Rene Said:

What is BLIND? Imean is it an employment agency, hospital, or a clinic?

We Answered:

A Organisation


Founded in 1940, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is the nation's largest and most influential membership organization of blind persons. With fifty thousand members, the NFB has affiliates in all fifty states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, and over seven hundred local chapters. As a consumer and advocacy organization, the NFB is considered the leading force in the blindness field today. (Media Page) For more information about the leadership of the National Federation of the Blind please click (Board of Directors).

The purpose of the National Federation of the Blind is two-fold—to help blind persons achieve self-confidence and self-respect and to act as a vehicle for collective self-expression by the blind. By providing public education about blindness, information and referral services, scholarships, literature and publications about blindness, aids and appliances and other adaptive equipment for the blind, advocacy services and protection of civil rights, development and evaluation of technology, and support for blind persons and their families, members of the NFB strive to educate the public that the blind are normal individuals who can compete on terms of equality.

Special services of the National Federation of the Blind include a Materials Center containing over eleven hundred pieces of literature about blindness and four hundred different aids and appliances used by the blind and the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind is the world's largest and most complete evaluation and demonstration center for all speech and Braille technology used by the blind from around the world. NFB-NEWSLINE® for the Blind, the world's first free talking newspaper service, offers the blind the complete text of leading national and local newspapers with the use of only a touch-tone telephone. Jobline offers national employment listings and job openings through a telephone menu system to anyone free of charge.

Publications of the NFB include the Braille Monitor, which provides a positive philosophy about blindness and discusses events and activities of the Federation and in the blindness field and Future Reflections, a publication of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children, a Division of the NFB. Voice of the Diabetic focuses on special interests and needs of diabetics and is a publication of the Diabetes Action Network, also a Division of the National Federation of the Blind.

It is estimated that about 1.3 million people in the U.S. are blind. Each year 50,000 more will become blind. Studies show that only AIDS and cancer are feared more than blindness. However, blindness need not be the tragedy which it is generally thought to be. In the NFB we say, “The real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight, but the misunderstanding and lack of information which exist.”

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the National Federation of the Blind is to achieve widespread emotional acceptance and intellectual understanding that the real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight but the misconceptions and lack of information which exist. We do this by bringing blind people together to share successes, to support each other in times of failure, and to create imaginative solutions.