I thought that this might be a good time to answer the question "What is the National Federation of the Blind, anyway, and what are we doing on Mt. Everest?" 

The National Federation of the Blind is the principal sponsor of this Mt. Everest Expedition.  We have made this investment in Erik Weihenmayer's dream because he embodies much of what members of the National Federation of the Blind believe and the way we live our lives daring, optimistic, and confident.  Erik is the blind member of the team making his attempt to reach the summit of the highest peak in the world.  It is not, of course, his first mountaineering expedition.  Erik has already climbed the highest peaks on 4 of the 7 continents.  Mt. Everest will make 5 towards his goal of conquering all 7 continental summits. 

I am a member of the largest consumer and advocacy organization of the blind in the U.S.  We have more than 50,000 members across the United States, including the fifty states; Washington, D. C.; and Puerto Rico.  We are not an organization for the blind; we are the blind, speaking for ourselves.

The Federation's presence here has everything to do with Erik Weihenmayer's exemplification of our conviction that, given proper blindness training and an opportunity to succeed, blind folks can accomplish just about anything they set their minds, talents, and skills to achieving.  We have developed alternative techniques to the usual methods others use to accomplish the tasks of life.  These techniques are not necessarily inferior, merely different.  Erik, for example, has perfected a number of skills to perform many athletic activities.  His travel technique using trekking poles, for example, enabled two other blind people to trek to Everest base camp for this climb.
 These alternative techniques, like many others developed by blind people themselves, are proven solid.  This dispatch, for instance, reaches you by means of a laptop computer.  I am using a proven non-visual typing technique known as touch typing, which is superior to the visual method.  Anyone who has ever taken a typing course knows that this is the preferred method.  It frees one from watching the keyboard so that one can look at the computer screen, read a document from which one is typing, or concentrate on whatever else might require one's attention.  Information about what is on the computer screen comes to me through a screen-reading program.  The speech software speaks the information on the screen as my fingertips touch the computer keyboard. 

The NFB provides blindness training to anyone who needs to learn Braille, travel using a long white cane, computer operation, or independent-living skills at state-of-the-art training facilities in Louisiana, Colorado, and Minnesota.  I am a Rehabilitation Instructor at Blind Industries and Services of Maryland in Baltimore.  Our rehabilitation program is very similar to the Federation's. Above all, this cutting-edge training, provided largely by skilled blind instructors, increases the competence and self-confidence of its blind students until they recognize themselves as worthwhile, contributing members of their communities who happen to count blindness among their personal characteristics. 

In this spirit Erik Weihenmayer is in the vanguard of blind people pushing the limits of expectation and shattering the misconceptions that have for so long prevailed in our society about the abilities of blind people.  Besides Erik's considerable athletic ability, he is also the author of a book entitled "Touch The Top Of The World," which describes the course of his life leading to his current attempt to climb Mt. Everest. 

Think of any profession, skill or acomplishment imaginable, and we in the National Federation of the Blind undoubtedly know someone who is blind, and doing it now.

For those of you who may not know, I am a part of the base camp team supporting the climbing expedition, and I am also totally blind.  Accompanying Erik and I on the trek up to base camp (which was not, by the way, what I would call a piece of cake) was Dan Rossi, another blind guy who introduced Erik to sky diving several years ago. Dan works as a software engineer. 

In our 60-year history the NFB has grown from being strictly a civil rights organization of the blind to the most powerful and influential group of the blind in the country.  We are currently engaged in building the National Research and Training Institute for the Blind, which will move the field of work with the blind to new and revolutionary levels.  It will house the largest collection of books and other research material about blindness, the founders of the blindness consumer movement, and the civil-rights struggle of blind people. In addition it will include state-of-the-art training and research facilities.  We are in the midst of raising the $18,000,000 needed to construct the Institute on the campus of the National Center for the Blind in Baltimore, headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind.

To find out how you can help or for further information about blindness or the National Federation of the Blind, you can always contact a local NFB chapter in most towns of significant size.  You can also write to the National Center for the Blind at 
National Federation of the Blind 
1800 Johnson Street 
Baltimore, Maryland 21230 
Phone:  (410) 659?9314 
e-mail: [email protected]
Or online:  http://www.nfb.org 

Together we are changing what it means to be blind.