Defying Geography: NSITE Virtual Learning Options Bring Career Training Home

NSITE partners with state vocational rehabilitation agencies and NIB associated agencies to bring a range of career services to people who are blind or visually impaired, even in areas where NIB doesn’t have a physical presence. Imagine this scenario: A case manager at a state vocational rehabilitation agency determines a client who is blind or […]

Be My AI: What Happens When You Give ChatGPT Sight?

Let’s face it: When the artificial intelligence research project OpenAI announced the public release of ChatGPT in 2023, no one expected the quirky chatbot to dominate world headlines for weeks to come. What is ChatGPT? Using large language modeling (LLM), OpenAI researchers fed a dataset of an estimated 175 billion words of text into ChatGPT, […]

Kevin Lynch Receives Distinguished R.B. Irwin Award  

After retiring April 30 from a 44-year career at National Industries for the Blind and its associated agencies, Kevin Lynch, president and CEO emeritus, was honored May 14 with the R.B. Irwin Award.    The recognition took place during the General Session of the annual NIB/NAEPB Public Policy Forum. During the ceremony, Lynch was presented with […]

Meet NIB’s 2024 Class of Advocates for Leadership and Employment 

Advocacy makes legislators aware of the needs of their constituents, including people who are blind, and nobody is better equipped to tell the NIB story than the people who live it.   NIB launched the Advocates for Leadership and Employment program in 2012 to help people who are blind represent their community to their elected officials. […]

Alicia Howerton: Advocacy Provides a Platform to Confront Stereotypes and Break Down Barriers

Alicia Howerton was advocating for members of the blind or visually impaired community even before her involvement with NIB as an Advocate for Leadership and Employment. Her professional advocacy journey began years earlier, in the Ohio statehouse, where she and others from the Cleveland Sight Center (CSC) worked diligently with legislators advocating for insurance coverage […]

Rebekah Grieb: Forging Her Own Path to Career Success

Rebekah Grieb wasn’t concerned at the age of 12 when an eye doctor recommended she have some tests done. She was an athlete, active in basketball, volleyball, and softball. “There was no vision loss in my family that glasses wouldn’t fix,” she says, “or that wasn’t related to old age.” The eye specialist told Rebekah […]

All-Terrain Cane: The Humvee of White Canes

When David Epstein moved to Sedona, Arizona, several years ago, he looked forward to regular hikes with his wife through the picturesque red sandstone formations along the outskirts of the popular tourist destination. Epstein, who has the incurable inherited retinal eye disease retinitis pigmentosa, soon found hiking with his wife increasingly difficult — especially at […]

Connecting the Dots: How Technology is Impacting Braille Literacy

Each January, people across the globe celebrate Louis Braille’s genius communication system of tactile raised dots representing visual alpha-numeric print. January is National Braille Literacy Month, and January 4 is World Braille Day.  Born in France on January 4, 1809, Louis Braille fell victim to a tragic accident in his father’s leather-harness-making shop as a […]