Braille Monitor, Vol. 69, No. 9, October 2026

I will start this column by humbly apologizing to those of you who noticed the longer than usual wait for our double-stuffed convention issue.

I hope, however, that we made up for that delay by presenting you with an August-September edition that did credit to our wonderful convention in Austin this past July.

Of course, fully encapsulating any convention in a single issue is impossible, so we offer more hashtag NFB26 content in the pages that follow.

Specifically, we've included the outstanding panel on employment and the power of using the Federation Network to acquire and maintain it, chaired by Leah Stone, the motivating and upbeat update presented by our advocacy team, and Jonathan Mosen's brief report on matters technological.

And if you feel that we still aren't capturing the full flavor of the event, the good news is that you can still help by contributing your own observations, experiences, and reports to future issues.

Another apology is due to both our readership and to some beloved members of our Federation family.

We hope that any corrections that need to be made to the Braille Monitor are relatively minor ones, but sometimes they are not.

We recently realized that our August-September 2024 issue omitted one of the highlights of that year's convention, the presentation of the Jacobus Tenbrook Award.

The award recipients and our readers deserve better, and so that award presentation is included in this issue as a flashback to hashtag NFB24.

Speaking of convention activities, members often ask how the resolutions passed by the convention are implemented.

Check out this month's From the President's Desk column to learn how President Riccobono has already acted to advance one of these resolutions and our other advocacy priorities.

We've rounded out this issue with two articles dealing with the ever-urgent topic of equal access to information, and both pieces are intended to empower blind people to maximize and control that access.

Jack Mendez, who manages the NFB Newsline program, spoke with Sarah Wiseman about what it means to him and how it advances the integration of the blind into society.

And Curtis Chong gives us practical tips on how to increase the odds of being able to read the pesky PDF files that too often elicit our sighs of exasperation.

Having begun with apologies, let me close with gratitude for your readership and your many contributions to these pages.

Please keep them and your feedback coming.

I am most eager to hear from you, as this magazine is not truly our voice unless it includes all of yours.