New this year the American Council of the Blind will provide our members and community Spanish language ACB content for the DC Leadership Meeting March 12-15th. 

ACB will use this year as a pilot experience to test the translation and Spanish use for certain materials, host a live segment, and by selecting relevant content for podcasting capabilities bilingually. 
This pilot will include:

The American Council of the Blind is among 181 undersigned disability organizations who believe that there is an urgent need for digital accessibility regulations. We urge the Department of Justice to promulgate enforceable online accessibility standards by the end of the current Administration. The US Department of Justice has long held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) includes websites and other technologies that are critical to accessing a business' or agency’s services or facilities but has failed to define when and how they should be accessible.

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and Congressman Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) reintroduced the Medicare Demonstration of Coverage for Low Vision Devices Act. This legislation would help vision-impaired Medicare beneficiaries live safe and independent lives by creating a five-year national demonstration project to evaluate the economic impact of allowing reimbursement for low vision devices, which are currently excluded from Medicare coverage.

El American Council of the Blind (Consejo Americano de Ciegos) es la organización líder, impulsada por miembros, en la nación para personas con ceguera o pérdida de visión. Con ás de 65 afiliados estatales y de interés especial a lo largo del país, el ACB está compremetido con la tarea de incrementar el nível en la seguridad, la independencia, la calidad de vida, y las oportunidades económicas, para las personas con ceguera o baja visión en los Estadus Unidos; además, el ACB se mantiene firme en la tarea de abogar con apego a nuestros valores.

The American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project Announces Call for Nominations for the Fourteenth Annual ADP Awards in 2022

The Audio Description Project (ADP) is a wide-ranging audio description promotion and production initiative with goals that include:

Throughout the pandemic, ACB has heard from our members about the increasing importance of accessible health care information to the wellbeing of our community. As more health care providers communicate with their patients through electronic means, we want to ensure that the systems being used are usable and accessible to our members. To assist in our efforts to ensure that health care information systems are accessible to all patients, it would be very helpful if you could complete the short survey of questions below.

The American Council of the Blind is the nation’s leading member-driven organization for individuals who are blind and experiencing vision loss. With over 65 state and special-interest affiliates across the country, ACB is committed to increasing the security, independence, quality of life, and economic opportunity for people who are blind and low vision in the United States, and ACB stands committed to advocacy that lifts up our values.

Recently we were able to add accessible improvements in our Dots and Dashes newsletter in the form of headings. We are pleased to share with you that we can now include content headings to break up content subjects in the newsletter making reading the content a more user-friendly experience. Screen reader users are now able to jump to different sections and topics directly rather than having to read through the entire copy without any accessible distinction.

Where and when can I watch the Olympic coverage with audio description on television?

American Council of the Blind 
1703 N. Beauregard St. Suite 420 
Alexandria, VA 22311 

January 31, 2022

Lawrence Tabak, DDS, PhD
Acting Director
National Institutes of Health
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Dear Acting Director Lawrence Tabak: 

As the President of the American Council of the Blind (ACB), we need your help. I write to you on behalf of our members and the blind and low vision community, to urge the National Institutes of Health to develop accessible testing right away.