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Vol. 62, No. 7 July 2019
Gary Wunder, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive, by the
The National Federation of the Blind
Mark Riccobono, President
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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.
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Vol. 62, No. 7 July 2019
Illustration: Art Coming Out from Behind Glass Displays
Creating a More Perfect Union: The Role that a More Perfect JTB Law Symposium Can Play
by Gary Wunder
When Two or More are Gathered: The Power of One with a Multiplier
by Adelmo Vigil
Leave a Legacy
The Injustice of Disability-Based Subminimum Wages
by Justin Salisbury
The Gem of Rocky Bottom
by Shelley Coppel
Dr. James Nyman: An Unconventional Man Embracing Unconventional Solutions
by Fredric Schroeder
The Buzzsaw, the Plumber’s Skillet, and the Montana City Hardware Café
by Dan Burke
The Best of Both Worlds: The QBraille XL Almost Perfectly
Blends a Braille Display and a USB Keyboard
by Karl Belanger
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
Copyright 2019 by the National Federation of the Blind
John Olson and 3DPhotoWorks have worked together with the National Federation of the Blind for several years now. From the tactile timeline at the 2015 National Convention to the Newseum exhibit of tactile photography in 2018, they have been working to make art accessible to the blind. And their work has not gone unnoticed.
On May 20, 2019, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) had its trade show in New Orleans, and the National Federation of the Blind and 3DPhotoWorks were there. They brought the bas-relief versions of photographs with touchpoints that activated audio descriptions of elements of the photos that debuted at the Newseum, large quotes from Federationists posted visibly, and a ten-foot blowup of President Riccobono’s open letter to museum leadership about the importance of finding ways to make art accessible for the blind and visually impaired.
And the museum community is listening. Leadership for the AAM spoke about ways that they are trying to make its collections more accessible for the disability community as a whole: special hours with lowered light and sound levels for patrons who are autistic or have sensory processing disorders, websites or apps designed to work with screen readers for the blind, along with less high-tech methods of accessibility. And it’s not just American museums, either. The Singapore Museum has commissioned three artists to make touchable adaptations of its own works (with more planned), and the Louvre has commissioned small low-relief models of parts of its exterior for exhibits about the museum’s history.
by Gary Wunder
The work of Dr. Jacobus tenBroek’s life extended far beyond people who are blind. He was concerned with all of those who were disenfranchised by society as evidenced by his writings and his service. He wrote The Right to Live in the World and made frequent contributions to other publications of the time. He also served on the California State Social Welfare Board and for a number of years served as its chairman. To honor and further his work, the National Federation of the Blind holds the Jacobus tenBroek Law Symposium. It speaks to discrimination experienced by all people with disabilities, and its goal has been to have speakers representing those whose voice society has not heard or heeded.
But as progressive as we have tried to be, our efforts in being inclusive and fully representative have sometimes fallen short of the ideal Dr. tenBroek’s work created. Our work to be inclusive has taken many forms. First, we recognized that our organization did not always welcome people of color and to say through word and action that this was unacceptable. Of course, this was well-intentioned but not enough. We then created a group to deal with issues faced by people of color, but in retrospect we worked so hard at emphasizing our commonality as blind people that we did not fully appreciate or embrace the issues that needed to be addressed that were unique to those of us of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, or any of the other characteristics that provide different perspectives.
Embracing includes actively recruiting and accepting the talents of the groups who have for too long been on the fringe of our organization. We continued our evolution with the creation of the Underserved Populations Committee, but what we have come to understand is that failing to reject a group isn’t the same as embracing and really listening to its members. We reorganized the Diversity and Inclusion Committee in 2017 to reflect new thinking, emphasis, and direction. Next we crafted a policy statement that put in writing our expectations of one another, and in 2018 we published our code of conduct which again was a combination of codifying in formal policy what we have long strived to do in practice.
While we would prefer to believe that we are ahead of the curve and are able to see and bring about the changes required in our treatment of one another as equal members, sometimes internal processes are not enough, and we need to listen to the outside world. This presumes that the outside world also respects what we do and offers its criticism because it believes we are open to and able to change our behavior. We believe that this was the case when we received an open letter suggesting that our symposium has not worked hard enough to hear the voices of those who have for too long gone unheard, unheeded, unrepresented, and consequently underappreciated and underutilized in our movement.
Below is an open letter to the tenBroek Disability Law Symposium Steering Committee, and following it is a response from President Riccobono. After his response we are including a list of activities that will take place during the national convention intended to do a better job of listening to and being influenced by all of the intersectional voices that are a part of our role as the leading consumer organization of the blind. Our approach will be to continue to actively work to further the rights of blind people and to put equal energy into seeing that we warmly embrace and listen to all of the groups that make up the community of blind people we wish to serve and represent. Here is the open letter:
April 5, 2019
Dear Steering Committee Members:
We write this letter in our personal capacities as lawyers, law students, and advocates dedicated to disability rights advocacy. We are current and former attendees of the tenBroek Disability Law Symposium, some of us for years, others in years past, and some for the first time. Some of us have also served on the Steering Committee. A few have desired but have never been able to attend. We come from different backgrounds, specialties, and areas of practice within the broad realms of disability rights and disability justice. What brings us together to write this letter is our concern about the systemic problems that exist within the tenBroek Disability Law Symposium regarding diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
We do not take lightly the decision to write a public letter such as this one. This, however, is a topic that has been brought up year after year, privately, and both formally and informally to members of the planning committee and other voices of influence within the conference. Unfortunately, these efforts have proven unproductive at best. Eventually, when dealing with matters of such importance to the community we claim to represent, a public approach becomes necessary.
The Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium is a space of great potential as an important gathering of disability rights lawyers, advocates, and other professionals to discuss matters pertaining to disability law. Unfortunately, like so many spaces in disability advocacy, this Symposium has excluded voices of color and LGBTQ voices in favor of predominantly white, cisgender, male voices. As an example, in 2019, during the first day of the Symposium, there were no speakers of color during the plenary sessions and only one during the breakout sessions.
Over the years, sessions about topics that disproportionately and predominantly impact people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, and other marginalized communities have been led by all-white, predominantly cisgender male panels. These topics include immigration, intersectionality, incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, and international disability rights, among many others. Rarer still are moderators, keynote or plenary speakers, and panelists with lived experiences related to these issues, which many other conferences and symposia have long-since begun to include. Some of these directly affected people included in other conference spaces include people who have been homeless or who have been targeted for criminalization—both issues that were discussed at length during this year’s conference with no representation from affected persons.
This leads to an environment at the conference that is largely unwelcoming to people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, and people from other marginalized identities with disabilities in the profession. In past and present conferences, many of us have witnessed or experienced time and time again, unintentional and intentional prejudice on the part of tenBroek participants and organizers, often in the form of jokes and demeaning comments. Many participants with marginalized identities who have attended tenBroek in the past have stopped attending precisely because of these issues—leaving feeling unwelcome in this space and by extension, in the movement and profession.
When these issues are brought up, the response is often a demand for “non-white” lawyers to “step up” or “help out,” with little or no acknowledgement of the work marginalized people have been putting in to engage with and shift these problematic dynamics. In truth, it is people in positions of power who must take proactive action to remedy these kinds of systemic problems. Shifting the burden of responsibility, rather than assuming it, unjustly puts the onus on marginalized people to remedy that which they often have no structural power to change.
For too long, the burden of improving diversity and responding to the nature of intersectional identities has rested on the most marginalized among us, and it is not acceptable. Other times when these concerns are raised, we have been met with vitriol, defensiveness, or excuses (e.g., personally attacking people who raise concerns or claiming that underrepresentation is only because lawyers of color are not interested in participating) or have tried to shut down conversation by claiming that the act of identifying these problems is “uncivil.”
This prevalence of racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ oppression, ageism, defensiveness, and exclusion is unacceptable within any activist community. It is anathema to the very core of the values of the disability community.
At a minimum, we believe that the following changes must take place for tenBroek to begin rectifying these wrongs as it aspires to honor Jacobus tenBroek’s legacy of full and meaningful inclusion:
We write this letter from a place of love and deep concern for the future of the symposium, and the disability rights profession and disabled communities after years of frustration. We cannot engage in the same practices, year after year, while expecting advancement for our profession, communities, or movements. As the advocates who claim to represent such an incredibly diverse community, we must evolve if we wish to remain part of the movement.
Sincerely,
Nancy Alisberg
Zainab Alkebsi
Alexis Alvarez
Ma’ayan Anafi
Torie Atkinson
Sam Bagenstos
Rabia Belt
Zoe Brennan-Krohn
Lydia X. Z. Brown
Debbye Byrne
Claudia Center
Natalie M. Chin
Sarah Colby
Sam Crane
Richard Diaz
Esperanza Dillard
Nida Din
Tim Fox
Dustin Gibson
Karla Gilbride
Pilar Gonzalez
Deepa Goraya
Kelly Israel
Scott Huffman
Caroline Jackson
Jinny Kim
Rachael Langston
Martie Lafferty
Talila A. Lewis
Katherine Mathews
Jennifer Mathis
Caitlin Parton
Katherine Pérez
Jamelia Morgan
Tifanei Ressl-Moyer
Gena Rinaldi
Amy Robertson
Rebecca Rodgers
Victoria M. Rodríguez-Roldán
Mehgan Sidhu
Ariel Simms
Brianna Terrell
Michelle Uzeta
Shira Wakschlag
Stephanie Woodward
Silvia Yee
Here is the letter President Riccobono wrote in response:
April 12, 2019
Dear Colleagues,
On behalf of the National Federation of the Blind Board of Directors, this letter is to thank the signatories for raising the issues detailed in “An Open Letter to the tenBroek Disability Law Symposium Steering Committee” dated April 5, 2019. We acknowledge and take responsibility for the concerns raised regarding the Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium. In this response, we hope to clarify the evolution of the disability rights efforts we are involved in and to make some initial commitments to evolving the Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium specifically.
We understand and take responsibility for the fact that individuals have been harmed by the actions that we have or have not taken. The letter also makes it clear that hostility and misdirected blame have been unfairly targeted at the segments of the population that are most underrepresented at the symposium. We commit to seeking more effective ways of listening and acting on concerns raised in the future and more fully pursuing the standards of equity and social justice that Dr. tenBroek championed. We apologize for our role in creating, explicitly or implicitly, a hostile and exclusionary environment in our law symposium. We have heard the urgent need for stronger representation of people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ, people from other marginalized identities with disabilities, as well as voices with lived experience regarding the topics being discussed. The commitment of the National Federation of the Blind to diversity is real, and we are prepared to evolve the Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium to ensure that it leads the way in broadening the diversity of disability rights generally. We invite, and in fact need you to be a part of this evolution.
As President of the National Federation of the Blind, I have the ultimate responsibility for the programs we conduct and the environment that we create for guests to our events in and outside our building. The Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium is one of the most important events that we organize and host, and I am deeply disappointed that we have missed the mark in meeting the highest expectations for the symposium. The steering committee, along with a number of the Federation’s volunteer members and Federation staff, helps to guide our work on the symposium. It is worth acknowledging that our steering committee members have volunteered dozens of hours of their time to share their ideas, connections, and insights to continue building the symposium into a dynamic community. We believe that they are also people who work from a place of love, and I know they share my disappointment that an important set of voices in our movement have been unintentionally or unconsciously unwelcomed and excluded. We acknowledge that we have work to do in formalizing the process for engaging individuals including people of color and people who identify as LGBTQ on our tenBroek steering committee. We are further committed to more clearly articulating the role of the steering committee and ensuring that they, like leaders of the Federation, remain guided by the diversity statement found in the NFB’s Code of Conduct.
We would like to take this opportunity to make it clear that while the National Federation of the Blind has been a strong supporter of the development of the Disability Rights Bar Association, it does not dictate the policies and practices of that entity. The National Federation of the Blind has supported that community through financial and in-kind support, and many of our members are active in the DRBA. However, the Federation does not direct the priorities of that organization. We have tried to create synergy through the tenBroek Symposium by providing space and resources to programs like DRBA and, more recently, the Deaf Law Day, to bring the community together rather than divide it. It is clear from the letter that our collaboration in these activities has created uncertainty about how they are planned and organized and who has responsibility for them. On behalf of the National Federation of the Blind, we plan to seek ways to make the processes more transparent and to share the priorities of diversity and inclusion with programs that are conducted in partnership with the symposium.
Seven specific items were identified as necessary reforms for us to achieve the quality of community at the Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium that we all want to experience, and we commit to considering those as important guides in shaping the symposium of the future. It would be disingenuous to make a complete commitment to achieving each of the reforms by the time of the 2020 symposium—especially after just one week of reflection. While this symposium is a critical forum in the disability rights movement, it is only one piece; the broader success will take the continued commitment and engagement of many more organizations. However, we ask you to recognize that our organization has made a significant commitment to this work. We know that it is going to continue to take real work to evolve the symposium effectively, and it is our intent to make changes for long-term growth not simply for short term effect. We ask that you hold us accountable, and we welcome your assistance and active engagement as we move down that path.
There are some immediate steps we are taking to begin this process. These are initial action items, and do not represent the entire scope of the work that lies ahead.
Those are our near-future steps, and we are certain that much more work will be needed. We are confident that we do not know all that we need to and that we are not aware of all of the people that are best suited to help. We take responsibility for our symposium, but we sincerely do need your help. We need to know where you can help and what your interests might be. We are certain that it will be impossible to fully implement every suggestion in the short term, but we know that we are bound to fall short if we do not receive your input. Please consider sending your thoughts directly to [email protected] with the subject line “#JTBLaw Recommendations” so we can consider them.
I close with again thanking you for your direct approach. I have attempted to be open and honest and invite you to continue the dialogue. I am certain there is more to learn together, and I hope that you will take away from this letter my sincere openness to continuing to build upon the legacy of Jacobus tenBroek in a way that each of us can be proud.
Sincerely,
Mark A. Riccobono, President
National Federation of the Blind
Sunday, July 7
5:30 to 7:00 PM Mujeres of the Federation
Join us for a keynote from a dynamic Latina leader. This session will provide inspiration and mentorship opportunities for the next generation of blind Latina trailblazers. ¡No te lo pierdas!
7:00 to 9:00 PM Black Leaders Advancing the Federation
Celebrate the numerous contributions of black Federation leaders. Let’s inspire youth through personal empowerment, leadership development, and mentorship. All are welcome to attend.
Monday, July 8
4:30 to 6:00 PM Asian Membership Development
Contribute and gather ideas on how to provide culturally relevant outreach and support to the Asian community. Your thoughts are critical in shaping the course of this initiative.
7:00 to 9:00 PM Diversity and Inclusion Committee Meeting
We are providing an avenue to share experiences, explore strategies, and generate ideas to support NFB diversity efforts. Get involved in this aspect of our movement.
Tuesday, July 9
7:30 to 8:30 AM Presidential Diversity Morning Mixer
This gathering provides an open opportunity to engage with national leaders to chat about diversity and inclusion topics. Please drop in and share your ideas, suggestions, and thoughts about our continued efforts to broaden the participation and advancement of blind people from diverse backgrounds in our movement. Facilitator: Mark Riccobono, President, National Federation of the Blind
Thursday, July 11
6:00 to 7:00 PM Intersectional Meet-Ups
Participate in a series of special topic community conversations that include:
by Adelmo Vigil
From the Editor: Adelmo Vigil is the president of the National Federation of the Blind of New Mexico and has worked for a long time for the New Mexico Commission for the Blind. Less known are Adelmo’s early years and overcoming the obstacles that could have cost him two wonderful careers. Here is what he has to say:
When I think about why I am in the National Federation of the Blind, my greatest reason is that I want to give what has been given to me. Because I have been blessed, I want to share that blessing, and my hope is that telling this story continues my payment.
I started school in the small town of Amalia in New Mexico where my family lived. I could not see well enough to read, and everybody knew this. But what none of us knew was what to do about it. It wasn’t until I was thirteen that the nurse at my school said I needed to go to the school for the blind, and for two years they continued trying to have me read print. At age fifteen a doctor examined my eyes and said, “I am sorry to tell you that you are going to have to learn Braille.” She thought she was giving me bad news, but I was happy—very happy. She was saying I could learn to read, and I thought about all that had been out of my reach before. I would learn Braille, and to my heart and mind this was a dream come true, something I thought impossible. I could learn through reading and not rely entirely on listening and memorization. I could look at things I wrote and not be counted off if, in my nervousness, I forgot. I would be graded on what I could think about and write and not on my memory as I pretended to read.
So after two years at the school for the blind, at age fifteen I finally learned to read for the first time. Blessed: it is what I felt then and what I still feel today. I learned to run track, and, most important to me, I learned to wrestle. I didn’t know it at the time, but being a wrestler would one day give me a fantastic opportunity and a way to make some money.
One of my jobs at the school was to help with the younger children. Again this was a blessing because I realized that I liked working with them both in the dormitory and in the gym teaching the younger ones how to wrestle. This is when I decided I wanted to teach, and I’ve never regretted that decision.
Walking across the stage during high school graduation, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the next step to becoming a teacher, and that step was going to college. I enrolled in Western New Mexico University located in Silver City. I started in 1973, and the campus was my home until 1977. No one expressed any reservations about signing me up for education classes, so I was on my way to becoming what I wanted most to be, a person who could be to others what some wonderful people had been to me.
In my third year I happened to meet a man in a speech class we were taking, and we struck up a conversation. His name was Travis Columbus, and this stranger who was fast becoming a friend said he was a schoolteacher in the Silver City school district. When I said I was in training to do the same thing and would soon be ready to student teach, he said that he would be glad for me to work in his third-grade class. He even went so far as to check with his principal to see if this generous offer would be supported, and the principal was enthusiastic about keeping Travis’s commitment.
Before I knew it, I was sitting in front of my advisor reviewing graduation requirements. Both of us knew student teaching was next, and he said he would be contacting the school for the blind to see if they would take me. As politely as I could, I said that I didn’t want to teach at the school for the blind. I had already worked with blind children and liked them, but I wanted to teach sighted students. He said, “No one will take you. Blind teachers do not teach sighted students.” When I said I had a teacher willing to take me, he sounded surprised, but to his credit he took the phone number of my teacher friend and said he’d get back with me. Since I was the one who had the most interest in getting this done, I said I’d see him the next week, and this I did. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had indeed contacted Mr. Columbus and his principal. Both were as good as their word, and my advisor seemed surprised.
I did my student teaching and came through with flying colors. Then came the harder job of finding work. Since I student taught in the Silver City school district and this was where my wife Soledad and I had located, I started by looking there for a job. But as the season for getting a contract wound on, I decided I had to act. As July turned into August my hope began to turn to a firmer realism. I started by talking with the principal of the school at which I had interned. He said I had not been contacted because my name did not appear on the list principals used for hiring. He suggested I set up a meeting with human resources. This I did, and though the director gave me an interview, I never felt like he was serious. The interview ended with him telling me he would get back to me, and when I never heard anything from him, I sadly concluded I was right.
I got myself a meeting with the superintendent of the Silver City district, and my friend Travis was on my side again, picking me up from home and driving me to the meeting. The superintendent met with me, and to his credit he was honest. “When people open your application and see that you are blind, they just don’t think it is worth the risk,” he said. I asked if he knew about affirmative action, and he said that indeed he did. “Affirmative action is why we try to find people with Hispanic surnames.” I wondered whether Vigil wasn’t a Spanish surname, but I didn’t say anything because he had already given me the reason why I wasn’t being taken seriously for any of their positions.
Disappointed but thinking ahead, I asked the superintendent what he thought I should do. He said I should go visit each of the principals so they could get to know me, and maybe that would allay some of their fears. Once again Travis was there to pick me up. I told him what the superintendent had said, and Travis immediately said, “Well, let’s go see the principals.” So we went to the elementary schools in Silver City. There were at least three of them, and we went to each one. They all knew Travis, and with his help I got a meeting with officials of each of them. The thing I most appreciated about Travis was that he accompanied me, but he never tried to speak for or answer any of the questions asked of me.
The principals all gave the same story when it came to why I wasn’t getting called. They said my name wasn’t on the list of available candidates distributed by the personnel director, so they weren’t even seeing me, let alone passing me up. We asked one of the principals if we could have a copy of that list, and he said yes. I am glad he didn’t get in trouble for that, but I am very grateful he gave me the list.
So the next place we went was to see an attorney. He advised we would have to go through the human rights commission and file a grievance. This we did, and that started a process of investigating the school district to see why they did not hire me.
The district stuck to their guns, but in the meantime I kept looking for work. Soledad and I went down to the college administration offices to look at postings. We found two openings, one in Shiprock and the other in Cimarron. Neither opportunity was close to Silver City, but I thought, “Well, I’ve got to do something.” I called the district in Shiprock and told them I was interested in the job. I talked with the personnel director, and he said, “Can you be here by Friday?” This was on a Monday, I had no idea how I was going to get there, but, of course, I said sure. Shiprock is about 350 to 400 miles from Silver City, and our car was not in any shape to drive that far. When I told the dean of the University I was applying there and had an interview, much to my surprise he said, “Well, we’re going to fly you over there.” I don’t know how they did it, but they flew me there, and I was picked up by a former student. I spent the night with him, and the next day I went to the interview.
But forgive me—I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You see, after my phone call on Monday, I started thinking about the length of the trip and all of the trouble people were going to on my behalf. So I called the personnel director in Shiprock, and I said, “I want you to know that I’m blind.”
He said to me, “Mr. Vigil, that doesn’t matter. To me what matters is that you have gone through school just like everybody else. You’ve gotten your education just like everybody else, so I’m not at all concerned about you being blind.”
Little did I know that by that time he had received all kinds of calls, faxes, and letters from people in Silver City who were supporting me. This included the university dean and the basketball coach who was the housing director. He was a good friend of mine who was always there with me. There were other people I had worked with, and it was very inspiring to see how all of them believed in me.
When I got to the interview, I was carrying a letter from the principal, as well as another letter from someone I can’t remember now. The principal said, “Well, I’ve never had so much correspondence about a candidate as I have for you.” In his interview he told me that I would be teaching remedial math in the elementary school. He said that, because the school was on the reservation, housing would be provided, and he told me the apartment in which I would be living. So after he says all this, he up and asks me, “Now, do you want to come and work for us?” I said yes, he said okay, and then he asked when I could start. So a week later there we were, Soledad, me, and my son all moving to Shiprock.
I taught remedial math for three years, and I was then transferred to teach the third grade for another six. I then taught first grade for a year, and the second grade for yet another six. I also coached the junior high and high school wrestling teams.
While I was teaching at Shiprock, the Silver City school district was still holding on to its notion that blind people should not teach in their classrooms. They therefore kept up the fight to keep me out of the public schools. Finally, during one of the board meetings, a board member said to the superintendent, “I see that Travis Columbus is supporting Adelmo. He works for us; why is he doing this?”
The superintendent said that he didn’t know. The chairman of the board then said that he would go and talk with Travis. He told Travis, “You know that Adelmo is suing the district, and we notice that you are supporting him.” Travis said, “Indeed I am, and I will continue to support him because I believe in his capability to teach. You are sending away an excellent teacher who can really help our kids. I know that I work for this district, and if you guys don’t think it is right for me to support Adelmo, then I will move to a different district.” So the chairman of the board went back to the next meeting and told the superintendent, “You know, what you need to do is settle this now. Travis is not backing down, Adelmo is not backing down, and we’re going to lose.”
So the superintendent offered me a job back in Silver City, they paid for my attorneys, and this was the settlement to which we agreed, though I did not take a job there. I was already working, was enjoying teaching at Shiprock, and I didn’t really think that I would be treated fairly by an administration and a school board that I had put so much time and energy into suing.
In all of the time I spent at Shiprock, I worked in several schools. Although the work was good, and I got good reviews, there were a few bumps along the way. The first principal I worked under would let me teach, but he wouldn’t let me engage in any of the activities that were assigned to other teachers. I could not do lunchroom duty. I could not supervise recess. I couldn’t do anything that involved supervising the kids outside my classroom.
I heard about another principal who worked in the district, and his school was just three miles down the road. I heard that he was very open-minded and willing to work with people, and in fact he hired a woman who was in a wheelchair. She said that she really enjoyed her job, so I met with that principal and asked for a transfer. When I went for my interview with Mr. Baxter, I made it clear to him that if I got the job there, I would want to have duties just like all of the other teachers. His words I remember to this day: he said, “Adelmo, if you’re going to be working here, you’re going to have all of the duties that teachers have, just like everybody else.”
I said, “Thank you. I appreciate this.” Two days later, the principal at the school at which I worked came up to me and said, “Well, Mr. Baxter is going to take you, but I want you to know that I really had to twist his arm to get him to do it.” Of course I knew this was not true, and I worked for Mr. Baxter until he retired.
In the new school I still taught third grade with all the duties required of all teachers, and Principal Baxter was true to his word. He required me to take on all of the responsibilities given to other teachers, and he liked my work so much that he started assigning me other outside activities. I really enjoyed it, but eventually I had to admit to myself that I was becoming involved in too many things. I decided that he and I had to have a talk. I told him that I thought I should not take on anything else because I didn’t want the children I was teaching to suffer. He agreed, but I still remained very involved in all of the school’s extracurricular activities.
When they moved the third-graders to a different school, I went as well. To put it mildly, the principal and I were locking horns, so eventually I transferred back to the original school where I had started all of this, and by that time the school had a new principal, Mrs. Eva Stokely. I taught first grade for a year, and about halfway through it Eva retired, and a new principal took over. Her name was Genevieve Jackson. I had known her previously. She had a blind daughter, and I helped her learn Braille. So after a year teaching first grade, I asked her if I could move to the second grade. I found the first graders very sweet but a little too immature. She said that indeed she thought there would be an opening in the second grade, and, true to her word, I was transferred.
One of the things I remember most fondly about working for this principal was that, every time she was out, she left me in charge of the school. She would tell the other teachers, “Mr. Vigil is in charge. If anything comes up, you guys let him know.” So teachers who were working with kids having trouble brought them to me, I would take action, and I would report to her the next day she got back.
These added responsibilities were not only important to me in my career advancement as a schoolteacher, but they were also helpful in convincing me that I had some interest and aptitude in administration. So after teaching second grade there for six years, I applied for a job at the orientation center run by the New Mexico Commission for the Blind. The job was in Alamogordo, Dr. Schroeder hired me, and I worked at the commission from 1993 until 2007, the year of my first retirement. I had a lot of different jobs before my retirement, and I became the deputy director in 1997.
I liked the work at the commission so much that I have now retired three times from it. After my first retirement, when they called to ask that I help in teaching cane travel, I accepted. Dr. Eddie Bell had always encouraged me to get certification in the field, so in 2009 at the National Convention in Detroit I took the tests for the National Orientation and Mobility Certification (NOMC) and passed. I have been certified ever since. But retirement was still calling to me, and so I retired for a second time. Surely twice was enough, but no, not so fast.
When the director of the New Mexico Commission for the Blind, Greg Trapp, needed my help, I signed on again as the administrator of the orientation center and worked there until 2012. After helping the new director through the transition for a year, I retired from the commission for the third time. But I guess I am still not settled with my retirement because I do consulting and teaching for different states, working as a cane travel instructor. I tell people that I have done pretty well at everything I worked at except retirement.
In 2012 I was elected as the president of the National Federation of the Blind of New Mexico, and in 2016 I was elected to the national board, so I now find myself with a job which sees to any unfilled time in my semi-retired state. That job is helping blind people achieve their potential through self-organization and a little bit of advocacy.
My wife and I both retired in 2013, though she seems to have been better at staying retired than I have. We enjoy it very much. I have been asked several times if I would like to return to the New Mexico Commission for the Blind. I tell them that I have loved working there, but I really do want to be retired. Still it is hard for me to keep my hand out of holding down some kind of paying job. Since last May I have been working part-time as a cane travel instructor and helping the administration of the Freedom Center for the Blind in Alabama. It is certainly not full-time work, but it keeps me traveling, and there is enough work to do that I can clearly say I am not yet fully retired.
I enjoy time with my family. Of course, there is my wife Soledad, and we have two children. Currently the oldest is forty-two and the youngest is thirty-nine. My wife and I have seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. They help to round out what has been an absolutely wonderful life for me.
I feel fortunate that blindness did not stop me from living a first-class life. The teenager who could not read went to a school for the blind where they taught me how to do it. There I saw the miracle that teachers can perform in the lives of their students and was able to become a teacher. Seeing that administrators could help even more people, I was pleased to serve in that capacity, and now, as grandpa and great-grandpa, I clearly see that I still have the capacity to combine love and service. It’s funny how doing something for others can so enrich our own lives, and I will be forever grateful to all of the people who have had a part in helping me truly live a life that the odds were against me living. When a man has enjoyed the love of a good woman, a fine marriage, several challenging careers, and the joy of being a parent, grandparent, and great-grandparent, what more can he ask? Blindness has not been the characteristic that has defined me. The desire to succeed, the determination to think ahead, the making of good friends who care about me, and an organization that stands for all of this and lets me help in its noble work makes my life a joy I dare not take for granted. I put my energy into this organization and share this story with you because I want to expand that sharing. I want people to know that hope is not a fantasy and that dreams are not silly things that happen to us when we are asleep. Dreams can drive us, and acting on those dreams really can get us where we want to go. Let’s go there together and bring with us everybody we can.
For more than seventy-five years the National Federation of the Blind has worked to transform the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people into reality, and with your support we will continue to do so for decades to come. We sincerely hope you will plan to be a part of our enduring movement by adding the National Federation of the Blind as a partial beneficiary in your will. A gift to the National Federation of the Blind in your will is more than just a charitable, tax-deductible donation. It is a way to join in the work to help blind people live the lives they want that leaves a lasting imprint on the lives of thousands of blind children and adults.
With your help, the NFB will continue to:
Creating a will gives you the final say in what happens to your possessions and is the only way to be sure that your remaining assets are distributed according to your passions and beliefs. Many people fear creating a will or believe it’s not necessary until they are much older. Others think that it’s expensive and confusing. However, it is one of the most important things you will do, and with new online legal programs it is easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do decide to create or revise your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as a partial beneficiary. Visit www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information. Together with love, hope, determination, and your support, we will continue to transform dreams into reality.
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future. You can live the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back. A donation to the National Federation of the Blind allows you to invest in a movement that removes the fear from blindness. Your investment is your vote of confidence in the value and capacity of blind people and reflects the high expectations we have for all blind Americans, combating the low expectations that create obstacles between blind people and our dreams.
In 2018 the NFB:
Just imagine what we’ll do next year, and, with your help, what can be accomplished for years to come. Below are just a few of the many diverse, tax-deductible ways you can lend your support to the National Federation of the Blind.
The NFB now accepts donated vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, or recreational vehicles. Just call 855-659-9314 toll-free, and a representative can make arrangements to pick up your donation—it doesn’t have to be working. We can also answer any questions you have.
General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and the work to help blind people live the lives they want. Donate online with a credit card or through the mail with check or money order. Visit www.nfb.org/make-gift for more information.
Even if you can’t afford a gift right now, including the National Federation of the Blind in your will enables you to contribute by expressing your commitment to the organization and promises support for future generations of blind people across the country. Visit www.nfb.org/planned-giving or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information.
Through the Pre-Authorized Contribution (PAC) program, supporters sustain the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind by making recurring monthly donations by direct withdraw of funds from a checking account or a charge to a credit card. To enroll, visit www.nfb.org/make-gift, and complete the Pre-Authorized Contribution form, and return it to the address listed on the form.
by Justin Salisbury
From the Editor: This article first appeared on May 21, 2019, in Community Voices, a publication which describes itself as “kind of a cross between Letters to the Editor and op-eds. This is your space to talk about important issues or interesting people who are making a difference in our world.” It is produced by Honolulu Civil Beat, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt news organization dedicated to cultivating an informed body of citizens, all striving to make Hawaii a better place to live. We appreciate the permission to reproduce this article.
Monitor readers will be familiar with Justin Salisbury, who regularly contributes articles. He is an active member of the National Federation of the Blind of Hawaii and teaches cane travel at the Ho’opono Center for the Blind. The National Federation of the Blind has a long history of opposing subminimum wages for blind people, and Justin is one of our finest warriors in the battle. The beauty of his work, and in fact his very being, is that he leads with his head and his heart, and they are both on the same page. Here is what he had to say:
I am writing an open message to workers with disabilities earning disability-based subminimum wages, as well as their friends and families. It becomes necessary to use such public media as the Civil Beat because it is a channel that flows above the walls of segregation. Technology today gives us options that are better than a message in a bottle.
You see, workers with disabilities in sheltered workshops are segregated from the rest of society, a concept all too familiar to the people of Hawaii because of the way that plantations kept workers segregated. As a matter of housekeeping, not all sheltered workshops pay subminimum wages, but these wages are paid in sheltered workshops.
Imagine visiting Hawaii as an outsider back in the height of the plantation days and seeing the workers with bottles around their necks. If you, as the outsider, wanted to know what was best for the plantation workers, would you ask the plantation owners, the lunas, or the workers?
Surely, some were confused about this at some point in time, but most of us would agree today that the plantation workers knew what was best for them. They may not have complained—they may have even made peace with their poverty and suffering—but they were not treated with aloha.
Some privileged people argue that the plantation workers were not forced to work on plantations, but they often believed they had no alternative. Eventually, they organized with elected leaders, rose up, and got off the plantations.
When people unfamiliar with the sheltered workshops want to know what is best for the workers with disabilities inside them, they all too often direct their attention to the disability agencies and the leaders of the workshops themselves. These workshops and agencies will always protect their own interests first, just like any other institution.
People with disabilities have organized, and we continue to become more active in our own quest for liberation. When the workshops and agencies tell us why we should like being treated as second-class citizens and paid seven cents per hour, our elected leaders push back.
Sometimes, when people get up to speak publicly on something, we feel compelled to give the audience some highlights of our credentials so that people might listen to what we have to say. I have felt this urge many times. Since I have worked in the disability field since 2008, I have often felt like it would help my credibility to tell people, “I work for agency X.”
In fact, this is the anti-credential. What is really a credential is the fact that hundreds of people with disabilities voted for me through a democratic process so that I could speak for them. This makes me beholden to the voters who elected me, not beholden to someone who might be contributing to my paycheck.
Sheltered workshops try to market themselves as part of the vocational rehabilitation system as if they are preparing the workers for mainstream jobs. This claim has long been rejected by organizations of people with disabilities.
Sheltered workshops confuse rehabilitation with entertainment, as if we are capable of nothing else besides being entertained by smiling caretakers who give us the illusion of working. This confusion was flushed out as a conflict of interest in the public hearing testimony on Governor’s Message 734.
Some of the able-bodied leaders and managers of sheltered workshops may have missionary mentalities, where they believe that they are doing what is best for us. Missionaries must be careful not to look down upon the people they serve and impose their own values and expectations upon those “lower” beings. Sometimes, missionaries can be too fixated upon the good feelings of accomplishing what they set out to do rather than truly giving the people what they request.
I’m here to talk about alternatives to the payment of subminimum wages. Some of them are quite simple and can be done essentially overnight:
Internships and apprenticeships: These allow entities to train people for jobs while paying them less than the minimum wage. I have personally done paid and unpaid internships, and there are many people in these arrangements at any given time in Hawaii. The sheltered workshops can use paid internships, or even unpaid internships, to organize their agreements with the workers with disabilities who are currently receiving disability-based subminimum wages. Whether or not someone has a disability, if they are not productive enough to be paid a full wage for that job, you can make them an intern or apprentice and pay them less while you train them into it. This is what the sheltered workshops claim to be doing anyway. Some people might say that this is pointless because it will have the same outcome, but organizations of people with disabilities say otherwise. The resounding message is that we want to be treated equally. If we are paid less because we are learning, that’s fine, but it should have nothing to do with our disability. In fact, many organizations of people with disabilities take no stance on whether a minimum wage should exist at all, but, if it is going to exist, it should not discriminate.
Actual rehabilitation programs: The types of interventions necessary for each disability vary, but there are rehabilitation programs for every kind. For example, blind people attend adjustment to blindness training at a residential training center like the state’s Ho’opono Services for the Blind.
Higher education: people with disabilities can go to college or trade school to prepare for a career of their choice.
Competitive, integrated employment: Instead of going into a subminimum wage job, it is entirely possible for many people with disabilities to walk right into a regular job.
Real pay in the sheltered workshop: Many sheltered workshops pay regular wages to workers with disabilities and do not hold the special wage certificate allowing them to pay subminimum wages.
For the first time in eighty-one years of advocacy, there is finally a congressional committee hearing on a bill to end the payment of disability-based subminimum wages.
The House Education and Labor Committee will hold a full committee hearing on the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act, H.R. 873, on Tuesday. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has repeatedly cosponsored this legislation, and former Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa did, too.
I am hopeful that, with enough support from good leaders in Congress, the bill will pass, and the practice will end.by Shelley Coppel
From the Editor: This article is reprinted from the Winter 2018 issue of the Palmetto Blind, the newsletter of the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina. Our work with seniors is exciting, and the cooperation between our senior division and our state affiliate is exemplary. Here is what Shelley has to say about last year’s event:
On October 14, 2018, a group of twenty-three staff and students (seniors this time) enthusiastically descended upon Rocky Bottom Retreat and Conference Center of the Blind for a week of amazing training. The NFB Seniors Division partnered with the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina to offer a first-rate training for a segment of our population who otherwise don’t have an opportunity for specific skills training for loss of vision.
We recruited seven individuals as staff: Frank and Shelley Coppel of South Carolina; Tom and Linda Anderson from Kansas; Liz Lewis and Michael Hartz from North Carolina; and Ruth Sager from Maryland, who is the NFB Seniors Division president. We also recruited the assistance of Christine Filter, a registered nurse who has served us for many years as our camp health nurse; a kitchen crew like none other headed up by Lenora Robertson, Ellen Taylor, Ora Bell, and JW Smith; and several volunteers. We also needed drivers since we required a golf cart to take us up and down the steep hill from one of the sleeping lodges. This lodge has a kitchen most like the one you would have in your home, which served as our training kitchen. Other classes that we offered were cane travel, organizational skills, Braille, iOS training, and a group where we discussed the effects of vision loss on our lives.
As we settled in the first evening, we discussed the schedule, were introduced to one another, found out where we each would reside for the week, and had a wonderful meal for our weary, excited guests. They represented nine states and ranged in age from the mid-forties to eighty-seven.
Monday morning began with a hot breakfast for fortification to begin our rigorous schedule. Sleepshades were passed out as were long white canes. Our classes were one-and-a-half hours in length, and we planned four classes in a day. Everyone participated in all of the classes. As the week progressed, folks were using their shades voluntarily and showing good cane skills as they navigated the paths, found their class sites, went grocery shopping, navigated an apple orchard, and found a pond where wonderful stories were swapped over a great fishing experience. Every afternoon we ended our day with a discussion time. We talked about the successes of our day and answered questions about the tough business of losing vision and how to deal with this personally. We also talked about how to advocate for ourselves and the way to bring those closest to us to an understanding of what help we really need, because sometimes we decide to struggle through an issue and find our own alternatives. On Thursday evening we made a bonfire and roasted marshmallows to eat s’mores. What a perfect ending for a week of great achievement.
Two of our students completed the Braille alphabet including numbers and punctuation. Many thanks to the NFB Seniors Division for coming to South Carolina and using our facilities at our beloved Rocky Bottom Retreat and Conference Center of the Blind. We look forward to many more opportunities to be of service to other state affiliates and national divisions of the National Federation of the Blind.
From the Editor: Now that Shelley has told you about how last year’s senior retreat went, here is the flyer for the 2019 event:
When: September 15 to 21, 2019
Where: Rocky Bottom Resort and Conference Center for the Blind, Sunset, South Carolina. Rocky Bottom is a camp owned and operated by the South Carolina affiliate of the NFB. This camp is located on Sassafras Mountain, the highest point in the state. It is a modern facility with a dining hall and several lodges for sleeping and holding classes. Retreaters will share a room with a colleague. Paved pathways connect buildings in this rural mountain setting. Fishing can be done on the property. Other off-site activities may be planned during the retreat.
Eligibility: Must be legally blind and have a strong desire to learn nonvisual techniques taught by blind instructors. Preferred age over fifty but some exceptions can be made. Candidates must be able to administer their medications and know the dosages and times they should be taken. We can suggest labeling methods and organizational skills but cannot administer medications. We will have a nurse on-call throughout the retreat.
Classes Offered:
Process and Cost: Please contact Ruth Sager, president, NFB Seniors Division by email at [email protected]; by mail at 7634 Carla Road, Pikesville, MD 21208; or by home phone at 410-602-9030 to obtain an application. Fill out the application, and return it to the above address by August 10, 2019. Upon receiving your application, you will be contacted by an instructor or Seniors Division board member to schedule a telephone interview. This interview is designed to help us make your retreat experience as beneficial for you as possible. We want everyone to participate in all of the activities, but we will try to tailor some classes to fit your specific needs.
Candidates will then be notified if they are successful retreat participants. The cost per attendee is $300. This cost covers room and board, any activities which take place during the retreat, transportation from the nearest airport (Greenville-Spartanburg) and after the retreat, transportation from Rocky Bottom back to the airport. All other expenses incurred will be covered by the candidate.
After you have been notified that you are a successful retreat participant, the $300 check should be sent to: NFB Seniors Division, c/o Ms. Duncan Larsen, Colorado Center for the Blind, 2233 Shepperd Avenue, Littleton, CO 80120, no later than September 1, 2019.
For more information, please contact Ruth Sager as listed above.
by Fredric Schroeder
From the Editor: When I heard about the death of Dr. James Nyman and saw nothing in the way of a tribute, I decided to write one myself. I interviewed about four people and begged others for a brief submission. One of those I asked was Fred Schroeder. He gave me much more than a few thoughts; he provided a tribute that I cannot match. I am grateful to those who gave me interviews and will briefly summarize what you told me.
People who worked for Dr. Nyman or who were students while he was the director remember him as a challenging man. At times he seemed more like the questioning, demanding professor he had previously been and less like an agency administrator. Words such as argumentative and curmudgeon are frequently used to describe him, but these characteristics have a positive side as well. They relate having to argue hard for what they wanted, sometimes being frustrated when they got less than they thought they had won through agreement, but everyone I talked with is unanimous in their belief that Dr. Nyman must be judged on the result of what he created. In that light he wins unanimous support. He hired the first blind mobility instructor and liked the results so much he did it again. He started the orientation center in Nebraska, and he staffed it with people who believed in the Federation philosophy. Though he excelled in and respected academia, he rejected the idea that his instructors must have a master’s degree. Instead he hired blind and sighted people based on their potential to be trained to instill a positive view of the students in themselves. His accomplishments can easily be seen through those who have gone on to be positive agents of change in the field and whose names are well-known to Monitor readers. Some of the changes were subtle: a woodshop that was never used before Dr. Nyman came to the agency that became the confidence-bolstering facility it was meant to be. The criticism he took for requiring staff to train under training shades and having students use them throughout their stay was significant, but he held firm. While he was not what many would consider a smooth traveler, using a shorter cane than many of his staff and students, on most days he ran the two-and-a-half miles to work. In so doing, he generated positive press about the mobility of blind people and helped establish a number of contacts through others who were running enthusiasts.
Here is what Fred has to say:
Dr. Nyman became director of the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired (at that time, Nebraska Services for the Visually Impaired) in 1974. He brought Federation philosophy to the work of the agency at a time when the Federation was viewed with suspicion and outright hostility by other rehabilitation programs for the blind. The level of animus toward the Federation cannot be overstated; it was pervasive, intense, and deeply personal.
A decade and a half earlier, Dr. Jernigan had taken over the Iowa Commission for the Blind and set a new and dramatic standard in the rehabilitation field. In short order Dr. Jernigan developed a program of services rooted in Federation philosophy that completely eclipsed the work of other programs for the blind. By the mid-70s, we had Iowa and (to a far lesser extent) California and finally, with Dr. Nyman’s appointment, we had Nebraska—that was it.
So, what did Dr. Nyman do? At one level what he did was simple. He set about injecting our philosophy into the work of the agency in much the same way Dr. Jernigan did in Iowa, but it was not easy. It took courage and a deep and abiding belief in the ability of blind people to live as others.
In 1978 I graduated with a master’s degree in special education and was completing my professional training to teach orientation and mobility. At the 1978 national convention, Dr. Nyman sought me out and offered me a job. That took courage. He did not know me, and his agency was still in its early stage of development with critics on all sides. Yet, he hired me to teach cane travel at a time when the orientation and mobility profession would not certify blind people to teach cane travel; and I was not the only blind Federationist he hired. He hired me and others because he believed in blind people and was prepared to put his beliefs into action, even when it was not popular, even when it caused conflict and hostility.
One day Dr. Nyman called me into his office. He said he had received a call from the governor’s office. The governor’s chief of staff told Dr. Nyman that a state car was seen entering a large parking lot at a high rate of speed, performing a number of figure eight turns and leaving. Of course, Dr. Nyman knew I had taken a student on a drop route, an exercise in which students are deliberately disoriented and dropped off to find their way back to the agency. The figure eights were to heighten the drama, to make the whole experience more daunting so when the student made it back safely it would mean something profound. Dr. Nyman asked me what I thought he should tell the governor’s chief of staff. I said he should say we had a blind client lying on the back seat of the car and were trying to get him as lost as we could so we could drop him off and tell him to find his way back without assistance.
I knew Dr. Nyman understood what we were doing and why, but I did not realize at the time what he was up against. The agency was still relatively new, and we had critics. While it is hard to imagine, I am sure Dr. Nyman had to wonder how to balance our philosophy against the need to maintain our fragile support. In other words, it would have been so much easier to say, let’s take things a little slower, let’s not be quite so aggressive. Let’s take a safer and far less stressful approach and not be quite so radical. But, of course, that is not what he did. He believed in blind people, and he supported blind people in every way he could.
When Dr. Nyman hired me to teach cane travel, I had not finished the master’s program in orientation and mobility. He granted me leave with full pay for two consecutive summers to finish my master’s program even though I did not need the master’s to teach at the agency. He did it because he believed in me and because he believed that we needed to support one another in standing up against discrimination. Again, I did not need the master’s degree to teach in Nebraska, but blind people needed to stand up to the established orientation and mobility profession—a profession that believed it knew better than we what blind people could and could not do.
Dr. Nyman’s legacy endures. Nearly a half century later, the Nebraska Commission for the Blind continues to be a leader in rehabilitation of the blind, but that speaks only to professional accomplishment, not to his personal human qualities.
Many who knew Dr. Nyman were terrified of him. He was a crusty and sardonic fellow who enjoyed mental sparring to the point of intellectual gymnastics. But that did not mean he was unkind or uncaring; just the opposite. One day many years later, I called Dr. Nyman, and when he answered the phone, I said, “Dr. Nyman, I presume.” He retorted something to the effect, “That is quite a presumption and one you would be hard put to defend.” I said, “You presume I wish to defend my presumption, an indefensible presumption if I ever heard one.”
It is easy to look at where we are and forget how we got here. Dr. Nyman’s life reminds us of the power of courage and the power of justice. It reminds us that change is born of pain and strife. It reminds us that our obligation is to do what we can, do what is right, not just what is easy. I do not remember Dr. Nyman ever praising me, but I felt his kindness and support and feel it to this day. He gave me a job when I had none, and he gave me his friendship and loyal support for all of my adult life. Would that I could do as much!
Rest in peace.
by Dan Burke
From the Editor: This is a story Dan Burke wrote a long time ago. Why it has been so long in getting to us I cannot say, but I doubt it was the US Post Office or a slow internet connection that caused the delay. No doubt it was Dan going about living his life, thinking only after hearing a conversation that this might just serve to show blind people what blind people can do in the same way that these travelers were showing sighted residents of Montana. Here is Dan’s story:
Five of us start out in the 7 a.m. darkness of a late October Montana morning: four men and one woman, four white canes, and one guide dog. We have a goal and directions from the motel clerk where we’re staying to attend an affiliate board meeting: Walk straight out from the door, and you’ll hit the driveway out to the road. It’s a different driveway than the one you took to dinner last night. Bear to the right, and you’ll find the edge of the drive; there’s a line of boulders bordering it. Cross the two-lane and turn right. Pretty quick you’ll come to another driveway going off to the left. Turn in there. No, that first building won’t be it; that’s the bank. Keep going past there, and after a while the oil ends, so keep going on the gravel. When you get down there, you’ll know it; there’ll be a bunch of pickups parked in front.
We start, make the driveway, and find the right edge. I look for the border of boulders, mostly out of curiosity. Now we’re across the road, staying close together, and turned right. There is no traffic, not even the sound of a vehicle on I-15 a quarter mile east. Walking in the shoulder gravel—shore-lining—the driveway is there after maybe thirty feet. A voice calls out from the motel parking lot.
“That’s it, turn left there.”
Kind of figured, but the reinforcement is not resented. Another four steps and the voice calls out again: “Now turn right!”
This jog was not part of the original set of directions, a detail easily overlooked, especially by someone unused to giving directions to anyone but sighted people—no matter that we asked for clarification and repetition. In fact, a sighted person would be told simply, “You can see it just down there.” There’s nothing out here to block the view, so maybe you would have seen it already, and the only conversation necessary would center on whether it was a good place for breakfast—in this instance a matter not in doubt. The watchful eye of the motel clerk may be little more than recognition of doubt about her verbal instructions. In any case, we turn right.
We continue down this drive, taking up the whole thing, some following the crown, some shore-lining the edge of the pavement, some just following the flow. There is light chatter in the rear of the procession, comments on the chill of the light breeze that greets our faces. Soon there is a flapping and slapping of nylon rope and metal coming up on our left.
“Flag,” Jim Marks observes just behind me. “That’ll be the bank.”
Jim and I have traveled together often and over all kinds of terrain, and this observation is one of the things that always makes exploring with him such a pleasure. On an unclaimed afternoon in Washington, DC a few years ago, we walked from the vicinity of the White House back to the Mall and up to the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and then off to find the relatively-new FDR Memorial—the existence of which very few seemed to be able to fix in their minds well enough to give us much in the way of directions. We kept on, kept asking until a British tourist along the Potomac asked:
“FDR?”
“President Roosevelt,” I said.
“Churchill’s buddy,” clarified Jim.
The tourist seemed to scratch his head, considering as he slowly rotated it before he finally noticed the sign beside us. He happily announced that we were there.
After examining the gigantic Braille on the wall and the bronze sculpture of the fedoraed, pince-nezed President in his wheelchair, we set off back to our room at the Capitol Holiday Inn, trying to make it before dark. All day long we traded observations, identified landmarks, and taught each other a thing or two about traveling in a strange city.
But we are in Jim’s home territory now. His family homesteaded about thirty miles east of here five generations ago, and Markses are spread out all over this area. We already made a bit of a splash: Our outing to the Montana City Grill last night netted two sightings by members of Jim’s family living in this unincorporated township, which has become something of a bedroom community for the state capitol.
Since Montana City is unincorporated, there are no sidewalks, no streets in the usual sense of a city street, few right angle-turns, stop signs or streetlights—all things city travelers rely on as landmarks. On the other hand, this is pretty tame stuff. Tomorrow at this time Jim will be out in the hills and gulches where his family has lived for more than a century, quietly stalking elk with family members and neighbors on opening day of hunting season.
Now another driveway turns off to the left. We hear a low buzzing sound, steady, on the far side of the drive, and I detect a rectangle of light as we come up on it, a bank sign, likely. We press on and before long find the end of the oil, and then my cane sweeps across the gravel. The track’s not difficult to follow, and I start looking for signs of parked vehicles. A car or two passes on the road above and to our right, and I listen to see if any turn in ahead of us, revealing our destination. None do, but I already suspect this is the only way in anyway. Still, no traffic comes down our track to give additional clues.
We are staying together, though spread out across the gravel drive, heading slightly downhill. Then the road starts to level out a little, and then from ahead a new cheerful voice: “Good morning!”
“Get a call?” I ask in response, smiling in the dark.
“Sharon called and said you were coming,” confirming only that this is Montana small-town life. Then we are threading our way through parked vehicles to the sidewalk running along the front of the building.
“I’m not sure how to give you directions,” our guide confesses, trying to worry us between parked 4-wheel drives and around posts.
“Just keep talking,” we assure her.” We’ll be right behind you.”
Inside, only three or four of the twenty tables are occupied. We sit at a table covered with a vinyl tablecloth loaded with creamer and condiments and place settings.
“Anybody want coffee?” I am already turning my mug over, examining the print with my fingers.
“What does the cup say?” I ask the hostess as she comes around to pour.
“Montana City Hardware Café,” comes the half-expected answer.
“I’m putting water on the table,” the waitress announces. “Yours is next to your coffee,” she says, and I hear the soft thunk as it comes to rest on the cloth.
The south end of the building is the café. The north end is the hardware store, where you can buy galvanized nails, fence supplies, batteries, and alfalfa pellets for your horse on your way out after breakfast. In fact, my one previous visit here with friends who live in the area ended in just such a transaction. Now, I’ve got t-shirts from various trips—Washington, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago—but nowhere does Hard Rock Café food come close to the food served here. This is a Montana original.
Our waitress starts through the specials, then reads the descriptions of the other items. But I want more than just what’s in each dish.
“What are the names of these?” I ask, and she begins to read the names along with the descriptions.
Ted Robbins orders the Mechanic’s Skillet. Appropriate enough: Ted has been blind for a quarter of a century, and though he retired from his northern plains farm a few years ago, he still tears into his vehicles to do necessary maintenance. Lately he replaced the struts on his van. We order one special, a couple of Plumber’s Skillets with sausage and eggs and onions and green peppers on a bed of hash browns, and one Buzzsaw featuring homemade biscuits and sausage gravy.
The place is filling up. As Federationists, we know that wherever we go in our home state, we are seen, and we are teaching a different lesson about what it means to be blind. Maybe this wide, friendly spot in the road will buzz about us after we’re gone. Maybe not: Maybe some will imagine us as especially intrepid—surely blind people don’t wander into the Hardware Café often. But somewhere in the back of their minds we hope they will recognize an important fact: That we’re pretty much like them; we’re after a good meal in a warm place where the customers and staff josh amiably and folks can enjoy the company of good friends. Certainly we are treated respectfully, not hovered over, yet get plenty of good information from the waitress; we’re just another table of hungry Saturday morning breakfast customers. As is often the case, the most important lesson we’re called upon to give today as blind people is simply showing up.
By the time my Plumber’s Skillet lands in front of me, I’m good and hungry. The board met till ten last night, and we have about six hours ahead of us today. I dig in a little too enthusiastically at first, but soon slow down to enjoy the food and one of Ted’s salt-of-the-earth stories.
When my check comes, I pick it up, extend my cane, and move around the table and then off of the carpet of the room onto the tiled area by the entrance to where I suspect the cash register counter will be. It turns out to be a table with two middle-aged women, who set me straight.
“Sometimes,” I explain, “you gotta get lost before you know where you are.”
After everyone pays, we make for the door. The hostess who met us out front on our way in is quickly there.
“Do you need any help getting back?” she asks.
“We won’t have a problem.”
We thank her and make our farewells. Outside, traffic is beginning to move on the road and on the Interstate. The dull first light of morning is in the sky, revealing the shapes of the Elkhorn Mountains around us. We start off up the gravel drive, fortified, satisfied we have done a small part of the day’s work of changing what it means to be blind.
by Karl Belanger
From the Editor: This blog post first appeared on Friday, January 4, 2019. It will be clear to anyone who uses a Braille display on his or her computer that memorizing the keystrokes used to simulate Windows commands can be difficult, but this innovative technology doesn’t require it. This excellent writeup comes from Karl Belanger, a technology specialist who works for us in the Jernigan Institute. Here is his post:
Have you ever found yourself struggling to remember the series of commands needed to perform a keyboard shortcut on your display? Have you ever needed to do a command that isn’t configured on your display? Have you found yourself switching back and forth between your computer keyboard and your display to accomplish your work? If so, then the QBraille XL from HIMS may just be the perfect device for you.
The QBraille XL is a forty-cell display that takes a standard Perkins-style Braille keyboard and adds all the function and navigation keys of a standard keyboard. The result is that you can type in Braille while being able to perform all the shortcuts and commands you’re used to with the standard keyboard keys. For example, Control+F is done by holding the control key and pressing the dots for the letter f, and commands like Control+Tab or Alt+F4 are done using the same keys you are used to. This is made possible by some software that makes the display appear to a connected device as both a Braille display and a regular USB or Bluetooth keyboard. Even if you haven’t configured the display with your screen reader, the navigation keys and computer Braille input will work perfectly, though you will not have Braille output. The QBraille also has a small suite of internal applications. I won’t be focusing too much time on these since they are very similar to those found on the Braille Edge. The only new internal application that the QBraille has is a DAISY reader for reading textbooks from services like Bookshare. The QBraille does not have speech built in, so the DAISY reader is Braille only.
The edges of the QBraille are fairly clean, with the only thing on the left side being the power button and the front and back edges completely empty aside from a small hard reset button near the right of the back edge. The right side has a USB-C port for charging and connections over USB, and behind that an SD-card slot. A card must be installed for the notepad and DAISY reader to function. On the top front of the unit is a forty-cell display, with the standard panning and cursor routing keys that are common to all HIMS displays. Above the display is the keyboard. The main portion of the keyboard is a standard Perkins keyboard that any display user will be familiar with. On the same row as the spacebar are several keys. From left to right there is control, function, Windows, and alt. To the right of the spacebar are another alt, applications, and the right control key. On the far right are the arrow keys just as on a standard keyboard. Above the arrows is the standard six-pack of keys that you find on most keyboards. This is arranged in two columns of three keys with insert and delete on the top row, home and end below insert, and page up and down below the delete key. Above the Braille keys is a row containing escape on the far left, then the standard F1 through F12 keys. Below F1 are Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift. Below the Escape key are the paring and mode buttons which have various functions when you’re connected to a device. The QBraille also comes with a protective case that looks fairly sturdy and fits the device very snugly.
The QBraille will take a little under thirty seconds to start up, and it will display progress messages on the display. Once it starts, you will be at the main menu. The menu has several options: notepad, DAISY reader, applications, options, and information. The applications folder contains an alarm, clock, calculator, and calendar. As mentioned earlier, if you have used or read about the Braille Edge in the past, these will be quite familiar to you. You will first want to go into the options menu to set your preferred Braille language and grade, whether you want sounds to play, and other settings. Most of the QBraille’s magic happens in the connectivity mode. When you select connectivity from the main menu, you have a choice between USB, Bluetooth keyboard, or Bluetooth display. If you choose one of the Bluetooth options, you will be placed into pairing mode, then into terminal mode once a device is paired. If you select USB, you are directly placed in terminal mode. Once you have at least one connection, pressing the pairing button plus F1-F12 switches between Bluetooth connections, and pairing+Escape switches to the USB connection. The QBraille supports up to six unique devices, with a display and keyboard connection for each, for a total of twelve Bluetooth connections plus a USB connection. All the major operating systems and screen readers are supported.
If you’re using a USB connection, the keyboard mode is active immediately. In this mode you can use all the standard function keys and type in Braille, but there will be no Braille output. In order to make things fully functional you will need to download the HIMS USB driver if you’re on Windows and configure your screen reader to use the display. Once this is done you will automatically be put in hybrid mode. In this mode the display will output Braille normally, and the keyboard will operate in the keyboard mode. To have the keyboard work through the normal Braille display drivers, press the mode button to turn hybrid mode off. To set up a Bluetooth device, you will first need to select Bluetooth display and pair it as you would any display, then select Bluetooth keyboard and pair that as well. Once this is done you will be in hybrid mode. Once you have at least one connection, you will need to use the pairing and function keys to switch to an empty slot to pair either a new display connection or a new keyboard connection. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to view a list of established connections, nor a way to clear one specific connection. During testing, one of the keyboard connections automatically connected to someone else’s Mac, and the only way I found to clear it was to reset all pairing information through the options mode.
Once you’re connected, you have two options for how to work with the display. If hybrid mode is off, the QBraille functions like any other display, using the command set in your screen reader of choice. However, if hybrid mode is on, all the function keys behave as they would on a regular keyboard, and Braille input works a little differently. Pressing the pairing and mode buttons together toggles between the various available input modes. For me, the choices are computer Braille, US uncontracted, US contracted, UEB uncontracted, and UEB contracted. For computer Braille, the keys are directly sent through to the device. For the others, the text is sent when the spacebar is pressed. This seems to work well, and I haven’t experienced any issues with lag or missed characters when typing quickly into a document. This does have one drawback, specifically when using single letter navigation when browsing a web page. When entering a letter, such as h for heading, the QBraille will enter the word "have" if you’re in contracted mode, unless you use the letter sign. Even so, or if you’re in uncontracted mode, the space is still entered which can cause unwanted actions. The best thing I’ve found to do if you want to browse a web page in hybrid mode is to change the input mode to computer Braille. Then the letters behave exactly as desired. I also noticed an issue with hybrid mode on an iPhone, where using the Voiceover quicknav commands that require multiple arrow keys don’t work. The arrow keys simply get sent one right after the other. Another thing to be aware of is that performing some shortcuts requires a bit of hand gymnastics because of how the keys are placed. For example, doing Insert+N to open the NVDA menu requires you to reach for the insert key with your pinky while pressing the Braille keys with the rest of your hand, which could be a problem for someone with small hands. I might try the Windows sticky keys feature in this circumstance. HIMS might also consider adding an on-device solution for this.
The QBraille XL is a solid device that makes using a computer much more pleasant to use. On mobile devices it also allows for the benefits of both a Braille display and a Bluetooth keyboard. The internal applications, while basic, provide a nice way to take some notes, read a book, or use the basic scheduler. The experience is not perfect as mentioned earlier, but the few caveats do little to mar what is overall an excellent device. Since it’s a forty-cell display with an expanded keyboard, some may consider it a bit too large for everyday carry outside of a laptop bag or briefcase, but given that its major draw appears to be for working with a computer I don’t see the size as a major concern. If you’re an office worker, or do any significant work on your computer, the QBraille XL is worth a serious look.
Recipes this month come to us from the National Federation of the Blind of Nevada.
by Terri Rupp
Terri Rupp is the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Nevada, is a wife and mother, and is the author of a blog called Blind Mom in the Burbs.
Note: There are no measurements in this recipe. The person preparing can choose the amount of each ingredient to his/her liking.
Ingredients:
Kale
Strawberries
Feta cheese
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Method: Tear the kale leaves into small, bite-size pieces. Lightly sprinkle salt, pepper, and olive oil onto the kale and gently massage. Let the massaged kale sit in a covered bowl for at least an hour in the refrigerator. The longer it sits, the better. When you are ready to serve the salad, toss in finely sliced strawberries and feta cheese. Enjoy!
by Aaron Rupp
Ingredients:
4 pounds pork rump roast or picnic shoulder
4 teaspoons of liquid smoke
4 tablespoons of kosher salt (coarse salt)
Shredded cabbage
Method: Rub pork with liquid smoke and salt. For extra flavor insert garlic into the meat. Tightly wrap with four layers of aluminum foil. Bake at 400 degrees for four hours. Once pork is done, serve shredded on top of a bed of shredded cabbage.
For every extra pound of pork, increase everything in the recipe to equal the weight of the pork, including the baking time. The only thing you do not increase is the temperature at 400 degrees.
by Regina Mitchell
Regina Mitchell is currently the Southern Nevada chapter president and affiliate board member. She has been married for thirty-four years to Stan Mitchell and mother to her teenage daughter, Journi Mitchell. She’s a foodie and loves mystery movies. Her passions are travel, healthy eating, and an affinity for running, although she still craves a few Cheetos. She’s also on the hunt for the best cupcake and doesn’t believe ketchup should be anywhere near breakfast foods.
Dressing Ingredients:
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
3 tablespoons orange juice (1/2 orange)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Method: Combine the dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.
Orzo Ingredients:
1/2 pound orzo
1 16-ounce can chicken broth (low sodium)
1 cup water
4 whole scallions, minced (white and green parts)
15 fresh basil leaves, cut into chiffonade (ribbons or strips)
Method: In a large saucepan add chicken broth and water. Allow to come to a boil. Add the orzo and cook ten to twelve minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Drain the orzo in a strainer or colander if needed. Pour the citrus vinaigrette (dressing) over the warm pasta, this will allow the dressing to absorb into the orzo. Let cool to room temperature. Garnish with scallions and basil.
Orzo is actually a tiny rice-shaped pasta, slightly smaller than a pine nut. Orzo is ideal for soups and wonderful when served as a substitute for rice. Add the dressing when the orzo is still warm so the dressing is absorbed into the pasta. This dish is even better when made in advance; just check the seasonings and add the basil leaves at the last minute.
You can serve the orzo hot or cold, as a side dish, and as a component in casseroles, soups, and salads. Orzo usually comes in a basic pale-yellow color, but it is also available in a tricolor variety that is commonly used in rotini and other pasta types. The dressing can also be used on salad. Enjoy!
by Regina Mitchell
Macerated Seasonal Berries Ingredients:
2 pounds fresh berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries or boysenberries)
1 cup simple syrup (1 cup water and 1 cup sugar. Place in a saucepan; simmer until sugar dissolves. Cool)
Method: Place berries in a large bowl. Add simple syrup to taste, start with 1/2 cup of syrup then add as desired. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside while preparing and baking the shortcakes.
Lemon Shortcake Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour (spoon and level)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
2 whole lemons, zested and chopped
1 cup sour cream (not low-fat)
1/4 cup whole milk
1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water or milk (for egg wash)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, for sprinkling
Note: For a shortcut—purchase store-bought shortcakes or sweet biscuits from local grocery store or fresh bakery.
Method: Preheat oven to 425. In a medium bowl, sift the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in 1/4 cup sugar. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or fork until it resembles coarse meal. Stir in the lemon zest, sour cream, and milk. Scoop the dough into six high mounds evenly on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Brush the tops with the egg wash. Sprinkle with the remaining two tablespoons of sugar. Bake until lightly browned, about fifteen to twenty minutes, until the outsides are crisp and the insides are fully baked. Transfer the biscuits to a rack. Cool slightly before splitting.
Place biscuits on a dessert plate. Spoon the macerated berries over the biscuits. As an alternate you may spoon a dollop of fresh whipping cream or non-dairy whipped cream on top of macerated berries. Enjoy!
Come to the Carnival:
The American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults is celebrating its 100th anniversary by bringing to the 2019 National Convention the best indoor carnival ever. It will have games, prizes, and the premier of a special book, Pedro and the Octopus. The book was written by Deborah Kent Stein and illustrated by Ann Cunningham. When his big sister, Lena, warns Pedro that octopuses have lots of sticky arms for catching kids, he isn't too sure that a family trip to the beach will be fun. Pretty soon, though, he gets caught up in the excitement of walking in the sand with his long white cane, finding shells and stones to put into his pail, and playing in the waves. With its print and Braille text, and Ann Cunningham's captivating illustrations that appeal to both vision and touch, this unique picture book can be enjoyed by both blind and sighted readers.
At the carnival, the American Action Fund will be giving away 100 of these books, and the book will also be available for sale in the Independence Market at a cost of thirty-five dollars.
The carnival will be held on July 9 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Please check the convention agenda for the room location.
Come and help the American Action Fund celebrate a century of service to the blind and have a great time in the bargain.
Regional Seminar for Blind Parents in August:
The NFB of Colorado is hosting what we envision as a regional seminar for blind parents and are inviting parents and grandparents from around the country to come out August 23 and 24 for the event. The seminar will take place at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton.
The seminar will include discussions of our legal rights, tools for self-advocacy, and resources provided by the NFB. We will have tracks for parents based on the ages of children (infants, school-age and tweens and teens) that include everything from introducing important soft skills to hands-on use of accessible equipment and alternative techniques. We'll also have a dedicated track for grandparents and activities for your kids running at the same time.
We'll have plenty of opportunities for discussion among participants, networking with other blind parents, and get a keynote address from Melissa Riccobono, first lady of the NFB.
The agenda will be posted by mid-June on theblindcoloradan.blogspot.com as well as on the Colorado Info channel on NFB-NEWSLINE®.
The cost of the event is $25 per person or $50 per family, with registration available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/blind-parents-seminar-tickets-61853819439.
For more information, contact Maureen Nietfeld at 215-353-7218.
From Imagineering Our Future:
This originally appeared in the May 16, 2019, Imagineering Our Future, and it is an eloquent reminder about the role advocacy plays in being a Federationist:
President's Letter
Dear Friends,
In the National Federation of the Blind you frequently hear about the big, bold, advocacy initiatives we are taking on—such as getting the Marrakesh Treaty ratified by the United States. While those efforts are important, the critical aspect of what we do happens at the individual level, where we teach blind people to be their own best advocate.
We recognize that as a blind person, if you know the laws and understand your rights, you are the most authentic spokesperson for yourself. Thus, much of our work centers around training each other to self-advocate and backing each other up with more support as needed. We know from our decades of experience that both are essential.
My wife Melissa, who also happens to be blind, and I often have to attend educational team meetings to advocate for our two daughters who receive services in the public schools because of their blindness. Thank goodness we both have received training from the National Federation of the Blind network, and fortunately we have each other and the support of our friends in the Federation. If we did not have that background and support, those meetings would be even more emotionally taxing than they already are. Melissa also spends a lot of her time going to meetings to support other families, But, despite our best efforts, we know there are so many families and blind people who are not yet connected with us; as a result, they are fighting against the artificial barriers all alone.
Advocacy is one of the most important reasons for us to connect with blind people and their families. When we do, we teach them that they are not alone, we empower them with the tools to raise their own expectations, and we connect them with an unparalleled network that will be a lifelong resource for them to continue to be strong advocates for themselves.
As part of our network, you are an important component of this self-advocacy training and support program. Thank you for your role in raising expectations for the blind every day.
Sincerely,
Mark A. Riccobono, President
National Federation of the Blind
Advocacy—Our Vision and Objectives
The National Federation of the Blind has been advocating and teaching self-advocacy for more than seventy-eight years. At first we worked to gain economic security for blind people. The next generation focused more on civil rights. Now we are well known for our efforts to protect students, veterans, blind children, blind workers, and senior citizens losing vision. Along the way NFB taught tens of thousands of blind people to advocate for themselves politely, persistently, and persuasively.
The third pillar of our strategic plan aims even higher. Our vision reads:
The National Federation of the Blind is the leading advocate for all blind Americans in areas such as education, employment, transportation, voting, and civil rights. Blind people, their families, agencies for the blind, corporations, and the government turn to our organization for expert advice on programs, skills building, encouragement, nonvisual access, and technology that levels the playing field for blind people.
Our objectives are:
• To strengthen the advocacy capacity of National Federation of the Blind members;
• To establish and strengthen our relationships with industry and federal, state, and local government officials; and
• To increase public support to achieve acceptance, full integration, and equal opportunity of blind people.
We will reach our goals with love, hope, and determination. You can read our strategic plan in the February 2019 Braille Monitor or online at: https://www.nfb.org/sites/www.nfb.org/files/ publications/bm/bm19/bm1902/bm190202.htm
Notices and information in this section may be of interest to Monitor readers. We are not responsible for the accuracy of the information; we have edited only for space and clarity.
New and Unique Travel Site for the Blind:
On June 3, 2019, Holman Prizewinner Stacy Cervenka launched the Blind Travelers’ Network, an online platform to connect blind and visually impaired people with information and resources for nonvisual accessibility in countries around the world. The platform hosts blog posts, reviews, discussion boards, and event listings to help users expand their horizons, leave their comfort zone behind, and explore new places.
Never before has there been a website exclusively dedicated to the global travel opportunities for blind people; the Blind Travelers’ Network underscores the growing ability of blind people worldwide to explore independently.
Cervenka, who is blind, birthed the idea for the platform after she and her husband Greg, who is also blind, sought to enjoy a leisurely horseback riding lesson at a ranch, only to encounter obstacles and disrespect in response to their blindness. The staff infantilized the couple and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act; Cervenka took legal action and wanted to share her experience with other blind people.
“I wanted to post about our experience on Yelp, but I knew that it could be months or years before another blind person wanted to go horseback riding at this stable and, by then, my review would likely be hundreds of reviews down the page,” Cervenka said. “I wished there was a centralized place where I could post a review of this stable where other blind people who needed to see it could do so.”
With the creation of the Blind Travelers’ Network, there now is, and it contains information about traveling with a cane in China, paragliding in Torrey Pines, and beach-going in Sydney. The platform was also influenced by Cervenka’s experience planning a cruise for her honeymoon, where the largest online aggregate of cruise information provided her ample detail about various cruise lines, cruise ships, and ports of call, but none about nonvisual accessibility. She realized that there was a need for a central platform with this information. Cervenka has also used social media to share her travel experiences with other blind people, who have historically contacted her directly with questions. Now, she hopes to scale this level of communication and community-building with the Blind Travelers’ Network and also to make this information publicly available.
The Holman Prize, of The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco, selects three winners a year to challenge conventions of blind ambition and perceptions of blind ability. Created specifically for legally blind individuals with a penchant for exploration, the Prize provides financial backing–up to $25,000–for three individuals to explore the world and push their limits. To visit the Blind Travelers’ Network, go to blindtravelersnetwork.org.
For all inquiries, please contact [email protected].
Maryland Settles Discrimination Case by Blind Inmates for $1.4 Million: National Federation of the Blind Assisted Blind Inmates Challenging Disability Discrimination
Annapolis, Maryland (June 5, 2019): Nine current and former Maryland prison inmates have settled their discrimination lawsuit, Brown v. Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, for $1.4 million in damages and attorneys’ fees. The Maryland Board of Public Works has just approved the settlement payment. Under the settlement, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) will modify prison procedures and provide assistive technology for the blind to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other applicable laws.
The lawsuit, brought with the assistance of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind and the Prisoner Rights Information System of Maryland (PRISM), alleged that DPSCS denied the blind inmates access to prison jobs, kept them in prison longer, denied them access to prison programs and information, and put them in danger because of their disabilities. Specifically, because they were blind, the inmates were housed at a medium-security prison, even when they were eligible for lower security or for programs at the state’s twenty-six other facilities. Blind inmates were also excluded from the prison work programs that allow prisoners to learn job skills and earn higher wages and credits off their sentences.
The suit further alleged that the blind prisoners did not have equal access to prison services and privileges available to other inmates because the prison communicates with inmates primarily in print, but made no accommodations for inmates who could not see. The ADA, enacted in 1990, prohibits discrimination against inmates with vision disabilities and requires state agencies, including prisons, to ensure “equally effective communication” with blind and low-vision inmates. The plaintiffs in the case alleged that the prison’s discrimination denied them the ability to communicate and endangered their safety. They had to rely on other inmates to help them navigate prison facilities, read their mail (including attorney-client communications), read the rules in the inmate handbook, use the commissary and prison library, file grievances and requests for medical attention, and more. Not surprisingly, this subjected them to mistreatment by other inmates, who took advantage of the blind prisoners’ need for help by extorting money, commissary items, and even sex.
Some of the changes that DPSCS will make under the settlement agreement include:
“These blind inmates do not seek special treatment,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind. “They seek only equal and independent access to the same facilities, services, and privileges that are available to other inmates. Lack of that access has not only denied them their rights but led to a nightmare of extortion, threats, and violence. We are happy the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has agreed to make changes and hope that corrections officials throughout the nation take note. The National Federation of the Blind will continue to fight for the rights of our blind brothers and sisters, including those behind bars.”
Background: A National Problem
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 7 percent of state and federal prisoners have vision disabilities, significantly higher than the 2 percent of people not in prison. As people age in prison, that number increases to 15 percent. According to the report “Making Hard Time Harder” by the Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities Project at Disability Rights Washington, “While prison is hard for everyone, incarceration is even more challenging for inmates with disabilities. Research shows that inmates with disabilities are sentenced to an average of fifteen more months in prison as compared to other inmates with similar criminal convictions. The time they serve is also harder, with more sanctions imposed and less access to positive programming than other inmates.”
Abused, Depressed, and “Frightened All the Time”
Gregory Hammond, one of the plaintiffs, lost his sight in prison due to multiple sclerosis. He says of his experiences: “I wanted to work in one of the vocational shops at the prison to reduce my sentence and learn some skills for when I got out, but they said blind people weren’t allowed to work in the shops. They assigned me an inmate walker to guide me around instead of letting me use a white cane or teaching me how to navigate myself. Then they made me share a cell with him and he stole from me because I was blind and couldn’t see my things. He assaulted me because I bumped into his TV, and I couldn’t defend myself. And I had to depend on him for everything—going out of my cell, reading mail or rules, writing medical slips. I even had to pay him to write the medical slip to get help for the injuries he gave me. But they still would not give me a single cell. Later, when my MS acted up, no one would write a medical slip for me, so I was paralyzed in my bed overnight. Inmates I had to pay to read my mail for me even went after my family. One threatened to hook up with my mother because, while he was reading my mail, he saw a picture of her. Another wrote obscene letters to my little sister because he got her picture and address from reading my mail. I couldn’t ask them to write grievances about themselves, even if I could have afforded to, and the computers in the library weren’t accessible for the blind, so I couldn’t do anything. I was mentally abused and powerless, and it changed me. It made me depressed. I was scared and frightened all the time. And it's hard to cope when you are a grown man and you have to depend on someone else, another inmate, to help you, and he's just taking advantage of you.”
Messages of Joy:
I have compiled a short book of my favorite scriptures on joy. This book is about twenty pages, and I hope it will be a blessing to you. It is available in grade one Braille, grade two US Braille, and grade two Unified English Braille. The cost is $12, including shipping.
Please call or email me to order this book. My phone number is 804-328-1831, and my email is [email protected]
Blind Employee Sues Los Angeles County for Discrimination:
National Federation of the Blind Supports Sharon Watson in Fight for Her Legal Rights
For Sharon Watson, a blind licensed clinical social worker with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health since 2004, it was bad enough that the county deployed software—the Integrated Behavioral Health Information System (“IBHIS”)—that wouldn’t work with her text-to-speech screen reader in 2014. The department has made matters even worse by refusing to provide Dr. Watson with a dedicated, qualified reader to help her complete the administrative tasks that she can no longer accomplish independently. And to add insult to injury, Ms. Watson has faced discriminatory accusations related to her job performance, even though her alleged low productivity has been caused by the county’s failures to accommodate her disability.
After trying to resolve the situation with the county for the past five years, Ms. Watson filed suit this week in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Her lawsuit alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. Ms. Watson seeks a court order requiring the county to provide her with a qualified reader with the sole or prioritized task of assisting her, declaring that the county has violated state and federal law by deploying the inaccessible IBHIS system, and awarding her compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys’ fees. She is being represented by Anna R. Levine and Timothy R. Elder of the TRE Legal Practice, with the support of the National Federation of the Blind.
“The National Federation of the Blind is dedicated to promoting accessible technology in the workplace and beyond and to fighting for the legal rights of blind employees,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind. “We will not tolerate a situation in which Los Angeles County deploys inaccessible technology, refuses to accommodate a blind employee affected by that unlawful decision, and then threatens her career and livelihood by blaming her for problems of its own making.”
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