Cyclists ride to help vision impaired

[totalmotorcycle]

Cyclists ride to help vision impaired
October 19, 2006 - By STEVE SMITH Times Staff Writer - Edorado Times - eldoradotimes.com




Saturday morning motorcyclists were rolling out of the parking lot of 3-2-1 Kawasaki on West Central, headed out on a 124-mile ride through Butler County's Flinthills.

However, the purpose of their trip had far more to do with something else besides enjoying the early fall weather and scenery.

Riders were on a benefit run for those whose vision impairment would not allow them to climb aboard a motorcycle for the kind of ride they were enjoying.



Saturday's event was a benefit for the Kansas Braille Transcription Institute, headquartered at 1200 E. Waterman in Wichita.

Services provided by KBTI include transcription of Braille, the system of raised dots which the vision impaired trace with their fingers to read letters and numbers.

KBTI also provides workshops and seminars; distance learning seminars; Braille writer repair; and training in Braille transcription, Braille writer repair and adaptive technologies.



KBTI is the only school in the country able to provide online training in Braille transcription.

Terry Fagg of El Dorado is a board member for KBTI, which was founded in December of 2000 by Randy Cabral, who is also now its president.

Back then, Cabral said, there were no services available to benefit people who were in a situation like that of his father and aunt, who were blind.



That, he said, was what spurred him to found KBTI.

“My brothers and I set out to try to get something more done” for the vision impaired, he said.

“The state of Kansas is not accustomed to having a surplus of Braille transcribers,” Cabral said of what KBTI has accomplished so far.



“We've trained close to 100 transcribers in the state of Kansas,” he said, “and we probably have about 47 transcribers right now.”

However, Cabral said, those numbers have created somewhat of a problem for his organization.

“When you have transcribers going around wanting to help advocate for ADA (the U.S. Americans With Disabilities Act),” he said, “it ruffles a few feathers, actually.



“The communities are not accustomed to being asked to provide Braille for the blind,” he said, and sometimes when that happens businesses and agencies feel like they have ADA mandates snapping at their heels.

“That was one of the major hurdles we had to overcome,” he said, because it was a matter of convincing people “we're not part of ADA; we're not here to enforce the law.

“We're just here to help the low visioned and the blind, and we're wanting to work within the communities.



“That was the first hurdle and the major hurdle” KBTI faced, he said, but “once that hurdle is overcome, things start becoming a lot easier after that.”

In his view, Cabral said, “quite frankly the majority of people” do not have sufficient information about the obstacles the blind face and about how “not providing adequate services to the blind affects not only them as people but communities as well.”

A good example, he said, is Braille.



“Without Braille,” he said, “a blind person cannot become literate, so Braille is actually literacy for the blind.

“It's as important to the blind as print is” to a normally sighted and visioned person, he said.

While such technologies as audio cassette tapes and CDs and the Internet have their place in assisting the vision impaired, Cabral said, those “still do not take the place of knowing to read and write.”



Without those abilities, he said, a blind person is placed at a “huge disadvantage.”

In addition to a fulltime staff of four, Cabral said, KBTI has Braille contractors around the U.S. who have been trained by the institute or who have been hired and already knew Braille.

“We'll do anything from the alphabet to obscure languages, higher mathematics, graphs and charts” and even from a map of Kansas to a map of the world, he said.



One project of which Cabral and KBTI are particularly proud is a fully tactile graphic depicting the U.S. Heritage flag.

The embossed tactile figures on the left hand side of the flag are the stars, each of which represents the original 13 states and are arranged in a circle.

The long tactile horizontal lines on the right represent the red stripes and are labeled with the lower case “r” at the far right end.

Between each of these tactile representations of the red stripes are the long smooth areas or “white spaces” representing the white stripes of the flag.

They are labeled with the lower case “w.”

There are 13 stripes representing the original 13 American colonies of England, which became the original 13 states of the new independent republic.

The Pledge of Allegiance is written in standard font English literary Braille code over the raised red stripes.

Immediately beneath the flag is a “key” in English literary Braille code.

KBTI is a 501(c)(3) private non-profit organization.

It can be contacted at 265-9692 or at www.kbti.org.