Tuesday Topics

We are overjoyed to welcome back ACB'S President, Dan Spoone. We will talk about 2020, 2021 and will end with a discussion of the Voting Task Force. Dan must leave us to go to a meeting of that group so I thought we might use his discussion of where the group is and what plans there are to springboard a discussion of the whole voting issue for the last half hour of the show. Rick Morin, Larry Gass...

Episode Notes This episode of Tuesday Topics has two for the price of one...... Debbie Hazelton and Cindy Hollis, perhaps the most popular presenter at state conventions this Fall and the heart and soul of the community radio revolution, join Paul to talk about their plans for Christmas 2020 and New Year's 2021 on ACB Radio and the Community calls. Cindy Hollis is Paul's first repeat guest. Cindy...

Episode Notes Ninety miles off the coast of the United States is the island of Cuba. 11.3 million people, according to 2020 figures, live on an island which, since the early 1960s, has had a communist government. Paul's guests on this episode of Tuesday Topics grew up there and give us a glimpse of what life was like for people who are blind in Cuba. Roberto and Danays Perez now live in Miami. Rob...

Episode Notes In this episode of Tuesday Topics, Mark Richert is Paul's guest. Mark has had a long and distinguished career working in the disability field. He is currently First Vice President of the American Council of the Blind and interim Executive Director of the Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER). Mark talks about his experience, the sta...

Episode Notes Imagine what it might have been like for a little girl in a small village in Vietnam to lose her sight at the age of eight and suddenly be seen as a liability rather than an asset to her family. Imagine what it must have been like for a teenager who is blind to leave Vietnam where she was successful and felt useful and suddenly find herself at a school for the blind in Massachusetts...

Episode Notes This episode of Tuesday Topics Paul speaks with Jim Kracht, a friend who happens as well to have an interesting life. He is a current Board member of ACB who has lived a very full life, has a most interesting hobby and knows more about lots of things than I will ever know. Jim started out in California and ended up in Miami by way of Harvard Law. We discuss his history, his family, h...

Episode Notes Patti Cox, President of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International (CCLVI) joins Paul Edwards, President of the Braille Revival League to discuss what the two ACB affiliates are doing and what their goals are. Our topic this week should interest people who are totally blind and those with some vision. Find out more at https://acb-tuesday-topics.pinecast.co

Re-live election night's Tuesday Topics with Paul Edwards! Callers relate their experiences and their impressions of how things went before and on election day. Anthony Corona joins Paul bringing the enthusiasm and knowledge he has demonstrated on Sunday Edition for the last several months. Paul and Anthony explore the elements of this historic election with callers from around the country. Caller...

Dr. Joel Snyder explores the history and future of audio description. How did audio description start? Who did it? Why has closed captioning become ubiquitous while audio description has to fight for hours? It's ten years since the CVAA was passed; the anniversary is this month! Should we push for changes? There are very few people who have the comprehensive knowledge of audio description that is...

Dr. L. Penny Rosenblum answers questions about two surveys that shed much light on the impact of the pandemic on people who are blind. It seems like an age ago that the pandemic began. It is therefore not surprising if most of us have given little thought to an event that occurred fairly early on. It was a survey that ACB sponsored along with fifteen or so other organizations and companies. Its ob...

This episode of Tuesday Topics explores what telling our stories has to do with our ability to raise dollars. What kind of image do we want to communicate? Why are our stories relevant? Who are we trying to communicate with? Are we making an effort to define what it means to be blind for ourselves as well? Anthony (Tony) Stephens is on his second tour with ACB. Now he directs our efforts to raise...

There is an old saying that says: "a one-eyed man is king in the country of the blind." Only ten percent of those who are legally blind are totally blind according to statistics I have seen. In ACB, how are partials doing? Are they represented in proportion to their numbers? If not, why not? Do the issues facing people with some usable vision get enough attention in our resolutions or in our polic...

On Friday, September 11th 2020, Charlie Crawford passed away. During his long life he made many friends, did many wonderful things, lived by a set of principles I admired and was my friend. This two hour episode of Tuesday Topics is devoted to a celebration of Charlie's life. You will hear the good things, the funny things, the passions, the principles and the panache that were all a part of who C...

Find out what younger members of ACB are doing and expect from ACB! Amanda Selm is President of ACB'S newest affiliate: ACB Next Generation. Minh Ha is President of ACB Students. Both of these young women are guests on this episode of Tuesday Topics. They tell us what their affiliates are up to and a little about themselves. They will also give us a chance to discuss the recruitment of younger mem...

At our ACB convention this year there was a short presentation at our General session from Lee Nasehi, chair of the Vision Serve Alliance. If you didn't hear her presentation, you will get a chance to learn much more about an organization which is in the process of reinventing itself. At its heart, the Alliance is an association of private agencies that serve people who are blind. Lee will tell us...

It seems amazing that we are now six months into the pandemic, but we are. When Tuesday Topics first started we did a show that tried to explore some of the ways that people who are blind were affected by covid-19. We looked at positives and negatives. I want us to do that again, six months into the crisis and see if our feelings have changed. How is keeping our distance going? How do other commun...

Tuesday Topics is now old enough to drink and old enough to vote everywhere. It is fitting, therefore, that we talk a little about voting at ACB and its affiliates. It will happen at 7 PM on Tuesday August 25. If you are going to be participating with us be on our Zoom connection at 6:45 Eastern Daylight Time. We want to take a long view and look back at where ACB came from and how our voting appr...

we will be discussing our twentieth topic! Time flies when you are having fun! Thank you so much, Rick as in Morin! You are what makes this little plane fly, sir! This week we are going to discuss getting older which all of us do! However, we will focus on those blind people who are old enough to call themselves seniors. Some of us become seniors having been blind most or all of our lives. Others...

For long term, happy partnerships which is better; a relationship between two blind people or a relationship between a blind person and a sighted partner? I believe there will be strong opinions on both sides of this question. For the purposes of this debate, two partials equals two blind people. Do join us for our first "great debate".

Tuesday Topics takes a look at people who have hearing loss as well as vision loss. Deborah Kendrick has written a new book about people who are blind who have hearing loss. She explores the problems multiple disabilities create and also looks at resources that are out there for people who must operate with two disabilities. We will also have a representative from SASI (the Sight and Sound Impaire...

My guests on this week's Tuesday Topics have recently lunched a new podcast called "picture this". Brian Charlson, current President of the Bay State Council and immediate past President of Library Users of America and former First Vice-President of ACB, has been an active advocate for audio description since it began. Carl Richardson is Co-Chair of ACB'S audio Description Project Committee. He kn...

Tuesday Topics is excited to welcome a distinguished duo to discuss the ADA at 30. Chris Bell is a distinguished attorney who was directly involved in writing the ADA and worked for many years for the government and later as a law partner to oversee its implementation and enforcement. He has published several seminal articles on the ADA and is acknowledged to be an expert on this subject Claire St...

Tuesday Topics is now two hours which should give people lots of time to talk about their likes and dislikes concerning the ACB convention. My co-producer of Tuesday Topics will be featured during the first hour to tell us more about how he herded cats and juggled streams during the convention. Rick Morin was awesome and I want him to tell us more about how he did what he did and I hope he will te...

This is a reminder to everyone to tune in tomorrow when Tuesday Topics will give you a chance to hear what will be broadcast where during the convention. I think that we will be able to tell which elements will be on which ACB Radio channels. The schedule for the virtual tours that will appear on the treasure Trove channel has already been published. But where will the exhibit hall be and what abo...

This week on Tuesday Topics we explore a question that demands attention. Do black blind lives matter enough? We know there is less likelihood that black blind people will be working and we know that blind black women fare even worse than their male counterparts. We think that ACB has fewer black members than we should but we currently have no way of knowing how many black members we have. Peggy G...