The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #121496   Message #2653394
Posted By: Jack Campin
10-Jun-09 - 03:44 PM
Thread Name: Sing Out! vs. the blind
Subject: Sing Out! vs. the blind
Spotted on rec.music.folk:

Dear Sing Out readers and members:

It is with a sad and heavy heart that I inform you that the members of
the National Association of Blind Musicians at its annual meeting this
past Saturday, June 6, voted to boycott Sing Out! magazine and its
advertisers and to also ask the general membership of both the
National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind
to join forces in the boycott. This is the first such boycott in the
history of NABM.

The boycott is in protest of the Mark Moss, Executive Director of Sing
Out!, refusal to agree to provide the content of Sing Out! magazine in
a format that blind and visually impaired readers can access with
their own computers, and egregious hostility to the needs and civil
rights of visually impaired Sing Out! members as expressed by Mr. Moss
in email correspondence.

This boycott is scheduled to begin on Sunday, June 21, 2009, with a 1
PM ET press conference and official notification to Sing Out
advertisers. This timing is to support a seperate legal action to be
taken by visually-impaired Sing Out! members. A civil rights
complaint has already been filed with the US Department of Justice.

The members of NABM cordually request the Support of Sing out Members
and urge them to ask Executive Dircotor Mark Moss to reconsider his
position and formally agree to make Sing out! available in a
accessible format.

Sincerely,

Greg Austin
National Executive Secretary
National Association of Blind Musicians

The National Association of Blind Musicians is non-profit organization
dedicated to making music education and educational materials
available to blind and visually impaired students.

Somebody posted a link to the "new improved" Sing Out! site a while back, and I agree entirely with Greg - it was indeed one of the most appallingly ignorant and inconsiderate pieces of web design I've ever seen. Well beyond needing a repair job - the whole thing needs to be thrown away and rewritten from scratch (by a designer with a clue).