American Council of the Blind 62nd Annual Conference and Convention
7/3/2023 9:30 AM

CONFIDENTIAL ROUGHLY EDITED REALTIME FILE
Compliments of HRICART.com

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This file was created in real time by a Human Realtime Captioner for the purpose of communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and may not be entirely verbatim. It is intended for use by the consumer only as notes of the proceedings. A consumer should check with the presenter for any clarification of the presentation.

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AMERICAN COUNCIL OF THE BLIND
62ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND CONVENTION – GENERAL SESSION
JULY 3, 2023, 9:30 AM
CONFIDENTIAL ROUGHLY EDITED REALTIME FILE
Compliments of HRICART.com
***************************************
This file was created in real time by a Certified Realtime Captioner for the purpose of communication access.  It is not a certified legal transcript and may not be entirely verbatim.  It is intended for use by the consumer only as notes of the proceedings.  A consumer should check with the presenter for any clarification of the presentation.
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	>> Welcome, we're about ready to start. 
	>> We're ready to start. 
	>> Okay.  Let's go ahead and start the streams and things. 
	>> Good morning, everyone. 
	Welcome to Monday!  Monday in Conventionland, that's not a bad thing, is it?  No, that's a good thing!  We have a lot to do today.  So we are going to have some slight changes of agenda.  And I'll kind of talk you through those as we go along throughout the day, but there will be some slight changes.  We are not taking an official break because of the amount of stuff we have to do, so just like Saturday night, if you need a break, by all means, take one.  I'll try to tell you a little ahead of what we're doing so you can time that out.  But meanwhile, we're calling the convention to order, and we're ready to begin our general session.  We're going to start this morning with the flag salute.  We actually have the flags today!  
[Cheering and Applause].  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes, and I just want to comment, as our scholarship winners are getting ready to lead us in the pledge 
-- that's you guys -- I want to comment that we were not able to have our salute on Saturday night with the American Legion post and these guys were ready but the flag was missing, but it's here today, so we are ready to go.  So if our scholarship winners will lead us in the pledge, we will begin now.  Flag is right, left for us.  Left for audience.  Okay.  Left for audience.  All right.  All right.  
	>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  All right.  I thought Ray was going to tell us to play ball. 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  This morning we have some sponsorship recognitions. 
	We have our corporate sponsors and those will be followed by our individual sponsors.  Today, we will be reading all of the corporate sponsors and individual sponsors and then we will not read all of the list of.  The American Council of the Blind would like to thank our 2023 convention sponsors.  Your support is sincerely appreciated.  Diamond sponsors -- JPMorgan Chase and Company, Microsoft, Vispero, Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Comcast. 
	Emerald sponsors -- Amazon, MGM Resorts, Cruise, Verizon, Janssen. 
	Ruby sponsors -- AT&T, Google, Waymo, Uber, Netflix, National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA), HumanWare, Charter Communications, Adobe. 
	Onyx sponsors -- Seleste, American Printing House (APH), Democracy Live Incorporated, AIRA, Walmart, United Airlines. 
	Pearl sponsors -- ACB Families, ACB Lions, National Industries For the Blind. 
	Coral sponsors -- Library Users of America. 
	Walk sponsors, Macular Degeneration Foundation. 
	The American Council of the Blind sincerely thanks our 2023 Conference and Convention sponsors for their generous support.  Individuals sponsors, titanium, $500. 
	Platinum, $250, Chris Bell, Edwin Rumsey, Marilyn Sanders, Maria Stone, Tim Stone, George. 
	$100, George Abbott, David Adams, Viola Bentson, Donna Brown, Ray Campbell, Virginia, Brian Duckalmire, Tom Frank, Katherine Fredrick, David Goldstein, Vicky Golightly, Debbie Hill, Donald Linda Hunt, Jim Kennedy, Victoria Kennedy, Gary Liggetts, John McCann, Glen McCully, Shirley Myers, Donna Pomerantz, Mitchell Pomerantz, Sara Presley, Sherry Richardson, Dan Spoone, Nancy Sumner, James Schwartz, Howard Thomas, Janice Thomas, Lee Tucker. 
	Silver $50 -- Sara Acman, Michael Alvarez, Rosanna Arby, Don Barrett, Liz Bottner, Ronald Brooks, Donna Browning, Olivia Chavez, Mary Ellen Cronin, Rita, Janet Dixon, Anita Doyle, Chris Libeck, Patty Becker, Peggy Garrett, Christopher Gray, Jeffrey Harris, Rochelle Hart, Melody Holloway, Connie Jackmeani, Lynne Koral, Judy, Rick Lewis, K.  Love, Julie McCulloch, Rose Miller, Mary, Cecily Nipper, Jane Perry, Allen Peterson, Debra Plumlee, Bruce Radke, Alice Ritchhart, Rachel Schroeder, Joe Slaten, Leslie Spoone, Sheila, Robert Turner, Debra, Ricardo Villa, Silver, $25, Mary Abramson, David Anderson, Joey Couch, Natalie Couch, Patti Cox, Joyce Driven, Tony Ames, Tyson Ernest, Marcia, Hazel Fields, Vicky Flakes, Kathleen Gear Heart, Debbie Herring, Robert Hill, Kenny, Darlene, Linda Holiday, Sue Howell, Jean Jacobs, Pamela Johnson, Jean, Richard Keyes, Cindy La Bon, Kevin LaRose, Paul Lewis, Van Lewis, Marcia Moses, Marilyn Muratta, Mary Pickereli, Lynn Roberts, Shirley Roberts, Gregory Rosenburg, James Rutherford, Kevin Semien, Sr., Tammy Snyder, Bill Sparks, Monica, Ellen, Harry, Jeff Thom, David Trott, Rhonda Trott, Myrna, Mary, Andre Web, Judy, Benjamin Wright, Elijah Duvaro.  
[Applause] 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  Wow.  That is just amazing.  And back in the old days, I read those one year.  It's a lot of reading.  Thank you, everyone, who has sponsored the convention this year.  It's just fabulous. 
	And speaking of our sponsors, we're going to hear two diamond sponsor presentations this morning.  We had a little schedule juggling that we needed to do to accommodate one of our sponsors, so this morning, our first sponsorship presentation is -- I'm not looking at the right place, is Ryan Jones, vice president software and product management from Vispero, I'd like to introduce to you Ryan Jones. 
	>> RYAN JONES:  Thank you all for allowing me to be here with you today.  I'm actually going to take this Microsoft and hold it.  Can everyone hear it?  Excellent.  So I just want to share some thoughts and notes that I have about where we are as -- in a landscape around technology, I'll share some personal anecdotes with you as well, but I was able to speak with some of the scholarship winners before we started.  Wow.  There are some great folks here, interesting things these folks are going to be doing.  
[Applause] 
The future is definitely bright.  I want to take a few moments to share about myself.  I started in Vispero about a year ago when my predecessor retired, and Eric is enjoying retirement and playing golf a lot so now I've taken over that role.  A little bit of background on myself.  I grew up in Florida.  Florida here, anybody?  I jokingly say, I'm one of three people who were actually born in the state of Florida.  My sister is number two, and probably somewhere in here.  Most people move to Florida at some point.  Grew up in the northwestern part of the state, did my university at Alabama and studied computer science and information management.  
I've lived in central Florida, Washington DC, but about ten years now I've been in Kentucky.  Is Kentucky here?  A little bit?  There they are.  All right.  I was in Lexington with my wife and we've been there about ten years and that's probably where we'll stay.  That's where most of the family is, in that area.  My journey from a professional standpoint started in about 2005 when I went to work for Freedom Scientific, blindness, low vision products.  Many of you, if you participated in training over the years, you probably heard my voice on webinars or other training recordings.  I worked with Dan Clark for a number of years building out that training team, and then I also worked in consulting working on web accessibility consulting, Smartphone app testing and accessibility and recently, kiosk accessibility, since kiosk is the wild west of accessibility, so it's been -- how do we make things accessible that are inherently challenging?  Because they're all designed around visual.  
I grew up low vision.  Many of you probably have.  I started out using large print books, I used books on tape.  I used the old video magnifiers with the hot lights that would burn the back of your hands after a few hours.  That was my homework excuse, mom, my hands are singed.  Worked about once.  When I got into my 20s, my vision is light reception, so I made the transition to ZoomText to JAWS and full screen reading and that's where I've been at since 1999, using JAWS.  I still have a little bit of light perception and that's about it.  
When I was trying to think about what to talk about, and the team of the convention is Winds of Change, and the old Scorpions song, “Winds of Change,” popped in my head and that song has been in my head for about three days.  But it made me realize, that's kind of where we are in the technology landscape right now.  We're at a fairly pivotable -- pivotal moment in time.  
It's too early to talk straight, by the way.  I haven't had enough coffee.  
So we're at a moment in time when we're changing around and we don't actually know how much they're going to change or how they're going to change, and it reminded me, because I grew up in Florida in the panhandle, that area of Florida is often referred to as hurricane alley, we have tornado alley for those of you in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois, so I went through many hurricanes.  I was always a weather nerd.  I like to look at weather stuff just for fun, read the geeky tropical Outlook because I wanted to know what was coming and do not do anything that I'm going to say I did, just as a disclaimer, but I was the guy who liked to be outside in the crazy weather, when the wind was blowing really hard.  I was smart enough not to stand beside a tree or power lines or I wouldn't be here, but I loved to feel the wind.  I love to experience the weather in person.  And one thing about wind, you can never see wind.  You can only see its effects.  Right?  We can't actually see moving air.  We can just see what that moving air is doing, whether it's blowing trees, blowing snow, rain, however, you can't actually see the wind.  But we can hear it coming, right?  Especially in tropical weather, you can hear the trees down the street.  You can hear the roar of the trees as the wind was coming towards you, you could hear it coming, and you would know, there's a big gust of wind coming toward you because you could hear it down the street.  
So I would listen for those telltale signs of the coming winds and sometimes you lean over and try to hold it up.  Again, please don't actually do this.  But it was -- it was something that you could predict and you could see, you could hear the signs of it.  And those who could see it would see the signs of it coming.  I think that relates to where we are from a technical standpoint.  
We've heard so much about AI and what is AI going to do for us, how do we leverage it, what does it mean to us.  We can hear the wind in the trees right now.  We don't know how strong it's going to be.  We don't know what exactly is going to happen with AI and how it's going to affect us, especially from an assistive technology standpoint.  I think it's important as a company, what we're doing as Vispero and what my role is in leading our software team is looking at what problems do we need to solve for people, right?  If we're creating things in our software and it's not solving problems for someone, we're doing the wrong thing.  And there's a lot of problems that AI can solve.  But there's a lot of ways that other companies are solving those problems as well.  
If we look at the browsers, Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, they're working on leveraging AI for people.  So the goal as the company, where do we fit in with all this and how do we find those unique things that no one else is doing that we can do well to solve problems for people.  Image recognition.  That's a clear thing.  
For those of us who use screen reading technology, images are one of the barriers we all face, not knowing what's in those images or that lack of information, even if there's a text description, it's usually very brief, and it is so for a good reason.  But the ability of artificial intelligence to describe images is something that will definitely change.  Why don't we put that into JAWS?  Well, I know we could.  But we know those things are coming into web browsers.  So we have a limited number of resources and a limited amount of time that we have to work with.  Those are our precious commodities, time and people.  So directing that energy in the right way is something that's important, and that's where I think we all can get really excited around AI but we also have to take a step back and say, what problems can I solve with this and how do I go about doing it in the most efficient way, in a way for all of us, as users of these products, that will be beneficial to us.  And so I want to share a couple of things with you.  
Yesterday, I spoke to a group about what's been going on with the soft products, and I'm not going to rehash all of that.  But I wanted to just touch on two things that are coming up throughout the rest of this year, that I think are really valuable for us to think about.  Again, I always think of problem first.  What's the problem we face, how can we solve it in software.  
So I'll share with you one example that's coming up.  How many by clap of hands use Team calls, Zoom, et cetera?  I would clap myself, but I'd drop the microphone.  I'm on Teams calls all the time.  A problem I face and many of you, how do I know if I'm in the camera view?  How do I know if the camera is set up right?  How do I know if there's something in the background, an animal or your dirty clothes basket that I don't necessarily want the other people to see in my camera shot?  And sometimes how do I make sure to remember to turn off my privacy lens on the camera?  Sometimes I've been on calls and they see my virtual background and they're like, is Ryan here?  Yeah, I'm here.  All I see is your virtual background and my camera privacy shutter was on and I need to open it.  This is a real problem that's been exposed in the last three years since COVID and we've been on these calls and that will only grow over time.  We can solve that in JAWS.  
We can use AI technology and AI models to recognize if you're in the view and centered in the view and if the camera is in the right way and looking at the camera and we can tell you things about the background that you're in.  We may not be able to tell you if the laundry behind you is dirty or clean, but there is something behind you.  Then you can figure out, is that okay or not okay.  So that's the problem we're going to solve later on in JAWS.  We're going to have the ability to tell you some of that information when you're on a call.  I know that's something I'm excited about and the feedback I'm getting, it will be beneficial.  
At the end of the day, we don't want to stand out, right?  If you're blind or low vision, on a call with others who are not and it's normal to be on camera, you want to look just like everybody else.  A lot of people I'm on calls with don't know I'm blind.  They don't need to know.  It's irrelevant to my conversation.  
So another thing around Braille, how many folks use professional Braille?  One of the challenges that we face, from refreshable Braille and text to speech, we're limited to generally interacting and looking at one thing on the screen at a time, right?  If I'm reading a document in Braille in Word but I want to check something on the web browser or I'm writing an email but using a document with notes in it to write an email or presenting a PowerPoint presentation and have notes in another document, wouldn't it be nice if I could look at two things at once on a Braille display?  So we're going to take a Braille display and split it into two halves, a left half and a right half and an example, I could have a Word document on one half of the Braille display and I'm working or reading an email on the other half of the Braille display, or one that's buffered and text on the other, or imagine, for those of you who may teach Braille, or some who are even learning Braille still, imagine learning you have grade two and uncontracted Braille, so you can see them together and right with one hand and contracted and uncontracted on the other.  That's also coming this coming year in our software products.  
Again, what are the problems, and how can we solve them.  That's where my focus is.  That's where I think we all have to be from a technology standpoint, and really, that's where the winds of change are going to take us, and those gusts are going to happen.  Sometimes they're going to be big gusts.  Sometimes they're going to be small gusts.  The truth is, we don't know how strong those gusts are going to be, we're going to ride this together, and we're going to solve problems.  
And I need to hear from all of you.  We need feedback about what we're doing in software, what problems do you face that you need solved.  So the last thing I'll mention as I close, one easy way to tell us that feedback is to email us.  And we set up a special mailbox, email is old school, right, but that's sometimes the easiest thing.  
So if you email softwaresuggestions -- software suggestions, that's all one word -- @Vispero.com, that mailbox, we look at to see what people are suggested, what problems do you need solved and what problems can we help you solved and that lets us know where to spend our valuable time and resources going forward to make products that work for all of us and make sure we're going the right way as this wind blows and the technology changes ahead of us the next few years.  I think it's pivotal, we'll work together and solve a lot of problems.  
We appreciate you, all of you, with us in the journey.  I know many of you have been working with our software for decades and we appreciate that.  I'll be around the rest of today and hope to meet you.  Thanks for being here this morning, and may the winds of change blow on!  
[Cheering and Applause] 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you so much, Ryan.  That was great.  I'm looking forward to that new feature about the cameras.  One of my funny stories on that one is right near the beginning of the pandemic I bought a new laptop.  I didn't know it had a rear camera.  I didn't know the rear camera was going to be the default on anything and I went to a major presentation where I was it and they were looking at my stationary bicycle and the talking bicycle was giving them a presentation and I couldn't fix it.  It happens to all of us.  You never get too techie to have strong things happen with tech.  Thank you, Vispero is a wonderful partner.  We have another Diamond sponsor, Vanda Pharmaceuticals, I sleep eight hours, take eight hours, I'm up and at 'em, but I appreciate how many people struggle with this and at this time, I'd like to present Jennifer Lymon.  
	>> Good morning.  I am not Jennifer Lymon.  I'm Vicky.  I'm here with Jennifer.  [Applause] Thank you all for inviting us to participate this year in your convention.  Always glad to be here.  A big thank you goes out to Janet and Michael and all those people behind the scenes who provided so much assistance in getting this convention put together.  How about a round of applause for them.  [Applause] again, my name is Vicky and this is Jennifer.  We're registered nurses with Vanda pharmaceuticals, and we are joined by our manager, Francis, somewhere in this audience.  Our role as nurse educators is to provide awareness, non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder and the short name for that is non-24.  It's non, n-o-n, and 24.  So many of you have heard us speak at affiliate meetings, but we speak out to schools of the blind and state agencies that support the blind and the visually compared.  
	>> JENNIFER:  Hi, I'm Jennifer.  I wanted to take a minute too, since Vicky mentioned, but there are four nurse educators at Vanda, and we all cover differently, I cover Chicago, the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.  Vicky is in Florida and the southeast.  Shawna, many of you know, and she covers the south and the west and Maggie, many of you have met her as well, and she covers the east.  So we all have our territories that we work.  We overlap a little bit.  But getting back to non-24, research indicates that 7 out of 10 people who are totally blind have non-24 and people with lower vision can develop non-24 as well.  I'm sure most of you know how important sleep is to our overall health and well-being, and non-24 can cause sleep struggles, and those sleep struggles with lead to exhaustion, irritability, and even depression. 
	So a person with non-24 may have symptoms such as difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep and sleepiness during the day.  Those are the symptoms, but you don't need to have all of those symptoms to have non-24.  The symptoms tend to start close to the time when a person loses their vision, but not always, and they might worsen as vision loss progresses.  The symptoms may appear in cycles, so there may be periods of good sleep followed by periods of bad sleep and that is a characteristic of non-24.  
	>> VICKY:  Sleep disturbances can leave a person irritable and unmotivated.  They can affect someone personally, professionally, and academically.  We can teach you about non-24, advocate for yourself and connect you with the low-cost resources provided by Vanda.  So please visit us at our exhibit booth.  We're at booth 9 and 10, you can learn more about non-24, discuss your private situation with myself or Jennifer or Francis or schedule an outreach in one of the areas that Jennifer mentioned.  
	>> JENNIFER:  Vanda is now known for giving away delicious ice cream, apparently.  Apparently we're famous for that.  [Applause] 
	>> VICKY:  You know we're giving away ice cream, right?  It's so awesome to have the ability to reconnect with you.  We've had many people stop by our table.  Come see us today and learn more about non-24.  Thank you, and we hope you have a wonderful and successful convention and a great time in the Chicagoland area.  Thank you all.  It's sunny out today!  It's not raining.  There's no rain in the forecast today.  [Applause] 
	>> That's better.  That's a lot better.  I'm only going to be here a little tiny bit.  All right.  So thank you so much for the presentation with Vanda, and one thing I just absolutely love about Vanda is that they are so great about coming to our local affiliates and whatever else and being there and being part of the organization as a regular contributor and exhibiter and resource.  You can't ask for more.  It's wonderful.  
Now, I have a couple of announcements.  We are going to have our roll call related to the amendments that we were voting on yesterday.  I want to avoid confusion.  If you are the delegate or alternate who will be reporting on the roll call and you are here, stay here!  Don't leave!  This is your delegate room!  However, if you are at home or in the park or, you know, I don't know, at work, sneaking in the convention, Starbucks, somewhere other than in here, you need to go quickly to the delegate Zoom room.  So if you need Zoom to be able to heard by us, you need to go to the delegate Zoom room.  If you're in here, stay put and know where your nearest microphone is.  It might be behind you.  All of that good airline stuff.  I have a neat announcement to make.  We have another life member presentation.  Someone has contributed a life member for our interim Executive Director, Dan Spoone.  [Cheering and Applause] 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes!  Dan, if you'd like to say a word or two, there's a mic -- all right.  Come up here.  Yes.  [Laughter].  Hip hip.  
	>> Hooray!  
	>> Hip hip.  
	>> Hooray!  
	>> DAN SPOONE:  Thank you.  Thank you, anonymous, whoever you are.  Hopefully you're listening here this morning and I'm going to assume it's from all of you, and thank you so much, American Council of the Blind!  I'm so honored to be a member of this organization.  Thank you!  [Applause] 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  Excellent.  All right.  So now, I think we are ready to do the roll call, and I'm going to turn the meeting over to Denise Colley.  Following the roll call, we will be having our scholarship presentations.  And you don't want to miss that.  So just to give you a heads-up for what will be next.  
	>> DENISE COLLEY:  Good morning, ACB!  
	>> Good morning!  
	>> DENISE COLLEY:  Okay.  All right.  So this morning, we are doing the roll call on the amendment, and I'm sure you all were really good about voting yesterday and letting your affiliates know how you want to vote.  I'll be calling a few of you, but please be prepared to get to a microphone or get your device unmuted so you can give your response.  Alabama through Connecticut.  Alabama through Connecticut.  Get to a mic.  
	>> All right.  
	>> [Away from mic].  
	>> Alabama, three votes.  
	>> Good morning, ACB.  Alabama, two for and one against.  
	>> Two for, one against.  
	>> Arizona, two votes.  
	>> Good morning, 1.5 are and .5 against.  
	>> 1.5 for and .5 against.  
	>> Arkansas, two votes.  
	>> Good morning, ACB.  Arkansas has two votes for.  
	>> Two for.  
	>> California, 20 votes.  
	>> California votes 6 votes for and 14 votes against.  
	>> Six for, 14 against.  And our next group could start making their way up, Delaware to Hawaii.  Connecticut, one vote.  
	>> .5 for, .5 against.  
	>> .5 for, .5 against.  District of Columbia, 5 votes.  
	>> Two votes against, three votes for.  
	>> Three for, two against.  
	>> Florida, ten votes.  Did you say ten?  
	>> Did I forget Delaware?  
	>> Yes, I believe so.  
	>> I'm having issues this morning.  Delaware, one vote.  
	>> Delaware, one for.  
	>> One for.  
	>> Yeah, I did say ten.  Is that wrong?  I'm sorry.  19 votes.  
	>> Thank you.  Yes, Florida votes 17 for, two against.  
	>> 17 for, two against.  Georgia, five votes.  Georgia?  
	>> One for, four against.  
	>> One for, four against.  
	>> Hawaii, three votes.  
	>> Three for.  
	>> Three for.  Illinois through Kentucky, making their way.  
	>> Illinois, three votes.  
	>> Illinois Council of the Blind, one for, two against.  
	>> One for, two against.  
	>> Indiana, four votes.  
	>> 3.5 for, .5 against.  
	>> 3.5 for, .5 against.  Iowa, three votes.  Iowa?  
	>> Coming.  
	>> Okay.  
	>> Iowa votes 1.5 for and 1.5 against.  
	>> 1.5 for, 1.5 against.  Kansas, three votes.  Kansas?  One more time.  Kansas?  Kentucky, 13 votes.  
	>> Kentucky has 12 votes for and one against.  
	>> 12 for, one against.  Kansas, three votes.  Kentucky bluegrass, four votes.  
	>> Bluegrass Council of the Blind, three for, one against.  
	>> Three for, one against.  Louisiana, two votes.  
	>> Two for 
	>> Two for.  
	>> Thank you, ma'am.  
	>> Maine, two votes.  
	>> Two votes, one for and one against.  
	>> One for, one against.  Maryland, three votes.  
	>> Maryland casts three votes for.  
	>> Three for.  K-state [phonetic].  
	>> Six in favor, two against.  
	>> Six for, two against.  
	>> Michigan, five votes.  
	>> All right.  Michigan is voting two votes for, three votes against.  
	>> Two for, three against.  Minnesota, three votes.  
	>> Minnesota, 2.5 for, .5 against.  
	>> 2.5 for, .5 against.  Mississippi, two votes.  
	>> Mississippi should have three votes.  
	>> Why does it say two here?  Okay.  Three votes.  
	>> Mississippi votes three for.  
	>> Three for.  Missouri, 18 votes.  Missouri?  One more time.  Missouri, 18 votes.  Nebraska, one vote.  
	>> One against.  
	>> One against.  Nevada, two votes.  
	>> One affirmative and one opposed.  
	>> One for, one against.  New Jersey, two votes.  
	>> I believe we should have three votes.  
	>> My sheet must have -- [indiscernible] in the middle of the night.  Okay.  Three votes.  Sorry.  
	>> Thank you.  New Jersey votes three for.  
	>> Three for.  New York, eight votes.  
	>> Good morning, ACB.  The American Council of the Blind of New York casts four votes for and four against.  
	>> Four for and four against.  North Carolina, three votes.  
	>> Good morning, North Carolina, 1.5 for, 1.5 against.  
	>> 1.5 for, 1.5 against.  North Dakota, 7 votes.  
	>> North Dakota votes 7 votes no.  
	>> Seven against.  Ohio, seven votes.  
	>> Ohio, seven yes.  
	>> Seven for.  Oklahoma, 17 votes.  
	>> Oklahoma has 16 for and one against.  
	>> 16 for, one against.  Oregon, four votes.  
	>> Oregon, 3.5 for, 0.5 against.  
	>> 3.5 for, .5 against.  Pennsylvania, 8 votes.  
	>> Pennsylvania votes four against and four in favor.  
	>> Four in favor, four against.  
	>> Thank you.  
	>> South Dakota, three votes.  
	>> South Dakota casts 2.5 for, .5 against.  
	>> 2.5 for, .5 against.  
	>> Did you say 2.5 for?  
	>> Yes.  
	>> Okay.  Thank you.  
	>> Tennessee, six votes.  
	>> Tennessee, six votes against.  
	>> Six against.  Texas, 11 votes.  
	>> Howdy, y'all!  Texas casts 10 for and one against.  10-4, good buddy!  
	>> 10 for, one against.  Utah, 11 votes.  
	>> 11 votes for.  
	>> 11 for.  Thank you.  Vermont, three votes.  
	>> 1.5 for, 1.5 against.  
	>> 1.5 for, 1.5 against.  
	>> Virginia, two votes.  
	>> Virginia, one in favor, one opposed.  
	>> One in favor, one against.  Washington, 16 votes.  
	>> Nine for, seven against.  
	>> Nine for, seven against.  West Virginia, one vote -- Or Mountain State, I should say.  
	>> That's okay, Madam Secretary.  We know where we're from.  Mountain state votes its one vote against.  
	>> One against.  Wisconsin, one vote.  
	>> Wisconsin casts our one vote against.  
	>> One against.  Alliance on Aging and Vision Loss.  
	>> AAVL casts two votes in favor, four against.  
	>> Two votes in favor, four against.  
	>> Teachers, two votes.  
	>> Teachers votes two votes for.  
	>> Two for.  Attorneys.  Two votes.  
	>> AAVIA casts one for and one against.  
	>> One for, one against.  Diabetics, 5.  
	>> ACB Diabetics, home of the sugar warriors, woo-hoo!  We vote one for and four no.  One for, four against.  
	>> ACB Families, four votes.  
	>> ACB Families casts 3.5 votes for -- no, I'm sorry, 3 votes for and one against.  
	>> I'm sorry, can you give me that again, Carla?  I'm sorry.  
	>> Three for and one against.  
	>> Three for, one against.  ACB Government Employees, one vote.  
	>> 0.5 for, .5 against.  
	>> .5 for, .5 against.  ACB Lions, four votes.  
	>> ACB Lions, three for, one against.  
	>> Three for, one against.  ACB Next Generation, three votes.  
	>> ACB Next Generation votes two in favor, one against.  
	>> Two for -- 
	>> ACB Radio Amateurs, one vote.  
	>> ACBRA votes one vote for.  
	>> One for.  ACB Students, one vote. 
	>> Audio now unmuted.  One for.  Thank you.  Fits, seven votes.  
	>> Four votes for, three against.  
	>> Four votes in favor, three against.  Pride.  
	>> Blind pride, open mics, three for and two against.  
	>> Three for -- sorry about that.  
	>> We have five.  
	>> No, four.  
	>> All right, then.  Split two and two.  
	>> Okay.  Two for.  Blind revival 11 votes.  
	>> Blind revival, five votes for and six against.  
	>> Five for, six against.  
	>> CCLVI, 10 points.  
	>> CCLVI, 6.5 for, 3.5 against.  
	>> 6.5 for, 3.5 against.  Friends in art, two votes.  
	>> I thought we had four votes.  One for, one against.  
	>> One for, one against.  Guide dog users, 15 votes.  
	>> GDUI, 5.5 for -- 
	>> I'm sorry, do that again.  
	>> 12.5 for, 2.5 against.  
	>> Okay.  Sorry.  
	>> IB, one vote.  
	>> IB is going to get right down to business and vote one vote against.  
	>> One against.  LUA, seven votes.  
	>> Three yes, four no.  
	>> Three for, four against.  
	>> RSVA, 17 votes.  RSVA, 17 votes.  One more time, RSVA, 17 votes.  We'll go back up to -- 
	>> Point of personal privilege, Madam Secretary.  Kansas this year appointed both our delegates and alternates to be virtual trying to expand the workload, but I have text messages from both of them saying they are unable to connect and get in, so regrettably, this is Michael Byington, president of the Kansas association, and I need to change our affiliate delegate to myself until we can get the transmission issues dealt with.  
	>> Okay.  Do you want to cast the three votes?  
	>> I would like to cast three votes against.  Thank you.  
	>> Three against.  
	>> Okay.  Missouri, 18 votes.  
	>> Missouri casts 11.5 votes for, 6.5 votes against.  
	>> 11.5 for, 6.5 against.  RSVA, 17 votes.  One more time.  Coming to a mic?  
	>> Madam Chair, that completes the call of the roll.  
	>> There we go.  No, you had it up there.  All right.  You know, thank you, everyone, and what was so cool was sitting up here, it was actually pretty hard to tell who was in the room and who was in the Zoom, everyone was doing such a good job.  [Applause] If you have difficulty heading to the Zoom room, check with Cecily to make sure you have the right link, because the room is open, and I can't think of any other reason you couldn't get in.  If there are people who are challenged with that, we really do want it to work for everyone, and it basically should, for the most part.  So that's that.  
Also, to -- you can get from her information for calling in on the telephone if you can't get into the link.  We just wanted this to work as much as it can for everyone.  
All right, Nancy, do we have a count yet?  Do we play some "Jeopardy" music, she says.  Well, let me tell you what's going to happen this afternoon -- no, she's not ready.  Okay.  Let me tell you what's going to happen, we're going to have the rest of our program, our scholarship and our narrator and those good things, and then what we will be doing is returning to this resolution because what you have passed or failed is the amendment to the resolution and so then we have to actually discuss the resolution itself.  And so we started to debate the resolution before the amendment was introduced.  We used up four minutes of the debate.  I'm not going to split hairs on that.  If people do want to debate the resolution, I'm going to allow the entire 20 minutes for debate since it's been a long time.  And then if there is debate, we'll take it.  Fors and against.  We will manage the room and the Zoom, which mean the room has to slow it down a little to make it work for the Zoom people and we will manage that with you.  
When that is completed, we will take a hands vote on the resolution.  The only parts of the resolution you can now amend would be the whereas clauses, so if you want to amend the whereas clauses, you can do so during the debate.  Otherwise, the amendment resolution will be voted.  If a record vote is requested after the vote is taken, the hands vote, and it will be hands in Zoom and in the room, and they will be counted.  So if after that there are a significant number of nos and those nos wish to record a record vote, the resolution will go into the pile that is going to be voted Wednesday in the individual vote and Thursday in the delegate vote.  So that will then complete the work on the resolution and we'll work through it as quickly as you all allow it to happen.  So that's how I'm going to word that.  All right.  If you guys aren't going to be ready for a little while -- you are ready.  I'm going to call on Nancy Becker to give us your vote totals.  
	>> NANCY BECKER:  The total, then the individual total along with the affiliate total and the percentages, and ironically, the percentages are exactly the same.  The total is 490.5 for, 275.5 against.  So for the individual count.  276 for, 155 against.  The affiliate count, 214.5 for, 120.5 against.  So what it turns out to be is 64% for and 36% against.  And that is the same for both the affiliates and the individual vote.  
[Applause]
	>> Okay.  So the amendment passes.  And so what we will be voting on this afternoon is the amended resolution, which is the same as the -- ooh, yeah.  Somebody either liked it or didn't like it.  I'm not sure which.  [Laughter].  
Okay.  So what we will be working with this afternoon is the amended resolution, which is essentially the same thing you just voted, unless you amend the whereas clauses.  Okay.  Enough of that now.  We will move on.  Our next -- the next thing I'd like to do is introduce Mr.  Ray Campbell, who will be our presiding officer for this morning.  He will be presenting -- working through the process with our scholarships, first, the CCLVI scholarships, presented by Patti Cox and then Denise Colley to do the rest of the ACB and AFB and our talking book narrator, so take it away, Ray!  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  I've got to raise this up here.  Excuse me, puppy.  Good morning!  Good morning, ACB!  Welcome to Illinois.  Are you all having a good time?  
[Cheering and Applause] 
Great, great, great.  Before I introduce Patti, I'm going to give a quick shout-out, a point of personal privilege, whatever you want to call it, I don't know if they're listening or not, but if they are, I want to say hello to my parents in Rockford, Illinois, about 60 miles from here, and I'm on my best behavior, as best I can be.  Don't let anybody tell you any different.  
This morning is one of my favorite times of the convention, because we get to see how bright the future is, and it is always bright.  That is, we get to hear from and about some wonderful people.  So first of all, for our friends at the Council of Citizens With Low Vision International, to introduce their scholarship winners, gives me great pleasure to call upon Patti Cox from the great state of Kentucky.  Patti?  
[Applause] 
	>> PATTI COX:  Man, is he tall!  Okay.  I have to find the right file.  That's okay.  We're going to -- so we're going to 
-- we're both up here.  That's okay.  We're not trying to confuse you.  But we're doing things a little differently this year.  Each of us will be talking a little bit about our scholarship program and introducing our particular scholarship winners, and instead of having them all come forward, which always makes it -- we're going to let them stay where they are, pass the mic, and we're going to let them tell you about them.  So I'm going to let Patty to talk about the scholarships and then announce her winner.  
	>> The Fred Schneider scholarship is usually given to one freshman, one undergraduate, one graduate student each year.  Last year during the convention, Fred passed away.  His wife, Alexa, has graciously added another scholarship, so we have two freshmen scholarships.  One undergraduate and one graduate.  [Applause] Our freshmen winners are Samantha Donovan and Emmett Glover.  [Applause] The undergraduate student is Kevin Cohen.  [Applause] And the graduate student is Sandy Owens.  [Applause] All right.  So what we're going to do, get those four individuals to raise their hands so we can get the mics to them first.  
	>> Hello, my name is Kevin Cohen.  It's nice to see all of you, meet everyone.  So I'm a rising senior at Binghamton University which is in New York, majoring in accounting and economics and a fun fact about me is that a certified scuba diver.  [Applause] And thank you so much for all -- for everyone, for your support and your help.  It's really appreciated and goes a long way.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, I'm Samantha Donovan, I'm going to be a freshmen at Springfield College and I'm studying occupational therapy.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, my name is Emmett Glover.  I'm a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, originally from Utah, studying computer science and I will be doing men's gymnastics at Oklahoma.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, ACB!  This is Sandy Owens from North Carolina, again, and I am in grad school, going for two masters.  My first masters is in visually impaired, I want to be a CVI, and also, assistive technology, and a fun fact, I was a math teacher for ten years.  [Applause] 
	>> And that's just the beginning!  The American Council of the Blind offers educational scholarships ranging from $2,000 up to $7,500 for entering freshmen, undergraduates, graduate students, and students attending vocational technical colleges.  And several years ago we ended up partnering with the American Foundation For the Blind and they provided -- asked us if we would be willing to select, go through the interview process and select the scholarships that they were awarding and they wanted to channel their scholarships through the American Council of the Blind.  
So we did that, and we were able to take and combine their scholarships with some of our scholarships to make them larger.  And that has been a really great thing.  We've had a wonderful working relationship with them, and we just continue to thank them for doing -- doing that.  [Applause] And I was very excited because for the first time this year, the current CEO and president of the American Foundation For the Blind, our own Eric Bridges, was able to come to the dinner and honor them.  That was an exciting addition to our program.  The scholarships that we provide can be used to help with educational, financial needs, such as tuition, fees, room and board, and purchasing or updating assistive technology.  
Scholarships are awarded to students who are majoring in areas such as disability, rehabilitation, education, law, business, computer science, data processing, computer programming, web development, science, engineering, mathematics, music and the arts, advocacy, disability services, and we have one for an undergraduate who has overcome major difficulties and should have little to no vision.  At this point, I would like to introduce to you -- well, first of all, before I do that, we actually have one scholarship winner who is getting a scholarship from both CCLVI and the American Council of the Blind and that is Kevin Cohen.  We're really excited about that.  We're excited that Kevin was able to return again this year.  [Applause] So at this point, I would like to introduce to you, the 2023-24 class of ACB scholarship recipients.  
	>> Hello, my name is Javier, for those in the convention in the past, you may know this is the first time that ACB has been kind enough to award me a scholarship.  I'm a rising senior at Stanford University, majoring in mathematics and computational science, and this is something that -- [indiscernible] is that I'm [indiscernible].  [Applause] 
	>> Good morning, Philippines, my name is Eric, I'm an incoming fourth.  Year PhD student at college of Pennsylvania, and I'm looking at it the way we read and tell stories and one thing I'm looking at, audio description as a new and emerging genre of literature.  [Applause] 
	>> Hi, everyone, it's Kevin Cohen again.  I already introduced myself so I'm not going to bore you with the details again, but it's a pleasure to be here again and again I appreciate all of you and your generosity.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, my name is Matthew Ard, I'm a rising undergrad senior in California and I'm studying mechanical engineering and for the summer, I'm interning at Columbia University doing research on renewable energy.  
	>> Hello, everyone, I am the other Matthew, Matthew Cho.  I am going to be a freshman at Marymount in New York City.  I will be studying psychology and hope to become a music therapist.  I will be -- this summer, I'll be mentoring seniors with assistive technology and fun fact is I -- I guess I was -- I represented NASA, Amazon, and the Lighthouse Guild, and I went to NASA to talk to Alexa, she was a million miles away.  Thank you for your support.  [Applause] 
	>> Hi, everyone, my name is [indiscernible], I'm a rising sophomore at a college in Michigan.  I will be studying international business and foreign language.  An interesting fact about me is I don't know if anybody remembers, but they -- unveiled a statue of Helen Keller in the rotunda and I sang the National Anthem there.  It was pretty cool.  I was four years old.  But yeah, 2009.  But yeah.  I just -- yeah.  I just want to say thank you so much to ACB for this scholarship and have a great rest of your convention.  [Cheering and Applause] 
	>> Hello, everyone.  My name is Kaitlyn Keller, and I'm entering my second and final year as a master of social work student at George Mason University in northern Virginia outside DC, yes.  Super, super grateful for this opportunity and for this scholarship, so thank you so much.  My fun fact is that I will be starting in August as a completely blind play therapist with children and teenagers, so if anyone is wondering how that's going to work, I am also wondering that.  [Laughter].  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, my name is Ray Cooper, I'm a freshmen at IT tech in business administration.  A fun fact about me is I am [indiscernible] certified.  [Applause] 
	>> I'm Charlie, and I wish to extend my gratitude to ACB and all the other organizations out there that assist all the sight-challenged and I'm studying labor and employment relations over at BYUC here in Illinois.  And I just recently acquired a position over at the US State Department and I thank everybody for the opportunities that, you know, these organizations and in particular, ACB bestow upon us all.  Thank you.  [Applause] 
	>> Hi, everyone, my name is Katie Severe, I'm originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, and I moved to Massachusetts and I'm studying at Harvard, psychology and education, particularly looking at how we can improve the education for students with disabilities.  And a fun fact about me, this is very Harvardesque, but Harvard has high tea every Thursday and I'm a frequent attendant and I just wanted to extend my gratitude to ACB for this scholarship.  Thank you for all your support.  Thank you.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, everyone.  My name is Shawntelle, and this is the time -- I've been awarded this scholarship, so grateful.  I'm a rising junior at Wellesley College, international relations, political science, and computer science minor.  I'm really grateful for this scholarship.  Fun fact about me is I speak five languages.  Yeah.  [Applause] 
	>> Hi there, everyone, my name is Emily Nelson, I'm from Indiana, and I will be an incoming freshman at Indiana University and I hope to work with NATO, anti-terrorism.  One thing about me, I am very passionate in what I call accidentally accessible video game, someone who has played 4,000 hours, I have learned to -- there are different techniques to hacking accidentally accessible for both the visually impaired and sighted people can enjoy in different areas and working with the company right now in Bethesda to help improve their next game so both sighted and visually impaired people can enjoy the game.  Thank you.  [Applause] 
	>> Hello, ACB, my name is Danielle Shutts, I will be a rising senior in University of Nebraska at Lincoln in the fall.  I am finishing up my final year and planning to apply to medical school to pursue psychiatry.  A fun fact about me, I grew up on a farm and raised pigs in 4-H my entire life.  
	>> Hi, y'all, my name is -- just before I -- I'm hot and I'm freezing here, we are from Texas, so it's very cold.  
	>> So true.  
	>> Yes.  So I am finishing my first year PhD student at the University of Texas, majoring in social work and my focused research on refugee, also, refugee with disability and [indiscernible].  So something fact about me, I just selected to serve on the board of directors for [indiscernible] without borders, and I'm the first to serve in that position.  [Cheering and Applause] 
	>> Good morning, and happy Monday, everybody!  My name is 
-- I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I will be attending the university of Alabama this fall to study computer science and work on my master's in business and I would like to say a quick thank you to everyone who made this scholarship possible and I will be able to continue my education in someplace a lot warmer than my hometown.  A fun fact, I have completed 85 triathlons in the last year and I'm on the team for blind ice hockey.  
	>> Good morning, everyone, my name is Andrew, D-ability.  I'm from Austin, Texas, a PhD student at Texas Tech University in educational leadership with special education, focus area is within century disabilities, currently working on my first academic publication, really excited about that.  Also wanted to thank all of y'all and ACB for this amazing scholarship and opportunity and a fun fact is two weeks ago I -- we brought in our second daughter on June 15th, 5 pounds, 9 ounces So it's very difficult to be away from them and we're excited and I wanted to thank you all for this opportunity.  [Applause] 
	>> They saved the best for last.  Hello, everyone, I'm Devin, I was born and raised in Los Angeles and attend California State [indiscernible], I played violin for four years and I'm here to say without a community behind you, you will never succeed in life.  I'm grateful to join the ACB community as a first-time recipient.  [Applause] 
	>> Aren't they amazing?  Let's give them all another hand.  [Applause] I just want to take this opportunity to thank my co-chair, Rebecca Bridges, and my Scholarship Committee, which I won't mention the names because I'll forget somebody. 
	They have worked really hard this year, and I have a great committee to work with and that is really very special to me.  Now, if you want to learn more about these students, tonight is your opportunity. 
	Please, please come to our scholarship reception at 5:30 in Nirvana B.  Nirvana B, and who knows what else you might learn. 
	So we'll see you all this evening.  Thank you. 
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Wow.  We are doing really good.  Isn't the future bright, ladies and gentlemen?  It really is.  To the young man going to Alabama, it sounds like he already is getting indoctrinated and he'll learn to like football if he doesn't already because they play a lot of it down there and they play very well.  We are running away ahead of schedule, but I hope they're ready.  It's time for one of, I know a lot of people's favorite part of the convention, door prizes!  So Sharon Howerton, I believe you're handling it this morning if you could get to a microphone, let me know when you're there.  We actually made a door prize team this year, and -- 
	>> I'm here, Ray.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  There you are, so it gives me great pleasure to -- let's do -- how many do you think we should do, Deb?  
	>> I have five all together.  
	>> She has five.  Three now, Sharon, and two at the end.  Introducing our wonderful National Anthem singer and my good friend, Sharon Howerton.  
	>> Our first door prize -- can't hear?  Okay.  Is this any better?  No, not any better yet?  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  People, keep your voices down so you can hear.  
	>> How about this?  Okay.  So the first door prize is a $25 from Laura [phonetic], and the winner is Vickie Kennedy from Hawaii.  [Applause] The second one is a subscription, one-year membership from Penny Forward, it contains a branded retractible UBS and a charger with a value of $165, and the winner is Kaitlyn Keller-Meyer.  
	>> All right.  One of our scholarship winners.  
	>> And the third one is a $25 gift from LUA, and the winner is virtual, and her name is Vanessa.
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Thank you.  Thank you, Sharon, and since we've gone hybrid, we don't draw until we get one.  Everybody gets their door prize.  So if you're not here, they will be mailed to you, and although that -- okay.  We are running away ahead of schedule here.  Is Jake Williams in the room?  The narrator?  I guess we get to sing now to fill some time, right?  
	>> We have some karaoke tracks back here, Ray.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  I think you have blackmail is what you have, I'm sure.  Okay.  Let me consult with the president and see what we ought to do here.  Okay.  I'm echoing now.  We thought we weren't going to give you a break, but you're all doing so good, we're going to give you a 10-minute break.  My watch right now says 10:12.  If you could be back here, say, 10:25.  10:25 Central Time, that would be fantastic.  So all of you here, go do what you need to do, as well as you all in Zoom, and we'll see you at 10:25.  Thank you.  
[Break] 
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  As we say in the NFL, this is your two-minute warning.  The two-minute warning given to both benches. 
	Okay.  Are we back online, the stream and zooming and all that stuff?  Okay.  Good.  Welcome back, everyone, both here in Schaumburg as well as out in the rest of the world.  Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever it is, wherever you are.  If we could get our voices down a little bit here in Schaumburg, that would be fantastic, and return to our seats as quietly as possible, that would be great.  There we go.  
All right.  We are back, and this is another of my favorite times of the convention, because we get to -- we get to hear from somebody that accompanies many of us to many places in our lives, whether it's on the paratransit bus as we're taking an hour-long trip that should take a half hour, whether it is out in the park, whether it is walking around the house with us as we do housework, dishes, laundry, whatever it is we might have to do or as we get ready to go to sleep at night.  They are our Talking Book narrators.  [Cheering and Applause]  And many of us could not enjoy the love of reading without them.  Yeah.  We always do.  
My mom and dad -- I was a child of the energy crisis in the '70s, and my mom always -- mom and dad always used to say to me, well, we're going to write the president and tell them you're an energy saver because you read with the lights off.  I was reading a lot of Braille at this time but talking books did that as well.  It gives me great pleasure to introduce our talking book narrator.  I will give you his name in a minute.  He had a very early exposure to talking books, didn't understand what was happening, but his great grandfather was listening to these recordings and he didn't understand the significance of it, but boy, he certainly has learned a lot, and he was telling me, his show is on the program from Denver, and they moved from St. Louis to Denver in 1952 when he was five years old.  I don't know if he's still a Cardinal fan.  He'll have to tell you about that.  Ladies and gentlemen, gives me great pleasure, please give a warm welcome to this year's talking book narrator, Jake Williams!  
	>> JAKE:  Yes, I did grow up Cardinals.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  If you could speak closer to the microphone.  
	>> JAKE:  Would spend my summers in St.  Louis after we moved to Denver in 1952, so I spent my summers with my grandparents listening to the radio.  And anybody out there as old as I am, I'm familiar with early 1950s radio.  The St.  Louis Cardinals' broadcasts were hosted by Joe Garagiola and Jack Buck and Harry Caray.  Holy cow.  I forgot Harry Caray's name. 
	You don't forget Harry Caray's name in Chicago.  Anyway, about my grandfather and my first experience, I was able to about maybe six or seven years old, this was my grandmother's father, the Reverend Charlie Mosely, grew up on a former rice plantation in Wilmington, North Carolina, and he spent most of his days in Lumberton, North Carolina, not that far from the ocean, as a Baptist minister.  And many things Midwestern sort of western kid not really exposed to the southern U.S. that much didn't grasp at the time not only the concept of talking books, it became obvious that what he was listening to was prerecorded written material.  I was old enough to figure that part out by myself.  I thought it odd at the time that his style of listening would be to talk back to the record player.  [Laughter].  
Later on, I learned, well, you do not -- you're not a practicing Baptist minister unless -- and listening to somebody deliver any type of oration, even if it's recorded, it's impolite to not respond.  So the part I would catch and remember the -- as an adult still, in my '70s now, yeah, he would punctuate each sentence.  Oh, yeah.  Oh.  Mm-hmm.  That was -- yeah, probably about maybe 1953, thereabouts.  Early '50s, for sure.  Great grandfather died on the Fourth of July, 1955.  
Anyway, kind of -- well, many years later, this is probably 20 or 30 years ago, I have the type of memory, I can who said what and what I did and maybe what colors people were wearing at the time, but I have the mind, I can't tell you whether that happened five years ago or 25 years ago.  
So the exact date, I don't know.  My mother-in-law, my wife's mother, has not been with us for the past 10 or 12 years, so it was obviously before that.  But my wife is talking to my mother-in-law, her mother, on the telephone, and I'm hearing one half of the conversation.  And I heard her saying things like, well, no, if you go into the program, if you go in and receive the recording, anybody who has difficulty with, you know, printed material, sign up and that's it.  You're not taking anybody's place if you sign up.  
My mother-in-law's diabetes had caught up with her.  Her retinas were detaching very quickly.  It was the subject of enrolling in the talking book program had come up to her and she's talking to her daughter, my wife, from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Denver, Colorado, and I'm listening to my wife's portion of the conversation and I heard her say, you know, not only does it not work like that, but if you don't sign up, there's a remote possibility there won't be enough time that sign up and the program might be put in danger and Jake could lose his job and we might have to move in with you.  [Laughter].  She joined the program.  [Laughter].  [Applause]  
And at that time, material came to her mostly on -- by cassette tape.  But I actually -- personal history, coming from a line of preachers and when I was in high school, I think, was, you know, the time I made the decision, I knew by then I wasn't a good enough athlete to get into college by way of any type of scholarship or anything like that, so I went to speech meets, and specialized in original oratory and debate and went to college, couldn't afford college tuition at the time.  
While working in -- or while in my college career, I graduated from Regis College -- it was Regis College then, now it's Regis University.  It was 1969.  By then I had gotten a part-time job my last couple of years of college working for a local radio station.  And it seemed like a very comfortable thing I could do while I was trying to decide how exactly I was going to save the world, what I wanted to be when I grow up.  A few years after college, I'm still working in the radio, working as a newscaster, record-spinner.  This was back in the days when we played music on the radio using vinyl records.  I don't think that has happened since probably the early 1970s.  
But anyway, I was back into broadcasting as a career, and that led to my reading books and magazine articles for the Library of Congress through -- at the time the only Denver studio doing that work, it was called Talking Book Publishers.  There were, I think, four studios around the country doing that work.  We Midwesterners, Denver is really the Midwest, although it's -- there are equal primarily Midwesterners, primarily Westerners, live there.  And old-time Denver broadcaster whom I worked for for years named Gene Amole, used to say the countries of America were divided wrong.  He thought the dividing line rather than north-south, should be east-west, with the Mississippi separating one country and the other.  
But anyway, that led to in the mid 1970s my moving from primarily radio to primarily the Talking Books program.  And which ultimately led to July 4th of 2023, being invited to Schaumburg, Illinois, to sort of explain the process and give people a chance to ask and if I can, answer questions about that process.  I am amazed at the -- I'm not good on technical end of how things happen.  I liken when I was doing radio and especially now, everything electronic has gotten more complicated.  I sort of compare myself to somebody driving an automobile or flying an airplane.  Not everybody who drives can fix that machine, and very few people beyond that can design their own.  I've been working the last couple of years with people who have the technical know-how, which they call the nerdiness, to design their own system for recording talking books for the blind in a situation where two people cannot get together in the same room.  It was, to my thoughts, utterly astounding, our head computer person at Books to Life, which is the name of the organization I've been working for for the last going on ten years now.  
Denver now has two studios that record things for the Library of Congress.  The Talking Books studio is still alive and well, and the new upstarts, Books to Life, with whom I'm now affiliated, developed or at least our head geek developed a process whereby we could still record during the early days of the pandemic when everything was locked down and put us in very good standing with the library and we also personally continued to work in a situation where, for a few months, we were the only ones in the country doing that.  It involved Zoom and all sorts of things people can do to closely enough for the government simulate being in the same room, observing the same process, and listening to the recordings being made and having a capacity to stop and correct while that process is taking place.  And yet another feather in the cap for Zoom and a commercial for them.  [Laughter].  
But the process -- I'll just tell you a little bit about some of the people involved, which is what I'm better at anyway than describing how you do it.  I'm one of those people, you push this button to achieve this result.  If pushing that button does not achieve that result, here's the number of the guy to call to try, you know, whose shoulder I can cry on. 
	But the skills to work in a situation like that are varied.  We have the electronic type people.  Strangely enough, we employ musicians who are not -- you know, usually just starting out, not really working full-time as musicians, students -- a lot of people who are working, many part-timers, the paradox, if you will, of working at a studio that does our type of work.  If you're smart enough to do the work, you're smart enough to make more money doing something else.  So we have a fairly high turnover.  We have happy people because they like what they're doing while they're here, but eventually they look in their wallets when they pull them out and not see an awful lot of reason to stay working for us.  But bookworm students are very 
-- are attracted to our line of work because it gives you a chance to look things up in dictionaries.  These are people who like homework, and this is a way to essentially do homework.  How do you pronounce this in Turkish or Chelle gallic [phonetic]?  We have the words spelled out in our alphabet.  Now, how do they actually pronounce that?  Because if we can't come up with something fairly convincing and accurate, we're submitting things to the Library of Congress, and the library won't take it, frankly.  Anyway, we have researchers.  
Musicians are good technically on the recording end, particularly when you're recording, if someone stumbles, the recording goes back -- the reader can listen to the playback up to the point where the good part of the recording stops.  If I say something like, "and then on the following day, so-and-so, so-and-so," and I get stopped, and no, it's on the next day, they can give me the recording as far as "and then," and their timing is good enough that they can resume the recording at that spot and I say, "on the next day, so-and-so, so-and-so."  If I make a mistake which isn't caught right away, another part of the process is to kick the recording back to the reader for correction.  Now, here's where the musician can do it pretty much without an awful lot of practice.  Anybody can do it with enough practice, but you're going to maybe from comma to comma, changing the recording, and so you need somebody who can -- who can start the recording process precisely at the right spot and then end it at the correct spot as soon as you've set it -- as soon as you've pronounced it correctly.  Musicians just have that timing.  They've been doing it for years by the time they get to our situation.  
I worked also for a few years.  There are several of us who have been working in more or less the same situation now.  I started in the mid '70s full time.  There are a couple of people still alive and well.  We have one reader who is now in her upper 80s.  She does not work full time, but she does when she feels like it.  She'll get called from time to time.  Are you interested in, you know, this is something we think you would -- it calls for that particular perspective.  But we have a number of people.  Our core situation hasn't changed that much.  Several of us are now in our 70s who have been working since the 1970s.  I'm not going to say 50 years.  [Laughter].  [Applause] 
I know I had reached middle age when the policemen started looking and sounding like kids.  [Laughter].  You don't -- after a while, especially when the gray hairs start, it's -- you know, it's a situation, you get called "sir" a lot more and you don't look at all dangerous anymore.  [Laughter].  Anyway, one of our studio mates -- this was 20 years ago -- enrolled in a program where she raised guide dog puppies.  This was from an outfit in Oregon.  And during the course of the few years, she was involved with the process.  We were all involved in the process.  Because the puppy would come to work, and, you know, they were not -- the puppies, they were of the lab family, labs and goldens and mixtures, and shepherds, and puppies that had already been screened for even temperament, so they were, you know, just very fine, personable little personalities to get used to and interact with.  And it was a sound recording studio, so it was a quiet atmosphere.  And just not -- not too -- you know, fairly low overall energy atmosphere, so there were no surprises to scare a puppy and we had all of us involved, had fun with the process.  
My friend wound up reacquainted with a couple of the dogs she had raised as puppies when her careers and guide dogs.  It was just a nice situation.  Eventually it got to the point where it was too hard on her to, you know, whenever the puppies would move on to their next business phase.  But anyway, that's sort of our situation.  
Old people -- one woman who now is sort of the head resource and taggler of the most involved types of recordings we do, she's now in her 70s, a few years younger than I am, and her mother was a librarian for years and she says, and she, you know, really compares what became her career, she's still bookworming, she's researching pronunciations.  But we have -- we have people who enjoy looking things up like that and I used to call the Talking Books studio when I first started D.J.'s Graveyard, and well, it has gotten to the point where I'm one of the few D.J.s left, and I don't want to call it D.J.'s Graveyard anymore.  [Laughter].  
Anyway, the -- there are some things that make sound very intelligent.  I didn't really -- I wound up through circumstances, one led to the next led to the next led to the next, and there was in the late '70s, early '80s, still pretty much insatiable demand for information on World War II and I figured that probably in a ten-year span in my recording booth the Germans and the Japanese probably lost around 20 world wars.  [Laughter].  And it sounds impressive until you realize, after the first recording, it was the same people making the same mistakes in the same sequence in the same towns, book after book after book.  You know, just sort of gets easier as it goes along.  Anyway, enough about me.  What do you think about me?  Yes, let's see if -- yeah, there's a curiosity, I'm sure people have.  
	>> Zoom people can ask questions too.  Let's try four, two from Zoom and two from the Zoom, if we can do that.  Do we have anybody in Zoom or in the room that would like to ask Mr.  Williams a question?  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Yes, we have two attendees in Zoom.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Chuck?  
	>> CHUCK:  Yes, my first contact as a narrator, okay, my question, number one, how many books have you narrated since you've been working with the Library of Congress?  
	>> JAKE:  I'm not sure.  It's over 1,000 titles.  [Applause] 
	>> CHUCK:  [Indiscernible].  
	>> JAKE:  In preparation for coming here, I thought that question would probably come up, and I think it's been about ten years since I went to the internet, dialed up NLS.com.  You used to be able to give you the name of a narrator and they would tell you how many titles were currently available with that particular narrator.  I tried that process and it was not successful.  But the last time I tried it, and it could have been ten years ago -- 
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Maybe it couldn't count that high.  
	>> JAKE:  Maybe.  I'm sure you don't keep that many older, you know, everybody economizes.  Once it's recorded, you know, there's nothing to do, especially once everything gets digitized, it doesn't cost to keep it in storage.  I looked a little over ten years ago, it was 1,000.  
	>> LINDA:  Jake, what an honor for you to take my question.  I have a couple of them.  You can hear me, correct?  
	>> JAKE:  Yes.  Very well.  
	>> LINDA:  First of all, you have to say, [indiscernible].  For those who don't know, the NBA champions.  I am a -- I grew up around, you know, and I grew up there and I started reading Talking Books when I was about five, so a couple of questions.  First of all, is your narrators who is in their 80s, my second question is, what radio station did you work for?  
	>> JAKE:  First question, she records under the name Jill Ferris.  [Applause]  In the early 1950s, Jill Ferris was Denver's first weather girl, and -- but she does still make the occasion recording.  I've been involved in a couple of her recordings of books by Joan Chittister, who some people suggested her name has come up now, not really jokingly, when the last -- when the need arose the last couple of times for a new Catholic Pope.  You know, just based on knowledge of tradition and all that sort of stuff and scripture and all that sort of stuff.  I don't know if legally she could even be considered, but -- but, you know, she is that profound a thinker.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Radio station.  
	>> JAKE:  Radio station is in the Denver area.  I started working in the late '60s for KADX.  It was a very small operation.  They played what we call, jokingly in the business, elevator music.  Easy listening.  And on Saturday nights we talked the powers at KADX, a friend of mine who is now in the Colorado broadcaster's Hall of Fame, Charlie Sampson, we were in school together at Regis and both of us were fond of jazz music and talked the people at grand KADX into a Saturday night jazz show.  I don't know if we ran the station in the ground with that one show, but the station sort of died there after.  And then I also worked at an all-news radio station and worked for 
-- what in Denver they called the old KADX -- or the old KVOD, I'm sorry.  In the '30s there was a radio station, voice of Denver, KVOD, when Gene Amole and his partner wanted to establish a radio station, KVOD call letters were available once again so they chose that for the FM part of their operation.  The AM side was KDEN.  And by the time I arrived there, KDEN played jazz and KVOD, the FM part, same building, same equipment, played classical music.  And I started working there because that was what I was most interested in.  Those were the two forms of music I knew the most about.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Ballroom.  Do we have anybody in the ballroom?  
	>> Thank you.  I was wondering, one, what type of book or specific book you've enjoyed reading the most, and two, what were the categories or types of books that were the hardest for you to read?  Thank you.  
	>> JAKE:  I'll go into hardest for me.  I'm not great on characterization and I am much better at fact books than a news reporter than fiction.  And you know, it's hard for me to sound like the main characters in the short niece.  There are those who do that far better than I.  So primarily over the years my recordings have been fact books.  And magazine articles, informational type articles.  There were, you know, there would be the occasional Readers Digest short story which wouldn't feature me.  
	>> Okay.  I have a question for you.  First, thank you for being here.  This has been very interesting.  Appreciate what you do.  
	>> JAKE:  Thank you.  
	>> I'm curious, there are so many books written every year, and that's a good thing, but also, I'm wondering how it is decided which books will be read next?  Part two of that is, generally about how long after a new book comes out, let's say, from a well-known author, before a new book is spoken?  
	>> JAKE:  That is, in both instances, it's mostly up to the people at the library.  We used to joke about most of the fiction stories we'd get, just about anything that made the bestseller list, not necessarily critical acclaim, would be recorded.  In the Talking Books program, to give people a chance to hear firsthand not only what is the bulk of the output these days but what's selling.  And I used to -- we collectively would develop a number of jokes about that while we were satirizing ourselves.  
In the late '70s, we would say, anything with Fabio on the cover, and the guy who gives his aunt a couple of hundred dollars periodically and sends him to Safeway to buy his books.  But we do, you know, anything that receives critical acclaim also gets recorded.  You know, it doesn't have to be even though it perhaps doesn't sell as well as the new equivalent of the dime novels.  And so we do get a good gamut.  We get things that are more memorable.  And as for how long it takes, it can -- it varies tremendously.  The library will put a book on a fast-track and I remember what came to mind first when you asked the question was sort of an autobiography by the late Colin Powell, and that was given to me to record "by yesterday." And we did that.  We just didn't do any -- there was -- there was a possibility of Powell running for president at that very time.  And we had that book out of our studio and on its way back to NLS in about a week's time.  
	>> Wow.  Thank you.  
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  Jake, thank you so much for coming to ACB and talking with us.  [Applause] If you didn't get a chance to ask your question or you would like to talk up close and personal with a talking book narrator, you can do that.  The library service of America will have him as a part of their program.  When is that?  1:00 this afternoon in what program?  Sound bridge G, so I assume that will be hybrid.  Schaumburg G, and it is in your Zoom links if you are accessing via Zoom, so please, take that opportunity to hear more from Jake and talk to him, and we always enjoy the Talking Book narrators coming to ACB every year.  They're the voices that give voice to the literature to all of us, and thank you so much for all you do.  [Applause] 
	>> RAY CAMPBELL:  All right, well my time before you, at least in this role, is coming to an end.  I'm going to turn things back over to Deb.  Before I do that, I just want to take a moment of personal privilege and say thank you, thank you, thank you.  It is you, the membership, through electing me to this position, that I'm honored to hold, that give me the opportunity to serve and also to be up here before you and I appreciate that and value that and wish you all a wonderful convention here in Schaumburg and I'm going to turn things back to Deb.  Thanks very much.  
	>> Approach the mic, please.  
	>> This is Carla Ruschival, and I wanted to thank whoever made these gorgeous signs and put them on our table.  It was so great to welcome us here this morning and have affiliate signs on the table.  So thank you very much.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  [Applause] I think that's our chief crew in the back, Nancy and crew, taking care of that for you.  Excellent.  That was such a tough act to follow, the scholarship winners and then the narrator, and now we have to go back to ACB business and that's not really fair, boo, hiss, yeah.  We're going to go through this as quickly as possible.  I've been trying to keep us a bit ahead of schedule so we would not take too much time out of your lunchtime.  There is not a formal luncheon today, so this does work pretty well for our process.  Here is what we will be doing.  So you voted on the amendment to the resolution.  Because the amendment did pass, it has now become the resolved clauses of the resolution.  We started to debate the resolution many, many days ago, on the Friday night, the 23rd of June, this same year.  Just wanted to make sure you know that's true.  Yeah, this same year.  We did debate the resolution at that time and then we took the amendment.  I'm going to allow the debate to start over because it was a very, very long time ago, even though it was pointed out to me that we did use up four minutes of it.  We have already taken the question on the amendment and we've taken the question period on the resolution, the original resolution itself.  So we really are at debate.  
If you would like to debate the resolution, that is fine and in order.  I'm going to ask you to limit the debate to specific points that you want to make that could influence someone's vote.  This is not the time for the public report whether, you know, whether you like the resolution, whether you'll be voting for the resolution.  We're going to deal with that.  We're going to give you an opportunity to vote and have your vote count.  But this is really about the pros and cons of the resolution as amended.  The only amendments that I can take will be on the whereas clauses themselves if you wish to amend those in any way. 
	So at this time I am opening the floor to accept -- the way we did this in the previous work, I think worked fairly well for us.  We started with the people who wished to debate in opposition to the resolution and we established the number of them and I will establish five and then we developed -- determined whether there were people to speak for the resolution.  We can have one additional person speak on one side or the other of the resolution.  So that -- then that's as far as we go.  The debate will cease in 20 minutes of actual debate.  So I will be announcing that.  During the debate, we will, as we did before, we will identify the people in advance and then when we complete the debate and we vote, I will tell you how we're doing that, because it does have to be slightly different since we have people both in Zoom and in the room. 
	So at this time, are there any hands -- we've already recognized Michael Byington.  Dan asked if we wanted to recognize Michael.  We recognized Michael in the previous debate.  He was the one person.  If he wants to speak again, he certainly can.  So let's go ahead and establish if there are people who wish to speak in opposition to the resolution.  And actually, I don't know where Michael is now, because since the amendment passed, I'm not sure if Michael is going to be for or against.  So if Michael does wish to be recognized at some point in this process, we sure will.  Let's determine in the room and in Zoom, I can take -- well, let's take two, each place, and then I guess I can take one more somewhere.  So are there two people in the room who wish to speak in opposition to this resolution?  And you'll be placed in the queue.  If so, please go to a microphone and state your name.  No, I don't -- no.  Yeah.  Ray wants permission to go away.  He has permission.  Nancy, do we have any hands?  
	>> KONI SIMS:  Deb, this is coni.  
	>> MICHAEL BYINGTON:  I will speak in favor previously.  
	>> KONI SIMS:  As speaker of the resolution, am I supposed to speak or not?  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  You can or not.  We're back on the original resolution now.  Michael is considered the maker of the resolution.  The amendment has been taken care of.  This is now the resolution.  So Michael is down to speak for.  Is there anyone who wishes to speak against the resolution?  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  We have two in Zoom.  Janeen Lea and Vanessa Lowery.  
	>> VANESSA:  Against.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Are there any other individuals in the room or in Zoom who wish to speak in opposition to the resolution?  
	>> Yes.  
	>> KONI SIMS:  Deb, this is Koni.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes.  
	>> KONI SIMS:  I would like to speak against the original.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Okay. 
	>> LIZ BOTTNER:  Liz Bottner.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Would you like to speak for or against the resolution?  
	>> LIZ BOTTNER:  Against the original resolution. 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  We have four people currently speaking against the resolution.  We need to pause to be even with things.  I am now going to ask for any individuals aside from Michael who would like to speak in favor of the resolution.  
	>> Lori Scharff.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  So Michael, Lori.  Additional?  And in Zoom?  Do we have anyone in Zoom?  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Yes, Don Horn.  
	>> And Dorene Cornwell.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  I believe we have five in favor and four against right now.  I will take one more.  Patrick will be added to the against side, and one more on the for side I can take.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  We have Michelle McGrew.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Michelle, do you wish to speak in favor of the resolution?  
	>> MICHELLE:  I'm not sure what to call this, but there seems to be some confusion as to whether we're speaking for the original.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  No, you are speaking for the amended resolution as passed.  
	>> MICHELLE:  That's what I thought, but there are some people who said they wanted to speak against it because they wanted they were speaking against the original resolution.  I just wanted to clarify.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you.  We are speaking against the amended, for or against the amended resolution.  
	>> KONI SIMS:  This is Koni.  I'm really confused.  
	>> I think we need a point of order.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Let's stop for a second.  Let me remind you what we are speaking about.  If you are speaking for the amended resolution, it means that you believe that we should write a letter and that we should ask, you know, -- let's begin again and review the people who are speaking, and I will not take, if you are switching sides, you won't all be speaking.  I first -- if someone will tell me who has identified to speak against the resolution.  
	>> Madam President, point of order.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes, Chris.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  This is Peter Heide.  I would like to have the resolution as amended read.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  We can.  Let's have that be -- let's get the speakers -- they're confused about what we're voting.  I think we need to do the reading first.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  Thank you.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  People are confused.  So Nancy, will you please read the entire resolution that we are -- just the amended resolution.  
	>> NANCY BECKER:  Whereas, the Academy for Certification of Vision Rehabilitation and Education Professionals (ACVREP) was established in order to enhance the stature and recognition of the highly specialized professional disciplines in the field of blindness and visual impairment; 
and Whereas, ACVREP's role is to ensure that available certification options, and the particular requirements for specific practices, reflect and preserve consensus concerning the need for and value of specialized services provided by properly prepared professionals; 
and Whereas, it is essential for ACVREP to embrace a continuum of specialized services without certifying practitioners who are not primarily involved in serving people with vision loss; 
and Whereas, without consultation from the American Council of the Blind (ACB) and other stakeholders, ACVREP recently announced determination to establish a new certification open only to occupational therapists (OTs) who acquire vision-related training to provide specialized services; 
and, Whereas, if this certification effort is to continue, ACVREP should demonstrate a compelling justification for this additional certification. 
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the American Council of the Blind will have the Executive Director write a letter with ACB board approval to ACVREP expressing our profound objection and disappointment that ACVREP is moving forward with this certification and training without having offered a formal invitation for ACB and all stakeholders to participate in their stakeholder listening process; and be it further resolved that this organization calls upon the staff and board of ACVREP to formally have an engaging and meaningful dialogue with ACB and all stakeholders in any further development of the new OT training and certification.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  This was the amendment introduced by Koni on the 23rd and was passed by a voice panel vote then and was requested a record vote, and the record vote you all completed yesterday and today.  So that is what we are debating.  Now, I would like to go through and continue whether people are on the right side of what they want to be.  So if someone could tell me please who the oppositions were.  Janeen Lea, Vanessa Lowery, Koni Sims, Liz Bottner -- let's go quickly through them one by one.  One name and then tell me, are you still speaking in opposition.  Janeen Lea.  
	>> JANEEN LEA:  Yes, ma'am, I am still speaking opposed.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Vanessa Lowery.  
	>> Still speaking for.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Koni Sims.  
	>> KONI SIMS:  I'm speaking for.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  So Deb drops off this list.  
	>> LIZ BOTTNER:  Liz Bottner, I am also speaking for.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Okay.  So Liz drops off this list.  
	>> PATRICK SHEEHAN:  Patrick Sheehan speaking for.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right. 
	I have two people who are speaking against the resolution. 
	Are there any other individuals who would like to speak against the resolution?  Do I have any hands in Zoom or in the audience to speak against the resolution?  People are standing around the microphones.  If you wish to be recognized, you will need to raise your hand to vote.  Well, to be recognized to speak against.  Otherwise, I'm going to take the two.  No hands?  Are there any hands in Zoom, Chanelle?  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  We have people who raised their hands to speak originally for -- 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  That's what I'm looking for.  It gets confused.  I don't want to mess anybody over.  So I'm going to have two people who are speaking in opposition, we will have three people who are speaking for.  Those will be Michael Byington and who are the first two of the people speaking for?  
	>> The original or the ones that added?  
	>> Lori Scharff and Don Horn. 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Michael, Lori, and Don speaking for and Janeen and Vanessa speaking against.  We will begin with Michael.  
	>> MICHAEL BYINGTON:  Ladies and gentlemen, I will certainly not act less than disappointed that the amendment passed because I felt that the resolution was stronger without it.  However, I do want to say that half a load is better than no load at all.  We are in a situation where now -- and this has been a change over the years -- ACB does its resolutions debating process circulating drafts and all kinds of things out there very much in public.  Believe me, ACVREP is profoundly aware that we are talking about this stuff.  If we wimp out now and don't pass any kind of a resolution, ACB looks like an organization going away with its tail between its legs.  We don't want to do that.  We want to take a position and even if our position is not affirmed by ACVREP, we need to be on record as to where we stand on this issue.  I don't consider this to be a great resolution anymore, but I consider it to be a good enough one that we need to pass it.  Thank you very much.  [Applause] 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you, Michael.  Excellent.  Janeen Lea.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Janeen, you need to unmute, please.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Janeen is speaking in opposition.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  We do have Vanessa Lowery.  
	>> VANESSA LOWERY:  Can everybody hear me?  My concerns about the current resolution are that the other organization, the alphabet soup that I'm not going to try to repeat because I'll get it long, they're going to look and say, whatever, and into the trash can it goes and they'll go on their merry way and do whatever they intend to do.  Whereas the original language asked the other organization to cease and desist, period, stop any forward movement, until we have an opportunity to consult with them as stakeholders.  I don't have a problem with OTs becoming certified in specific areas.  I do have a problem with an organization going forward with it and saying, we're going to do what we want to do, and the only thing that we have to tell them that we're opposed to is just a letter.  Cease and desist has more bite and that's why I'm opposed to the resolution as it stands.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you very much.  Who is next?  Lori?  
	>> LORI SCHARFF:  Thank you, I would like to say, as somebody who was on the committee, working on this resolution from the beginning, we need to show ACVREP that the dirty games they're playing with the potential future of people who are blind or low vision are not acceptable.  We need to know -- we need to let them know, we are watching, and we have a voice.  Not allowing people to be certified in key areas of nonvisual techniques of teaching people who are blind or low vision is not acceptable.  We need to stand united and say we will not let professionals, in quotes, make decisions for people who are blind or low vision.  We don't accept people in organizations making decisions for professionals without consulting those professionals, which is exactly what was done by ACVREP.  Thank you.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you.  Excellent.  All right.  Janeen, are you prepared to speak?  
	>> JANEEN LEA:  Yes, sir, I got notification, couldn't get it off.  I was trying.  Now I'm going to after Lori.  I wanted to go after Michael.  So I -- I think we need to do something.  I agree.  And I agree with your -- the -- holding people accountable.  At this point, I think we should vote no on this resolution and rewrite one or let the executive board and our executive director write the letter anyway.  We don't need a resolution for them to write a letter.  You guys can write letters and make decisions.  I think this resolution, we have debated is and gone over and over and over and the language now is kind of like -- I know that Michael said half is better than nothing.  That's true, but we need to be stronger, and we need it to be very adamant.  You know?  So I think we should just go back to the drawing board and rework this and make it better.  At this point, there's so many people confused and they don't even know what they're voting for.  So I think we should let them rework it and Michael did a great job and I wanted to say that.  I'm done.  Thank you.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you, Janeen, we had one more person in favor.  Don Horn.  All right.  On Zoom.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Don, you may unmute.  Don is staying muted.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  It's hard to know whether he is staying muted or has decide not to speak.  We will allow you to try to catch up with us here.  
	>> DON HORN:  I'm so sorry.  Okay.  I think there are three things to consider here.  One is, we cannot go back and wait, because ACVREP, they have a calendar that they're working on.  So they're not going to go back and wait.  They have already established dates and time frames.  
Number two, we as the blind community should always have a voice in these kinds of decisions.  And number three, let me tell you why this is so important.  What's being proposed -- and I understand why it's being proposed.  It's being proposed because there's an awful shortage of VRTs and mobility instructors.  
But here's the equivalent of what's being proposed.  Let's say I have some orthopedic disabilities, which I happen to have.  Let's say that I went to my podiatrist next week to have my toenails cut and the podiatrist and I got into a conversation about some of my orthopedic problems because after all, he's cutting my toenails and the orthopedist deals with my legs.  And the podiatrist said to me, you know, I took a couple of courses that are similar to the courses your orthopedist took, so if you can't find an orthopedist or you don't want to pay for an orthopedist, come to me and I'll do what the orthopedist did.  If you think of it that way, I don't think any would agree to that without an awful lot of discussion and clarification and I don't think any patient would agree to have all that discussion done without consumer involvement.  Thank you very much.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you very much.  All right.  That concludes the debate and by the way, they're doing a really good job, guys, managing all the people in the room and the people in the Zoom and all of the rest of it.  So thank you all so much for your courtesy to each other and the process.  Okay.  Now, so that means that the -- we have -- we need basically a -- do we need a motion, I guess, now, for the -- because normally the -- huh?  The Resolutions Committee recommended a do pass on the original resolution.  So the amended resolution should still be in that same place.  Is that correct?  Just a moment.  Is everyone willing to close debate so that we can move to the vote?  
	>> Yes.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  If there was any one in Zoom who is not willing to close the debate, you may raise your hand.  We didn't have any more debaters, so there is, you know, no reason to continue the debate.  So then I would like to move to the vote.  How we will handle the vote is that we will begin with the hand, raising of hand vote.  Whether you raise your hand, whether it's in Zoom -- first of all, let's make sure all the hands in Zoom are down.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  All hands in Zoom are down.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Let's make sure that all hands are down.  Yes, we're going to do actual count.  We're going to do the room first and then we're going to do Zoom.  So all of you who are in favor -- in the room, all of you who are in favor of passing the resolution as amended, you may raise your hand and keep it up.  You can use your other hand to help it stay up if it's too hard and we'll have some exercise classes to help you.  But keep it up until our counters tell you that you can put it down, and it will be a few minutes.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  And it's not time for raised hands in Zoom, so lower your hands.  I'll lower them, actually.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  We'll take Zoom separately because they can only count one group at a time anyway.  So they will count the room.  Please keep your hand up in the physical room.  If you're in the physical room with me, this is the physical room.  Make sure we are -- and the people in Zoom, you are in Zoom, right?  So you wait just a moment.  They are taking the count.  The count is being taken by Nancy Becker, our election supervisor, and by our parliamentarian Denise Irminger, and they will compare their notes of how many hands are counted.  And because we got most of this done in Zoom during our first week, this is probably the only time we're going to do this.  So enjoy.  [Laughter].  
Yeah.  It's the only time we got to do this this week.  Too late.  You needed to do that during the debate.  Don't put up two hands, only one.  If you put both arms up, make sure one is lower.  I know all the tricks people have, you know.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Leslie will provide some coaching about how to hold your arm up.  She's going to teach us the difference between our biceps and our triceps.  Triceps are the back of the arm.  Keep your arm up if you're voting yes.  Keep your arm down if you're waiting to vote no.  You guys are so good.  You've all established which part is the arm.  Any questions about which part is your arm?  You know, I used to teach preschoolers in Sunday school and some of them weren't sure, when I say raise your hands, serious things happened.  
	>> Okay, Deb.  Got a number.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Okay.  You may lower your hands if you are in the room.  All right.  Let's see, did we do in the -- against in the room.  So now, if you are in the room and you wish to vote in opposition to the amended resolution, please raise your hand.  And since you witnessed how the other people did it, you had training now and you should be able to do it too.  Yeah.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Please leave your hands down in Zoom.  We will come to the vote.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  We will get to you.  I promise we will do it.  Basically, if you are wishing to vote no on the resolution as amended, then you may raise your hand, making sure to keep your biceps and triceps lined up carefully, and which part is the hand.  We are done.  All right.  Thank you.  You may lower your hands.  I know it takes a long time to lower your hands in the room.  We're waiting for that to happen.  Are we settled in the room?  Okay.  Thank you.  In Zoom, if you wish to vote in favor of the resolution, show how it's done by raising your Zoom hand, please, and remember, Zoom will get a little excited about this, and don't worry if your device tells you that it's lowered your hand.  It probably has not.  So please raise your hands in Zoom if you wish to vote in favor of the resolution.  All of the information about biceps and triceps does not apply to you.  It's only a finger exercise for most of you.  Exactly.  Dan says which finger depends on how you're voting.  But right now, we are taking those in Zoom who wish to vote in favor of the resolution as amended.  And they are working on this.  Are we settled?  
	>> NANCY BECKER:  We are settled in Zoom.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Nancy, any panelist hands?  Chanelle will lower the -- she doesn't have a lot of panelists going on there.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  Actually there's a lowered hand.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Let us know when they're down in Zoom.  Anybody?  No.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  All hands are lowered.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  Those in -- wait a minute.  Get your hand down.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  We'll wait until Deb gets done.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  I want to say my thing and you just messed it up.  Now it's taking longer.  Are we ready?  Are they down?  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  All hands are lowered.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All those in Zoom who wish to vote in opposition to the resolution as amended, please raise your Zoom hand.  All right.  Let's get that going, and please keep them up.  Don't touch them.  Zoom may tell you it's doing things, but it's probably not really, so it's okay.  And again, the information of biceps and triceps is not applicable, but we could talk about parts of the finger, I guess.  [Indiscernible] mine when we were at the leadership conference so I'm kind of sensitive about fingers right now.  They are working on this.  Thank you very much, to our voting crew.  
	>> NANCY BECKER:  We have settled.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Very good.  We will lower the hands in Zoom.  When you are ready, you may report the count to us.  
	>> The total count is 218 for, 30 against.  There are 160 people in Zoom and Denise Irminger and I are not going to count the total in the room.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you very much.  So the motion has passed or the resolution has passed, the voice vote -- or hand vote, whatever it is we're doing here, and because there are more than 25 people who have asked -- who have voted no, if any of those 25 people wish to request a record vote on the resolution, they may raise their hands now.  We'll start with the room.  If you wish to request a record vote.  That record vote, if it is requested, will happen on Wednesday and Thursday, Wednesday for the individual vote and Thursday for the affiliate vote with the other resolutions and the constitution and bylaws amendments for which a record vote has already been requested.  So we won't be voting tomorrow or any of that.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  It's an individual vote and an affiliate vote on Wednesday.  If you raise your hand in the audience, that's what you're requesting.  Only if you voted no on the resolutions.  If you voted yes, you can't request a record vote.  
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  And this is only in the room.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  In the room only.  We'll do one at a time again.  Okay.  The room is settled.  All right.  Lower your hands in the room.  If you are in Zoom and you wish to request a record vote, please raise your hand.  
	>> We have settled.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Okay.  You can lower the hands in Zoom, please.  And you can report the total, Nancy, please.  
	>> NANCY BECKER:  11.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right.  That is not enough.  That is not enough to request a record vote on the resolution.  [Applause] So it will not go in the pile for our Wednesday-Thursday vote process.  So we will not be voting again at all that I can think of or come up with until we vote on Wednesday.  On Wednesday, you will receive information for those votes, for those resolutions and constitution and bylaws amendments.  We will be sending them out again as soon as we can get them rounded out again and then on Wednesday, just like we did yesterday, you will, in the afternoon, be invited to cast your individual vote.  The items will all be listed on the ballot.  They will not be in their entirety because we can't do that.  We can't make that work for the phone in particular, and it just makes a huge ballot.  So you will need to figure out how you wish to vote or your record vote, individual vote, on the various items which will be those resolutions and the constitution and bylaw amendments.  And then on Thursday morning, your delegates and alternates will report out that entire ballot.  So they will be responding for your affiliate on behalf of each item.  So, you know, we'll provide as much help as we can because this is different, but that's the way that will work. 
	I believe we have finished all of the business that we have for today.  
	>> Madam President.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:   Announcements and door prizes, yes.  
	>> Madam President.  Point of order.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Point of order.  I need to know who it is.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  This is Peter Heide again.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  You need to get closer to the mic.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  I'm trying to.  It's short.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Thank you.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  All right.  Just for information, I was confused in this process because, although a substitute resolution or amendment can be brought, that once the substitute amendment has been brought forward and voted on, it's usually considered, then, as a substitute resolution.  And that leaving it as an amendment that I continue to wait for language that incorporated both the language of the initial resolution with the -- 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  That's what we read.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  But I didn't find the original language in the amended resolution.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  It's not there anymore.  The whereases are the original whereases and the resolves were replaced.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  I understand that.  But since it was not brought forward as a substitute resolution, I was still looking for the amendment to incorporate the language of the original resolution.  And I believe that Robert's Rules is in favor of that.  It has no bearing on the result.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Right.  I understand your question.  Yeah.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  Thank you.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Just a second.  We're having a consult with our parliamentarian.  So once the amendment was adopted -- I'm losing the microphone.  What happened to it?  Once the amendment was adopted, then that became the pending resolution.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  Right.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Which we voted on.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  But it wasn't substitute resolution.  
	>> Should it have been?  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  She said it should not have been a substitute resolution.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  Then the language from the original amendment -- 
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  The original resolved clauses went away when the amendment passed.  
	>> PETER HEIDE:  I understand.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Do we have any announcements?  
	>> Yes, Madam Chair.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  One at a time.  Carla?  
	>> CARLA RUSCHIVAL:  Thank you.  I wanted to remind everyone that tonight at 7:15 in the Vana that the ACB Family is holding a bingo, lots of fun, lots of chances with your friends, and we will have Braille and large print boards.  If you have a ticket, that's great.  If you don't have a ticket yet, there's no problem.  It's $10 at the door, and we sure look forward to having all of you there.  Thank you.  
	>> Madam Chair?  I have an announcement.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes, announcement.  
	>> Chris Prentice from Texas and her chapter is happy to donate $250 to the ACB general fund and $250 for raffle tickets.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  All right!   
	>> PATTI:  Madam Chair.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Hold on. 
	Was that Patti?  
	>> PATTI:  Yes.  CCLVI is selling tickets, $10 apiece, and the winners will receive either $500, $100, or $90 worth of [indiscernible] products.  You can see Debbie, myself, or anyone from CCLVI.  
	>> Madam President, this is Donna Gallagher.  I am using scrubbies to watch dishes with.  They sell for $3 and I'm doing a fundraiser for the Nevada Council of the Blind.  If you are interested in seeing them or talking to me about them, my room number is 1039.  Thank you.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Those are nice.  Very nice.  Okay.  
	>> Madam President.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Yes.  
	>> This is Terry.  
	>> Thank you for doing a great job.  Just have an announcement to say from ACB Diabetics in Action, first place sugar warriors, over $8,000.  Did I say that out loud?  Want to say happy birthday to one of our members that are here at the convention, Melissa Loops, and if there's anyone having a birthday on July 3rd, let's hear a big round of applause.  Happy birthday, everybody!  
	>> Sorry about that.  This is Marcia Farrell from GCB and the Georgia Council of the Blind is selling what is called cow patty bingo tickets, and in September, we will have an arena set up with a large bingo card and the cow decides who wins by doing his thing.  So if you want to -- if you want to buy a ticket and have an all natural support of ACB, you can see Marcia, Alice, Betsy, Cecily.  
	>> ANTHONY:  I would like to know after the amazing showcase, everyone who has already submitted, we have you down, but if you have brought your own track or you have poetry or some other magic trick, bird calling, at the beginning of the event, you can be placed on the roster.  It's tonight from 10:00 to 12:00 right after the friends in art showcase and we look forward to all of the talent in ACB tonight.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  That sounds great.  Any additional ones?  Hearing none, I have a couple.  So I want to remind you to go by the MMS booth in the exhibit hall and sign up for MMS or sign up to increase your MMS involvement because there are prizes involved, but because you love ACB, so those would both be good reasons to do that.  Yes?  I thought someone was asking for the mic, but they didn't, so -- 
	>> CHANELLE ALLEN:  They are muted now.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:  Hello?  Okay.  The other thing that I want to remind you of is that there are a few Braille raffle tickets, even though Chris just took some, but there are a few left, and I would recommend that you move on that really quickly.  Remember that you can divide your Braille form raffle ticket among several people or your chapter or whatever and make that easier to purchase, but then you'll probably have to share the prize too if you win, but maybe you can work that out.  See the attorneys if you need help negotiating how to work that out, a fee for a fundraiser affiliate, they'll help you work that out.  Let's have some door prizes and then we'll be able to get on out into recess.  
	>> Okay.  I have three.  $25 from Illinois Council of the Blind, ICB.  And the winner is Nicole Curly.  And the second is two packages of burger cookies from Maryland Council of the Blind, and the winner is Belinda and the last one is $50 to ACB of Minnesota and the winner is a virtual participant, Steve Dresser.  
	>> DEB COOK LEWIS:   Congratulations to our door prize winners.  Thank you, everyone, for a great morning.  We will have all the programs this afternoon and this evening and we will be back here again in the morning at 8:30.  We are in recess.  
[ Human realtime captioning by HRI CART.  ]