The House on Monday celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act by approving legislation assuring that the disabled
have full access to the Internet and television.

“The ADA mandated physical ramps into buildings,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., sponsor of the bill. “Today, individuals with disabilities need online
ramps to the Internet so they can get to the Web from wherever they happen to be.”

The bill, which passed 348-23 and now moves to the Senate, takes such steps as making it easier for the blind to access the Internet from smart phones,
providing deaf people with the ability to watch new TV programs online with captions included, and requiring that telecom equipment used to make calls
over the Internet be compatible with hearing aids.

The measure also:

_Gives the blind a fuller TV experience through audible descriptions of on-screen action.

_Makes cable TV program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss.

_Mandates that remote controls have buttons or similar devices to easily access the closed captioning on broadcast and pay TV.

_Provides financial support to help the low-income disabled buy accessible Internet technology.

The legislation does not require manufacturers and service providers to install particular technology, but it does set new federal standards that the telecommunications
industry will follow.

The House took up the measure immediately after paying tribute to the achievements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark bill ensuring the
disabled equal access to public places that President George H.W. Bush signed into law two decades ago.

“Fifty million Americans have taken advantage of the ADA’s promise and have lived richer lives as a result,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Presiding over the debates in the speaker’s chair was Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., the first quadriplegic to serve in the House. It was the first time Langevin,
a five-term congressman, had served as speaker pro tempore.

At the White House, President Barack Obama marked the anniversary by promising to boost government efforts at recruiting, hiring and retaining people with
physical and mental limitations. He signed an executive order requiring the federal personnel agency to develop model guidelines for hiring people with
disabilities.

Obama also announced that the Justice Department is publishing stronger rules to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities by state and local
government agencies and private businesses.

___

The bill is H.R. 3101.

We read our constitution and bylaws, and then we voted on them and made them final. Then we actually had the chance to confirm our officer positions.  You see, we started with temporary positions.  The president, Vice president and the secretary were some of the positions that were deamed temporary until we had our second meeting.

Kenneth Semien SR. our President;  sent in our documentation regarding chaptership, so that means that sometime next month, we will recieve chaptership status, thus making BACB the 10th chapter in texas.  This is a  true milestone because when we recieve full chapter status, we can begin assisting educators, and other professional officials  in making the needed changes that our area needs to greatly improve the lives of those who are blind and visually impaired.

Since our officers have been confirmed, and all documentation has been submitted,  all that we need to wait on now is the final say by the board of directors at whether or not we’re a chapter.

I am the first vice president, and Kenneth is our president.  We also have a second vice president, Melinda.  I will be working close with Melinda to train her and to assist her in her duties as second vice president of our chapter.

My duties as first vice president is to back up the president should he not be able to attend the meetings.

This is really an exciting time for the Beaumont area blind and visually impaired because a chapter of ACB was very much needed in our area.  However, now that this is underway, now a much brighter future is in store for our local area as a direct result.

As Co-Founder of the BOSS program, I urge everyone to join either ACB, or NFB, or any other organization of their choice to help support the blind and visually impaired in whatever way possible.

These organizations have helped many blind and visually impaired people to live more independent lives.  They have brought hope and inspiration to those whithout hope and inspiration, and they have brought much needed education to where it is needed most.

So whether you join ACB, NFB, or even the Lions Club, or any other organization that supports the blind; it really doesn’t matter because we’re all working towards one great cause and that is the betterment and full independence of those who are blind and visually impaired.

After all, that is what the BOSS program does.  It helps to make those that are blind and visually impaired more independent by offering them skills that they can use the rest of their lives to build, run and manage a successful business on the Internet.  Combined with these organizations mentioned above, the skills and abilities that are achieved by each individual insures that individual a greater understanding of their place in society, as well as within a business setting.

It really doesn’t matter which organization that you’re a part of because all of these organizations do something to assist those that are blind or visually impaired in one way, or another.

What this means for the Beaumont Texas area is that now we will have our own chapter of ACB, and we will not have to travel to Houston to attend ACB meetings.  This new chapter will do many of the same things that other chapters of ACB in Texas does.  We Sincerely hope that this new chapter will bring more independence, and education to the Golden  Triangle area of Southeast Texas.  This could help to open the doors to employment and better blind services for our local area.

We will be meeting at Division of Blind Services to begin proceedings for the development of this new chapter.  I will keep you all posted and informed as to what transpires from this meeting and future meetings to come regarding the development of this new chapter of ACB in Beaumont Texas

New to the NLS program is a state of the art online component, called the
Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) site. This new site for blind and
physically handicapped patrons of NLS now provides better than ever access
to digital audiobooks and magazines. The BARD digital books and magazines
are in the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 format, the specification for navigable
digital talking books. Readers may press buttons on the NLS digital
talking-book player and compatible players to jump from chapter to chapter,
section to section or page to page. This ability to quickly navigate the
book structure, combined with the high-quality human recording, make the new
digital NLS download books one of the most significant advancements in the
provision of talking books for blind and low vision people.

"The high quality navigable digital books from the new NLS BARD service
represent a major advancement in access to books, magazines, and electronic
braille for Americans who are unable to read print due to blindness, low
vision, or physical disability", says Gilles Pepin, CEO of HumanWare. "With
BARD, NLS brings its library into the home of its patrons. Not only do NLS
patrons now have access to thousands of digital books but they can find
their book of interest and download it in minutes independently and from the
comfort of their home computer."

HumanWare manufactures the popular Victor Reader Stream, a DAISY NISO
compatible digital talking-book player designed in collaboration with the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB), which several thousand NLS patrons
already use to play the new digital NISO books. The NLS digital books on the
BARD site are protected by encryption and compatible digital book players
must be authorized by NLS for eligible patrons to play the books.

The ability to press buttons on the Victor Reader Stream to easily jump
between chapters, pages, or magazine articles, like the NLS digital
talking-book player, provides a rich audiobook reading experience never
before experienced by audiocassette readers. For reference books such as
cookery books the user can even enter a page number from the table of
contents on the Stream telephone-style number pad and the playback will move
immediately to that page. With the NLS player, Victor Reader Stream, and the
NLS BARD books, users now have immediate access to thousands of books and
can navigate them just like they would navigate the equivalent print book’s
structure.

The new BARD download audiobook and magazine service is available free of
charge to eligible blind and physically handicapped individuals in the U.S.
and to citizens living abroad, who have access to a computer and high-speed
Internet connection, and who have a free NLS digital talking-book player or
own an authorized compatible digital talking-book player such as HumanWare’s
Victor Reader Stream. To learn more about the new BARD service visit
https://nlsbard.loc.gov/

About HumanWare

HumanWare is the global leader in assistive technologies for vision,
including products for the blind and visually impaired. HumanWare’s products
include BrailleNote, the leading productivity device for blind people in
education, in business and in their personal lives; the Victor Reader
product line, the world’s leading digital talking book players; and
myReader2, the new version of HumanWare’s unique "auto-reader" for people
with low vision. For more information visit
www.humanware.com

New York City (May 20, 2009): The Reading Rights Coalition, representing more than 15 million print-disabled Americans, has denounced publishing giant Random
House, which has turned off text-to-speech on all of its e-books available for Amazon s Kindle 2 reading service.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: When Random House turned off the text-to-speech function on all of its e-books
for the Kindle 2, it turned off access to this service for more than 15 million print-disabled Americans.  The blind and other print-disabled readers have
the right to purchase e-books using this service with text-to-speech enabled.  Blocking text-to-speech prohibits access for print-disabled readers and
is both reprehensible and discriminatory.  We urge President Obama, whose e-books are now being blocked from over 15 million Americans, to either demand
that access be restored or to move to a publisher who does not engage in discrimination.

Dr. Cynthia Stuen, Senior Vice President of Policy and Evaluation for Lighthouse International, said: "Having the technology available to give people with
impaired vision and other print disabilities equal and timely access to the printed word should be celebrated and encouraged in a civil and just society
for all."

Andrew Imparato, President and Chief Executive Officer for the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), said: Random House is callously
disregarding the right of American consumers with disabilities to get access to the same content at the same price at the same time as everyone else.
Random House s decision to turn off the feature that makes this content accessible to millions of print-disabled Americans is a bad business decision with
real human consequences and it must be corrected immediately.

Mitch Pomerantz, President of the American Council of the Blind, said: "The recent action by Random House disabling text-to-speech on e-books is the latest
and most egregious discriminatory action against the nation’s 15 million print-disabled individuals.  Random House either doesn’t care or doesn’t understand
the impact this will have on those who would otherwise have equal access to books and other printed materials in the same manner as our non-disabled peers.
 We must work collaboratively to do everything possible to assure such access for this growing constituency."

James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), said: KEI is disappointed that Random House is turning off text-to-speech on its Kindle 2
e-books. In a world where access to knowledge is central to everything, Random House certainly understands this action will isolate and marginalize many
persons with reading disabilities.

K. Eric Larson, Executive Director and CEO of National Spinal Cord Injury Association, said: "All Americans have the right to equal access and many people
living with paralysis use text-to-speech capabilities in order to gain that access.  Our members are also consumers and turning off text-to-speech means
that some will not buy books they would otherwise purchase."

John R. Sheehan, Chairman of the Xavier Society for the Blind, said: The Xavier Society for the Blind is committed to the notion that ALL books should be
accessible to all people. When a book about Mother Teresa is among those whose text-to-speech functions have been disabled, we fear that we are seeing
the beginning of a blanket cut-off of a function that should be open and available to all, especially (but not exclusively) to those with visual impairments
or other problems that limit access to printed materials.

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 e-book reading service on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would be able to read e-books aloud
using text-to-speech technology.  Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech
function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2 service.  Random House is the first publisher to turn off text-to-speech on all of its
e-books and thus deny the rights of print-disabled people across America.

The Reading Rights coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal
cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promises for the first time easy,
mainstream access to over 270,000 books.

For more information about the Reading Rights Coalition, please visit
www.readingrights.org.
To sign our petition, go to
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/We-Want-To-Read.
If you are an author who supports our cause, please send your contact information to
readingrights@nfb.org.

As most of us know, when it comes to blind or visually impaired people, it seams that they are  treated like second class citizens in many situations.  While the blind community as a whole is  not as large as other minorities, it still deserves attention, but in the right way.

For so long now, the blind have been treated as second class citizens, given lower paying jobs,  or in many situations; no jobs at all.  It is not that the blind lack in the proper job training  and independent living skills.  The problem lies within the private job sector where there are a  lot of people who are still ignorant as to what the blind are capable of today.

However, even in the face of knowing what the capabilities are of the blind, some employers are  still reluctant to hire blind people, even if they have all the needed skills and meet all the  criteria that the job requires.

The Problem could lie in personal opinions of the employer and the company, or it can be  something as simple as their misunderstanding of the capabilities of blind people today.

Job discrimination is going on, even in the twenty-first century.  At least 70 to 80% of all  blind persons are without employment, not because they don’t want to work, but because of the  system and how it operates.

You would think that job discrimination would go on in places like third world nations, but not  in the United States.  Well it does go on here, and that’s a fact whether we like to hear it or  not.

So the ability for the blind to live what most call the american dream is pretty much out of  reach, and for the most part; unatainable, unless those individuals are employed and are able to  support themselves without having to rely upon government money.

However, the problem lies in the fact that so many blind and visually impaired relie upon a  system that basically gives them scraps to live on that only allow for them to barely make it  from month to month.

Let’s face it, $600 is not enough to really live on these days.  Sure, it is just enough to  scrape by, but that’s what most blind and visually impaired people are doing these days, just  scraping by off of a system that is broken and inefficient.

One of the other reasons why so many blind and visually impaired people aren’t working actually  has to do with them themselves and their relationship with this broken down system that they  draw their monthly income from.

Because so many blind and visually impaired people are recieving income such as SSI, many of  them just get used to the system,  and continue to rely on that system for their life support, thus loosing the  desire to work or to even get off the system altogether.

A matter of fact, there are individuals today who are so attached to the system that they are  afraid to get off of it in fear of loosing what little independence they may have.  However, do  you call living off of government income true independence?

It seams easier for a nation to just simply hand out monthly incomes to the blind, rather than  properly train them to live independent lives.  That is why many state agencies for the blind  send the blind and visually impaired to vocational rehabilitation centers for such training.

However, in spite of that training, the blind still are being treated like second class  citizens, and many of them aren’t even employed with the newly found skills that they now  possess from these training facilities.

So is there an alternative solution?  Yes there is and it is called the Blind Online Success  System, and you can check it out here below.

http://www.blindonlinesuccesssystem.com/info

Ok, now onto the article that I was talkingabout earlier.  The link below will take you directly  to the article.

This is one powerful article that you must read, and then after you read it come back here to  learn more about the Blind Online Success System and what it has to offer.

<a  href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Freedom+for+the+blind:+the+secret+is+empowerment-a0126791482 ">Freedom for the blind: the secret is empowerment.</a>

Ok, so what did you think of that article?  Do you agree with it?  Don’t you think that the  blind deserve more in the way of equality and independence?  Well that’s what the Blind Online  Success System attempts to deliver through its in depth traning and mentorship.

We don’t just give them a fish and feed them for a day, we teach them to fish and feed them for  a lifetime.  The Blind Online Success System is designed in such a way that we properly educate  the blind and visually impaired to properly run and manage their own online businesses by giving  them a chance to obtain new skills and mentorship that can only be given through a program such  as this.

Those who are already a part of this program say that this type of thing has been a long time coming.  They also wonder why anyone else hadden’t thought of it before.  Well I don’t know why they didn’t think of it before, but at least we did, and now we have such a program available today.

Our goal is to help to provide a more independent lifestyle for the blind by training them to run and manage their own online businesses.  We pride ourselves on the fact that we’re the only program of this tipe in the entire world.  Sure there might be some copy cats along the way that try to immulate what we’re doing, but we have already cornered this market, and therefore, we hold the highest position.

Those that have joined us have already experienced a wealth of training and information that they say is the best that they have ever recieved from anywhere.  Our members are happy to be a part of this winning team, and we are looking forward to new members as well.

Online skills are a must in today’s society, and we can give you such skills through our comprehensive training.  We are thorough and complete when it comes to training people how to effectively run and manage an online business.  Our goal through this program is to create more independent blind and visually impaired individuals by allowing them to make their own choices and make their own incomes through their own business online.

Having your own business means that you do not have to worry about descrimination issues, transportation issues and a whole host of other negative issues that society can dish out.  We want to focus upon making sure that those in our program can not only develop new skills and use them, but we want them to use these newly found skills to their advantage.  As an alternative to traditional employment training, the Blind Online Success System is rising to the challenge of providing quality mentorship and training.

These skills that are taught through our program can be transferred to traditional employment if need be.  Not only that, but if an indivdiual is already in our program, and is currently working in more traditional employment, the skills that they recieve from us can instantly be used in their place of work as well, thus improving upon their productivity and so on.

We already have individuals in our program who are currrently working in more traditional employment settings and they are using the skills that they learn from us to greatly improve their status at their place of employment.

As an upcoming organization, the Blind Online Success System has already proven that people can do the work.  It just takes action and that’s what at least 8 to 9% of our members are doing.  They’re all taking action and doing what is required of them to begin their journey down the road of success.

Instead, they insisted he use what little vision he had to read print. By the third grade, he was falling behind in his schoolwork.

"They gave him Braille instruction, but they didn’t tell us how to get Braille books, and they didn’t want him using it during the day," said Jordan’s mother,
Carrie Gilmer of Minneapolis. Teachers said Braille would be "a thing he uses way off in the far distant future, and don’t worry about it."

That experience is common: Fewer than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in
the United States
read Braille, and just 10 percent of blind children are learning it, according to a report released Thursday by the National Federation of the Blind, which
is based in Baltimore.

By comparison, at the height of its use in the 1950s, more than half the nation’s blind children were learning Braille. Today, Braille is considered by
many to be too difficult, too outdated, a last resort.

Instead, teachers ask students to rely on audio texts, voice-recognition software or other technology. And teachers who know Braille often must shuttle
between schools, resulting in haphazard instruction, the report says.

"You can find good teachers of the blind in America, but you can’t find good programs," said Marc Maurer, the group’s president. "There is not a commitment
to this population that is at all significant almost anywhere."

Using technology as a substitute for Braille leaves blind people illiterate, the federation said, citing studies that show blind people who know Braille
are more likely to earn advanced degrees, find good jobs and live independently.

"It’s really sad that so many kids are being shortchanged," said Debby Brackett of Stuart, Fla., who pressured schools to provide capable Braille teachers
for her 12-year-old daughter, Winona.

One study found that 44 percent of participants who grew up reading Braille were unemployed, compared with 77 percent for those who relied on print. Overall,
blind adults face 70 percent unemployment.

The federation’s report pulled together existing research on Braille literacy, and its authors acknowledge that not enough research has been done. The 10
percent figure comes from federal statistics gathered by the American Printing House for the Blind, a company that develops products for the visually impaired.

The federation also did some original research, including a survey of 500 people that found the ability to read Braille correlated with higher levels of
education, a higher likelihood of employment and higher income.

The report coincides with the 200th birthday of Louis Braille, the Frenchman who invented the Braille code as a teenager. Resistance to his system was immediate;
at one point, the director of Braille’s school burned the books he and his classmates had transcribed. The school did not want its blind students becoming
too independent; it made money by selling crafts they produced.

The system caught on, but began declining in the 1960s along with the widespread integration of blind children into public schools. It has continued with
the advent of technology that some believe makes Braille obsolete.

"Back in about 1970 or so, I was heading to college, and somebody said to me, ‘Now that you’ve got the tape recorder, everything will be all right.’ In
the early 1980s, somebody else said, ‘Now that you’ve got a talking computer, everything will be all right,’" Maurer said. "They were both wrong. And the
current technology isn’t going to make everything all right unless I know how to put my hands on a page that has words on it and read them."

Audio books are no substitute, said Carlton Walker, an attorney and the mother of a legally blind girl from McConnellsburg, Pa. Walker once met a blind
teenager who had only listened to audio books; the teen was shocked to discover that "Once upon a time" was four separate words.

Walker also had to lobby teachers to provide Braille for her 8-year-old daughter, Anna, instead of just large-print books.

"At 3 years old, Anna could compete with very large letters. When you get older, you can’t compete," Walker said.

Walker once asked a teacher, "’What are you going to do when she’s reading Dickens?’ She said, ‘Well, we’ll just go to audio then.’ If that were good enough
for everybody, why do we spend millions of dollars teaching people to read?"

Gilmer, now an 18-year-old aspiring lawyer, worked on his Braille in a summer program when he was in middle school and can now read 125 words a minute,
up from his previously rate, an excruciatingly slow 20 words a minute.

"Just try it," Carrie Gilmer said. "Go get a paragraph, get a stopwatch and try to read 20 words a minute. Try and read that slow and see how frustrating
it is."

Fluent Braille readers can read 200 words a minute or more, the federation says.

Carrie Gilmer is president of a parents’ group within the federation for the blind. She believes poor or haphazard instruction is largely responsible for
the decline in Braille literacy, but she says sometimes teachers push Braille only to meet resistance from parents.

"They’re afraid of their child looking blind, not fitting in," Gilmer said.

The report outlines ambitious goals for reversing the trend, including lobbying all 50 states to require teachers of blind children to be certified in Braille
instruction by 2015. But its immediate goal is to simply make people aware that there’s no substitute for Braille. It’s not just a tool to help people
function — it can bring joy, Maurer said.

"The concept of reading Braille for fun is a thing that lots of people don’t know," Maurer said. "And yet I do this every day. I love the beautiful, orderly
lines of words that convey a different idea that can stimulate me or make me excited or sad. … This is what we’re trying to convey."

No I personally am not a Braille user, but I can fully understand the need for learning Braille.  It is much like the need for learning print.  When you read Braille, you get to see exactly how the words are formed, plus how they’re spelled and used in sentences, paragraphs and other ways that are not mentioned here.

The problem with Braille books is that they’re too large to be carried around.  The Bible, which takes up only one book in standard print; takes many volumes in Braille, and is rather expensive to own.  With today’s current technology, there is no reason why a Braille tablet device couldn’t be invented that would resemble a braille page with a refreshable screen much like the refreshable Braille displays on many adaptive devices for the blind.

This special Braille tablet would be the same size as a sheet of Braille paper and have a screen the same size which would display an entire Braille page from an SD card, or built-im memory.  The technology already exists for digital Braille because there are translation devices that are built into the many devices that are currently being used by the blind that translate text into Braille dots, both in grade 1 and grade 2 Braille.  So having a tablet sized device that represents and entire Braille page that digitally produces the Braille dots would be a great way to reintroduce the reading of Braille to many of Today’s blind readers.  There would be a series of buttons at the bottom of the device for navigation through the file, such as backward and forward to act as page turning devices.  The Braille tablet could resemble a Braille book, but a very thin one indeed. That way, the user could store litterally thousands upon thousands of books in the device, and still be able to read a Braille book much like he or she would if they were reading a non-digitized version of that same book.

This I think would be the revolution in Braille because it would strongly encourage newly blind individuals to begin reading Braille without the bother of those very large, cumbersome Braille books.  The device would accept plain text files, word documents, pdf documents and other text related documents into it and instantly translate that material into either grade 1, or grade 2 braille.

The device would run off of long lasting batteries with the option of being powered by wall outlet.  When plugged into the wall outlet, it owuld charge up for external use away from home, or the office.

As far as media storage goes, the device could have its own internal storage, or use external storage such as an SD card for material.  What a device like this would do for students in school, is it would instantly translate any textual information directly into grade 1, or grade 2 Braille for the student to read in class.  Litterally thousands of books could be stored on removable media, thus allowing the individual to have at their disposal all the material they would need for study, or leisure.

A device like this would hopefully spark a real interest in learning Braille,and improving upon Braille literacy.  So this is one way that modern technology could be used to bring back the love of reading Braille once again.  That way, Louis Braille’s invention would never be put to waste and gone by the wayside.

Motown icon, advocates encourage CES vendors to consider blind needs
By Sinead Carew
Reuters
updated 11:32 a.m. CT, Fri., Jan. 9, 2009
NEW YORK -

The craze for touch-screen gadgets, sparked by Apple Inc’s popular iPhone, is raising worries that a whole generation of consumer electronics will be out of the reach of the blind.
Motown icon Stevie Wonder and other advocates came to the world’s biggest gadget fest, the annual
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, to convince vendors to consider the needs of the blind.

Wonder told a CES event that his wishlist included a car he could drive — which he acknowledged was
probably "a ways away" — and a Sirius XM satellite radio he could operate.
"If you can take those few steps further, you can give us the excitement, the pleasure and the freedom of
being a part of it," said the famed musician.

Wonder said some companies had managed to make their products more accessible to the blind, sometimes
without even meaning to. He cited an iPod music player and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry as gadgets he
likes to use.
Advocates argue that if product designers take into account blind needs, they would make electronics that are
easier to use for the sighted as well.

The good news is that manufacturers do not need to put large sums of money into making products
accessible, nor would they have to forsake innovation, said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National
Federation For The Blind.
"We don’t want to hold up technological progress," he said. "What we’re saying is, think about the interface
and set it up in such a way that it’s simple …. The simpler you make the user interface of a product, it’s going
to reach more people sighted or blind."

Touch screens

With the popularity of touch screens, once simple products such as televisions and stereos have become
difficult for blind people to use as they often require navigation of multiple menus that need to be seen to be
used effectively.

"That’s an increasing problem with new digital devices. It’s easy to add feature after feature that’s buried
under menu after submenu," said Mike Starling, chief technology officer of National Public Radio, which is
working on accessible options.
Manufacturers have been putting touch screens in everything from calculators and watches to computers and
music players.

Sendero Group President Mike May, who is blind, joked, "Can I ski 60 miles an hour downhill? Yes. Use a flat
panel microwave? No." Sendero makes GPS navigational devices that have an audio output for the blind.
There are also screen readers that give an audio reading of a phone’s menu. But Anne Taylor, director of
access technologies at the National Federation for the Blind, says they do not yet help her to use a touchscreen
phone.

She said the ability to use a device without needing to look at it could help sighted people who are driving or
older people whose eyesight is starting to deteriorate.

While blind users can buy screen-reading software for $300 upward, it tends to only work on certain phones,
often the most expensive smartphones. Sendero said accessible technology is often expensive, and about 70
percent of the U.S. blind population is unemployed.

Taylor is using CES as a forum to present vendors a set of suggestions for product design that she sees
benefiting both sighted and blind consumers.
For example, manufacturers could include an easy-to-use start-over button, different sounds for different
menus, and controls with good tactile feedback.

Progress

Ahead of the show, there were some signs that vendors, while unlikely to give up on the touch-screen trend,
may be more ready to consider consumers with disabilities.
Developers at Google Inc are working on ways to make touch-screen phones, including those based on its own
Android mobile software, usable for blind people.

National Public Radio announced a special radio receiver technology and software that would connect a digital
radio to a dynamic Braille generating device. It has also created special digital radio channels for readings of
the day’s newspapers.

Dice Electronics has made a prototype radio that incorporates the NPR technology, and NPR’s Starling hopes
this will become a commercial product in 2009.
Starling has also set up meetings at CES with other manufacturers in the hope they will include NPR’s
technology. He said responses to requests for information, which often go unheeded, are much more active
this year.

Some manufacturers could use their production facilities to make such devices, as demand weakens for more
mainstream products in the economic downturn, he said.
"I think in general there may be a view that accessibility may be becoming the new green," said Starling.

This is a milestone because this site gets a lot of traffic, and with that, we could end up with even more members, and even more successful business owners as a result.  Like I had stated in the last post, my goal for 2009 is to heavily promote the BOSS program.  Doing that will take a lot of work on my part, but it is more than worth it.

I plan to give each and every member of the program copies of our promotional CD so that they too can help to spread the word about BOSS, plus I plan to contact other web sites and other agencies for and by the blind.  The more that BOSS is promoted and put out there, the more members we will get and the more members that we have could possibly mean more successful business owners as a result, and that’s what I am aiming for in 2009.

With the help of each and every BOSS member, we can definitely make this happen.  Who knows where all this promotion may lead us, but I can assure you of this, and that is; wherever it leads, it will definitely be good for BOSS, and all of its members.

We have covered a lot of ground this past year, and we’re looking forward to 2009 with even more expectation than ever before.  We have high hopes that BOSS will grow even more this next year because we’re getting ready to heavily promote our program.

As I write this post, I am preparing to launch a massive promotional campaign which will include every BOSS member.  I plan to send each and every BOSS member two of our promotional CD’s that they can use to spread the word out about the Blind Online Success System.

These promotional CD’s were created some time back, but this next year, they will be used for some rather major promotion.  I have already started this campaign by emailing many agencies for the blind, and I have already recieved some responses.  However, this campaign will go even further during 2009.

Promotion of the Blind Online Success System is a must.  We need to get the word out and we need to expand and get more blind and visually impaired people starting their own online businesses through our unique program.

Anybody who is interested in assisting us to promote our program is more than welcome to assist in any way possible.  We strongly urge the public to get involved if at all possible.  The more that this is promoted, the better it will become.  We have already reached some milestones, and we plan to reach even more during 2009.

Let’s make 2009 a year of new horizons and greater expansion all throughout our entire program.  Let’s see how far we can take this, and let’s see just how many new members we can get to join us.  2009 will definitely be a grand business-building year for the BOSS program.  I would like to see many new businesses started and I would like to see many new happy business owners.  These are my personal goals for the BOSS program, and that’s what I plan to work on this new year.