Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Our flight from Hong Kong to Fuzhou on Dragonair was made much more interesting when we had a ringside seat on a disability rights demonstration! Rami Rabby is famous in the American blind community as the first blind foreign service officer working for the US State Department. It wasn't easy for him: he had to sue them because they wouldn't hire him even though he was highly qualified. It might come as no surprise that Rami is attuned to discriminatory practices and willing to stand up for himself. Rami had been assigned a window seat even though he wanted to sit on the aisle like your typical frequent flier. So, he asked to switch seats with Jimmy Young (son of Hadley School's CEO, Chuck Young). This caused some consternation among the airline staff. Apparently, they have a little manual that says blind people have to sit in a window seat. So, they asked Rami to move, claiming this was standard operating procedure (which it isn't, since we'd all travelled ar...

I'm now on my first-ever trip to mainland China, thanks to the Hadley School for the Blind twentieth anniversary of their China school. It's unusual for a U.S. nonprofit to have a China branch, but truly amazing that it's been there for twenty years. Hadley's brand of distance education for the blind (and people who care about blind people) has been adapted to focus on teaching of English in China. I've always wanted to have a reason to go to China, but there never was a strong enough reason to go for Benetech. Because of Hadley's reputation, their twentieth anniversary was the nexus for many of the top blindness folks from China to come help them celebrate. Since we're a partner of Hadley's (our goal is to be the school library for their students), Hadley's president, Chuck Young, invited me and other Hadley supporters to accompany him and his staff on this celebratory trip. We started our visit in Hong Kong, visiting the three main nonprofits t...