[Brl-monitor] The Braille Monitor, October 2019
Brian Buhrow
buhrow at lothlorien.nfbcal.org
Mon Sep 30 14:28:26 PDT 2019
BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 62, No. 9 October 2019
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash
drive, by the
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: 410-659-9314
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ISSN 0006-8829
© 2019 by the National Federation of the Blind
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Vol. 62, No. 9 October
2019
Contents
Illustration: Bells Ringing throughout the Nation
Accessibility and Accountability: Drive-by Lawsuits Leave Pothole-size
Problems
by Chris Danielsen
Bringing the Synergy of the Blindness Movement into Concentrated Programs:
Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan
Institute
by Anil Lewis
Global Leadership, Responsibility, and Technology: Accessibility as a Core
Value at Microsoft
by Brad Smith
Cambiandos Vidas en la Frontera de Tejas
by Norma Crosby, Daniel Martinez, Hilda Hernandez, and Raul Gallegos
The Driverless Revolution: Setting a New Standard for Transportation and
Technology
by Kyle Vogt
Autonomous Vehicles: Establishing Strong Policy for America's
Transportation Future
by Dave Schwietert
Led by the Blind: Bringing Authenticity to Services for the Blind and
Making Them Relevant to the Lives We Want to Live
by Bryan Bashin
Competing on Terms of Equality and Blending in: Government Service with
Federation Style
by Kristen Cox
World's Number One Card Game for the Win
by Stephanie Cascone
Meagan's Guide to Stylish Farewells: On Coming to Terms with Vision Loss
by Meagan Houle
The Right of Blind People to Serve on Juries Comes to the Court
Exhibitors' Showcase Review
by Jessica McLeod and Mark Jones
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
[PHOTO CAPTION: Participants in the Pennsylvania BELL program pose in front
of the state capitol building.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: BELL student rides a recumbent bicycle]
[PHOTO CAPTION: A BELL student (center) enjoys using a Perkins Brailler
while a BELL teacher and another participant smile with him.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Annie uses nonvisual pouring skills while making play
dough.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: A Federation friend holds a young alligator to allow BELL
participants to touch the reptile.]
[PHOTO CAPTION: A young man feels the water jet at the pool.]
Bells Ringing throughout the Nation
It is exciting to work with children and to help them find the magic
in words and particularly words on paper. Far too many blind children are
steered away from Braille by the schools that should be teaching them, so
we do what we can to fill the gap.
Not only do we teach Braille, but we give these young people
experiences to remember. In Pennsylvania the program took its students to
the state capitol, toured each of the chambers, and had a meeting with no
less than Governor Tom Wolf. He was interested in them: their names, where
they lived, and what they were doing in this program.
But everyday life is also about the little things such as learning to
pour liquids and make play dough, and all without worrying about how much
or little one can see. Sight has nothing to do with enjoying exploring the
water jets of a swimming pool or riding a modified bicycle. Sight must not
keep us from touching the untouchable, even when what we want to touch is
an alligator. Boise NFB BELL Academy students got hands-on and personal
with several reptiles and arachnids, including a tarantula, a giant
tortoise, and the alligator pictured. The session with Reptile Adventures
ended with seven of the students holding a fifteen-foot albino python!
Learning is about coming upon new things, understanding them, and
making them part of the rich tapestry that should be the life of every
blind person. This is why we have bell ringers and why we work so hard to
make the BELL Academy a success.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Chris Danielsen]
Accessibility and Accountability: Drive-by Lawsuits Leave Pothole-size
Problems
by Chris Danielsen
From the Editor: Chris Danielsen is the director of public relations
for the NFB, and it is easy to see why he has been charged with packaging
our message. His writing has the beauty of being both interesting and
educational. His passion for what we do, coupled with his sense of trying
to understand the other person's position, make his contributions
extraordinary. Here is what he says about click-by lawsuits, an issue
discussed in the August-September issue by Eve Hill:
Link. Link. Image. Image. Button. Button. Our screen readers too
often utter this and similar gibberish. We all know that there are plenty
of inaccessible websites out there, and plenty more that, while not
completely inaccessible, have frustrating accessibility barriers. The idea
of suing them all probably brings a certain visceral satisfaction to many
of us as we pound on our keyboards in exasperation. Some are doing just
that. But certain lawsuits hurt our progress. Those are click-by or drive-
by lawsuits.
Click-by or drive-by plaintiffs and their lawyers file dozens or
hundreds of lawsuits against businesses, municipal governments, and other
entities that are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, claiming
that their websites are inaccessible.
Recently the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported that a man living in
Daytona Beach, Florida, had filed some 130 lawsuits in the state since
2016. Many of the lawsuits were against Florida cities with public
documents hosted on their websites that were not accessible to the man,
Joel Price, and other blind people who use screen readers. Inaccessible
government documents violate the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
and other laws. Acknowledging they had a problem, many of the cities were
removing the documents from their sites and then replacing them when the
accessibility issues were resolved. Some removed all the public documents
at once, while others did it in stages. Thus, the news report began: "If
you're having trouble finding what you're looking for on your city's or
county's website, even information you know used to be there, you're not
alone." The piece went on to report that Mr. Price, when interviewed,
claimed that the cities he had sued were among several to which he was
considering moving. The message of the article, intended or not, was this:
If you can't find what you need on your city's website, it's probably this
blind guy's fault.
Perhaps Mr. Price really was considering a move and couldn't find the
information he needed on the websites of the cities he visited. And the
lawsuits did spur many of the cities to action. Some important
accessibility victories may therefore have been won. But the article also
reported that many of the cities had settled the suits that Mr. Price
brought against them for between five and fifteen thousand dollars. It
wasn't clear whether all those cities were remediating the inaccessible
documents on their websites or had plans to do so. Given the high number of
lawsuits and the cash payouts, Mr. Price may also be what has come to be
called a "drive-by" or "click-by" plaintiff.
As a start, these plaintiffs or their lawyers pick a category of
business in a geographic area, such as wineries in upstate New York, and
then file suits against them in alphabetical order, as if they simply read
the listings from the Yellow Pages. Sometimes the legal complaints they
file have the exact same allegations about each business, as if the
language has simply been repeatedly cut and pasted. Occasionally this
results in errors that immediately raise red flags, such as the name of the
business not matching the address of the allegedly inaccessible website. In
a few cases the lawsuits have been almost entirely without merit, meaning
that the websites didn't contain any accessibility barriers or only very
minor ones.
Why is this a problem? For a few reasons. Lawsuits are complex
things. When a blind person, or the National Federation of the Blind,
alleges that a website is inaccessible, we must be prepared to prove it in
court, because the burden of proof is rightly on the person or organization
making the allegation. Proving a case involves gathering testimony and
evidence, both to show the court that we're right and to answer any
arguments that the website owner might make in its defense. It takes
patience, time, and money. If it is not done thoroughly and correctly, the
case can be thrown out of court or lost on appeal. In the latter
circumstance, an appeals court may issue an opinion that sets a bad
precedent. Appellate courts publish their opinions, and lower courts in the
same jurisdiction are bound by them. To put it simply, bad cases make bad
law.
It is unlikely that plaintiffs and lawyers who file dozens of
lawsuits at a time are prepared or have the resources to thoroughly
investigate and prove each of them. Their intentions may or may not be
good, but their strategy depends on the defendants quickly doing the legal
equivalent of crying "uncle": settling the case to put an end to the
matter. Small businesses are likely to want to settle quickly when sued; it
may be cheaper for them to pay a plaintiff's attorneys' fees than to fix
their website, even though accessibility isn't necessarily expensive.
Cynical plaintiffs' attorneys know this, and so they calculate that if they
sue a few dozen businesses and each of those businesses pays a few thousand
dollars to make the pesky lawsuit go away, this will add up to real money
in their pockets.
What this strategy doesn't necessarily do is improve the
accessibility of the websites that are the subjects of the lawsuits. Some
plaintiffs and lawyers may sincerely believe that, when business owners
must pay up, they learn their lesson and fix their websites. (One lawyer
told me that he was pleased to be able to do so much good with so little
effort.) That may even sometimes happen, particularly if the business owner
is smart enough to realize that failing to fix the website may bring
another lawsuit down the road. Most of the time, though, the approach won't
bring meaningful change.
What click-by lawsuits have been very successful at doing, however,
is mobilizing some companies, business groups, and policymakers against the
ADA and the rights of people with disabilities. Last year, the National
Federation of the Blind fought against the so-called ADA Education and
Reform Act, which would have curtailed the ability of disabled plaintiffs
to file suit. Our efforts were not enough to stop the bill from passing in
the United States House of Representatives. Fortunately, it was never taken
up by the Senate, but it's a sure bet that the coalition who supported it
will try again. After a blind California man successfully sued Domino's
Pizza, the company is now asking the United States Supreme Court to rule
that the ADA cannot and does not apply to websites. Powerful business
lobbying organizations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are lining up
behind this argument. If the Supreme Court accepts the case and rules as
Domino's wants, then blind people will be left with little or no legal
recourse when we experience online discrimination.
This is where holding ourselves and others accountable comes in. The
National Federation of the Blind has no need to make apologies for our
legal strategy. We always seek partnership and collaboration with
businesses and government entities before pursuing litigation and file suit
only when they absolutely refuse to work constructively with us. We have
reached several agreements to improve accessibility without ever entering
the courthouse with companies including Expedia and Monster.com. Whether or
not we use the courts, we reach agreements that are publicly posted to our
website and require specific steps toward accessibility and accountability
for maintaining it. We have also made clear that we disapprove of
plaintiffs and lawyers who fail to do likewise, most recently through
Resolution 2019-09 passed at our national convention in Las Vegas.
But, just as we hold ourselves organizationally accountable and call
out bad actors who imperil our rights, we must all be individually
accountable as well. Each of us can and should be an effective
accessibility advocate. In the November 2018 issue of the Braille Monitor,
my colleague Karl Belanger wrote an excellent article describing how we can
bring accessibility issues to the attention of companies we deal with. We
can all follow the steps Karl described whenever we encounter an
accessibility barrier. In addition to alerting businesses to accessibility
issues, this strategy demonstrates that inaccessibility is real and affects
real people. We can also let businesses and the public know that we, as
individuals and as members of the organized blind movement, are willing to
help them serve all their customers equally.
If persuasion fails, of course, we must be ready to fight; we cannot
simply roll over in the face of discrimination. But fighting discrimination
doesn't always mean going to court. We can call out the businesses who are
discriminating against us, refuse to do business with them online or off,
and tell our friends and families to avoid doing business with them as
well. We can publicly commend entities that take accessibility seriously
and send business their way. When there are serious and systemic barriers,
we can file complaints with the United States Department of Justice.
And yes, if necessary, we can go to court. But we must use our
nation's legal system in a strategic and coordinated way that results in
positive and permanent change. Members of the National Federation of the
Blind who think that legal action may be necessary and appropriate should
inform their affiliate president, who can then coordinate with President
Riccobono to ensure that the contemplated action fits in with our legal
strategy and priorities.
Finally, to return to the click-by problem, accountability means
making sure we aren't drawn into such litigation. When members are
contacted by lawyers or even by other blind people who ask us to sign on as
plaintiffs in a lawsuit or series of lawsuits, we should politely decline
to do so, even if the person making the request claims to be a member or
working on behalf of the Federation. Then inform Valerie Yingling, our
national legal program coordinator, of the solicitation. Valerie can be
reached at 410-659-9314, extension 2440, or by email at vyingling at nfb.org.
We know that at least one individual, Mr. Juan Carlos Gill, is soliciting
participation in serial lawsuits. Mr. Gill attended the national convention
and may attend state conventions. We believe that his efforts are
representative of the click-by litigation discussed here, and either
Valerie Yingling or President Riccobono should be informed when he contacts
members or attends state conventions.
There is a long way yet to go in achieving a fully accessible
Internet for everyone, and we must continue the effort to get there without
giving ammunition to those who want to make it harder or even bring it to a
premature end. At the same time, we have made tremendous progress through a
careful, coordinated legal strategy, as well as by other means. As in all
our efforts, let's work together with love, hope, and determination to make
sure blind people can fully participate in our increasingly digitized
society.
To get an overview of the legal actions we are currently taking and
to learn how you can help some of those efforts and engage in effective
individual advocacy, visit our legal web page at www.nfb.org/legal.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Anil Lewis]
Bringing the Synergy of the Blindness Movement into Concentrated Programs:
Blindness Initiatives at the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan
Institute
by Anil Lewis
From the Editor: Anil is the executive director for blindness
initiatives at the Jernigan Institute, and whenever he speaks, it is clear
that we are blessed to have him as a part of our movement and as a part of
our staff. He is a deep thinker, an effective communicator, and a man I
admire for the tremendous ability he has to understand others, meet them
where they are, and develop meaningful and lasting relationships. Here is
what he said to the 2019 National Convention on the morning of July 10:
Good morning, Federation. Thank you guys for waking up and coming
down. Hasn't this been a wonderful convention? [applause] I have to admit
that I was a little afraid that we had gotten so comfortable in Florida
that the challenge of a new location would trip us up, but in Federation
form and fashion we stepped up, and man, we turn this place out. Thank you
guys, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.
When I saw the title, bringing synergy, I reflected back on last
year's banquet speech. I had to go back and revisit it to understand what
synergy was. So what I learned is that synergy is the interaction and/or
cooperation of two or more agents working together to produce a combined
effect that is greater than the sum of the separate effects. What? That's
where I went with that! So I thought about this a little bit, and I
recognize that that is what we do as an organization. In order to get
grounded in really understanding this, I picked one of our programs and
realize that yes, synergy is what we do through our movement and our
programs.
The Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning [BELL] Academies
evidenced in 30+ states and 40+ programs is definitely exemplary of synergy
in the blindness movement. This program started with the recognition that
we as an organization needed to step up and provide services to our blind
students in a way that the current systems are not. If they will not teach
them, we will teach them ourselves. [applause] It started as a program in
Maryland with Jackie Anderson and all of her team, and then other people
added to that program to get where we are now, to the place where we have
such nationwide exposure, starting with one program and growing to include
so many. Beyond this, the efficacy of what we do has also drawn the
attention of funding sources that have allowed us to leverage that as well.
Yes, we could do it through our commitment, our volunteer efforts to change
the lives of blind people, but it sure does help a lot when we get $100,000
to put in the bank to help some of that programming.
Thank you to Wells Fargo for being a financial partner in our BELL
Academies.
I think that what is important to understand is that synergy is not
the sum of our separate efforts, but it's producing an effect that is
bigger and broader than that sum. So the different parts are not just
additive; they are exponential. We are not talking about 2X, but X squared.
When we add to this the advantage of our diversity and continue to work on
including more and more people, we can raise this to the third power and
the fourth power. Our synergy helps us take one person's desire and wish,
build on the effort of the nation's blind, and create exponential programs
that positively affect blind people.
But this effort requires all of us, not just some of us. We must seek
to understand from various perspectives in order to make sure that we can
bring individuals with varying perspectives into our organization.
How many of you guys have seen the movie The Help? [applause] I often
try to find analogies that help me understand stuff, but it wouldn't do any
good if you didn't share that same understanding. The Help is a movie about
black domestics in the 60s. I should've asked permission, but I'm going to
put this out there. Ever Lee Hairston, Gary Wunder, and I were sitting
around having a conversation about The Help. Ever Lee was saying "Oh, I
really just didn't like the way that the movie was portraying some of these
black people. That's real; that's her perspective. But, being a little
country boy raised in the big city and my mom being a domestic for a
significant part of her life, a lot of the scenes in that movie resonated
with me and struck as so true with what I saw her experience to be. But the
interesting dynamic ends up being two things: Ever Lee and I are both
African-American, and we saw it from a different perspective. We saw good
and bad in the movie from different lenses. So Ever Lee said that she was
very disappointed in the way that black people were portrayed in that
movie. Gary Wunder, just being Gary Wunder, added insight that helped me
expand my paradigm of this perception: "I was embarrassed and upset by the
way they portrayed white people." [laughter] That hadn't been my lived
experience. So it's very helpful for us to have those candid conversations,
for us to really look at things from different perspectives, and then what
we need to do is respect them and value them. [applause] When it's all said
and done, we need to just look at each other and say, "You is smart, you is
kind, you is important." If you don't get that, you have to watch the
movie; I'm sorry.
So as we work on our diversity and inclusion efforts, one thing
that's very important is this: let us not forget that, as we seek to
embrace every characteristic of individuals, we don't stray away from our
core of accepting everybody regardless of their vision. [applause]
Regardless of their level of sight, they are part of the National
Federation of the Blind. Moreover, we must accept them regardless their
skill level. [applause] Whether you can make it from here back to your room
without touching anything or needing any assistance or whether you need
someone to guide you through this, you are still a member of the National
Federation of the Blind. [applause] We are not an organization of elitists.
But the National Federation of the Blind is an elite organization. We have
to be welcoming and accepting to everyone. The foundation of the National
Federation of the Blind is what gives us our strength because we are
founded on the lived life experiences of blind people. That's our core.
It's not based on some curriculum that someone passed; it's not based on
some program; it's based on our everyday lived experiences interacting with
the world, and we develop strategies and techniques that allow us to be
successful in this world. We know the perils and the pitfalls of blindness,
we challenge them, and we overcome them.
We have not just survived; we have thrived. We took what little the
world had to offer us, and we made something powerful-the National
Federation of the Blind. [applause]
Now you know that I can't get up on the stage without being authentic
to who I am. My grandma raised hogs. You guys are asking yourself, "Where
is he going with this?" [laughter] Since my grandma raised hogs, I have had
everything on the hog from the rooter to the tooter. That's a delicious
animal; I'm just letting you know. I'm sorry, John Paré, but it is a
delicious animal. I've had pigs feet and pigtails and pig ears, but see we
had that because my grandma raised the hogs. But we didn't get the good
stuff. Very rarely did we get the porkchops and all the pork loin, for that
is what we sold. We sold it so we could have money to buy other groceries.
We had to use the leftovers, but man my grandma made it delicious. The only
thing I couldn't get into was the chitlins.
I thought I had eaten every part of the pig until I talked with Mrs.
Patricia Maurer one day, and she says, "Obviously, then, you've had pig
cheeks?"
I thought about that and I said, "No, pig feet, pig ears, pigtails,
but no pig cheeks-oh, you mean hog jowls. Oh yeah, I've had some hog jowls.
>From the rooter to the tooter, I've had it all."
You know back then those were the dregs, but people like my
grandmother, who knew how to cook those things, made people realize that
they can be gourmet dishes. Now the pig feet and pigtails and pig ears I
used to get are now top dollar when you go to a restaurant. But my grandma
was not getting any cut of that. I mean that's just not right. She started
this, opened up this industry, and she's not getting anything.
I only say all of that to say this: we as an organization have taken
what little the world has offered us, and we've made something very
powerful: the National Federation of the Blind. We need to make sure that
our value is respected as we move forward. We need to make sure that the
world recognizes that we can enhance and enrich through our participation.
One of the programs we've developed to do this is our Blind Users
Innovating and Leading Design. As technologies evolve, we recognize that
only if we are involved in the design phase can blind people really impact
the development so that not only is it accessible for us when it's over-
it's also better for everyone who uses it, not just blind people. Through
our build program we offer support from novices to experts, because many
companies out there developing this technology will hire a blind person
who's definitely skilled. God rest her soul, Rachel Olivero could've made
the most inaccessible thing accessible, but that would leave a person like
me unable to use it at all. So we make sure that we give feedback in a way
that really represents our selfish desire to see that we can access things
but also our altruistic desire because we realize that our participation
helps everyone, not just us.
Let me take the time now to thank each and every one of you who
signed up for the build program. I know we haven't pushed a lot of it out,
but we have to build the infrastructure first so that we can make sure that
as the demand comes, we're able to meet it and that we keep the demand
coming.
Just to show you some examples of this, where are New York and
Colorado? [shout outs from both states] So we had a company contact us, and
they wanted to test digital lockers. They wanted to make sure that they
were accessible for blind people. We'd already demonstrated our expertise
in that by working with the Amazon locker system, but in the past they
would've pulled blind people aside, had them participate in the experience,
and said "Thank you very much," and shook their hands. But because we were
able to negotiate and they recognized the value of our participation, we
were able to make sure that each and every person who participated in that
demonstration received $100 for about forty-five minutes worth of work. I
think that's a pretty good minimum wage, don't you? [applause]
Now everything won't bring that degree of value, so I don't want
everybody to sign up thinking wow, I'm about to get paid. But we do want to
make sure that our value is recognized and our members are not co-opted. We
have more work to do. We have to work on accessible kiosks; we have to work
on accessible websites; we have to work on different banking solutions. We
definitely have to work on point-of-sale machines and those new virtual
customer interfaces like we find at McDonald's, who launch this nationwide
announcement about this flagship location in Manhattan where they are
introducing all of this technology and the kiosk where you walk up and make
your order. It's not accessible. Now those of you who know me know that I
love myself some Mickey D's. But right about now, [he sings the McDonald's
theme song] I'm not loving it." So we must make sure that we're in this
game and we are playing in a way that makes certain that our participation
is appreciated.
We must protect our brand. That's the other piece that's important
for this. This might hurt some people, but I'm just going to put it out
there. We have to make sure that our brand is not co-opted. The work that
we do needs to bring value back to the National Federation of the Blind.
How many of you guys know what the blues are all about? [cheers] Okay, so
maybe this will help those who didn't understand the hogs. The blues is
music that is born out of struggle, and as the music moved up north, it
turned into the foundation for R&B and rock 'n roll. But a lot of people
don't realize that the blues is that foundation because the brand got co-
opted. Langston Hughes, in a poem around the Harlem Renaissance wrote:
"You've taken my blues and gone. You mix them up on Broadway, and fix them
up in operas, so they don't even sound like me. Yep, you've taken my blues
and gone."
We can't let anybody take our blues. Our struggle and the success and
strategies that we develop as a result of that struggle belong to the
National Federation of the Blind. [applause] And we are not going to let
people take our blues. But we must be strategic in making sure that that is
not the case. We must make sure that our value is recognized. Our National
Federation of the Blind training centers, the Louisiana Center for the
Blind, the Colorado Center for the Blind, Blind Incorporated, and all of
our certified structure discovery centers recognize the benefit of our
lived life experiences, have benefited from our struggle, but there are
others out there trying to take away our blues. They think that if they add
sleep shades and longer canes into their curriculum that they are in NFB
training centers. No. We can't let them take our blues.
I went to a meeting of the National Council of State Agencies for the
Blind, and the work that our Michigan affiliate did with the state VR
office there to build autonomous vehicle opportunities for our blind
students to learn was phenomenal, and they gave us phenomenal credit in
that open forum. However, there was an agency, and I'm sorry that I'm going
to call them out, an agency from Idaho that talked about the wonderful work
they had been doing with their BELL Program, but they gave no credit to the
National Federation of the Blind. They are taking away our blues. Don't boo
them: let's hug them until they realize that it is safe to say, "We did
this with the NFB."
There is our research that we conduct, and there are individuals who
have come here for many years and have taken blind people and have done
research and published it. We've even had partnerships with individuals
with whom we've collaborated, and you're going to hear from them next. One
of them will be Wade Goodridge from Utah State, and the other will be the
new assistant professor at Illinois State University, the master teacher
that we know and love, Natalie Shaheen. Wherever she goes, you know she's a
Federationist, but some of the people we partner with in our research don't
acknowledge us. They are trying to take our blues.
When Brad Smith presented, he talked about Anne Taylor, who we know
and love. In his presentation he recognized and acknowledged that she is a
member of the National Federation of the Blind, and she says that proudly
in every place that she goes. But there are other individuals out there who
have built their reputation on the National Federation of the Blind and who
have gained the skills and the confidence that they have needed to be
successful. When we are talking to them here, they are all about NFB. But
when you talk with them outside, they act like they can't pronounce the
letters. They're trying to take our blues.
Chancey Fleet of New York: I have come to rely lately on Chancey in
so many ways. I love her expertise, her knowledge, but most of all I love
her frankness. It is very helpful. Chancey is building a significant brand
for herself as she's moving around, but anytime I've called on her or have
talked with anyone about her, they recognize that she is a member of the
National Federation of the Blind. But there are others out there who are
using the Federation to build their brand and don't in any way acknowledge
the NFB. They're trying to take our blues.
Joe Ruffalo said it best when he was reelected to the board: "The
best title we have is as members of the National Federation of the Blind."
[applause] As I said last year and Terri Rupp reiterated it, whatever hat
we're wearing, it has to be on our Federation head.
We have to make sure that as we move forward that all of these things
are put in place that reflect the value that the Federation has to offer.
Internally we have to make sure that the programs we build through the
Federation are not just programs of our National Federation of the Blind
Jernigan Institute. People shouldn't say, "Oh, this is what we're doing at
our national office." These are not just Jernigan Institute programs. They
are programs of the National Federation of the Blind. They are programs for
each and every one of us, and they represent all of us. And all of us
should participate in the development and execution of those programs.
That's what gives us our strength and our power.
Last year I talked about our career mentoring program. I just want
you guys to know that that's going really well. We're trying to make sure
that we maintain the authenticity of our program within the bureaucratic
framework, and we're doing a good job of doing that in Mississippi,
Nebraska, and Maryland. We're doing a lot of work with autonomous vehicles.
Back in 2011 under the leadership of Dr. Marc Maurer, our current president
Mark Riccobono got to drive independently an automobile on the Daytona
International Speedway. That has given us credibility and standing in this
space for autonomous vehicles because they recognize that we have the
technical expertise and the capacity to not only make the vehicles
accessible but to make them better for everyone. We're addressing the fears
that people have about these autonomous vehicles, and even more, we're
putting it in a way that helps them advertise the efficacy of this. You
guys may not know this, but with the advent of all of this ridesharing, now
there are so many more cars on the road. I think this is very frustrating
because they are making it sound like the technology that has allowed us to
be more effective is just disrupting their lives. Well that's just too bad.
We too pay taxes to get the roads built; we want to use the roads just like
you; stop exercising your degree of privilege in prohibiting us from being
able to live the lives that we want.
Luckily we've been able to manifest significant partnerships through
Lyft and Uber, and most importantly through Lyft at this convention through
autonomous vehicle rides, which was awesome. This wasn't just a
demonstration of our collaboration; it was a manifestation of our desire to
continue to want to participate and add value.
I'll add one of the things that we're doing and that's inaccessible
museum spaces. I want individuals who are interested in being ambassadors
as we talk to these museums to reach out to us. We've developed a wonderful
partnership with John Olson of 3DPhotoWorks to expand accessibility in all
multimodal functions. Again, making the museum experience accessible for
blind people enriches the experience for everyone.
So you've taken my blues and you've gone. You've mixed them up in
Broadway and mixed them up in operas so they don't even sound like me.
Yeah, you've taken my blues and gone, but someday someone's going to stand
up for me, sing about me, and write about me. The poem says black, but I'll
add blind and beautiful in the vein of Ever Lee Hairston. But someday
someone's going to stand up for me, going to sing about me, going to write
about me-black, blind, beautiful-it'll be me, I reckon; Yep it'll be me,
but it won't just be me. It'll be me working together with 50,000 members
of the National Federation of the Blind to combine our efforts to produce
an effect that is greater than the sum of our separate effects. Let's go
forth and build the National Federation of the Blind.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Brad Smith]
Global Leadership, Responsibility and Technology:
Accessibility as a Core Value at Microsoft
by Brad Smith
From the Editor: Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft. What he
says and does has a significant effect on what a major contender in the
field of technology will do. What his company does will help set the tone
in an industry in which Microsoft is a major player. Here is what he said
about technology built in service to people:
Thank you, Mark. The first thing I want to say is that as president
of Microsoft on behalf of the team from Microsoft that is here with me in
this room, and more importantly on behalf of the 140,000 people who work in
our company across this country and around the world, we are honored to be
with you today. Thank you for making room for us. [applause]
As you might expect, I want to say a little bit about technology.
Technology is transforming our world. It is changing our future, but I want
to talk about technology perhaps from a bit of an unexpected vantage point.
I think the best way to understand what technology can do for the future is
to learn from the past, and the best way to think about the importance of
technology is not to focus on technology first but to think first about
people.
When you think about the places that bring people together, the great
intersections of the world, Las Vegas is one of them. It's a little bit of
Hollywood, it's a little bit of Disneyland, it's a little bit confusing,
but it's downright entertaining. I want to start with another great
intersection. Just east of Paris there is a site that attracts 10 million
people every year. It's called Disneyland Paris. If you were to go, you
would feel that you were in California or perhaps Orlando where the NFB has
often met. But as good as Disneyland is, it's not the best site in the
region. If people would only go a few miles farther east, they would travel
through gentle hills, amidst orchards and small vineyards, to a small town,
a town of less than three thousand inhabitants. I've been there. The town
is called Coupvray. As you travel through this town, you come to the end of
a small street where there is a small house that is now a museum. It is a
house that has stood for more than 200 years. In fact two centuries ago
there was a man who lived and worked there. He built the technology
products of his day, which happened to be harnesses for horses and
carriages. He was a master craftsman. His name was Simon René Braille. As
many of you may know, there came a day in 1812 when his three-year-old son
went to Simon René's workshop and pulled out a sharp tool to do what he had
seen his father do, use it to cut a piece of leather. But there was an
accident that day that changed his life. But because he was a person of
unbelievable potential and ability, that young boy, that young man named
Louis Braille took what happened in his life and changed the world.
[applause]
By the time he was six years old he was in a local school, and by the
time he was ten he was the best student in the class. He was such a
promising young boy that his father took him on a trip to Paris. They went
to Paris where Louis enrolled in what was then known as the Royal Institute
for Blind Youth. It was not a very nice building. It was run down, it was
dark, it was damp, it was poorly ventilated, and if you think that was bad,
the food was even worse.
But just two years later this young promising student had the
opportunity to learn from a new director of the Royal Institute, a reformer
if you will. He came in, and he saw the potential in his young students. He
not only improved the school; he took the students across Paris. He would
take groups of a dozen blind students who were holding a rope and led by a
sighted teacher. They would go to the Royal Botanical Gardens, and they
would be given an opportunity to learn from everything that Paris had to
offer. He brought in other people who could teach the students about new
opportunities in the world. One was a gentleman named Charles Barbier from
the French military. He had developed a new code that French soldiers were
using to communicate in darkness at night. The most amazing thing was that
it was a thirteen-year-old, Louis Braille, who said that that code could be
taken and turned into something even better. It took Louis two years to
perfect what we now know as the Braille language. As you all know, it
created opportunities for people around the world. It is a story about a
person, but it's also in my view a story about technology. Because that is
what the Braille language in many ways was: it was a leap forward in
technology, and it was a leap forward that in so many ways illustrated what
is to this day, two centuries later, perhaps one of the most fundamental
tenets that goes into creating better technology with every type of
disability in the world. It is encapsulated in a saying: nothing for us
without us. That is what Louis Braille showed. [applause]
Like all great innovators and leaders, Louis Braille created a
foundation on which others could stand. So it was almost exactly a century
later in Canada that another young boy suffered an accident. He suffered
this accident when he was seven years old, and by the time he turned
fourteen, like Louis Braille, he too was blind. His name was Jacobus
tenBroek. [applause] Like Louis Braille, he recognized that you can lose
your sight, but that doesn't mean that you lose your vision. As you all
know, he went on to partner with Dr. Newel Perry and create one of the
great movements, not just in this country but for the world, the movement
that is reflected in this room, the movement that the world now knows as
the National Federation of the Blind. [applause]
This movement too would connect with the world of technology. It was
almost a half-century ago that Ray Kurzweil partnered with the National
Federation of the Blind and created the first reading machine for the
blind. It was based on that that people were inspired to go further and
recognize that if there is a fundamental right in every democracy in the
world, it is the right to vote and the right to make that right real for
people who are blind. It took the creation of accessible voting machines.
So that is what the NFB helped pioneer. [applause]
Of course it was the NFB's work that led an expansion of this into
the world of digital publishing and the need to promote literacy for the
blind around the world in what is now known as the Marrakesh Treaty, a
treaty that moves these rights forward for every community around the
world. [applause]
It is amazing to see how far the world has come over two centuries,
and yet it is equally amazing to think about how far we still have to go.
Of course I never had the opportunity to meet Louis Braille or to meet
Jacobus tenBroek. But just as tenBroek built on the foundation created by
Braille, there are new leaders, new heroes, and heroines who are adding to
and taking this foundation even higher. My personal favorite is someone I
have had the opportunity to meet and get to know. Her name is Anne Taylor.
[cheers] As many of you know, Anne started as a student at the Kentucky
School for the Blind. Anne, in her day, had an aspiration, an aspiration
that certainly speaks to all of us every day, all of us who work at
Microsoft. Anne said that she wanted to learn computer science. It was not
offered at the Kentucky School for the Blind, but it was offered at the
public school nearby. So for part of the day Anne would go there, and she
said that they had never worked with someone like her. They had never
worked with a student who was blind. But as Anne is prone to do with so
many people, she quickly won them over, and like Louis Braille she became
the best student in the class.
Anne, as many of you know, would go on to college, would pursue this
career, building on computer science, and ultimately recognize that it
would become a career that would take her into this movement. It would
bring her to the National Federation of the Blind. For twelve years Anne
led the team here at the NFB as the director of access technology,
promoting across the tech sector the need for companies like ours to better
understand and better serve this community.
Ultimately there came a day when Anne's phone rang, and on the other
end was Microsoft's head of accessibility, our chief accessibility officer,
a woman who is here today, Jenny Lay-Flurrie. [applause] Like all good
leaders, Jenny recognized talent and sought to recruit Anne. Thankfully,
from my perspective, she succeeded. Her message to Anne was, "You've
changed technology from the outside. Come join us and see what you can do
on the inside." Every day I am grateful that Anne took that offer.
There have been good years for Microsoft when it comes to
accessibility, and there have been not-so-good years. There were even years
when we took areas where we were ahead and fell behind. But over the course
of this decade, in part based on feedback from Mark Riccobono and the
incredible leadership he has provided in talking to companies like ours, in
part listening to more of you, and in part based on the inside leadership
of people like Anne, every year we have focused on getting better. One of
the things I always tried to remind every product team at Microsoft is that
this is a big community. As you all know, there are 300 million people in
the world who are blind. Think about this for a moment. Think about the
almost 3,300 people who are here, and yet each one of you, in an important
way, is a voice for 100,000 more. It is a voice that, as you heard, needs
to be heard, but it's a voice that needs to be more than heard. It's a
voice that we need to listen to. [applause]
As I then remind our product team on so many days, there is no group
more directly impacted by the next version of our product than the
community of people who are blind. If we do our job well, we create new
opportunities for people who are blind, and if we do our job poorly, we
make people's lives harder. That is what we always need to remember in
every company that creates technology today. [applause]
I will say that I would like to think we are getting better. I hope
you see this. I hope that you feel this when you use our products.
Certainly with Windows we've worked to improve the screen-reading
technology. We now have a fully functioning built-in free screen reader
with a new QuickStart feature to help people learn more quickly how to put
this to work. We are investing in new low-vision tools, things like bigger
and brighter points, and smoother magnifiers. We are partnering with our
peers who also do important work and in many ways great work across the
industry. One sees this reflected in new advances like the Braille HID
standard with Apple. We recognize that we are not a company that can make
progress alone. We need to contribute every day to an incredibly powerful
ecosystem of competitors and partners and companies old and new, large and
small. We need to keep taking this into our other products as we're doing
with Office in our accessibility checker. So too are we doing this with
artificial intelligence, using the power of this new technology in embedded
ways with suggestions to make processes quicker and more accessible for
people with all types of disabilities. We need to look beyond the features
and the products that people use today and fundamentally ask ourselves the
same question that Louis Braille asked himself: How can we imagine new
technology that can fundamentally improve people's lives in ways that they
haven't yet experienced?
There are a number of initiatives taking place across the Microsoft
campus near Seattle. My personal favorite is one that is called Seeing AI.
[applause] As many of you obviously know, with the power of a camera and a
phone, and the ability of that phone to connect with the cloud, and the
ability of technology to harness artificial intelligence, every phone can
become a powerful new tool to help people navigate their lives each and
every day. Like the innovation that was reflected in Louis Braille's work
two centuries ago, my favorite image of the development of that product is
the photograph of Anne Taylor, who was part of the original team who helped
put it together and helped figure out how to make that product work. She
walked around Microsoft with a smart phone attached with duct tape to her
forehead. [laughter] People sometimes have to do amazing things to move
technology forward.
That, in part, is our future. But it is not a future of technology
alone. It's a future of partnerships-new partnerships that we're forging
through a new program called AI for Accessibility. This program is now
investing millions of dollars a year to put technology into the hands of
groups around the world, nonprofits and the like, who can then use our
resources and technical expertise to help discover their own advances. It
will take the kinds of partnerships that we've been so fortunate to have
the opportunity to forge with Mark and the leadership of the NFB to stand
up for the needs of people with disabilities across this country. We've
done that in Washington, DC; we've done that in state capitols; and we're
doing it at Microsoft itself as well as with our suppliers. That's why we
as a company first made a commitment to ourselves, for our own employees,
and last week we expanded that commitment to reach the employees of our
suppliers as well. What we said when we looked at the people and the jobs
at Microsoft and our suppliers was really straightforward. We are saying
now to our suppliers: "If you want to work with us, you have to pay people
the minimum wage." [applause]
So as I think about the future, I think about how all these strands
can come together. It is a future where technology can take us forward. It
is a future where technology companies need to put people who are blind and
people who have other disabilities at the center of everything we do.
Because if we serve this community well, frankly we're going to serve every
community well. [applause] It is a future that will require that Mark and
all of you continue to do what you do so well: use your voice, raise your
voice, call our Disability Answer Desk; operators are standing by. We have
received over a million calls since 2012. There are days when your feedback
is tough; there are days when you share with us your disappointments. But
keep doing it. It is what makes us better. [applause]
If there is one thing I've learned, it's that this is a community
that has important things to say. You need to be heard, and we need to
listen. [applause]
So in conclusion I would say this: we all come together in Las Vegas
in 2019 in a time that often feels pretty tumultuous. There are many days
in our country when it feels that people disagree with each other more than
they agree. There are even days when it feels that people are shouting at
each other more than listening to each other. But we need to have the
vision to pursue a brighter future. So many times I believe the best way to
imagine a brighter future is to think about the journey that we must
continue to pursue that will build on the best journeys of the past. When I
think about that, I think about the journey that Louis Braille put all of
us on two centuries ago. I think about the journey that a century ago the
NFB put us all on together. I think about the Anne Taylor's of Microsoft
and across the tech sector in the NFB, and I say there is not only cause
for hope, there is reason for optimism. Let us build on this ability to
work together and let us do what it takes to stay committed to this journey
and build on the shoulders of those who have come before us. Thank you very
much. [applause]
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Norma Crosby]
Cambiando Vidas en la Frontera de Tejas
by Norma Crosby, Daniel Martinez, Raul Gallegos, and Hilda Hernandez
From the Editor: Those of you who read the convention roundup in the
August-September issue will know the English translation of this title.
Those of you who know Spanish as your native language are probably glad to
see a title written in a language you love. Those who don't know the
meaning of the title are encouraged to read, for the answer is found early
on in this article.
Mark Riccobono introduced this exciting presentation with these
words: "Here to lead us in this panel is a woman who does not need much
introduction because she has been a mentor to many in this movement. Her
leadership is invaluable in our organization, and I'm always inspired by
what she's trying to do to build connections within our organization. In
her state she's been empowering others to explore ways to bring and build
connections to people in the state of Texas who need our philosophy but who
have not always been well-connected to us. So I'm really thankful this
morning that we have her and the other team of presenters to talk about
bringing hope, opportunity, and the family of the National Federation of
the Blind to so many, and I hope that it's an example of what we can do in
all of our affiliates. As you know, what we do often bubbles up, is tested,
and refined on the local level. Here to talk to us about changing lives on
the Texas border is Norma Crosby."
Norma Crosby: Good morning, you guys. I've got to tell you before I
start my presentation that, when you really care what someone thinks about
what you're going to say, it's really nerve-wracking. So I'm as nervous as
a cat on a hot tin roof because I really care about my Federation family.
So what comes to mind when you think of Texas? Do you maybe think of
people walking around in Wranglers and cowboy hats, pretending that they're
real cowboys? Or maybe you think of oil men who have their tailored suits
and their shiny cowboy boots. [shouts from the crowd, Norma laughs] Someone
said Willie [Nelson]. Those things are definitely a part of what Texas is,
but they aren't all that Texas is. Let me show you what I mean by using the
home of our 2020 Convention as an example. [cheers] Houston is certainly
full of oil men, and they certainly strut around town like they own the
place. (Which they kind of do.) However, you will also find a vibrant
Latino community [cheers] and a dynamic African-American community, but our
diversity doesn't stop there. Our LGBTQ population contributes
significantly to what Houston is and what it aspires to become. And we
respect all faith traditions. We are a melting pot, and so is Texas. The
National Federation of the Blind of Texas is very much the same. Our
members come from all diverse backgrounds, and as a result we continue to
develop programs that serve both our current members and the members we
hope to attract by making them feel included.
Today I've been tasked with talking about one aspect of what we do in
Texas in terms of diversity and inclusion. But as you've probably noticed
if you heard my presentation during the board meeting, I'm not always good
at staying on task. I'm going to veer off-topic a bit in order to tell you
about a couple of other things to promote inclusion.
Our NFB-NEWSLINE program is very dynamic. We are constantly adding
content to our local information channel, and this year we've added a
Spanish-language content manager, Ana Marquez. Ana is working to translate
material that's been available to our subscribers in English so that we can
make it available to our subscribers who speak Spanish. Liz Wisecarver and
her team do a phenomenal job of making sure to provide access to this
Federation program to as many people as we possibly can.
We're also working to make our mentoring program as diverse as
possible, and we've already made significant strides in that area. Most of
our program participants come from minority communities, and so do many of
our mentors.
Because we're making efforts at reaching the Latino community in
particular, we have just asked Rosy Carranza to become a part of our effort
at inclusion. Rosy will be helping us to communicate effectively with
parents, many of whom are a little apprehensive about allowing their
children to participate in programs like ours. We're very excited to be
working with Rosy, and we continue to work with Mika Baugh from Indiana.
She's been helping us for the past couple of years in project planning, and
so not only do we have program participants from diverse backgrounds, but
we also try to reach out to our Federation family to get help wherever we
can to make our programs work more effectively. We couldn't do it without
the wonderful leadership from our other affiliates, and when we see
talented members of your affiliate, we won't hesitate to borrow them from
you if you don't mind. So thank you so much for sharing with us. [applause]
Now let me talk about what President Riccobono actually asked me to
talk about, which is our Cambiando Vidas en la Frontera de Tejas, [cheers]
Changing Lives on the Texas Border. About a year ago members of our
affiliate's committee on diversity and inclusion came to me and said, "Hey,
we really think it's time for us to expand our community outreach efforts
to encompass the Latino community more." I absolutely agreed with them in
concept, but I wasn't really sure exactly how I could support what they
wanted to do. Luckily though they had that under control. They said, "Look,
we already have plans, we just need you to figure out how to pay for
everything. [laughter] You can do that, right?"
Well, challenge accepted. I let our team run, and they worked with
other Federationists and leaders from METAS [Mentoring, Engaging, and
Teaching All Students] such as Conchita Hernandez and Garrick Scott. They
set about developing a program that would allow us to reach out to a
community that is sometimes a little reluctant about coming out of the
shadows.
In the spring of 2018 we undertook our Cambiando Vidas on the United
States side of the border, and then in the fall we reached across the
border to host our second program in Matamoros, Mexico. [applause] We not
only served blind people, but we included their families so that they could
begin to understand about the high expectations we would be teaching their
blind family members. Our team was spectacular. Everyone worked tirelessly
for months to make these weekend-long programs possible, and all I had to
do was accept the praise that really belonged to our instructors and to
everyone who offered support during the process.
Today, three members of a spectacular team of instructors are going
to give you a glimpse into what we worked so hard to create. Here are
Daniel Martinez, Hilda Hernandez, and Raul Gallegos.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Daniel Martinez]
Daniel Martinez: Hello, my family. I'm Daniel Martinez. We just heard
from Norma Crosby. I can tell you I've eaten Mexican food with her and
partied with her; she's amazing. She's opened her heart, not only to the
Hispanic community, but we've seen it in the work that she has allowed us
to do. In our mentoring program-which is a program that lives in my heart
because that's how I started in the Federation-I now see more diversity
than ever.
Norma trusts me with the diversity and inclusion committee along with
José Marquez, the co-chair of that committee. We've developed a strong core
group of mentors, among them Hilda Rolando Hernandez, José and Ana Marquez,
and Irma Pyka. [applause]
Last year at our 2018 Convention we had a Spanish agenda, we had
volunteers interpreting into Spanish the entire convention, just like we're
doing here-thank you to all the volunteers who are taking the time to
interpret every word that we say on this microphone into Spanish. We also
held a Hispanic seminar which gave us a lot of insight into what our
community needs. From that seminar we concluded that we needed to provide
resources and information to our community. We talked about doing a podcast
in Spanish. So we recorded the first podcasts, and then we shared them in
January with Norma, and we talked about our proposal. Before she could give
us a yes or a no, we were showing her the recordings of our podcasts. Now
Cambiando Vidas is an amazing program. I had the opportunity to go to
Guadalajara, Mexico, in November to a school for the blind. There we did
evaluations, we talked with the parents, we talked with the children, with
the volunteers, and we realized they need services. Later this month, from
the 26 to the 28 of July, Norma, Irma Pyka, and myself are going to travel
to Guadalajara to present information and give resources that community
needs. [applause]
In the Cambiando Vidas programs we provide programs that you're
familiar with: we see them in the BELL Academies, for example. We teach
Braille literacy, adaptive technology, nonvisual skills, travel skills, and
one important component is the integration of the family into our
rehabilitation program.
And now I would like to present a friend of mine, a mentor in
Cambiando Vidas and in the NFB of Texas, Hilda Hernandez, who is going to
talk about the family in our rehabilitation. Thank you very much.
[applause]
[PHOTO CAPTION: Hilda Hernandez]
Hilda Hernandez: Good morning. I have the pleasure of coming to speak
to you about an important role the family plays in our rehabilitation,
especially in the Hispanic community where it's so difficult to let go,
especially whenever a member of the family has a disability. I worked with
the family members of the participants throughout the training weekend of
Cambiando Vidas. And believe me, it was not easy. Because during the
training that I give to the family members, I talk about awareness, but I
also talk a lot about letting them go. It's very difficult for them to let
go, but once they learn how we are able to learn and to become independent,
that letting go is a lot easier.
Throughout the weekend I have the family members explore their
emotions and their own fears, but I also talk to them and say that they
need to let go of their own fears so that their family member can be
successful. I emphasize the importance of thinking about the future and
what is going to happen when they are not there to continue supporting
them. That is what opens the family members' eyes. They want for their
family member to have the tools and the independence to be able to succeed.
[applause]
I thank the NFB for giving me those tools and that encouragement when
I was sixteen years old when I started participating in conventions and
with the students. Throughout the training that I lived with the NFB and
the members who supported me, I was able to explain all of that to my
family. Thanks to the NFB, now I'm able to explain this message to the
family members of my Hispanic community. Thank you for having me.
[applause] And I am sorry, but now I would like to introduce to you a
bilingual technology instructor who is also sharing this message with his
students, Raul Gallegos:
[PHOTO CAPTION: Raul Gallegos]
Raul Gallegos: Hello to my Federation family. [cheers] As a
technology instructor, I often get asked a lot of questions, some of them
simple questions that I can answer in one second; others I have to do a
little research. I have to say that some of the best students I have are
youth, because we cannot have seniors without having adults first; we can't
have adults without having teenagers first. But even before that those
teenagers are children who are like sponges. So we have our BELL program.
[applause, cheers] Everyone who speaks English knows that BELL is B-E-L-L.
However, if you say "bel" in Spanish, typically that's just one L, so
unless you're spelling my last name, you're not going to think of two Ls in
the word BELL. So I had a student say, "Que es 'BELL'?" (What is BELL?) And
so I said, "Well, it's an acronym," and before I could tell him what that
acronym was he said, "Braille es lindo." But we often say in English,
"Braille is beautiful," do we not? [applause]
One of the questions I ask my students, especially the younger ones,
is what is technology? And children being children, I'll often get answers
like the computer, the tablet, the TV device. Nobody thinks that an abacus,
a pencil, or a sketchpad is a form of technology. However, I encompass
their learning by using all forms of technology, from the "boring low-tech"
as some of my children would call it to the cool high-tech like the
notetakers and readers and whatnot. One of my best experiences-we're not
supposed to have favorites as teachers, but I have to say, something that
really stands out-through the use of a device like the Sensational
BlackBoard or the Sketchpad, I was able to show one of my BELL students,
who only spoke Spanish, and he would often hear people talk about the
sunset, but he had no idea what people were talking about. We were able to
draw together a house, a little lawn, and the sun up above in the corner
with little rays coming off of it. I explained to him how the sun travels-
well for us science-techy people really it's the Earth traveling, but
that's okay. I explained to him how the sun moves from our perspective from
one corner to the other, and I explained to him what a sunset was, all by
using tactile forms of teaching. And this BELL student loved it. [applause]
Later on as we practiced with a portable book reader, he got to read a
book, and he got to choose what book he wanted to listen to, and it was a
science book-I think maybe he might be an astronaut one of these days.
[applause]
The students that we have typically are going to be Spanish speakers,
English speakers, or even speak other languages, different groups. It just
shows how diverse we are, and how much we want to share our information
because we want these children to learn the right way how to be a very
successful blind person. They are our next generation. Thank you.
[applause, cheers]
Norma Crosby: They keep moving this microphone up. [laughter] Thanks
Danny, Raul, and Hilda. Programs like these are now in our DNA, and thanks
to the hard work of this team of leaders, we plan to hold our next program
in Texas this August, and we're planning to return to Matamoras between
Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year. It's our goal to make these annual
events so that we continue to partner with our Latino family to ensure that
they gain the skills they need to live the lives they want. [applause] The
National Federation of the Blind of Texas celebrates diversity. We want to
include any blind person who wishes to be a part of our family. We don't
care where you come from. We don't care about the color of your skin. We
don't care who you love or what faith tradition you follow. [cheers] We
believe that if we work together with love, hope, and determination, we can
turn our dreams of including everyone into reality. Thank you very much.
[cheers, applause]
----------
Leave a Legacy
For more than seventy-five years the National Federation of the Blind
has worked to transform the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people
into reality, and with your support we will continue to do so for decades
to come. We sincerely hope you will plan to be a part of our enduring
movement by adding the National Federation of the Blind as a partial
beneficiary in your will. A gift to the National Federation of the Blind in
your will is more than just a charitable, tax-deductible donation. It is a
way to join in the work to help blind people live the lives they want that
leaves a lasting imprint on the lives of thousands of blind children and
adults.
With your help, the NFB will continue to:
. Give blind children the gift of literacy through Braille;
. Promote the independent travel of the blind by providing free, long
white canes to blind people in need;
. Develop dynamic educational projects and programs that show blind
youth that science and math are within their reach;
. Deliver hundreds of accessible newspapers and magazines to provide
blind people the essential information necessary to be actively
involved in their communities;
. Offer aids and appliances that help seniors losing vision maintain
their independence; and
. Fund scholarship programs so that blind people can achieve their
dreams.
Plan to Leave a Legacy
Creating a will gives you the final say in what happens to your
possessions and is the only way to be sure that your remaining assets are
distributed according to your passions and beliefs. Many people fear
creating a will or believe it's not necessary until they are much older.
Others think that it's expensive and confusing. However, it is one of the
most important things you will do, and with new online legal programs it is
easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do decide to create or revise
your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as a partial
beneficiary. Visit www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call 410-659-9314,
extension 2422, for more information. Together with love, hope,
determination, and your support, we will continue to transform dreams into
reality.
Invest in Opportunity
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
characteristic that defines you or your future. You can live the life you
want; blindness is not what holds you back. A donation to the National
Federation of the Blind allows you to invest in a movement that removes the
fear from blindness. Your investment is your vote of confidence in the
value and capacity of blind people and reflects the high expectations we
have for all blind Americans, combating the low expectations that create
obstacles between blind people and our dreams.
In 2018 the NFB:
. Distributed over seven thousand canes to blind people across the
United States, empowering them to travel safely and independently
throughout their communities.
. Hosted forty-eight NFB BELL Academy programs, which served more than
three hundred and fifty blind students throughout the United States.
. Provided over one hundred thousand dollars in scholarships to blind
students, making a post-secondary education affordable and attainable.
. Delivered audio newspaper and magazine services to 118,900
subscribers, providing free access to over four hundred local,
national, and international publications.
. In the third year of the program, over three hundred fifty Braille-
writing slates and styluses were given free of charge to blind users.
Just imagine what we'll do next year, and, with your help, what can
be accomplished for years to come. Below are just a few of the many
diverse, tax-deductible ways you can lend your support to the National
Federation of the Blind.
Vehicle Donation Program
The NFB now accepts donated vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats,
motorcycles, or recreational vehicles. Just call 855-659-9314 toll-free,
and a representative can make arrangements to pick up your donation-it
doesn't have to be working. We can also answer any questions you have.
General Donation
General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and
the work to help blind people live the lives they want. Donate online with
a credit card or through the mail with check or money order. Visit
www.nfb.org/make-gift for more information.
Bequests
Even if you can't afford a gift right now, including the National
Federation of the Blind in your will enables you to contribute by
expressing your commitment to the organization and promises support for
future generations of blind people across the country. Visit
www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more
information.
Pre-Authorized Contribution
Through the Pre-Authorized Contribution (PAC) program, supporters
sustain the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind by making
recurring monthly donations by direct withdraw of funds from a checking
account or a charge to a credit card. To enroll, visit www.nfb.org/make-
gift, and complete the Pre-Authorized Contribution form, and return it to
the address listed on the form.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Kyle Vogt]
The Driverless Revolution: Setting a New Standard for Transportation and
Technology
by Kyle Vogt
From the Editor: Mark Riccobono introduced this presenter with these
enthusiastic words: "I'm very excited about this presentation. We invited
this gentleman last year, but he declined-rightfully so, his wife had just
had a baby, so he should have declined. He made it a priority to be here
this year. We really appreciate that. I was fortunate to have the
opportunity to first meet him right here in this hotel, as a matter of
fact, in January at the Consumer Electronics Show when we were one of the
founding partners to launch the PAVE Coalition, which is an effort to
promote the opportunities that will come from driverless vehicles. This
next gentleman is an innovator and a visionary in this space, and we're
proud that we've had the opportunity to get to know him in our efforts to
make sure that autonomous vehicles are accessible to blind people from day
one. He's a relatively new and growing partner with the National Federation
of the Blind. We're happy he could make it this year. He's the president
and chief technology officer of Cruise Automation, Kyle Vogt":
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, President Riccobono, and thank
you to the National Federation of the Blind for having me. Congratulations
on another successful conference. This is a really impressive turnout. I
appreciate the opportunity to be here today, and I'm humbled by the
remarkable work you do. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the work
we do.
As Mark said, my name is Kyle Vogt. I'm the cofounder, president, and
CTO of Cruise, which is a company based in San Francisco working on self-
driving cars. We have about 1,500 people, and we partner with General
Motors to manufacture and deploy our vehicles. We're working every day to
improve roadway safety. We think self-driving cars can be safer than humans
ever could be and also can make transportation more accessible by bringing
autonomous vehicles to life.
Building and deploying autonomous vehicles-we like to think of it as
this generation's Space Race. The technology challenge is immense; there's
been nothing like it since the Apollo Program. If you think about what
we're trying to do here, we're trying to make an artificial intelligence
system that is better than humans at one of the most complicated and
confusing tasks that we do on a regular basis-driving-in some cases in very
complex urban environments. We've seen computers beat humans at things like
chess, which is a very structured and straightforward problem without a lot
of complexity. We've seen computers beat people at video games and other
things. But never has a computer system been better-or in this case, safer-
than a human at a task as complicated and unpredictable as driving out on
public roads where there are other drivers doing things: pedestrians,
cyclists, and all of it can come together and create a very chaotic scene.
The stakes for what we are doing are enormous. Beyond just safety we
want to bring accessibility to seniors, people with any kind of disability,
and all of our vehicles are electric, so we want to make the air in our
cities cleaner as well. To us the vehicle of the future shouldn't be built
like the vehicles of the past. [applause]
Like the Apollo Program in the 1960s, today's Space Race (if you want
to call it that) is being led by the private sector and not government. The
industry is driving a technology revolution with huge impacts, and that
makes the work that we're doing together working with the NFB extremely
important. Since the government is not pushing, this is being led by
private companies, and we've got to work together and fight to make sure
that this technology is actually available.
Our mission, simply put, is to build the most advanced self-driving
vehicles to safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences
they care about. This sounds like sort of a simple mission, but it's not
simple to pull off. People, of course, are at the center of that, and I
think that that's pretty important. Because every year 40,000 Americans
lose their lives on the road, and despite all the improvements we've been
making in vehicle technology and safety technology, that number is going
up, and that might be because people are using Instagram and Snapchat and
doing all these other things when they should be driving. The vast majority
of those accidents that lead to all those fatalities are caused by human
error: 95 percent of them. So that means your car is not breaking down;
that's people doing dumb things behind the wheel, and we think that's an
opportunity where we can improve. That includes drunk driving, distracted
driving, drowsy driving, emotional driving-any kind of driving that's not
the right kind of driving.
We're sort of complacent with this reality today because there's not
a lot of opportunities other than using a car to get where you're going in
many cases. So we're sort of comfortable with this reality that's pretty
barbaric if you think about it in terms of how dangerous driving can be.
AVs [autonomous vehicles] have a significant potential to address this,
especially given that 95 percent of the issues are caused by humans,
because the autonomous vehicles don't get tired, they don't drink and
drive, and they never get distracted by text messages.
So today it's dangerous to be inside a car, and it's dangerous to be
outside a car, and in San Francisco where we're headquartered, pedestrian
fatalities have increased over the last several years. So it's risky to be
a pedestrian in San Francisco today, but it could be extremely dangerous to
be a blind pedestrian in San Francisco today. I think we have a moral
imperative as a society to do better, to make our streets safer for
everyone, and that's what we're working on. That's why I started this
company, and that's why I get up every morning thinking about how to make
this happen sooner and faster and to make it more accessible to more people
as quickly as we can.
If you look at the vehicles we're building-again, going back to that
Apollo Program analogy-these are pretty complicated, pretty impressive
machines. They've got sensors that are always on: laser range finders,
radars, cameras-all this pretty interesting technology that's never been
put on a car before, and together these sensors create a near-perfect 3D
view of what's happening around the car: where all the people are, where
all the bikes are, where the road is, the lane markers on all of those
things. So that car is computing a safe trajectory hundreds of times per
second. Again, it's doing that without ever getting distracted or ever
taking a break or hopefully ever making a mistake. So even if you don't see
one of our vehicles with all of these sensors, odds are it sees you, and
it's trying to do the safe thing near you.
We're working on this technology every day, and we want to put it on
the road first in the form of a self-driving rideshare service. I know from
talking to several of you that ridesharing has been game-changing in terms
of accessibility and giving you back the freedom to move around when you
want to. We're going to start there by deploying vehicles like this as
opposed to selling cars to individuals because this has real benefits to
us. When we have a fleet of vehicles that are owned and managed, we can
make sure that they're properly maintained at all times, they're
functioning as designed, and that if one car learns something or discovers
a construction zone or an accident or something, it can share that
information with all the other vehicles on the road. This is something that
human drivers can't really do today because you're busy driving. You can't
really call all the other drivers on the road and tell them what's
happening. I think that's one of the ways that AVs are going to start maybe
slightly safer than humans, and as time goes on get much, much safer.
There's no reason to me that this technology has to top out at human
performance. I think down the road we can make cars that are one hundred
times or one thousand times safer than human drivers are today. [applause]
This approach also allows broader consumer interaction with the
technology. We're working to create the safe, advanced vehicle, and we want
it to be available to as many people as possible and not just the elite. So
we're committed to deploying these vehicles with what is called level four
autonomous technology, which means it is fully autonomous within an area,
so think of maybe a certain city, city geofence or something. The occupant
in that vehicle never has to take control of the vehicle. And that's really
important today. It's different than cruise control or a driver-assist
feature. This means that you get in the car, and you don't have to touch it-
that's a really big deal. It means that if you can't get a driver's license
or you have a hard time getting a driver's license, that's not a problem.
If your job never involves taking control of the vehicle and never involves
driving the car, you shouldn't really need a driver's license. I don't
think anyone should need a driver's license in the future. But you should
have the freedom to go wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go,
and that's what we're working on.
As I mentioned before, all of our vehicles are fully electric and
zero-emission. We're committed to being good stewards of the environment
and want to democratize access to clean, safe, and accessible
transportation and make sure the air in our cities stays clean as our
population continues to grow.
Ridesharing services have already improved mobility for people with
disabilities-we know that, we love that-and we believe that autonomous
vehicles can take it to the next level. If you think about it, when you
have a rideshare service, you're still paying for another human being to
spend their time sitting in that vehicle driving around, so that's going to
have a cost associated with it. When you take that human being out of the
car and replace it with a computer system, we can drop the cost, which
makes that transportation more accessible to more people. [applause] It's
also consistent; you can skip over the confusing or non-intuitive
interactions with the rideshare drivers-which despite their best intentions
can really vary from person to person. That consistent, reliable
transportation service is something that we dream of and want to bring to
life with this technology. That's related to our culture of inclusivity and
diversity. We think that diversity makes us stronger and makes our
technology better. We think about that both in terms of the people who
build the technology at Cruise-our employees-but also the people who use
it. As you know, accessibility is not one-size-fits-all. There are 57
million Americans who identify as having a disability, and the needs of
those 57 million are obviously not all the same. But while there's no
single silver bullet we can use to make this kind of technology available
to everyone, I think there can be meaningful progress. So we've taken a
pretty deliberate approach to understand the differences both between and
within communities. For example the blind and low-vision community, the
deaf and hard-of-hearing, people with cognitive disabilities, and the non-
ambulatory community. If we recognize and understand these differences, we
can hopefully make a better product for everyone. Despite our intentions we
know that we don't have all of the answers, and that's where these
partnerships come in, including this one.
Last summer we launched a first-of-a-kind initiative to better
understand the rideshare experience of people who are blind, and how we can
tailor that experience specifically so that when autonomous vehicles
arrive, they're available and they work for everyone. For months we worked
hand-in-hand with the NFB and others in the blind and low-vision community
to understand the challenges associated with using a rideshare service.
These things may be obvious to many of you-like how to find the vehicle,
understanding where you are during the trip, figuring out how to navigate
the curb safely, and doing this complex dance when the driver is trying to
find you and you're trying to find the driver-all of those things and
understanding those problems so when we design this technology without the
driver, we still have a solution that works. How do you find a vehicle
outside the apartment when it picks you up in a different location each
time or when the driver parks on the other side of a busy road and asks you
to cross lanes of traffic to get there, or drops you off on the wrong side
of the road. These are all real problems that I think we can help to
address.
As we've been made aware, the blind community is far from helpless.
As President Riccobono appropriately stresses, you all are very gifted
problem-solvers, and we appreciate that. We are problem-solvers. I think of
building a self-driving car as one giant, complex problem to solve, so I
think you're in good company here. There are answers, solutions, and
"hacks" to every one of these challenges-if you are a really good problem-
solver, by the way we're hiring. We'd love to get you involved. We want to
work with you on this. I think there's a clever solution to all of these
things, even if it's not obvious the first time we look at it. If we can
solve these problems and others and make the system work, make it better,
make it predictable and consistent, user-friendly, more personalizable so
it knows your preferences, through all those things we hope to make it more
accessible or more usable to more people. These are only a handful of the
issues that we explore together with the NFB and others in our research
study. We also went a little beyond that, and we examined the challenges
together and worked on co-designing potential solutions together.
Our work, of course, is not done. In fact over just the last couple
days here in Vegas we've continued to work with the NFB and hosted more
accessibility workshops and research sessions. We're sort of a sponge for
information. We want to learn more and understand the problems better. We
want to partner, and we want to learn from you. I think together we can
unlock the remarkable promise of this technology.
We can't do this alone. We believe fundamentally in the power of
partnership, as do you. It's in our DNA. We partner with General Motors and
also Honda to build our vehicles so that we can get there faster by going
together. We partner with world-class organizations like the NFB to help us
learn and help us make our user experience the best it can be.
The NFB has been an outspoken leader on this issue, including calling
on our elected officials to expedite the day when AVs can be a reality and
we can actualize the benefits that they can bring. The unfortunate reality
is that AVs have no shortage of critics. Changing the status quo is often
something people are hesitant to do, and many things that are new, such as
autonomous vehicles or the idea of a car without a driver are often
misunderstood at first. But we both know differently, that the status quo
we live in today can be much better. One hundred people die on US roads
every single day, and millions of Americans struggle to live independently
because of the barriers to accessible transportation. So we need your help
to change it. Six million Americans with a disability have difficulty
getting the transportation they need, which affects not just quality of
life but also employment and connection to the community. So not only can
AVs help solve those challenges, but research shows that AVs can help two
million Americans with disabilities enter the workforce and save nineteen
billion dollars annually in healthcare from missed medical appointments.
That is a future worth fighting for, and I think we need to do it together.
[applause]
So I had the idea for Cruise over twenty years ago when I was on a
road trip with my father traveling down a two-lane highway from where I
grew up in the Kansas City area to a robot competition here in Las Vegas. I
remember staring down that road, and it was just a mind-numbingly boring
task of just holding the steering wheel and going in a straight line, and I
thought, "Man, that seems like something a computer could do." Immediately
when I got home I started trying to hack together something. Of course here
we are, over twenty years later and billions of dollars invested into this
and 1,500 people working on it, and we're still not quite done. But we're
making progress, and it matters. So not only do we have all that wasted
time and human potential but the thousands of deaths on our streets every
year and the barriers to mobility and independence faced by people with
disabilities. It's clear that something needs to change. So this is my
life's work. I knew it when I was ten years old, and I feel it even more
strongly now. It's why I dedicate myself to building this technology every
single day, as do the thousands of people at Cruise and GM and our other
partners. I know AVs will change the way we live and move: they'll save
lives, improve accessibility, reduce emissions and air pollution, and give
people back the most important resources: their time and their freedom to
go where they want to go when they want to go. I'm honored to partner with
the NFB in this pursuit. Thank you very much. [applause]
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Dave Schwietert]
Autonomous Vehicles: Establishing Strong Policy for America's
Transportation Future
by Dave Schwietert
From the Editor: Following Kyle Vogt, President Riccobono introduced
the next speaker: "We're going to stick with the theme of autonomous
vehicles. This organization is not new to us, but you may not know this
presenter. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has been a longtime
partner of the National Federation of the Blind, and as we have gotten
beyond talking about quiet cars into talking about autonomous vehicles and
our role in it, one of our primary policy partners for us has been the
Alliance. You have heard from the president of the Alliance in previous
years, but this gentleman has been with the Alliance but not as president.
Now he's serving as interim president. He's been one of the chief policy
folks at the Alliance helping us to line up the stakeholder conversations
to keep the blind in the center of the autonomous vehicle conversation. On
behalf of the Alliance here to talk with us is Dave Schwietert" [The
Beatles' "Drive My Car" plays as he approaches the microphone]:
Thank you so much, Mark. You know, I really like the theme music. I
testified before Congress a few weeks ago, and I'm going to have to ask
about whether we can do something like that. [laughter] My name is Dave
Schwietert, I'm the interim president and CEO of the auto alliance,
America's leading advocacy group for the auto industry. We represent iconic
companies and nameplates that you're familiar with that run the gamut from
Ford, General Motors, Fiat/Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, Jaguar/Land Rover, Mazda,
Mitsubishi, Porsche, Volkswagen, and of course Volvo. Our organization is
based in Washington, DC, but we also have offices in Michigan and
California, and I want to thank the NFB for inviting me to join you this
afternoon, especially since I was able to leave the high humidity of
Washington, DC.
Today I really want to share with you what is happening in Congress
and the administration regarding autonomous and self-driving vehicles,
what's happening in the states, and why our shared mission to move
autonomous vehicles forward is so important. Before I walk through the
remarkable innovations that auto manufacturers are committed to, including
the remarkable work that Kyle Vogt and the entire team at Cruise are doing,
I want to personally thank President Riccobono, members of the board, and
NFB's amazing staff for your very warm welcome. Without question we are
witnessing the most profound transformations in the auto sector our nation
has ever experienced. The inclusion of amazing technology is not only
revolutionizing transportation today, but also improving our lives,
expanding options for the traveling public, and having a positive impact on
the environment.
For the past decade the auto alliance and NFB have formed a
productive and uniquely strong relationship. This partnership between the
nation's foremost advocacy group for the blind and the leading association
of auto manufacturers has yielded tangible progress. To be candid, the
faster the pace of change the better. Working together we can accelerate
the enormous benefits that innovations offer for everyone. For the past few
years our collective work with the Coalition for Future Mobility, a
pioneering network of forty-two members that has brought advocacy groups,
associations, manufacturers, and technology companies in the fight to speed
up the deployment of self-driving automotive technologies both in
Washington, DC, and with federal agencies such as the US Department of
Transportation. Throughout the coalition the auto alliance, NFB, and others
continue to push for the creation of a regulatory framework by Congress
that will respect state authorities, but most importantly provide a pathway
that will give automakers and other stakeholders much-needed clarity to
help develop fully self-driving and autonomous vehicles. Last Congress this
partnership was effective in advocating passage of key legislation, the
SELF DRIVE Act, which was unanimously approved by the US House of
Representatives. Unfortunately the momentum to get legislation signed into
law last Congress came up a little short, even with the related AV START
Act being approved by voice vote in the Senate. Although our efforts faced
unexpected resistance from trial lawyers and other special interests who
fear changes in mobility, we're still committed to seeing Congress pass
legislation that will create national rules facilitating the deployment and
testing of self-driving cars. Until such federal legislation is signed into
law there will be uncertainty for automakers and other stakeholders due to
the patchwork of different state laws that will delay important investments
and innovations from being commercialized.
The NFB has been an invaluable partner in this mission for the simple
reason that self-driving technology has promised to yield a huge
improvement when it comes to the mobility of persons who are blind across
the United States. [applause] One key provision in the Senate AV
[autonomous vehicle] bill last Congress was a stipulation that states
cannot deny access to self-driving vehicles, including people who are
blind. [applause] It's a tremendously important provision, and together
we're committed to pushing for action in Congress, and I'm optimistic that
this common sense approach will eventually become law. But outside of
Congress there's other positive efforts that are being made, including in
the US Department of Transportation. Under Secretary Elaine Chao's
leadership, the department continues to evaluate and make necessary changes
to vehicle regulations, including other modes of transportation such as
trucking and aerial drones to spur the development of new technologies.
When it comes to advocating the benefits of self-driving vehicle
technologies, I remember a profound statement that President Mark Riccobono
expressed at an event with the Department of Transportation roughly a year
and half ago, and I quote, "The deployment of self-driving vehicles will
remove the artificial barriers of the past that have hindered mobility and
accessibility for the blind and push toward a future in which sightedness
does not determine mobility." [applause]
In recognition of our ongoing partnership and the NFB's pioneering
push toward a self-driving future, the auto alliance has organized a three-
part workshop this year regarding automotive vehicles and increased
accessibility. The second workshop is actually scheduled for next week in
Washington, and so far the feedback has been very positive, not only from
auto manufacturers but also from other key stakeholders including the NFB
who have participated in the workshop series. To give due credit, the idea
for the alliance to host this workshop series actually originated from a
related self-driving vehicles accessibility conference that the NFB hosted
at its offices in 2017. The conference focused not only on the benefits to
NFB members but the needs of roughly 57 million Americans with
disabilities. [applause]
Over the past few years I've been thrilled to watch how our
partnership has strengthened. Important trust was forged with collaboration
on the quiet car rule, which mandated that sound be added to electric
vehicles so that people who are blind can hear when these vehicles are
approaching. So far I've explained a little bit about where we've come the
last few years, but the key question is what we can do together to spur
important regulatory and legislative changes to realize the benefits that
are just around the corner when it comes to expanding mobility. When it
comes to automotive safety, as Kyle noted earlier, it's astounding that our
nation has accepted the fact that roughly 37,000 people perish on our
roadways each year. That's roughly 90 percent of crashes that are directly
related to human error. That fatality rate breaks down to an astounding
figure of roughly 100 lives that are lost each and every day. Although the
three largest causes of this human error are speeding, drunk driving, and a
lack of seatbelt use, automakers have made tremendous progress in recent
years not only to make vehicles stronger and to protect occupants, but also
with technologies that are being added to vehicles. I'm excited to say that
we are now starting to see a reduction in the number of crashes or
preventing crashes from happening altogether due to these critical safety
technologies. The reason I point to these transformative safety
improvements that continue to be added to new automobiles is because these
technologies, including blind spot warning, lane centering, adaptive cruise
control, auto parking, and automatic emergency braking are the building
blocks to fully self-driving vehicles. In effect these technologies that
are available today are the gateway to expanded freedom of mobility for all
Americans but especially NFB members.
I'm regularly asked how long this change or transformation to fully
self-driving vehicles will take. While I don't have a crystal ball, the
change is coming faster than many individuals think. While certain auto
manufacturers and other stakeholders have made public announcements about
when they would like to deploy self-driving vehicles on a large-scale, I
certainly expect that within a few decades autonomous driving vehicles are
likely to be commonplace on our roads and not just in large cities.
Self-driving vehicles, enabled by cutting-edge sensors can travel
faster, closer together, thereby cutting commute times, easing congestion,
saving fuel costs, and further reducing emissions. They can free occupants
to focus on other tasks in the vehicle, enhancing freedom and productivity
and perhaps, most importantly, self-driving cars will help to reduce the 90
percent fatalities tied to human error that I mentioned earlier. [applause]
For your membership, however, the impact of self-driving cars will be even
more powerful and transformative. Mobility in most of the United States
depends on driving or having access to a vehicle. Unfortunately those who
are unable to drive or afford a vehicle have less opportunities for
employment, and education options are diminished. Many people who are blind
are forced to rely on ridesharing services or taxis or depend on
inefficient public transportation and paratransit providers. In rural areas
like South Dakota where I grew up, options are even more limited or
nonexistent, and this reduced mobility is a major factor contributing to
the high rate of unemployment among the blind. My members, auto
manufacturers, want to help solve this problem. We are approaching a future
in which every blind or visually impaired person can own, operate, or use
self-driving vehicles, offering seamless point-to-point services through
voice-operated self-driving technology. [applause] The simple ability to
commute by car to work, school, doctor's appointments, restaurants, or
cultural opportunities is often taken for granted, but together we can work
to change that and expand mobility as we know it today.
This transformation has already begun. Nearly all major auto
companies are hard at work creating the autonomous vehicles of the future,
and self-driving technologies like park assist, lane correction, and
automatic braking are becoming standard features in many vehicles. The
question that I pose to all of you today is how fast do you want to expand
mobility and for that to happen? In my experience, having worked in
Washington, DC, for over twenty years, there are two kinds of politicians.
The first are those who are cautious to a fault, who hesitate to allow the
new innovations out of fear of their consequences. They are more concerned
about how things have been done in the past than how they will be done in
the future. They prefer the status quo versus innovation and disruption.
Perfection is the standard they demand regardless if that precludes access
or opportunity for key segments of our nation. The second type of
politicians are those who embrace the future, who foster the next
generation of solutions and welcome transformative change. I suspect to me
and you, these are the leaders who share our collective vision for self-
driving technologies. The questions around autonomous vehicles are now more
political than technological. Some states have chosen to lead in this new
frontier, allowing manufacturers room to test new technologies. They have
eliminated fees and barriers to self-driving vehicles. Other states have
opted to go the other way, taxing self-driving vehicles and restricting
their operation out of fear. Developments in Washington, DC, and in state
capitals will determine which approach wins out. The alliance will always
push for innovative progress and safety, but we can't do it without your
voice and support. The NFB, as I have mentioned, has been an invaluable
partner in this push for standardization, a forward-looking national
framework for self-driving vehicles, and those who are blind have too much
at stake to allow trepidation and fear to impede progress toward a future
that provides mobility for all. We can't slam the brakes on progress; we
won't. This is a battle we will fight and one that we will win. Your
passion and direct involvement can make a difference.
I want to close with this call to action for each of you. Make your
voices heard across the country but especially in Washington. Our joint
call to action should be to reject the status quo and demand that
politicians explain to each and every one of you what they are doing to
expand mobility and ensuring that regulations aren't holding back key
safety innovations. Your voice and involvement are critical to make it
known that self-driving vehicles will revolutionize the way you live your
lives, and dare any politician to deny that simple urge for free movement.
No more excuses! Let's work to pass critical self-driving legislation into
law that liberates mobility. The future is in our hands; we need only to
reach out and take it. I'm proud to say that our nation's automakers will
fight this fight with you every step of the way. [applause]
Thank you so much for inviting me to join your conference today, and
I very much look forward to working with all of you on this journey.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Bryan Bashin]
Led by the Blind: Bringing Authenticity to Services for the Blind and
Making Them Relevant to the Lives We Want to Live
by Bryan Bashin
From the Editor: Bryan Bashin is the chief executive officer at the
San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind. When I first heard about him, he
was a science writer, and I was soon fascinated by everything he had to
say. I was delighted to find that he was a Federationist, and I felt a real
sense of awe at playing on the same team. I admit to being somewhat
dismayed when Bryan gave up his work as a reporter and moved into the field
of rehabilitation. But I should have expected good things, for that is
certainly what Bryan has delivered at the LightHouse. Here are the comments
he made on the last morning of the 2019 national convention:
Thank you, President Riccobono, thank you, distinguished guests, good
morning, Federation Family. Twenty-five years ago, a blind Federation cane
travel instructor put a cane in my hand and taught me to believe in myself
and the dignity of the blind. Fast forward twenty-five years, and I find
myself leading a remarkable agency in charge of reinventing itself with
that dignity in mind. [applause]
Why reinventing? As President Riccobono said, we have a 117-year
history with some high points and some low points. Reinvention is our
friend.
I want to talk with you about what happens when a large private
agency starts hiring blind people at every level of management and people,
blind and sighted, who know the truth about blindness. Perhaps the way an
agency is led and governed is revealed by talking about who the people are
who are working at our agency, and I will remind you that a little more
than ten years ago the number of LightHouse people attending convention was
zero. Here are the ones who are here this week: Scott Blanks, the director
of our programs; Erin Lauridsen, the director of access tech; Amy Mason in
our technology program; Debbie Worstman, tech trainer; Bobbi Pompey
teaching life skills; Amber Sherrard, wellness; Jamey Gump, youth; Ann
Kwong transition, youth; Serena Olson, adult programs; Kate Williams,
employment immersion; Wanda Pearson, employment; Christina Daniels,
communications and the Holman Prize; Katt Jones, O&M; and from our MAD Lab
Greg Kehret, Caitlin O'Malior, and Maritza Calderon.
Oh yes, did you see one other person from the LightHouse that you may
have heard of-we have seen him on Sixty Minutes this January, Chris Downey,
our board chair. He is my boss, his predecessor chair of the board was
blind, and his successor is likely going to be blind.
These folks that I just mentioned are helping us be authentic. Yes,
the LightHouse does the same core training as you could find around the
country, but a little differently. We believe in the power of words. We
don't call the people who study with us clients; we call them students.
[applause] We've gotten rid of the ableist and insulting term for blindness
that so-called professionals use: we never say vision loss. We describe,
out of respect, all publications, whether it's our SuperFest Film Festival
or our own communications, all images.
You know, we've had a camp in Napa for seventy years. For more than
sixty of those years blind people were not permitted to cook in the
commercial kitchen. Last year our director of camp, Tony Fletcher, went
into the kitchen for something and noticed there were seven people working
in the kitchen; all seven were blind. [applause] We have twenty counselors
who lead the hundreds and hundreds of campers in a dozen sessions at our
summer camp. Last year seventeen of those counselors were blind. Our board
in our management designed our 40,000 square-foot headquarters in San
Francisco; every square inch of it was designed with the blind in mind. It
is a beautiful place, but much more beautiful is the fact that you can
control things there: the audiovisual system, the thermostats, and we even
have talking business caller ID. It's all accessible.
We believe in the history we have, and we owe our predecessors a debt
of gratitude. So when you come and stay at the LightHouse, you'll notice
the rooms are named for people you may know: Blind Boss Chris Buckley, the
San Francisco boss; Newel Perry; Isabelle Grant; Jacobus tenBroek.
We shatter some myths about blind people always being dependent. We
have a blood drive that takes place several times a year where blind people
roll up our sleeves and contribute back to the Red Cross. [applause] A few
years ago we created the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition. We spent over a
quarter of a million dollars making the dreams of blind people come to
life. Last week, Red Szell from the U.K. rode across ten miles of a bog in
Scotland, swam across the boiling Atlantic, and climbed a twenty-two-story
sea stack and successfully summited it. [applause] Last month Stacy
Cervenka's Blind Travelers' Network went live, and I bet there may be one
or two comments about the Mandalay Bay on that network as well. In a couple
of weeks Conchita Hernandez will do the first ever all-Spanish blind family
retreat in Jalisco in Mexico. [applause]
In making the hard decisions about who wins the Holman Prize, we have
a distinguished international committee, and all of them are blind. You may
know a few of these names who are judges: Anil Lewis, Gary Wunder,
Katherine Webster, Brian Miller, Debbie Kent Stein, Chancey Fleet, and a
new member still in training in Colorado, Holly Scott-Gardner. [applause]
Now while the name LightHouse may have suggested to you a giant
factory with little blind leadership, our community and our authenticity
now demand that we be more bold. So, what have we done? When nobody thought
five years ago that this scrappy little startup could succeed, we invested
$100,000 for an app that now has 2.5 million volunteers and 150,000 users,
Be My Eyes.
When it was unheard of that a LightHouse would pursue blind civil
rights, we sued Redbox and made sure that 30,000 Redboxes across the states
are now accessible. When we switched to an HR and payroll system at the
LightHouse and found that it was inaccessible, we brought out the lawyers.
We're talking with them now. When we finish and make that system
accessible, the 500,000 people who get their paychecks through ADP will
have an accessible system. [applause]
When Goodwill in Northern California wanted to work with the
LightHouse, we said, "No, you have to reject the 14(c) subminimum wage of
your parent organization." [applause] We challenged them, and their board
of directors removed the 14(c) certification. I ask you, is your local
blind private agency troublemaking enough?
When the experts said that seniors couldn't be taken to an immersive
training, sometimes at our camp, sometimes in San Francisco, we thought
otherwise. We are now in our seventh year of "Changing Visions, Changing
Life" retreats. In our eleven-story headquarters, we fired our cleaning
company and decided that blind people should get the benefits of cleaning.
Today five of the seven people who clean our building are blind or deaf.
Against skepticism, we put twenty-nine beds in our high-rise
headquarters so that blind people could stay and connect and form
community. There are hundreds and hundreds of students who stay there every
year, and you may have seen some of them, the thirteen students who are
here from the LightHouse's YES! (Youth Employment Series) program. Next
week they're going to be staying in the rooms and commuting to their
internships and jobs directly from the LightHouse.
In the San Francisco Pride Parade we marched 120 strong, the largest
contingent we ever had in the largest Pride Parade in the United States.
[applause]
We have a robust relationship with the big tech companies around San
Francisco. For seven years now we've operated a sort of scrappy tech salon,
LightHouse Labs, led by Erin Lauridsen and assisted by people like Amy
Mason, Jim Barbour, and Brian Buhrow.
But in a greater sense we are developing something precious and rare
at the LightHouse-a 50/50 mix of blind and sighted people at all levels of
management, working together, people who know the truth about blindness.
Now we didn't do this because we are a wealthy organization. I submit to
you that we became a wealthy organization precisely because of the
authentic and bold steps that we in our community insist that we do. I want
to tell you a few things about our biggest benefactor, Donald Sirkin. He
was not, when in his eighties, an authentic low-vision person. Like so many
seniors, he was ashamed and hid his own vision loss, as he would say. He
saw our messages, our blind positive messages on our website, and named us
in his will in 2010. He followed our authentic message of living the life
we want and again, when he revised his will in 2014, named the LightHouse.
We've discovered that blind authenticity pays, that fewer people give when
we have these maudlin messages about the plight of the blind. But people
respond to messages of hope and pride. Oh yes, about that bequest: it is
the largest single bequest in the history of American blindness, $130
million. [applause]
But in my heart, the biggest gift I ever received was each one of
you. The only way I can repay that debt is to ensure that the United States
has more agencies that are authentic and reflective of the blind community.
So today the LightHouse has 140 employees in six locations. This September
we're opening a new satellite location in Berkeley. We have eighty-two
different and distinct programs, and we're looking for cool blind people to
run them, to manage them, to direct them at all levels of our organization.
And may I remind you that we are especially looking for some NOMCs. We're
going to continue to do strategic blindness investments in technology like
Be My Eyes. We're going to continue to do our blind civil rights advocacy.
We're going to go where underserved people who are blind need our help.
Last week the director of programs, Scott Blanks, went to
California's Corcoran State Prison because there are blind people there-not
one or two-how many blind people are in that prison? Would you believe
eighty-five? It's practically an affiliate. [laughter]
We want to expand our connections to people who have not been served,
like the undocumented. We want to expand our TMAPS. Did anybody get one of
our tactile maps in the exhibit hall? [cheers] We're proud of the Bolotin
Award that we achieved last year for the tactile maps, and we are only
going to grow it. These are tools blind people can use.
We're going to do more immersive short-term courses like how to learn
LinkedIn over a long weekend or how to learn audio editing hands-on. We're
going to continue to do media partnerships, particularly with National
Public Radio. Look for more than thirty podcasts about the blind and
broadcasts on NPR about that. Again, we're not talking about the plight of
the blind but the joy and the beauty of how we live our lives.
We want to raise the bar about traditional and often overlooked
blindness institutions. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
hours that blind youth and young adults spend in blindness camps. There's
never been any kind of gathering to raise the bar about that, so this
October the LightHouse and CNIB in Canada are going to organize the first
ever best practices in blind camps conference. [applause]
We're looking to expand partnerships so that we can offer more Holman
Prizes. The Holman Prize for Blind Ambition just announced our 2019 blind
awardees last night. Do you want to hear who they are? Computational
chemist Mona Minkara has an ambitious goal to visit the teaming public
transit systems on six continents, and, like Anthony Bourdain, to blog and
video how a blind person takes ordinary transit. Alieu Jaiteh, in The
Gambia, will build a mentorship system of seventy blind people in the most
rural parts of that nation. People will get for the first time the positive
message of blindness in The Gambia. And Yuma Decaux in Queensland in
Australia, a blind astronomer, has developed an app that can run on your
iPhone or some other smartphone and will take the data that our satellites
are getting and sonify it so that blind people directly, as part of citizen
science, can play a role and discover the next exoplanet.
Now there have always been blind people with self-confidence in
California. Think of Newel Perry, Jacobus tenBroek, and all of those, but
what we have not had is an agency in California with those kinds of people
at all levels of management until now. Take the aspirations of Jacobus
tenBroek for our right to live in the world and expand it now into our
right to influence our world. If I can name a law, I will call it Bashin's
law, which says that the more money an organization has, the fewer are the
blind people who run its board of directors or are in senior management. If
you look at it, in California the first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
sixth, and seventh largest agencies, apart from the LightHouse, are people
with overwhelmingly sighted management from the top down. Nationally fewer
than 10 percent of blind private agencies are led by blind people or
management teams. In 2019 I ask you, is this managerial apartheid
acceptable? [The audience responds with a resounding no!] Even the 660
independent living centers are mandated to have half of their management
and half of their board of directors be people with disabilities. In
California though, one large private agency actually fought a bill in the
California legislature, saying that it could not be mandated to find even
20 percent of its board of directors because it couldn't find qualified
blind people in California.
The LightHouse now is at 50 percent blind and sighted parity on our
board of directors, and in the next few months it is likely that we will
codify that as a permanent part of our bylaws. [applause] So it's time to
take that disability refrain "nothing about us without us" and just make it
simple: nothing without us!
Our authenticity is based on the understanding that blind people want
to be actors and not passive people. We want to be subjects and not
predicates in somebody else's sentence. We don't believe in an artificial
schism between blind and sighted people working in our field. And we
certainly don't need a divisive and outmoded organization like NAC to tell
us what's progressive and what's authentic. [cheers] In thirty years the
LightHouse has not needed the services of NAC, and we never will.
[applause]
Our future and the future of private agencies lies in cultivating and
not alienating sighted allies. They are essential to amplify our reach. Our
goal then is to teach and engage and involve our wider community, but a
community that must learn from us with humility and respect.
It is now time for us in the Federation to take some larger strides,
to expand our reach beyond our three training centers and the handful of
commissions and state training centers we now influence. [applause] Our
task is to light more flames of authenticity in places that call themselves
lighthouses, societies, centers, or happy homes for the blind. So whether
your local private agency is in the east or the west, north or south, or
even in San Francisco, will you please join me in the new refrain, "Nothing
without us, nothing without us, nothing without us." Thank you.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Kristen Cox]
Competing on Terms of Equality and Blending in:
Government Service with Federation Style
by Kristen Cox
From the Editor: Kristen Cox is the executive director of the Utah
governor's office of management and budget. Many will remember her
distinguished service as a part of our government affairs team almost
twenty years ago. Here is what she said on the final presentation of Friday
afternoon, July 12:
It's so great to be here. I love this organization, and the older I
get, the more I appreciate the profound philosophy this organization
embraces. I want to thank President Riccobono and the staff for putting on
a conference of this size. I have put on one that isn't quite this big, so
I know how much energy it takes, and I really want to thank him and the
staff. [applause] Yes, they deserve a round of applause.
I run the office of management and budget. I am senior staff to
Governor Herbert. He is the third governor I've worked for, and I'm going
to talk to you a little bit about my job and the journey to get here.
Essentially I am the COO and the CFO [chief operating officer and the chief
financial officer] for the state of Utah. I manage a budget of almost $19
billion. We do all the revenue projections, I manage a team of economists,
and we do all of the operations for the agencies. So it is complicated, and
I also deal with the legislature. In fact, originally, way back in the day
when I was completing my individualized plan for employment, I wanted to be
Dian Fossey and study gorillas in the Congo. I never did that, but I do
work with the legislature. Maybe-maybe-I'm just saying-it's a little close.
I have a great job, it's rewarding, but I couldn't be here in the
position I am today without this organization. I want to share a little bit
of my journey about how I got here and my gratitude. But before I do that,
I do want to announce that there is a $10,000 donation coming to the
organization. I wrote a book with a colleague and his colleague, who are
fans of this wonderful organization. Proceeds from the book and the
workshop we are doing in Japan will be coming to the NFB in August. So
we're doing our best to get the mission of the NFB to the entire world, and
wherever I go, people are impressed and inspired and more committed to
helping our cause.
My journey is probably one that many of us have encountered. I
started going blind at eleven. I did large print, I did magnifying glasses,
I went through every dang plan you can imagine: an IEP [Individualized
Education Plan], an IPE [individual plan for employment], a ticket to work
program, and, after years of being in the school system and the rehab
system, I graduated from school with no skills. I can't read Braille, can't
do cane travel, have no adaptive technology. But again, I'm independent,
ambitious, and I have dreams and desires. But the idea of holding down a
job seemed elusive to me.
But then I came across an invitation to go to a meeting of one of our
local chapters in Utah, and I said, "Sure, I'll go." I met the Gardner
brothers; many of you know the Gardner brothers, and that's where the
beginning of my new life started. Norm Gardner introduced me to a Braille
'N Speak. At that time we had our first son, I did not know Braille, and I
wanted to read to our son. So I would teach myself one letter a day. Then I
would go to grade 2, and then I could read Hop on Pop. Finally I read The
Hobbit-I'm a big fan of The Hobbit series-so I learned Braille.
Then I started to dabble a little bit more into philosophy in this
idea of cane travel. I would get out my cane, but I wasn't quite convinced
that I needed it, and I was a little embarrassed and had some shame about
that. At the time, I had one of those collapsible canes. I would stick it
in my backpack, and when I thought I needed it, I would pull it out. I'm
sure people thought I was crazy because I was like, do I need a cane, do I
not need a cane, what in the world am I thinking? So I would pull my cane
out when I thought I needed it and then hide it away because I hated people
staring at me. One day I was walking home, had just used my cane, had just
put it back in my backpack, and I fell right into a manhole. The good news
was that it was in the middle of winter, so the manhole was covered with
ice-cold water. The bad news was that it was covered with ice-cold water.
It was freezing, it was humiliating, and it was really an eye-opener for me
to start thinking about getting honest with myself.
At this point I had been in the Federation for a couple of years, and
I intellectually understood what we said. I could say the words: that with
the right training and opportunity, blindness could be reduced to the level
of an inconvenience. I could say the words that the biggest problem with
blindness was not blindness itself but the misperceptions and stereotypes
we have about blindness. I could say the words, but I don't think I got
them in my heart yet.
Then I had this amazing opportunity to come back and work at the
headquarters of the National Federation of the Blind. Dr. Maurer was
willing to take a chance on me, and so too was Mr. Gashel, Dr. Jernigan,
and others. Getting hired at headquarters exposed me to the most eye-
opening experiences I've had. I want to tell you about some of them.
Specifically there are four lessons that have had an impact on my
life forever, not only my personal life, but even today and the way I do my
work in government when we tackle big problems. The Federation philosophy
impacts everything I do.
One of the first things I did when I was back at the NFB-and Mr.
Gashel, I don't know if he'll remember this or not-I know that we all use
first names now back at the NFB, but I can't do it. I think it was my first
week back there, and I was trying to figure out what the heck I'm going to
do. He takes me to lunch, and we were walking down the street. I was so
impressed with Mr. Gashel. He is so articulate, so smart, just always on
his game. So while we were walking to get lunch, I remember asking him this
silly question: how much can you see? Because, in my mind still then, even
though I knew the words, I had this belief that how competent or successful
I could be had something to do with how well I could see. Fortunately Mr.
Gashel, in the Gashel form, ignored my question, and in the months ahead I
worked with such amazing people, including Dr. Maurer and the rest of the
team, until I realized that I got to the place where I didn't wonder can
they see or not see or how much or how little. People everywhere were
successful and competent and making a difference, and all of a sudden that
question of how much can you see became irrelevant.
When I was running for lieutenant governor, one of the headlines
said, "Blind Mormon woman running for governor." I said to myself, "Wait,
what about the bald Jewish man running for Senate?" But we were out one day
with Governor Ehrlich, and there had been a big flood. He had toured the
site with his helicopter looking down, and when he got off, the press said
to him, "How would your lieutenant governor candidate do this job? She
couldn't have seen." And he was so great, because he got what I had learned
by this point which was that there are many, many ways to get information
other than your eyes. [applause] He knew then what I had finally learned,
that vision does not determine our success. It does not determine our
success.
We know that in the Federation with the right training and the right
support and the right opportunities, that is the mark of our success. So I
went on my journey, and I started to get this idea that vision wasn't the
end-all, and then came this second lesson that was so important and
President Riccobono talked about yesterday in his report. The word is
excellence. I remember doing my first fact sheet for Washington Seminar and
giving it to Mr. Gashel. It came back just redlined and redlined and
redlined. I would spend hours working on these things, and the sentences
were never good enough. Then I would go in with Dr. Maurer and study
elements of style with grammar. Do you split your infinitives or not? Where
do you punctuate? Do you remember this? [She addresses Mark Riccobono,
saying that he was in one of these classes.] I came to understand that
excellence, high standards, and being our best were critical.
If we want society to accept us, we've got to be our best. We can't
go out to the workplace and compete on equal grounds if we are not bringing
our best game to the table. I can't tell you how many classes I had taken
in high school or college where no one gave me the kind of feedback I got
at headquarters at the NFB. No one had! Because I was blind, they didn't
want to hurt my feelings, they didn't have the expectations that I could do
it, and this is after eight years of being in the system with all of the
IEP and IPE you could have. I didn't have the basic skills, and it was not
until I got to the NFB that something changed: the expectations were
elevated. They expected much more from me in everything that I did, and
I've come to appreciate how important that is because we will live up to
the expectations people will set for us. Because of that we should set
pretty danged high expectations for ourselves. [applause]
That was the second lesson, and there are two more. The third lesson
was a story that Dr. Schroeder-there are so many wonderful mentors that
I've had here in this room: Dr. Schroeder, Joanne Wilson, the list could
just go on and on. But I want to focus on a story that Dr. Schroeder told
me. I'm going to repeat it if I can; I know I'll get the name wrong, but
forgive me. This story really affected me, and I use it today with our
cabinet members as we ask them to really go after big results. Government
is such a mess; I'm in it, and I can't stand it. It's such a mess, and
we're asking them to improve, and they're telling us every reason why they
can't. This story has always affected me. Dr. Schroeder, if I get it wrong
I apologize, but this is how I remember it:
He was working with a boy-I call him Tony, but I think his name was
Vincent. Anyway he was working with Tony, who wanted to learn to play tag,
and Dr. Schroeder thought about this. How do I help this kid play tag was
the question that he took home that night. The next day when Dr. Schroder
came back, Tony came up to him and had figured out how to play tag. He had
taken jars, put pebbles in the jars, and had given them to his friends.
There was no high-tech solution or anything like that: just use jars with
pebbles in them so he could hear his friends at play and join them in it. I
have two sons, and we tried this once. Instead of using jars with pebbles,
I had everyone turn their phones on with music so that I could hear where
they were. We all wore blindfolds and played tag, and it was a blast.
This little boy, Tony, had the best mindset. So many times as adults
we just assume that a thing can't get done. We give all the reasons why a
thing is difficult, all the excuses, all the yes-buts. What is so
remarkable about Tony is that it was not an issue of if the thing could be
done-but how! This is what we need to understand: that the question is not
if but how! The NFB teaches us about creative problem-solving. Yes, we may
do things differently, but we still get the job done. [applause]
Every day at work I am working with economists and spreadsheets and
graphs and revenue projections, and every day there is a new challenge
about how I'm going to access this or how I'm going to communicate on that.
There is always a way if we assume the thing is possible, and it's just
that we have to figure out the solutions. We just have to be creative
problem solvers.
Again, this is so important. When Gov. Herbert first took office, he
charged all the agencies to improve their performance by 25 percent. Now
this was just after the recession, and our cabinet members were openly
saying, "This is impossible." But I said no. Because I have learned in the
NFB that nothing is impossible. I take this philosophy to work every day,
so the third lesson is not if the thing can happen, but it is how to make
it happen and to be a creative problem solver.
This last lesson was so critical. I was blessed to go through
residential training the NFB way and actually did it in the NFB center, and
I'm so grateful for that. At the time we had one son, Tanner, and we went
and did four or five months with the sleepshade training, Structured
Discovery, and the whole bit. It was so great, and this is where it became
less an intellectual exercise but an emotional exercise of really getting
it into my heart, what this meant to be an independent cane traveler, and
to really learn the skills of blindness.
I remember working with Tony Cobb. He was my O&M instructor for the
day. We were out practicing, and we were out in the park across from the
headquarters. What is that park called? I can't believe I forgot the name.
Yes, Riverside Park. So I'm at this park, doing my practice for the day,
and I cannot get out of the park. I can hear where the highway is, right.
But every time I'm walking, I'm hitting a bench. I hit grass. I hit dirt. I
cannot get out of this dang park; it's like the Minneapolis airport. I hate
that airport. [laughter] That airport makes no sense to me, and I feel like
I travel there once a month.
So I'm in this park, and I can't get out of it. So I just stop,
because it's frustrating. It felt hard to me. I did not know my way
forward. Tony Cobb just let me struggle for a bit, let me struggle just
enough, and then he came up behind me and said something that I think about
frequently. He said, "Kristin, you've got to learn to walk through your
confusion and your fear. You'll get no new information by standing still.
You've got to take a step into the unknown to get that information." And
that was so impactful for me.
As blind people we can sit back and wait for the world to come to us,
but, if we do that, it's going to pass us by. Sometimes it can feel
uncertain, and sometimes when I'm traveling I have questions. Last year I
was in Japan traveling by myself, and at first my feeling was "How am I
going to do this?" But I set that aside because I know in the NFB that we
know about persistence; we know about taking one step at a time. We know
that when we set our minds to big goals and things that are important to
us, even if we're not sure how we will achieve it, we know that we can if
we just take the next step-through our confusion, through our fear, through
the uncertainty. That was a game changer then, and it's a game changer in
my profession today.
So when the agencies say something can't be done, what do you think I tell
them? [an audience member yells out yes. She echoes back the word yes with
a laugh.] There's no mercy.
We have a lot of work still to do in Utah. We've made great progress,
but vocational rehabilitation was transferred from the Department of
Education to the executive branch eighteen months ago, and we have a lot of
work to do there. Sometimes in government bureaucracy, people can list all
the reasons why a thing is impossible and why we can't do it. But again, in
the NFB way, we will never let obstacles impede us from achieving the goals
either professionally or personally that we have.
So I want to leave you with this: the National Federation of the
Blind is one of the most profound organizations in the world. I have
associated with senators and congressmen and different associations, but
the profound and simple philosophy that this organization embodies impacts
everything we do from legal action to training and education. But, more
importantly, it penetrates our hearts. It's what gives us the hope and the
ability to live out our dreams and totally make a positive contribution in
the world around us. For that I am deeply grateful to the organization, and
I am excited that we can give the $10,000 donation. The governor also
wanted to make sure that I extend his gratitude. He has spoken before this
group. I told him I was speaking. He knows we have work to do for the
remainder of his term. He's committed to setting a very robust program to
hire people who are blind within state government. I will be working
closely with the NFB of Utah to make this happen. [applause] We are going
to get the job done in Utah, and with that, I thank you, my Federation
family.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Stephanie Cascone]
World's Number One Card Game for the Win
by Stephanie Cascone
From the Editor: Stephanie is the director of marketing and
communications, and she is working on one of our central goals, that being
to partner with others in the country to advance the opportunities for
blind people. Here is the article that she and officials from Mattel have
offered to the Braille Monitor:
It's a rush of excitement to have that one card left in an intense
game of UNO. Round after round has gone by that included those darn Skips
and Draw Fours. Who will be the first out?
It's a game that turns family night into loud laughs or great
debates. Can a Draw +4 go on top of Draw +2? But this article isn't about
the rules of UNO. Instead, it's about how Mattel partnered with the blind
to create a co-branded, accessible version of this globally popular game.
Mattel and the National Federation of the Blind are proud to announce
UNO® Braille. Through a dedicated collaboration between Mattel's game
experts and the blind community, this out-of-the-box accessible game for
game enthusiasts and those looking for a fun, friendly good time will be
available at Target locations nationwide and online starting this month.
Partners
"In college, I played all-night tournaments. I love UNO!"
UNO isn't new to the blind. Many of us found ways to adapt the game
through the years, including Brailling our own decks with a Braillewriter
or slate and stylus. But that won't be necessary anymore. The National
Federation of the Blind believes in collaboration to advance our goals, and
we always welcome the opportunity to strategically partner to raise
expectations and secure equality. Mattel wanted to bring an inclusive game
to the nation's blind and the mainstream market. From the beginning, this
was a match made for success!
Mattel wanted the game to be right. It wanted authentic, certified
Braille. It wanted accessible instructions and a fully accessible UNO
Braille website. It realized that the best way to achieve all these goals
was to solicit input from blind people throughout the process of creating
this new version of UNO.
Every step of the way, blind people had input into this now-available
product, and Mattel listened. Several rounds of samples were sent between
the company and NFB headquarters until the Braille cards and instructions
were perfect. Selected families with both blind and sighted members played
with the new decks at our national convention and gave feedback. Our
experts also vetted the website, the instructional videos, and the voice-
activated tutorials that are available via Amazon Alexa and Google Home
devices.
Play
"The Braille is beautiful."
The UNO Braille experience starts with the packaging. There is
Braille on both the front and back of the box, including the name of the
National Federation of the Blind. Upon opening the box, you can find four
quick play cards-each with Braille and print. If more instructions are
needed, they are available at UNOBraille.com or by accessing the Voice
Skill on Alexa or Google Home.
Each card has Braille in two adjacent right corners. Zeros through
Nines. Skips. Reverses. Draw Plus Twos. Wilds. Wild Draw Fours. Everyone
playing starts with seven cards, and then the fun starts!
The development of an UNO Braille game may seem like a small and
simple thing, but the spirit of inclusion and partnership that it
represents is significant. Even those who don't play UNO Braille will see
it in Target stores and hear about it from blind friends and colleagues.
This will expand awareness of the importance of accessibility and
diversity. As UNO continues to be a staple of game nights all over the
country, UNO Braille represents a win for everyone.
The National Federation of the Blind and Mattel are proud of the work
we have done. Together with love, hope, and determination, we turn dreams
into reality with partners and play.
----------
[PHOTO CAPTION: Meagan Houle]
Meagan's Guide to Stylish Farewells: On Coming to Terms with Vision Loss
by Meagan Houle
From the Editor: Megan Houle of Alberta, Canada, has a blog entitled
Where's Your Dog?, and from it we at the Monitor came across a fantastic
article about transitioning deeper into blindness, about grieving the loss
of a sense, and about making it in the world anyway. Here is Megan's
article, and there is more where this came from on her blog at
https://wheresyourdog.com:
Sighted people are always caught off guard by how casually I treat my
vision loss, whose inexorable progression began the day I came into the
world. While I understand the assumption that vision loss is all sadness,
all the time, that isn't the case for me. If my vision was ever good enough
to accomplish useful tasks like driving, or fun things like painting, I'd
likely be far more bereft. As it is, what little vision I was born with is
more liability than blessing, becoming increasingly burdensome as it
dwindles.
The one thing I occasionally allow myself to mourn is the loss of
color perception. Though my understanding of color was never perfect, my
childhood is filled with memories of gazing with fascination at anything
brightly colored, especially in nature. Now that I'm all grown up and my
vision loss is more advanced, I don't reliably notice color unless I make a
deliberate effort. Even then it's hit or miss.
I've always known I'd eventually lose all my color perception, but
over the past few months, I'd begun to view that loss as part of my
present, not my future. It was no longer on the horizon. It was upon me,
happening in real-time, and I couldn't deny that it seemed to be slipping
away more quickly every day.
The way I saw it, I had two options: I could lament its vanishing and
write more soppy posts about it, or I could give it a send-off worth
remembering. I chose the second option. I wanted to infuse this time in my
vision loss journey with joy and gratitude, focusing on what I had rather
than what I'll lose. To that end I enlisted the help of my charming and
devastatingly attractive friend Krissi. (Did she pay me to say that? You
decide.) She fell in love with my vision (ha ha) and planned the most
colorful day she could imagine: a plant crawl. All day long we visited
various greenhouses, including the Muttart Conservatory and Greenland
Garden Centre, exploring plants from around the world. There was more color
than I had the capacity to process, and it truly was a feast for my eyes
and soul.
Surrounded by vibrant flowers and exotic trees, I got all the color-
gazing I could ever want. I also discovered something else. Interacting
with plants is a surprisingly tactile experience if you have a brave and
patient plant expert like Krissi nearby to keep you from impaling yourself
on a cactus. I'd always thought of plants as delicate things that didn't
like to be touched, and there was the looming threat of insects that would
make their displeasure painfully known. In these climate-controlled
environments, I was able to gently acquaint myself with the glossiness of
banana leaves and the shapely curvature of a fruit tree. I stroked roughly
textured bark and soft foliage that rivaled felt. I found a leaf that
looked exactly like a feather, with its slightly downy grain. I touched
leaves so fuzzy they felt like peaches and other leaves that felt like
nothing so much as the rough but cozy blanket my grandfather might drape
over the back of his rocking chair. I discovered creepy-feeling succulents
and graceful, delicate herbs. Krissi nearly had to tear me away from a
plant that appeared to have sprouted its very own umbrellas. There was so
much to touch that I occasionally forgot I was primarily there to look.
The biggest surprise came when we stopped off at Krissi's house so
she could teach me the tricky art of flower arrangement-another chiefly
tactile activity. I assumed it was all about doing whatever looks
prettiest, but I soon realized that what felt symmetrical was the most
reliable test for what would look fabulous in a vase. To my immense
delight, I learned that rookies use their eyes, while pros use their hands.
Krissi patiently showed me how to trim stems, strip leaves, and thread
flowers through my fingers in an awkward X shape. Thread, twist. Thread,
twist. Thread, twist. Snip ... Boom! I suddenly had a gorgeous bouquet,
which made it look like I really knew what I was doing. (I still don't, but
photographic evidence of my triumph will forever suggest otherwise. Tell no
one.)
As I cleared away the pile of stems I'd cut and sat back to admire an
arrangement so bright I could actually see it, I experienced the air of
celebration I'd hoped to inspire. I knew I'd soon see the world in shades
of grey and that not long after that I'd see nothing at all. But in that
moment, I sat back and absorbed the incredible gift I'd been given, which
was no less wonderful for its impermanence.
I'm sure that sadder times are ahead of me, with a blind community
that is so often dismissive of partially sighted pain. I do not expect to
remain this philosophical and high-minded about it all. I will have days
where I'm grumpy about this slow march to darkness, even though I am
already blind for most intents and purposes. But I'll always have the
comforting knowledge that I can live well and happily, color or no color,
light or no light. And I'm lucky to have enjoyed both, if only for a while.
----------
The Right of Blind People to Serve on Juries Comes to the Court
Editor's Note: One of the strange contradictions in American law is
that we can elect and appoint judges, and we can do it without much
controversy. But when it comes to performing jury service, acceptance has
been more sporadic and controversial. Many of us have stories to share, but
seldom has our service been the focal point of a case.
In California a man involved in an altercation was not awarded damages
in a jury trial. He has sued on the grounds that one of the jurors in his
case is blind and therefore could not see and judge his injuries. We have
weighed in by filing a friend of the court brief, and what we say is both
thought provoking and makes for interesting reading. Enjoy!
The National Federation of the Blind, the National Federation of the
Blind of Massachusetts, and the Disability Law Center respectfully submit
this brief pursuant to this Court's solicitation of amicus briefs on April
16, 2019.
STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE
The National Federation of the Blind ("NFB") is the nation's oldest
and largest organization of blind persons.[1] The NFB has affiliates in all
50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The National Federation of
the Blind of Massachusetts ("NFB of MA") is the Massachusetts state
affiliate of the NFB and has chapters in Cambridge and Greater
Springfield.[2] The NFB and its affiliates are widely recognized by the
public, Congress, executive agencies of state and federal governments, and
the courts as a collective and representative voice on behalf of blind
Americans and their families. The organization promotes the general welfare
of the blind by assisting the blind in their efforts to integrate
themselves into society on terms of equality, and by removing barriers that
result in the denial of opportunity to blind persons in virtually every
sphere of life, including education, employment, family and community life,
transportation, and recreation.
The Disability Law Center ("DLC"), is a private nonprofit
organization, and the designated protection and advocacy ("P&A") system for
people with disabilities in Massachusetts, pursuant to federal statutory
authority. See e.g., 29 U.S.C. § 794e (persons with disabilities, including
physical disabilities) and 29 U.S.C. § 3004 (people with disabilities in
need of assistive technology). DLC's core mission includes advocacy on
civil rights and public access for people with disabilities living in the
community, as well as non-discrimination in the provision of government
services. On many occasions, DLC has participated in amicus briefs filed
before Massachusetts appellate courts, including joining in an amicus brief
discussing modifications for a witness with disabilities, In Re: McDonough,
457 Mass. 512 (2010).
Amici have particular knowledge regarding the application of federal
disability discrimination laws to the courts, including the range of
modifications available to assist blind jurors. The outcome of this case
will likely have a profound impact on the ability of many of amici's
clients, members, and constituents to fully engage in civic life.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
If trial by jury constitutes the "heart and lungs of liberty," then
courts must take extraordinary measures before excluding any juror based on
disability. Rauf v. State, 145 A.3d 430, 465 n.216 (Del. 2016)
("Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of
liberty.") (quoting John Adams). See also Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S.
522, 530, 538 (1975) ("[E]xcluding [from jury service] identifiable
segments playing major roles in the community cannot be squared with the
constitutional concept of jury trial.") Framing these cases as a balancing
act between defendants' rights to a fair trial and blind Americans' rights
to serve on a jury can create a false dichotomy. By its very design, jury
deliberation is meant to be a collaborative process in which individuals
with varying perspectives reach a fair outcome based on their collective
wisdom. With assistive technology or, in many cases, without, blind people
are fully capable of serving on juries without depriving criminal
defendants of their fundamental right to a fair trial.
ARGUMENT
EXCLUDING BLIND INDIVIDUALS FROM JURY SERVICE UNFAIRLY DEPRIVES THEM
OF CIVIC PARTICIPATION.
The privilege of jury duty provides among "the most significant
opportunit[ies] to participate in the democratic process." Powers v. Ohio,
499 U.S. 400, 407 (1991). Juries "afford ordinary citizens a valuable
opportunity to participate in a process of government, an experience
fostering, one hopes, a respect for law." Id. (citation omitted). But for
blind Americans, access to the jury has proven elusive. Though no longer
categorically prohibited,[3] a de facto system of exclusion persists.
Nearly three decades after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Act ("ADA"), the jury box remains frustratingly inaccessible for many blind
Americans. The systemic exclusion of these potential jurors is rooted in
outdated and stigmatizing notions disregarding their ability to
meaningfully contribute to the American justice system.
Anecdotal evidence from blind prospective jurors in Massachusetts
illuminates the problem. One NFB member reported that she was routinely
turned away from jury service by court employees who told her that a blind
juror would never be selected. Once, a court official patted her on the
head before sending her on her way. Another NFB member described how court
officials, upon learning of her blindness, told her that she likely would
not be selected for jury service and encouraged her to simply disqualify
herself if summoned. A third NFB member recalled being chosen for jury duty
but subsequently removed and replaced by an alternate juror prior to
closing arguments because she was blind-even though she had paid close
attention through the trial while several of her co-jurors had fallen
asleep. Other blind Massachusetts residents revealed that they simply
abstain from the jury selection process altogether, not because they doubt
their own ability to serve, but because they know from personal experience
that they would not be seriously considered.
Outside of Massachusetts, the story is the same. In an essay published
in NFB's periodical, the Braille Monitor, Maryland-based NFB member Daniel
Frye shared his own disappointing jury duty experience. Daniel B. Frye,
Juror 458, 52 Braille Monitor 7 (July 2009),
https://archive.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm09/bm0907/bm090711.htm.
After receiving his jury summons in March 2009, Mr. Frye arrived at the
courthouse a half-hour early and eagerly waited for his number to be
called. Id. When the time came, he approached the front desk. Id. The court
employee "paused uncomfortably" before conferring in whispered tones with a
colleague. Id. She informed him that because the circuit court courtrooms
were in two different buildings, to ensure his own safety, he would not be
called for a jury pool in the other building. Id. Mr. Frye politely
responded that he had no concerns about crossing the street and that he did
not want to be treated differently from any other juror. Id. Within a half-
hour, every other member of Mr. Frye's jury group was instructed to report
to the other courtroom; he was told to stay behind. Id.
At the heart of these stories is an understanding that jury service is
more than civic duty. It is recognition as a responsible member of the
community, worthy of being entrusted with questions of guilt and innocence,
life and death. To be systematically denied jury service because of
blindness denies that recognition, fosters a sense of otherness, and
suggests that the blind fall outside the "cross section of [the]
community." See Commonwealth v. Ricard, 355 Mass. 509, 512 (1969). That
stigmatizing sense of exclusion is precisely the social ill that the ADA
sought to combat. Nearly thirty years later, this Court should act to
ensure that it is finally remedied.
EXCLUDING BLIND INDIVIDUALS DEPRIVES THE JURY OF PERSPECTIVES AND LIFE
EXPERIENCES THAT INFORM AND ENHANCE DELIBERATIONS.
Excluding blind people from participation in jury service also carries
significant consequences for the administration of justice. The Sixth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides criminal defendants "the
opportunity to have the jury drawn from venues representative of the
community" that do not "systematically exclude distinctive groups." Taylor,
419 U.S. at 530, 538. Exclusion of "any large and identifiable segment of
the community . . . from jury service . . . remove[s] from the jury room
qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of
which is unknown and perhaps unknowable." Commonwealth v. Arriaga, 438
Mass. 556, 562 (2003) (citation omitted). A group's exclusion "deprives the
jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance
in any case that may be presented." Id. Excluding blind individuals
deprives both the defendant and the members of the jury of unique
perspectives and life experiences that enhance deliberations and ensure a
just verdict is reached.
By its very design, jury deliberation is meant to be a collaborative
process in which individuals with varying perspectives, strengths, and
challenges reach a fair outcome based on their collective wisdom. Blind
jurors bring into the jury room perspectives and abilities not shared by
most sighted jurors. Their participation may benefit the jury as a whole,
sparking discussion and encouraging other jurors to take a closer look at
the subtleties of the evidence. They may ask their co-jurors targeted,
specific questions to better understand and help draw a mental picture of
visual evidence. While sighted jurors may draw inaccurate and unfair
conclusions from the dress and deportment of a defendant or his associates,
the blind juror may make no such inferences. See D. Nolan Kaiser, Juries,
Blindness and Juror Function, 60 Chi. Kent L. Rev. 191, 199 (1984).
Though blind individuals are not bestowed with superior hearing,
living without sight may sharpen their listening skills and produce a more
nuanced sense of hearing. See Kim Eckart-Washington, Brain Differences in
Blind People May Sharpen Hearing, ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2019),
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190422151020.htm.[4] As one
New York court noted, "a blind person's perceptions as to voice intonation
may be supplemented by the other jurors' perceptions of body movements and
together, a determination of veracity may be made." Jones v. N.Y.C. Transit
Auth., 483 N.Y.S.2d 623, 624 (N.Y. Civil Ct. 1984).
FEDERAL AND STATE DISCRIMINATION LAW REQUIRES THAT COURTS INCLUDE BLIND
JURORS.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that states have a
duty under Title II of the ADA to ensure that individuals with disabilities
have access to the courts. See Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509, 532 (2004).
While state courts are not obligated to "employ any and all means to make
judicial services accessible to persons with disabilities," they must "take
reasonable measures to remove . . . barriers to accessibility" and provide
"all individuals a meaningful opportunity to be heard in its courts."[5]
Id. at 531-32. See also 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(7)(i); Galloway, 816 F. Supp.
at 17 (noting that a "policy of categorical exclusion of all blind persons
from Superior Court juries violates the ADA"); People v. Caldwell, 603
N.Y.S.2d 713, 714 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. 1993) (finding that the ADA prevents
removal of a potential juror simply because of a disability).
In addition to federal law, Massachusetts law specifically requires
the inclusion of blind jurors. The law states that "[a]ll persons shall
have equal opportunity to be considered for juror service" and that
"[p]hysically handicapped persons shall serve except where the court finds
such service is not feasible." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 234a, § 3 (2019). See
also Mass. Const. amends., art. 114 (providing that "[n]o otherwise
qualified handicapped individual shall, solely by reason of his [or her]
handicap, be excluded from the participation in, denied the benefits of, or
be subject to discrimination under any program or activity with the
commonwealth"); In re McDonough, 457 Mass. 512, 514 (2010) (applying art.
114 to the state court system to find that individuals with disabilities
have a constitutional right to participate as witnesses in judicial
proceedings).
Courts have consistently recognized the ability of blind judges to
serve not only on state[6] and federal[7] appellate courts, but also on
trial courts[8]-including over bench trials with visual evidence. See,
e.g., People v. Hayes, 923 P.2d 221 (Colo. App. 1995) (upholding ruling of
blind judge, with the assistance of a professional describer, in a hearing
that required evaluation of video evidence). At least one court has found
that "[n]o distinction can be drawn between a blind judge's ability to make
factual findings and the abilities of a blind juror." See Galloway, 816 F.
Supp. at 17 (discussing the tenure of Judge David Norman, a blind judge on
the Superior Court of the District of Columbia).
BLIND JURORS MAY SERVE EFFECTIVELY WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE RIGHTS OF
CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS.
Although visual impairment was once a basis for per se
disqualification from jury service, by the late 20th century, courts and
legislatures began to reconsider blanket exclusions in favor of a case-by-
case analysis that weighed the Sixth Amendment rights of criminal
defendants against the public interest in equal access to the jury. See,
e.g., Bewley v. Oklahoma, 695 P.2d 1357, 1359 (Okla. Crim. 1985) (holding
that blindness did not automatically disqualify a juror under state
statutes). But framing these cases as a balancing act between defendants'
rights to a fair trial and blind Americans' rights to serve on a jury often
creates a false dichotomy. While protecting a defendant's constitutional
rights is essential, blind jurors have served and will continue to serve on
juries without depriving the defendant of any of her fundamental rights and
protections to a fair trial. See Nancy Lawler Dickhute, Jury Duty for the
Blind in the Time of Reasonable Accommodations: The ADA's Interface with a
Litigant's Right to a Fair Trial, 32 Creighton L. Rev. 849, 857 (1999)
(concluding that "while at first blush the seating of a blind juror might
appear to compromise the guarantees of an impartial, competent jury, upon
closer examination these guarantees are neither sacrificed nor
compromised").
In Commonwealth v. Susi, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
established that blind jurors begin with a presumption of competency.
Decided five years prior to the passage of the ADA and just three
years after the state legislature explicitly allowed individuals with
disabilities to serve on juries, Commonwealth v. Susi found that in the
context of a blind juror, Massachusetts law "creat[es] a presumption of
competency which must then be evaluated on a case-by-case basis." 394 Mass.
784, 788 (1985). That presumption was overcome in Susi, the Court wrote,
because "[t]he issue of identification was the predominant issue at trial."
Id. at 786. The jury was asked to compare the physical features of the
defendant with another man, as well as the police's composite drawings and
other photographs. Id. at 785. In reversing the conviction, the Court held
that a mere description of the physical evidence would have failed to
"convey adequately the subtleties which would be apparent on a visual
comparison." Id. at 788.
While amici believe the outcome of Susi reflects a limited and
outdated understanding of the capabilities of blind people, its underlying
principle-that blind jurors possess a "presumption of competency" that can
be overcome on a case-by-case basis-remains workable so long as the bar to
overcome the presumption is set high. The case-by-case approach demands
"the articulation of some specific way in which the blind juror's blindness
would thwart justice." Kaiser at 197. With advancements in both technology
and the public's understanding of the capabilities of blind individuals,
the correct presumption is that blind jurors can access and interpret
visual evidence and meaningfully contribute to jury deliberations. Rather
than trying to determine why a blind juror may not be competent, the court
should instead be asking what modifications, if any, will be needed to
ensure the blind juror's ability to participate fully.
BLIND JURORS CAN COMPETENTLY ASSESS PHYSICAL EVIDENCE AND MAKE CREDIBILITY
DETERMINATIONS.
In the 34 years since Susi was decided, there have been dramatic
advancements in both technology and the general public's understanding of
the capabilities of blind Americans. Given these advancements, blind jurors
are presumptively capable of performing two key responsibilities of jurors:
assessing physical evidence and determining a witness' veracity or
credibility.[9]
Technology has revolutionized access for blind individuals.
Since Susi, technological advancements have transformed blind
individuals' access to information. Assistive technologies have
proliferated, and today, blind individuals have a variety of options for
receiving written communication. Most blind individuals access information
electronically, using mobile devices and/or personal computers and screen
access software, which vocalize textual information or display that
information on a user-provided refreshable braille display.[10] Others use
large print, audio, magnification devices, scanners, or human readers.[11]
Some individuals take notes using a BrailleNote, a portable electronic
notetaking device. These assistive technologies are widely available, often
inexpensive, and already used and possessed by many blind individuals.
Apple[12] and Microsoft Windows[13] operating systems include free built-in
assistive technology.
Blind jurors are presumptively capable of assessing physical
evidence.
This Court should hold that the presumption is that blind jurors can
competently assess visual evidence, in some cases with modifications to
ensure effective communication of the evidence.
First, the introduction of visual evidence, such as photographs,
videos, mechanical objects, diagrams and handwriting exhibits, requires a
testimonial base. Thus, it is almost always accompanied by supplemental
evidence in spoken or written form and interpretation by a lay or expert
witness. As one blind juror noted, "[t]here is ample describing of the
evidence and the particular aspect of the evidence the lawyers want to get
across to the jurors . . . They don't just say here's a picture-figure it
out for yourself." M. J. Crehan, Seating the Blind Juror, 81 Judicature
104, 107-08 (Nov./Dec. 1997). See also Caldwell, 603 N.Y.S.2d at 714
(holding that seating a blind juror did not deny the defendant due process
despite the presence of photographic evidence, where the court described
the photographs as they were introduced and oral testimony was presented on
the same issues).
The present case offers a useful example: While the blind juror at the
center of this appeal was unable to view the two photographs of the
victim's battered face, he could consider the victim's testimony about his
internal permanent impairment and disfigured face, as depicted in the
photographs, Tr. at 116, 119, 121, 122, and described by the medical
treatment he later received, Tr. at 122, as well as the medical records
from Norwood Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Tr. at 149. The
totality of the evidence was sufficient for the blind juror to make a
finding of disfigurement and loss of function.
In addition to testimony provided about the visual evidence, the blind
individual may choose to use a trained human reader or describer.[14] The
use of a qualified reader does not implicate the defendant's Sixth
Amendment rights. Readers function like interpreters, which courts have
consistently allowed. See United States v. Dempsey, 830 F.2d 1084, 1087-88
(10th Cir. 1987); see also People v. Guzman, 556 555 N.E.2d 259, 263 (N.Y.
1990) (noting that interpreters are "neutral figures" and that the court
"assume[s] that the jury can be trusted to follow . . . instructions"
regarding the expected participation of such individuals).
Trained describers serve a similar role, providing a narration to
convey all the relevant characteristics of an object to the blind
juror.[15] When the proceeding is in open court, the accuracy of
description can be monitored easily and addressed by the parties. See
Hayes, 923 P.2d at 225-26.
Such a process was upheld in People v. Hayes, where a blind judge
presided over a hearing that included video evidence. Id. at 226-27. In
Hayes, the judge had a describer prepare a written report of the videotape
and describe the contents of the video while it played during the hearing.
Id. at 225. The defendant had the opportunity to object or add to the
narration and to cross-examine the narrator. Id. Although the defendant
claimed on appeal that the narration could not serve as a substitute for
viewing relevant evidence, the court disagreed, finding it an "appropriate
accommodation" that "ensured defendant of a fair hearing and of a decision
based on a rational evaluation of the actual evidence presented." Id. at
226-27.
Blind jurors are presumptively capable of making credibility
determinations.
The notion that a blind juror is unable to assess a witness's
credibility is without merit.[16] In evaluating testimony, blind jurors can
concentrate on verbal testimony while avoiding distractions like a
witness's facial expressions, dress, appearance, and body movements. Crehan
at 106. Even visual cues indicating deception, like nervous tics, darting
glances and uneasy shifting, are nearly always accompanied by a
corresponding audible cue such as throat-clearing, swallowing, voice
quavering, or inaudibility. Kaiser at 200. As one blind juror described,
"I've found that I've been pretty accurate-probably as, if not more
accurate, than people who make eye contact, because people have gotten real
good about fooling people on the visual level, but people often don't think
about how they sound when they speak." Crehan at 106. Another blind juror,
who served on a murder trial, observed that "[p]eople can control face
muscles . . . Nobody thinks about the nuances of the human voice." Id.
THIS COURT SHOULD PROVIDE ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE ON HOW TRIAL COURTS CAN
ACCOMMODATE BLIND JURORS.
This Court has the opportunity to provide guidance to ensure that
trial courts recognize the right of blind jurors to an equal opportunity to
participate in jury service. Because trial courts may not appreciate their
obligations under Title II of the ADA, guidance is necessary.[17] See
Opinion, An Opportunity to Provide Guidance on Disabled Jurors, Mass. Law.
Wkly., June 17, 2019, at 38.
When a blind juror is present, the trial judge should be vigilant in
monitoring counsel and witnesses to ensure they do not rely on gestures and
other non-verbal cues without accompanying verbal explanation. When
eliciting oral testimony, counsel should request accurate and complete
descriptions of exhibits and clarifications for the record as needed, so
that the trial content is accessible to the blind juror. See Dickhute at
872. For key evidence, the trial court should make readers and describers
available to ensure unbiased transmission of information to the blind
juror. Many states have developed court rules or policies addressing jurors
and others with disabilities. See, e.g., Oregon Uniform Trial Court Rules
7.060; Maryland Rules of Procedure 1-332; California Rules of Court
1.100.[18]
Amici suggest the following guidelines for ensuring that blind jurors
receive effective communication and an equal opportunity to serve:
Improving Information Available to the Public.
A. Provide information on the court's website related to modifications
available to ensure effective communication with blind jurors.[19]
B. Provide all publicly available printed information concerning court
policies, practices, and procedures in electronic format and large print.
Ensure that all information provided in electronic format, including on the
court's website, is fully accessible using screen reading software.[20]
C. Provide basic training to court personnel on common issues related
to making trial materials accessible to blind jurors, including use of
screen reading software,[21] and the availability of professional readers
and describers.
Summons and Other Court Communications
A. Provide to jurors the name, office address, telephone number, and
email address of the designated ADA coordinator in the summons letter and
all related communication.
B. Develop written procedures for prospective jurors with disabilities
on how to request and obtain modifications to court policies, practices,
and procedures before the hearing date. These should include information on
any assistive technology provided by the court.[22]
C. Eliminate from forms any question that leads to an automatic self-
exemption from jury service for people with disabilities.
Day of Court
A. Ensure that all information available at kiosks or posted signage
in the courthouse is available in an audible format.
B. Assure that the Jury Questionnaire or any other forms completed by
members of the jury pool before or on the day of jury services are
accessible.
C. Adopt and publish a procedure providing for a confidential
interview of all prospective jurors prior to jury selection, to determine
if the juror anticipates a need for a modification should they be selected
to serve on a panel.
Analyzing the Case.
A. When the judge learns that a member of the jury pool is blind, the
judge should work with trial counsel and then with the potential juror at
sidebar to identify:
i) the extent to which the case hinges upon the interpretation
of visual evidence;
ii) how the juror can access that evidence, with or without
modifications (e.g., through use of screen reading software,
large font printing, readers, describers); and
iii) the ability of the court and the parties to provide those
modifications.
Deciding Upon Modifications and Trial Procedures
A. Evaluate the requested modification, and unless it is an undue
burden or would fundamentally alter the proceeding, make provisions in the
event the potential juror is chosen to serve.
B. In considering requested modifications, give preference to the
accessible format requested by the juror (e.g., braille, large print,
reader, describer, accessible electronic document).
C. The court should not grant hardship waivers in lieu of providing a
modification.
D. If the requested modification is not timely available, reschedule
the prospective juror's service for another day when the modification can
be arranged.
E. The court should not modify jury service for persons with
disabilities by shortening the time or terms of service.
Finalizing the Composition of the Jury Pool
A. When considering a challenge for cause, never grant a challenge
against a blind person for cause without first fully considering the
person's abilities in relation to the nature of the case and evidence to be
presented, making a complete record of the voir dire examination, and
putting the reasons for the ruling on the record.
B. Consider whether jurors with disabilities are being stricken using
peremptory challenges, without justification.
During Trial
A. Offer a change of seating where doing so would help a juror who is
blind or visually impaired enter and exit the jury box or to see shapes or
faces better.
B. Remind witnesses to testify in detail when describing diagrams,
photographs, documents, and visual aids.
C. Allow the blind juror to touch exhibits during trial and to trace
lines on diagrams and sketches.
D. Instruct the jury that it is permissible for sighted jurors to
discuss visual evidence with and read documents to the blind juror in
deliberations.
E. Through a trained describer, provide the blind juror a detailed
description of any visual evidence sighted jurors are viewing.
During Deliberations
A. Allow a reader to assist the blind juror in accessing written
documents admitted in evidence that have not been otherwise made
accessible.
B. Allow the blind juror, or any juror for that matter, to seek
clarification on diagrams, sketches, photographs, and visual aids.
CONCLUSION
Blind Massachusetts citizens can competently and meaningfully
contribute to juries and should be given the opportunity to do so. In the
34 years since this Court decided Susi, we have seen the passage of the ADA
and a technological revolution. This Court now should state unequivocally
that the use of visual evidence at trial does not by itself undermine blind
jurors' presumption of competency. Such a holding would align Massachusetts
courts with federal law, state law, and relevant case law recognizing the
too-often ignored capabilities of blind Americans.
----------
Exhibitors' Showcase Review
by Jessica McLeod and Mark Jones
From the Editor: Each year the Braille Monitor sends a note to all
divisions, committees, and groups that are a part of our national body. The
request is simple and straightforward: tell us what you've done over the
last year, and/or tell us what you did at the convention. Mark Jones and
his colleague always come through, and the showcase he writes about is a
tremendous benefit to our exhibitors and members. Here is what Mark and
Jessica tell us about the showcase:
On Sunday, July 7, 2019, the Exhibitors' Showcase took place at the
National Convention of the National Federation of the Blind. Nearly thirty
presentations were made before the standing-room-only crowd introducing new
gadgets and software to the eager audience. Here are a few of the
highlights from those presentations:
WayAround enables your iPhone or Android phone through a free app to
identify tags that you can place on anything from CDs to canned foods to
clothing. Representatives from HIMS spoke about its Google-certified
notetaker, the Polaris, and the recently released QBraille, a forty-cell
Braille display with a combination of a Perkins-style keyboard and the
special keys found on the QWERTY keyboard. Having these extra keys on a
Braille display eliminates the need to memorize complex Braille key
equivalents. HIMS also has released a Braille instructional system for
young readers called LeapFrog for the blind.
HumanWare representatives spoke about its new BrailleNote Touch Plus
that uses a newer android platform and faster hardware. They said it would
be much faster than the BrailleNote Touch. They also spoke of new things
coming to the Victor Trek and its new Reveal 16 video magnifier.
Duxbury Systems is now entering their forty-fourth year of doing
Braille translation software. Its newest version, 12.5, has many new
features for the Braille embosser. Its PerkyDuck freeware also turns your
computer into a Perkins Braille writer. Duxbury is now handling a larger
number of Braille math files as well.
If you are looking for a very simple-to-use phone, BlindShell claims
to have the most accessible phone for the blind. It features a full keypad
with buttons and is fully vocalized with many smart phone features plus
high contrast icons and large print for those with low vision. For
Federationists who use Sprint, the company has developed special phone
plans with great phone prices for NFB members.
Representatives from Vispero, formerly Freedom Scientific, told us
about its fifth generation Focus Blue Braille display and its newly
released ElBraille 40. They also spoke about new features in JAWS and
ZoomText.
Amazon representatives spoke about its new accessible Fire TVs and
its new speakers including the Echo and Alexa. It has improved verbosity
features, new rapid shortcuts, and has improved its book reading voices.
There is also a new Alexa-enabled microwave.
Microsoft representatives talked about new features in its screen
reader Narrator and about its Disability Answer Desk, which will answer
questions for you for free anytime. There is also Be My Eyes Support and
monthly webinars.
Representatives from the American Printing House for the Blind talked
about its new product Code Jumper, which takes computer coding and puts it
into sound and moving objects. It also has a new fourteen-cell Braille
display called the Braille Trail LE. Additionally there is the new
BrailleBuzz, a toy that teaches phonics, keyboard positioning, and more for
the new Braille reader. There is also the new Color-Star that can not only
identify colors but can tell you the color of LED lights.
In the area of wearable tech, eSight eyewear has electronic glasses
for those with low vision that can detect changing colors, has built in
OCR, can store PDF files, and can drastically increase the size of things
that you are looking at. A personal coach will help you learn to use your
glasses which they say is like a wearable CCTV. OrCam talked about its tiny
wearable assistive technology device, the OrCam MyEye which now has facial
recognition for both recognizable and nonrecognizable features. Sunu has a
device that you wear like a watch that can detect nearby objects and
vibrate to let you know where nearby obstructions may be when using your
cane.
A T Guys is in its tenth year at the convention. This year
representatives demonstrated a new waterproof Bluetooth speaker and a
pluggable, foldable Bluetooth keyboard that will connect to your phone. Its
AfterShokz headphones keep getting better. It also has Micro-speak talking
voice recorders. Another new product from them is a $10 USB sound card to
make sure your speech synthesizer and music don't come through the same
speaker.
Independent Science representatives told about its new LabQuest 2
that enables a student to stick in their probes at the lab and test things
like everyone else. With its Logger Pro product you can now print out your
own graphs. Now the blind can do their own lab work.
Envision Inc. has a podcast on using Uber with a guide dog. It also
has a telephone and email service that hires the blind to work the phones
and teach folks to use its AfterShokz and accessible microwaves.
Representatives from Bookshare said that it now has over 700,000
titles to choose from and has audio in highlighted text. Now you can get
more out of your iPhone with the new Rivo 2, a keypad that connects through
Bluetooth and makes voicemail, phone banking, and Google assistant easier
to use.
The National Braille Press has been around ninety-two years developing
Braille books, from print-Braille children's books to cookbooks and how-to
books for technology written by blind authors. New this year are Drop into
Dropbox and Dating in the Digital Age. The National Braille Press is always
looking for new ideas of things to Braille.
The San Francisco LightHouse provides tactile maps for your address
anywhere in North America so you can really feel your surroundings.
Curtis Chong told us about the new Eltrinex digital talking recorder.
It produces stereo recordings and can copy files to a computer. With the
Eltrinex V12 Pro, you can also plug in an external mike or use line-in.
Representatives from Global Initiative Accessibility came to the
convention to educate, advocate, promote, and enforce accessibility rights
to websites. It will report accessibility issues to attorneys so that cases
can be filed as soon as possible.
Finally we heard from Bristol Braille Technology representatives and
got to have hands-on reviews by our audience of the new Canute 360-cell,
nine-line Braille display which can read a third of a Braille page. Just
put in a memory stick with a file on it and read your file like a Braille
printer would. It will be a big help with math and music. When released, it
should be priced at around $2,000 according to its distributor.
We would like to thank all who attended. Hopefully they learned a lot
and were able to go into the exhibit hall informed and ready to ask more
detailed questions of the vendors there.
----------
Recipes
This month we're running another edition of Retro Recipes, pulled
from the archives. We were reminded about some of the absolutely delicious
recipes that have run in the past that deserved another look. Obviously,
there are too many to reprint them all, but here's a small selection:
Corrine Dunbar's Red Bean Soup
This recipe first appeared in April 1991.
Ingredients:
1/2 pound red kidney beans
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
1/4 stick butter
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 pound ham, ground fine
water
salt and pepper to taste
Claret wine, sieved hard-boiled egg, 8 lemon slices (garnish)
Method: Sauté onion in butter. Simmer beans for about three hours
with onion, garlic, celery, thyme, and bay leaves in enough water to cover.
Keep an eye on the beans as they cook; it's important that they not go dry,
but equally important that there not be too much water. Press mixture
through coarse strainer, using large spoon to force mixture through. Add
ham, and correct seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Place one
tablespoon claret wine in bottom of each bouillon cup. Pour soup. Garnish
with sieved egg and lemon slice. Serves eight.
----------
Portuguese Chicken and Rice
by Bill Bridgeman
This recipe originally appeared in November 1999.
Ingredients:
3/4 pound Polish sausage, kielbasa, or any other garlic smoked sausage (I
like to use Mexican chorizo or medium-flavored Italian sausage)
2-1/2 pounds cut-up frying chicken
2 medium onions, chopped
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 cup long grain rice, uncooked
2 cups chicken broth
3-1/4 ounce can pitted ripe olives, well drained, and cut in half
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
Method: Brown sausage in a little oil; remove with a slotted spoon
and set aside. Brown the chicken in the same pan, adding more oil if
necessary. Set aside. Stir in the chopped onions and continue cooking until
the onions are softened. Add pepper flakes and rice, stirring until the
rice is coated. Add the olives and return sausage to pan. Mix together. Add
the chicken broth and arrange the chicken over top. Sprinkle with cider
vinegar, bring to a boil, cover, and cook in 375-degree preheated oven for
thirty minutes. Uncover and cook another five to ten minutes, or until the
chicken is done.
----------
Potato Chip Cookies
by Pat Robbins
This recipe first appeared in June 2003. At that time Pat Robbins was
a member of the Charlotte chapter and served on the chapter's board of
directors.
Ingredients:
1 pound margarine
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1 cup potato chips, crushed (1 snack pack)
1 cup chopped nuts
Powdered sugar
Method: Cream together margarine and sugar. Add vanilla and egg
yolks. Work in flour. Add potato chips and nuts, stirring well. Drop by
teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. These cookies rise very little, so
you can place them close together. Bake at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes.
Roll in powdered sugar. Makes about four dozen cookies.
----------
Vanilla Flan
by Lydia Usero-Quiones
This recipe was originally introduced in February 1996 like this:
Lydia Usero-Quiones has a bachelor's degree in education from the
University of Puerto Rico. She plans to keep studying to obtain her
master's degree in education. Presently she is working as an English
teacher at Ramirez College of Business and Technology. She is a founding
member and first elected president of the NFB of Puerto Rico. Currently she
serves as first vice president of the affiliate. She is also the treasurer
of the Society of Friends of the Regional Library for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped.
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar for caramel glaze
3 cups milk
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
teaspoon salt
6 large eggs, plus 2 additional yolks
1-1/4 teaspoons vanilla
flan mold, round, 8-inch by 2-inch
larger mold for the bain-marie
Method for Glazing Caramel: Put one cup sugar in the flan mold over
low to moderate heat for eight minutes. Stir continuously with a wooden
spoon until the sugar is completely melted. Keep over very low heat while
glazing the mold. Using your hands and working rapidly, tilt the mold in a
circular pattern to spread the syrup evenly over surface. You want the
bottom and sides of the mold to be caramelized. Set aside to cool.
Method for Making Flan: Preheat the oven to 325-degrees. Add enough
water to the bain-marie mold to reach two thirds of the way up the flan
mold and set water-filled mold in the oven. Mix well the milk, sugar, and
salt without foaming and scald mixture in a saucepan. Don't let it come to
a boil. Beat the eggs and additional yolks lightly, just enough to blend
them. Don't let the eggs foam up because this will produce a grainy flan.
Add the scalded milk slowly to the eggs and strain. The idea is to combine
the mixtures without curdling the yolks. Add the vanilla, pour into
caramelized mold, and set in the pan already in the oven. Bake for ninety
minutes or until a cake tester inserted slightly off center comes out
clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for two hours before
refrigerating. Refrigerate covered. To serve, invert a platter with a rim,
which will hold the liquified caramel. Note: This recipe is specially
dedicated to Ollie Cantos, president of the National Association of Blind
Students. During his visit to Puerto Rico in June, he ate tons of Vanilla
Flan. Enjoy, Ollie!
----------
Easy-to-Make Brownie Blitz
by Kathy Davis
This recipe was originally introduced in December 2005 like this:
This recipe should be made a day ahead of serving. Therefore, depending on
the time available for cooling of the brownies, you may want to make the
brownies two days in advance.
Ingredients:
1 package brownie mix, baked, cooled, and broken into bite-sized pieces
1 large package instant chocolate pudding
1 12-ounce container Cool Whip
2 to 3 Butterfinger candy bars, sliced into very thin slivers (or 3 to 4
Heath bars broken into small pieces)
Method: In a large fluted or glass salad bowl place approximately
half of the crumbled brownies. Prepare pudding as directed. Add about half
the pudding to the brownies and spread a layer of Cool Whip over the
pudding. Then sprinkle with half the candy bar slivers. Repeat these layers
in this order with other half of the ingredients. You will have to work
quickly to prevent pudding from setting before layering is complete.
Refrigerate overnight to allow the pudding to soak into the brownies and to
set. Serve and bask in the compliments.
----------
Monitor Miniatures
In Brief
Notices and information in this section may be of interest to Monitor
readers. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the information; we
have edited only for space and clarity.
Ski for Light Makes Tracks for Wyoming:
The 45th annual Ski for Light International Week will take place from
February 9 through 16, 2020, in Casper, Wyoming. This is a new venue for
the all-volunteer nonprofit's annual event where beginning blind and
mobility-impaired skiers are taught the basics of cross-country skiing,
while more experienced skiers further hone their skills. All enjoy a
variety of après ski activities.
Casper is located in east-central Wyoming at the foot of Casper
Mountain along the North Platte River. Participants will stay at the
Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center and ski at the Casper Mountain Outdoor
Center at McMurry Mountain Park. The Center has 42 kilometers of wide cross-
country trails.
The annual week-long event attracts more than 250 skiers, guides, and
volunteers from throughout the United States, as well as international
participants. During the Ski for Light week, each skier with a disability
is paired with an experienced, sighted cross-country skier who acts as ski
instructor and on-snow guide. Most blind and/or mobility-impaired adults
leave Ski for Light with a sense of accomplishment and motivation that
carries over to every aspect of their lives. Many volunteer guides return
year after year and most discover that in the process of giving of
themselves they get much more back in return.
If you have never before attended what many have called "the
experience of a lifetime," join us on an epic adventure in Wyoming.
Additional information can be found at www.sfl.org, or you may contact
Visually Impaired Participant Recruitment Chair Melinda Hollands at (231)
590-0986 or mlhollandstc at gmail.com. Come discover yourself and make new
friends!
State Resource Handbooks Available for Purchase:
I have created forty-eight screen-reader-friendly resource handbooks
containing resources for the blind and visually impaired. These are to
assist consumers and professionals in finding information about employment,
housing, transportation, and more. Handbooks are currently available for:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The Resource Handbooks are available in the following electronic
formats Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, and Rich Text Format. Since these are
electronic formats the requested list will be sent to you by email with an
attachment. If a large-print hardcopy is desired, please email me at
insightfulpub at gmail.com and include in the email which state resource book
you want so that I can give you the correct pricing information.
For more information on pricing and formats please contact Insightful
Publications by email at insightfulpub at gmail.com or by phone at 808-747-
1006.
----------
NFB Pledge
I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the National
Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for
the blind; to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to
abide by its constitution.
-----------------------
[1] Used in this context, the term "blind persons" refers to the legal
definition found in Mass. Gen. Laws ch 6, § 133(1) and thus includes both
individuals without eyesight and those with low vision.
[2] According to the NFB, there are 129,800 non-institutionalized persons
in Massachusetts, ages sixteen and older, with a visual disability. See
Blindness Statistics, National Federation of the Blind,
https://nfb.org/resources/blindness-statistics (last visited Aug. 13,
2019).
[3] Arkansas became the last state to repeal such prohibitions in 1994,
when it struck language disqualifying persons whose "senses of seeing or
hearing are substantially impaired." Kristi Bleyer, Kathryn Shane McCarty,
and Erica Wood, Access to Jury Service for Persons with Disabilities, 19
Mental & Physical Disability L. Rep. 249, 250 (1995) (quoting Ark. Code §
16-31-102). The year prior, a federal court overturned an official policy
in Washington D.C. Superior Court excluding all blind people from jury
service. Galloway v. Superior Court of D.C., 816 F. Supp. 12, 20 (D.D.C.
1993).
[4] Additional research indicates that the reliability of auditory memory
of people who are blind from birth can only be matched by a subgroup of
sighted people who had the highest memory performance. Brigitte Röder,
Frank Rösler, Helen J. Neville, Auditory Memory in Congenitally Blind
Adults: a Behavioral-Electrophysiological Investigation, Science Direct,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0926641001000027 (2001).
[5] While making accommodations to eliminate barriers to individuals with
disabilities is a core concept to all sections of the ADA, Title II imposes
a higher standard than Titles I and III to ensure proactively that public
programs are accessible. It requires that a public entity conduct a review
of its programs and facilities to ensure that it will provide individuals
with disabilities an equal opportunity to participate in, and enjoy the
benefits of, its service, program, or activity. 42 U.S.C. § 12132; 28
C.F.R. § 35.130. Where necessary, the public entity must make reasonable
modifications in policies, practices, or procedures to avoid discrimination
on the basis of disability, unless the public entity can demonstrate that
making the modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of the
service, program, or activity. Id.
[6] Justice Richard Bernstein currently serves on the Michigan Supreme
Court. Biography of Justice Richard Bernstein, Michigan Courts,
https://courts.michigan.gov/Courts/MichiganSupremeCourt/justices/Pages/justi
ce-richard-bernstein.aspx (last visited Aug. 16, 2019). Chief Justice
Richard Teitelman of the Supreme Court of Missouri served until his death
in 2016. David A. Lieb, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Richard Teitelman
dies, Associated Press News, Nov. 29, 2016,
https://apnews.com/95454042353c40f2bb11307450631362 (last visited Aug. 16,
2019).
[7] Judge David Tatel has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit since 1994. Barbara Slavin, A Judge of
Character: although he's blind, David Tatel skis, runs and climbs
mountains. By summer's end, he may be a top jurist too., Los Angeles Times,
July 28, 1994, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-28-ls-21024-
story.html (last visited Aug. 16, 2019).
[8] Judge Richard Casey served as a U.S. District Judge on the District
Court for the Southern District of New York until his death in 2007.
Richard Conway Casey, 74, Blind Federal Judge, Dies, March 24, 2007,
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/obituaries/24casey.html (last visited
Aug. 16, 2019).
[9] Historically, skeptical courts raised concerns about blind jurors'
abilities to perform these tasks. See Susi, 394 Mass. at 788; Lewinson v.
Crews, 282 N.Y.S.2d 83, 85-86 (N.Y. App. Div. 1967); Black v. Cont'l Cas.
Co., 9 S.W.2d 743, 744 (Tex. Civ. App. 1928).
[10] See Assistive Technology Products, American Foundation for the Blind
("AFB"), https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/using-
technology/assistive-technology-products/screen-readers (last visited Aug.
16, 2019).
[11] There are many more assistive devices that blind people use to live
independently-from a tactile meat thermometer to a talking color
identifier. See Household, Personal and Other Independent Living Products,
American Foundation for the Blind,
https://www.afb.org/node/16207/independent-living-products (last visited
Aug. 16, 2019); The Chicago Lighthouse,
https://www.lighthousetoolsforliving.com/Colorino-Talking-Color-
Reader.html?AffId=1(last visited Aug. 16, 2019).
[12] Mac Accessibility, https://www.apple.com/accessibility/mac/vision/
(last visited Aug. 16, 2019); iPhone Accessibility,
https://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision/ (last visited Aug. 16,
2019).
[13] Microsoft Accessibility, https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/accessibility/windows?activetab=pivot_1%3aprimaryr2 (last visited Aug.
16, 2019).
[14] In fact, qualified readers are specifically listed as auxiliary aids
or services required by the ADA to ensure effective communication with
blind individuals. 28 C.F.R. § 35.104 (definition of Auxiliary Aids and
Services).
[15] For more information about the training and work of audio describers,
used in both daily activities and in accessing media and the arts, see
Audio Description Project, American Council of the Blind,
https://www.acb.org/adp/ (last visited Aug. 12, 2019). The New Jersey Court
system recommends that audio describers for the blind, along with readers,
note taker, or real time transcribers, be administered an oath similar to
that given to ASL interpreters. New Jersey Bench Manual on Jury Selection,
2014, at 32,
https://www.njcourts.gov/pressrel/2014/Bench%20Manual%20on%20Jury%20Selectio
n%20-%20promulgated%20Dec%204%202014.pdf (last visited Aug. 12, 2019).
[16] This reasoning has now been almost uniformly rejected by statutes and
case law. See People v. Pagan, 595 N.Y.S.2d 486, 487 (N.Y. App. Div. 1997);
Caldwell, 603 N.Y.S.2d at 714.
[17] Limited guidance is provided through the Massachusetts Court System's
ADA Accessibility Policy (2018), https://www.mass.gov/policy-statement/ada-
accessibility-policy (last visited Aug. 16, 2019) (noting that "[t]he
Commonwealth's courts seek to provide appropriate aids and services to
qualified persons with disabilities so they can participate equally in the
services, programs, or activities of the Judiciary"); the Office of Jury
Commissioner's webpage on jury duty accessibility, Office of Jury
Commissioner, Learn About Jury Duty Accessibility,
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/learn-about-jury-duty-
accessibility#jurors-with-vision-issues (last visited Aug. 16, 2019)
(providing limited information about the available modifications).
[18] State judiciaries have also issued guidance on accommodating
individuals with disabilities through public-facing reports and pamphlets.
See, e.g. Accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
N.J. Courts, https://www.njcourts.gov/public/services/aocada.html (last
visited Aug. 16, 2019); ADA Information, Fla. Courts,
https://www.flcourts.org/Administration-Funding/Court-Administration-About-
Us/ADA-Information (last visited Aug. 16, 2019); Hawaii ADA Accommodations,
Haw. State Judiciary,
https://www.courts.state.hi.us/services/ada/ada_accommodations (last
visited Aug. 16, 2019); How Court Users Can Obtain Accommodations, N.Y.
State Unified Court System,
http://ww2.nycourts.gov/Accessibility/CourtUsers_Guidelines.shtml (last
visited Aug. 16, 2019); Jud. Council of Ga., A Meaningful Opportunity to
Participate: A Handbook for Georgia Court Officials on Courtroom
Accessibility for Individuals with Disabilities, Ga. Courts,
http://ada.georgia.gov/document/publication/115096162adahandbkmay05800pdf/do
wnload (last visited Aug. 16, 2019) ("Meaningful Opportunity"); Jud.
Council of Cal., For People with Disabilities Requesting Accommodations,
http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/access-fairness-QandA-for-persons-with-
disabilities.pdf (last visited Aug. 16, 2019).
[19] Currently, the website lists only that the Trial Juror Handbook and
Grand Juror Handbook are available in web versions and that the Trial Juror
Handbook is available in a large print version. See Jurors with Vision
Issues, Off. Jury Commissioner (Apr. 25, 2018), https://www.mass.gov/info-
details/learn-about-jury-duty-accessibility#deaf-&-hard-of-hearing-jurors
(last visited Aug. 16, 2019).
[20] At the time of filing, many of the court system's electronic forms are
inaccessible or difficult to navigate using screen readers, as described
below:
-- Juror Questionnaire,
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/11/06/Confidential_Juror_Questionn
aire.pdf (last visited Aug. 13, 2019) (Required document provided in pdf
format that is not JAWS compatible. Without pause, it reads the document in
its entirety. As a result, a JAWS user would have to commit to memory the
order in which the information is needed in order to fill it out correctly.
The document also relies upon use of a mouse, a visual tool not used by
JAWS users, who use keystrokes.).
--ADA Complaint Form, https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/04/29(/jud-
ac-ada-complaint-form-john-adams%202019--0419.pdf)(last visited Aug. 16,
2019) (similar issues);
--Request for Accommodation, https://massdocs-digital-mass-
gov.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2018/tc-request-for-reasonable-
accomodation.pdf?Qw.nKhUppsmUWQ6KslERIdBDTLnjW90U (last visited Aug.16,
2019) (similar issues)
--ADA Grievance Document,
https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/06/19/jud-Complaint%20ADA-1.pdf
(last visited Aug. 16, 2019) (PDF document that gives instructions on how
to file a grievance, rather than an inaccessible form. The document is
accessible in JAWS for the most part. However, the link in the document can
only be accessed by mouse.).
Each form should also be available online as an accessible Word document
(which would not require use of a mouse), and available at the court in
large print format.
[21] From the colloquy between the trial judge and juror number six, it
appeared that the trial judge may have believed that screen reading
software could not be used by the juror because there was no internet in
the courtroom. Tr. at 63. This belief is incorrect, as screen readers do
not require internet access.
[22] Ideally, every courthouse or Justice Center should have one laptop or
tablet with screen reading software, which could be made available to the
blind jury pool member as well as to any empaneled blind juror needing to
access written exhibits during deliberations.
To the extent the court relies on prospective blind jurors to bring their
own devices, courthouse security policies should be amended. See Trial
Court Policy on Possession & Use of Cameras & Personal Electronic Devices,
https://www.mass.gov/location-details/trial-court-policy-on-possession-use-
of-cameras-personal-electronic-devices (last visited Aug. 16, 2019)
(addressing assisted listening devices as the only exception to the
Massachusetts court system's electronic device security policy).
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