APH News: November 2016

Exciting New APH Products Announced!

Read on to learn about these new products – now available!

• Featured Article: You Can Test Braille Blaster!
• NEW! Teaching Street Crossing to Students With Visual Impairments
• NEW! Braille Datebook, 2017
• Field Tests and Surveys
• APH Fall Harvest Sale
• APH Braille Book Corner

APH Listens to YOU — APH News Reorganized at Request of Ex Officio Trustees

Our recent 148 Annual Meeting was a wonderful exchange of ideas with our Ex Officio Trustees and special guests. One of the Trustee requests was to reorganize the monthly APH News to place product-related items and field tests requests toward the top of the newsletter. Starting with this issue, we are presenting the reorganized newsletter. We invite you to send us feedback about the APH News or other feedback that you think will help us better serve our customers. Thank you, Your APH Partners.

NEW! Teaching Street Crossing to Students With Visual Impairments

8-75978-00 — $27.00

Intended for use by O&M professionals, this book summarizes promising pedagogical methods for teaching street crossings to persons who are blind and visually impaired.

Teaching Street Crossing to Students With Visual Impairments: How to Teach, Not What to Teach provides information about teaching various components of street-crossing skills at appropriate ages/developmental levels; sequencing skills and environments; and using appropriate pedagogical strategies to enhance effectiveness of street-crossing instruction.

The goal of this manual is to provide information about different strategies—skills-based, behavioral, and Piagetian—that are derived from different theories of learning.

Practical case examples and vignettes throughout the manual apply concepts to real-world scenarios for the reader.

Topics Addressed Include

• Chapter One – Skills and Pedagogy: What Is the Difference?
• Chapter Two – When to Begin Teaching Street Crossing
• Chapter Three – Developing a "Game Plan" for Teaching Street Crossing
• Chapter Four – Planning How to Teach, not What to Teach

NEW! Braille Datebook, 2017

1-07899-17 — $79.00

Replacement Items

Braille Datebook, 2017 Calendar Pages only: 1-07899-17 — $22.00
Braille Datebook, 2-Ring Binder: 25-070-001 — $23.25
Braille Datebook, Filler Paper and Tabs: 1-07897-00 — $11.00

The Braille DateBook is an attractive planner-organizer designed specifically for braille users! Keep track of appointments, addresses, family schedules, class assignments, and more. Use it at your desk or on the go — it is sturdy, compact, and fits in a backpack or brief case.

The Braille DateBook is housed in a small, rugged binder. The binder holds one hundred pages, including the calendar and other tabbed pages. Its hook/loop fastener keeps all materials together. The binder includes a slate pocket that is on the inside of the front cover. Note: A slate is not included with the Braille DateBook. The pocket on the inside spine of the binder includes an APH Saddle-Shaped Stylus.

The tabbed calendar pages are made of durable plastic. Note that you will need to buy a new calendar for each year.

The included filler paper pack contains 250 sheets of punched, 4×6 inch braille paper. Blank tabs are packaged with the filler paper. Use tabs to create sections such as addresses, family schedules, financial transactions, emergency contacts, medical information, travel itineraries, shopping lists, or to do lists.

Includes

• Binder
• Calendar pages
• Blank filler pages and blank tabs
• A Saddle-Shaped Stylus
• Print and braille tips pamphlet

Recommended ages: 11 years and up.

APH Fall Harvest Sale

Load up a world of savings on selected APH products with APH’s Fall Harvest Sale 2016, October 1—December 31. As always, first come, first served.

archive.aph.org/sale/

A Bold, Strong Annual Meeting!

The 2016 Annual Meeting of Ex Officio Trustees and Special Guests, entitled "Bold, Strong, Together!" was a wonderful gathering of nearly 400 attendees. Here is a brief recap of a few of the many inspiring moments of the meeting:

Keynote Speaker: Denna Lambert, a lifelong user of APH products, shared her personal journey of boldness, strength, and the power of working together to reach goals. Lambert is a Program Manager with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and she quoted Robert Goddard in her speech: "It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dreams of yesterday are the hope of today and the reality for tomorrow."

Awards from APH: We were proud to recognize outstanding achievements in our field with the Creative Use of Braille Award and the Virgil Zickel Award, please see the accompanying photos.

New Session Format: For the first time this year, APH held a series of interactive Concurrent Roundtable Discussions. Attendees shared their questions and knowledge in lively conversations about 11 topics of interest to the blindness field.

Wide Variety of Sessions: The days were action-packed as attendees had numerous opportunities to learn about new APH products, hear about ongoing research and field testing, have input into product design, and hear an update from blindness organizations during a general session.

Cutting-Edge Products Featured: Attendees had the chance to get hands-on with three amazing products APH will be releasing soon: BrailleBlaster™, Graphiti™, and Orbit Reader 20™.

Banquet Honored Artists and Legends in Our Field: Friday evening we honored winning artists during the APH InSights Art Award Ceremony, which featured artwork created by students and adults who are blind. This was followed by the induction ceremony for the field’s Hall of Fame, which recognized legends Sir Charles Frederick Fraser and Dr. Randal T. Jose.

Annual Meeting 2017: There were far more activities at Annual Meeting than we can list here, so make plans to experience it yourself at the 149th Annual Meeting on October 12–14, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Louisville!

Note: Look for the full APH Annual Meeting photo memory album that will be published with the December APH News, along with video and audio sessions from the meeting!

First-Ever APH/AER Rehabilitation Institute

“WIOA, Best Practices, and Outcome Assessments”

APH partnered with the Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER) to host the first APH/AER Rehabilitation Institute at the 2016 APH Annual Meeting. The topic of this pre-conference session, “WIOA, Best Practices and Outcome Assessments,” attracted professionals working with adults in rehabilitation settings and education professionals interested in transition services for their students. Led by Neva Fairchild, National Independent Living and Employment Specialist at AFB and Mark Richert, Director, Public Policy at AFB, the session highlighted recent changes to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and an interactive discussion around best practices and outcome assessments at agencies and states represented in the audience.

This inaugural event, facilitated by AER Executive Director Lou Tutt and AER President Joe Catavero, provided both APH and AER with information and ideas needed to plan for next year’s second Rehabilitation Institute, which we hope will attract an even larger audience. If you have ideas or suggestions for the 2017 training, please contact Lou Tutt, lou@aerbvi.org or Janie Blome, jblome@aph.org.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and we hope to see you next year!

16th Annual National Prison Braille Forum

Nancy Lacewell (nlacewell@aph.org, 502-899-2339)

APH staff hosted the 16th annual National Prison Braille Forum on October 5 in Louisville, in conjunction with APH’s 148th Annual Meeting. Sixty-six corrections and vision professionals attended, representing 21 states and 22 prison braille programs across the US.

With a theme of “Working the Network,” the Forum focused on building relationships among colleagues in the field to share our experience and our challenges. In between panel presentations, brief videos and news clips showing prison braille programs were presented, and participants networked during breaks.

Results of Braille Transcriber Apprentice Program (BTAP) pilot initiative were shared, indicating that three apprentices have successfully completed BTAP. Two of these transcribers – Jason Wilson (GA) and Howard R. Parker II (DE) – have been hired by APH as full time employees. The third apprentice – Terri Fox (WA) – is working as an independent transcriber in Crestwood, KY, transcribing math textbooks for APH. BTAP has been funded for FY2017, and application packets are available through the Public Affairs Department. Qualified transcribers are encouraged to submit their applications for this highly competitive program by December 16, although applications will be accepted until July 1, 2017.

An increasing number of transcribers who learned braille while incarcerated are attending the annual Forum. This year, eight former offenders participated, and four of them served on a panel offering advice to others preparing for release and successful transition as transcribers. Advice included focusing on learning as much about technology before release from prison as possible and learning all aspects of braille production, such as bidding for jobs and invoicing for completed work.

John Romeo (IA) and several colleagues from across the country gave a presentation on an innovative program called “From Beyond the Walls.” This program, which won APH’s Creative Use of Braille Award this year, gives experienced incarcerated transcribers the opportunity to train transcribers on the outside via live stream and video.

Mark your calendars now for the next National Prison Braille Forum: Wednesday, October 11, 2017.

APH Partners on a Landmark Book Project

Darcy Thompson, Director, Louisville Story Program

During the 2015-16 school year, the Louisville Story Program worked closely with seven students from the Kentucky School for the Blind in daily afterschool writing workshops to help them write about their lives and experiences. The students also developed oral histories based on interviews they conducted with others in their lives. Their hard work culminated in We Can Hear You Just Fine: Clarifications from the Kentucky School for the Blind, the nation’s first professionally published nonfiction anthology written by teenagers who are blind and visually impaired.

The essays in We Can Hear You Just Fine offer vivid, incisive and illuminating portraits of these students’ lives. They cover a range of topics including the travails and triumphs of visual impairment and the difficulties of marginalization. Their book highlights the particularities of their lives, but also serves as a poignant reminder that the desire for acceptance and dignity and the drive to succeed and make meaning in the world are common to all of us.

We Can Hear You Just Fine will be published in November. Braille and large print editions will be available from APH, and regular print editions will be available from the Louisville Story Program at http://louisvillestoryprogram.org/store. The Louisville Story Program plans to develop a standards-aligned curriculum for secondary teachers who are interested in using the book as a mentor text for their students.

Title: We Can Hear You Just Fine
Subtitle: Clarifications From the Kentucky School for the Blind
ISBN: 0991476522 / 9780991476527
Publisher: Louisville Story Program
Description: a groundbreaking anthology of memoirs and oral histories by seven authors from KSB
Agency: APH

• Catalog #: A-L01393-00
• Price: $161.00
• Format: Large Print
• Status: Intention
• APH Large Print textbooks will be in 18 pt. font, printed in color, and be a standard book size.

• Catalog Number: A-B1543-00
• Price: $143.00
• Format: Braille
• Volumes: 2 v.
• Accessible format detail: UEB/Interpoint (double-sided)/contracted braille
• Pages: 306

Typhlo & Tactus Tactile Book Contest 2017

Entries Due August 10, 2017! Once again APH is the U.S. national contact for The International Tactile-Illustrated Book Prize, a biennial competition created to encourage improvement of the quality and quantity of tactile books for young children with visual impairments. Don’t miss your chance to submit your tactile book, designed for children with visual impairments from 3 to 12 years of age.

The competition is conducted by Typhlo & Tactus (T&T), an organization comprised of western and eastern European nations that exists to improve the quality and quantity of tactile books available to young children with visual impairments in member countries. As a part of T&T’s efforts, the organization has conducted a biennial tactile book competition each year, beginning in 2000. At first, the competition was open only to European T&T members, but in 2011, it was opened to a worldwide audience.

A panel of U.S. judges will review entries sent to APH and select the top 5 tactile books for final adjudication by an international panel of children and adults with visual impairments, as well as professionals in the field of vision. A single winning entry will be chosen, along with ten shortlisted books. Selected books may be featured on the T&T website, on posters, or in promotional materials used by T&T.

U.S. entrants should send their completed tactile book to the American Printing House for the Blind by August 10, 2017. Questions? Contact Rob Guillen, rguillen@aph.org

Visit this link for rules and entry forms and to see last year’s winners
archive.aph.org/tactus-international-tactile-books-competition/

Compilation of National Listserv of State Vision Consultants

The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) sponsors an electronic listserv for Department of Education BVI representatives who support statewide resources. If you are a Specialist for BVI in a statewide role endorsed by your state department of education and would like to be added to this national listserv, please contact Tanni Anthony at Anthony_t@cde.state.co.us

Find a Winter Sports Camp!

2017 Winter Sport Camps are taking registration now!

Find a camp near you: archive.aph.org/physical-education/camps/

Tactile Art Products and Materials

For her Annual Meeting session, "Bold, Beautiful, and Tactile," Project Leader Karen Poppe assembled a list of APH and other products useful for creating educational and fun tactile graphics. Here’s a handy list of APH products and other materials helpful for creating tactile graphics.

Together

“When we received our son’s blindness diagnosis, the first question I asked myself was, ‘How am I going to get him to like reading?’” Shelly is a former early childhood educator whose son Alex has been blind since he was a few months old. Alex is now a rambunctious four-year-old currently enrolled at VIPS (Visually Impaired Preschool Services) in Louisville.

After the family received Alex’s diagnosis, Shelly was in a meeting with a developmental interventionist who recommended that she get on “the list.” Shelly laughs. “I said, ‘What is the list? Talk to me about the list!’” The list refers to Braille Tales, a program offered by APH that sends print-braille books to eligible families. Shelly signed up for Braille Tales when Alex was seven months old, and proudly tells me that her house now has an entire shelf of braille books.

I had brought a few Braille Tales books with me for our interview. Shelly spied The Gruffalo and exclaimed, “We just got that one!” She shuffled through the other two–Maple, which she said her 17-year-old daughter adored, and Llama Llama and the Bully Goat, which is written in playful rhymes that Alex enjoys. Shelly talks about how Braille Tales has more than solved her original problem: how to get her son to like reading when he can’t see “the best part of picture books: the pictures.” Now, she says, reading Braille Tales books is exciting for the whole family. “Books are very important to me,” she says, “and I read to my kids all the time. What I love about the Braille Tales books is that they’re quality literature. I can read them to all of my children at the same time, so while my girls are sitting beside me, looking at the pictures and describing them, Alex is sitting on my lap, feeling the braille, knowing that this is a book, and understanding the story.” Shelly says that reading Braille Tales books brings her family together. “I don’t have to say to my girls, ‘I’ll read you your kind of book, and then I’ll read your brother his book.’ When we get a new book in the mail from Braille Tales, we tear open the package to see ‘What did we get this time?’ We’re grateful that our family can share the books we get from Braille Tales, and that Alex can know that literature is out there, and we can enjoy it and feel it together.”

As an early childhood educator, Shelly knows how important it is for children to acquire literacy skills before they begin school. She says that the books from Braille Tales have equipped Alex to begin learning how to read. “If I were reading a picture book to a sighted child the same age as my son, my finger would go under the word, and we would look at the pictures, and we would turn the pages. When Alex and I read together, he’s searching for the braille on the page, trailing along with his fingers as I read, and turning the pages, and that to me is awesome. Those are things, from an early childhood educator perspective, that children have to learn. You hand a child a book, and just instinctively, they don’t know what to do with it. They don’t know that they’re supposed to find the words, to trace the words in a left to right, top to bottom progression, to turn to the next page. Those are all skills, and Alex has gotten those skills from the Braille Tales books.”

Shelly is grateful for Braille Tales because she has had to purchase some braille books on her own, and they can be expensive. Braille Tales books are free, mailed directly to their home, and are fun and engaging stories that the whole family can enjoy.

Shelly is excited and relieved that Alex has become so familiar with braille. “Alex thinks that all books have braille in them, because all of the books in his life have braille in them. Just like any four-year-old would automatically know when they pick up a book that there’s going to be something inside, he knows that when he picks up a book, there’s going to be bumps inside. And if he doesn’t feel that, then it’s not a book! He will throw it down or toss it across the room.” Braille is Alex’s normal. And because of Braille Tales, he will be able to start school with a solid understanding of what books are, and the exciting worlds that they can open up.

APH Welcomes New Ex Officio Trustees

• Douglas Williams, the Pennsylvania Department of Education
• Amy Campbell, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

Here’s a handy link to the full directory of current Ex Officio Trustees.

Treasures From the APH Libraries

The APH Barr Library supports research initiatives at APH, while the Migel Library is one of the largest collections of nonmedical information related to blindness in the world. Although the collections do not circulate, arrangements can be made to use the materials on-site. In addition, an ongoing digitization effort means APH will continue to make materials available through the online catalog at http://migel.aph.org.

From the Migel Library:
McNeil, Mary A. E. A. The Blind Knight of Nova Scotia, Sir Frederick Fraser, 1850-1925.Washington, D.C.: University Press, 1939.

Hall of Fame: Leaders and Legends of the Blindness Field 2016 inductee Sir Frederick Fraser was seven years old when he injured his eye while whittling. Frederick entered the Perkins Institution when he lost sight in both of eyes at the age of 13. As a student, he was known as a bit of a trouble-maker and was briefly expelled before returning to graduate. It was a rocky academic start for someone who would go on to become the first principal of the School for the Blind in Halifax – a position he retained for 50 years. During that time, he also successfully campaigned for a free education program for the blind, a library of braille materials, and free postage for braille books. He guided the school through terrible hardship after a massive explosion left the school in ruin and blinded hundreds of the residents of Halifax. The Blind Knight of Nova Scotia has been digitized for Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/blindknightofnov00mary

From the Barr Library:
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Handwriting Manual: A Reference Manual for Rehabilitation Teachers Working with the Adult Blind. Kalamazoo: Graduate College, Western Michigan University, 1970.

This resource aims to help rebuild the self-esteem of those who recently lost the ability to communicate in written form by providing a method for reteaching scriptwriting to newly blinded adults. This skill was especially critical during an era in which electronic modes of communication were not commonplace, and the authors underscore the feelings of grief experienced when visual impairment is construed by others as illiteracy. Upper case and lower case letters of the alphabet are taught in 22 lessons, and the manual also includes practical exercises for punctuation, paragraphing, writing personal letters, and addressing envelopes. The guide also utilizes other writing aids, including a corrugated writing board, a drawing kit, and embossed materials.

APH is working with the Internet Archive to digitize portions of the M.C. Migel Library. Search the phrase “full text” to find these items at http://migel.aph.org. The digitized texts are available in a variety of formats, including DAISY, Kindle, EPUB, PDF, etc.

Contact Library staff: library@aph.org, 800-223-1839, ext. 705

Social Media Spotlight

New Product Tuesday

Would you like to know whenever APH releases a new product? Every Tuesday we feature a new product on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Some of the new products we most recently featured on New Product Tuesdays include: Teaching Street Crossing to Students with Visual Impairments, Braille DateBook 2017, and Gross Motor Development Curriculum. Be sure to “like” us and follow us and be one of the first to know about each new product APH produces.

"Like" APH at Our Facebook Page!

We invite you to visit our Facebook page and "Like" us! You can find APH at these social media sites: Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, and at our blog, Fred’s Head from APH.

APH offers a number of recreational books in braille (Quota funds can be used). Each of these titles was originally transcribed and produced by APH for the National Library Service which has graciously granted permission for this offering. As usual, these titles have been added to the APH Louis Database where you can find thousands of titles produced in accessible formats.

Note: all books are produced upon receipt of orders, therefore, please allow several weeks for delivery.

Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear
By Lindsay Mattick: T-N2135-30 — $18.50
A woman tells her young son the true story of how his great-great-grandfather, Captain Harry Colebourn, rescued and learned to love a bear cub in 1914 as he was on his way to take care of soldiers’ horses during World War I, and the bear became the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Grades K-3. *(AR Quiz No. 176655, BL 3.4 Pts 0.5)

Ribsy
by Beverly Cleary: T-N2146-10 — $55.50
Separated from his owner, Henry Huggins, in a shopping center parking lot, ordinary city dog Ribsy begins a string of bewildering adventures. Grades 3-6. *(AR Quiz No. 7745, BL 5.0 Pts 4.0)

Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
by Nick Lane: T-N2129-70 — $219.50
Biochemist theorizes the emergence of morphologically complex life two billion years ago, two billion years after simple bacterial life arose. Discusses the basis for the question he is trying to answer, and presents evidence for his hypotheses, including cellular morphology and biochemistry, and genetic divergence.

See Me
by Nicholas Sparks: T-N2137-40 — $220.00
With a history of violence and bad decisions behind him and the threat of prison dogging his every step, Colin Hancock is determined to walk a straight line. That means applying himself single-mindedly toward his teaching degree and avoiding everything that proved destructive in his earlier life. However, a chance encounter on a rain-swept road will alter the course of Colin’s life forever. Some adult content.

The Double (A Spero Lucas Novel)
by George Pelecanos: T-N2139-90 — $114.00
The job seems simple enough: retrieve the valuable painting Grace Kinkaid’s ex-boyfriend stole from her. It’s the sort of thing Spero Lucas specializes in: finding what’s missing, and retrieving it quietly. But Grace wants more. She wants Lucas to find the man who humiliated her–a violent career criminal with a gang of brutal thugs at his beck and call. Some adult content.

*Accelerated Reader quiz number, book level, and point value. For more information on the Accelerated Reader program, see the January 2006 APH News or www.renlearn.com/ar/

APH Travel Calendar

NIP Events

January 12-13, 2017
NIP: Building Literacy with Building on Patterns
Baton Rouge, LA

Product Trainings

November 3-4, 2016
Technology and New Product Training for Educators and Families
Watertown, NY

December 13, 2016
Kentucky Co-op Training
Ashland, KY

Exhibits/Presentations

November 3-4, 2016
Arizona AER Conference
Yuma, AZ

November 3-4, 2016
Indiana AER Conference
Spencer, IN

November 6-8, 2016
NY State AER Conference
Syracuse, NY

November 7-8, 2016
Arkansas AER 2016 Conference
North Little Rock, AR

November 11-12, 2016
KY Council of the Blind Convention
Louisville, KY

November 14, 2016
SCOPE Professional Day
Columbus, OH

November 16-18, 2016
OCALICON 2016 (Ohio Center for Autism & Low Incidence) Convention
Columbus, OH

November 20-22, 2016
Kentucky Exceptional Children 2016 Conference
Louisville, KY

January 19-21, 2017
ATIA 2017
Orlando, FL

Conferences

November 2-5, 2016
VisionServe Alliance Fall Conference 2016
San Antonio, TX

November 3-5, 2016
BANA Board Meeting, Fall 2016
Atlanta, GA

December 5-8, 2016
The SharePoint Technology Conference
Burlingame, CA