<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta
http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> <meta name="generator"
content="pandoc" /> <title>The Braille Monitor, June 2026 – The Braille
Monitor, June 2026</title> <style type="text/css">
html {
line-height: 1.5; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px; color:
#1a1a1a; background-color: #fdfdfd; } body {
margin: 0 auto; max-width: 36em; padding-left: 50px; padding-right: 50px;
padding-top: 50px; padding-bottom: 50px; hyphens: auto; word-wrap: break-word;
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; font-kerning: normal; } @media (max-width:
600px) {
body {
font-size: 0.9em; padding: 1em; } } @media print {
body {
background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 12pt; } p, h2, h3
{
orphans: 3; widows: 3; } h2, h3, h4 {
page-break-after: avoid; } } p {
margin: 1em 0; } a {
color: #1a1a1a; } a:visited {
color: #1a1a1a; } img {
max-width: 100%; } h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
margin-top: 1.4em; } h5, h6 {
font-size: 1em; font-style: italic; } h6 {
font-weight: normal; } ol, ul {
padding-left: 1.7em; margin-top: 1em; } li > ol, li > ul {
margin-top: 0; } blockquote {
margin: 1em 0 1em 1.7em; padding-left: 1em; border-left: 2px solid #e6e6e6;
color: #606060; } code {
font-family: Menlo, Monaco, 'Lucida Console', Consolas, monospace; font-size:
85%; margin: 0; } pre {
margin: 1em 0; overflow: auto; } pre code {
padding: 0; overflow: visible; }
.sourceCode {
background-color: transparent; overflow: visible; } hr {
background-color: #1a1a1a; border: none; height: 1px; margin: 1em 0; } table
{
margin: 1em 0; border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; overflow-x: auto;
display: block; font-variant-numeric: lining-nums tabular-nums; } table
caption {
margin-bottom: 0.75em; } tbody {
margin-top: 0.5em; border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a; border-bottom: 1px solid
#1a1a1a; } th {
border-top: 1px solid #1a1a1a; padding: 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em; } td {
padding: 0.125em 0.5em 0.25em 0.5em; } header {
margin-bottom: 4em; text-align: center; } #TOC li {
list-style: none; } #TOC a:not(:hover) {
text-decoration: none; } code{white-space: pre-wrap;} span.smallcaps{font-variant:
small-caps;} span.underline{text-decoration: underline;} div.column{display:
inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;} div.hanging-indent{margin-left:
1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;} ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
.display.math{display: block; text-align: center; margin: 0.5rem auto;}
</style> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1 class="title">The Braille Monitor,
June 2026</h1> </div> <h1 id="braille-monitor">BRAILLE MONITOR</h1> <p>Vol. 69,
No. 6 June 2026</p> <p><em>Chris Danielsen, Editor</em></p> <p>Distributed by
email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive, by the</p> <p>NATIONAL
FEDERATION OF THE BLIND</p> <p>Mark Riccobono, President</p> <p>telephone:
410-659-9314</p> <p>email address: <a href="mailto:nfb@nfb.org">nfb@nfb.org</a></p>
<p>website address: <a href="http://www.nfb.org">http://www.nfb.org</a></p>
<p>NFBnet.org: <a href="http://www.nfbnet.org">http://www.nfbnet.org</a></p>
<p>NFB-NEWSLINE® information: 866-504-7300</p> <p>Like us on Facebook: <a
href="http://Facebook.com/nationalfederationoftheblind">Facebook.com/nationalfederationoftheblind</a></p>
<p>Follow us on X: @NFB_Voice</p> <p>Follow us on Mastodon: @nationsblind@nfb.social</p>
<p>Watch and share our videos: <a
href="http://YouTube.com/NationsBlind">YouTube.com/NationsBlind</a></p> <p>Letters
to the President, address changes, subscription requests, and orders for NFB
literature should be sent to the national office. Articles for the <em>Monitor</em>
and letters to the editor may also be sent to the national office or may be emailed
to <a href="mailto:cdanielsen@nfb.org">cdanielsen@nfb.org</a>.</p> <p><em>Monitor</em>
subscriptions cost the Federation about forty dollars per year. Members are invited,
and nonmembers are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be
made payable to <strong>National Federation of the Blind</strong> and sent to:</p>
<p>National Federation of the Blind</p> <p>200 East Wells Street <em>at Jernigan
Place</em><br /> Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998</p> <p><strong>THE NATIONAL
FEDERATION OF THE BLIND KNOWS THAT BLINDNESS IS NOT THE CHARACTERISTIC THAT DEFINES
YOU OR YOUR FUTURE. EVERY DAY WE RAISE THE EXPECTATIONS OF BLIND PEOPLE, BECAUSE
LOW EXPECTATIONS CREATE OBSTACLES BETWEEN BLIND PEOPLE AND OUR DREAMS. YOU CAN
LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT; BLINDNESS IS NOT WHAT HOLDS YOU BACK. THE NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND—IT IS THE BLIND
SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES.</strong></p> <p><em>ISSN 0006-8829</em></p> <p>© 2026
by the National Federation of the Blind</p> <p>Each issue is recorded on a thumb
drive (also called a memory stick or USB flash drive). You can read this audio
edition using a computer or a National Library Service digital player. The NLS
machine has two slots—the familiar book-cartridge slot just above the
retractable carrying handle and a second slot located on the right side near the
headphone jack. This smaller slot is used to play thumb drives. Remove the protective
rubber pad covering this slot and insert the thumb drive. It will insert only in
one position. If you encounter resistance, flip the drive over and try again.
(Note: If the cartridge slot is not empty when you insert the thumb drive, the
digital player will ignore the thumb drive.) Once the thumb drive is inserted,
the player buttons will function as usual for reading digital materials. If you
remove the thumb drive to use the player for cartridges, when you insert it again,
reading should resume at the point you stopped.</p> <p>You can transfer the
recording of each issue from the thumb drive to your computer or preserve it on
the thumb drive. However, because thumb drives can be used hundreds of times, we
would appreciate their return in order to stretch our funding. Please use the
return envelope enclosed with the drive when you return the device.</p> <p>Vol.
69, No. 6 June 2026</p> <h2 id="contents"> Contents</h2> <p>Convention Bulletin</p>
<p>From the Editor</p> <p>by Chris Danielsen</p> <p>Employment Events at the 2026
National Convention</p> <p>by Lia Stone</p> <p>How to Be a Blind Wheelchair User</p>
<p>by Ellana Crew</p> <p>When the Pain Is Real, but the Reason Is Invisible</p>
<p>by Kaleigh Brendle</p> <p>Becoming the Voice His Daughter Will Need</p> <p>by
Ismael Collazo</p> <p>Keep NFB Advancing: Give $25 in ’26</p> <p>The
Super-Braillers and Me</p> <p>by Will Hendrick</p> <p>Indiana Drops Out, but States
Continue to Threaten Section 504 in Lawsuit</p> <p>by Anna Claire Vollers</p>
<p>Once Again, the Federal Government Delays Equal Access</p> <p>by Chris
Danielsen</p> <p>DOJ Delay of ADA Web Rule Undermines Equal Access</p> <p>by Mark
Riccobono and Eve Hill</p> <p>From the President’s Desk</p> <p>PHOTO/CAPTION:
The JW Marriott at dusk.</p> <h2 id="convention-bulletin-2026">Convention Bulletin
2026</h2> <p>The National Federation of the Blind’s National Convention
brings together blind people from across the country and around the globe. We come
from all walks of life. Some of us have been blind all our lives, while others
may be new to blindness. Some are young, some have been around the sun more than
a few times. Some are convention first-timers, while others have been attending
for decades. Our patchwork of individual experiences makes us stronger together,
and it means that our national conventions are a celebration of our diversity.</p>
<p>Over the course of eighty-five annual conventions, nearly three dozen cities
reflecting similar diversity have played host to the NFB’s biggest event
of the year. Yet, among this broad list of destinations, our convention has never
come to the capital city of Texas to gather and celebrate. This will change next
month when we head to the JW Marriott Austin for our annual National Convention!</p>
<p>Austin is widely known as the “Live Music Capital of the World,”
having been home to the PBS program <em>Austin City Limits</em> for more than
fifty years and host to the annual South by Southwest music and media festival.
Austin also boasts a vibrant arts scene with many public art displays throughout
the city. But Austin isn’t just fueled by creative energy. A strong technology
sector thrives here, with many tech companies establishing headquarters in the
city. Waymo and Tesla are two notable names, as both companies offer autonomous
vehicle rides within Austin. The University of Texas at Austin, with over 50,000
students, sits just north of downtown. Visitors will notice an emphasis on local
retailers over national chains. This broad and eclectic diversity perpetuates the
popular “Keep Austin Weird” vibe and makes for a truly unique
destination.</p> <h3 id="our-convention-hotels">Our Convention Hotels</h3> <p>The
upscale JW Marriott Austin will serve as our headquarters hotel, and all convention
events will take place here. Our block of sleeping rooms at the JW is fully booked.
However, there is plenty of space at all our nearby overflow hotels.</p> <p>The
recently opened Austin Marriott Downtown is a couple blocks’ walk from the
JW Marriott. Specify our room block code, BL1, when calling 800-627-7468 to book
your room. The hotel offers several on-site dining options, a 24/7 fitness center,
and a pool with rentable cabanas. Please note that rooms do not have refrigerators,
but these are available upon request for those who must keep medications cold.</p>
<p>The Courtyard by Marriott Austin Downtown is just a few blocks from the JW
Marriott and offers a Starbucks and Champions Sports Bar, a pool, fitness center,
and breakfast buffet for just over twenty dollars. Call 800-321-2211, ask for the
Courtyard by Marriott Austin Downtown, and mention the National Federation of the
Blind National Convention to book a room.</p> <p>Located at the same address as
the Courtyard, the Residence Inn Austin Downtown includes access to Starbucks and
a complimentary breakfast buffet at Champions Sports Bar for guests. The pool and
fitness center are also available. To book, call 800-331-3131, ask for the Residence
Inn Austin Downtown, and request the National Federation of the Blind National
Convention room block.</p> <p>All 2026 convention hotels offer our nightly rate
of $139 for singles and doubles. Triples and quads are available for $155 per
night. Sales tax and a tourism fee total a combined 19.7 percent. For each room
you book, the hotel requires a deposit of the first night’s room rate,
taxes, and fees, payable by credit card or a personal check. If a reservation is
cancelled before Sunday, June 1, 2026, half of the deposit will be returned.
Refunds will not be issued after that date.</p> <h3 id="registration">Registration</h3>
<p>In-person registration for convention on the NFB website closes on May 31, but
onsite registration will be available in Austin for a cost of $30 per person plus
$90 per banquet ticket. Registration includes the biggest event of the year, access
to the mobile app, and communications on the latest news and events. Registration
for the Convention Virtual Experience is still open. The Virtual Experience
registration fee is $10. Virtual Experience registration includes access to the
mobile app and the opportunity to win door prizes. Links to both registration
forms are at <a href="https://nfb.org/convention">nfb.org/convention</a>. The
latest convention information will also be available on that webpage.</p> <h3
id="convention-schedule">Convention Schedule</h3> <p>The 2026 Convention of the
National Federation of the Blind will be an exciting and memorable event, with an
unparalleled program and renewed dedication to the goals and work of our movement.</p>
<ul> <li><p>A wide range of seminars for parents of blind children, technology
enthusiasts, job seekers, and other groups will kick the week off on Friday, July
3. Onsite registration and registration and packet pick-up will also open on
Friday.</p></li> <li><p>Breakout sessions continue Saturday, July 4, along with
committee meetings.</p></li> <li><p>Sunday, July 5, begins with the annual meeting,
open to all, of the Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind.
National division meetings will follow that afternoon and evening.</p></li>
<li><p>General convention sessions will begin on Monday, July 6, and continue
through noon on Wednesday, July 8. This year there will be no general session on
Wednesday afternoon prior to the banquet; instead, there will be more breakout
sessions.</p></li> <li><p>Convention ends on a high note with the banquet Wednesday
evening, so be sure to pack your fancy clothes. The fall of the gavel at the close
of banquet will signal convention’s adjournment.</p></li> </ul> <p>Make
plans to be a part of it.</p> <h3 id="request-for-door-prizes">Request for Door
Prizes</h3> <p>Remember that we need door prizes from state affiliates, local
chapters, and individuals. Prizes should be small in size but significant in value.
Cash, of course, is always appropriate and welcome. As a general rule, we ask that
prizes have a value of at least $25 and do not include alcohol. Drawings take
place throughout the convention sessions, and you can anticipate a grand prize of
truly impressive proportions to be drawn at the banquet.</p> <p>Important note
for attendees: You must be registered to win a door prize!</p> <h3
id="first-time-attendees">First-Time Attendees</h3> <p>If you or members of your
chapter are first-time attendees, please learn about convention through
the <em>First-Timer’s Guide</em> available at <a
href="https://nfb.org/convention"><u>nfb.org/convention</u></a>.</p> <h3
id="countdown-to-austin">Countdown to Austin</h3> <p>The best collection of exhibits
featuring new technology; meetings of our special interest groups, committees,
and divisions; the most stimulating and thought-provoking program items of any
meeting of the blind in the world; the chance to renew friendships within our
Federation family; and the unparalleled opportunity to be where the real action
is and where decisions are made—all of these mean you will not want to miss
being a part of the 2026 National Convention. To secure yourself a room in the
headquarters hotel at convention rates, make your reservations early. We look
forward to seeing you in Austin next month!</p> <p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO CAPTION:
Chris Danielsen]</p> <h2 id="from-the-editor">From the Editor</h2> <p>by Chris
Danielsen</p> <p>As I write this note in preparation for finalizing the issue that
is now in your hands, we are in the midst of a very busy May in which the focus
is advocacy. It will be clear why that is as you read this issue. Doubtless you
have also heard something about our recent advocacy efforts on either the live or
recorded <em>Presidential Releases,</em> received calls to action via email, or
even ran across mainstream news articles. As President Riccobono has said, the
National Federation of the Blind is as critical now as it has been at any time in
our history, perhaps even more so. Since there were a lot of fast-moving developments
in late April and early May, the <em>Braille Monitor</em> may not be your first
source of information on some topics, but we have included items in this issue
that we hope make it the most in-depth coverage of some of those developments. We
also note that you can get much of the latest information on advocacy efforts by
visiting <a href="https://nfb.org/advocacy">https://nfb.org/advocacy</a>. There
you can read our latest policy statements, legislative priorities, and more.</p>
<p>Two informative articles in this issue deal with the intersection of blindness
and other disabilities. While the Federation is focused on barriers faced by the
blind and deafblind, we must not forget that other disabilities can present barriers
to our members’ full participation in our movement if we are not intentional
about learning and addressing their needs. Ellana Crew shares what she has learned
about using a cane in conjunction with a wheelchair, and Kaleigh Brendle reminds
us that disabilities—even physical ones—are not always obvious but
have real effects that require the care, consideration, and support of our Federation
community.</p> <p>Ismael Collazo is the president of the National Federation of
the Blind of South Dakota. He has been a chef, is now an entrepreneur, and has a
family. In a beautifully written piece appropriate to the celebration of
Father’s Day this month, Izzy shares his journey and how blindness, training,
and fatherhood have molded him into the advocate he is today.</p> <p>Our May
articles centering around the concept of independence continue to generate
discussion. Colleen Roth of Ohio called to share her thoughts on how independence
redefines itself for many of us as not only our individual needs, but the needs
of our families change. She said that as a blind parent of children with other
disabilities, she found services like paratransit very helpful, even as she
recognizes that blind people generally should learn about and can use public
transportation. Now a grandmother, she uses a quad cane rather than a traditional
white cane, and sometimes a wheelchair.</p> <p>She urges us to accept people where
they are. In the same vein, Will Hendrick writes about an experience he had earlier
in his Federation involvement that, without anyone intending it, did not make him
feel valued or welcomed as he worked on building his Braille skills. While he
recognizes the role of his own feelings about what happened, we believe that
sharing his experience in these pages can help our community be a more inviting
one. Finally, Kemuel Perez shared the following: “Through leadership and
community involvement, I have learned that independence is not isolation—it
is empowerment supported by others who share the same goals. Ultimately, independence
begins with mindset. It is something we claim by believing in our abilities and
taking action. For me, independence means living with confidence, purpose, and
the freedom to define my own life.”</p> <p>The countdown to National
Convention continues, so we’re pleased to include an article from the chair
of the National Federation of the Blind Employment Committee sharing what they
have planned for jobseekers who will be attending, as well as the last “2026
Convention Bulletin” before the big event. All of this and more awaits your
perusal, and hopefully your feedback as well. I look forward to receiving the
latter at <a href="mailto:cdanielsen@nfb.org">cdanielsen@nfb.org</a> or by phone
at 410-659-9314, extension 2330.</p> <p>Your article submissions are welcome as
well. You can review our recently developed submissions policy by visiting <a
href="https://nfb.org/braille-monitor">https://nfb.org/braille-monitor</a>. There
you can also peruse our <em>Early Access</em> content and the online versions of
our latest issues.</p> <p>Happy reading!</p> <p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO CAPTION:
Lia Stone]</p> <h2 id="employment-events-at-the-2026-national-convention">Employment
Events at the 2026 National Convention</h2> <p>by Lia Stone</p> <p>I was raised
in a union household, and because of that, I’ve always understood myself
first and foremost as a worker. I’ve been blind since age eleven and started
working at fourteen. Aside from a brief stretch after back-to-back layoffs in
2022, I’ve spent my entire adult life employed as a blind person. Those
experiences shaped my belief that work is dignity and that we as blind people have
something to contribute in every corner of the workforce. That belief guides my
work as chair of the National Federation of the Blind Employment Committee and
fuels our efforts to lower the abysmal unemployment rate in our community.</p>
<p>Throughout the year, the Employment Committee hosts programs to support blind
jobseekers and professionals, but nothing compares to what we offer at National
Convention. Every summer, we bring together workshops, panels, and our signature
career fair to help members prepare for and secure the jobs they want. I’m
excited to share a preview of what we’re planning for Austin.</p> <p>Our
biggest event is the career fair, where we will connect employers from Texas and
across the country with talented blind jobseekers. Members often ask for more
mid-career opportunities and a wider mix of industries, and we continue building
those relationships year-round. Blindness agencies will of course be featured at
the fair, not because we love repetition, but because improving rehabilitation
services requires blind professionals with a positive philosophy shaping those
systems from within. Be sure to check the agenda when it’s released for
the new date and time.</p> <p>We’ll also host our annual Seeking Success
Seminar (the event formerly known as the Job Seeker’s Seminar) where speakers
and panelists will dig into topics members consistently ask for, including
entrepreneurship, the impact of AI on employment, and navigating career transitions.
Stay tuned for the full seminar agenda.</p> <p>And this year, we’re bringing
back a classic: a program designed specifically for early-career professionals.
Some of you may remember the Upward Mobility seminars from years past. Well,
they’re back—revived by a new group of emerging leaders who are
ready to help the next generation of blind professionals launch their careers with
confidence. The Blind Professional Playbook will cover everything from self-advocacy
in a first job to building strong professional networks, with time built in for
connecting with other early-career attendees.</p> <p>Our committee is working hard
to make this year’s employment programming the strongest yet. We always
welcome ideas and feedback. All are welcome to share feedback at our committee
meeting at convention, or you can email me at <a
href="mailto:first.vp@nfbnj.org">first.vp@nfbnj.org</a>.</p> <p>I can’t
wait to see everyone in Austin! Until then, I’ll be getting back to work!</p>
<p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO CAPTION: Ellana Crew tries out a Braille Notetaker at
the Orbit booth in the national convention exhibit hall.]</p> <h2
id="how-to-be-a-blind-wheelchair-user">How to Be a Blind Wheelchair User</h2>
<p>by Ellana Crew</p> <p><strong>From the Editor: Ellana Crew has worn many hats
in the National Federation of the Blind, including serving on our national staff
in the Independence Market. She is currently secretary of the Central Maryland
Chapter while pursuing a degree in disability studies.</strong></p> <p>When I
first started experimenting with using a wheelchair almost three years ago, figuring
out how to use my white cane at the same time was like searching for the proverbial
needle in a haystack. I was a well-rounded cane traveler with hundreds of hours
of blindfolded Structured Discovery training under my belt, so I figured that I
could teach myself with a little research, but what I found was an information
drought. I combed through online forums and internet search results, hunting for
any scrap of information I could find, but I typically emerged from these research
sessions largely empty-handed. The only blind people I could find making videos
about it seemed not to use canes at all. An old APH document on the topic seemed
to rely on a lot of traditional closed-minded assumptions. And though I successfully
unearthed two articles by blind wheelchair users in the archives of our National
Federation of the Blind publications—one by Maureen Pranghofer and the
other by the late Treva Olivero—neither went into the kind of detail I
needed to teach myself from the ground up. They provided excellent pro tips that
I still use, but what I truly needed was a complete beginner’s guide, and
I didn’t have one of those. I had only three or four tiny pieces of a much
larger puzzle. I put those puzzle pieces together to the best of my ability, but
there was still much that I was left to figure out on my own. It felt like I was
reinventing the wheel—pun intended.</p> <p>Since then, however, quite a
few more of those pieces have fallen into place. Over the course of around six
months, I built myself a network of contacts from whom to learn. Some of them were
my old blindness skills instructors, such as my former Orientation and Mobility
(O&M) teacher L J Bowens. Some of them were blind people I found online who
did not have the same cane training I did but had the wheelchair-using experience,
allowing me to ask them questions and then workshop my own solutions. And some of
them were Federation members who had known blind wheelchair users.</p> <p>Eventually,
I was also able to successfully make the case to my state VR agency that I needed
a new round of adjustment-to-blindness training, this time at the Louisiana Center
for the Blind (LCB). It was there that I made the most progress, working closely
with Roland Allen as my travel instructor to stretch my skills and test the
boundaries of what was possible. I spent five full months re-learning how to cross
streets, re-training the muscle memory of my cane arc so that I would quit smashing
my rims into door frames, and practicing wheelies in the grass to get better at
hopping over train tracks.</p> <p>I am still by no means an expert. I’ve
only been using my wheelchair for around three years, only have direct first-hand
experience with manual chairs, have never used a guide dog with or without my
wheelchair, and cannot speak for every blind wheelchair user and every situation.
I have collected quite a breadth of information, though, and I think it’s
high time that we take a firehose to the information drought on this topic so that
others are not left in the same place that I was in the beginning.</p> <p>In this
article I plan to share the most fundamental things I believe you should know
about using a white cane and a wheelchair at the same time, according to my research
and experience. I have done my best to cover a wide range of factors and variables,
although my aforementioned limitations should be fair warning that this guide
cannot cover every situation. Hopefully, however, it will provide enough of a
jumping-off point for you to experiment with solutions for your own needs and then
perhaps spark further contributions to the <em>Braille</em> <em>Monitor</em> by
those who can share perspectives that I cannot.</p> <p>And so, with all of that
said, let’s begin.</p> <h3 id="cane-length">Cane Length</h3> <p>The first
thing to know is that choosing the cane you use with a wheelchair will in many
cases involve different considerations than choosing a cane for walking. To start,
a wheelchair user will often require a cane that is longer than that of an ambulatory
cane user. This is for two primary reasons:</p> <ol style="list-style-type:
decimal"> <li><p>When seated in a wheelchair, or any chair for that matter, your
feet are positioned farther forward than the feet of someone who is walking,
particularly if your footplate is at an angle that sits farther forward than ninety
degrees. This means that you lose some of the length of your cane to your feet,
which decreases the reaction time you will have when you encounter an obstacle,
making it harder not to run into that obstacle with your footplate. Your cane must
be longer to account for your feet being farther forward than they would be if
you were walking.</p></li> <li><p>A wheelchair often takes longer to come to a
complete stop compared to someone on foot because of its rolling momentum. When
walking, it is fairly easy to simply halt one’s entire body, but on wheels
you need time to fully stop rolling without braking so abruptly that you are thrown
forward in your seat. This effect may be much less significant on many power chairs
depending on the configuration of the brakes, but power-chair users may still
experience this when moving quickly, necessitating a gentler stop that covers more
ground. This means that you again need extra reaction time, which necessitates a
longer cane than an ambulatory person.</p></li> </ol> <p>But exactly how much
longer does your cane need to be? This depends on a wide variety of factors: how
fast you tend to move in your chair, how high off the ground your seat is, how
your disability may or may not affect your reaction speed, the angle of your
footplate, whether you are using a manual chair or a power chair and how quickly
you accelerate and decelerate on average, and the position in which you hold your
cane relative to your body and chair. Because of all these variables, I believe
that there is no set standard or universal rule that can be applied to all wheelchair
users. However, when asked, I usually suggest taking whatever your typical
recommended cane length would be when standing based on your height and go up two
sizes as a starting point. If that’s not enough reaction time, continue to
experiment with taller and taller canes until you find the one that allows you to
move, navigate, and stop at a comfortable pace.</p> <p>I am a firm believer that
the cane should match the user, not the other way around, so if the cane you are
using in your chair isn’t giving you enough reaction time, in most cases
I believe a longer cane will be more beneficial than artificially slowing your
pace to meet the limitations of your cane. I know I am not the only blind wheelchair
user who has been unduly advised to slow down when I knew that I could keep myself
perfectly safe with a longer cane.</p> <p>All that said, one thing to keep in mind
is that by being seated, to some extent your cane is automatically a little farther
ahead of you than the same cane would be on foot because you are lower down in
space, which changes the angle at which your cane tip meets the ground. This means
that some people may be able to use the same cane in a wheelchair that they would
when standing, especially if they tend to move relatively slowly in their chair
and their seat is fairly low compared to other wheelchair users. But for many,
this effect is not enough to compensate for the above factors, hence my general
recommendation of a longer cane for most wheelchair users. But do keep this caveat
in mind because there are always exceptions.</p> <h3 id="cane-type">Cane Type</h3>
<p>Due to a variety of factors, the type of cane you choose to use with a wheelchair
may also need to be considered differently than it would if you are ambulatory.
For instance, a lightweight cane can be even more important for many wheelchair
users, both because some of our disabilities also affect our hand strength and
dexterity and because we are often positioned lower down in space than someone
who is standing, which can make the extra weight of a heavier cane feel even more
pronounced. For similar reasons, using a cane that tapers to be skinnier at the
bottom than it is at the top can also be extra important for a wheelchair user.
That tapering changes the weight distribution of the cane to be more concentrated
at the handle, so that you do not feel the weight as much down by the tip. Even
when I am using my ultra-lightweight NFB rigid cane, which is the lightest cane
I’ve ever used, its weight is more noticeable to me when I am in my wheelchair
than it is when I am ambulatory because of the different angle.</p> <p>For similar
weight reasons, a rigid cane can also be more advantageous, just as it is when
ambulatory. Many people are under the impression that a wheelchair user must always
use a collapsable cane. But in most cases, rigid canes when using a wheelchair
provide all the same benefits that they do when on foot, such as lighter weight
and enhanced tactile feedback. They also feature all of the same drawbacks in
terms of being slightly less convenient to store when not actively in motion. But
holding a rigid cane while at rest in a wheelchair is not significantly different
from doing the same while seated in an ordinary chair in my experience, and so if
a rigid cane provides you more functional benefit than a folding one, I say use
it anyway and experiment with the most comfortable resting positions for your
needs. I frequently wedge my cane shaft between one of my clothing guards and the
side of my cushion with the upper shaft resting against my backrest beside my push
handle or with the handle leaning against the wall behind me.</p> <p>It may also
be possible to lean the cane against your shoulder with the tip held between your
feet, clamp it between your knees, position it behind your footplate and lean it
against your seat so the footplate acts as a stopper, lean it up against a nearby
wall or corner, hold it between your shoulder and chin, or even stick the tip
inside your shoe if the tip is small enough. For wheelchair users who may need
frequent assistance being pushed, you may also experiment with the best position
in which to hold it so that the upper half is not poking the person pushing your
wheelchair in the face. Some strategies may also be utilized for clamping or
strapping your cane to a spot on your frame, for which you can often draw ideas
from wheelchair users who do the same for a physical support cane or crutches,
with modifications for the height and diameter of white canes as needed.</p>
<p>There are certainly exceptions to this; I have met a handful of blind wheelchair
users for whom the nature of their disabilities sincerely require them to use a
heavier cane. However, this so far appears to be the exception and not the norm,
and some of those same people still experience hand pain or other difficulties
from those heavier canes but still choose them based on the overall pros and cons
for their individual circumstances. And so, I would personally still suggest
starting with something light and tapered like the NFB Chris Park cane, the D
Cane, or the non-tapered Ambutech Slimline cane and working up to other options
as needed. The Revolution graphite cane may be a good in-between weight for some
users, while Ambutech canes are often the heaviest—at least until entering
the heavy-duty market with options like the titanium All Terrain Cane.</p> <h3
id="cane-tips">Cane Tips</h3> <p>Just as the weight of the cane itself can be more
important for wheelchair users, so too can the weight of the tip you choose. As
mentioned before, some of our disabilities can also affect our hand strength and
dexterity, and so heavier tips can be even more detrimental for us than they can
for ambulatory users. And just as our lower position in space can make the weight
of the cane itself feel more pronounced, the same is true for our cane tips. in
most cases, therefore, I suggest using small and lightweight tips, such as metal
glide and ceramic tips. These tips provide excellent weight balancing, great
aerodynamics, and superior tactile and auditory feedback compared to larger and
heavier tips. They are also versatile enough to enable the use of a wide variety
of techniques for different situations.</p> <p>Fixed tips can also be more
advantageous than rolling tips for similar reasons. I have encountered a surprising
number of people who believe that a wheelchair user must only use rolling tips.
However, the user being on wheels does not automatically require their cane to be
on wheels as well. Rolling tips are often much heavier than fixed tips, and for
those of us with limited hand strength, the momentum created by a rolling tip can
sometimes make it more difficult for us to wrench the cane back in the opposite
direction after reaching the edge of the cane arc.</p> <p>I have noticed that this
momentum issue for me personally can cause great hand pain, and so I find fixed
tips much easier to control for my particular disability. Others with greater hand
strength and hand control may not experience such difficulty when changing
directions, but a rolling tip will still be significantly heavier, and that extra
weight may feel more pronounced while seated in a wheelchair. And of course, the
usual disadvantages of rolling tips still exist when using them in a wheelchair,
such as reduced tactile feedback and limited opportunity for auditory feedback
from tapping the cane. The auditory effect is especially pronounced because rolling
tips are often made from plastic, which does not produce such a crisp sound when
tapped and does not generate as much detail through touch compared to materials
like metal or ceramic.</p> <p>One concern I have heard expressed not just by
wheelchair users, but also blind people who haven’t had much experience
with metal and ceramic tips, is that these tips cannot be used with constant
contact. Although some vendors like Ambutech may advertise metal glide tips in
particular as being only designed for two-point touch technique, this is not true,
and in fact a good cane tip should be designed for numerous techniques, as the
well-rounded cane traveler should ideally be making use of multiple techniques
for different situations. The questions of when and where to use each cane technique
are beyond the scope of this guide, but I can say with certainty that both a metal
glide and ceramic cane tip are versatile enough to be used with virtually any
technique. So, for those wheelchair users whose disabilities make the dexterity
involved in two-point touch extremely difficult, you need not worry that the tips
I’ve suggested here will not be usable if you need to make more frequent
use of the constant contact technique.</p> <p>Again, though, there will be
exceptions. Just as the nature of some disabilities can sincerely necessitate a
heavier cane, they can also sometimes necessitate a heavier tip, and some find
the momentum of a rolling tip to be a help rather than a hinderance. Some disabilities
can also impair a person’s proprioception—the body’s ability
to perceive its position, movement, and spatial orientation without visual
input—such that they struggle to detect large drop-offs, such as stairs
and curbs, without a tip that is either large or heavy enough to make the sensation
significantly more obvious. Still others may use a small lightweight tip for
greater functionality but use something like loose metal washers or tied-on bells
to produce an obvious sound to alert them of such changes if they are not physically
able to detect them reliably by touch.</p> <p>Given that falling off of a curb or
step can be far more dangerous to someone in a wheelchair than it can be to most
on foot, ensuring you have adequate drop-off detection for your disability is
imperative. That said, these cases are often still the exception and not the norm
in the experience I’ve had so far, and so I would still recommend starting
with something small, lightweight, and with great feedback for most and then
experimenting with other options once lighter options have been thoroughly exhausted.
No need to risk pain, tiredness, or repetitive stress injury from a heavy rolling
tip if something small and lightweight will get the job done just as well. I will
also discuss some technique options later on that may aid in better drop-off
detection without requiring a specific tip type.</p> <h3
id="using-the-chair-and-cane-at-the-same-time">Using the Chair and Cane at the
Same Time</h3> <p>And now we move onto the real meat of the question: How do you
use a white cane and a wheelchair at the same time? The first thing I will say is
that there is not one single answer to this question. There are many types of
wheelchairs and power attachments and many different individual needs. However,
I will try to cover the main options available to you, and we will talk separately
about power chairs and manual chairs.</p> <h4 id="power-chairs">Power Chairs</h4>
<p>If you use a power chair, I have good news because your answer to this issue
is much simpler than manual chair options for most. The majority of power chairs
that I know of are operated fully one-handed, leaving your other hand free to use
your cane as usual. This certainly gives many power-chair users an advantage in
learning to use their canes from their wheelchairs. So long as you have enough
hand function in at least one hand to use a white cane and enough hand function
in the other to operate your chair, you shouldn’t have too many other
factors to worry about. The primary consideration will likely be in which hand to
use the cane and which to use the chair control, particularly if you do have issues
with hand function, and you may want to try a wide variety of joysticks and control
methods for your chair to find what works best for your needs.</p> <p>If hand
function or coordination is an issue such that using a cane in one hand and chair
controls in the other is not possible but one hand can still use the cane, you
may want to look into alternative control methods for your chair that do not
require the hand. I will admit to knowing extremely little about these alternatives
other than that some do exist, however, so this will be something you will want
to research heavily on your own time to determine if they would work for you or
not. There are certainly some who will simply not be able to use a cane and operate
their chairs independently at the same time due to the nature of their disabilities
and hand function in particular, but it may still be worth researching as many
options for chair controls as possible if you have the ability to use a white
cane.</p> <p>Note: if you use a power chair which allows you to adjust the height
of your seat for easier access to tables or conversations, you may want to pick
a consistent seat height at which you keep your chair when traveling, at least
while you are still learning, and find an accessible way to return your seat to
that same height. Inconsistent seat heights when using your cane could produce
varying reaction time with your cane due to changing the angle at which your cane
extends forward and thereby altering exactly how far ahead your cane tip is from
one outing to another.</p> <h4 id="manual-chairs">Manual Chairs</h4> <p>We manual
wheelchair users often have to get a little more creative about how we operate
our chairs and canes at the same time. The typical manual wheelchair requires the
use of both hands on the push rims, which does not leave a free hand for the white
cane. There are several options to try out, however, so the answer need not
necessarily be to just use a power chair instead.</p> <p>The first option, requiring
the least specific chair design and augmentation choices, is to hold both the cane
handle and one push rim in the same hand, sweeping the cane between each push as
you move. I confess that I have had significant trouble learning how to perform
this technique. However, I have met several manual wheelchair users who do, one
of whom was our very own late Treva Olivero, as she described in an article she
wrote for the <em>Future Reflections</em> magazine entitled “From Tumbles
to Triumphs: Using a Cane from a Wheelchair.” You may need to experiment
quite extensively with this technique to determine if it will work for you, trying
different grip positions, arc movements, and potentially different push rim shapes
and textures. Some may need to wrap the whole hand around both the cane handle
and push rim, some may split their fingers between cane and push rim like some
crutch users do when carrying other objects, and some may only use the palm or
heel of the hand to push the wheel and so have the cane wrapped with all of the
fingers. Making this technique work can be very individualized and require plenty
of trial and error. However, if you can achieve it, it will often allow you to
have the greatest choice and flexibility in your chair features, since it does
not require any special customizations to make it work.</p> <p>When using this
technique, however, you may want to pay special attention to your cane arc to
ensure that it is even. Because this technique means that your arc will begin with
the handle held off to the side instead of the center of your body, it can require
more practice to ensure your arc does not fall too short on one side or the other.
I have personally found myself prone to not sweeping far enough out on my right
side when experimenting with this technique, leading to swiping my right push rim
on things too frequently as I pass. If you find this technique effective for you,
be sure to pay close attention to your cane arc as you practice it in order to
build good habits.</p> <p>A second option is a one-arm drive system on your manual
chair so that both wheels can be pushed with only one hand. These systems place
both push rims on one side, the standard push rim that controls the wheel on that
side and a second, smaller push rim that controls the opposite wheel via a removable
axle. To move forward or backward, the user grips both push rims at once, and to
turn, you only operate one push rim. One-arm drive systems are used most often
for those with one-sided upper limb differences or significantly reduced hand and
arm function on one side, but they can be repurposed for those of us who need a
hand free for our second mobility aid.</p> <p>The largest potential downside to
this feature is that it can be more challenging to push yourself long distances
or up hills with only the power of one arm. It can also make the chair slightly
heavier overall and require some dexterity, so it may be best for those with
reasonably good hand function and upper-body strength or may need to be augmented
with a power-assist attachment. It can also lead to your chair arm building up a
bit more strength from pushing compared to your cane hand, but so long as you do
not mind some slight asymmetry of your arms to those who look closely enough, a
one-arm drive system can offer great freedom to use your cane normally in the
other. It also leaves your cane hand free to hold the cane in the center of your
body, if you are able, rather than off to the side, avoiding the more complex cane
arc work involved in the first option we discussed. This customization can be
quite pricey, however, and so you will want to ensure that you have a wheelchair
occupational therapist (OT) who is very good at writing medical justifications
for your desired features.</p> <p>A third option—assuming you have the leg
function—is foot propelling. This is how I have personally chosen to use
my manual wheelchair most of the time because my disability allows me to do so.
This option will certainly not be possible for many whose disabilities prevent
it, but if you are physically able, foot propelling can be a great option that
leaves both of your hands free, allowing even more flexibility than most power-chair
users. I am often seen on my college campus rolling along with my cane moving in
one hand and a Starbucks cup in the other. It also allows me to keep my cane
centered in front of my body, avoiding the more complex cane arc practice required
of the first technique, and having my feet on the ground allows me to get a little
extra feedback about the surface, as I would when walking. Having my non-cane hand
free also means that I can use that hand for extra leverage on small slopes or
when turning or even just for a little extra momentum on occasion.</p> <p>However,
for larger slopes, foot propelling can be quite difficult on its own, and so you
may find yourself needing to use both hands for a push or two with a sweep of the
cane in between or opting for a power-assist attachment as I have. The major
downside to foot propelling, however, is limiting your options for rigid-frame
wheelchairs, as the fixed footplate will inevitably get in your way. However, some
manufacturers, such as TiLite and Sunrise Medical, offer rigid chair models and
customizations that include split flip-up or fully removable footrests, so it can
still be possible to have both if you can get insurance to pay the extra price
for it. I plan on going for this in my next chair. Do also note that if you plan
to use foot propelling as a primary technique, your seat height will need to be
much lower to ensure you have good traction.</p> <p>You may also be able to make
use of some combination of both foot propelling and pushing with one hand if you
are able to do so but neither one is good enough on its own. Having the strength
of both feet and one arm may be a great combination for some people depending on
your disability, or even one arm and one leg if one of your legs is capable of
foot propelling but the other is not. You may even be able to combine foot propelling
with a one-arm drive system to make this method more effective. I do not have a
one-arm drive system on my current chair, but just having one hand on my left
wheel can give me a little extra speed or power from time to time. If you do this
without a one-arm drive system, however, be aware that putting only one hand on
one wheel like this may sometimes cause you to turn or veer slightly in the opposite
direction. I have found that my feet doing most of the directing largely sidesteps
this issue but be sure to pay attention to your trajectory when doing this to stay
on track.</p> <h4 id="power-assists">Power Assists</h4> <p>If manual propulsion
on its own will not meet your needs well enough, you may also consider a power-assist
attachment. This is a motorized device that attaches to a manual wheelchair in
different ways to enable the user to have some power at their disposal while not
losing the overall lightness and maneuverability of a manual wheelchair.</p>
<p>Power assists come in three primary configurations. The first category includes
options such as the SmartDrive, SMOOV, Empulse R90, Klaxon Twist, and Light Drive,
which come in the form of an extra motorized wheel attached to the back of the
chair between the large rear wheels, which is operated by a one-handed control
unit that consists of either buttons or dials. Rear mounted power assists usually
cannot steer for you, however, they may be best for blind users who are able to
steer either by foot propelling, as I do, or by moving their hands between the
cane plus control unit and the wheels.</p> <p>The second category are rear wheel
replacements that have power built in and are activated either by pushing them
manually or operating a control device like a joystick. With manually pushed
powered wheels, they are steered the same way as regular rear wheels, by using
your hands on the push rims. With joystick-operated wheels, the joystick allows
you full directional control with one hand, essentially turning your manual chair
into a power chair. Some available manually-operated power wheels include the
E-Motion and NaviONE wheels, and these may be well suited to those who are able
to hold the cane and the push rim in one hand, as they cannot be operated one-handed.
Some joystick-controlled options include the E-Fix and NaviGo wheels, which can
be great for those who need one-handed control, and some powered wheels like the
Empulse M90 can do both joystick and manual push power. These options are great
for blind users who want their power assist to also be able to handle the
steering.</p> <p>The final category includes choices like the Firefly, Batek,
Klaxon Klick, Triride, and Empulse F35, which consist of an extra motorized wheel
mounted to the front of a wheelchair. Front-mounted power assists lift the front
castor wheels off the ground, effectively turning your wheelchair into a tricycle.
They typically have handlebars on top, which the user must use to steer. I will
personally admit that I have largely excluded front-mounted power assists from my
own pool of options because they obstruct the use of a white cane. Based on my
experience trying them, they can also be somewhat difficult to control with only
one hand on the handlebars if the other is using a cane, though readers may want
to do their own research.</p> <p>These are all of the options that I have thus
far discovered for manual wheelchair users. For some, however, none of these
options will be suitable, even if they would be able to push a manual chair in
the traditional way if they did not need to use a white cane, and in these cases
it may indeed be necessary to move to a power chair. I have found that I and other
blind wheelchair users have been pushed unnecessarily toward a power chair simply
on the basis of white cane use without being given the chance to explore other
options that may work perfectly well for us, but as I have hopefully driven home
already in this guide, there will always be exceptions and edge cases for whom
none of the other suggestions here will work. I believe in making sure your
wheelchair meets your physical mobility needs before making changes based solely
on the use of the white cane because, as we wheelchair users know, an ill-suited
wheelchair can do more long-term damage to our bodies and our health.</p> <p>But
there may be situations in which the second-best option is preferable if the
drawbacks are minor enough to make the ability to use the cane significantly more
possible, which can sometimes mean using a power chair instead of a manual. Because
every case can be so radically different from the next, however, I highly recommend
requesting from your wheelchair OT to be able to physically test out various
options with your white cane before making a final decision. Some wheelchair
seating clinics can offer temporary loaner chairs that share some of the features
of the chair you are considering, and if not, you may want to consider visiting
the nearest-to-you mobility-aid showroom and spending several hours trying out
options firsthand.</p> <h3 id="technique-tips">Technique Tips</h3> <p>Finally, I
want to share a few tips and tricks that may help you move more smoothly in your
wheelchair with a white cane. You may not find a need for all of them, but I hope
that they are helpful to you in developing your wheelchair cane technique.</p>
<ul> <li><p>Be sure to experiment with the speed at which you sweep your cane back
and forth to determine what works for you. Wheelchair users often cannot rely on
the pace of our steps to time our taps or sweeps, but as a general rule, the faster
your chair is moving, the faster you should be sweeping. If you struggle to keep
your arc consistent without making one direction faster or slower than the other,
you might find it helpful to keep a musical beat in your head or imagine the
ticking of a clock or metronome.</p></li> <li><p>So long as your disability itself
does not prevent you from using one cane technique or another, I have found that
using a wheelchair does not usually inherently necessitate a stronger allegiance
to any particular technique. I have read several articles implying that a wheelchair
user must use constant contact as their primary technique simply because of their
wheelchair, but I have not at all found this to be true. Most wheelchair users
should be able to make use of the full variety of techniques so long as they are
physically able to. Constant contact, two-point touch, touch and drag, tap and
slide, pencil grip, and many others can be done in most of the same situations in
which you might use them on foot.</p></li> <li><p>Make sure that your cane arc
covers the full width of your chair, not just your body. The conventional O&M
advice is to make your cane arc slightly wider than your shoulders, but for many
wheelchair users, our chairs make us wider than our bodies alone. For manual chair
users, your widest point is likely your push rims (or more accurately, your push
rims plus your hands), and for power chair users, your widest point is likely
either your wheel base or armrest, depending on model and configuration. Make sure
your cane arc accounts for your entire footprint and just a tad extra.</p></li>
<li><p>If your disability or method of operating your chair prevents you from
being able to hold the cane handle at the center of your body, make sure your cane
arc is still even on both sides. If holding the cane handle closer to one side,
this will often require reaching slightly farther forward on your opposite side
to avoid your cane arc falling short on that side, while also being sure not to
overcompensate too far in that direction.</p></li> <li><p>When traveling outdoors
or on other uneven surfaces, you may find it useful to pay extra attention to
other sensory cues to help prevent more frequent veering in your chair, especially
if you are new either to blindness or being on wheels. Wheels love to follow the
path of least resistance against gravity even on the slightest slopes, and when
your body is not making direct contact with the ground, it can sometimes be slightly
more difficult to detect if you are veering or slightly turning, and so making
more frequent use of cues such as the sound of traffic and the angle of the sun
on your body can be extra helpful to a blind wheelchair user.</p></li> <li><p>If
you have difficulty identifying down curbs or drop-offs in your chair, you may
find it helpful to pull your cane up into a more vertical pencil-grip-like position
when searching for them. Being lower down in space often changes the angle of our
canes to be more parallel to the ground, which can sometimes make it harder to
detect drop-offs, so this more vertical position may help if you are having trouble.
This tip comes from Maureen Pranghofer’s <em>Braille Monitor</em> article
entitled, “Wheels And White Canes: Tips For Blind Wheelchair Users.”</p></li>
<li><p>Be sure to experiment with different canes in your chair to find out what
works best for your needs. You may find that the type of cane you find most
beneficial in your chair is not the same kind that you prefer when on foot if you
are ambulatory. For example, I have met one blind wheelchair user who, although
he prefers the D cane when on foot, actually prefers the NFB Chris Park cane in
his chair because he prefers less flexibility in the cane when using his chair
due to the lower position and different angle.</p></li> </ul> <p>This guide is by
no means a complete instructional manual that can cover every aspect of using a
white cane with a wheelchair, but I hope that it can serve as a valuable foundation
for many blind wheelchair users to build on. I always recommend working with a
trained orientation and mobility instructor if you can access such services, but
I am also acutely aware how many in our community across the globe either do not
qualify for O&M services or whose instructors know little to nothing about
this topic themselves. My hope is that this guide can serve as a set of useful
building blocks that you can expand and modify, as well as an introductory crash
course for O&M instructors themselves who may be struggling to find information
on this topic. And if you are a blind wheelchair user with something to share that
I did not include here, I encourage you to submit your own article to the <em>Braille
Monitor</em> to share your experiences and add even more perspectives to this very
small body of literature.</p> <p>When I first embarked on this journey of becoming
a blind wheelchair user, the extreme lack of information on wheelchair-friendly
O&M strategies led me to believe that those of us in this situation must just
be incredibly rare and mythical, but since then I have met dozens and dozens of
us that have proved that assumption wrong. Some of us had to figure it out on our
own, some of us got training by an O&M instructor who was doing their best
but felt underprepared, and many more were simply led to believe that using a cane
in their chairs would be impossible and had been struggling to get by with vision
alone. My hope is that this article will serve as just one of many that will raise
greater awareness of the need for better wheelchair-inclusive O&M services
and empower many more blind wheelchair users with the tools they need to achieve
greater mobility than they had before. The system is failing us, but it doesn’t
have to. And as we always say in the National Federation of the Blind, if they
won’t teach us, then we will.</p> <p>If you’d like to get in touch
with me, you can find me on most social media platforms with the username
@AskABlindPerson, or find my blog at <a
href="https://askablindperson.wordpress.com">https://askablindperson.wordpress.com</a>.
I have some expertise on other mobility aids as well and will be happy to answer
any questions you may still have about using a white cane and a wheelchair at the
same time.</p> <p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO CAPTION: Kaleigh Brendle]</p> <h2
id="when-the-pain-is-real-but-the-reason-is-invisible">When the Pain Is Real, but
the Reason Is Invisible</h2> <p>by Kaleigh Brendle</p> <p>On a scale of one to
ten, how do you rate your pain? That might appear to be a very straightforward
question. You take the amount of pain you’re experiencing and compare it
to episodes of pain you’ve encountered in the past. But what if you experience
intense pain all the time? How do you quantify the pain you’re experiencing
in one given moment when pain has become your normal? When I’m asked that
question now, I usually laugh it off and discuss my high pain tolerance, without
explaining why I’ve had to develop such a high tolerance in the first
place.</p> <p>I’m twenty-three years old. I’ll be attending UC
Berkeley Law School this fall. I’ve been involved with the Federation since
I was seventeen, after the College Board revoked Braille as an accommodation for
all blind Advanced Placement students and the Federation advocated for its immediate
restoration. I learned from leaders like Tim Elder, Pam Allen, and President Mark
Riccobono and cultivated my blindness philosophy through candid discussions with
students who had found the organization years earlier.</p> <p>I knew that I had
another disability. As I pursued my undergraduate degree at Villanova University
and held leadership positions in both the state and national student divisions,
it sat comfortably in the background. It would pop up occasionally, but I could
easily manage it with the appropriate academic accommodations and personal
boundaries. My disability is called Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is
typically characterized by overly flexible joints. People sometimes think of us
as the ones who can execute really cool party tricks and excel in gymnastics, but
that extra flexibility can lead to joint pain and frequent dislocations.</p> <p>I
didn’t fully realize how much my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome would affect my
life until I began my pursuit of training at the Louisiana Center for the Blind
(LCB). For the first time, I was the odd one out in a blindness space. I watched
my peers of all ages progress through their classes with ease, while I ended up
at the urgent care clinic so frequently that the receptionists all knew my name.
I would barely be able to stand after my hours of preparing meals in the kitchen.
I would come very close to fainting when performing travel routes on hot days. At
night, I would experience intense temperature fluctuations, either feeling as
though I was burning up with fever or so cold that I’d end up sleeping
under multiple blankets in my heaviest winter coat.</p> <p>The pain was the worst
part. Every night I would lie perfectly still and feel it in my ankles, my knees,
my hips, my wrists, my elbows, my shoulders, and my neck, hoping that sleep would
grant me respite. I had the honor of developing my blindness skills under the
direction of incredibly skilled instructors, but I was also learning what a life
with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome meant.</p> <p>But how could I prove it? I had one
letter from a physical therapist stating that I had Ehlers Danlos, but that was
it. The specialists I needed notes from were all completely swamped, if they were
taking patients at all. We as Federationists contend that the world was not built
with us in mind. The same is true for those with disabilities like Ehlers. When
someone sees my cane, they immediately gather that I cannot drive. By contrast,
some perceive the limitations created by chronic conditions as personal choices
rather than concrete facts. When I say that I cannot walk a mile in heat or sit
at a desk for long periods of time, that doesn’t mean I’m simply
choosing not to because I don’t feel like it. It means I can’t or
I’ll pass out or be in such pain that I’ll lose a night of sleep.
Those fears are based on experiences of having had to ignore those boundaries and
fighting through the subsequent repercussions.</p> <p>All of a sudden, I was
navigating two starkly different worlds. At LCB, my access technology instructor
regularly incorporated stretch breaks into his lessons. Meanwhile, I was having
to articulate to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) why I “deserved”
the accommodation of stretching during the LSAT. At LCB, my woodshop instructor
would give me alternate assignments if I was in a significant amount of pain,
assignments that would still allow me to learn through the Structured Discovery
approach. On the other hand, the LSAC nearly made me sit for the LSAT with a
concussion and the associated pain that my additional disability creates when my
body experiences trauma.</p> <p>In my experience, people tend to approach chronic
health-related matters transactionally rather than empathetically. The focus
becomes either your ability to prove what you are alleging you live through, the
subtle guilt trips that come with having to refuse a task or outing, or the inquiry
of whether it’s all really as bad as you make it out to be. Statements
like, “Well, you’ll have to figure this out when you have kids”
neglect to acknowledge that I will likely parent differently than someone else.
“Figure it out” won’t mean performing tasks that will put me
at risk of injury. “Figuring it out” means finding alternative ways
of doing something. It also might mean asking for help. People have balked when
I’ve made that comment, but there is nothing wrong with asking for help
when your disability necessitates it. Able people ask for help all the time.
Reaching out when we truly cannot do something should never be something a disabled
person is shamed for.</p> <p>I have been shamed for asking for help by people of
all ages. I have been mocked for my disability by other disabled people. I have
cried that I’m hitting my limit and been met with an emphatic and unflinching
expectation that I push harder. In so many spaces I’ve been in, no paper
trail means you’re on your own.</p> <p>My multiple disabled friends in and
out of the Federation have been the biggest blessing. We support each other during
the flare-ups and the difficult days. We share strategies for how we navigate the
symptoms of our conditions. We listen, we empathize, we encourage, and we stand
together.</p> <p>For those who do not possess disabilities that cause chronic pain
and other similar tribulations, I ask this of you: do not project your misconceptions
in the advice you give. If you sprained your wrist once, that is not the same as
having aggressive tendinitis. If your mom’s cousin’s friend has the
same condition as the person you’re speaking with, that doesn’t mean
that it manifests in the exact same way. If you are comfortable with and proud of
your disability, understand that the person you’re speaking with may not
be in the same stage of their journey. Finally, and most importantly, no means
no. If someone is telling you that doing something will cause them pain or has
attempted to do something and it is now causing them pain, their lived experience
needs to take precedence in that moment. If you are concerned about the possibility
of them faking a condition, ask yourself how you would feel if someone accused
you of faking yours.</p> <p>To anyone reading this who has a disability like mine,
you don’t have to be proud today. You can cry. You can be angry. You can
be nervous about what comes next. Just know that there will come a day when
you’ve discovered strategies, therapies, supplements, or supports that make
it easier. You will find people who believe you, who listen, and who won’t
walk away when a flare-up strikes. I feel very lucky that I’ve found many
people like that through the Federation, and I’m grateful for them every
day. I won’t say that one day everything is going to be perfect. But one
day, it will be better. We stand with you until that day comes and will be here
to celebrate when it’s here.</p> <p>----------</p> <h2 id="we-need-your-help">We
Need Your Help</h2> <p><em>Through the Federation, I learned that most of what I
was taught to believe about blindness was untrue. Being blind wasn’t
something to be ashamed of. Using my cane in public wasn’t weird. If I
wanted to pick up my cane or my [guide] dog and walk somewhere, I could just do
it because the fears of other people didn’t have to be my fears too.</em> -
Julie</p> <p>Blind people across the United States are making powerful strides in
education and leadership, but we need to continue helping people like Julie. For
more than eighty years, the National Federation of the Blind has worked to transform
the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people into reality. With support
from individuals like you, we can continue to provide powerful programs and critical
resources now and for decades to come. We hope you will plan to be a part of our
enduring movement by including the National Federation of the Blind in your
charitable giving and in your estate planning. It is easier than you think.</p>
<h3 id="with-your-help-the-nfb-will-continue-to">With your help, the NFB will
continue to:</h3> <ul> <li><p>Give the gift of literacy through Braille.</p></li>
<li><p>Mentor young people.</p></li> <li><p>Promote independent travel by providing
free, long white canes to blind people in need.</p></li> <li><p>Develop dynamic
educational projects and programs to show blind youth that science and math careers
are within their reach.</p></li> <li><p>Deliver hundreds of accessible newspapers
and magazines to provide blind people the essential information necessary to be
actively involved in their communities.</p></li> <li><p>Offer aids and appliances
that help seniors losing vision maintain their independence.</p></li> </ul> <p>Below
are just a few of the many tax-deductible ways you can show your support of the
National Federation of the Blind.</p> <h3 id="vehicle-donation-program">Vehicle
Donation Program</h3> <p>We accept 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. We can also answer
any questions you have.</p> <h3 id="general-donation">General Donation</h3>
<p>General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and the work to
help blind people live the lives they want. You can call 410-659-9314, extension
2430, to give by phone. Give online with a credit card or through the mail with
check or money order. Visit our online contribution page at: <a
href="https://nfb.org/donate"><u>https://nfb.org/donate</u></a>.</p> <h3
id="pre-authorized-contributions">Pre-Authorized Contributions</h3> <p>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 withdrawal of funds from a checking account or a charge to a credit card.
To enroll, call 877-NFB-2PAC, or fill out our PAC Donation Form <a
href="https://www.nfb.org/pac"><u>https://www.nfb.org/pac</u></a>.</p> <h3
id="plan-to-leave-a-legacy">Plan to Leave a Legacy</h3> <p>The National Federation
of the Blind legacy society, our Dream Makers Circle, honors and recognizes the
generosity and imagination of members and special friends who have chosen to leave
a legacy through a will or other planned giving option. You can join the Dream
Makers Circle in a myriad of ways.</p> <p><strong>Percentage or Fixed Sum of
Assets<br /> </strong>You can specify that a percentage or a fixed sum of your
assets or property goes to the National Federation of the Blind in your will,
trust, pension, IRA, life insurance policy, brokerage account, or other accounts.</p>
<p><strong>Payable on Death (POD) Account<br /> </strong>You can name the National
Federation of the Blind as the beneficiary on a Payable on Death (POD) account
through your bank. You can turn any checking or savings account into a POD account.
This is one of the simplest ways to leave a legacy. The account is totally in your
control during your lifetime and you can change the beneficiary or percentage at
any time with ease.</p> <p><strong>Will or Trust<br /> </strong>If you do decide
to create or revise your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as
a partial beneficiary.</p> <p>Visit our Planned Giving webpage (<a
href="https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/ways-give/planned-giving"><u>https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/ways-give/planned-giving</u></a>)
or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information.</p> <h3
id="in-2025-our-supporters-helped-the-nfb">In 2025 our supporters helped the
NFB:</h3> <ul> <li><p>Host career fair and employment mentoring events for over
three hundred and fifty job seekers.</p></li> <li><p>Distribute over six thousand
free white canes to blind people across the United States, empowering them to
travel safely and independently throughout their communities.</p></li> <li><p>Deliver
more than five hundred newspapers and magazines to more than 135,000 subscribers
with print disabilities free of charge.</p></li> <li><p>Give over six hundred
Braille-writing slates and styluses free of charge to blind users.</p></li>
<li><p>Mentor 153 blind youth during our Braille Enrichment for Literacy and
Learning® Academy.</p></li> <li><p>Distribute over twenty-three thousand
Braille books to children and adult readers alike.</p></li> <li><p>Award thirty
scholarships each in the amount of $8,000 to blind students.</p></li> </ul> <p>Just
imagine what we will do in 2026, and, with your help, what can be accomplished
for years to come. Together with love, hope, determination, and your support, we
will continue to transform dreams into reality.</p> <p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO
CAPTION: Ismael Collazo]</p> <h2 id="becoming-the-voice-his-daughter-will-need">Becoming
the Voice His Daughter Will Need</h2> <p>by Ismael Collazo</p> <p>Izzy never
planned to become an advocate. In his twenties, he was just trying to survive.
Before the blindness, before the speeches, before the long drives across South
Dakota to sit in front of lawmakers, he was a chef with burned forearms, tired
feet, and a body running on too little sleep and too much determination.</p> <p>He
had been diagnosed with type one diabetes as a baby, so insulin was as natural to
him as breathing. He grew up knowing it kept him alive. It wasn’t optional.
It wasn’t something you could stretch or skip. But life in his twenties
didn’t follow those rules.</p> <p>He worked in kitchens where the heat
never let up—ovens blasting, fryers hissing, pans clanging. He loved the
rhythm of it, the pressure, the way everything came together in chaos. He loved
feeding people. It made him feel like he had purpose. What he didn’t love
was the paycheck.</p> <p>Cooking paid enough—barely. Enough for rent most
months, enough for groceries if he was careful, enough for gas if nothing went
wrong. But it didn’t cover what diabetes demanded. Insulin was about $300
a vial. And for Izzy, that wasn’t a monthly cost. It was a weekly one.
There was no real insurance safety net. What was available was too expensive or
didn’t cover enough to matter. So, he started doing the math that no one
should ever have to do. If he delayed rent, he could afford insulin. If he skipped
replacing something he needed, maybe another vial. If he just stretched what he
had—just a little—he could make it to the next paycheck.</p> <p>At
first, he convinced himself it was temporary, that he was in control, that he knew
his body well enough to manage. He started taking less insulin than he needed,
guessing doses, waiting longer between refills. He learned how to push through
the headaches, the exhaustion, the constant thirst. In a kitchen, there wasn’t
space for weakness. Orders had to go out. No one cared if your blood sugar was
high. But his body kept score.</p> <p>At twenty-eight, everything changed. That
was the year he met Heather. It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t cautious. It
was immediate—real in a way that made both of them stop pretending they
had time to waste. They met, and something clicked—not perfection, but
recognition. Two months later, they were married. People told them it was too
fast. They didn’t listen.</p> <p>Two months after their wedding, the cracks
began to show—blurry vision, missed details, numbers that wouldn’t
focus. Izzy told himself it was exhaustion. But he knew. Heather knew too. When
he finally told her about rationing insulin, she didn’t blame him. “This
isn’t you failing,” she said. “This is a system failing
you.” He wanted to believe that. But the damage had already started. Doctors
said words he didn’t want to hear: retinopathy, progression, permanent.</p>
<p>Six months after their wedding, Izzy went blind. Not all at once—but
steadily, until there was nothing left to see. He stopped driving. He stopped
working in kitchens. He learned to navigate a world that suddenly didn’t
match the one he remembered.</p> <p>That first year of being blind was the hardest.
It wasn’t just about losing sight—it was about losing identity,
losing independence, losing the life he thought he was building. He fell into a
dark place, one he didn’t know how to climb out of. Heather was the one
who pulled him back. She refused to let him stay there. She sat with him in the
silence, in the frustration, in the anger—and then she pushed him forward.
“There has to be resources out there,” she told him.</p> <p>That
belief led him to the Lighthouse for the Blind of Southwest Florida. There, for
the first time since losing his vision, he began to see a path forward again—just
not with his eyes. He learned skills, built confidence, and connected with the
idea that blindness didn’t mean the end of independence—it just
meant learning a different way.</p> <p>Eventually, he and Heather made the decision
to move to South Dakota. It was another fresh start—but this time, he
wasn’t starting from nothing. He trained at the Rehabilitation Center for
the Blind. That’s where he found woodworking. At first, it sounded
impossible—working with saws, blades, measurements, and fine detail…
without sight. But step by step, piece by piece, he learned. He learned to measure
by touch, to listen to the sound of tools, to trust his hands, and to build. And
through that process, something else came back too—purpose.</p> <p>From
that training, Izzy went on to open his own business: Blind Guy Boards LLC. What
started as rebuilding his life turned into creating something of his own—something
tangible, something meaningful, something that proved to himself and others that
blindness didn’t define his limits.</p> <p>By the time he was thirty-one,
Izzy and Heather’s life had found a rhythm again. That same year, their
daughter was born. She was everything. Izzy learned her through sound and
touch—the rhythm of her breathing, the way her small hands held onto him,
the way her laugh filled a room. For three years, she was just their joy.</p>
<p>Then came the signs. And then came the diagnosis: type one diabetes. She was
three years old. That moment didn’t just hurt—it changed something
in Izzy. Now everything he had gone through wasn’t just his story anymore.
It was hers.</p> <p>But the shift toward advocacy had already begun—quietly,
before that moment. It started when Izzy found the National Federation of the
Blind. At first, it was just a place to learn, to connect, and to understand how
to live as a blind person without limits placed on him by others. But what he
found there was more than resources—it was belief. Belief that blindness
didn’t have to define his future, belief that systems could change, belief
that his voice mattered.</p> <p>He became more involved, more present, and eventually
stepped into leadership—becoming the president of the National Federation
of the Blind of South Dakota. And it was in that role that he made his first trip
to Washington, DC. At the time, there were serious threats to defund programs
administered by the US Department of Education—including vocational
rehabilitation programs that had helped Izzy rebuild his life through self-employment.
So, he went—not just as someone learning to advocate, but as a leader. He
walked the halls of Congress. He sat in meetings. He told his story—not
polished, not perfect, but real. He spoke about what those programs meant—how
they gave blind people a path to independence, to work, to dignity. How without
them, people like him wouldn’t have the chance to rebuild after losing
everything. That trip deepened something in him. He saw clearly that his
experiences—his struggles, his losses, his rebuilding—weren’t
just personal. They were evidence. They were power.</p> <p>From there, he kept
going. He became more vocal, more determined. He worked on issues affecting the
blind community at every level—federal, state, and local. He spoke up about
access, employment, technology, and independence. All the while, in the background,
another fight was building—his daughter, her diabetes, the cost of insulin,
and the lack of accessibility in medical technology. He hadn’t fully stepped
into that advocacy yet—but it was coming. Because now, it wasn’t
just about what had happened to him. It was about what could happen to her.</p>
<p>Izzy never planned to become an advocate. But his life—every challenge,
every loss, every moment—kept pushing him in that direction. He hadn’t
chosen rationing. He hadn’t chosen blindness. He hadn’t chosen the
cost of insulin. He hadn’t chosen his daughter’s diagnosis. But he
was choosing what came next: to speak, to lead, to build something better. And
step by step, he was becoming the voice he once needed—so that one day,
his daughter might not have to tell the same story.</p> <p>----------</p> <h2
id="keep-nfb-advancing-give-25-in-26">Keep NFB Advancing: Give $25 in ’26
</h2> <p>Each year, thousands of Federation members and friends contribute before
and during the National Convention to funds that support blind people across the
country. In 2026, your generosity continues to power our movement. When you give
$25 or more between May 15 and July 7, 5:00 p.m. Central, you will be entered into
the Keep NFB Advancing: Connections, Community, and Opportunity Give $25 drawing.
Each $25 increment is another chance to win.</p> <p>Your gift strengthens connections,
grows our community, and expands opportunities for blind people nationwide.
Together, we keep the National Federation of the Blind advancing by raising
expectations and removing barriers so blind people can live the lives they want.
A past winner, Ali Colak, shared, “This was my second time entering, and
I didn’t think I would win anything. Just participating in helping the NFB
in its cause was wonderful, but winning was a pleasant surprise.”</p>
<p>Your support fuels programs that bring blind people to National Convention,
foster education and mentorship, and create opportunities for the next generation.
Our members and partners count on our expertise and our resolve. We will never
shy away from the effort to surmount obstacles and achieve full participation,
independence, and equality for blind people.</p> <p>When you contribute to the
Keep NFB Advancing: Give $25 drawing, you will be entered to win the following:</p>
<ul> <li><p>Roundtrip transportation for two for the 2027 NFB National
Convention</p></li> <li><p>Hotel at the convention</p></li> <li><p>Registration
and banquet tickets for two</p></li> <li><p>$1,000 in walking-around cash</p></li>
</ul> <p>Or</p> <ul> <li><p>$2,000 cash!</p></li> </ul> <p>And you can double your
dollars up to $25,000, thanks to a gift from AIRA, the visual interpreting
service.</p> <h3 id="expand-your-impact-and-win-with-purpose">Expand your impact
and win with purpose!</h3> <p>Be a Federation Connector. Friendly competition
energizes our movement, and this year your connections can go even further.</p>
<p>Invite your friends and family to give $25 or more before the National Convention
and indicate that you prompted their gift. If at least four people contribute in
your honor, you will be entered into a special drawing to win a BrailleNote Evolve
from HumanWare. You do not need to be present to win.</p> <p>Use your connections
to Keep NFB Advancing. By bringing others into this effort, you help expand our
reach, strengthen our community, and increase opportunities for blind people across
the country.</p> <p>The campaign supports several important funds:</p> <ul>
<li><p>Kenneth Jernigan Fund: Used to bring attendees to their first national
convention and more. Named for Dr. Jernigan who led convention planning for more
than forty years.</p></li> <li><p>SUN Fund: A “rainy day” reserve
for unforeseen needs.</p></li> <li><p>White Cane Fund: Supports the general treasury
of the Federation where funds are most needed.</p></li> <li><p>tenBroek Fund:
Supports the tenBroek Memorial Fund which owns our national headquarters property
in Baltimore.</p></li> </ul> <h3 id="how-to-contribute-and-qualify">How to contribute
and qualify</h3> <p>To qualify for the drawing, you must specify a fund when making
your contribution. You can give in multiple ways:</p> <ul> <li><p>Online: Use our
Give $25 online form <a
href="https://nfb.org/give25donate">https://nfb.org/give25donate</a></p></li>
<li><p>Phone: Call 410-659-9314, extension 2430</p></li> <li><p>Mail: Send a check
to National Federation of the Blind, 200 East Wells Street, Baltimore, MD 21230
and include #Give25 and your fund of choice in the memo</p></li> <li><p>Visit the
Give $25 table outside of General Sessions at convention</p></li> </ul> <p>Your
donation will be counted for the drawing regardless of which fund you choose. If
you’re unsure, please select the White Cane Fund for maximum flexibility.</p>
<p>The winner will be announced July 8, 2026, at our national convention banquet.
You do not need to be present to win. Together, we keep the National Federation
of the Blind advancing through connections, community, and opportunity. Thank you
for your generosity and for being part of this movement.</p> <p>----------</p>
<p>[PHOTO CAPTION: Will Hendrick walks across the Bay Bridge.]</p> <h2
id="the-super-braillers-and-me">The Super-Braillers and Me</h2> <p>by Will
Hendrick</p> <p><strong>From the Editor: Will Hendrick serves on the board of the
Greater Baltimore Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. I
serve as president of that chapter. Will wrote this article in response to the
“Myth of the SuperBlind” episode of the <em>Nation’s Blind
Podcast,</em> which we excerpted in last month’s issue of this magazine.
Here is what he shares:</strong></p> <p>Hello friends! Thank you for another great
episode. When I participated in my first vocational rehab, unfortunately, some of
the blindness professionals that assisted me gave me bad impressions of the National
Federation of the Blind—professionals that helped me quite a bit, I might
add, which is why I was inclined to listen to their opinions. I remember one
comment in particular: “Those Federationists!” My opinion at the
time was that if the professionals that get paid to inform me about the existence
of the Federation don’t think it is all it is cracked up to be, then I
don’t think I want to get too close. But I will still go, learn, and see
what the organization has to offer. These blindness professionals were blind, I
might also add. But nine years later, I am happy to say I am glad that I made up
my own mind and gave the Federation a chance.</p> <p>It took me years of participation
in the National Federation of the Blind before I got to know people I clicked with
or experienced actual friendship. That is mostly because I am picky! I don’t
want to be close friends with just anyone or just because someone is blind.
Blindness doesn’t mean someone is a good person. After making the effort
to observe and participate, relationships have developed that I am proud to have.
And I believe I am a better person for having them.</p> <p>My “super-blind”
experience was when I first tried to participate in Dinner and a Play at the
Maryland State Convention about five years ago. Each year at the state convention,
a cast of Braille readers performs a play while the audience enjoys dinner. The
cast is not always the same and is recruited each year, but the group always goes
by the name of The Braille Is Beautiful Players. I received an email stating
participants were needed for the play and that experience did not matter. I had
recently been discharged from my Braille class at the Workforce and Technology
Center in Baltimore. I knew I needed to practice to maintain my skills, but I
wanted to practice in a fun way. So, I responded to the email stating that I wanted
to be in the play. So far, so good. But I did not receive my copy of the script
until the day before the first rehearsal. I was unable to practice on my own with
such short notice, but the email had said experience did not matter.</p> <p>At
the first rehearsal, on Zoom, I experienced how amazing blind people can be. The
play we were performing was extremely long. In fact, it took us about an hour to
read it through one time. Therefore, the cast was anxious to begin. These seemingly
professional Braille readers took off like racehorses, SWOOSH! My part was ten
pages into the play, so I did not have anything to read for several minutes. When
the cast reached my segment of the play, I had no idea where they were. I was so
embarrassed! I felt like I was letting the cast down. I certainly did not think
I was an experienced Braille reader and knew I needed more practice, but my teacher
had discharged me, so I must know something, I thought. Full of shame and
embarrassment, I asked the cast to skip me and said that I would try to do better
at the next practice.</p> <p>In between rehearsals, I tried to practice, but our
play was about Louis Braille, so some of the words and names were French. I could
barely read English words, let alone French ones. At the next rehearsal, again
the “Super-Braillers” took off. I tried to follow along, but after
several page turns of the play, I lost my place. When it was my turn to read,
again I was lost and asked the cast to skip me. It was looking bad. I wanted to
be a part of the cast but felt that if experience truly did not matter, some kind
of consideration should have been taken for a novice like I was at the time. The
other cast members were laughing and bantering with one another, and I felt alone.
The director, Debbie Brown, and another cast member, Sharon Maneki, called me
individually to offer me help, but I was in my feelings by then and too proud to
ask for assistance.</p> <p>With only two rehearsals left, I realized I had to go
to plan B. I stopped trying to practice the whole play and just focused on my
lines. I only had two. Therefore, I memorized my lines and the lines immediately
before them as a cue. At the third rehearsal, I was able to perform with the cast.
By the fourth rehearsal, my solution had worked and I had no problems performing.</p>
<p>On the evening of the performance, when the cast sat together for the first
time, I was hoping to get to know someone. Maybe that would have happened if I
had chosen to have dinner with the cast, but I did not have a room at the hotel.
I commuted from home to save my money. When I arrived for the play, most everyone
had a seat already and was familiar with the person they were sitting next to.
The person I sat next to when I performed did not say one word to me at the play.
This was clearly not an intentional snub, but as I said, I was hoping to get to
know someone and I thought more people would appreciate the courage it took for
me to get on the microphone and perform with more experienced Braille readers. I
did not feel the love.</p> <p>As the saying goes, perception is reality. I think
most of this was in my head and I was just in my feelings because I was embarrassed.
I am now proud to call the person I sat next to at the play five years ago one of
my closest friends. Her name is Melissa Riccobono, and she is, among other things,
the co-host of the <em>Nation’s Blind Podcast</em>.</p> <p>----------</p>
<h2 id="indiana-drops-out-but-states-continue-to-threaten-section-504-in-lawsuit">Indiana
Drops Out, but States Continue to Threaten Section 504 in Lawsuit</h2> <p>by Anna
Claire Vollers</p> <p><strong>From the Editor: The following article originally
appeared on Stateline.org and is reprinted under the terms of the Creative Commons
License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We have edited for style and have changed the title of
the article. Just before this issue went through final proofreading and layout,
we learned that the state of South Dakota has also dropped out of the
lawsuit. </strong></p> <p>Charlotte Cravins’s son, Landry, turned two
in January. He’s a smiley little boy who loves singing “Itsy Bitsy
Spider” and recently got his first pair of glasses.</p> <p>Landry was born
with Down syndrome and has low vision. He receives publicly funded therapies that
have helped him learn to crawl, to pull himself up to stand, and to use American
Sign Language.</p> <p>Landry lives with his parents and sister in Louisiana, one
of the eight states whose attorney general has chosen to remain in a lawsuit
challenging a federal rule that protects accommodations for people with disabilities.
States are asking a federal court in Texas to declare unconstitutional a part of
federal law that requires states to provide services to disabled people in their
communities, rather than in institutions, when appropriate.</p> <p>Cravins, an
attorney, has followed the case with increasing concern. If the states succeed,
that could strip disabled people like her son of the right to publicly funded
services that allow them to live in their own homes and neighborhoods and instead
push them into institutions such as state hospitals and nursing homes.</p>
<p>“Landry is a part of our family, a part of the community,” she
said, “and to present his involvement in our family and in our community
as a burden is unconscionable.”</p> <p>The lawsuit is unusual. It began in
2024 with 17 Republican-led states suing the Biden administration over its inclusion
of gender dysphoria as a protected disability under a portion of federal law known
as Section 504. The states also challenged the constitutionality of Section 504
itself.</p> <p>But the suit has since morphed into something different.</p> <p>After
President Donald Trump was reelected and his administration made clear it would
not enforce the Biden rule protecting gender dysphoria, eight states pulled out
of the lawsuit. Their attorneys general scrambled to distance themselves from it
amid a swift backlash from the disability community that warned the suit imperiled
federal protections for all people with disabilities.</p> <p>But in a surprising
move, nine states chose to stick with the lawsuit anyway, and in January amended
their complaint.</p> <p>They’re now asking the court to strike down a part
of Section 504 that requires states to provide disabled people with services in
their communities whenever possible, rather than in institutions such as state
hospitals and nursing homes.</p> <p>It’s a maneuver that has shocked many
in the disability rights community. Those who spoke with Stateline said they have
not received answers from public officials about why the states are still pursuing
the lawsuit after the Trump administration removed federal protections for gender
dysphoria.</p> <p>The Republican attorneys general from the states involved either
did not respond to Stateline’s requests for comment or referred Stateline
to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the lawsuit. Paxton did not
respond to Stateline’s request for comment.</p> <p>Last week, a few days
after Stateline reached out, Indiana dropped out of the lawsuit, leaving eight
states remaining.</p> <p>Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, said
he remains concerned about “federal overreach into traditional state
matters” but felt that Trump’s move in December to officially exclude
gender dysphoria from Section 504 protections meant the lawsuit’s core
objective had been reached.</p> <p>“Our goal in this lawsuit was to remove
President Biden’s ridiculous addition of gender dysphoria as a disability,
which risked jeopardizing services for those who truly need them most,”
Rokita said in a statement. He noted he has a child with a disability; his son
has Angelman syndrome, which causes developmental delays.</p> <p>But eight other
states are pushing forward with the lawsuit: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana,
Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Texas.</p> <p>Cravins, Landry’s mom,
said she feels misled by Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, because
Murrill initially framed the case as being about the inclusion of gender dysphoria
and has not responded to questions about why her state remains involved after
that’s no longer an issue.</p> <p>“Other states left the lawsuit.
Louisiana didn’t. Why?” Cravins asked. She said she’s written
an open letter to Murrill about the case, with no response. “At this point,
it seems that her issue is people with disabilities living in the community.”</p>
<p>States say in their revised complaint that updates to Section 504 unfairly
restrict how they’re able to spend money and prevent them from deciding
how best to care for their own residents. They say their budgets, strained by
rising costs and workforce shortages, can’t always accommodate expensive
service changes required by the law, and that with smaller Medicaid budgets
they’re having to make hard choices. Removing the law’s “integration
mandate” would give them more flexibility.</p> <p>Disability rights advocates
respond that if the court strikes down the integration rule, it will be harder
for people with disabilities to get services in their communities. States won’t
be required to provide those as a condition of receiving federal money.</p> <p>And
they worry the states’ efforts signal a return to darker times, when disabled
people were hidden away, warehoused in institutions and far from family and
friends.</p> <p>“The reality is, the world was not built with us in mind,
and there are people who would rather us not be here,” said Kaleigh Brendle,
an advocate and college student who launched a nonprofit to push back against
efforts to defang Section 504. “Us existing in the world makes people
uncomfortable, with our braces, our canes, our wheelchairs, our differences.”</p>
<h3 id="nonpartisan-until-recently">Nonpartisan, Until Recently</h3> <p>For decades,
disability issues were largely nonpartisan. The two most consequential landmark
federal disability rights laws were signed by Republican presidents: Richard Nixon
signed the Rehabilitation Act—which includes Section 504—in 1973;
George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.</p> <p>The
requirement that states provide services for disabled people in their communities
comes from the landmark 1999 Olmstead v. L.C. ruling by the US Supreme Court.
Advocates hailed that decision as a civil rights victory that has helped shift
disability care from institutional “warehousing” to integrating
disabled people into the fabric of their communities.</p> <p>“Now the
states’ lawsuit seeks to upend all of that,” said M. Geron Gadd, a
senior attorney with the National Health Law Program who focuses on disability
rights cases.</p> <p>Gadd said that as a litigator, she’s seen states shift
how they fight disability-related cases: Instead of disputing how laws apply in
specific situations, states are increasingly challenging the thrust of the laws
themselves.</p> <p>“States seem to be much more offended by having to
conform their programs and services to basic requirements of disability law,”
said Gadd. And, she added, “It seems to have become politicized in ways
that it had not been for decades.”</p> <p>State efforts have echoed those
at the federal level.</p> <p>The Trump administration has been pushing a rule
change that would penalize disabled adults who live with their families and deduct
the value of their bedroom from the amount they receive in federal benefits. Last
year, Trump administration officials abandoned a proposal to cut disability benefits
for older workers after news reports and public outcry. The efforts have been made
in the name of government efficiency and reducing red tape, particularly in
safety-net programs.</p> <p>And in April, the US Department of Justice delayed a
Biden-era deadline—based on the Americans with Disabilities Act—for
state and local governments to update their web content to make it accessible for
people with disabilities.</p> <p>Disability rights advocates say the conservative-led
states and the US Department of Health and Human Services they are suing feel like
two sides of the same coin, with disabled people and their families caught in the
middle of the case, without a champion.</p> <h3 id="something-to-fight-back-with">‘Something
to Fight Back With’</h3> <p>When Kaleigh Brendle was seventeen, she joined
four other blind high school students in challenging a decision by the College
Board—which administers Advanced Placement tests—to replace hard-copy
Braille exams with a digital format during the COVID-19 pandemic.</p> <p>They were
successful. Brendle’s experience then, as well as her experiences pushing
to get the accommodations she needed in school, drove her to advocate for disability
rights nationally.</p> <p>She named her new advocacy nonprofit Judy’s
League, for Judy Heumann, a legendary disability rights activist known as the
“Mother of the Disability Rights Movement.” Brendle likes to quote
Heumann, who often said that disability can happen to anyone at any time.</p>
<p>Families and students with disabilities also worry the Republican states’
lawsuit could erode Section 504 protections for students if states were no longer
required to provide services in public schools and could instead direct students
to institutions.</p> <p>As a student, Brendle received services locally that helped
her learn to use a cane, to read Braille and to use accessible technology needed
to complete school coursework.</p> <p>At times she had to push for the accommodations
she needed.</p> <p>“But at least 504 gives you a leg to stand on,”
she said. “It gives you something to fight back with.”</p> <p>Similarly,
Cravins worries her son Landry could have a hard time receiving services at his
local school when he’s old enough to attend, even though he would be able
to go to school with his peers with the right support.</p> <p>National disability
rights groups—including the National Federation of the Blind, the National
Down Syndrome Society, and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund—have
continued urging the public to speak out about the possible loss of rights.</p>
<p>“It feels like it’s up to us as individuals to try and convince
these people in these positions of power to stop attacking us,” Brendle
said.</p> <h3 id="cascading-effects">Cascading Effects</h3> <p>On Monday, [May 4,
2026], the states asked the judge to decide the lawsuit without a trial. Over the
next few months, the states and feds will file briefs with the court. Disability
community groups and allies will have the chance to file briefs as well.</p> <p>If
the states prevail, it’s hard to say what the cascading legal impacts could
be. A win could trigger further litigation. Other courts might interpret the law
differently.</p> <p>A number of state laws, programs, and other efforts have been
built on the integration mandate and could be affected as well, said Mike Oxford,
a retired director of an independent living center in Topeka, Kansas, who has been
a longtime disability rights advocate.</p> <p>“I’ve seen people with
significant disabilities become great lawyers, academics, corporate leaders, on
and on,” he said. “That would not have happened” without the
integration mandate.</p> <p>Oxford said he has not gotten a response from Kansas
Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach when he asked about the case. He doesn’t
think that the attorneys general remaining in the case believe it’s still
about gender dysphoria.</p> <p>“It’s just totally ridiculous,”
he said. “They’re lawyers. They signed the new complaint. They know
what it does and doesn’t say.”</p> <p>If the court strikes down the
integration mandate, that doesn’t mean the entire law is invalidated or
in-community services automatically cease.</p> <p>But it does mean that if a family
were denied services outside of an institution, they’d likely have to pursue
litigation each time to fight the decision, Cravins said.</p> <p>“I think
it’s important for the average citizen to realize that laws only work when
there is enforcement behind them,” she said.</p> <p>----------</p> <h2
id="once-again-the-federal-government-delays-equal-access">Once Again, the Federal
Government Delays Equal Access</h2> <p>by Chris Danielsen</p> <p><strong>From the
Editor: The following is an updated version of an article that originally appeared
on the <em>Braille Monitor Early Access</em> blog. It has been revised to reflect
additional developments since first publication.</strong></p> <p>On April 20,
2026, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), as we feared, published an
interim final rule (IFR) in the <em>Federal Register</em> extending the compliance
dates for the recently adopted web accessibility rule under Title II of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). We first learned of this on April 17, when
a pre-publication version of the IFR was posted on the DOJ’s website. The
now-delayed rule, originally finalized in 2024, requires state and local governments
to ensure that their websites, mobile applications, and other digital services
are accessible to people with disabilities, including blind and deafblind users
who rely on screen readers and other nonvisual access technology.</p> <p>The DOJ
had been signaling this move for at least the last few months, but we had hoped
to forestall it. Prior to the issuance of the Interim Final Rule, the Federation
submitted a detailed letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi urging the Department
not to weaken or postpone the requirements. That letter explained that blind people
had already waited decades for enforceable, uniform digital accessibility standards
and that further delay would undermine both the intent and the effectiveness of
the ADA. Prior to that, we had sent a similar but shorter letter to the director
of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where the Interim
Final Rule, at that time not public, was under review. We had also met with the
Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Civil Rights. So, we were disappointed,
but not surprised, when the bad news came.</p> <p>The April 2026 IFR delays the
compliance deadlines—one for cities and counties with populations of 50,000
or more and a later one for those with fewer than 50,000 people—that were
intended to ensure timely access to critical government services online. The first
deadline was originally April 24, 2026, with the other roughly a year later, but
now they have both been moved back a year, so that the smaller entities will not
need to comply until the spring of 2028. There is also language in the IFR ominously
signaling that further rulemaking may be forthcoming. Given that the Interim Final
Rule already delays compliance, we expect nothing good to come from further efforts
to substantively alter the 2024 regulations.</p> <p>The National Federation of
the Blind responded swiftly, releasing a video message underscoring the real-world
consequences for blind Americans on the day that the unpublished version of the
IFR came out and following up with an official press statement condemning the
delay. Here is a transcript of the video released on Friday, April 17:</p>
<blockquote> <p>I’m Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation
of the Blind, and I’m here—in our empty computer lab—to talk
about our outrage. The United States Department of Justice, Office of Civil Rights,
has released an interim final rule related to ADA Title II web accessibility and
digital regulations.</p> <p>Why am I here in this empty room? Because the government
has said it’s okay for blind people to continue to wait to get equal access
to state government, to education, and to other forms of digital access through
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.</p> <p>But wait! We have already
been waiting.</p> <p>We’ve been waiting for two years since this rule was
announced. Two years. So we’ve been waiting—already. Outrageous that
we should have to wait longer.</p> <p>But it gets even worse. Because it hasn’t
just been two years. The original advance rulemaking was sixteen years ago—in
2010. Blind people have been waiting to get access to paying our taxes, to education,
to so many government services. Waiting.</p> <p>But it’s been even longer
than that. The Americans with Disabilities Act—this promise—was
given to Americans with disabilities in 1990, 1990!</p> <p>America is celebrating
this year our 250th anniversary—the promise that this nation makes for
equal access. And we’ve been guaranteed this promise not just in the
Constitution, but through the Americans with Disabilities Act, starting in 1990.
Outrageous that the Department of Justice wants us to wait even longer.</p> <p>The
National Federation of the Blind is prepared to continue to advocate—and
to continue to push forward—to make sure that blind people no longer have
to wait for the doors to be opened for us to have equal access to the digital
services provided by our state and local governments.</p> </blockquote> <p>Here
is the statement issued on April 20, the day of official publication of the IFR:</p>
<h3
id="national-federation-of-the-blind-condemns-doj-interim-final-rule-signaling-delay-of-ada-title-ii-digital-accessibility-enforcement">National
Federation of the Blind Condemns DOJ Interim Final Rule Signaling Delay of ADA
Title II Digital Accessibility Enforcement</h3> <blockquote> <p><strong>BALTIMORE,
MD (April 20, 2026)</strong> — The National Federation of the Blind
(NFB) today expresses outrage in response to news that the US Department of Justice
has issued an interim final rule regarding ADA Title II website and mobile
application accessibility that delays implementation and accountability for state
and local government digital accessibility.</p> <p>The Title II website accessibility
regulation, issued on April 24, 2024, was scheduled to take effect on April 24,
2026. We urged the Department to protect the rule, and we opposed any attempt to
delay, rescind, or otherwise undermine it. Accessible digital services are essential
for blind people to access education, pay taxes, obtain public benefits, and
participate fully in civic life.</p> <p>Title II has required since 1990 that
state and local governments ensure communications with blind and other disabled
people are “as effective as” communications with nondisabled
individuals, and the Department of Justice has long made clear that this includes
web and mobile communications.</p> <p>The 2024 regulation provides the clarity
public entities have requested by setting a recognized technical standard, allowing
equivalent facilitation, and including targeted exceptions and phased-in timelines.
It was announced on April 20 through the interim final rule published in the
Federal Register that the Department is delaying implementation of the rule,
without going through advanced notice to the public and opportunities for public
comment.</p> <p>“After more than a decade of advocacy for clarity on website
accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), we finally have a
Title II regulation that provides the roadmap public entities need to make their
digital services accessible to blind people in the United States. The effort to
weaken and delay this rule is a betrayal of the promise America made when it
enacted the ADA, which guaranteed our rights to participate fully in the mainstream
of American life,” stated Mark A. Riccobono, President of the National
Federation of the Blind. “The organized blind movement will not stand idle
while the Department of Justice undermines the very regulation we fought so hard
to achieve. Blind Americans deserve timely access to government services.”</p>
<p>Delaying digital accessibility has real consequences for blind people at every
stage of life—from students and working professionals to seniors accessing
public services. An immediate concern is the impact on blind students who are
among those most directly harmed when public entities rely on inaccessible websites
and mobile apps for course materials, assignments, and student portals.</p> <p>When
information is not accessible, blind students are excluded from the same curricula
as their peers, face delays in completing coursework and degrees, and encounter
unnecessary barriers to entering the workforce and participating fully in society.</p>
</blockquote> <p>The bad news did not stop there. On May 8, 2026, the Department
of Health and Human Services delayed the implementation of rules enforcing Section
504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which among other things would have required
accessible digital services from healthcare entities that receive federal funds.
This action was also disappointing but not surprising; the regulatory processes
for both ADA Title II and Section 504 had been paralleling each other for some
time, and in anticipation of just such a possible delay, we had already expressed
our objections to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and to the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs.</p> <h3 id="what-comes-next">What Comes
Next</h3> <p>The Federation is calling on our members and allies to make their
voices heard. We encourage members to submit their stories of unequal access to
state and local governments or to healthcare to the email address <a
href="mailto:story@nfb.org">story@nfb.org</a>. Members can also submit stories
over the phone by calling 410-659-9314, extension 2444, and leaving a detailed
voice message. Further information will be forthcoming about additional actions
our movement will take in opposition to this further delaying of our rights.</p>
<p>The promise of our nation’s laws is clear: blind people are entitled to
full and equal participation in all aspects of society. In today’s world,
that participation depends on digital access. Extending compliance deadlines does
not move the nation closer to equality; it moves us further away.</p> <p>The
National Federation of the Blind will continue to advocate for strong, enforceable
accessibility standards and to oppose any action that delays or weakens them.
Blind and deafblind people have waited long enough!</p> <p>----------</p> <p>[PHOTO
CAPTION: Mark Riccobono]</p> <p>[PHOTO CAPTION: Eve Hill]</p> <h2
id="doj-delay-of-ada-web-rule-undermines-equal-access">DOJ Delay of ADA Web Rule
Undermines Equal Access</h2> <p>by Mark Riccobono and Eve Hill</p> <p><strong>From
the Editor: The following piece appeared on the Expert Analysis page of the website
Law360.com on April 23, 2026. It is written by President Riccobono and Eve Hill,
general counsel to the National Federation of the Blind. The footnotes that appeared
in the original have been omitted.</strong></p> <p>The bipartisan Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush,
has existed nearly as long as the internet. Since its enactment, which Bush touted
as his greatest achievement, government entities—specifically state and
local governments—have moved online. Applying for benefits, getting an
education, paying taxes, accessing public records, and participating in civic life
increasingly happens through websites and mobile applications. For those with
disabilities, the ADA promises that those digital doors should be open to them.
However, state and local governments claimed that they needed more regulatory
direction. In April 2024, they got it when the US Department of Justice (DOJ)
issued a final regulation governing the accessibility of state and local
governments’ web information and services.</p> <p>Then, ahead of the
regulation’s April 2026 and 2027 compliance dates, the DOJ announced on
April 20 that it was moving the compliance dates back a year. This delay negatively
affects all involved and is not necessary.</p> <p>The 2024 rule was hardly a
surprise to Title II covered entities. It was published in April 2024 after fourteen
years of public process and consideration, and nearly 1,000 comments from
stakeholders. Notably, the rule provided a series of exceptions—for archived
content, preexisting documents, individualized password-protected documents, and
third-party content—that do not currently exist under the effective
communication requirement of the ADA. It also provided delayed compliance dates
of two and three years from its issuance, depending on entity size. So rather than
burdening state and local governments, the rule actually reduced the burdens on
those entities.</p> <p>For disabled Americans who have waited decades for reliable
access to government services online, the 2024 rule represents long-overdue
progress. It also provides the exact regulatory clarity that public entities spent
years requesting. For example, it spells out the precise technical standard that
is to be used to determine if and when a website or mobile app is fully accessible,
thus giving entities a firm benchmark to measure against and a legal defense if
the resource’s accessibility is called into question. Nonetheless, the
National Association of Counties and the National League of Cities asked that the
deadline be extended to mid-2027. The DOJ’s new interim final rule grants
an extension of an additional year for entities with populations of 50,000 or more
to comply and extends the deadline to 2028 for entities with smaller populations.</p>
<p>The DOJ is providing the public with an opportunity to comment on the interim
final rule until June 22. And on top of the unjustified delay, the DOJ indicated
that it might not be done undermining or eliminating the 2024 rule. Without further
specification, it stated that “the Department plans to engage in future
rulemaking processes related to the substantive requirements of the 2024 final
rule.”</p> <p>The DOJ says that its primary reason for issuing the interim
final rule is cost; it cites the arguments of lobbyists and its purported internal
findings that governments simply don’t have the resources to meet the
regulatory requirements. But the legal obligations won’t actually change
in the absence of the regulations, as the DOJ itself acknowledges. Instead, covered
entities will simply have to dedicate resources toward other ways of maintaining
effective communication with disabled residents. For example, in the absence of
an accessible website, they will need to staff phone lines so that blind people
who cannot access their services online can do so over the phone, and that will
likely require hiring more employees. This won’t save money; it will likely
cost even more than making websites and mobile apps accessible.</p> <p>Furthermore,
delaying the regulation does nothing to decrease the legal exposure of these
entities, which can still be sued by private individuals or the federal government
for denying access to people with disabilities, which is already required by the
ADA. Finally, as the DOJ also acknowledges, disabled citizens will be forced to
request that individual documents and resources that are inaccessible be made
accessible during the delay. Local governments may well find themselves inundated
with such requests, which means that rather than focusing on overall compliance,
as the DOJ claims to hope for, they will be spending their limited staff and
resources putting out accessibility fires. In short, rather than relieving costs
and burdens, the delay simply imposes more.</p> <p>At the same time, the cost to
people with disabilities is already high, and the consequences of delay are
implacable. For instance, delay is not an abstraction for a blind college student
who cannot submit an assignment because a university website is inaccessible. Will
the university grant an extension of the assignment deadline? Likewise, for a
disabled resident who is trying to apply for benefits, pay taxes, or access public
records, inaccessible websites mean exclusion from essential services. Will their
tax deadline be excused because the online payment system is inaccessible or
because they are waiting for the city or county to remediate the inaccessible tax
bill they received?</p> <p>The legal obligation is not new. The ADA’s
requirement for equally effective communication has existed for more than thirty
years and the 2024 rule clarified how that obligation applies to the modern digital
world. The compliance delay and the very real possibility that the rule will be
further undermined or eliminated ultimately benefit no one. The cost to disabled
Americans is clear, but state and local governments do not benefit either, as
nothing about the delay changes their legal obligations or materially diminishes
the risk of costly litigation. Likewise, covered entities should not take any
comfort in the idea that the DOJ may substantively change the regulation, as that
process will take more time and create more uncertainty. The interim final rule
should therefore be rescinded, and governments should get down to the work of
collaborating with their disabled citizens to create an online environment that
is accessible to everyone. If they do, the end result will be better for all
concerned.</p> <p>----------</p> <h2 id="from-the-presidents-desk">From the
President’s Desk</h2> <p><strong>From the Editor: The following is recent
correspondence from the President of the National Federation of the Blind to the
United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and the United States
Secretary of Health and Human Services. Both letters are official comments regarding
regulatory actions that have been taken by these officials. The letter to the
Assistant Attorney General</strong> <strong>is presented without the footnotes
and reference links that were in the original version. To see the document in its
original form, visit <a href="https://nfb.org/advocacy">https://nfb.org/advocacy</a>,
then click on Policy Statements.</strong></p> <p>April 30, 2026</p> <p>The Honorable
Harmeet Dhillon<br /> Assistant Attorney General<br /> Civil Rights Division<br
/> United States Department of Justice<br /> 150 M Street, NE<br /> Washington,
DC 20002</p> <p>RE: RIN 1190-AA82</p> <p>Dear Assistant Attorney General Dhillon:</p>
<p>The National Federation of the Blind, the transformative membership and advocacy
organization of blind Americans, appreciates the opportunity to comment on the
Interim Final Rule (IFR) regarding the regulation to establish specific requirements
for web and mobile apps offered by state and local governments to the public, in
accordance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). We were
pleased to see the Department of Justice (DOJ) moving forward with the regulation
addressing website and mobile application accessibility after fourteen years of
rulemaking and public comments. However, this IFR delaying the rule’s
implementation for a year, while also proposing to consider further changes to
the final rule, is deeply concerning.</p> <p>First and foremost, as we stated in
our June 2025 and two March 2026 letters to the administration, any delay of the
compliance deadline for the rule is utterly unnecessary. The DOJ even referenced
our 2025 letter in the IFR, noting that we argued the rule “went through
fourteen years of consideration, public input, and adjustment, and the Department
accurately estimated the costs and burdens of the rule.” To contest our
point, the Department argued in the IFR “the length of time spent considering
the issues covered by the 2024 final rule is irrelevant to whether covered entities
can comply with the deadlines.” We respectfully disagree with this
assertion.</p> <p>Covered entities have known for more than a decade that a digital
accessibility rule was in the works, that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.1 Level AA—an internationally recognized consensus standard for
digital accessibility—was published in June 2018, and that the WCAG 2.1 AA
standard was proposed in the August 2023 NPRM. No matter how we choose to look at
this, covered entities have had a minimum of three years to familiarize themselves
with a set of guidelines that has existed since 2018. Delaying implementation or
enforcement for another year only acknowledges that covered entities knew the law,
did not meet it, and are now being given a pass rather than being held to the
standards they could have been meeting for years.</p> <p>Furthermore, the Department
of Justice itself has been requiring WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance in settlements
and Project Civic Access agreements for years. There is, quite literally, no need
to delay the compliance dates when the DOJ, private attorneys, and courts are
already using the standard. Additionally, the tools, techniques, and expertise
needed to implement WCAG 2.1 are well established and commercially available, and
thousands of organizations, including many state and local governments, have
already achieved compliance. Far from underestimating the burden of coming into
compliance, given the rapid development of simple and inexpensive tools for making
existing and new content accessible, if anything, the final rule overestimated
the cost and difficulty of compliance.</p> <p>Moreover, the ADA already provides
two general defenses to deal with any burden: (1) undue burden and (2) fundamental
alteration. Both of these longstanding exceptions are well-recognized by Americans
with disabilities and by the United States legal system. The IFR explicitly
acknowledges this. To be frank, the relevance of the undue burden defense is being
mitigated through the advancement of technology. We are living in an era where
digital accessibility is already relatively easy to attain, and it is only getting
easier. Therefore, there is simply no basis for an assumption that covered entities
will face a significant burden to make their websites and mobile apps accessible.</p>
<p>However, the final rule goes further; adding five new classes of exception to
the requirement to make web and app content accessible. These exceptions relieve
covered entities of the need to make much pre-existing content accessible, thus
further reducing any burden. As we indicated in our 2023 comments on this subject,
the proposed exceptions go far beyond the current undue burden and fundamental
alteration defenses and therefore substantively decrease the obligations of existing
law. The proposed exceptions exempt broad swaths of new and existing content
regardless of how easy the content is to make accessible, regardless of the
resources available to do so, and regardless of whether a covered entity ever
actually raised and defended an affirmative defense in the first place. These
exceptions allow covered entities to focus their efforts on making new content
accessible—which is inexpensive and simple to accomplish.</p> <p>Two to
three years was more than enough time for covered entities to develop processes
and procedures to ensure new content is accessible. Any delay in compliance does
not “lead to greater accessibility for individuals with disabilities because
more time and resources will be devoted directly to compliance with the substantive
requirements of the 2024 final rule” as the IFR claims. It compounds the
problem by allowing for the creation of more new and inaccessible content. Providing
accessibility for new web content is neither unduly burdensome nor costly, and
covered entities should not be able to avoid providing accessibility for new
content unless they can demonstrate that doing so would actually constitute an
undue burden or fundamental alteration. Requiring still another year before being
in compliance with the law is an outrageous admission that the civil rights of
Americans with disabilities are not a priority.</p> <p>It is true that some existing
content may properly be subject to an exception because it may arguably be presumed
that it will be burdensome in most instances. However, new content should never
be presumed to be burdensome to make accessible in the absence of some unusual
constraint on the resources of the particular covered entity. The entity is in
the best position to determine what those constraints are, to document them in
real-time, and to respond affirmatively to assertions of liability. People with
disabilities should not lose access to important government information, including
new content by large entities, simply because some small entities may, for reasons
unique to them, have difficulty complying. Those entities already have an additional
year to comply and a defense available to them.</p> <p>Here again, failing to
implement and enforce the rule now because of the Department’s belief that
entities will fail to comply only serves to provide a pretextual justification
for continuing to deny people with disabilities the access guaranteed by law. It
is preposterous for the Department to say simultaneously that the law already
protects people with disabilities, that the law must be enhanced because it is
not actually protecting people with disabilities, and also that such enhancements
will come eventually, but not today, not this year, but maybe next year or the
year after that, all because some entities may have an undue burden that they have
yet to raise or support.</p> <p>Although the Department says that covered entities
were surprised by how difficult it was to remediate barriers using AI, did not
have the resources to provide manual remediation, and did not understand the
relevant technical guidelines, we remind the Department that the National Federation
of the Blind did raise each of those issues in its comments in 2023. Covered
entities who failed to be in compliance could have, but chose not to, collaborate
with us and other affected parties to attend proactively to each of those issues
across the past three years. Failing to attempt to comply with the law is not an
appropriate defense to breaking it.</p> <p>Third, as the IFR states, “If
the 2024 final rule’s compliance dates take effect before the covered
entities have had sufficient time to make their web content and mobile apps comply
with the terms of the rule, those entities would face significant litigation risks.
Congress created a private right of action in Title II.” This is only
partially true. As the IFR notes, a private right of action is already available
under the ADA. The thousands of lawsuits that get filed every year, targeting
digital accessibility specifically, are not dependent upon this rule. For example,
in 2025 3,117 ADA Title III website accessibility lawsuits were filed in federal
courts. Note that statistic is for ADA Title III website accessibility suits, and
that rulemaking for Title III has not progressed beyond an Advance Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) published on July 26, 2010, coincidentally the same
exact date as the Title II ANPRM. Lawsuits regarding digital accessibility under
both Title II and Title III of the ADA proceed directly under the ADA statute and
the existing regulations.</p> <p>If anything, further delaying the compliance
deadline does not reduce litigation risk; it increases it by removing the one
clear, predictable technical standard and exceptions that Title II covered entities
could rely on. Without the rule’s compliance framework, courts will be at
leisure to continue applying the ADA’s general effective-communication
standard for digital content without defined benchmarks for compliance. The
Department posits, somewhat incorrectly, that letting covered entities “face
lawsuits for failure to comply with such unreasonable compliance deadlines would
conflict with one of the foundational precepts of law, that no one is bound to do
what is impossible.” We would counter with another foundational legal
precept: ignorance of the law is not a valid defense.</p> <p>Finally, in what is
by far the most concerning part of the IFR, the Department states: “...
the Department plans to engage in future rulemaking processes related to the
substantive requirements of the 2024 final rule. During the extension period, the
Department will consider issuing an NPRM providing members of the public with an
opportunity to comment on the substance of the 2024 final rule and any changes
proposed by the Department.” This sentence transforms the IFR from a mere
delay into a staging action for a far more consequential attack on the rule itself.
The National Federation of the Blind is categorically opposed to further limiting
the scope of the final rule as published in 2024. As we have repeatedly pointed
out, the rule offers covered entities five additional exemptions beyond those
provided by undue burden and fundamental alteration. This watering down of our
rights is wrong enough. Any additional reduction in our rights is not merely a
subtraction of those rights, but an exponential decrease. The National Federation
of the Blind would stand in direct opposition to such degradation and would work
tirelessly to ensure it does not come to fruition.</p> <p>In closing, the National
Federation of the Blind again appreciates the opportunity to comment on the ADA
Title II Website Accessibility Interim Final Rule. We urge the Department of
Justice to let the rule go into effect with no further delay. We further urge the
Department of Justice to immediately cease any plans or efforts toward additional
rulemaking on this regulation. We look forward to the entire rule being implemented
and enforced. If there are any further questions, or if we can be of assistance
in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us.</p> <p>Sincerely,<br /> Mark A.
Riccobono, President<br /> National Federation of the Blind</p> <p>May 5, 2026</p>
<p>Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. <br /> Secretary<br /> Department of Health and
Human Services<br /> 200 Independence Avenue<br /> Washington, DC 20201</p> <p>RE:
RIN 0945-AA30</p> <p>Dear Secretary Kennedy:</p> <p>The National Federation of
the Blind is the transformative membership and advocacy organization of blind
Americans. Throughout our more than eighty-five year history, we have sought to
advance the lives of all blind people in the United States. A major driver of that
advancement during our existence has been equal access to information, particularly
digital information.</p> <p>It is for this reason that we oppose any attempt to
delay, rescind, or otherwise undermine the effectiveness of the Final Rule regarding
Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Programs or Activities Receiving
Federal Financial Assistance (89 FR 40066) that is set to take effect on May 11,
2026.</p> <p>The Section 504 final rule, published on May 9, 2024, pertains to
entities that receive HHS funding under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of
1973 including public and private schools, public and private colleges, hospitals,
and social service agencies.</p> <p>While reflecting a compromise between the
needs of people with disabilities and the resources of covered entities, the
clarity provided by the final rule is important to the lives of people with
disabilities. The inaccessibility of digital materials is one of the most significant
barriers to blind people being able to achieve their full potential and make their
rightful contribution to American society.</p> <p>Moreover, the final rule provides
exactly the clarity that covered entities have been requesting regarding their
obligations under Section 504 to make their websites and mobile applications
accessible. Since 1973, Section 504 has required covered entities to ensure their
communications with individuals with disabilities are “as effective as”
communications with nondisabled individuals.</p> <p>In the more than five decades
since, the Department has made it clear that this standard also applies to websites
and mobile applications and has issued guidance documents providing technical
assistance to covered entities.</p> <p>The final rule clarifies what is required
to meet Section 504’s equally effective communication requirement in the
context of digital information. It provides a clear technical standard based on
an internationally recognized and widely adopted consensus standard.</p> <p>It
also provides flexibility by allowing covered entities to achieve equivalent
facilitation and preventing liability for inaccessible elements that do not
substantively affect the usability of a website or mobile application.</p>
<p>Notably, the rule also provides a series of exceptions, presumably implemented
at the behest of covered entities, establishing web and mobile application elements
and content that do not have to be made accessible. These exceptions are not
available under the pre-existing equally effective communication requirement.</p>
<p>Although the equally effective communication requirement has been in effect
for decades, the final rule also provides delayed effective dates of two or three
years, depending on the size of the covered entity. Thus, rather than burdening
those entities, the rule actually reduces their burdens.</p> <p>The final rule
reflects exactly what public entities have been seeking for years—a clear,
transparent shared understanding of the applicable legal requirements. The final
rule is clear and comprehensible, does not stray from legislative intent, and
provides additional exceptions beyond what was established in the law.</p> <p>There
is no basis for reconsidering the Section 504 final rule, which has already gone
through the traditional process of public input and adjustment, and which is based
on a requirement in existence for nearly fifty years.</p> <p>Additionally, public
entities have had numerous years to prepare for the requirements that have been
actively requested by stakeholders on all sides. Conversely, delaying or amending
the regulation at this point would severely harm blind and other disabled Americans
by denying us access to critical information. We urge that you withdraw the Interim
Final Rule immediately.</p> <p>Thank you for your attention to this important
issue.</p> <p>Sincerely,<br /> Mark A. Riccobono, President<br /> National Federation
of the Blind</p> <p>----------</p> <h2 id="nfb-pledge">NFB Pledge</h2> <p>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.</p> </body>
</html>