Blog Posts by Subject: Disabilities and Accessibility

Our links from April.

Free touch tour of the Glenn Ligon: AMERICA exhibit at the Whitney Museum on Friday, May 6 at 11:00AM. Call 212-570-7789 to RSVP.

How Bind People See the Internet is a nice overview.

"War is Peace." "Freedom is Slavery." "Ignorance is Strength." These tenets of doublethink are from George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984. It's Dystopia Week at Tor.com, which provides an excellent incentive to look at one of my favorite genres, or subgenres: Dystopian Fiction!

From inspiring stories to the latest in assistive technology, we've got it all! Here are the links and announcements we posted on Facebook and Twitter for March.

The New York Times covered our Unseen Dance program, presented by the No-See-Ums.

With few exceptions (music, sculpture, tactile canvases), the Arts have typically been inaccessible to people who are blind or who have visual difficulties, but the times, as is often said, are a-changing. Dana Salisbury and the No-See-Ums will be presenting BARK! An Unseen Dance, at four New York Public Libraries this month. Based on non-visual perception, this is the first dance form fully accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.

We've got a grab-bag of links and articles for you this month.

Unseen Dance at the New York Public Library: Dana Salisbury and the No-See-Ums perform BARK, a dance for blindfolded audiences. Audience members experience the dance through their other senses. The group will perform at the Andrew Heiskell Library on Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. For Adults Only.

Thursday, March 24, 2011
10:30 AM
Richard H. Hungerford School

 
Anne Ford is the best selling author of A Special Mother, a book written in recognition of the role of the mother in the life of a disabled child. She was most recently featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in a segment called “Making a Difference.”

In the summer of 2009, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped officially went digital. For many months before digital cartridges were introduced, however, digital books were available for downloading from the National Library Service's BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. At first, the BARD service was only lightly used, but once patrons started to receive their players in mid-2009, BARD downloading began in earnest. Here's how the year of downloading books shaped up, statistically speaking. The number of total downloads for the month is in parentheses for each title.

This month's links focus on disability rights, along with some useful services.

The White House Disability Group holds monthly calls to update the public on various issues related to disabilities.

To listen in:
Dial-in number: (800) 230-1093
Title: Disability Call (use instead of code)
For live captioning (at time of call) go to the event page.

Most people read with their eyes. They might read a physical book or electronic text. Some people read with their ears, listening to audiobooks or Talking Books from the National Library Service. And some people read with their fingers.

January 4th marks the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, inventor of the raised writing system that bears his name and is still used by blind people to communicate.

We've got a few links that might interest you as we say goodbye to 2010 and welcome 2011. Don't forget: The library will be closed on Saturday, January 1, 2011, but you'll be able to leave Voicemail messages at 212-206-5400 and 212-206-5425.

We've got some news and interesting articles to share with you.

The number 1 BARD download for November was The Heart Of The Matter by Emily Giffin, DB 71280 [NYPL] Tied for a distant second: Split Image by Robert B. Parker, DB 71123 [NYPL] and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, DB 48437 [NYPL].

Selected memoirs and practical resources relating to disabilities in commemoration of December 3rd: The International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was designed to level the playing field for individuals with disabilities by ending illegal discrimination and providing reasonable accommodations to balance the needs of those individuals and employers, providers of products and services, and setting minimum standards for a range of services and products from building design and construction to telecommunication devices.

In October, The New York Public Library launched a large exhibition, showcasing materials from its permanent collections, to celebrate the Three Faiths of Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam. From NYPL's website:  "Jews, Christians, and Muslims all possess a book that they regard as the Word of God. That Word—and the way it has been written, copied and illustrated over the centuries—is the basis of Three Faiths." 

As part of our monthly series, we're sharing highlights from our postings on Facebook, featuring updates from the National Library Service www.loc.gov/nls, news about our programs, and links to sites we thought interesting and useful. You can follow us on Facebook to get all our updates as we post them.

Last week Correctional Services completed a new program at Rikers Island called Daddy & Me. The program is designed to encourage early literacy efforts for incarcerated fathers. After two workshops on the importance of early literacy and storytelling skills, the dads involved began to record stories for their children. There were eight men in the program, most of them with more than one young child. We recorded them reading their children's favorite books and this morning they presented the finished CDs with the books to their kids. The program went wonderfully with the help of a few very dedicated people in both the library and the jail. The fathers 

Once again, we're sharing highlights from our postings on Facebook, featuring updates from the National Library Service, news about our programs, and links to sites we thought interesting and useful. You can follow us on Facebook to get all our updates as we post them.

Have you ever wondered why it takes so long for new books to be added to our Talking Book collection? A lot of steps make up the process. Here at the Andrew Heiskell Library, we are able to supplement the audio collection we get from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) with books we record in our own Audio Book Studio (ABS), with the assistance of volunteer narrators, monitors, and audio proofreaders.

Recently, The New York Times ran a wonderful peek inside the studio in their City Room article "Audio Books with a New York Accent." So the time seemed right for us to offer our own 

Once again, we're presenting links to sites covering disability issues, as well as announcements of changes and enhancements of the services, and anything else that caught our attention during September. These links and announcements previously appeared on our Facebook and Twitter pages.