ACB Advocacy Update

This week on the ACB Advocacy Update, Claire Stanley and Clark Rachfal discuss the launch of ACB Voices. They speak with two of the great minds behind the blog, ACB Director of Development Tony Stephens and ACB Communication Intern Anthony Corona, as well as ACB's new membership intern, Nat Ratcliffe, who has authored a post on the blog. Get ready to learn about ACB Voices and find out how you too can submit your story to the blog. Visit www.ACBVoices.org to learn more.

Clark Rachfal and Claire Stanley speak with Sarah Malaier, Public Policy and Research Advisor for the American Foundation for the Blind. They talk about their participation in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Accessible Strategic Plan Framework. The plan is exploring all angles of accessibility in the transportation arena.

This week on the ACB Advocacy Update, ACB staff members Claire Stanley and Clark Rachfal discuss how the coronavirus has touched upon numerous areas of advocacy ACB routinely works on. They highlight issues surrounding transportation, education, and voting, as well as outline the advocacy work that has been taken up in light of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 has presented a myriad of new problems to tackle.

On this episode of the Advocacy Update, Claire and Clark speak with multiple guests about the advocacy work and government initiatives to ensure in-person and remote absentee voting options are accessible. We are joined by Commissioner Donald Palmer, Vice Chair of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), as well as Carrie Chapman, President of the Iowa Council of the United Blind, and Barbara Salisbury, President of the ACB of Indiana. Commissioner Palmer shared the resources available for election officials and voters from the EAC, and Carrie and Barbara share the ongoing advocacy work in Iowa and Indiana.
To learn more about accessible voting, visit the ACB accessible voting toolkit at: www.acb.org/voting.
To learn more about the upcoming EAC roundtable on election accessibility on Aug. 19, visit: https://www.eac.gov/events/2020/08/19/roundtable-discussion-uocava-and-a....

This week, Claire and Clark speak with ACB members about their experiences surrounding education, both K-12 and higher ed, during COVID-19. The three guests offer different perspectives from blind parents, blind students, and disability service offices on university campuses, demonstrating how accommodations look different during the pandemic.

This week, ACB staff members Claire Stanley and Clark Rachfal speak with three ACB leaders who helped develop and present the Transportation Forum at this year's convention. The podcast covers the content, speakers, and take-aways from the forum.

On this episode of the ACB Advocacy Update, please enjoy this Audio Description Project (ADP) panel presentation from the 2020 ACB virtual conference and convention. Clark Rachfal and Claire Stanley were joined by Suzy Rosen Singleton and Will Schell from the Federal Communications Commission’s Disability Rights Office, and Carl Richardson, ADP Steering Committee co-Chair, to discuss the ten years of progress made by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility (CVAA) Act, what the CVAA law and regulations cover, and where the CVAA may be improved in the future.

This week's episode features ACB's Advocacy Bootcamp hosted by staff members Claire Stanley and Clark Rachfal during the 2020 ACB virtual convention. During this bootcamp, Claire and Clark discuss how to effectively self-advocate and the panel of advocates share their own advocacy journeys.

This week on the ACB Advocacy Update, ACB staff members Eric Bridges, Claire Stanley, and Tony Stephens provide a sneak peak of the 59th ACB Conference and Convention. They discuss what the convention will look like, what has gone into planning for the event, and how members can participate.

This week on the ACB Advocacy Update, we air the second part of an important webinar developed and produced by the ACB Special Education Committee. This podcast will teach parents and guardians about how to effectively work with their blind and visually impaired students, now that as a result of COVID, parents are playing a much larger part in their children’s educations.