[gui-talk] Fwd: Announcing Notre Dame Blindness Symposium: Fri., 6 March, 2009

Wed Feb 25 02:27:05 UTC 2009

From: Kane Brolin kbrolin65 at gmail.com
To: gw-info at gwmicro.com

Greetings, fellow listers.

This note is meant to announce that a high-profile blindness symposium
is to occur in McKenna Hall on the campus of The University of Notre
Dame in Indiana on Fri., 6 March, 2009, from 9:00-5:45 Eastern
Standard Time.  I am sending an advisory to GW Micro lists because
leaders from GW Micro will play a prominent role during the afternoon,
demonstrating and marketing several of this company’s innovative
products for those who are blind or who have low vision.  Because the
greater South Bend, Indiana, area is reasonably close to Chicagoland,
southern Michigan, Indianapolis, and Ohio, a significant number of
persons will potentially find it feasible to attend.  So, particularly
if you live in the Midwestern United States, please forward to anyone
you believe might have an interest in this, perhaps posting an
advisory in any other newsletter or podcast to which you contribute.

For those not familiar with the Greater South Bend area or the Notre
Dame campus, it is understandable that you may be curious about how to
travel independently to, from, and within the venue where it is being
held.  Please know that reliable, low cost transportation is
available, particularly to and from the South Bend Regional Airport.
While there is no lunch provided at McKenna Hall for attendees,
several good places to eat are within walking distance, and sighted
guides will be available to help direct individuals and groups to
their preferred dining locations.  More info is available upon request
for those who want it, and much of the critical logistical information
is on the Notre Dame Web site and will be available in registration
packets handed out near the entrance of McKenna Hall on the morning of
March 6 itself.

The happenings of March 6 fall into three broad categories: academic
presentations, a museum tour, and a technology fair that will feature
both hands-on equipment exploration and formal tech presentations.
Some of these events will occur at the same time.  So please read
carefully what is below to get further explanation of each category.

The highest profile aspects of this symposium are the keynote address by 
Dr.
Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind; the
presence of Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer and entrepreneur Adolph
Kiefer; and the involvement of Dr. Georg Bodammer, a venture manager
from the giant global corporation Siemens AG in Germany that is
becoming increasingly involved in new navigational equipment for those
without eyesight.

Dr. Maurer will be on center stage roughly from 10:45 A.M. to 12:30
P.M and will speak directly to the enormous gap that remains in
respect to employment of the blind in 21st century America.

Athletically-minded attendees and parents of blind swimmers will be
able to see first-hand the brand-new, highly affordable navigational
aid called AdapTap that blind swimmers may use to keep their bearings
in the often confusing and fast-moving environment of a swimming pool.
 Adolph Kiefer’s firm is helping to develop and market AdapTap, and
Mr. Kiefer himself will be on hand for the presentation of the formal
paper describing its
history and function at 3:30 PM.

At 1:30 PM, Dr. Bodammer from Siemens will present a paper that gives
us a sneak peek at some experimental Orientation & Mobility technology
not yet released to the general public that is being developed and
tested in the nations that make up
the European Union.  At least one of these experimental devices never
has been seen before in North America, but we expect it to be
available for personalized demonstrations that may be arranged for
individually either in Michiana or in the Greater Chicago area in the
few days immediately following this event.

This blindness symposium has been created at Notre Dame and is being
administered by an ND special professional named Dr. Essaka Joshua,
who conducts and supervises academic research in the area of
disability studies.  So this will be first and foremost an academic
conference put on by one of North America's most prestigious
institutions of higher learning.  To that end, papers
about the literary and historical significance of blindness through
the ages will be formally presented by scholars from universities both
in the USA and in Europe.

For those who wish to do some active exploration, we have arranged for
two optional tours of the world-famous Snite Museum of Art on the
Notre Dame campus.  There will be an overall tour of the Snite Museum
at 10:00 A.M.  Alternatively, a visitor may choose to go on a
specialized tour featuring highlights from the special Darwin
Exhibition currently being displayed there; the Darwin Exhibition tour
begins at 9:45.  Audio description will be provided in both tours.
Each tour is designed to include a mix of blind or partially sighted
and sighted people. Spaces are limited, so please send an email to
Professor Joshua ejoshua at nd.edu if you would like to go on either
tour.

Apart from the academic focus and the museum tours, there is a third
aspect to the March 6 symposium, intended to line up with the
practical needs of teachers or
members of the blind community:  Following Dr. Maurer's time in the
spotlight and a brief lunch break, the afternoon will feature a
technology fair that runs concurrently with the last three paper
presentations.  As a part of that tech fair, we will present four
focused seminars of
practical and educational significance to special education teachers,
vocational rehabilitation professionals, blind persons, and family
members or friends of blind persons.  The lineup for these
presentations, as it stands now, is as follows:

2:00 PM:  Select members from the leadership team of GW Micro,
developers of the Window-Eyes screen reading program and distributors
of the Braille Sense notetaker, the SenseNav GPS system, and the
SenseView closed circuit TV, show off the benefits and new features
related to their increasingly robust and popular products.

3:00 PM:  The Sendero Group, featuring accessible GPS solutions and
other leading-edge portable technology for the blind.  Enter a drawing
for a chance to win a signed copy of "Crashing Through," the
inspirational true story of Sendero's president and
adventurer-in-chief Michael May.  This book, authored by Robert
Kurson, was published by Random House in 2007 and is available in
Braille, CD, cassette tape, and Internet download.

4:00 PM:  Wade Wingler of the Easter Seals Crossroads Assistive
Technology Center in Indianapolis.  Wade discusses the new INDATA
Project making technology affordable for members of the disabled
community who earn a low income and/or who do not qualify for direct
state funding assistance.

5:00 PM:  Hadley School for the Blind, based in Winnetka, Illinois.
Hadley has provided distance learning opportunities in Braille, in
large print, and now online, for nearly 90 years to blind citizens of
more than 100 countries.

Aside from the long-form presentations listed above, we are expecting
demonstration/informational booths  to be staffed all afternoon by
ADEC Inc., Bosma Enterprises, the Chicago Lighthouse, En-Vision
America, Easter Seals/Crossroads, Eye Can See, GH LLC, GW Micro, the
Hadley School for the Blind, the Indiana Talking Book and Braille
Library, the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana, Recording
for the Blind & Dyslexic, the Saint Joseph County [Indiana] Election
Board, the Sendero Group, the Social Security Administration, and the
United States Association of Blind Athletes.

Again, I recognize that those who seriously consider attending may want 
to
know a lot more specific information about how to arrive at the
symposium's location, how to navigate across the Notre Dame campus and
throughout the community (as in availability of public
transportation), how to make lodging arrangements, where to eat, what
each part of the formal academic presentation consists of, and when
each part is to be held.  Out of respect to the high server demands
that go with operating a listserv, I am not including specifics like
these in this message.  But answers to these critical concerns do
exist in other documents that the project team has drawn up, with
still further practical/logistical information having been made
available on the University of Notre Dame's Web site.  The official
electronic publicity about this event may be found at
http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=31546&seltopicid=3427.

Both the academic conference and the technology fair will be open at
no charge to the general public.  But because space in the auditorium
and demonstration rooms is limited, registration is strongly
encouraged.

If you wish to attend, or if you have a question relating to the
formal presentations or the practical side of how to get to this
symposium and how to meet your basic life needs while you are there,
you are cordially invited to
write to the principal organizer of this symposium: Dr. Essaka Joshua
ejoshua at nd.edu.  If you got this message from the GW-Info list, you
may simply reply to it and I will direct your inquiry to the
appropriate place, since replies will go personally to me.

If you have questions related strictly to the technology fair
exhibitors and the products they are presenting, please write either
to me kbrolin65 at gmail.com or to Lori Miller
Lori at asmodean.net.

For all those on this list who do not find this symposium feasible to
attend or relevant to your lives, I thank you in advance for your
forbearance and hope you take this announcement in the helpful spirit
for which it is intended.

Sincerely,

Kane Brolin
Office:     (574)386-8868, Ext. 1
Mobile:    (574)386-8868

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Windows Live Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963 