, will be conducted on Saturday, July 4.
Convention registration will begin on Sunday, and both Sunday and
Monday will be filled with meetings of divisions and committees,
including the Monday morning annual meeting of the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind, which is open
to all. General convention sessions begin on Tuesday and continue
through Friday afternoon. The annual banquet will take place on
Thursday evening, July 9.
     Remember also that we need door prizes from state
affiliates, local chapters, and individuals. Prizes should be
relatively small in size and large in value. Cash, of course, is
always popular. In any case we ask that all prizes have a value
of at least $25. Drawings will be made steadily throughout the
convention sessions. As usual, the grand prize at the banquet
will be spectacular--absolutely worthy of the occasion and the
host affiliate. In New Orleans, for instance, the grand prize was
$1,000 in cash. Don't miss the fun! You may bring door prizes
with you or send them ahead of time to Mr. Al Bunje, 1812 Bever
Boulevard, Arlington, Texas 76013-3807; telephone (817) 275-7663. 
    The displays of new technology; the meetings of special
interest groups, committees, and divisions; the fascinating tours
(more about them in later issues of the Monitor); the hospitality
and renewed friendships; the solid program items; and the general
excitement of being where the action is and where the decisions
are being made--all these join together to call the blind of the
nation back to the Dallas-Fort Worth Hyatt Regency Hotel in 1998.
Come and be part of it. Hotel reservations are now being
accepted.
                           **********
                           **********
*****************************************************************
                   Charitable Remainder Trusts
                           **********
     A trust is a plan established to accomplish goals for the
individual making the trust and the beneficiary. The donor
creates the trust, appoints a trustee (the donor, a family
member, a bank trust officer, etc.), and designates a
beneficiary. In the case of a charitable remainder trust, money
or property is transferred by the donor to a charitable trust.
This trust pays income for life. After the donor's death the
funds remaining in the trust go to the National Federation of the
Blind.
     There are two kinds of charitable trusts. The first, a
charitable remainder annuity trust, is set up to pay income to
the donor based on a fixed percentage of the original gift. The
second is a charitable remainder unitrust. The income from this
trust is based on the annual assessed value of the gift. Both
types of charitable remainder trust are common and relatively
easy to set up. Appreciable tax deductions are available,
depending on which type of trust is selected.
     The following examples demonstrate how trusts work, but the
figures are illustrative, not exact:
     Michael Brown, age sixty-five, decides to set up a
charitable remainder annuity trust with $100,000. He asks his
brother John to manage the trust for him. During Michael's
lifetime John will see to it that Michael is paid $5,000 each
year (5% of $100,000). In addition, Michael can claim a tax
deduction of $59,207 in the year the trust is established.
     Mary Ellen Davis, age sixty-five, sets up a charitable
remainder unitrust with $100,000. She asks her attorney to act as
trustee. During Mary Ellen's life her attorney will pay her an
amount, 5%, equal to the annual assessed value of her gift. If
the $100,000 unitrust grows to $110,000, Mary Ellen will be paid
$5,500. If it grows again to $120,000, she will be paid $6,000 in
that year, and so on. Also Mary Ellen can claim a tax deduction
of $48,935 in the year she establishes the unitrust.
     For more information on charitable remainder trusts, contact
the National Federation of the Blind, Special Gifts, 1800 Johnson
Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998, phone (410) 659-9314, fax
(410) 685-5653.
*****************************************************************
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Denise Mackenstadt]
            Insights from an Instructional Assistant
                      by Denise Mackenstadt
                            *********
     From the Editor: One of the most puzzling figures in the
educational landscape of blind children in public schools today
is the instructional aide. Parents and teachers are often
uncertain what the role of these aides should be. Denise
Mackenstadt has been doing this job intelligently and
knowledgeably for several years. Her husband Gary is a long-time
leader in the NFB of Washington, and Denise herself is a leader
in the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children. At the
1997 seminar for parents of blind children in New Orleans she
spoke to the audience about what should and should not be part of
an aide's responsibilities. This is what she said:
                            *********
     I live about twenty miles northeast of Seattle and am an
instructional assistant, as we are called, in the Northshore
School District. We have about 20,000 students in an area of
sixty square miles. There are approximately twenty blind and
visually impaired students on our caseload. I am assigned to a
normally developing fourth grade blind boy. He is totally blind
and a Braille user. There are some additional problems that
affect his learning, but they are not directly related to his
vision. I spend four hours a day at the school. I am a member of
the school staff, which is an important part for me to play,
because, in order for our student to become an integral member of
the school community, I have to do a lot of PR, a lot of
educating. My presence really helps allay the fears and anxiety
that are frequently seen in a general education staff. I think
that we have been very successful over the last two and a half
years. The fourth grade teacher he will have this fall has
actually requested that he be in the class. I view that as a real
asset and something we can be proud of.
     I've been with the National Federation of the Blind since
1970 in a variety of roles, so of course I've brought that
experience to this job. However, my job description does not
really require anything that you would recognize as specific to
working with a blind student. My job description says that I am
to follow directions given by a certified teacher, that I keep
accurate records, that I know how to operate office equipment
like the photocopier and rhisograph, and that I have some
knowledge of technology. The certified teacher that I work for is
the teacher of the blind--the vision teacher. She happened to
want me to have this position even though she was warned not to
hire me. She stipulated in the job announcement that an applicant
must have a basic knowledge of Braille and white-cane use. Since
I was the only applicant who had those skills, I was hired.
     A year ago Washington passed a Braille literacy bill, due to
the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind. Part of that
bill is unique in that one of the legislators, who was a former
school board member, stipulated that the Braille competency
requirement must also apply to any assistants producing Braille
materials or instructing a student in Braille. So I was required
to take the National Library Service Braille Competency exam,
which I did last year and passed.
     This provision of the Washington law reflects the influence
that instructional assistants have on the educational program of
blind students. Frankly I see my student more often than the
certified teacher does. I have more interaction with him. I see
him in areas that are critical to his social development, such as
playground, lunchroom, PE, music--the times he interacts socially
with his peers. I have a tremendous impact on what he does every
day.
     The thing I appreciate most is that the classroom teacher,
the vision teacher, and I have agreed that our ultimate goal is
to work me out of a job. Our goal is that this student will
become increasingly independent so that by middle school he will
be able to meet a good number of his own needs or will be able to
get the materials he needs through transcription services,
readers, working with his teachers, etc. That has to become the
goal for all of us who work with these children because, if they
are mainstreamed into a regular school program, they have to
acquire those skills. As parents your goal is to enable your
children to handle their own lives and to determine their own
destinies. As educators that must be our goal also.
     I am very cognizant of my own limitations. I am not
certificated. I really try to maintain close working
relationships with all the certificated staff. I eat in the
teachers' lounge in order to talk to other teachers, to hear
what's going on, to work with other teachers on their projects. I
work in the lunchroom so that I really get to know the custodian.
As all of us who have worked in schools know, the people who
truly run the school are the secretary and the custodian. I was
gratified to see that I had been successful in that effort. At my
end-of-the-year evaluation my principal noted that I still work
in the lunchroom even though our student doesn't require my
presence. Aides have to mingle with the staff because we are an
itinerant program. Most of the regular educational staff has no
idea of what we do, so part of our job is to make it very easy
for them to accept this blind student as a regular student in the
classroom.
     As a non-certified staff member, there are some experience
and knowledge in instructional skills that I just do not have. I
don't necessarily know the progression in reading instruction or
mathematics instruction. These are areas in which I need to learn
from and work with the classroom teacher and vision teacher. I am
there to adapt the regular education program for our blind
student and to teach the specific blindness skills he needs. In
addition I provide all transcription services. I come to school
in the morning, check with the teacher about what is happening in
class, and look at her plan book. She may tell me that she is
going to give a four-page reading exam that day, it has to be
Brailled by 11:00 a.m., and it's now 8:30 a.m. This means that I
have to have the test transcribed into Braille that this student
can actually read by 11:00 a.m. That's the reality of a public
school program.
     The responsibility for instructing the blind student in the
standard curriculum belongs to the classroom teacher. At times,
out of misunderstanding, the regular classroom teacher will
expect me to instruct the blind student in areas that are not my
responsibility or within my expertise. Avoiding these
misunderstandings can be a difficult task. My goal for the coming
year is to learn how to avoid these confusions of responsibility.
The classroom teacher must be willing to accept the blind student
as just one more student in a class of fourth graders. I must
sometimes go to the instructor and say, "this student is in need
of help on this math problem." Then I walk away to assist
elsewhere in the classroom so that the teacher can spend time
with the blind student.
     This past year my office was too accessible to the blind
student. He needs to stay in the classroom more. He performs
better in the classroom because there he wants to be like the
other kids in the class. And, if he is going to be like the other
kids, he will have to meet classroom expectations behaviorally
and instructionally. I'm locking my door this coming year. He's
not going to be able to wander in and out quite as much.
     Those are some of my goals for the upcoming school year.
This past year my professional goals were to pass the Braille
Competency Examination and to learn more about computer
technology for the blind in education. My goal for my student was
to develop and improve his self-esteem. I took from the National
Federation of the Blind and from what we've done at our
rehabilitation centers in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Colorado the
understanding that I couldn't accomplish a lot just using a self-
esteem curriculum. I could do all the talking I wanted, but what
was really going to build his self-image was his feeling of
competence using his blindness skills. That, I am very pleased to
say, has happened. His feeling of competence as a Braille reader
and as a blind traveler and his ability to communicate his needs
to his sighted peers or adults has improved his self-esteem as
much as--no, more than--any of the head talks he and I could have
had.
     The advantage of being married to a blind man has been that,
when my student comes to me saying he can do or not do such and
so, I can say, "Hey, don't talk to me about it." I can say "I
know my husband." Even if I weren't married to a blind person, as
an instructor I would have to know adult blind people for my own
education, for mentoring him, for helping him to understand that
there is an adult future for him to dream of and be a part of.
That is really what our goal has to be as educators. In
conclusion I would say that I have the best job in the world
because I am working with kids, one on one.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Cody Greiser
PHOTO/CAPTION: Kyle Neddo
PHOTO/CAPTION: Amanda Jones
PHOTO/CAPTION: Brett Boyer]
            Around the Block, to the Mall, and Beyond
                           **********
     From the Editor: At the seminar for parents and educators of
blind children sponsored by the National Organization of Parents
of Blind Children at the 1997 NFB convention in New Orleans, one
of the most delightful and inspiring presentations was a panel of
blind youngsters talking about their experience of blindness.
Each presenter prepared and read remarks in Braille. It was clear
that all of these students are growing up understanding and
living by Federation philosophy. The first speaker was Cody
Greiser (ten), whose father Marty is one of the leaders of NOPBC.
Kyle Neddo (nine) is the son of Dawn Neddo, the President of the
Michigan parents division. Amanda Jones and her twin sister April
(eleven) are the granddaughters of Pat Jones, who leads parent
activities in Tennessee. And Brett Boyer graduated from high
school last January. This is what each student said:
                           **********
     Cody Greiser: Hello, everyone. My name is Cody Greiser. I am
ten years old and live in Polson, Montana. Next year I will be in
the fifth grade. My Dad says I was two and a half when I got my
first cane, but I really don't remember that. My O&M teacher
comes once a month to our school, where he shows me how to follow
sidewalks and go around the block and stuff like that. Mrs.
Colburn and I practice those things when he is not there.
     I don't use a cane in my house or my Dad's house or my
grandma's house or in the classroom, but I do just about
everywhere else. If I don't have my cane with me, I have to be
very careful. Sometimes I get so excited about recess I leave the
room without it. Then I think, "Oh my cane," and go back and get
it. If I lay my cane down on the playground, sometimes kids take
it, but I always get it back.
     When I get in the car, I put my cane crosswise on the floor
or between the seat and door. Once, when I went to my Dad's, I
forgot my cane and had to use a collapsible one he had. I didn't
like it because, when it collapses, it feels like you're going to
step into a hole. I have been to lots of conventions, and I like
Detroit the best because everything wasn't carpeted, and they had
lots of escalators. Escalators are really neat, but I hate the
moving sidewalks in airports because the end comes when you are
not ready.
     I like going up in the mountains where I can climb on steep
hillsides and throw rocks off cliffs. I like the way they bounce
all the way to the bottom. I have been skiing but really don't
like it because you can't use your cane. Somebody should invent a
ski cane.
     When I walk down the railroad tracks with my Dad back to the
slew and the river, I throw rocks on both sides to see what's
over there. No matter where I go, I sometimes run into things. If
I hit some thing really, really hard, the first thing I do is
check to see if I'm bleeding. I've had bruises, bumps, and
stitches, but that's the way it goes because I don't want to sit
around. Thanks for listening.
                           **********
     Kyle Neddo: My name is Kyle Neddo, and I got my first cane
when I was three years old. I like to use my cane because I can
take my time looking at things and go where I want to go.
Sometimes people at school say I take too long. They want to drag
me along, but they don't know that I can do it myself. Some of my
friends at goalball don't use a cane, and they have their mom or
someone guiding them around. I feel good being independent using
my cane.
     My cane helps me play games where we chase each other,
keeping the ball away. I can play just like sighted kids when I
use my cane. My friends think that I have a special power.
Really, I just learned to use my ears and my cane together from
my friend Allen Harris.
                           **********
     Amanda Jones: Hello. My name is Amanda Jones. I would like
to tell you about a time when I was selling things for school. I
was walking down the street with my cane, and a dog started
barking at my sister April and me. We were scared of the dogs, so
we started running back up the hill. Another thing happened to me
when I was selling candy for the girls' choir. My neighbor Jimmy
let me in, and my grandma started looking for us. When she
finally found us, we didn't want to go home. Last year I was
almost late for the bus. I had to fly up the hill. I almost fell
on my nose. I beat my sister for once. April was running behind
me, and her backpack was on one shoulder.
     The last thing I wanted to talk about was when I tried out
for track and cross country. I have tried out for both of them
each year ever since fourth grade. What I want to tell you about
is when I ran the 100-meter run. I did better last year than I
did in fourth grade. I made twenty-two seconds last year and
forty-two seconds the year before. I also tried out for the 200-
meter run. My sister and I made the same score, which was sixty-
seven seconds. Other things I tried out for were shot put,
running jump, and the 400-meter run, all of which I am not good
at. Right now I am learning to go around in my school because I
will have to change classes every day. I am in the band, playing
the clarinet.
     Have a nice day. I will be going to the baby-sitting course.
                           **********
     Brett Boyer: Good morning, everybody. I'm here today to talk
about my independent travel experiences. So let's start with my
first independent journey. I was three years old and was
determined to mail a letter. I decided that I would go to the
mailbox that I thought was at the corner of the block. I set out
to find it. Keep in mind that this was before I had ever heard of
a cane--I was introduced to a cane when I was five. Anyway, I
continued to walk down the block, looking for the mailbox, which
I did not find. As all little kids do, I lost concentration and
found myself stumbling around and crying in driveways and yards.
Finally a lady found me and brought me home. To this day I've
never found that mailbox.
     A few years later I was introduced to the cane but would
only use it when my mobility teacher came. My first real
experience of independence was in Charlotte, North Carolina, at
the National Convention in 1992. I had my NFB cane, and I went
cruisin' around that hotel. I didn't go to general sessions much.
I remember the feeling that I could go anywhere and do anything.
I explored every room in that hotel. If I found stairs, I went
with them. If I found a door, I went inside. But I don't think
the room service employees liked it much when I found myself in
the room service kitchen elevator.
     Like I said, that was one of my turning points. From then on
I would use my cane in school, going to classes, but at that
point I lived in a small town in New Jersey. I was independent,
but not fully. I would still use a sighted guide whenever I
could. I never really ventured out on my own.
     I went to the conventions after North Carolina, and in
Detroit I met a student who was at the Colorado Center for the
Blind. He told me about a program that the CCB offers high school
students in the summertime. I went through the program, which
gave me my independence, I believe--learning how to clean, shop,
cook, and travel almost anywhere in Denver, Colorado, on my own.
I liked Colorado so much I decided to move there. I finished high
school and graduated in January of this year. Then I became a
full-time student at the Colorado Center, which I am still today.
This has given me the complete independence that I have earned.
Learning how to take care of an apartment, manage it, and just do
everything on your own is a great experience.
     Before I go, I want to share one more travel experience with
you. During the summer program of 1996, I worked for the American
Red Cross the last four weeks of the program. One day after work
I was so tired that I caught my bus and fell asleep. I was
supposed to catch another bus and join the other students to go
home. But, as I said, I fell asleep. I woke up, and I was on the
bus that everyone else from CCB had caught home. It turned out
that the bus I had taken from work was the bus I needed to take
to go home--it was the only one during the day to make that
switch. Pretty amazing! I would like to thank everybody, and I
hope everyone has a great convention.
                           **********
                           **********
                    An All Too Familiar Story
                           **********
     From the Editor: The two previous articles provide a ray of
hope for parents of blind children and the advocates committed to
improving the educational opportunities available to blind
youngsters. Aides like Denise Mackenstadt and teachers like the
distinguished educators honored by the NFB each year provide
their students the chance to make everything they can of their
lives and gifts. And the children who spoke to the parents'
seminar at last summer's convention demonstrate what can be
accomplished by knowledgeable, determined parents even when ideal
instructional conditions are not available. Yet across the
country today blind children languish in public school classrooms
because no one working or caring for them knows enough to provide
the services needed or can find a way to compel the school system
to do so.
     Louisiana is doing more than many states to solve this huge
problem. The Louisiana Center for the Blind, the NFB's adult
training center in Ruston, has a grant to train paraprofessionals
to teach Braille. Pam Dubel directs this effort, and it is
turning out aides who can make a real difference in the
educational future of blind children. But the grant is for the
northern half of the state, and the child profiled in the
following story lives in the southern part. This article appeared
in the June 7, 1997, edition of the Times Picayune. It is a stark
reminder of how much work we have yet to do. Here is the story:
                           **********
                  Teaching Blind Boy a Struggle
              Mainstream Classes Lack the Resources
                        by Cassandra Lane
                 St. Bernard/Plaquemines Bureau
                           **********
     While the other children learned to read books this year,
Gerald sat in the back of the class wearing headphones to listen
to books. Six-year-old Gerald Passero twirled wildly on an open
area of the playground at Carolyn Park Elementary School, then
braked himself against a brick wall with his hands. His cane had
been discarded on the sidewalk.
     "I can see," the kindergartner mused. But Gerald can't see.
And this past year the St. Bernard public school system struggled
to help him find his way into a regular classroom, despite a lack
of resources and no precedent for dealing with a completely blind
child.
     While there are twenty-two visually impaired children in St.
Bernard's public schools, Gerald is the only one to be totally
blind, said Gloria Plaiscia, one of two instructors who teach
Braille and living skills to the visually impaired students.
Nationwide, school systems are trying to find ways to integrate
handicapped students into regular classrooms. As St. Bernard
schools learned with Gerald, that's not always easy.
     In January, at his mother's request, Gerald was removed from
a preschool for children ages three to six with a wide range of
handicaps and placed in a regular classroom at Carolyn Park.
     "He was in a class with children who were in diapers,"
Penelope Passero said. "Children who couldn't talk, couldn't
walk.... He went on field trips with just them. He learned what
they learned." Gerald wasn't being challenged academically, she
said. "He would come home and say, `Mama, I want homework. Mama,
I want to go to kindergarten,'" Passero said. "I want Gerald to
be able to learn everything. He's so normal."
     Teachers agreed it was a good idea to move Gerald into the
regular kindergarten class. "There's nothing wrong with his
learning ability," said Trina Claycomb, his special class teacher
at Gauthier Elementary. And his regular kindergarten teacher at
Carolyn Park, Tabitha Osbourne, agreed: "He's a very bright
student."
     But that wasn't enough. Although he's a smart kid, Gerald
had trouble keeping up with his sighted classmates. As a
consequence of a late start in kindergarten and too many
absences, Gerald won't join his classmates in first grade next
year; he has to repeat kindergarten. Glaucoma and cataracts
caused the youngster to lose his sight. He became
totally blind at age 3. He doesn't know how to read because he
knows only half of his alphabet in Braille. While the other
children learned to read books, Gerald sat in the back of the
class wearing headphones to listen to his books.
     Osbourne said she sometimes felt frustrated trying to teach
Gerald math because, while she had a few Braille materials, she
didn't have hands-on materials that would help her explain
concepts. So while the other children worked, Gerald sometimes
stood alone in the corner, running his fingers over toys. "I've
got twenty-something other children in my classroom," Osbourne
said. "I've never taught a blind child."
     Carolyn Park Principal Katherine Thornton said she was
apprehensive when she learned she'd be getting Gerald in a
regular classroom at her school. "He can't see," she said. "We
were very, very nervous. We were worried about his falling down
or running into a pole."
     As a resource teacher for visually impaired children,
Plaiscia tried to ease the transition. She helped Gerald find his
way around the school, ordered special materials for him, and
gave him lessons in Braille. But with only two teachers to work
with all of the twenty-two visually impaired public school
students, Plaiscia had only about an hour to spend with Gerald
twice a week.
     Pam Dubel, youth services director for the National
Federation of the Blind of Louisiana, said a youngster can't
learn much in that time. "No wonder he doesn't know his Braille,"
Dubel said. "You wouldn't think of teaching a sighted kid who's
in kindergarten reading only twice a week and expect him to pass.
     "It's not the resource teacher's fault," she said,
explaining that nationwide there are too few teachers to provide
the specialized help that blind students need. "School systems
say that they don't have the money, but parents need to fight for
more certified teachers so their children can have more time.
That child should be with his Braille teacher at least one hour
every day," she said.
     Passero said she'd been fighting to make sure Gerald gets a
fair and equal education since she learned she had a right to
take him out of the special preschool class.
     Janice Campagna, head of the school system's special
education program, said the local public school system is doing
the best it can with the financing it gets. She said more federal
money for the special education program would mean more equipment
and materials for students with special needs.
     "We don't have a special school for the blind." Campagna
said. "Philosophically, they should be integrated in regular
education. It would be wonderful if colleges prepared regular
education teachers for students who are blind."
     Plaiscia said she spends much of her time squelching
teachers' fears about teaching visually impaired students.
     "I'm like a counselor to these teachers," she said.
Osbourne, who isn't teaching Gerald next year because her one-
year contract with the school system has expired, said having him
in her class was a learning experience for her and the other
students.
     When she found out she was getting Gerald, she blindfolded
her students and told them: "That's what Gerald sees." They read
books about children with physical impairments. And in time they
saw that Gerald could find his way around the classroom and the
school as well as they could.
     "The important thing to remember is that Gerald just learns
in a different way," she said.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jim Omvig]
               From Bad Philosophy to Bad Policy:
             The American Braille Illiteracy Crisis
                        by James H. Omvig
                           **********
     From the Editor: Jim Omvig is the former director of both
the Orientation and Adjustment Center operated by the Iowa
Commission for the Blind, Des Moines, Iowa, and the Alaska Center
for Blind and Deaf Adults, Anchorage, Alaska. He has been
involved in one way or another in all facets of work with the
blind for more than thirty-five years. He is now one of the
leaders of the National Federation of the Blind of Arizona. This
is what he says:
                           **********
     The state convention of the National Federation of the Blind
of Arizona was held in Tucson over the weekend of September 5, 6,
and 7, 1997. State President Bruce Gardner asked me to give a
presentation on the new Braille provisions in the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which was recently
reauthorized by Congress and signed into law. The NFB had worked
hard to have the language on Braille included, and the fact that
we now have tough federal Braille legislation to go with the
state Braille bills is a credit to the organized blind movement.
     This assignment, together with some damning statistics which
I reviewed in preparation for my presentation, caused me to
engage in some serious reflection on the staggering illiteracy
rate among our nation's blind children and young adults.
     Before turning to a discussion of this crisis and my
thoughts concerning the reason or reasons for it, let me offer a
word or two about Braille and my experiences with it. In far too
many circles over the years, I have heard people say, "Braille is
too hard to learn." "Braille is too slow." "Braille is too
bulky." "Braille is outdated and is no longer necessary."
"Braille is not cool!" And on, and on, and on....
     Let me tell you two of my own experiences with Braille.
First, I grew up in a small farming town in Iowa. By the time I
was fifteen years of age, I was so blind that I could no longer
even pretend to function successfully in the public school, so I
was enrolled in the Iowa Braille and Sight-Saving School to
complete my last three-and-a-half years of high school.
     Unbelievable as it sounds, even though I could read no more
than fifteen or twenty words a minute of very large-print
material for no more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a sitting
and, further, even though everyone knew I would be totally blind
one day, I was not taught Braille at this remarkable institution.
The attitude of the school was, "Let him be normal (sighted) as
long as he can."
     My parents knew, of course, that I would be totally blind
one day, so they were justifiably concerned about my lack of
training. However, when my mother wrote to the school requesting
that I be taught Braille, she was told, "He can always learn
Braille when he really needs it."
     Therefore, since I was unable to read my own school books
and papers, I got through high school by having literate students
(using either Braille or print) read aloud to me. By the time I
graduated, I was nearly totally blind and therefore could read
neither print nor Braille at all.
     My second personal experience involves learning the Braille
code itself, when I was twenty-six years old. After having sat at
home for eight years in idleness and frustration following my
graduation from the school for the blind, I had enrolled to
become a student in the Iowa Orientation and Adjustment Center
for Blind Adults, and I was to enter on March 15, 1961. Three
weeks before I was to begin, my rehabilitation counselor gave me
books (the old Illinois Series) with which to learn Braille. His
argument was simple, "You could just as well do something useful
with your time while you are waiting, so why don't you learn
Braille?"
     I went at it with gusto, and in the three weeks available to
me I memorized the entire Braille code. I couldn't read or write
very fast, of course, but I had committed the system itself to
memory. Therefore, when somebody says that it's too hard to learn
Braille, I know from personal experience that this assertion is
incorrect--that it is just plain folly.
     Then there is the question of whether Braille is too slow. I
hadn't been a student at the Iowa Center long when I heard Dr.
Kenneth Jernigan read Braille as fast as he could waggle his
tongue. Through the ensuing years I have met many blind people
who can read Braille just as rapidly as the sighted read print.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, these people all share a
common experience--they all learned to read and write and use
Braille when they were tiny children.
     In my own case it took me a month or so to read with any
speed at all, but I was also mastering the skill at twenty-six
years of age. Two other students and I practiced together for two
or three hours each night in addition to the classes we had
during the day, so before long we had developed a reasonable
speed.
     I went on to use Braille all through college and law school,
and it stood me in good stead. I took all class notes (ten or
twelve pages an hour in law school) using the slate and stylus. I
continued to use Braille as an essential tool throughout my
working life, and I rely upon it heavily to this day.
     Now, back to my thoughts about the illiteracy crisis. As I
began to prepare for my State Convention presentation, I ran
across startling and damning statistics. In 1968 (the first year
for which accurate data are available), 44 percent of all blind
children across America could use Braille. Although it is pure
speculation on my part, I suspect that the percentage in the
1930's and 1940's (before large print came along) would have been
much nearer to 100 percent.
     In any event, by 1996 the percentage had dropped from the
outrageously low 44 percent in 1968 to a devastating 9 percent--a
national disgrace, a tragedy, a crisis!
     And the percentage of those unable to use either large print
or Braille had increased by the same tragic proportions. While 9
percent of the blind children in America could use neither print
nor Braille in 1968, this figure had risen to an abysmal forty
percent by 1996. Why? What could have gone so terribly wrong with
our programs to educate the blind and partially blind? There has
to be a reason, or reasons, and, whatever they are, the situation
borders on the criminal.
     As I thought about the problem and considered a whole series
of negative factors which have contributed to the crisis, an idea
emerged and crystallized. While there are several symptoms of the
problem to examine, there is really only one overriding problem:
our educational system has adopted (intentionally or otherwise) a
bad philosophy about reading and writing for partially blind
children. Over time this bad philosophy has actually evolved into
an unwritten, but very damaging, national policy--"Use print at
any cost!"
     Just think of it. The education establishment evolved a bad
philosophy which has gradually become a national policy
concerning literacy for partially blind kids. As I look back at
my own experience at the Iowa School for the Blind, "Use print at
any cost" was the philosophy in place. Never mind that the cost
was high and that the child with a little residual vision was
forced to pay it. That philosophy had become the school's policy,
and the administration was unwilling or incapable of altering it,
no matter what.
     Once I realized that the basic cause of the crisis was
actually an entire unwritten national policy, it was easy to see
why we have sunk to the current crisis level. And as I examined
the problem, five specific pieces of the macabre puzzle emerged
as comprising the sorry whole.
     The first ingredient has to do with consumerism, or in this
case, the lack of it. If you truly wish to set good policy, you
must begin by asking for information from those who know the
subject and whose lives are affected by the policy.
     If professionals in the education of blind children had
thought to consult blind adults in the late 1940's and early
1950's, I suspect that the entire use-print-at-any-cost fiasco
might have been avoided. Informed adults would have pressed for
literacy through continued Braille instruction, and the whole
sight-saving (large-print) movement could have been given its
proper, modest emphasis. But of course the system did not seek
out information from the true experts, and the first major error,
which led to the mistaken policy, was made.
     The second ingredient leading to the current crisis was the
large-print movement itself. It was in the late 1940's and early
1950's that the use-print-at-any-cost philosophy took root and
became national policy. It was this bad policy at the Iowa school
which prompted officials to refuse to give me Braille. If I had
come to the school only a few years earlier, Braille instruction
would have been a given. I simply had the bad luck to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately my experience was
not unique; it became the norm.
     Once this bad philosophy became a national policy, it picked
up momentum like a steamroller. The third critical factor leading
to the current crisis was the introduction of the concept of
vision stimulation. The theorists figured that, if our national
policy for blind children with some residual vision was to use
print at any cost, "Then let's see if we can't make these blind
kids see better so that they can read print better." The effort
was actually to make kids see better through practice and
training. This was the natural extension of the original bad
policy; but of course it didn't work. You can see what you can
see, and no amount of trying or straining or pleading can make
you see any better.
     In my adult rehabilitation work, I met lots of young blind
people who had experienced emotional damage from instructional
and family effort to make them see what they could not see.
Thankfully, this ill-conceived piece of the use-print-at-any-cost
policy is on its way out.
     The best evidence that vision stimulation is finished is
this: Recently Dr. Kay Ferrell of the University of Northern
Colorado wrote an article entitled, "A Call to End Vision
Stimulation Training." The article appeared in the American
Foundation for the Blind's Point/Counterpoint section of the
Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness. Ferrell is widely
respected. We can only hope that her views on vision stimulation
will spread and that the fixation on such training will die a
speedy and unlamented death.
     The fourth factor involves technology. Technology for the
blind, of course, is a wonderful and useful thing when it is
understood and used properly. But when it is used as a substitute
for the ability to read and write competently, it can cause much
damage, and it has certainly done so.
     In fact, with the overuse of technology (chiefly the
cassette player) came a small but significant shift in emphasis
and intention of the original national print policy. With the
embrace of technology, we moved beyond the original use-print-at-
any-cost national policy to one, in the minds of many, of avoid-
Braille-at-all-cost.
     Finally, the fifth ingredient is simply the natural and
logical (though disastrous) extension of the first four. If we
don't seek information from those who know what kind of policy we
should establish as we are establishing it; if we determine that
large print is better than Braille, no matter how inefficient and
slow it is; if we decide that, since print is preferred no matter
the cost, we should simply make blind children "see better"; and
if we determine that technology is an adequate substitute for
literacy, it logically follows that teachers of the blind don't
need to be particularly skilled in or able to use or teach
Braille. So we have had more than a generation of specialists
who, since they were not good at Braille themselves, failed to
give Braille proper emphasis and frequently failed to teach it at
all.
     These five ingredients, then, have emerged and flourished
under our use-print-at-any-cost policy, and thousands of blind
children have been the losers. The lives of many have been
damaged forever.
     Where do we go from here? Can something be done to reverse
the trend, to get rid of this destructive policy and to bring
sanity back into the education of blind children?
     Thankfully, there is good news, and we still have a chance.
Extremely positive action is occurring on several fronts. First,
Dr. Ruby Ryles of Louisiana Tech University has just completed
what is probably the most significant Braille research project of
the century. She studied a large group of high school students.
Her study shows that partially blind kids who learn and use
Braille from infancy are so far ahead of those partially blind
students who use regular or large print (in reading speed,
comprehension, retention, spelling, grammar, etc.), that there is
simply nothing to compare or to argue about. In fact, her study
shows that, unlike the blind large-print users, those who have
learned and used Braille from infancy function on a par with kids
who have ordinary vision. The blind print users aren't even on
the same playing field.
     Since the university masters' programs from throughout the
country which train teachers of the blind rely upon objective
testing rather than opinion, our past efforts to convince the
instructors that Braille is better have usually fallen on deaf
ears. However, now that the proof is available as the result of a
major, objective, professional study, perhaps we can expect
positive change in instructional philosophy and policy.
     Then there is the new Braille language in the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act itself. It requires that the
Individualized Education Program (IEP) for each blind student in
America will no longer start with a presumption that print will
be taught. The IEP for blind children will automatically provide
for Braille instruction and the use of Braille unless all members
of the IEP team determine, following a complete assessment, that
Braille is not appropriate for this youngster.
     Finally, we have our National Federation of the Blind state
Braille bills. Many require that textbook publishers provide the
school district with electronic versions so that Braille texts
can be made available inexpensively and quickly. Before long, one
would hope, virtually all publishers will provide disks of
textbooks routinely. And, to address the problem of teachers who
don't promote and teach Braille because they don't know it
themselves, many of our new state laws require that special
education teachers for the blind pass Braille competency tests in
order to teach.
     If we are persistent, if we are vigilant, and if we continue
our concerted action, working through the National Federation of
the Blind we can eliminate the destructive national print policy
and replace it with a policy which more appropriately and
positively meets the needs of our blind children--a national
policy which states that Braille is blind people's true method of
literacy and our passport to freedom and independence.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: 1997 Scholarship winner Ameenah Ghoston is the
new President of the Illinois Student Division. The convention in
New Orleans was her first National Convention.]
               The 1998 National Federation of the
                    Blind Scholarship Program
                           **********
     This year's scholarship program will be the fifteenth since
the organization determined to expand the number, variety, and
value of the scholarships presented each year at our annual
convention in July. Assisting the nation's most talented post-
secondary students to fulfill their academic and professional
dreams is one of the most effective ways for us to demonstrate
our conviction that blind people deserve the chance to enter
whatever field they demonstrate themselves equipped to succeed
in.
     Scholarships will be presented this year to twenty-six
college, vocational-school, and graduate students. The awards
will range in value from $3,000 to $10,000, and we will bring the
winners as our guests to the 1998 convention of the National
Federation of the Blind to experience firsthand the excitement
and stimulation of a gathering of the largest and most dynamic
organization of blind people in the country today.
     Again this year we plan to present approximately three of
the scholarships to students who won scholarship awards in a
previous competition. The purpose of these special awards is to
nurture in today's students an ongoing commitment to the
philosophy and objectives of the Federation. The students so
designated will be recognized and honored as the 1998 tenBroek
Fellows. All current students who were scholarship winners in
previous years should take particular note of this program and
consider applying for the 1998 National Federation of the Blind
scholarships.
     Full-time employees interested in pursuing post-secondary
degrees should take a close look at this year's scholarship form.
Beginning this year, one award may be given to a part-time
student holding down a full-time job.
     Every state affiliate and local chapter can help in
spreading the word of this extraordinary opportunity for
America's blind students. Scholarship applications have been or
soon will be mailed to financial aid offices in educational
institutions around the country, but many of these will be filed
away and forgotten by the time students come to ask about
financial assistance. It is very helpful to have local
representatives deliver or mail forms to the actual college
administrator who works with blind students. Being identified
with such a valuable national scholarship program gives the local
chapter and state affiliate prestige and respect, and the local
touch insures that more blind students will actually have an
opportunity to apply for these scholarships.
     Anyone can order scholarship forms from the Materials
Center, National Federation of the Blind, 1800 Johnson Street,
Baltimore, Maryland 21230. State Presidents and members of the
1998 Scholarship Committee will also be sent scholarship forms.
These may be copied as long as both sides of the form are
reproduced.
     Here is the text of the 1998 National Federation of the
Blind scholarship application form:
                           **********

                NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
                    1998 SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

     Each year at its National Convention in July, the National
Federation of the Blind gives a broad array of scholarships to
recognize achievement by blind scholars. All applicants for these
scholarships must be (1) legally blind and (2) pursuing or
planning to pursue a full-time post-secondary course of study in
the fall semester of 1998, in the United States, except that one
scholarship may be given to a full-time employee also attending
school part-time. In addition to these restrictions, some
scholarships have been further restricted by the donor.
Scholarships to be given at the National Convention in 1998 are
listed here with any special restrictions noted:

1 SCHOLARSHIP FOR $10,000
     American Action Fund Scholarship -- Given by the American
Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, a nonprofit
organization which works to assist blind persons. No additional
restrictions.

3 SCHOLARSHIPS, EACH FOR $4,000
     Melva T. Owen Memorial Scholarship -- Given in memory of
Melva T. Owen, who was widely known and loved among the blind.
She and her husband Charles Owen became acquainted with
increasing numbers of blind people through their work in the
"Voicepondence" Club. Charles Owen says: "There shall be no
limitation as to field of study, except that it shall be directed
towards attaining financial independence and shall exclude
religion and those seeking only to further general or cultural
education."
     Two National Federation of the Blind Scholarships -- No
additional restrictions.

22 SCHOLARSHIPS, EACH FOR $3,000
     Hermione Grant Calhoun Scholarship -- Dr. Isabelle Grant
endowed this scholarship in memory of her daughter. Winner must
be a woman.
     Mozelle and Willard Gold Memorial Scholarship -- Endowed by
the energetic and effective former president of the National
Federation of the Blind of California, Sharon Gold, in loving
memory of her mother and father, both of whom were dedicated to
creating opportunity for their daughter and for all blind persons
through Braille literacy and dedication to service. No additional
restrictions.
     Frank Walton Horn Memorial Scholarship -- Given by Mr. and
Mrs. Charles E. Barnum, the mother and stepfather of Catherine
Horn Randall. No additional restrictions, but preference will be
given to those studying architecture or engineering.
     Kuchler-Killian Memorial Scholarship -- Given in loving
memory of her parents, Charles Albert Kuchler and Alice Helen
Kuchler, by Junerose Killian, dedicated member of the National
Federation of the Blind of Connecticut. No additional
restrictions.
     E. U. Parker Scholarship -- Endowed by his wife, who joined
him in a lifetime of Federationism, this scholarship honors a
long-time leader of the National Federation of the Blind whose
participation in the organization stood for strong principles and
strong support of the Federation's work. No additional
restrictions.
     Howard Brown Rickard Scholarship -- Winner must be studying
or planning to study in the fields of law, medicine, engineering,
architecture, or the natural sciences.
     National Federation of the Blind Computer Science
Scholarship -- Winner must be studying in the computer science
field.
     National Federation of the Blind Educator of Tomorrow
Award -- Winner must be planning a career in elementary,
secondary, or post-secondary teaching.
     National Federation of the Blind Humanities Scholarship --
Winner must be studying in the traditional humanities such as
art, English, foreign languages, history, philosophy, or
religion.
     Thirteen National Federation of the Blind Scholarships -- No
additional restrictions, except that one will be given to a
person working full-time who is attending or planning to attend a
part-time course of study which will result in a new degree and
broader opportunities in present or future work if a suitable
candidate applies.
     CRITERIA: All scholarships are awarded on the basis of
academic excellence, service to the community, and financial
need.
     MEMBERSHIP: The National Federation of the Blind is an
organization dedicated to creating opportunity for all blind
persons. Recipients of Federation scholarships need not be
members of the National Federation of the Blind.
     MAKING APPLICATION: To apply for National Federation of the
Blind scholarships, complete and return the application on the
reverse side of this sheet, attaching to the application all the
additional documents that are requested. Multiple applications
are unnecessary. Each applicant will be considered for all
scholarships for which he or she qualifies. Send completed
applications to: Mrs. Peggy Elliott, Chairman, National
Federation of the Blind Scholarship Committee, 805 Fifth Avenue,
Grinnell, Iowa 50112; (515) 236-3366. Form must be received by
March 31, 1998.
     REAPPLICATION: Those who have previously applied are
encouraged to apply again. It is the intention of the National
Federation of the Blind to award not less than three scholarships
to men and women who have already received one Federation
scholarship in the past if enough strong and worthy candidates
apply.
     WINNERS: The Scholarship Committee reviews all applications
and selects the scholarship winners. These winners, the same
number as there are scholarships to award, will be notified of
the selection by telephone by June 1 and will be brought to the
National Federation of the Blind convention in July at Federation
expense. This is in addition to the scholarship grant. Winners
will participate in the entire convention and in the scheduled
scholarship program activities, beginning with functions on
Saturday, July 4, 1998. All decisions by the Scholarship
Committee are final.
     The National Federation of the Blind convention is the
largest gathering of blind persons (more than 2,500) to occur
anywhere in the nation each year. You will be able to meet other
blind students and exchange information and ideas. You will also
be able to meet and talk with blind people who are successfully
functioning in your chosen profession or occupation. Federal
officials, members of Congress, and the makers and distributors
of new technology attend Federation conventions. Above all, a
broad cross section of the most active segment of the blind
population of the United States will be present to discuss common
problems and plan for concerted action. It is an interesting and
exciting week.
     AWARDS: The day before the convention banquet the
Scholarship Committee will meet to determine which winners will
receive which scholarships. The scholarship awards will be made
during the banquet.

                NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
                  SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION FORM

     Read reverse side of form for instructions and explanation.
Form may be photocopied but only if reverse side is also
included.
     To apply for a scholarship, complete this application form
and mail completed application and attachments to: Mrs. Peggy
Elliott, Chairman, National Federation of the Blind Scholarship
Committee, 805 Fifth Avenue, Grinnell, Iowa 50112; (515) 236-
3366. Form must be received by March 31, 1998.
                           **********
Name (please include any maiden or other names by which you have
been known):
Date of birth:
School address:
School phone number:
Home address:
Home phone number:
Institution being attended in spring semester, 1998, with class
standing (freshman, senior, etc.):

Cumulative grade point at this institution:
Institution to be attended in the fall of 1998, with class
standing. Send by separate letter if admitted to school after
submitting completed application:
List all post-secondary institutions attended with highest class
standing attained and cumulative grade point average:

High school attended and cumulative grade point:

Vocational goal:

State your major:
Awards and honors (attach list if necessary):

Community service (attach list if necessary):

Attach the following documents to completed application:
     1. Personal Letter from Applicant. NFB scholarships are
awarded on the basis of scholastic excellence, financial need,
and service to the community. In preparing your personal letter,
please keep in mind that the committee members and decision-
makers are all successful blind college graduates. Take some time
to think how you personally can convey your best qualities in
your own words. This is an advocacy job; the committee members
will note how you choose to do it. Please also keep in mind that
the awards are restricted to blind persons, so the committee will
be interested in what techniques and approaches you personally
practice concerning your blindness. And, please note that almost
all blind students have financial need. Committee members will
assume basic need, so you may choose merely to refer to this
topic unless your need is unusual and extreme.
     2. Send two letters of recommendation.
     3. Provide current transcript from institution now attending
and transcripts from all other post-secondary institutions
attended. If you have not yet attended such an institution or
have not completed one year of study, send high school
transcript.
     4. Send a letter from a state officer of the National
Federation of the Blind evidencing the fact that you have
discussed your scholarship application with that officer. We
prefer that you discuss your application with the Federation
state president, but a letter from any Federation state officer
will suffice. President's address provided upon request.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Tina Blatter]
         Blind Artist Sees Ways to Share Her Creativity
                       by Barbara Tomovick
                           **********
     From the Editor: Tina Blatter is a member of the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind of South
Dakota. She lives in Sioux Falls, where her work was displayed at
the Civic Fine Arts Center on September 7. The following article
about her and her work first appeared in the May 8, 1997, edition
of the Rapid City Journal. Here it is:
                           **********
     Tina Blatter imagined the north wind as a blue face with
puffed-up cheeks, then transformed the picture in her mind, strip
by strip, into a solid, three-dimensional work of papier-mache
art.
     At Southwest Middle School in Rapid City, where Blatter is
doing a week-long Artist-in-Schools residency, students were
impressed, not only by the expressive north wind mask, but by the
hands that had made it.
     In many ways Blatter's hands are her eyes. Legally blind
since birth, she sees color and light but not detail. She uses a
white cane but can quickly memorize a room and move through it
with ease.
     The five days at Southwest this week are enough for Blatter
to teach students to make masks of their own, winding glue-dipped
strips of newspaper around balloons to form heads. They'll add
facial features and paint by week's end.
     But the art project, valuable in itself, is only secondary,
said Southwest art teacher Doris MacDonald. The primary reason
she brought Blatter, forty-four, into her classes was to broaden
students' perception of what is possible.
     "It's just amazing how she can do it," MacDonald said of
Blatter, an award-winning artist who has exhibited nationally and
internationally.
     It took a little while for the kids to get used to calling
out "Tina" instead of raising their hands to get her attention.
But on the first day Blatter and the class talked about what it's
like to have a disability and the lessons that can be learned
from it.
     She told the students, "Everyone needs help with something.
Everyone's different. We all have to be creative in finding ways
to do things."
     The message got through to Ross Palmer, who said, "It's kind
of hard to be blind, to get around places. She has to buy a lot
of different stuff--talking stuff (such as a computer) and a
special (Braille) watch."
     But blindness is not an obstacle to a full life, he
realized. "It's kind of amazing what people can do art-wise."
     Jaimie Didier also expressed admiration for Blatter, "She
has neat ideas. She's just, like, really creative, and I think
it's just really cool how she does this stuff."
     Katie Ruedebusch said Blatter is a good artist and teacher,
who encourages students to use their imaginations. "It's like
your own creation, and you can make it whatever you want," she
said of the mask project.
     Blatter is delighted to find herself teaching art, an
ambition that long seemed beyond her reach. In college in her
native New York state, she majored in elementary and special
education, then earned a master's degree in rehabilitation
counseling, putting away any thought of studying art.
     "I didn't think anyone would take me seriously," she said.
     Nonetheless, a persistent creative urge kept her busy at the
easel, developing her own techniques and becoming increasingly
aware of the need to add texture to her paintings--to make
touchable art for the visually impaired, who are shut off from
museum displays.
     Experimentation with built-up lines of gold and silver
paint, pebbles, shells, beads, sequins, and Braille writing led
to her "tactile collages," signature pieces designed to please
the eye as well as the hand.
     "When I have exhibits, I always say, `Please touch,'" she
said.
     Inspired by French painter Henri Matisse, who she said
turned to cut paper as his vision faded, she began using bright
foils in two-dimensional images that gleam like stained glass.
     In 1990 she moved to the Denver area from Baltimore,
Maryland, refined her collage techniques, and began teaching in
schools and other institutions.
     "I started getting out into the community and talking about
being blind and doing art, about finding hope that there are
other ways of doing things," Blatter said.
     Her work took her as far as Brussels, Belgium. Since moving
to Sioux Falls a year and a half ago, she has conducted workshops
through the South Dakota Arts Council.
     And although she has much to show young people about art and
life, she gets as much as she gives from working with students,
she said.
     "They gave me so many ideas."
                           **********
                           **********
                   Of Numbers and Independence
                        by Suzanne Rowell
                           **********
     From the Editor: What does it take to make a Federationist?
Sometimes the chemistry is such that a person knows that he or
she belongs in this movement as soon as the philosophy is
explained. Sometimes it takes a personal crisis and powerful
injustice. This is a story of such an experience. Suzanne Rowell
is now an active member of the National Federation of the Blind
of Connecticut. The following article appeared in the Spring,
1997, edition of The Federationist in Connecticut, a publication
of the NFB of Connecticut. This is the way it happened:
                           **********
     Five years ago I was a typical, carefree, fun-loving, self-
involved nineteen-year-old. My life consisted of myself. Then I
became aware that I was slowly becoming blind. The next thing I
knew, I was spending hour upon hour in doctors' offices, waiting
rooms, and operating rooms. Each day a little piece of my world
slipped away into the shadows. I was okay, though. I would be the
same person I was before my loss of sight. My main determination
was just to go on with life.
     One might think such a positive attitude would be a very
good thing, and in a lot of ways I believe it helped me not to
let blindness stop me from living a full life. Unfortunately,
society had a very different attitude towards my lack of vision.
     I couldn't understand where society had gotten the idea that
a blind person was helpless. Throughout my progressive loss I had
learned to cope with performing daily living tasks without
effective vision, yet it was not until my total blindness that
the doctors gave in and turned me in the direction of
rehabilitation services. I began learning Braille and started
traveling with a white cane, but I did not like it and would
usually travel with a sighted guide. This greatly interfered with
my independence, as well as with my self-esteem. I got a guide
dog and went back to school. I still traveled in the same crowd,
but at school no one seemed to know how to instruct a blind
person in mathematics courses. Yet it was a required course for
my degree of study. I contacted my rehabilitation teacher; she
had a master's degree, so I figured she ought to know. She
informed me that her math courses had been waived. This didn't
make much sense to me when I was required to complete my math
courses. I questioned the reliability of state services.
     I realized that I could not avoid my math courses. I went
into class alone for the first two weeks with no book on tape. My
Braille skills were not developed yet. I remember the first day
of class my teacher informed me that math was a visual subject
and that she didn't know quite how to approach the matter. She
asked me if I was truly blind.
     It was inevitable that I would be tested. I made
arrangements for an oral test to be taken at the disability
office. The day of the test I walked in, sat down with a
volunteer from that office, and began my test. I got to about
question four and realized that the volunteer could not read the
test properly. She couldn't remember which was a greater-than
sign and which was a less-than sign. I consulted with the
disability coordinator and told her it was unreasonable to expect
me to function under these circumstances. About a week later a
visual aid was provided, and I worked well with her. The teacher
who had said math was a visual subject approached me at the end
of the semester and told me that she had enjoyed working with me
and that her attitude had been greatly altered by having a blind
student in her classroom. She wished me success in the future.
     My math experience was hardly over, though. I had tackled
three math courses and received A's in all, but the school
required two higher-level math courses. My scribe was not
qualified to work with me. It was the end of the spring semester,
and I had registered for my fall courses. The school policy was
to request assistance six weeks before the beginning of the
semester. I told the disabilities coordinator that I would need
assistance and left for summer break. What did she do? Nothing.
     I returned for the fall semester, and on the first day of
classes, I went into two math courses alone. It was supposed to
be the last semester before I received my associate's degree and
could go on to another school for my bachelor's. These courses
were very technical. I was told by the disabilities office that
they were unable to find a qualified individual to assist me. I
was enrolled in a logic and probability course and a statistics
course. I realized the first day that it was just not going to
work. I spent weeks fighting with the disability coordinator,
whose coordination skills I found lacking. I was treated as if I
was asking for something unreasonable, and I was soon told that
the school had gone above and beyond what was required of them. I
couldn't believe it.
     I called the state agency and informed my rehab counselor
that I needed her help. She said it was the college's
responsibility to provide services because of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, and her hands were tied. She couldn't see me
for at least two weeks.
     I had attended a few meetings of the National Federation of
the Blind of Connecticut since my vision loss, but I had never
been enthusiastic about getting involved. I knew they did good
work, so I sent my dues in and avoided going to any of the
Federation functions. I was nearly done with my degree, and I
refused to be defeated. I called the East Hartford Community
Outreach Office of the NFBC and was put in touch with Paula
Krauss. Paula is blind, a member of the NFBC, and an advocate for
blind people in Connecticut who are faced with discrimination.
That call changed my life and attitude towards my blindness and
the National Federation of the Blind. Paula contacted the college
and state services, and radical changes took place. People
cleared their schedules for me. I no longer had to wait two weeks
for my state rehab worker to get to me. The college wanted to
know what services I needed.
     I arranged a meeting with the college staff and informed
them that I would be represented by my advocate Paula Krauss. The
disability coordinator said she needed time to organize. I
demanded a meeting now. I was ready, so why weren't they? Paula
represented me at that meeting, and services were put in place.
     My number systems teacher was glad to see me still in his
course. He was of the opinion that I added a new perspective to
his classroom, and he valued my input. My statistics teacher
unfortunately was not of the same opinion. He asked me to draw
graphs on my test. After I had my scribe draw them from my
descriptions, my teacher tore them up. He deducted as many points
as he could, yet the other students in my class seemed to think
he was generous in correcting their exams. I was under great
scrutiny. In class he became frustrated when I followed his
lecture so closely that I actually understood the material. When
he prompted answers from the students in class, I would answer if
I thought I knew the answer. Then he said he wasn't talking to me
and I couldn't even see the board, so how did I know what he was
talking about? He once told the class, after I had answered,
"What is this, the blind leading the blind? She can see it but
none of you can?"
     I finally stopped answering questions. Then I went into
class one day, and the teacher told us to get our books out.
Since I did all my work outside the classroom with a tutor, I did
not have my book. He said if we didn't have our book or we
couldn't see the table, we wouldn't be able to understand
anything further in today's lecture. It was lunch time, I was
hungry, and I'd had it. I packed up my stuff and left. When I
called Paula and told her every discriminatory comment I had
heard throughout the semester, she called the professor. He
admitted his discomfort with me and my blindness and said that he
thought I should finish the course out of his classroom. Paula
informed the school that this was discrimination. Thanks to her
intervention I completed the course material and passed his
class.
     Because of this experience I became a full-fledged
Federationist, and I began to realize the importance of a support
system. It is respectable to be blind. It is also my right to
have a fully integrated education. I have learned to stand up for
what I believe in. I am hopeful for future generations of blind
people, and I am grateful for the leaders who are guiding us into
a brighter day.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Greg Trapp]
  Funding Closed Circuit Televisions Through Medical Insurance
                          by Greg Trapp
                           **********
     From the Editor: Greg Trapp has been a staff attorney with
the Protection and Advocacy System of New Mexico since 1992. In
1993 he taught disability law as an adjunct professor at the
University of New Mexico School of Law. Closed Circuit Television
Systems (CCTV's) can be helpful to some people. The following
information may be useful to those seeking the means of financing
this equipment. This is what Greg says:
                           **********
     In this era of decreasing state and federal budgets, it is
increasingly necessary for blind people to explore alternative
ways to fund assistive technology. An assistive-technology device
is defined as any item, piece of equipment, or product system
that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional
capability of a person with a disability. If the device serves a
medical purpose, it may also meet the definition of "durable
medical equipment" (DME). A closed circuit television can be
included within the definitions of assistive technology and
durable medical equipment.
     A closed circuit television (CCTV) may enable some people
who are legally blind or who have low vision to read printed
materials. It uses a camera and television screen to create an
enlarged image of printed text. It can also enhance contrast by
placing white letters over a black background. If you could
benefit from having a CCTV at home, you might be able to obtain
one through your private medical insurance, Medicaid, or
Medicare. These funding sources should be considered along with
more traditional funding methods such as vocational
rehabilitation or through an employer as a reasonable
accommodation. Since a CCTV can cost over $3,000, medical
insurance may be the only practical way for many people to obtain
a home CCTV.
     For some people a properly used CCTV can be a valuable tool
which can enhance productivity and independence. However, it is
necessary to understand the limitations of a CCTV. Keep in mind
that a CCTV magnifies only a small portion of text at a time and
that usually the reader must physically move the item being read
beneath the camera. Prolonged reading with a CCTV may also cause
eyestrain and headaches. For these reasons reading with a CCTV
can be slow and inefficient. Accordingly, a CCTV is often more
appropriate for elderly persons who have lost vision later in
life and who have not developed more efficient alternative
techniques.
     Despite its limitations a CCTV can be an effective
supplement to other reading methods such as using Braille, tapes,
scanners, electronic text, and sighted readers. A CCTV can be
especially useful for reading and filling out forms, reading
small amounts of text, and writing checks. A CCTV can also be an
effective alternative to the use of large print or hand-held
magnifiers.
     Some school-aged children may be able to benefit from a
CCTV. However, children who improperly use a CCTV could actually
have their educational development impaired. For instance, there
is often a strong tendency to encourage blind children to read
using partial vision instead of using more efficient methods such
as Braille. Unfortunately some parents find it painful to
recognize that their visually impaired child is actually legally
blind and in need of Braille. In addition, some school districts
are often reluctant to pay for teachers who have the expertise
needed to teach Braille, arguing that a CCTV (or other adaptive
equipment) makes teaching Braille unnecessary. A tragically
common situation is a child with a degenerative eye condition
whose teacher ignores Braille in favor of having the child use
her remaining vision even though the vision is likely ultimately
to be lost entirely. In such a case, improper reliance on a CCTV
when Braille should be taught could limit the child's ultimate
Braille proficiency.
     Regardless of the age of the person seeking to obtain a
CCTV, the individual should be evaluated by a qualified low-
vision professional to determine if a CCTV would be appropriate.
The evaluation should include consideration of factors such as
whether the visual condition is degenerative, whether the
condition is stable from day to day, whether eyestrain will be
incurred as a result of using the equipment, and whether the
person can use the CCTV efficiently. Most important, the
evaluator must appreciate the benefits of Braille and speech
devices in order to insure that the evaluation will be balanced.
     In order to obtain medical insurance coverage for a CCTV,
you must have a physician prescribe a CCTV to treat the visual
condition. The first step in the process is to determine whether
your medical insurance could classify a CCTV as a medical device
within the scope of covered services. This process is similar for
private health insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare. Accordingly,
because the processes are similar and since Medicare operates
much like a private insurance program, this article will focus on
the process under Medicare.
     Medicare is divided into two parts. Part A pays for hospital
stays and home health care. The latter coverage can include
payment for durable medical equipment. Part B coverage can also
include payment for DME, as well as coverage of prosthetic
devices.
     The Medicare description of DME includes devices such as
iron lungs, hospital beds, and wheelchairs. In order for a device
to be classified as DME, it must be able to withstand repeated
use, be primarily and customarily used to serve a medical
purpose, be generally not useful to an individual in the absence
of an illness or injury, be appropriate for use in the home, and
be necessary and reasonable for the treatment of an illness or
injury or to improve the functioning of a malformed body member.
A CCTV can meet all of these criteria. A physician must prescribe
the CCTV, include it in a treatment plan, and supervise its use.
If these requirements are met, Medicare can pay for a CCTV as an
item of durable medical equipment.
     Medicare may also cover a CCTV as a "prosthetic device."
Medicare defines prosthetic devices as devices which replace all
or part of the function of a permanently inoperative or
malfunctioning external body member or internal body organ. For
instance, Medicare covers pacemakers as prosthetic devices, even
though a pacemaker does not replace the heart. Likewise a contact
lens prescribed after cataract surgery is also covered as a
prosthetic device since the contact replaces the function of the
natural lens. Accordingly a CCTV may be covered as a prosthetic
device since it replaces the functioning of the damaged portion
of the eye.
     Once you determine that a CCTV may fall within the scope of
a covered service, you must next obtain a prescription from a
physician. In order to obtain a prescription, the CCTV must be
reasonable and necessary. A CCTV is already recognized as a
treatment for certain types of visual impairments. For example,
the American Academy of Ophthalmology recognizes the CCTV as a
prosthetic device. In addition, the CCTV is not a comfort item. A
comfort item is an item such as a tape recorder which does not
contribute to the treatment of the visual condition. By contrast
a CCTV is a treatment for the damaged portion of the eye. It does
not matter if you will use the CCTV for recreational reading.
     Medicare also functions like most private health insurance
providers in the way claims are processed. You must normally
first purchase the CCTV from an approved Medicare supplier, then
file a claim for reimbursement. However, some Medicare suppliers
will order medical equipment while awaiting payment from
Medicare. Medicaid differs from this process in that you must
first obtain prior approval before you can purchase a CCTV.
Medicare will send the CCTV reimbursement claim (along with
supporting documentation) to a Durable Medical Equipment Regional
Carrier (DMERC). The DMERC will determine if the CCTV is covered
and is reasonable and necessary. Reasonable means that it is the
lowest priced item that will meet your medical need. Necessary
refers to the medical need established by your physician. The
DMERC will then determine the reasonable cost of the CCTV.
     Unlike Medicaid, which pays in full, Medicare subjects you
to a deductible of $100 and a 20 percent co-payment. From the
cost determined by the DMERC, Medicare will pay you an 80 percent
reimbursement after the $100 deductible. If the supplier has
agreed to "accept assignment," the supplier will only charge the
amount determined by the DMERC. However, suppliers who have not
accepted assignment are allowed to charge above the amount
determined by the DMERC, and you will be responsible for the
additional charge. Suppliers who have agreed to accept assignment
are listed in the Medicare Participating Physicians/Suppliers
Directory (MEDPARD), which you can request from the DMERC. In
some circumstances Medicare may allow or require rental of a
CCTV.
     Requests for CCTV's are often denied. However, you have the
right to appeal, and Medicare appeals are often successful when
pursued beyond the initial appeal levels. For instance, as long
ago as 1980 a Medicare beneficiary successfully appealed the
denial of a CCTV. (Medicare Fair Hearing Decision, HIC No.
062-44-0658-A, 1980.) If you receive a denial, the letter of
denial will explain the appeal process, and you should carefully
meet all deadlines and follow all procedures. The appeal
procedure is different depending on whether the claim is under
Part A or Part B. The first level of appeal under Part B is to
request a review. The next level is to a hearing officer. Since a
CCTV costs more than $500, claimants under Part B have the right
to continue to appeal by requesting a hearing before a federal
administrative law judge (ALJ). The ALJ level affords you the
greatest chance of success. If the ALJ appeal is not successful,
you may request a review by the Appeals Council. The final appeal
level is to federal court. The appeal process under Part A is
somewhat similar but begins with a request for reconsideration.
If the denial of the CCTV is under Medicaid, you also have the
right to appeal. In addition, most private insurers also have
appeal procedures. Regardless of the funding source and appeal
procedure, you should be persistent and not take "no" for an
answer.
     The CCTV can be a valuable tool and has a place in the
arsenal of alternative techniques. By being persistent, you may
be able to obtain medical insurance funding for a CCTV. The
immediate goal is to expand the choices you have. The ultimate
goal is to enhance your productivity and maximize your potential.
                           **********
                           **********
                    Magoo Debate Moves to UK
                           **********
     From the Editor: The October issue of the New Beacon, the
monthly publication of the Royal National Institute for the
Blind, carried a stop-press story reflecting the ongoing support
European organizations of blind people are demonstrating for our
position on the Disney Company's plan to release a live action
movie starring Leslie Nielsen as Mr. Magoo. (See the October,
1997, Braille Monitor for a full discussion of the Magoo
struggle.) Norbert Mueller went home to Germany following our
convention vowing to see what he could do to alert his blind
countrymen to the situation. Now the NFB of the United Kingdom is
weighing in. Here is the New Beacon article:
                           **********
NEWS EXTRA
                           **********
   Magoo Presents Out-of-Date and Alien Image, Says Federation
                           **********
     The National Federation of the Blind of the United Kingdom
is calling upon Walt Disney Corporation not to show the feature
length live-action comedy film Mr. Magoo, based on the cartoon
character. The Federation believes that the character portrayed
is detrimental to blind and partially sighted people.
     The Federation's response follows a similar reaction from
the National Federation of the Blind of America, which earlier
described the film as an insult to blind people. The American
Federation has also voted at its annual convention to demand a
ban on the showing of the film.
     The Mr. Magoo character, well-known from cartoons, is played
in the new film by Leslie Nielsen. He is a bumbling but cheerful
millionaire who blithely survives the scrapes which appear to be
caused by his short-sightedness.
     The National Federation of the Blind--the largest
campaigning organization of blind and partially sighted people in
the UK, which celebrates its Golden Jubilee this year--said that
it had fought alongside other organizations of and for blind
people to squash the Mr. Magoo image, which caused great offence
in the past to blind and partially sighted people, and did not
want Walt Disney to re-introduce Mr. Magoo into this country.
     In its press statement last month, the Federation said:
"Over the past fifty years the mass media, given the time and
space, have helped to improve the image of blind and partially
sighted people, and blind people themselves have achieved a
positive role in society by actively taking part in the lives of
their communities, in employment, and social activities. Blind
people have jobs in all walks of life, including being school
teachers, physiotherapists, social workers, piano tuners,
computer specialists, lawyers, accountants, and running their own
businesses. The Chairman of the Royal National Institute for the
Blind, John Wall CBE, himself totally blind, is a Judge, and our
Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett
MP, is also totally blind.
     "Many blind and partially sighted people of all ages
participate in leisure and sporting activities at local,
national, and international levels, from elderly people playing
cards, chess, or bingo to the more athletic taking part in golf,
swimming, bowls, skiing, mountain climbing, sailing, dancing,
rambling, tandem riding, etc.
     "Although the media present a positive image, many members
of the general public do not have understanding and are not aware
of the capabilities shown by blind and partially sighted people.
Only last week flat owners living in Bournemouth petitioned
against a blind lady who wanted to buy a flat within their
complex on the grounds that she would be a potential fire risk.
Ironically, Mrs. Jill Allen King MBE, Public Relations Officer
for the National Federation of the Blind UK, herself totally
blind, said that at the National Consumer Congress held at
Sheffield University a few years ago, when the fire alarms went
off at 3 o'clock in the morning and all the lights failed, it was
Jill who led the sighted delegates down three flights of stairs
to safety. As many of the residents of the flats in Bournemouth
are likely to be elderly, the chances are that some of them would
have poor vision and would not necessarily be able to cope as
well as Mrs Tandy, against whom they have petitioned.
     "Walt Disney is a well respected name in the UK and has
produced enjoyable films for many years. The Federation feels
that their good reputation would be tarnished by the remaking of
the Mr. Magoo feature film. We sincerely hope, therefore, that
they will reconsider their decision to launch this feature film
in the New Year.
     "If Walt Disney do go ahead with this feature of Mr. Magoo,
it will be going against the principles of the new Disability
Discrimination Act introduced in this country in 1995. Since the
Act came into force, a different attitude towards disability has
come into being, and, in the opinion of the National Federation
of the Blind, any Mr. Magoo film is likely to present an out-of-
date image of blind and partially sighted people alien to today's
world."
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Mary Ellen Gabias]
                      Delivering the Coffee
                      by Mary Ellen Gabias
                           **********
     From the Editor: The following story is taken from Like Cats
and Dogs, the latest in the NFB's Kernel Book series of
paperbacks. It begins with Dr. Jernigan's introduction:
                           **********
     Mary Ellen Gabias has held a variety of responsible jobs.
She has worked for a state legislature and has been an
administrator of a program which helps blind people find
employment. Today she is a wife and mother with three small
children. In her story, "Delivering The Coffee," she reminds us
that it isn't always the great events of life that make the
difference. Here is how she describes her own personal journey to
confidence:
                           **********
     I was lucky. My parents always believed I could do great
things. When I wrote my first composition in elementary school,
my mother was very proud. She said that I could work hard and
become a famous writer. She had it all planned. I would write the
Great American Novel and make enough from it to support her and
Dad in their old age.
     I began learning French in Grade 3. My parents imagined me
working as an interpreter at the United Nations. I became a
political junkie in the seventh grade and began working on
political campaigns in high school. My parents reminded me that I
should not forget good ethics when I was elected to Congress. My
parents definitely believed that I was capable of doing
extraordinary things with my life.
     It was the ordinary things that gave them trouble. I was
expected to dust furniture, but my mother gave up on teaching me
how to sweep floors when I couldn't get the hang of using a
dustpan. I took my turn washing and drying dishes, but my sighted
brothers were all expected to clear the table. It just seemed so
much easier to do that job with sight.
     I learned how to measure, pour, stir, and chop. I did not
learn how to use the gas stove. In fact my mother always thought
I would have to marry a rich man, who could afford to hire a cook
and housekeeper. Either that, or I should stay single and live at
home.
     My parents were quite progressive compared with some of the
other adults I knew. They expected me to be responsible for
myself and my actions. They pushed me to do more than I thought a
blind person could do. They stood up to other adults who called
them cruel for letting me play tag and roller skate. All in all,
they were terrific.
     But they had never heard of the National Federation of the
Blind. They had very limited contact with blind adults who were
earning a living and managing their own lives. The local agency
for the blind had a very custodial approach. They organized
picnics, but the people with the most sight served them food and
cleaned up afterwards.
     The totally blind people were taken to a bench and
encouraged to sit there and wait to be served. My parents knew
that I could do more than the agency thought a blind person could
do, but they didn't know how much more.
     I was a typical adolescent. I felt ugly and awkward, and I
was sure that every blemish on my nose made me a social pariah.
With their usual patience and understanding, my parents reminded
me that I wasn't the only kid who'd ever had a pimple. But
blindness made me stand out more than any adolescent wants to
stand out.
     My parents helped me to understand that being different from
everyone else could be tremendously positive, provided the
differences were based on excellence and achievement. I came to
believe that, if I were only good enough at everything I tried,
people would forget I was blind and treat me like everyone else. 
    I became active in the Junior Achievement program. High
school students in Junior Achievement work with representatives
of local companies to form their own small businesses. The
businesses make a product or provide a service throughout the
school year. If they are successful, they make a profit. If not,
they go the way of many failed small businesses. Needless to say,
the whole program is permeated with the spirit of friendly
competition.
     I was in Junior Achievement for three years. I worked hard
and entered every competition for which I was eligible. In my
senior year the other students in my company elected me executive
vice president. I was very excited. This proved to me that people
would forget I was blind if I was good enough at what I did.
     Our company produced a radio show, which was aired on a
local station. It was a lot of fun. Everyone had a turn being
disc jockey for the week. We sold radio advertising. We produced
a company annual report. Our officers competed with the officers
of ninety-three other companies for the title of "Officer of the
Year." I won. Out of ninety-four executive vice presidents in
northwestern Ohio, the judges chose me. What more proof did I
need that blindness could be forgotten?
     Then the wind was knocked out of my sails. I was told that I
could not attend the National Junior Achievement Conference along
with the other contest winners. They were afraid to be
responsible for a blind person. They said I could go if I was
willing to be the only student among the 2,000 who attended from
around the country to come with their parents.
     The conference organizers said they might let me eat with
the other students, provided the food was not "too difficult." I
could not stay with them on the college campus where the
conference was being held. I would have to stay in a motel with
my parents. I learned the hard way that others do not forget
about blindness, particularly when they do not understand it. I
was not willing to attend the conference under such humiliating
circumstances. My confidence was badly shaken. If being the best
wasn't good enough, what could I do?
     I first heard about the National Federation of the Blind
when I was a university freshman. I read Federation literature
with increasing excitement. Here were blind people succeeding
despite obstacles thrown in their way. They weren't asking anyone
to forget that they were blind. They were not asking for special
favors or to be taken care of by others. They were prepared to do
their share of the work and to help take care of others in need.
     As I met other members of the National Federation of the
Blind, I began to understand what real self-confidence means. I
did not have to struggle to be perfect at everything I tried in
order to feel acceptable to others. I needed to strive for
excellence because doing my best was the right thing to do. I met
people who were doing things which I admired. Some were
succeeding in careers I never dreamed possible for a blind
person. Others were doing the ordinary work of everyday living
with skill and grace.
     Sometimes it is the small moments which make the largest
impact. I was attending the Federation's National Convention
during the summer I graduated from college. The Presidential
Suite was a place for convention delegates to gather, make
friends, and conduct business with the President.
     There was always a pot of coffee on hand to serve visitors.
I dropped by the suite to say hello to friends. Someone asked for
a cup of coffee, and the person in charge said to me "Will you
get that, Mary Ellen?"
     That simple request threw me into a dither. I was an honors
graduate of a large state university. I'd travelled by myself
across the country. But I had never before carried a steaming cup
of coffee across a crowded room. Yet someone had asked me to do
just that. I was afraid I might not put the right amount of cream
and sugar in the cup. I was afraid I might burn myself when I
poured the coffee. I was afraid I might bump into someone and
dump the whole cup on them. 
     But I was at the Convention of the National Federation of
the Blind. This was not the place to use blindness as an excuse
for failing to try. Besides, where else would I get more
understanding and support if things didn't go well? I delivered
the cup of coffee. Nothing went wrong. In fact, I doubt if anyone
else realized what a moment of truth this small act had been for
me.
     I was quite ready to heave a sigh of relief and rest on my
laurels. Then three more people asked for coffee. Before long I'd
gotten over my nervousness. By the end of the afternoon I felt
quite experienced. I did drop a cup and realized the world did
not come to an end. It was just an ordinary part of doing an
ordinary job.
     More than twenty years have gone by since that convention. I
still enjoy writing and speaking French, though I've long since
decided that the life of an author or interpreter is not for me.
I'm still a political junkie, and I spent more than two years
working for a state legislature.
     Now I'm a wife and mother. I'm teaching my three-year-old
son to pour his own apple juice. He's learning the ordinary
skills of daily life from me. Now I'm the Mom who encourages my
children to dream great dreams and work hard to achieve them.
It's amazing how extraordinarily satisfying ordinary things can
be.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO: Peggy Elliott is on the floor, holding a toy, which a
kitten is batting at. CAPTION: Peggy Elliott and Sheriff]
                      A New Sheriff in Town
                        by Peggy Elliott
                           **********
     From the Editor: The following article appears in Like Cats
and Dogs, the latest addition to our Kernel Book series. It
begins with a note by Dr. Jernigan. Here it is:
                           **********
     Have you ever felt you knew just about all there was to know
about a particular subject only to find you still had a lot to
learn? This is precisely what happened to Doug and Peggy Elliott
(both long-time leaders in the National Federation of the Blind)
when they brought a baby kitten who happened to be blind into
their household. Here is how Peggy tells the story:
                           **********
     We have a new little kitten at our house. She's all black,
but she had a tiny white star on her chest when she was born.
It's grown in black now, but we still call her Sheriff.
     Sheriff is four months old. Everything in her world is a toy
to bat, chase, gnaw, or pounce upon. She is endlessly hungry,
begs for everything, steals the two older cats' food, and sneaks
onto the table to cadge tidbits from us. Oh, and I should have
mentioned, Sheriff is blind.
     My husband Doug and I are both blind. We heard about Sheriff
from a friend who took pity on a starving stray cat and soon
learned the cat was a mom with two little kittens. When she was
tiny, Sheriff put her head on the flank of one of her sisters to
follow her to food and play. The little sister did not survive,
and Sheriff had an incurable eye infection from birth that left
her completely blind.
     Our friend told us about his blind kitten, mentioning that
he did not have any takers for this perfectly healthy, happy,
bouncy kitten because she was blind. We knew what that could
mean, and we offered to take Sheriff if no one else wanted her.
We wouldn't give her up to anybody now.
     We were worried about stairs, her finding the cat boxes, and
her interaction with the other cats, whom we now call the Great
Cats in comparison to little Sheriff. Here's how each of these
worries worked out.
     At first we kept Sheriff in a room with a cardboard box
across the door. This prevented her from getting out, but we and
the Great Cats could get in. We were worried that, if we let
Sheriff roam, she would fall down one of our two staircases, both
of which have turns in them. We bought a blue collar with a bell
on it so that we could find Sheriff and avoid stepping on her. We
put the collar on her only when we were taking her out of the
room. She got so she purred when we put the collar on.
     We tried to teach her about stairs, making sure that her
little feet looked at the edges and risers. She didn't like the
lessons. We made her go down, one stair at a time, to get the
idea. She hated this. Then, one day about a week after we had
welcomed Sheriff, we noticed that she was upstairs.
     We had put her on the floor downstairs to play and had gone
about our business, keeping an ear on her movements, or so we
thought. Suddenly she was upstairs. It turned out that Sheriff
knew all about stairs. There had been a short flight in her
original home in a garage, and she had used them from the time
she was tiny. She still kind of galumps down the stairs, being a
little too short from nose to tail to walk down yet. But she
obviously will as soon as she is big enough. She's taught us
that. We tried to protect her, to ease her into our home a bit at
a time. She wasn't having any of that.
     We talked about this and decided that, even as long as we
have both lived as blind people, we can still learn about the
capabilities of the blind. In fact, both of us have had
experiences in which people think we can't do something and (from
what they intend as kindness) prevent us from doing it. Stairs
are one example.
     We were recently in Washington, D.C., visiting our
Congressman, and we were heading out of the building to get a
cab. As we approached the door, a Capitol guard prevented us from
going any farther, telling us that she would "take us" to a door
without stairs.
     We had chosen this particular door because it led us where
we intended to go. Had we been "taken" to any other door, stairs
or not, we would have been a lot farther from our destination. We
insisted; she relented, and we exited as planned, stepping down
the stairs as agilely as sighted visitors. I couldn't help
thinking of Sheriff and the help we had tried so hard to give her
as I descended.
     Regarding accidents, we simply haven't had any. We don't
exactly know how she finds the cat boxes (we have two, one on
each floor). We guess it is by using her knowledge of where she
is as well as her nose. Early on, we worked very hard at being
sure she was back in her room every two hours or so while she was
a one-room kitten, to be sure she would be near a box she knew.
     Just as with the stairs, one day we noticed that a cat was
scratching in the downstairs cat box, and each of us had a Great
Cat on our laps. So much for thinking Sheriff couldn't find the
cat box.
     How about the other cats? GirlKitty is deeply suspicious of
everyone but Doug, whom she loves. Before Sheriff was even out of
the carrying case in which she entered our house, GirlKitty was
at the front door, glaring through the bars and hissing. In fact
we started calling her Miss Propane because she put her whole
body into her effort to hiss, sounding like one of those propane
tanks that cause lift in hot air balloons. She would even propane
at Doug if he had been holding Sheriff and she got a whiff of it. 
    In the early days GirlKitty would punch Sheriff occasionally;
you could hear Sheriff sort of go flying in the other direction
from the one she had been heading. And once I think GirlKitty was
actually holding her down and socking her--I was in the next room
on the phone; and, by the time I got in there, they were
separated. But the thing we noticed most was that Sheriff never
reacted to these expressions of disgust by GirlKitty. They were
usually delivered right in Sheriff's face, but her body didn't
move at all. We knew because the bell didn't tinkle.
     We talked about this as well, relating it to our own
experiences. Eye contact is crucial to cat communication, but
it's very important to people as well.
     GirlKitty seemed very puzzled that she was getting no
reaction from her fierce glare and hiss. We have both known
people who were very uncomfortable talking to us. It has often
seemed to us that part of their discomfort comes from lack of eye
contact and uncertainty on the sighted person's part about
whether we could detect that they were talking to us.
     In Sheriff's case, of course, it just may be that Sheriff
has better manners than GirlKitty. Anyway she's found her own
form of revenge. GirlKitty is very food-focused since she almost
died as a baby from lack of nourishment. For a while she said
horrible things to Sheriff when the little kitten tried to join
the Great Cats at the dry food dish. So Sheriff figured out that
she could fit under the kitchen stool that happens to sit next to
the cats' food station. GirlKitty can't.
     Sheriff gets under the stool and sticks her head out far
enough to grab some food and then withdraws under the stool to
eat. GirlKitty can't do a thing about it except stalk off in
distaste. We didn't teach Sheriff about the stool. She figured it
out for herself.
     And then there's Bob, our large, mellow, kindly, clingy
male. One day early on, when Bob was eating, I put Sheriff on his
back. Bob kept eating. Sheriff slid off on purpose. I put her
back. Bob kept eating. This went on for a while because I was
trying to teach Sheriff that one of the Great Cats was not a
meanie. She learned.
     When she finds Bob now, she jumps up on his shoulder or up
his side in play. Bobby will sort of run and fight back
appropriately, not knocking Sheriff across the room as he easily
could but batting and taking evasive action as part of the game.
They tussle like that. Then Sheriff loses physical contact and
starts looking around with her paws for Bobby. (Doug calls her
Scatters when she does this--running back and forth in very short
spurts in a search pattern.)
     If she doesn't find Bobby and he still wants to play, he
will scrabble his back claws very fast on the linoleum or
hardwood. Sheriff hears the sound and jumps. They start the cycle
again.
     Doug and I have laughed about this as well, having met
people in our lives who are immediately comfortable with us,
realizing that, although we respond to oral instead of visible
cues, we are otherwise pretty much just ordinary people. Bobby
got that idea right away with Sheriff. But he also tires of the
kitten's endless playfulness. When this happens, he vaults over
Sheriff and trots off.
     Sheriff is still learning. When she came to us at six weeks
old, she was too small to look at chairs with her paws and
understand them. We would hold her in a chair and then put her
down. She learned to climb up the upholstered recliner in her
first room using claws, but she often misjudged and fell down
before she learned.
     She's now four months old and has a much longer wheel base
from nose to tail. She has looked at the kitchen chairs with her
paws, figured out how they are made, learned that they are
comfortable, and now regularly hops into one or another. That is
how she gets onto the table. I now keep the chair next to mine
pushed in all the way. Sheriff can get her head and upper arms up
on the table but not the rest of her. So she sits there when I'm
eating, for all the world like a little cat person except that
she'd rather be on the table helping me with dinner.
     And she applied her knowledge about kitchen chairs to all
the other seating devices in our house. You never know now in
which chair or sofa you will find her. We didn't teach her about
chairs at all. By the time she learned, we had figured out that
she did better learning on her own. We just get out of the way
and let her explore. She does just that.
     There are lots of other stories I'd love to tell: like the
fact that Sheriff gets in the middle of a wide open space like
the kitchen floor and just plain dances--hopping and jumping and
leaping to music only she can hear. Like the swisher toy we have-
-long strips of plastic attached to a rigid stick that you can
shake in the air or tap on the ground, moving it around quickly
for Sheriff to hear and attack, which she does with the same
speed a sighted kitten would. Like the Great Cats hiding when the
new bathroom was being put in while Sheriff hung around outside
the door, listening and smelling and talking with the workers, as
fascinated as the Great Cats were scared.
     But I won't. Instead, I'll just say that Doug and I have
been in the National Federation of the Blind for a long time and
worked hard to learn that we can handle daily living tasks, jobs,
home management just like our sighted associates. And we have
both worked hard to spread that word to our fellow blind brothers
and sisters as well as to our sighted friends. Even so, in the
last three months we've learned again the lesson of how easy it
is to underestimate the capabilities of the blind. We were taught
this lesson by a little black kitten we call Sheriff.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Seville Allen]
                 Reflecting on Fear of Blindness
                        by Seville Allen
                           **********
     From the Editor: Seville Allen is First Vice President of
the National Federation of the Blind of Virginia. She is also a
member of the governing body of St. George's Episcopal Church in
Arlington. Like other blind people she works constantly to teach
those around her that she is not so different from them.
Sometimes the job seems too big, too demanding. Then something
encouraging happens, and suddenly there is reason to continue the
effort. The following story first appeared in the Spring, 1997,
edition of the NFB Vigilant, a publication of the NFB of
Virginia. Here it is:
                           **********
     It was almost noon on Saturday at the vestry retreat. The
morning meeting was breaking up, and we were about to move down
the hill for lunch. My usual anxiety began to rise as I
contemplated yet another social situation in which I find myself
feeling isolated and awkward as people divide into dyads and
small knots, often moving away from me as I approach to join
them. As I put my slate and stylus into my purse and closed my
notebook, one of my fellow vestry members came and said,
"Seville, I want to go to lunch with you because I need to talk
to you."
     Pleasantly surprised, I answered, "Certainly." What followed
was one of the most honest and positive experiences I have ever
had in dealing with blindness. The young man who asked me to go
to lunch with him had just joined the vestry. I knew him by name
and reputation as an excellent youth leader, but we had not
spoken before.
     As we left the building to walk down the hill to the
cafeteria, I explained that I could take his arm as we talked or
walk beside him. He offered his arm, I took it, and we started
down the hill as the snow fell on our heads. We had only walked a
few steps when the young man announced that he wanted to talk to
me because he was afraid of me as a blind person. "Seeing you
frightens me because I would be helpless if I couldn't see." I
was shocked at his honesty, paused for a few seconds to gather my
thoughts, and then answered that I was not surprised to learn how
he felt, but surprised that he was so up front and honest about
it.
     As we continued our walk to the retreat center cafeteria, we
discussed his fear and the realities of not seeing. When I
explained to him that, most important, blindness has nothing to
do with darkness--the thing he feared the most--he began to
relax. I explained that blindness means the lack of eyesight,
nothing more, nothing less, and that darkness must be seen to be
experienced. I also told him that, if he were to lose his vision,
he would be frightened, depressed, and probably angry. I assured
him that would be a very normal reaction. I explained that he
would need time to learn how to function as a blind person and
that this learning would take several months in a good
rehabilitation center. Using our Federation philosophy, I
explained that we have come to understand blindness as a
characteristic which is often inconvenient but not a tragedy.
     By the time we reached the cafeteria, we had moved on to
other subjects, such as the lunch menu, and I explained how he
and I would navigate the food line, carry our trays, and reach
the table to join our colleagues.
     I share this delightful experience because I hope it may
provide you, as it did me, a reminder that, as we are changing
what it means to be blind, the change takes place slowly and will
be accomplished through incidents such as this one.     
Unfortunately, my conversation with our new young vestry member
was an exception to our usual fatiguing treatment as helpless
children, unaware of where we are or what we are doing, and from
the social isolation caused by neighbors and colleagues who avoid
us because they are afraid to talk to a blind person. This
positive, honest interaction certainly has renewed my desire to
continue the much-needed education that we must effect as we
journey on our road to full equality.
                           **********
                           **********
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Gail Bryant
PHOTO/CAPTION: Marsh Mayry
PHOTO/CAPTION: Martha Young]
                             Recipes
                           **********
     This month's recipes come from the Diabetes Action Network,
a division of the National Federation of the Blind. Ed Bryant,
division president, describes it as a support and information
network reaching out to all diabetics, especially those who are
blind or losing vision, with news, advice, and information, and
with the Federation's message of opportunity and individual
empowerment.
     The Voice of the Diabetic is our quarterly magazine. Each
issue has diabetic recipes as a regular feature. All of the
following recipes are from Voice archives.
                           **********
                    Eggplant Soup With Pasta
                        by Vickie Traylor
                           **********
     Vickie Traylor is the daughter of Ed Bryant, President of
the NFB Diabetes Action Network.
                           **********
Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 medium eggplant peeled and cubed (3-4 cups)
28 ounces no-salt-added canned tomatoes, cut up
2-1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth or bouillon
1/4 teaspoon each: dried thyme and crushed rosemary
1/2 cup uncooked tiny pasta--orzi or stars
                           **********
     Method: In a microwave-proof 3-quart casserole combine
onion, celery, garlic, and olive oil. Microwave, uncovered, on
high 3 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Add eggplant and
tomatoes. Microwave, covered, on high 7 minutes or until eggplant
is soft. Add remaining ingredients. Cover and microwave on high
10 minutes or until pasta is cooked. Yield: 8 servings; Calories:
85; Diabetic Exchanges: 1 vegetable, and 3/4 bread
                           **********
                      Low-Fat Potato Salad
                   by Ann S. Williams, RN, CDE
                           **********
     Ann Williams is both a diabetic and a Certified Diabetes
Educator.
                           **********
Ingredients:
1/2 cup low-fat mayonnaise
3/4 cup no-fat yogurt
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
1/4-1/2 cup finely chopped onion, to taste
1/2 cup chopped pepper, red or green
1 hard-cooked egg, chopped very fine
4 cups cooked, peeled, cubed potatoes
 (5 to 6 medium)
1 cup chopped dill pickle
1-1/2 cups chopped celery
                           **********
     Method: Stir together first six ingredients. Add remaining
ingredients and mix well. Cover and chill at least 1 hour.
Yield: 12 servings. Serving size = 1/2 cup. Calories = 91;
protein = 3 gm; fat = 1.2 gm; carbohydrate = 17 grams; sodium =
420 mg; cholesterol = 24 mg; fiber = 1.1 gm; Exchanges = 1 starch
                           **********
                Low-Fat Low-Calorie Slaw Dressing
                         by Gail Bryant
                           **********
     A long-time Federationist, Gail Bryant serves as Secretary
of the NFB of Missouri's Columbia Chapter.
                           **********
Ingredients:
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
one package sugar substitute
3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/3 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Dash red pepper
                           **********
     Method: Mix all ingredients and pour over large bowl of
grated slaw greens. Allow to marinate at least eight hours.
Yield: Serving size: 1/2 cup; Diabetic Exchanges: Free for 1/2
cup
                           **********
                        Herb Concoctions
                       by Laurel Gilkerson
                           **********
     Ed Bryant says: "I have sampled Laurel Gilkerson's
creations, and I can recommend them. They contain so few calories
that they have no dietetic impact. The herbs she lists are all
commercially-available seasonings, perfectly safe in a spiced
vinegar. If you choose to use other types of herbs, please make
sure they are safe for human consumption."
                           **********
     Have I found a delightful taste treat for the health-
conscious! When I received a wine bottle full of white vinegar
and fresh herbs for my birthday last year, I started
experimenting. I found I could jazz up a variety of foods using
this spiced vinegar as a healthy replacement for heavy, overly
rich sauces. Spiced vinegars are very simple to make and low in
cost (especially if you grow your own herbs), and they make
unusual personal gifts. The first thing is to get some wine
bottles. Many local restaurants throw empty bottles away and
would be happy to recycle them. Next decide what herbs to spice
your vinegar with. If you cannot grow your own fresh herbs, try a
local farmers' market or grocery store. Last, buy plain white
vinegar. Experimenting with food and herb combinations is the
key. I have listed here some samples and ways I use them.
Portions are easy to determine--if your herb concoction is too
strong, dilute with plain white vinegar. Let steep for two to
three days before using.
                           **********
                          Meat Marinade
                           **********
     Mix rosemary, garlic, chives, and vinegar; or mix rosemary,
peppercorns, chili peppers, and vinegar; or mix sweet marjoram,
basil, garlic, chives, and vinegar.
     Pour spiced vinegar, red wine, salt, and pepper over meat.
Pierce meat with a fork to tenderize.
                           **********
                          Fish Marinade
                           **********
     Mix tarragon, lemon basil, chives, whole cloves of garlic,
and vinegar; or mix thyme, tarragon, chives, cloves, and vinegar;
or mix thyme, chives, peppercorns, and vinegar.
     Pour spiced vinegar, dry white wine, salt, and pepper to
taste over meat. Then poach fish with mixture.
                           **********
                         Salad Dressings
                           **********
     Mix thyme, tarragon, garlic, and vinegar; or mix basil,
lemon basil, tarragon, garlic, and vinegar; or mix thyme, chives,
peppercorns, chili peppers, and vinegar.
     When making, I always keep my herbs and peppers whole to
keep the vinegar clear. With time the bottles may get murky, but
they should be good for seven months to a year, if sealed with a
tight cork. Just use them like regular vinegar for light vinegar-
and-oil dressings. The spiced vinegar concoctions may be used in
other dishes such as salsas, soups, beans, sauteed greens, or
mayonnaise. Often I find my bottles are too pretty to use, so I
just put them in my kitchen windows and enjoy them that way.
                           **********
                 Krupsua (Finnish Oven Pancakes)
                         by Marsh Mayry
                           **********
     Marsh Mayry is the husband of Karen Mayry, President of the
NFB of South Dakota and a leader of the Diabetics Action Network.
                           **********
Ingredients:
2 cups of 2% milk
1 egg
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
1/4 cup melted butter
                           **********
     Method: Melt butter on cookie sheet in 350-degree oven. Mix
other ingredients together. Pour into cookie sheet and bake for
40 minutes. Serve with butter, syrup, jelly, or sugar. Yield: 9
servings; Calories: 125; Diabetic Exchanges: 1 bread, 1 fat.
                           **********
                           Beef Saute
                         by Martha Young
                           **********
     Martha Young is an active Federationist who has served as
President of the North Central Chapter of the NFB of Missouri.
She was a Weight Watchers' lecturer for eleven years and has
revamped the following recipe for diabetic diets.
                           **********
Ingredients:
1 16-ounce can of Bartlett pears, sliced and packed in water
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon ginger root, minced
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 pounds lean beef steak, thinly sliced (cut away all fat)
1 medium carrot, sliced diagonally
1 tablespoon oil
1 16-ounce can green beans, drained
2 cups rice, cooked
                           **********
     Method: Combine pear juice, vinegar, ginger, pepper flakes,
and garlic. Add meat and marinate at least 30 minutes (longer if
possible). Thoroughly drain meat and reserve marinade. In heavy
skillet cook meat and sliced carrots in hot oil, stirring
constantly until meat is almost browned. Remove meat and carrots
and keep warm. Add reserved marinade to pan and cook on high 3
minutes to thicken. Stir in sliced meat, carrots, beans, and
pears; and heat through. Serve over rice. Garnish with sliced
green onions if desired. Yield: 5 servings; Calories: 275;
Diabetic Exchanges: 2 meat, 1 bread, 1/2 fruit, 1 vegetable.
                           **********
                       Fruit-Milk Dessert
                   (a pudding and pie filling)
                       by Sandra Nebergall
                           **********
     Sandra Nebergall is the wife of Dr. Peter Nebergall, whose
articles have regularly appeared in Voice of the Diabetic.
                           **********
Ingredients:
1 package sugar-free Jell-O
1 8-ounce carton fat-free yogurt (no sugar added)
1 16-ounce tin unsweetened fruit or fruit cocktail (optional)
                           **********
     Method: Follow first stage of directions for Jell-O
preparation (mix package contents with 1 cup boiling water), then
refrigerate until cool and beginning to thicken, approximately 30
minutes. Next, place yogurt in deep mixing bowl and blend Jell-O
with yogurt, mixing thoroughly. If you will be adding fruit, do
it now. Allow mixture to set in refrigerator, approximately 1 1/2
hours. If you will be using tinned fruit, first drain off and
discard the juices. Many fresh fruits will work as well, but do
not use fresh pineapple--it will prevent the Jell-O from setting.
Tinned pineapple is OK. Choose compatible fruit flavors, e.g.,
raspberry Jell-O with raspberry yogurt, orange Jell-O with lemon
yogurt, cherry Jell-O with vanilla yogurt. Yield: 4 servings;
Calories: 80; Protein: 2 gm; Fat: 0 gm; Carbohydrates: 18 gm;
Sodium: 40 mg; Diabetic Exchanges: 1 starch.
(Note: Six-ounce cartons of fat-free yogurt will work equally
well, and no adjustment to proportions is necessary.)
                           **********
                        An Insect Recipe
                          (from Zambia)
                           **********
     Most cookbooks contain something inedible. This is our
contribution:
                           **********
Ingredients:
flying moths
mealie meal
greens
1 bottle Gold Medal brand Zambian beer
                           **********
     Method: Collect flying moths (life span about 1 to 2 hours).
Once you have collected a bag-full (plastic or whatever is to
hand), de-wing the dead moths. Discard wings. Place moth bodies
on baking tray and bake in moderate oven for 10 to 15 minutes.
     Serve with mealie meal and greens. Goes well with delicious
Gold Medal Zambian beer, but only after holding bottle to light
to check for unwanted bodies in the bottle. Contains much
protein, from honey-tasting bodies of crunchy insects.
     Once you get over the idea of eating insects, this recipe is
delicious. Also no chemicals, plowed land, or crops needed to
feed the insects. Exchanges: I wouldn't exchange this for
anything.
                           **********
                           **********
                       Monitor Miniatures
                           **********
Leadership Training for Blind Youth:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Do you know a future leader in the blindness community--a
young man or woman, blind or visually impaired, who has the
intelligence, energy, and determination to make a difference in
the lives of visually impaired persons in your country? The
International Program at Overbrook School for the Blind in
Philadelphia is open to candidates from throughout the world who
demonstrate these leadership qualities and who are interested in
participating in a one-year academic and training program.
     Now in its twelfth year, the Program announces the start of
the admissions process for the 1998-99 academic year. You are
invited to nominate candidates who meet the qualifications
required for admission and who would benefit from taking part in
the program. To qualify, a participant must 1) be blind or
partially sighted, 2) be between the ages of sixteen and twenty-
one at the start of the program, 3) be in good academic standing,
4) have a basic knowledge of English, 5) be interested in
adaptive computer technology for the blind, and 6) demonstrate
independence and leadership skills.
     The Admissions Committee reviews all nominations and invites
appropriate candidates to complete a full application.
     The International Program is designed to develop leadership
capabilities of young blind and partially sighted individuals
from around the world, to provide them with the skills they will
need to succeed in higher education and the work place, and to
help improve the situation of other blind and visually impaired
persons in their countries.
     Courses in adaptive computer technology, English as a second
language, and leadership development form the core of the
curriculum, while emphasis is also placed on learning in an
inter-cultural environment. Educational field trips, music
programs, and sports activities are also offered.
     For information and admissions materials, contact Lawrence
F. Campbell, Admissions Committee, International Program,
Overbrook School for the Blind, 6333 Malvern Avenue,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19151-2597, United States, (215) 878-
8700, fax (215) 878-8886, e-mail: larry@obs.org
                           **********
In Memoriam:
     Jim Willows, President of the NFB of California, recently
wrote to report the following sad news:
     I deeply regret having to report the passing of two
dedicated California Federation members. Larry Rangel died on
August 21, 1997, of diabetic complications. Larry was an active
member of both our Bay Area (San Francisco) and California
Orientation Center for the Blind Alumni Chapters. Larry attended
his first National Convention this past summer, shortly before
his death. He came home with high enthusiasm and motivation. He
asked me to call on him for any help he could offer our
affiliate. Dinah Smith died in Denver on September 7, after a
long illness. She had moved into a nursing home near her family.
Prior to this move Dinah lived for many years in Santa Barbara,
where she had been a twenty-year member and treasurer of the NFB
Chapter. Joy Smith, President of the Santa Barbara County
Chapter, tells me that she could always count on Dinah for help
in chapter activities. 
     Both Dinah and Larry are the stuff of which this
organization is made. They will be greatly missed.
                           **********
New Catalog of Braille Books for Children Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Seedlings Braille Books for Children announces its new 1998
catalog. This catalog contains over 300 low-cost Braille books
for children. Thirty-eight books have been added this year,
including for pre-schoolers print-Braille-and-picture books
Disney's My Book of ABC, Goodnight Moon, and Pooh All Year Long;
for older children Newberry Award winners in Braille such as A
Gathering of Days, The Giver, and The Midwife's Apprentice. Other
new Braille books include selections from popular series like The
Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, and The American Girls Collection.
For more information check the Seedlings Web page at
http://www.22cent.com/seedlings 
or write to P.O. Box 51924, Livonia, Michigan 48151-5924, or e-
mail: seedlink@aol.com
                           **********
Help Wanted:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     The Clovernook Center in Cincinnati is recruiting for a
variety of positions in its production facility. Openings include
packers; material handlers; machine operators; and utility,
quality assurance, and warehouse personnel. Contact Mike Walsh,
Clovernook Center for the Blind, 7000 Hamilton Ave., Cincinnati,
Ohio 45231, (513) 522-3860. The Center is an equal opportunity
employer.
                           **********
Italian Tour:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Campanian Enterprises plans a trip to Italy for sixteen
blind travelers April 26 to May 8, 1998. Several sighted guides
will be with us throughout the program.
     The tour accents the Touchable Treasures of Northern Italy
from the architectural glories of Milan and the landscape
surrounding Lake Como to the sounds, smells, and freshness of the
Alps and the magnificence of Florence--Giotto, Masaccio,
Donatello, Botticelli and Michelangelo. With expert guidance
across the majestic boundaries of Northern Italy, we will
encounter the history of ancient Rome and the Renaissance and
enjoy the food and wines of the local cuisine.
     The program includes transatlantic flights from New York to
Milan and Florence to New York (add-on fares are available from
other cities in the U.S. and Canada; contact us for this
information); accommodation at first-class hotels; continental
breakfast and dinner daily and one lunch; pullman coach
transportation throughout the program; expertly guided tours and
professional background lectures; sightseeing and excursions as
described in the itinerary; all entrance fees to museums and
archaeological sites; and gratuities and service charges. Not
included are passport expenses, airport taxes, ten lunches,
alcoholic beverages, accident/baggage insurance, personal
expenses, laundry, telephone, taxes, and taxis.
     For additional information about this tour or shorter
American tours to Hyde Park; New York City; Washington, D.C.; New
Orleans; and greater Boston, contact Robert Wilhelm, Campanian
Enterprises, Inc., P.O. Box 167, Oxford, Ohio 45056, (513) 524-
4846, fax (513) 523-0276, e-mail: campania@one.net 
Web site: http://w3.one.net/~campania/
                           **********
Elected:
     We recently received the results of the NFB of Colorado
election that took place during the affiliate's September
convention. Elected were President Diane McGeorge; First Vice
President, Kevan Worley; Second Vice President, Scott LaBarre;
Secretary, Julie Deden; Treasurer, Paul Lorensen; and Board
Members John Deden, Alice George, Don Hudson, and Dan Wenzel.
                           **********
Computer Systems Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Cabo Systems, which specializes in niche markets, now builds
adaptive computer systems for the blind and visually impaired. We
test and benchmark every component that goes into a Cabo computer
for speed and reliability based on its own merits and in the way
it interacts with other system components.
     Every Cabo System comes with a standard two-year parts and
labor warranty covering everything from hard drives to rubber
feet to mouse pads and with free-for-life technical support. You
can call ten years after your purchase and immediately talk to a
human being. On-site warranties are also available at a
reasonable rate, and in-house repairs are always completed inside
twenty-four hours.
     Fully configured adaptive computers start at $2,499 for a
mid-range pentium with all the bells and whistles. For the power
user, however, we also offer Pentium Pro, multi-processor, and
RISC based machines. If you can dream it, we can build it.
     Call us anytime to order, get additional information, or
receive a custom quote. Contact Cabo International Trading, Ltd.,
28W066 Commercial Ave, Barrington, Illinois 60010, (847) 381-
6000, fax (847) 381-7094, e-mail: cabo@mc.net
                           **********
Correction:
     In the July, 1997, issue, we printed an article about the
new Arizona Braille Law. The story said that Dr. Jane Erin of the
University of Arizona devised a provision stipulating that
electronic versions of text books for students in community
colleges and universities as well as in elementary and secondary
schools be available when needed for transcription into Braille.
We are told that, while Dr. Erin's Task Force recommended the
idea, it was actually Task Force member Terri Hedgpeth from
Arizona State University in Tempe who proposed the idea.
                           **********
Handbook on Reasonable Accommodation Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     The Department of Veterans Affairs Blind Rehabilitation
Services Committee on Reasonable Accommodations has produced a
handbook on reasonable accommodations. This handbook provides a
succinct overview of the law, examples of the requests for
reasonable accommodation, a definition of reasonable
accommodation, and several case laws. For a free copy call Margie
Donovan, VIST Coordinator, at (415) 750-6604. Please specify your
choice of format: large print or ASCII computer disk.
                           **********
Skiing Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     B.O.L.D., Inc., of Aspen makes it possible for blind people
from the U.S. and Canada to ski in Colorado's Rockies. We provide
ski instructions, guides, equipment if needed, reduced lift
ticket prices, companions for shopping, dining, and the like.
Winter activities include Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing,
snow shoeing, dog sledding, and snow mobiling. For additional
information or an application please contact B.O.L.D., Inc., c/o
Franchesca Campione, Program Director, 533 E. Main St., Aspen,
Colorado 81611, (970) 925-9511.
                           **********
Hoping to Find:
     We have been asked to carry the following request:
     We need a voice synthesizer and a screen reader for a 386
IBM-compatible computer. We would prefer a VERT or a Tiny Talk
either donated or for a reasonable price. We are a not-for-
profit, 501 (c)(3) organization, so any donation made to us is
tax-deductible. Contact the Voice of Print of the Northwest
Florida Radio Reading Service, Inc., fax (850) 944-3563, (888)
941-2888 (toll free), twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Please leave your name and phone number.
                           **********
Elected:
     Mary Willows writes to report that the Ala-Costa chapter of
the NFB of California held elections on October 11, 1997. The
election results were as follows: President, Donna Sexton; Vice
President, Carolyn Truitt; Secretary, Mary Willows; Treasurer,
Jim Willows; and Board Members, Steve Peters and Lillian
Richardson.
                           **********
Graduate Training Available:
     Louisiana Tech University, in cooperation with the Louisiana
Center for the Blind, is seeking qualified applicants interested
in a master's degree in orientation and mobility. Scholarships
are available for qualified applicants. This program is funded
through the U.S. Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services
Administration, under an Experimental and Innovative Training
Grant. For more information contact Dr. Ruby Ryles, (318) 251-
2891.                      **********


Business Opportunity Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Federation member Turley Richards, an internationally known
recording artist, songwriter, and producer, announces a home
business opportunity requiring only a telephone, computer or
notetaker, and the ability to talk to friends and acquaintances.
There are no inventory, meetings, and almost no paperwork. Having
started in June of 1997, this network marketing company is
growing fast. People who get in early will almost certainly make
money. You will be a music promoter dealing in CDs; cassettes;
music videos; and, coming soon, CD-ROM products and movie videos.
For information call toll-free (888) 488-4889 and leave Turley
Richards' code, AMI9599. If you need more information, call him
at (502) 452-9011. Internet address is www.bbtel.com/~dlarzin 
The company Internet address is www.soundmarketin.net. 
The upline is www.mjrgroup.com
                           **********
For Sale:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Do you experience cassette avalanches? Here's the perfect
remedy--the NFB of Illinois is selling cassette albums at $3
each. These sturdy, attractive, white vinyl cassette albums hold
twelve cassettes, perfect for one year of the Braille Monitor.
The album's spine is wide enough to accommodate Braille labels,
and it has a clear plastic sleeve for print label inserts. Orders
must be accompanied by a check or money order covering the number
of albums purchased. Make checks payable to NFB of Illinois. Send
orders to Stephen O. Benson, 7020 N. Tahoma Ave., Chicago,
Illinois 60646. If you have questions, please call (773) 594-
9977.
                           **********
Illinois Affiliate Meets:
     Steve Benson, President of the NFB of Illinois, reports that
Federationists from seven states gathered at the Days Inn in
Belleville, Illinois, for the twenty-ninth annual convention of
the NFB of Illinois. President Marc Maurer participated fully in
the convention agenda and delivered a moving banquet address.
Election results are as follows: Pam Provost, Treasurer;
Elizabeth Browne, Secretary; and Bill Reif and Kathie Mathis,
Board members. Scholarship awards were presented to Alma Hinkle,
Lynn Gosling, Lois Montgomery, and Michelle Koedoot. The parents
chapter was infused with Federation energy and spirit by
President Maurer and by National Parents Division Second Vice
President Carol Castellano. A solid group of parents show real
promise for the coming year. The NFB-I Student Chapter election
resulted in national scholarship winner Ameenah Ghoston's
election as President. She brings tremendous energy and good
sense to the office. The NFB of Illinois displayed an
extraordinary exhibit called "Keeping in Touch with the World"
which consisted of rare historical maps, games, and tools along
with new and exciting educational material. Federationists left
Belleville looking forward to the Washington Seminar and the 1998
National Convention in Dallas.
                           **********
International Association of Assistance Dog Partners to Meet:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Ed Eames, President of the International Association of
Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP), a cross-disability consumer
advocacy organization of people partnered with guide, hearing,
and service dogs, announces that the organization will hold its
fourth annual conference in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday,
January 10, 1998. For registration and membership information
contact Joan Froling, P.O. Box 1326, Sterling Heights, Michigan
48311, (810) 826-3938.
                           **********
For Sale:
     We have been asked to list the following items for sale:
     "Moving with Marge," a 50-minute exercise program on
cassette tape, produced specifically for the blind and designed
to strengthen and tone all major muscle groups, $7.50; "Gospel
Music," ten traditional country inspirational favorites sung by
Ray and Lois Howard, $7.50; Sunbeam Health Monitor (system with
synthesized speech and visual display measures blood pressure,
weight, and temperature), $50; Fostec 250, 4-track professional
tape recorder with many features, $400; echo chamber, $140;
twelve-band equalizer, $60; volume pedal for use with electric
guitar, etc., $60; and Yamaha programmable rhythm section, $100.
Those interested in any of these items may contact Lois Howard at
61951 High Hill Road, Cambridge, Ohio 43725, (614) 432-2287.
                           **********
For Sale:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Reconditioned Perkins Braille writer for sale. Cost is $350.
Trade-in accepted. Payment plan negotiable. Call Nino Pacini
evenings and weekends at (313) 885-7330.
                           **********
Holiday Cards Available:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     The Seeing Eye guide dog school offers both traditional and
whimsical holiday cards for sale. Both feature reproductions of
original watercolors commissioned by the school. "Holiday Hopes"
by Patti Falzarano features three realistically rendered Seeing
Eye puppies playing with a Seeing Eye harness, surrounded by a
decorative border of dog biscuits twined with red ribbon. The
greeting says, "May all your hopes and dreams come true."
     "Special Delivery" by Pat Garhart, depicts Santa Claus
delivering a squirming sackful of stylized puppies to the front
door of the Seeing Eye. A few stragglers catch up through the
snow on the front path. The inside greeting says, "Delivering
warm wishes for the holidays."
     Cards are packaged in boxes of 20 with 20 envelopes. Price
is $13 per box plus $6.95 postage/handling for the first box,
$1.00 handling for each additional box. Orders paid by check or
credit card may be sent to the Seeing Eye, c/o Parcel Plus,
Chester Springs Shopping Center, Route 206, Chester, New Jersey
07930. Make checks payable to The Seeing Eye; fax credit card
orders to (908) 879-5661; or e-mail to
www.seeingeye@chester.parcelplus.com
     Please provide your name, street address, and telephone
number and, for credit card orders, the type of card, card
number, and expiration date.
                           **********
911 Dispatcher Training Course:
     We have been asked to carry the following announcement:
     Over 300,000 Americans serve as police, fire, or emergency
medical dispatchers; and an increasing need for qualified,
professional public safety communicators is projected in the next
century. With quality training, appropriate access technology,
and placement support, blind people can be productive, valued
contributors in virtually any public safety communication center.
     The Vantage Media Group, a new career development
organization founded by a blind dispatcher, invites 24 people to
San Antonio, Texas, to participate in four weeks of public-safety
dispatcher training. Two sessions incorporate internationally
respected 40-hour certifying courses along with several support
elements. These sessions are scheduled for January 5 through 30
and February 16 through March 13, 1998.
     Students will learn the basics of the communication center,
the roles of the public safety dispatcher, interactive
instruction and emergency 911 call-taking, and radio
communication techniques. Also included are introductory classes
on computer-aided dispatch systems and regional and national law
enforcement networks. Other topics include ethics, liability, and
stress management.
     Supplementary courses delve into system-access solutions,
tactile and electronic mapping, and reasonable accommodation
under the ADA. Workshops on resume writing, networking, legal
issues, and job-search resources complement our 24-month student
placement program.
     Applicants must meet the following minimum qualifications:
high school diploma or G.E.D.; good reading, writing, and oral
communication skills; typing speed of 35 net wpm; mastery of
either speech- and refreshable-Braille-output devices or screen
magnification aids; and capacity to pass criminal background and
drug screening.
     Total tuition cost of $3,995 includes 160 hours certifying
public safety communications training, all training materials,
double-occupancy lodging, meals, and 24-month student placement
program. Although transportation during training is included,
travel expenses to San Antonio are not.
     Class registration is first-come, first-serve; and only
twelve students will be accepted per session. The registration
deadlines for the January and February, 1998, sessions are
December 1, 1997, and January 1, 1998, respectively. For student
registration or other information, contact Program Director
Roderick Roberts at (888) 584-8753 or by fax at (210) 805-8830.
Internet e-mail should be sent to vmg@world-net.net
                           **********
Oops:
     Barbara Cheadle, Editor of Future Reflections, the quarterly
magazine of the National Organization of Parents of Blind
Children, recently received the following letter and clipping:
                           **********
                                       Cross Lanes, West Virginia
                                                September 4, 1997
                           **********
Dear Staff:
     Enclosed please find a true-life funny that appeared in our
local newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, on April 17, 1997. I
hope your readers will find it interesting.
     Also let me say how much I enjoy reading the magazine and
how helpful it has been to me as Kanawha County Schools' only
Braille transcriptionist.
                                                       Thank you,
                                                        Kim Aaron
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     Kim Aaron, wife of TV newsman Bob Aaron, works as a
transcriptionist. She turns books into Braille for sight-
challenged children for Kanawha County schools.
     The Aarons were going to a movie one evening but couldn't
decide which film to see. Dad and son Adam wanted to see Star
Wars: Return of the Jedi, and Mom wanted Sling Blade. They
reached a compromise. Mom was dropped off at Cinema 7, and Bob
and Adam went on.
     Kim, however, had to wait forty-five minutes for her movie
to begin. She came prepared. She had brought some Braille lessons
with her and sat in the dimly lit theater studying and awaiting
the start of the movie.
     A half hour or so later, a couple of women walked down the
aisle. One of them stopped and said to the reading woman,
"Sweetie, it is too dark in here. You'll go blind reading that
book."
     The reader smiled at the woman and replied, "It's Braille."
     The woman turned to her companion, muttered something about
a "smart ass" and went to her seat.
     By the way there's also a sequel to the Kim Aaron story.
     After the movie she explained to the women what she was
doing, and they all had a good laugh about it.
     "I guess," the transcriptionist said, "you could say I have
a real feel for what I do."

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                           NFB PLEDGE
                           **********
     I pledge to participate actively in the effort of the
National Federation of the Blind to achieve equality,
opportunity, and security for the blind; to support the policies
and programs of the Federation; and to abide by its constitution.
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