I promised my next blog would be a review of the LiveScribe Pulse. But sometimes life, or death, can get in the way. I will be posting a review this week, but want to stop for a moment to honor my friend, Dick Banks, who died yesterday.
The community of AT people is still a relatively small one. Many of us know one another or are interconnected through cyberfriends of cyberfriends.... if you didn't know Dick Banks, you probably know someone who does. Dick has been one of the driving forces of Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) for the past 20 years. Legally blind, he's never allowed that to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. Dick has traveled Thailand to bring AT and training to people with disabilities, he has played in bands, and he has become one of the leading experts in distance education and AT.
I met Dick three years ago, when I first went to the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Colorado. His energy and enthusiasm for accessibility were contagious. A couple of months later, I started the AT Certificate program through EASI, and through that I got to know Dick. He was one of those people whose presence transcends cyberspace - though he was thousands of miles away, it was easy to feel we were hanging out at the water cooler in the office, swapping stories. Since then, we've kept track of each other. I have seldom met a kinder or more creative human being, or one so passionately devoted to accessibility.
We lost a great human being yesterday. Dick, the AT world will miss you. I will miss you.
If you knew Dick, please visit his CarePages and let his family know what he meant to you. His page is DicksJourney.
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