The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is a service agency which specializes in providing to blind people help which is not readily available to them from government programs or other existing service systems. The services of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults are planned especially to meet the needs of blind children, the elderly blind, and the deaf-blind. The purpose of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is to assist blind persons in securing reading matter, to educate the public about blindness, to give aid to the deaf-blind, to provide specialized aids and appliances to the blind, to give consultation to governmental and private agencies serving the blind, to offer assistance to older blind persons, to offer services to blind children and their parents, and to do any other lawful thing which it can to improve the quality of life for blind persons.

The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults has offices in Baltimore, Maryland, and Tarzana, California, and volunteer workers throughout the country. The Tarzana office houses our free lending library of Braille and Twin Vision^® books for blind children. Books are sent postage free to borrowers in the US and Canada. We publish and distribute to deaf-blind persons a free weekly newspaper in Braille internationally. The Action Fund also distributes free Braille calendars to blind and deaf-blind people on a nationwide basis. A very large number of volunteers help the Action Fund provide its services.

The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults has its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, at the National Center for the Blind. The National Center for the Blind was established in 1978 and has come to be the focal point of a great deal of the work being done to assist blind people throughout the country. The Action Fund carries on a widespread campaign of public education, administers a program of scholarships and financial and other specialized assistance to individual blind persons, conducts seminars about blindness, and provides information to senior citizens to help them deal with vision loss in their later years.

A renovated, turn-of-the-century, manufacturing facility comprising a square city block houses the National Center for the Blind, giving it ample space for handling the many activities relating to blindness which occur there. The International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind is also located at the National Center for the Blind. The American Action Fund assisted in establishing and equipping the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind so that all blind individuals, family members, employers, or other interested individuals can have the opportunity to learn about and evaluate the various kinds of computer-access devices which are now available to the blind.