Inside the American Council of the Blind: My Conversation with Michael Babcock

That's a lot of great information and I hope that y'all will reach out and send the email to community at acb.org if you have a need for the information or would like to see more of what all is on offer throughout the course of a week or so.

But I want to pause before my next question and point something out to the people who are listening or watching who don't have a visual disability.

The description he just gave of how their emails are created, that is some great accessibility information he's sharing there with you that long emails should have headers, that the fonts should be clear, bold type headers that can be easily read, and that when possible, the headers should be bolder or a little bit larger than the rest of the text.

And what he said about headings and being able to navigate quickly when you have headings is not only important for emails, but it's especially important for websites because they allow somebody with a screen reader or a screen magnifier to navigate large amounts of information in a short period of time by being able to skip between your headings.

headings and maintaining a good heading structure are very important within emails and probably even more so on your website.

So I hope y'all were paying attention to that point.

And then in one of our emails, you mentioned that there's opportunities for people who, I don't know if this is just for members or people who have vision loss from all walks of life, but You mentioned there's an opportunity for people to create their own content on the community.

Is that correct?

yeah so let me explain that for a moment uh we have uh i'm gonna throw a number out there but i would say 150 volunteers that help put these events on on a regular basis and we've got a system in place that lets us help facilitate an event effectively safe and welcoming to everyone as well as being respectful the the key phrase to remember with ACB community is we are safe, welcoming, and respectful.

And sometimes I mix those words up, so it could be a different order, but ultimately the goal is that everyone is welcome and respected when they come in and they feel safe.

ACB community will allow anyone for the most part to come and put on an event.

And I say anyone for the most part because our content does have to be family friendly.

So we do ask that you make sure, again, going back to that R word respect, that we always make sure that we are being respectful of everyone.

So we ask to keep your stuff family friendly.

If you go to acb.org, then you can activate the ACB community link.

And I'm making sure that I'm telling you correct.

It is acb.org and you activate, it says community events.

If you activate this link, then you can locate the heading level one on this page.

And there's information about both how to subscribe and start receiving.

And then there's a section here that says if you're interested in facilitating your own community event, fill out the event planners form.

and it links to a Google form.

If you go and fill that out, then what happens is I will get that in a Google sheet and then I add it to a system I built that will allow us to generate the schedule.

If you're a first time facilitator, I will offer for you the ability to get connected with our community support committee.

And the goal of the community support committee is to help you with feeling confident with being able to put on your event and answer any questions you have.

Now, you filling out that event planners form are known as an event facilitator.