Need Financial Assistance to Purchase Access Technology and Devices for the Blind?

Posted on October 24, 2016 by audreydemmitt

Assistive Technology Fund

The Association of Blind Citizens operates the Assistive Technology Fund. The Assistive Technology Fund (ATF) will provide funds to cover 50% of the retail price of adaptive devices or software. The ABC board of directors believes that this program will allow blind and visually impaired individuals access to technology products that will have a significant impact on improving employment opportunities, increase the level of independence and enhance their overall quality of life.

The products covered by this program must retail for a minimum of $200 with a maximum retail price of $6,000. Persons eligible to apply for assistance must have a family income of less than $50,000 and cash assets of less than $20,000. Applications will be reviewed by the Assistive Technology Committee (ATC) and recommendations will be submitted for board approval. If applicants are selected to receive a technology grant, applicants will be asked to provide documents such as tax returns, bank statements and any other documents that the ABC board or it’s designee would deem necessary to assess financial need for the grant.

Applicants must be legally blind and a resident of the United States to qualify for this program. Applications must be submitted by June 30th and December 31st for each grant period (two per year). Applicants will be notified if their request for a grant is approved. Applicants may submit one request per calendar year. All applications must be submitted via e-mail. You will be notified by ABC within 45 days after the application deadline. The grantee will have 30 days after notification to purchase the product. If the purchase cannot be made within 30 days ABC reserves the right to withdraw the award and assign it to another applicant. All decisions are final.

You may fill out the request form below by pasting it in to your word processor and emailing it to: atf@blindcitizens.org.

Important: Requests must be received via email only, by June 30th or December 31st. Please do not use attachments when submitting your request.

Association of Blind Citizens Assistive Technology request form

Name:

First Line Of Address:

Second Line Of Address:

City:

State:

Zip:

Telephone Number with area code:

Email address:

Provide a description of 500 or fewer words of the device you wish to purchase and how it will help you achieve employment or increase your independence.

Reading to Enhance Mental Health: Bibliotherapy

Posted on February 25, 2015 by audreydemmitt

Reading as a Healing Experience

Most of us become readers at an early age and discover the wonders of a good story. We learn to interact with books in order to learn and grow. Characters come alive to us as we relate to their experiences. Sometimes reading is for pleasure or escape and other times it is for the disciplined acquisition of information. No matter what, our engagement with literature and written word has the potential to change us, calm us, inform us, inspire us and heal us. In its most simplistic form, this is known as bibliotherapy. Exposure to books, poetry, writing, and even film and videos can be therapeutic and beneficial in helping us process our own life experiences. In other words, literature can be used to help us figure life out, heal emotional traumas, and change thoughts and behavior. Reading can be a healing experience.

As I was learning to adjust to vision loss, I was drawn to read books about blindness and books written by authors who were blind. I found it very helpful and motivating to enter the narratives of others who were sharing their own stories of vision loss. Some books were informational, some humorous, and others deeply moving. I realized that the cumulative affect was that I understood more about blindness and my feelings about it were changing. Reading books on blindness, memoirs and biographies of blind writers has had a very positive influence on my ability to adjust and cope with vision loss.

Reading Books on Blindness

It has long been understood that literature “heals the soul” and the use of bibliotherapy has evolved to become quite complex in its application to psychiatry and health care. Consider a bit of reading therapy for yourself as a way to deal with vision loss. With the help of the Peer Advisors at VisionAware, I put together a reading list of books for this purpose. It is not exhaustive by any means but meant to get you started. Most of these titles are available through the National Library Service in audio or braille formats. Newer titles are not yet available through the NLS. Many are available in e-book formats through your favorite booksellers. (Kindle, Nook, etc.) Another way to find such books on blindness is to search the NLS collection using “blindness” as a key word. Whether you are using your eyes, ears or fingers to read, may it be a rewarding and therapeutic experience.

If you are interested in learning more about the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and the Talking Book Program, go to: hhttp://www.loc.gov/nls/index.html

24 Books on Blindness

Touch the Top of the World by Erik Weihenmayer- e-book, NLS
Cockeyed: a memoir by Ryan Knighton- e-book, NLS
Blindness: What it is, What it Does, and How to Live with it by Thomas Carroll-NLS
Lessons I Learned in the Dark by Jennifer Rothschild- NLS
Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness by John Hull- NLS
Living on the Edge of Twighlight by Doug Green- e-book
Now I See You: A Memoir by Nicole C. Kear- e-book
Mobility Matters: Stepping Out in Faith by Amy Bovaird- e-book
Out of the Whirlpool: A Memoir of Remorse and Reconciliation by Sue Martin- e-book,NLS
The Adversity Advantage by Erik Weihenmayer and Paul G. Stoltz- e-book,NLS
Thoughts on Blindness: One Spouse’s Perspective on Losing Vision and Living Life by Becky LeBlanc-The Carroll Center Books on Blindness
Ordinary Daylight: Portrait of an Artist Going Blind by Andrew Potok- e-book, NLS cassette
A Matter of Dignity: Changing the Lives of the Disabled by Andrew Potok-NLS
ROCKS:The Blind Guy at the Lake by Thomas P. Costello-Amazon print, The Carroll Center Books on Blindness
Focus by Ingrid Ricks- e-book
How Do You Kiss a Blind Girl by Sally Wagner-NLS
The Way We See It: A Fresh Look at Vision Loss – anthology from Vision Loss Resource-print, e-book available at http://www.visionlossresources.org
Do You Dream in Color? By Laurie Rubin-NLS
And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance by Jacques Lusseyran-NLS
Not Fade Away by Rebecca Alexander
The Unseen Minority: a social history of blindness in America by Frances A. Koestler-NLS
Self-Esteem and Adjusting with Blindness: the process of responding to life’s demands by Dean and Naomi Tuttle-NLS
Shades of Darkness: a black soldier’s journey through Vietnam, blindness and back by George Brummell-NLS
Undaunted by Blindness: concise biographies of 400 people who refused to let visual impairment define them by Clifford Olstrom, Perkins School for the Blind-NLS

Share Your Favorite Therapeutic Book

Is there a book you have read that helped you adjust to vision loss? How did the book help you? Or is there a book about a blind person that was encouraging or motivational? What about books written by a blind or visually impaired author? Share your favorite reads below.

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Have You Heard About “Be My Eyes?”

Posted on February 13, 2015 by audreydemmitt

“Be My Eyes” will help the blind “see” all kinds of things with the help of sighted volunteers and the video cameras on their i-phones. Here is the press release from www.bemyeyes.org :

New app lets sighted help blind people see

A new app makes life easier for the blind, by connecting them with sighted helpers through a smartphone app. This allows the blind to handle big and small tasks, while ighted get the joy of helping someone else in a easy and informal way. The app is called Be My Eyes and could revolutionize everyday life for the blind.

It only takes a minute to choose the right tin can from the shelf, look at the expiration date on the milk or find the right thing to eat in the fridge if have full vision that is. For visual impaired individuals smaller tasks in their home can often become bigger challenges. The new app is called “Be My Eyes” and hopes to change that!

Through a direct video call the app gives blind people the opportunity to ask a sighted volunteer for help, for tasks that requires normal vision. The blind person “borrows” the helper’s eyes all through his or her smartphone. The sighted helper is able to see and describe what the blind person is showing the sighted helper by filming with the video camera in the smartphone. That way, by working together they are able to solve the problem that the blind person is facing.

A test version of the app has been well received by the blind community. John Heilbrunn, himself blind and vice chairman of The Danish Association of the Blind, sees it as great opportunity to get help from a network of volunteers: »The app makes it possible to get help at times where it might be inconvenient to get help from neighbors or friends, and you don’t have to go apologetically and ask for help.«

The idea behind Be My Eyes originates from the Danish 50 year old furniture craftsman Hans Jørgen Wiberg, who started losing his vision when he was 25. His wish is that the app will make both the everyday life of blind people easier and new flexible opportunity to volunteer:»It is flexible, takes only a few minutes to help and the app is therefore a good opportunity for the busy, modernindividual with the energy to help others.« Says inventor Hans Jørgen Wiberg

The Be My Eyes app is free and available in the AppStore.

This app is similar to Tap Tap See only it is free. It will soon be available on androids too. Could this be helpful to you or someone you know? If you are sighted, would you be interested in “lending your eyes” and becoming a sighted helper?

Have You Heard About NVDA and Computers For the Blind?

Posted on January 22, 2015 by audreydemmitt

I have been surviving on the computer with Zoomtext for the last 12 years. It has been wonderful to have such access. I actually started with “Bigshot”, a precursor to Zoomtext, and it allowed me to continue my job for years. But alas, my vision continues to change and technology changes even faster! I now have cataracts that affect the last bit of vision I have to read. I am making plans to have them removed and hoping to clear up my central vision. But at the same time, I have been thinking about making the transition to using a screen reader rather than a screen magnifier program so I can continue to use a computer.

I understand that the JAWS screen reader is difficult to learn and quite expensive. I am intimidated by it and dread learning it! Then there is Windows Eyes which I hear has some issues and seems to have less tech support available. In some cases, the state Vocational Rehab agencies will purchase access software and provide training for users. But in my state, there is a 2-3 year wait for these services. Many blind and visually impaired people cannot afford these expensive products on their own and it is sad how companies seem to exploit the disabled. So many blind and visually impaired people do not have access to a computer, social media, on-line shopping and the wealth of internet information.

That is why I am so excited about NVDA-nonvisual desktop access! This is a free screen reader that is compatible with Windows and available for download. Here is an exerpt of the story of how it was developed and made available for all from the website http://www.nvaccess.org/ :

Michael Curran and James Teh met as children on a music camp for the blind, where they realised they shared a strong interest in computers. Several years later they decided to join forces to help improve the accessibility of computers for blind and vision impaired people.

For blind people to use a computer, they need a screen reader which reads the text on the screen in a synthetic voice or with a braille display. But in many cases screen reading software costs more than the computer itself. In the past this has left computers inaccessible to millions of blind people around the world. This is a critical problem, because without computers, access to education and employment is severely limited, not to mention everyday functions such as online banking, shopping and news.

In April 2006 Michael began to develop a free screen reader called NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) for use with computers running on Windows. He invited James, who had recently completed his IT degree, to develop the software with him.

Together these two fully blind men founded the not-for-profit organisation NV Access to support the development of the NVDA screen reader. Before too long they were able to work full-time on the project thanks to a series of corporate grants and individual donations.

NVDA has been translated by volunteers into more than 43 languages, and been used by people in more than 120 countries. It has also won multiple awards.

NVDA is open source software, which means the code is accessible to anyone. This enables translators and developers around the world to continually contribute to its expansion and improvement.

Through this work, Michael and James have gained extensive expertise in software accessibility. They have also fostered relationships with companies such as Mozilla, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe and Yahoo! and have contributed to the accessibility of their respective products.

NV Access is based in South East Queensland, Australia.

Yay for these lads who have made computers more accessible with the NVDA screen reader! They have created tutorials to make NVDA user friendly. Check out these links:

http://nvda.wikispaces.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOQ7zELFmLE

And did you know about Computers for the Blind? It is a program that refurbishes desktop and laptop computers and then makes them available to people who are visually challenged for a nominal fee. The computers come preloaded with either magnification software or NVDA screen readers, monitors, keyboards and more. The mission of Computers for the Blind (CFTB) is to open the world of information technology to persons who are blind or visually impaired by providing computer equipment, software and training. Check out their site at: http://www.computersfortheblind.net/index-2.html or call 214.340.6328 to learn more.

I hope these resources are helpful to you or someone you know. Pass the information on…

Seeing Possibilities

Category Archives: Technology