Our Mission
World Access for the Blind is a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit organization that facilitates the self-directed achievement of people with all forms of blindness, and increases public awareness about the strengths and capabilities of blind people.
Our Vision
World Access for the Blind strives to improve the quality of interaction between blind and sighted people by facilitating equal access to the world's resources and opportunities. We are interested in more than meeting the minimum requirements for functioning and life satisfaction. We believe in mutual respect, consideration, and accommodation of blind and sighted people by society. We expect to see the blind population on mass rise to levels of productive participation and achievement to compare with those of sighted people.
We are developing and demonstrating a modern, holistic approach to blind movement and navigation that we call Perceptual Navigation, that greatly improves upon traditional methods and paradigms. This more modern approach draws from cutting edge science of human perception and action. It is based on a philosophy of No Limits, and on a new paradigm of self-directed discovery and freedom first. We are pioneering a new approach to delivering these strategies more broadly and economically. We are also helping to mobilize resources, facilitate collaborations, and provide specialized expertise in nonvisual human perception to guide and focus the development of more effective, respectful, and forward thinking strategies and technologies to expand nonvisual capabilities. Finally, we are embarking on a global public awareness campaign to bring to the attention of the general public at all levels the true challenges faced by blind people, as well as the true strengths, achievements, and capabilities possible for blind people.
We endeavor to help mobilize and direct global efforts toward the following aims:
- To develop and implement a model of instruction that is more respectful of blind dignity and purpose, easier to teach, learn, and use, and is more diversely applicable to all ages, cultures, backgrounds, and ability profiles.
- To develop and establish a model of service implementation that is lower cost, amd more applicable to all countries and cultures in all regions.
- To implement a broad reaching public awareness campaign that accurately show-cases blind people in terms of their true challenges , accomplishments, and achievement potential.
- To develop and maintain a science oriented, cross-disciplinary, evidence based clinical rationale for our approach.
- To support the development of research methodologies and technologies that effectively and respectfully address challenges faced by blind people, as well as capitalize on their achievements and capacities.
Guiding Philosophy
World Access for the Blind supports the idea that blindness is not as disabling as is commonly believed. Barriers to functioning associated with blindness arise more from poor interaction between blind people and society than from intrinsic deficiency. We characterize blindness as a condition of life style with specific challenges requiring a strong capacity to adapt. Blindness should not deny access to all the experiences and opportunities of the WORLD. In this spirit we proceed with two convictions:
Blindness: Challenge and Achievement
How we delineate the challenges faced by blind people, and how we aim to help blind people face them.