Tuesday Topics

20260707 Tuesday Topics - 2026 ACB Convention - Voting, bylaws, resolutions Explore elements of the upcoming convention. We look at how elections will be handled and explore the bylaw amendments that are proposed. Board members are up for election this year as are Board of Publications members. We will actually be doing elections during the virtual week that precedes our actual St. Louis time. Jus...

On June 30 Tuesday Topics will once more take to the internet waves with what has become a commonplace now. We will have one last scholarship winner and will then turn things over to the team and those present to talk with us about what they are reading during the Summer and what plans are being made as well. We decided that we didn't want to choose a weighty topic as June ended or as our penultim...

Tuesday Topics welcomes more scholarship winners and Amanda Selm, Chair of the scholarship committee. Then Tuesday Topics explores new plans for one of the most valuable activities of ACB! Kenneth Simien Senior brings some folks who are part of the committee that oversees mentoring for ACB. We hear about those who have participated this year and about some changes that are planned for the 26-27 ed...

June 6, 2026 - Tuesday Topics - Scholarships and Gardening with George Holiday Two more scholarship winners join us to brighten up the start of the show and then we welcome George Holiday who shares the how's and why's of gardening. It was a rule at my house that Paul did not have anything to do with plants. Even my early school project to grow radishes was an abject failure. My wives and my child...

Tuesday Topics - Scholarship Winners and Grandparents June 9, 2026 Tuesday Topics once more takes to the internet with a double feature. First, we have some more ACB scholarship winners to get to know. We had our first three and I truly enjoyed exploring in some detail how their experiences had been. Two of our winners had lost their sight relatively recently which makes their success even more am...

On June 2 Tuesday Topics will try another new thing! As we take to the internet we will create a platform for some of our ACB scholarship winners to tell us a little about who they are and what they are doing. Amanda SELM, current chair of the ACB Scholarship Committee, is the prime mover in this process to share scholarship winners with the broader ACB community. During this show we will explore...

At a convention of the Florida Council of the Blind a speaker from Vispero mentioned Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) which  happens on May 21, I think. It occurred to me that this might represent a good topic for us to look at. There are huge differences in accessibility even among developed countries. Some of those countries model what they do on what we do in the United States. Many ha...

It is graduation season and we wonder how that goes for people who are blind. When you graduated from high school or college was that a good experience? Were you treated in a special way as a person with visual impairment? Was the experience memorable for you? Were there problems?

In the past we have done programs on autonomous vehicles. Recently several folks have had the chance to ride in vehicles with no drivers and we thought it would be fun to ask them about their experience and their impressions. We also want to explore where we are in the process of regularizing their ability to function on a permanent basis. How good are accessibility features? Are there likely to b...

We will be continuing the discussion begun on our latest podcast concerning the state of the blindness nation today and tomorrow. We have essentially finished painting what we think is a fairly accurate picture of how the blindness system has changed over the last couple of decades and what some of the characteristics of the current system are. We have begun to identify components of what we think...

People who are blind have access to more information than they have ever had before! There is more technological choice for this population than there has ever been. Consumer organizations are advocating and so are organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind, the Vision Serve Alliance and the American Printing House for the Blind. What is the vision that advocating organizations have,...

On April 21, from 7 to 9 PM Eastern time, Tuesday Topics will once more take to the internet and other devices with a first look at the ACB convention coming up toward the end of July. We will be hearing about a new program aimed to attract young people to our convention. We will hear about a new and exciting component of the scholarship program and we will hear from our fearless convention leader...

We are excited about this program because we will get the chance to have three guests who we will get to know better. All of them are ladies who have recently begun working for the American Council of the Blind. The first of them that I met was Caitlin Lee who was waiting for a shuttle to the hotel in Washington DC with me at the airport. She is working on finding funds for ACB so we can do the im...

Tuesday Topics continues its exploration of devices available to purchase for less than a thousand dollars. We will look at several sets of ear buds and explore what makes them worth talking about. We will look at telephones. Some of them actually have buttons you can use to dial! We will explore players. These days they are a lot more than just players of music and books and we will explore some...

Everybody knows there is an unprecedented quantity of access technology out there. At CSUN three major new note takers were announced! They are at the forefront of what is new and innovative but most of them cost an arm and a leg and another arm! We thought it might be fun to explore the currently available tech that you can buy for under a thousand dollars! There are note takers, players, keyboar...

It may seem to some that the topic we have chosen this week is simplistic and doesn't involve a lot of discussion. We are hoping that the topic of literacy will provide two hours of spirited discussion. Is a blind person who only reads by listening fully literate or not? Is a person who listens actually reading? What role does braille play in determining whether an individual is literate? What abo...

All of our topics stem from the time of year. First we will talk about daylight savings time. Is it a good idea? What does research say? Is it different for people who are totally blind because our rhythms are not affected by light? Nevertheless is it a good thing or not? The day of our program is March 17 which happens to be St. Patrick's day. Have you had interesting experiences on that day? Did...

ACB has deadlines! These are coming up pretty soon! They relate to things that will happen at the ACB convention. It is a tradition of this program that, at this time each year, we invite folks to tell us about what is on offer. We know we will hear from the Durward K. McDaniel First Timers Committee who will tell us about a chance for several people to come to our convention free. They will actua...

Two weeks ago we spent time looking at new technology that is making sporting events more accessible. How are things now? Are they better than in the past or worse? Do most blind people listen to sports on the radio or use television? How do you think radio sports have cha'nged over the past few decades and why? Sports have been a huge part of the lives of many people who are blind! Tell us how yo...

we will explore romance on Tuesday Topics. We have talked about dating before but this time we thought it would be interesting to go a little further. How do most relationships between people who are blind get started? Is it on line? Is it because of meetings locally? How did you celebrate Valentine's day? What are some of the most romantic things you have done or have had the opportunity to recei...

I think particularly people who are born blind often assume they know a lot more about how sports work than they actually do! I know that I take formations in football for granted and don't have a good understanding of how players are placed in cricket even though these are sports I follow. It will be interesting to see how two folks who have been blind all their lives (I think) experience new tec...

Tuesday Topics will take a big risk! Lots of our shows depend on hearing from guests. We sometimes invite several guests to join us! This time we are making a different sort of invitation! We are inviting affiliates to tell us what they do to build membership! Virtually everybody knows about BITS and its hugely successful effort to increase its membership. We heard last night that it's important f...

This is the time of year when our affiliates are getting ready to send in membership lists so we thought it might be a good thing to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly about how we are doing at the local, state and national level at encouraging new members. It's generally accepted that our membership numbers are falling. Why is that? Are there particular reasons it is happening to ACB? A fe...

It is still January so many people will still have a pretty good memory of what happened last year! We thought it would be fun to ask you to think back to last year and tell us about some cool things you found last year. We would like to hear about the best book you read! We want to know about the best movie you saw! (It doesn't have to be a new one!) We want to know about what you think the best...

Tuesday Topics will encourage folks to consider an issue that could potentially create some interesting disagreements. As we take to the internet and a range of devices too numerous to mention, we will explore together a question that everybody has thought about but many have avoided discussing! Many people attempt to persuade us that there is only one sort of person with visual impairments. That...