April-June 2006

Greetings! I hope this finds all of you well!

We are definitely moving very fast towards our conference! The 2006 AADB national conference is less than two months away. It is hard to believe that it will happen so soon, and we know that you all have been waiting a very long time for this conference. Our last conference, after all, took place in 2003, in San Diego, California.

We encourage you all to attend the 2006 conference at Towson University this summer.  You will meet many old and new friends, participate in forums and workshops, talk with exhibitors, attend general business and special interest group meetings, and tour famous Baltimore area attractions.

The staff in AADB's office has been working with conference committee chairpersons to plan and coordinate conference activities, including exhibits, workshops, tours, housing and transportation. They have been working very hard to make sure that everything will work smoothly during the conference week.

There is one major change in this conference schedule this year. In the past, tours were offered daily during a conference week. Now, there will be one tour day during this summer's conference; this will take place on Thursday, June 22nd.

At our 2003 conference, many deaf-blind delegates chose tours daily while a very small percentage participated in workshops and visited exhibits. This caused many exhibitors and workshop presenters to be unhappy and not to plan to come to our next conference. We do not want to lose many valuable exhibitors and presenters in the future. They all are very important to us as well as many other deaf-blind people.

The full board met again last March in Silver Spring, Md. The board now has 12 members, including two new ones - Emily Vera and Bruce Visser.

At this meeting, we voted and passed important policy proposals. One was to re-enforce our AADB SSP policy, which was established in the 1980s. The policy explains that any deaf-blind person is not allowed to serve as a support service provider (SSP) at any future conferences, including our 2006 conference. First, we need to ensure the accessibility and safety of all deaf-blind delegates. Second, we must be fair to all other deaf-blind delegates who are paying the conference fees.

If you do not agree with this policy and want to share your concerns, we will have an SSP forum at the conference. Please come and discuss this with us at this forum. We will also re-visit this issue during our General Business meeting at the conference. Your opinion and input are very valuable to us!

We are working hard to make sure that the conference is ready for you. Here’s to AADB On the Move: No Deaf-Blind Left Behind!