The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, a charitable and educational foundation, provides a variety of services to the blind and deaf-blind throughout the county. The AAF, largely operated by the blind themselves, does everything it can to be responsive to and supportive of the needs and wishes of blind people.
All of the board members of the AAF are blind and volunteer their time. Each has extensive experience working with other blind individuals and groups. There is not space here to tell you about all of the board members and staff of the AAF, but we will let you meet a few.
The following remarks are taken from an address delivered by Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, formerly Executive Director of the American Action Fund, and the outstanding spokesman for change in the field of work with the blind from the late 1960s into the 1990s. The sentences below set the tone that is making it possible for the blind to achieve success in new fields of employment year after year and to gain greater acceptance:
It is doubtless true still of the majority of blind people that they see themselves as others see them. The images and stereotypes of blindness that prevail in society tend to become the self-images of the blind. But not entirely, not necessarily, and not exclusively. For one thing, there are new and better images of blindness abroad in the land—with new success to confirm them, new opportunities to reinforce them, and new organizations to support them. The antique myths and stereotypes of gloom and doom no longer hold the field alone; nor can they long survive in open contest with the truth.
When, then, is the truth? The truth is that we the blind are not doomed to dependence, but due for independence; not consigned to isolation, but prepared for integration; not condemned to frustration and futility, but capable of fulfillment—let us live up to the truth—let us live this truth—and this truth will make us free.*
President of the Board of Directors of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is Barbara Walker. Mrs. Walker graduated with distinction from the University of Nebraska with a degree in Education and a major in English. She has been employed as a Supervisor of the Training Center of the Nebraska Rehabilitation Agency for the Blind and as Braille Teacher of blind children and adults. More recently she has been working with blind seniors to assist with their adjustment to sight loss, especially teaching the use of computers. Mrs. Walker also serves as Chairman of the Nebraska Commission for the Blind. She has two children who are now young adults.
Barbara Walker has authored numerous articles regarding her experiences with blindness and blind people.
Hazel (Mrs. Robert) Staley is a housewife. She received an MS degree in social work from the University of North Carolina and has been employed as a social worker for the North Carolina Commission for the Blind and Mecklenburg Association for the Blind (now Metrolina Association for the Blind), in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is proud of being a housewife and mother. She has served as president of the local PTA, has held numerous positions of leadership in her church, and served as president of the largest organization of blind people in North Carolina for several years. She comments, "Well, I thought about going back to work after my son was away from home, but I really didn't have time. I was too busy." In 1977 Mrs. Staley was chosen as a citizen of the year in Charlotte.
Hazel Staley is now 86-years-old and still active. She serves as secretary of the American Action Fund.
Treasurer of the AAF is Mr. James Omvig. Mr. Omvig received his law degree from Loyola University in Chicago in 1966 and was employed as Regional Attorney in New York City for the National Labor Relations Board. He has worked closely with blind workers in workshops for the blind who have organized to work for better wages and benefits, and he has played a leading role in the effort by the blind Americans to get fair insurance coverage. Mr. Omvig has been a deacon in his church and a leader of his local Lions Club.
Jim Omvig now serves as Chairman of the National Blindness Professional Certification Board. In this capacity, he is making major strides in improving the quality of professionals in work with the blind throughout the country. Mr. Omvig has written a book entitled "Freedom for the Blind: The Secret is Empowerment" which was published in 2002 by the Rehabilitation Services Administration of the Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
Another one of the Board Members of the AAF is Adrienne Asch who grew up in New York and New Jersey. She graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. During high school and college years, Miss Asch organized and managed a choir and orchestra in her county. After college graduation in 1969 with a degree in philosophy, Miss Asch moved to New York City and began seeking employment. After 100 interviews in one month, she took a job as a typist in temporary employment.
During the next few years she was very active in an effort to improve civil rights legislation for the disabled. After receiving a masters degree from Columbia University, she worked in health services administration and legislative analysis. In 1992, she earned a P.h.D from Columbia University in social psychology. Dr. Aschthen was employed as associate professor of social work at Boston University. For nearly a decade, Dr. Asch has worked as the Henry R. Luce Professor in biology, ethics, and politics of human reproduction at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
She is well known for publications in her field which include Women with Disabilities (co-editor); Pre-Natal Testing and Disability Rights; The Double-Edged Helix, Social Implications of Genetics in a Diverse Society; and more than fifty additional articles and chapters of other books.
These four individuals are typical of AAF Board Members. The remaining members of the Board are:
Ron Gardner, administrator of a college program educating teachers in work with the blind of Utah;
James Gashel, who works as Director of Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of the Blind from Maryland;
Sandy Halverson, a medical transcriber specialist from Virginia;
Gary Mackenstadt, who is employed with the Office of Civil Rights in Washington state;
Ramona Walhof, a businesswoman from Idaho; and
Kevon Worley, a businessman in Colorado.
The depth of the collective experience and knowledge of the members of the Board of Directors of the American Action Fund makes it possible for the AAF to provide the kind of service to blind individuals that is seldom available to them. The following material draws on the collective experience of the staff and all of the Board of Directors of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults.
Below is a brief description of the services of the American Action Fund.
Young sighted children learn a great deal from pictures. Young blind children explore with their fingers and learn a great deal from that exploration. The American Action Fund has developed a series of books, "The Shape of Things," so that blind children can enjoy pictures they can touch, just as sighted children enjoy pictures they can see.
The American Action Fund produces and distributes for small children books that contain identical print and Braille texts side-by-side—Twin Vision books. Young blind children can learn about books as toddlers reading with parents and friends. They do not need to wait until school age to begin to learn about Braille. Blind children are as eager to learn as sighted children. Braille is as exciting and as challenging to a toddler who is blind as print is to one who can see.
Blind parents and blind teachers who use Twin Vision books with sighted children are extremely enthusiastic about these books.
The American Action Fund distributes Twin Vision books free of charge throughout the United States to: State Schools for the Blind, regional Braille libraries, blind children and blind parents, institutions serving the blind, and schools and libraries in many foreign countries through the Kenneth Jernigan Twin Vision Library.
The American Action Fund has been able to award scholarships to some very deserving blind college students. We would like to award more scholarships than we have been able to offer in the past, and there are college student who need and merit our help. The American Action Fund will continue to offer scholarships to blind students to the extent it has resources to do so.
For a person who is both deaf and blind, communication is very difficult. Even keeping up with the daily news is a problem, since a deaf-blind person can neither read the newspaper nor listen to the news on radio or television. The American Action Fund produces a summery of the news, "Hot Line to Deaf-Blind," in Braille bi-weekly. "Hot Line to Deaf-Blind" is sent free of charge to deaf-blind individuals and to libraries that serve them. The American Action Fund has received numerous letters from individuals who read the "Hot Line to Deaf-Blind" saying that this magazine is the principal means they have to keep themselves informed and up-to-date on what is in the news.
To function efficiently in today's society, blind people need certain specialized devices: Braille watches, white canes, Braille writing equipment. If the blind person who needs such a device is unable to pay for it, the American Action Fund can very often be of assistance. Other devices that aid blind individuals are more expensive: talking clocks, talking calculators, cassette recorders, Braille micrometers, instruments that detect light or measure the level of liquid in a cup or glass. Often such special instruments and tools will help a blind person get a job or help that person do his or her job more effectively. The American Action Fund helps these people to the extent its resources will permit.
Each year the American Action Fund produces Braille pocket calendars and sends them to blind individuals free of charge. You receive calendars for Christmas presents. You could walk into any of dozens of stores to buy a calendar. A blind person cannot get Braille calendars from stores and is not likely to receive one for Christmas. The convenience of a calendar may seem a little thing, but it is important. Many thousands of blind Americans depend upon the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults for Braille calendars.
More than half of all blind individuals in this country lose their sight near or after retirement age. A newly blinded person must make a major adjustment. He or she must learn new methods to do things that have always seemed simple. Often a newly blinded person does not know where to go to find out about special methods and tools that blind people use. Often a newly blinded person does not know that these tools and methods exist. Even though half of all blind people are senior citizens, fewer services are available to older people than to young blind people. The American Action Fund is doing what it can to help people who become blind late in life adjust to their blindness.
These people want to be as independent as possible. They do not know what to expect. The American Action Fund can offer advice, much needed encouragement, and information about government services that are available to the senior blind. Often the American Action Fund can offer additional services to individuals.
Vision Loss and Senior Citizens: Rights, Resources, and Responsibilities is an effort to compile the kinds of information requested and desperately needed by thousands of blind individuals all over the country into one book which can made available to blind persons, their friends and families, and agencies that serve them. The American Action Fund has drawn on the collective experience and knowledge of hundreds of persons to develop this material.
* Taken from an address by Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, Blindness: The Triple Revolution. Published in the Braille Monitor, February 1970, pages 434-442.