Testimony: Florida Council of the Blind
Hi, my name is Sila Miller and I’d like to talk to you today about Florida Council of the Blind, perhaps better known as F C B. So just who and what is Florida Council of the Blind? We are a state-wide based organization of people who have varying degrees of vision loss, we come from many different backgrounds and are young and old and all ages in between.
We are an independent bunch, working to make life better for people who are blind through public education, legislative actions, and by offering educational, social, and economic opportunities specific to the needs of people who don't see so well.
We are very proud of our statewide information and referral service, it’s called Project Insight. It offers help and hope to those who have recently lost or are still in the process of losing their vision. We have many peer counselors who are happy to talk with callers and since we've been there and done that, who better to help? We have many different affiliates as well. Some of them are based on special interest such as Guide Dog Users, people with low vision and those who are totally blind or have no vision. The other affiliates are based on geographical locations throughout the state.
F C B offers many learning and volunteer opportunities. I have personally taken advantage of both of these. I’ve grown so much since I first joined F C B in the early 90s. I've learned effective ways of advocating, developed my leadership skills, overcome my fear of addressing large groups of people, for the most part. I've also learned a lot about planning and organizing events such as our annual conventions and had golden opportunities to share my writings in our by-monthly newsletter, the White Cane Bulletin.
Our Bulletin is packed with interesting articles, helpful information, poetry, recipes and much more. Our parent organization, American Council of the Blind also offers a magazine called the Braille Forum. It’s produced monthly and is on a larger scale than the White Cane Bulletin. In addition to all this, F C B has a web site, f c b dot o r g. It has a lot of information about who we are, our organizational documents, and information such as that.
American Council of the Blind also has a Web site, and it can be reached at A C B dot o r g. Our members have the opportunity to join our email discussion list where they can share information and express themselves about items of interest. F C B also offers several scholarships to deserving college students who are blind. Both F C B and ACB have annual gatherings, we call them conventions in different locations. ACB's convention is generally a week long while F C B's is generally over a three or four period of days. They both offer interesting workshops and programs as well as special activities such as tours, opportunities for networking and concerts. So whoever you are, where ever you are or no matter your interest or age, F C B has something to offer you.
Some major accomplishments about which we are so very proud and love opportunities to celebrate are doing our part to bring about accessible and independent voting, having many audible pedestrian signals installed on Florida's busy streets at intersections, and descriptive video. Descriptive video
makes media, such as television programs, feature films, and home videos, more accessible to people who are blind by narrating and describing key visual elements that are taking place in the film. F C B will continue to advocate for better transportation and hopefully will make a difference for those who come after us. Also, one day soon, we'll realize our dream and goal of having accessible and identifiable paper currency!
I want to thank you for taking this opportunity to get to know us. And I want to invite you to visit our web site at f c b dot o r g, or, if you don’t have a computer, please feel free to call me. I’d be happy to chat with you. Again, my name is Sila Miller and my phone number is 850 251-5556. I’ll give you all the lowdown.
Thanks again for listening. Have a great day!