Accessibility

It may have been the worst speech synthesis since, well, the VoTrax (circa 1987), but it sounded beautiful because this room full of blind students had coded their BBC Microbits themselves to produce that "Hello!”

It was all part of our two-day camp with Cyber.org's Project Access on coding/robotics here at the Colorado Center for the Blind. We had ten participants - a mix of middle and high school students and our younger Independence Training Program (ITP) students.

Last Friday's vaccination clinic here at the center was a huge success, and we want to give a huge shout-out to our partners, Vive Family Wellness, St. Benedict’s Health and Healing Ministry, and the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition for helping us make it possible for 29 people to get their first Moderna shot on May 14. The convenience was a big draw for staff, students and folks in the neighborhood to drop in, and that was the beauty of the event.

Sure the taco truck was outstanding, too. I mean, really outstanding!

The clinic for the second shot will be held on Friday, June 11 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Editor's Note: Here's some news from Youth Director Martin Becerra-Miranda. He's been busy hosting lots of Zoom meetings for our staff and ITP students for the past month. But he's also had time to think about what he wants to do with our FAST (Fun Skills Activities and Training) for youth, and maybe, just maybe, he misses the real energy of working with kids. So we're going virtual with FAST starting this Friday!

Who?

Blind students of all ages and their family members

Where?

This will be a virtual meeting on the Zoom platform

When?

Friday, April 24, 2020 at 7:00 PM

Observing “Social Distancing” guidelines doesn’t have to mean being socially disconnected. The Colorado Center for the Blind FAST program will therefore host a virtual get-together every other Friday evening at 7:00 PM., starting April 24.

Okay, we said we’d have a video on the 2020 Census for blind folks, and here it is!

These Denver high school students, Deya and Alma were two of the dozen middle school to college prep students who experienced all the sensory data of a spiny dog shark when they opened one up today at the Center. Well, except for taste. Thanks again to Arapahoe Community College’s Biology Professor Terry Harrison for leading these blind students through a meaningful lesson about anatomy – a lesson with the side benefit of learning that vision isn’t the only sense with which to do real science!

Editor’s Note: In the fall we invited blind Colorado high school students to apply for our first-ever scholarship to attend the National Federation of the Blind’s annual Washington Seminar. Students were asked to submit an essay telling us why they wanted to go, and we selected two students to come with us. In fact, that’s where some of us are right now, including three staff members and three ITP students along with the high school students.

Tomorrow we’ll be on the Hill going to appointments at all nine offices of the Colorado Congressional delegation. Here’s a press release issued today by the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado.

Movie and Pizza for our first FAST Friday!
That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Even better is that we’ll be watching an audio-described version of the all-time favorite, “Toy Story.” It’s Martin’s favorite movie!

Audio description provides information to blind and visually impaired viewers that would otherwise be inaccessible to them – short descriptions of on-screen scenes, action, gestures and facial expressions slipped in during gaps in the dialogue.

What:

Toy Story and Pizza

When:

Friday, September 21, 5:30 p.m.

Where:

Colorado Center for the Blind
2233 W. Shepperd Ave.
Littleton, CO 80120

How:

Here are a couple of pics taken this morning at the Dirt Coffee Bar in downtown Littleton. Dirt is a nonprofit operation dedicated to employment for people with Autism and we knew we had a lot of values in common when they called us to ask about Braille menus and board games for the shop a month before it opened. There’s nothing like a Braille menu!

This morning we delivered two copies of the menu in Braille … and of course we had to try out their coffee and hot chocolate!

Here’s a short clip from dirtcoffee.org –

Dirt is on a mission to bring you quality crafted coffee, food & drink while employing & empowering individuals with autism. … From the ground up, our shop will go further to cultivate a culture of acceptance, inclusion, and opportunity