Who says that small towns can't be welcoming places for blind and disabled
people to live?  Check out the story below from the february 2 USA today
about Talledaga, Alabama.

kelly

   Town works harder to accommodate disabled Ala. Institute for Deaf and
   Blind leads city in making life easier
   ( USA Today )

   TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Sarah Chamblee inhabits a world of darkness, but
   she has never let blindness steal her independence during her 87
   years. A retired schoolteacher, she boasts about her peach cobbler and
   makes her own way around town.

   Last year, though, Chamblee found herself stymied. She started having
   trouble sorting her postage stamps and had to get her mailman to help
   pick out the right ones.

   In December, the post office here started offering Braille-labeled
   stamp books -- and gave Chamblee back a little slice of her cherished
   independence.

   This town's 19,000 residents are not surprised that their Postal
   Service branch came up with Braille labeling. They're used to their
   city working to make life a little easier for blind and deaf people.

   Talladega, about 40 miles east of Birmingham in the farm country of
   central Alabama, is known to many as a premier stop on the NASCAR
   racing circuit, attracting 150,000 a year to two races at Talledega
   Superspeedway.

   But among people with sensory impairments, Talladega enjoys a growing
   reputation as one of the Southeast's most hospitable towns.

   That's partly because of the longtime presence of the Alabama
   Institute for Deaf and Blind, which brags that it grew up with
   Talladega, and partly because accommodating those with access problems
   has become a way of life here.

   ``This is the best town in the world,'' Chamblee says. ``I've never
   had any problem going anywhere I want. People here have always been
   helpful to me.''

   At a time when disabled people in many cities are celebrating such
   basic accommodations as curb cuts for wheelchairs, Talladega offers
   much, much more.

   Here -- where a rustic red brick courthouse graces a traditional
   Southern town square -- the town responds to the many needs of its
   1,300 sensory- impaired residents with genteel courtliness.

   Restaurants offer Braille menus, and talking traffic signals tell
   walkers when to cross and what street they are crossing.

   Banks offer Braille statements, and this was one of the first places
   in the nation to provide Braille voting machines.

   The city is installing raised plastic strips at crosswalks to help
   blind people navigate with canes.

   A driving force behind all these enhancements has been the Alabama
   Institute for Deaf and Blind, established as a school for the deaf in
   1858 -- just 26 years after the town was incorporated.

   The institute's four campuses include schools for the deaf, the blind
   and those with multiple disabilities.

   There's also a two-year technical school here.

   The institute, Talladega's biggest employer with more than 700
   employees is a diploma-granting facility that also offers vocational
   training.

   Its factory, which makes paper products, neckties and brooms, mostly
   for the U.S. military, is required to use the disabled for 75% of its
   workforce of 225.

   That percentage is required under a federal law mandating which
   nonprofit agencies may contract to provide certain items to the
   government.

   Visitors are struck by the way people here react to being deaf or
   blind. Mostly, they don't. The silence or the darkness, their actions
   say, is but a vagary of birth or chance. And they take fierce pride in
   their place as contributing members of the community.

   Take Phyllis Clopton, 45, who works in the institute's factory. Deaf
   since birth and blind since age 4, she was reading a Braille magazine
   on a recent afternoon.

   Clopton, who communicates by signing and ``listens'' by feeling the
   hands of a signing interpreter, bristles at the suggestion that she
   isn't working.

   She is, she says, on her break. ``I like my job,'' she says. ``If I
   stay home, I'm so bored, so I love to come to work.''

   Folks on the tree-lined main campus of the institute, with its
   colonnaded antebellum buildings, don't talk much about obstacles. They
   are more likely to brag about the School of the Deaf basketball team,
   the Silent Warriors, who are now appearing on a special edition
   Cheerios cereal box. Or about the School of the Blind wrestling team,
   a perennial powerhouse.

   Terry Beasley, 15, is a member of that wrestling team and has carved
   out a personal 25-5 record in his matches.

   On a recent morning, he sits in the institute's library, preparing a
   class assignment on a Braille writer, a six-key device similar to a
   typewriter, and talks about moving about in Talladega.

   ``I've never had any problems getting around town,'' says Beasley, who
   is from Greenville, Ala., and was blinded in an accident when he was
   younger. ``We have a mobility teacher who takes us out on Mondays
   using a cane. When I go to one of the stores, I don't ever have any
   problems.''

   Talladega Mayor Charles Osborne says the institute's presence has
   given people here a rich appreciation for the perils that the everyday
   world can hold for the deaf and blind.

   ``That relationship accounts for some of the work we've done, by
   having a firsthand knowledge of their needs and abilities,'' he says.

   Even here, though, there is plenty of room for improvement, says Mike
   Jones, president of the state chapter of the National Federation of
   the Blind.

   Jones says blind people encounter far more thoughtless obstacles - -
   broken sidewalks, overhanging tree limbs, improperly parked cars --
   than might be expected in the institute's hometown.

   Plus, ``I run into a lot more stereotypical attitudes toward blind
   people here than I ever did in any of the larger cities,'' he says.
   ``And there ought to be blind people in city and county government, a
   representative percentage of blind people . . . I'm always having to
   educate people.''

   Not Judy Royal. Since she opened her downtown restaurant, Cafe Royale,
   four years ago, she has offered a Braille menu.

   Sometimes, that's not quite enough.

   During a recent lunch rush, an elderly blind man made his way into the
   restaurant.

   Royal asked if he wanted a Braille menu, but he told her he couldn' t
   read Braille. So she patiently read him the regular, two-page menu,
   with about eight entries on each page, then took his order.

   That's just the Talladega way.

   Copyright 1999, USA Today, a division of Gannett Co., Inc.

   Larry Copeland, Town works harder to accommodate disabled Ala.
   Institute for Deaf and Blind leads city in making life easier., USA
   Today, 02-02-1999, pp 07A.


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