_______________________________________________________________________________
Vol. 68, No. 10 November 2025
Chris Danielsen, Editor
Distributed by email, in inkprint, in Braille, and on USB flash drive, by the
National Federation of the Blind
Mark Riccobono, President
telephone: 410-659-9314
email address: [email protected]
website address: http://www.nfb.org
NFBnet.org: http://www.nfbnet.org
NFB-NEWSLINE® information: 866-504-7300
Like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/nationalfederationoftheblind
Follow us on X: @NFB_Voice
Follow us on Mastodon: @[email protected]
Watch and share our videos: YouTube.com/NationsBlind
Letters to the President, address changes, subscription requests, and orders for NFB literature should be sent to the national office. Articles for the Monitor and letters to the editor may also be sent to the national office or may be emailed to [email protected].
Monitor subscriptions cost the Federation about forty dollars per year. Members are invited,
and nonmembers are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be
made payable to National Federation of the Blind and sent to:
National Federation of the Blind
200 East Wells Street at Jernigan Place
Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND ADVANCES THE LIVES OF ITS MEMBERS AND ALL BLIND PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES. WE KNOW 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. OUR COLLECTIVE POWER, DETERMINATION, AND DIVERSITY ACHIEVE THE ASPIRATIONS OF ALL BLIND PEOPLE. THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND—IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES.
ISSN 0006-8829
Each issue is recorded on a thumb drive (also called a memory stick or USB flash drive). You can read this audio edition using a computer or a National Library Service digital player. The NLS machine has two slots—the familiar book-cartridge slot just above the retractable carrying handle and a second slot located on the right side near the headphone jack. This smaller slot is used to play thumb drives. Remove the protective rubber pad covering this slot and insert the thumb drive. It will insert only in one position. If you encounter resistance, flip the drive over and try again. (Note: If the cartridge slot is not empty when you insert the thumb drive, the digital player will ignore the thumb drive.) Once the thumb drive is inserted, the player buttons will function as usual for reading digital materials. If you remove the thumb drive to use the player for cartridges, when you insert it again, reading should resume at the point you stopped.
You can transfer the recording of each issue from the thumb drive to your computer or preserve it on the thumb drive. However, because thumb drives can be used hundreds of times, we would appreciate their return in order to stretch our funding. Please use the return envelope enclosed with the drive when you return the device.
Vol. 68, No. 10 November 2025
Illustration: Ray Kurzweil Honored at his Alma Mater, MIT
Running for the Federation: Meet Ken Duke
Bountiful Expressions of Thanksgiving from the Mississippi Affiliate
Compiled by LaShawna Fant
Back to School Bags for Braille Readers
by Peggy Chong
United States Department of Justice Sues Uber for $125 Million
by Chris Danielsen
Graduating from the Colorado Center for the Blind Means More Than Skills
by Jeremy Smith
National Federation of the Blind Commends House Introduction of Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act
Plan for the Future
National Federation of the Blind Denounces Devastating Job Cuts Within the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
When Cuts Become Catastrophe: Defending Braille and Deafblind Education
by Justin Young
Equal Access to Live Theater: Opening New Worlds through Audio Description and Touch Tours
by Cindy Scott-Huisman
Blind-Centered Innovations through JAWS for Windows: Celebrating Thirty Years and a Commitment to Leadership into the Future
by Glen Gordon and Ryan Jones
A Commitment to High Expectations: Leadership through Reflecting the Hopes of Blind People in Education
by Anne Lancaster
Monitor Miniatures
Copyright 2025 by the National Federation of the Blind
Ray Kurzweil, renowned inventor, futurist, and longtime advocate for accessible technology and supporter of the National Federation of the Blind, received the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Robert A. Muh Alumni Award from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. In his lecture upon receiving this prestigious award for MIT alumni, “Reinventing Intelligence,” Kurzweil reflected on his optimism about artificial intelligence and human progress. Shown here with Anil Lewis, Executive Director for Blindness initiatives of the National Federation of the Blind, Dr. Kurzweil pioneered groundbreaking reading and language-recognition technologies that have empowered blind and low-vision people worldwide. The first was the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which was created in collaboration with the Federation, and other collaborative projects followed. Today, the reading technology is available on multiple mainstream devices as well as products specifically designed for the blind. Anil shared that Dr. Kurzweil views these accomplishments with characteristic humility, “openly and humbly expressing his appreciation for being part of this transformative journey with blind people.” We congratulate our friend Dr. Kurzweil for this prestigious recognition of his many outstanding achievements.
[PHOTO CAPTION: Anil Lewis, holding his white cane and Braille display, stands beside Ray Kurzweil]
From the Editor: As part of the Federation’s coast-to-coast movement challenge, we are honored to have been selected to participate in the California International Marathon, which takes place on December 7, 2025. Our National Federation of the Blind team will showcase the capabilities of blind people and generate support for the organization. We thought you would like to meet one of the accomplished blind runners who are taking part. Here is biographical information about Ken Duke:
Ken Duke, a lifelong resident of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a dedicated advocate for the blind community and a proud member of the National Federation of the Blind of Utah since 2004. Currently serving as president of the Salt Lake Chapter, Ken works alongside a committed board to advance the NFB’s mission of empowering blind individuals to live the lives they want.
Diagnosed in 1982 with retinitis pigmentosa, Ken gradually lost his sight and adapted his personal and professional goals to meet the challenges of blindness. Originally aspiring to be a furniture builder, he shifted his focus to technology, earning a degree in computer science and building a successful thirty-year career in information technology as a programmer, software engineer, and project manager supported by assistive tools like JAWS and screen magnifiers.
As visual demands in the workplace increased, Ken transitioned once again, earning a business management degree from the University of Utah, where he also served as president of the Information Systems Technology Club. His leadership extends beyond the Federation; he is also president of the Achilles Utah Chapter, promoting inclusion through athletics and social connection.
“Whether as a father, husband, president, chairman, board member, student, missionary, or volunteer—in each case the main objectives are to work together to achieve a common goal,” Ken says. “I am a large recipient of service every day of my life. My family, friends, and colleagues uplift me with opportunities to grow and with experiences that advance my intellect. I also receive service regarding my personal health in the form of running partners. Without them I would not have been able to finish over sixty-three marathons or be a part of the 1996 and 2002 Olympic torch relay. It seems only equitable that with so much service rendered to me that I make it a priority to serve in the capacities in which I can contribute.”
One of Ken’s idols is Albert Einstein, who once wrote: “A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
Compiled by LaShawna Fant
From the Editor: Dr. LaShawna Fant is a consistent and thoughtful contributor to these pages. Below, she has compiled some Thanksgiving reflections from members of the Mississippi affiliate, of which she serves as president, for your enjoyment. Here are their thoughts:
The National Federation of the Blind taught me a lot. They gave me the skills to do more things on my own. Robert Skillon, Anthony Clay, and Sam Gleese were people I met, and we traveled together to national conventions. On top of this, I am grateful for life and for every morning I wake up because I have been through so much in the last few years.
I lost my vision in a car accident on March 29, 1999. After getting out of the hospital and adjusting to the loss of my vision, I started independence training at Addie McBryde Rehabilitation Center for the Blind in Jackson, Mississippi. I then met Mr. Sam Gleese, and he introduced me to the National Federation of the Blind. After attending a meeting, I became a member of the state affiliate. When I completed my training, I returned home and attended a meeting of the Tupelo Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Mississippi. I moved my membership to this local chapter. I have been a member of the Federation for twenty-four years, and I am now the president of the Tupelo Chapter. After attending several meetings, I realized that I am a blind person with the same legal rights as other individuals. I still have a life to live. I have gained more independence as a blind person through the training provided by the Federation. I have gained confidence that I can do it all, knowing that it may just take me a little longer, but I can still complete the task. I am now able to travel alone with my white cane thanks to proper training. I have attended numerous national conventions, where I learned about my rights as a blind person and received additional training to enhance my independence. Because of the National Federation of the Blind, I do not let blindness hold me back. Additionally, I am thankful for many things. God blessed me with the opportunity to earn my GED after the car accident. I then attended Northeast Mississippi Community College, where I graduated with an associate’s degree in office systems technology. I have a job at LCI where I work as an assembly worker. I am married. We have an eleven-year-old daughter, and I love every minute of it. I am also thankful to be a proud member of the National Federation of the Blind, where I have gained an extra family that cares about me and my rights to live as an independent blind person.
The National Federation of the Blind changed my life. It taught me independence, and I became more self-assured. As a result, I can do things I thought I never would do. I now do basic things I had other people doing for me. There are things I am thankful for in life. I am grateful for the Bible. It gives me strength and direction in life and lets me know what it will be like in heaven. 3 John 2:2 is my favorite verse. It says, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” (King James Version, (KJV)) Not to be forgotten, I am also thankful for life.
When I thought I was all by myself as a blind person, the National Federation of the Blind helped me realize that I am not alone. I thought my life was over, and I did not have anything else to contribute. When I heard of the Federation, I realized I had been found and no longer wondered what would become of my life as a blind person. Thankfully, I realized I can still grow, learn, and help others. Additionally, I am grateful for my family and friends. My grandchildren mean the world to me, and I treasure every moment I spend with them.
The National Federation of the Blind has taught me to be more independent. It has also helped me learn more about who I am as a person and has exposed me to various opportunities I can pursue in life. I am thankful for being a member of the Federation and for being a part of our Federation family. I am also grateful for the lessons that leaders in our organization have taught me and for the various skills that have helped me grow.
I appreciate that the National Federation of the Blind is an organization that advocates for and upholds the rights of people who are blind or low-vision. The Federation helps to make sure there is accessibility in the workplace, schools, and public buildings. The Federation helps motivate independent living, education, and self-empowerment. Additionally, the things that I am most thankful for are my Lord and Savior, who takes care of me every single day. I am also thankful for my family, neighbors, and friends who help me when I need it and stand by me in hard times. I am thankful for the limited eyesight that I do have, and that I am still able to read books, even though I have to hold them close to my face to see. I am thankful for being able to walk, talk, clean up my own house, cook, and help others when I can. Thankfully, God has blessed the blind with technology that can help us with daily living. God cares for the blind.
The National Federation of the Blind allows people who are blind, like me, to meet and interact with other individuals who are also blind. We are able to be around individuals who understand what it is like to live with blindness. Within this organization, I have learned about resources that help me in my daily life and gain information to live independently. I am thankful for the Lord waking me up each day and for me being able to take care of myself. Thanksgiving flows from my heart because I can live as a blind person, and the Lord keeps helping me every day to be able to still enjoy my life with minimal assistance.
The National Federation of the Blind gives me an opportunity to meet and build lifelong relationships with other Federationists who share similar life experiences with me. It also means I have connections with others who have some answers or suggestions to help overcome life’s hurdles. The Federation also represents a strong presence, because there is strength in the large number of Federationists who stand together as one. Moreover, I am thankful for the life that God has blessed me with so far. I am thankful for my parents, siblings, niece, nephews, other family members, and friends. I am also thankful and proud of my family legacy. I am thankful that with each new day, there is an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others.
The National Federation of the Blind of Mississippi is a newly found family to me. At the beginning of my low-vision journey, I was terrified. I had to leave my job where I worked for twenty-three and a half years, stop driving, and become dependent on others. After meeting my NFB family, attending the Addie McBryde Rehabilitation Center for the Blind, and meeting with people who were totally blind and others like me who have low vision, I became a different person with a new attitude. I’m so thankful for that experience. I came out of depression with an open mind, caring heart, and not feeling ashamed anymore. I was just so proud and thankful for the new chapter in my life. The National Federation of the Blind saved me from a bad situation, and I became a PROUD member of the NFB of Mississippi Greenville Chapter. In addition, I am very thankful for my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and my wonderful family. Last but not least, I am thankful for my handsome husband, WH Myers. I am grateful for the love and support I get from them all. To God be the glory! Amen.
The National Federation of the Blind is a support system, a community of encouraging and resilient individuals who are understanding of the challenges I contend with due to low vision. It is positive and spiritually uplifting. It is a wealth of information and knowledge that I appreciate and have been able to utilize and implement, which has considerably improved my quality of life. The Federation is also a platform to be seen and heard, with every opportunity to bring awareness to others that the blind and low-vision are vibrant, capable individuals who can and will accomplish as much as they desire. Additionally, I am thankful for God in my life. I see His love, care, and concern operating in and through my husband, family, friends, and others around me. In addition, I am thankful for His wisdom and the wherewithal He has provided for me to navigate through every aspect of life. I am thankful that He uses me as an example of perseverance to impact others, showing them that they can do all things through Christ, who strengthens them.
To me, the National Federation of the Blind has been and is a nationwide organization that redefines and builds character, conduct, and conversations of who we are as blind and low-vision people. I’m thankful that I was introduced to and later joined the Federation. Not only did I join an organization, but a worldwide family. Additionally, I am grateful for my health, strength, and family.
The National Federation of the Blind has given me a newfound hope that a full, rewarding life is still possible despite my visual deficit. I am part of an organization of like-minded individuals who inspire me to keep reaching and striving to be all I can be. I am thankful for life, my health and strength, and the blessing that my family are all doing well.
The National Federation of the Blind has handed me hope. I gain joy from the unity we display in walking together as blind people. We are supportive members united to walk out our purpose. In addition, I am grateful that God has given me the ability to continue being a blessing to my family and children. I am also very thankful for life.
The National Federation of the Blind means getting my life back. It means I have the power to advocate for myself and other blind people through collective actions. I have battled so much in my life through a divorce at an early age, becoming homeless (although I had three jobs), overcoming health issues, being blind (which I am proud to be), and assisting other blind people in gaining their independence. I regained my confidence thanks to the Louisiana Center for the Blind. Structured Discovery has become a significant part of my life, and I am honored to have been chosen by the Mississippi EMERGE Center to serve as the home management instructor, where I assist others in overcoming their blindness. For all this, I thank the Federation for helping me gain a deeper understanding of the positive philosophy on blindness and how it does not define me. Moreover, I am thankful for many things. I am thankful for this year of opportunities to work in the industry of helping blind individuals achieve their goals of independence and re-enter the workforce. I am thankful for this year’s organization of our Gulf Coast Chapter of the NFB of Mississippi and for being given the opportunity to lead our chapter as president. With endless love, I am grateful for my beautiful daughter Bella, who would not allow me to give up on myself and taught me what faith is all about. This highlights my gratitude for the great character she embodies through her hard work and determination. I am also grateful to my husband Tim for being there when I need him. Additionally, my niece Cailyn and her fiancé Joe are always present and cheer me on when I visit and never leave me behind. My mom Naomi has always taught me valuable life lessons and how hard work pays off. I have friends I have met along the way, and they have been encouraging. Most importantly, I thank God for His love and grace and for allowing me new days and new opportunities to make a difference in the world each day. Our affiliate president LaShawna Fant believes in me and has welcomed me to walk beside her to explore more opportunities and benefit from her mentorship. I am also thankful to Marilyn Green for being a strong mentor and believing I can achieve many goals in the National Federation of the Blind.
by Peggy Chong
From the Editor: These days you may be most familiar with Peggy Chong as the Blind History Lady, but she has been a leader in the National Federation of the Blind for decades and currently serves as president of the Aurora Chapter of the Colorado affiliate. In this short article, she tells of a Braille and tactile literacy project that her chapter undertook, and which others might wish to replicate. Here is what she says:
The Aurora Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado, a chapter of mostly seniors, gave five Braille readers from the greater Denver area public schools a back-to-school bag at our September meeting this fall. Each bag was valued at more than two hundred dollars.
Over the past few years, several of our members worked with blind high school and college students and were surprised to learn that many of them had exposure to Braille learning options but had no idea how to take advantage of them. Even some of the Teachers of Blind Students (TBS) had no idea that their students could order their favorite books in Braille through the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) and be allowed to keep the book using NLS’s Braille on Demand service.
Last January the new board of the Aurora Chapter met to discuss the upcoming year’s chapter goals and activities. Several worried that our blind kids in the area were not getting enough Braille and reading and writing practice. It was noted that the schools were generous in purchasing Braille notetakers and other high-tech devices, but that the blind students often could not take their devices home. Some members said that their sighted children and/or grandchildren, now teachers in public schools, received back-to-school bags for their students, but everything was in print and not inclusive for our blind kids. Everyone felt that each blind child should be able to have at home their own tools to allow them to do their homework independently, along with inclusive tools so mom, dad, grandparents, or guardians could help them understand and complete homework assignments. We talked about what a back-to-school bag could look like and how our chapter could raise the money to supply a bag. Over the next several months, members researched and gathered supplies. Michelle Chacon, board member of the chapter and a TBS, began contacting other TBSs throughout the Greater Denver area to whom we could present the bags. To our sadness, the search took months, but we were ultimately able to find five Braille readers.
Each bag included items that would encourage the reading and writing of Braille; tactile literacy; inclusive family time; and better access to school, home, and community participation for the kids. We included:
After the bags were presented, snacks were served, and the parents and children got a chance to work with the blind adults to learn how to use the items in the bag. We encouraged the families to reach out to us if they have any future questions about accessibility and inclusion for their blind child.
by Chris Danielsen
On October 15, 2024, members of the National Federation of the Blind and our allies protested denials of rideshare service to guide dog users and other blind and deafblind people in front of both Uber and Lyft’s headquarters facilities in San Francisco. There have been significant developments since then, including the rollout by both companies of features allowing guide dog or service animal users to voluntarily self-identify to facilitate a more streamlined reporting and follow-up process. At the same time, Federationists have continued to report violations not only to the companies, but to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division. The reports to the Justice Department have now borne fruit.
On September 11, 2025, DOJ filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Uber under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The complaint focuses on the denial of rides to blind and deafblind people who use guide dogs and extends to other service dog users and wheelchair users. DOJ says that it brings the action based on reasonable cause determinations that “Uber has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against people with disabilities” and that “a person or group of persons has been discriminated against, and that Uber’s discrimination raises an issue of general public importance.” The lawsuit seeks court orders to stop the discrimination and $125 million in compensatory damages for individuals who have reported discrimination, as well as civil penalties of up to $100,000 per violation.
The ninety-plus-page complaint is sweeping, and many of its details are distressing to read. It describes how Uber and its drivers have routinely refused service, imposed illegal surcharges and cleaning fees, and failed to modify policies that would accommodate riders’ disabilities. It alleges that Uber knew of these problems but failed to take preventive measures such as adequately training drivers, monitoring compliance, or providing meaningful relief to those harmed. It cites instances where there is evidence that drivers remained on Uber’s platform even after flagrantly violating riders’ rights.
The DOJ details many harrowing incidents. Blind riders like Michael May and Ryan Dour faced repeated denials after informing drivers they traveled with guide dogs, causing anxiety and missed appointments. Deafblind rider Valerie Hyatt endured drivers calling her service animal “filthy” and deliberately engaging in intimidating and frightening behaviors, such as taking detours, making unnecessary and unplanned stops, playing loud music, and accusing her of lying about her disabilities. After being denied multiple rides and missing his flight, veteran Jason Ludwig—who uses a service dog to help with his walking, balance, and daily tasks—had to endure a sixteen-hour drive in a rental car, which aggravated his chronic back pain to the point where he could not stand or walk when he arrived home and had to remain in bed and miss work for five days. Despite the considerable expense of the missed flight and rental car, Uber’s insulting solution was to offer Mr. Ludwig a $15 ride credit. Wheelchair users like a seven-year-old boy identified as “J.E.” and medical physicist Kingsly Joseph repeatedly experienced drivers refusing to transport them because the drivers claimed they could not stow a collapsible wheelchair in their vehicles, even in cases where the vehicle was obviously large enough. J.E.’s mother noted that these experiences, as well as insensitive and intrusive questions from drivers, caused her son to have more depression and anxiety about his disability and to become reluctant to travel. Riders with inflexible prosthetic limbs, like Elizabeth Lawrence, were denied the simple accommodation of sitting in the front seat for more leg room.
The complaint further alleges that Uber discouraged complaints by limiting account credits for riders who repeatedly faced discrimination and subsequently sought refunds. It also alleges that Uber failed to share the outcomes of investigations, leaving victims without recourse and allowing violating drivers to continue operating. It notes the rollout of the self-identification feature—which it says occurred after Uber was notified of the DOJ investigation leading to this enforcement action—but alleges that this has had little to no effect on denials.
This lawsuit is the culmination of years of effort by the National Federation of the Blind to spur DOJ action. Our long quest for justice is the reason that President Mark Riccobono and our national leadership requested that riders report discrimination to DOJ as well as through our rideshare survey and to Uber and Lyft directly. We know that reporting can be tedious and time-consuming, especially considering that discrimination persists, but we now know for sure that DOJ is listening and accumulating evidence to take Uber to court. The lawsuit represents our collective effort, but our government can bring pressure to bear on Uber that simply was not available to any individual or even to the Federation as an organizational plaintiff.
One hundred twenty-five million dollars is a substantial number, and it is undoubtedly focusing Uber’s attention and drawing the notice of Lyft and other rideshare providers as well. Pursuant to its specific powers under the ADA, DOJ is also seeking a civil penalty of $50,000 for a first violation and $100,000 for each subsequent violation to “vindicate the public interest in eliminating disability discrimination.” To reduce the possible civil penalties, Uber needs to show that it has made or is making good-faith efforts to end the discrimination. Money aside, it is in Uber’s interest to take much more aggressive action than it has so far to finally stop the denials.
This historic lawsuit underscores the essential role the National Federation of the Blind has played—and will continue to play—in the fight for equal access to transportation. By organizing protests, documenting violations, and urging members to report discrimination to DOJ, we helped to build an extensive record that made this enforcement action possible. But our work does not end here. We will closely monitor the progress of this case; push for meaningful remedies beyond monetary damages; and continue to hold Uber, Lyft, and all transportation providers accountable. Together, we will not only ensure compliance with the law but also secure the dignity, independence, and full participation that blind, deafblind, and disabled riders demand and deserve.
by Jeremy Smith
From the Editor: Jeremy Smith is a recent graduate of the Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB), one of the training centers affiliated with the National Federation of the Blind. At his graduation ceremony, he read a letter to his fellow students. He was generous in agreeing that it could be shared with me for possible publication and gracious in expanding upon the original piece when I asked him to give our readers more context. Here, then, is Jeremy’s adapted version of the thoughts that he shared with the CCB students and staff:
I was possibly the most reluctant student to ever walk through the doors at 2233 West Shepperd Avenue. I knew when I left Kentucky for the Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB) on January 8, 2025, that the trip would be costly. It was. Since being in Colorado, I’ve parted from my long-time partner. The next time I set foot in my house, it will likely be to pack my things and leave forever. I loved that little house. What’s more, I don’t think I’ll ever call Kentucky home again. My whole life I’ve tried to love a place that could never love me in return, not the way I needed. It’s time to move on.
I have retinitis pigmentosa. My eyesight has been vanishing bit by bit since I was ten years old, though it wasn’t until my early forties when genetic testing finally provided a proper diagnosis. As a kid, what I needed was comfort, an honest explanation of what was happening to me and what it might mean for the future. I received none of this. What I had was a void, a mystery filled with every source of evil a vivid young imagination could produce. In short, I was deeply traumatized by the lack of emotional support. No one was there for me, and so I’ve spent my entire life feeling abandoned, believing my eyesight was something to hide. I’ve been exploring this terrain for years. I wrote a 259-page yet-to-be-published memoir on the many ways I struggled to adapt to my sight loss and what mental health professionals now recognize as classic symptoms of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD).
Searching for the answers I needed early in life, I became a therapist. Today, as a middle-aged man, I still seek safety. I still lose myself in the swirl of stress and all those false gods—the things I thought would bring me peace, validation, and a sense of security. Accomplishment will not do this. Logic and reason, intellect and competence, our presentation to the world will not do this. Until the self is healed, not even the love of a partner or children will overcome the trauma that dictates our response to everyday events. I’m not in the habit of making big blanket statements about the human condition, but I stand by this one both personally and professionally. Our highest human potential cannot be realized while this type of wound goes untreated.
As a CCB graduate, I have hard skills now, useful, tangible ways of getting around and taking care of business: cane skills, mass transit, Braille, access technology, screen readers, and AI. Hell, I’m even in better shape, and I was never not “in shape.” But these are not what I value most about my time in Colorado.
In the decades it has taken for my sight to disappear, my confidence went with it—believing in me, trusting myself. All the ways we might think well of ourselves leaked and flowed away like a punctured water balloon. The person I wanted to be drifted out of sight long ago. But since being in Colorado, I have taken on a mission: restore the man I’ve believed I could be.
I did my own counseling to heal that original wound, to purge my central nervous system of the 380,000 volts that have lived in me, wild and unpredictable. Like downed power lines, my emotions have been dysregulated and reactive, thrashing this way and that with every new trigger. The slightest sign of danger would send sparks flying, my mouth spitting a thousand burning embers ready to create more destruction. Since I was a little kid, my body has been poised for a fight. I have no flight response. I advance. I fight. I know this effort has no end. I will be doing this work for as long as I walk this earth. But I’ve come a long way. Hands in my pockets now, I’ve finally taken off the gloves I’ve used to punch my way through the world.
Bless you, Colorado, for realizing that ketamine is more than just an escape from reality. It’s also a tool, medicine to reset and rediscover our truest self. To oversimplify the process, ketamine and other psychedelic medicines allow for greater neuroplasticity, which refers to the brain’s ability to forge new connections and break free of long-standing patterns of thought. This change in me, brought forth from my own hard work, from conversations with professionals and trusted friends, and through a fundamental reprogramming of my brain, has coincided with rediscovering the power of community.
I have known what it’s like to be “in community” over the years. In college, I belonged to a group of good-deed-doers called Students for Appalachia, idealistic young people who fought hard for social justice, for kids in our small town, and for the health of this planet. That community in many ways made me thoughtful. It made me feel like I was part of something, less alone in the world. Community shaped and molded me, but it has been years since I felt at home among a group of people like me. As much as I learned from individual instructors, my primary teacher at CCB was the community.
From a spunky eighteen-year-old, I learned to be truly brave, to go and keep going. To the outside observer, my friend Zoe has no fear. Getting lost is a gift, a chance to find yourself. For Zoe, riding the rails to some remote corner of the Denver Metro means pushing boundaries. It is the exercise of their freedom. For too many blind people, our boundaries are the four walls we live within. Without skills, without the capacity to manage our anxiety, there is no world outside. Zoe reminds me that opportunity is the adventure. To be able to go and do is not a chore. It’s not something else to be angry about. Outside is where the light is. I want to absorb that sun on my face, to fill my heart with it.
At CCB, we generally travel in packs—our travel groups consisting of an instructor and one or two of your classmates. From my travel bros, I learned that the journey will rarely be easy. There are no straight lines when you’re blind. You’ll hit every obstacle—trees, poles, jagged road signs. You might fall down escalators going the wrong direction or cross the street diagonally (very bad). But you can still arrive where you want to go.
In this, the middle stage of my life, I’ve learned to ask for help, to feel no shame, to cry more freely, and to be open, to know that the less desirable parts of me do not spoil the whole. I’ve learned what people can survive, and how positive it is possible to remain. So many of the staff and students at CCB face challenges beyond the loss of their sight. They do so with a grace and poise I can only aspire to. To those who avoid the bitterness and resentment, to you who refuse to hate the sighted world, you are bigger and better for it. We ask the world for grace and patience. We must give the same in return. It is, after all, human nature to take for granted our blessings.
To those who wonder if an Independence Training Program like the one at CCB is right for you, my answer is—maybe. Are you prepared to seize this opportunity? I’m old enough to know that life only affords us so many opportunities to be part of something magical. No one gets a second chance to do something as special as CCB. There is love and belonging to be found here. Though freely offered, it must be earned. Few things are handed to you at CCB. Not everyone will become a close friend. Participants don’t just come from all over the world, but we also come from a million varied situations. We cross the lifespan, socioeconomic status, education, life experience, and identities. But blindness is the great equalizer. To each and every person who dares to accept this mission, anyone who comes to be part of this community and to do this hard work, you have my utmost respect.
Completing the nine-month program at CCB is the hardest work any of us will ever do. Every obstacle you’ve ever faced will return to taunt you. Fear and mistrust, all your anger and anxiety, will be thrown in front of you like a hundred sandwich boards on Main Street. Whack every one with your white cane if you have to and keep moving. Remember the words of a very wise old puppet: Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Only you can stop that momentum.
There are many debates that take place at CCB-—about the virtues of a guide dog, on how to communicate and educate a sighted world that often doesn’t understand our needs or how to offer support. A portion of every day called “Philosophy” is devoted to exploring what it means to live inside this blind wrapper. One such debate is about how we prove our capability to a world that believes we are fundamentally diminished. I return over and over again to this question, and for me it has one answer: We prove what we are capable of by being part of the world, by defiantly engaging, by asking for, or if necessary, demanding space. We must be visible, whether through our advocacy or simply using the bus to commute back and forth to work. Being seen confidently living our lives is essentially shouting a message of freedom from the rooftops.
When you graduate from CCB, the parting gift each of us is given is a bell. They call it the bell of freedom. The message long expressed at CCB is that when one blind person moves through the world with greater freedom, that act helps to liberate the rest of us. Implied in that sentiment is a responsibility to one another. I for one appreciate that message. As a blind community, particularly one that is well trained, we must continue to use our skills. We must carry the torch until the next generation of bellringers leaves with the tools they need to take charge.
To everyone I have encountered along the way at CCB, all of you queens and kings of West Shepperd Avenue, I say thank you. Trade nothing for knowing who you are, for knowing and showing that to the world. Each and every one of us deserves to be seen, heard, and valued. Do this hard work, then go share your light with the world.
From the Editor: Below is the text of a press release from the National Federation of the Blind announcing the long-awaited reintroduction of critical legislation. Here is the release:
Washington, DC (October 1, 2025): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the transformative advocacy organization of blind Americans, commends Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) for her reintroduction of the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act of 2025 (H.R. 5605) in the United States House of Representatives.
The legislation also has twelve originating cosponsors from both political parties. They are Reps. Don Bacon (NE-02), Sanford Bishop (GA-02), Sean Casten (IL-06), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-AL), Jimmy Panetta (CA-19), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Mike Quigley (IL-05), John Rutherford (FL-05), Pete Sessions (TX-17), and Adam Smith (WA-09).
This legislation will ensure that medical devices are designed and manufactured with nonvisual accessibility features, enabling blind and low-vision individuals to use and access these critical devices safely and independently.
The bipartisan Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act authorizes the Food and Drug Administration to promulgate regulations requiring manufacturers of Class II and Class III medical devices (such as insulin pumps, glucometers, heart monitors, and CPAP machines) to incorporate nonvisual accessibility features like audio output and tactilely distinguishable controls.
These features will enable blind and low-vision people to use medical devices without assistance from a sighted person, allowing blind Americans to maintain their independence and promoting positive healthcare outcomes.
Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said:
“Accessibility is not a matter of mere convenience, but a moral imperative that, with respect to healthcare, can make the difference between good and poor health outcomes and even between life and death. Blind Americans must have nonvisual access to medical technology that is crucial to our well-being. The Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act will ensure that future medical devices are designed with nonvisual accessibility features, granting us full independence and control over our own healthcare. We commend Congresswoman Schakowsky for her continued championing of this critical legislation, along with the cosponsors, and urge their colleagues to join them in supporting it.”
“I am proud to reintroduce the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act, to ensure that medical devices, like insulin pumps and blood pressure monitors, are truly accessible to people who are blind or have low vision,” said Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky in a statement from her office. “Over seven million Americans are living with uncorrectable vision loss and more than one million Americans are blind. In many cases, a blind person’s ability to manage their health and livelihood depends upon the ability to use these devices. As Americans, we cannot stand idly by while people who are blind or have low vision are excluded from a full, happy, and independent life due to these inaccessible technologies. This bill will help foster more inclusive and accessible care.”“What if I was never blind? In April 2013 I received a diagnosis of Stargardt Disease. I often felt adrift, uncertain of how to chart a course towards a fulfilling life. At that time, I was employed at McDonald’s and had temporarily paused my undergraduate studies. If I hadn’t received that diagnosis, my life might have followed a completely different trajectory. I would have continued working at McDonald’s, feeling stuck and uncertain about my future, but without the guidance and support that I found through the National Federation of the Blind, I might have struggled to navigate the challenges of vision loss. Instead, that diagnosis became a turning point for me by forcing me to confront my circumstances and seek out resources and communities that could help me thrive despite my blindness. The NFB helped me realize that my vision loss didn’t have to define me or limit my aspirations. By believing in my abilities, by entrusting me with leadership positions, and through intensive mentorship, the Federation changed my life. My community helped me excel beyond where I would be if I were sighted.
Mentorship is what has brought me to this point in life thus far. Without my mentors I am not sure where I would be right now. I just hope I can pay it forward someday.” - Dustin
Blind children and adults are making powerful strides to live the lives we want every day across the United States, but we need to continue helping blind people like Dustin. For more than eighty years, the National Federation of the Blind has worked to transform the dreams of hundreds of thousands of blind people into reality. With support from individuals like you, we can continue to provide powerful programs and critical resources now and for decades to come. We hope you will plan to be a part of our enduring movement by including the National Federation of the Blind in your charitable giving and in your estate planning. It is easier than you think.
With your help, the NFB will continue to:
Below are just a few of the many tax-deductible ways you can show your support of the National Federation of the Blind.
We accept donated vehicles, including cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, or recreational vehicles. Just call 855-659-9314 toll-free, and a representative can make arrangements to pick up your donation. We can also answer any questions you have.
General donations help support the ongoing programs of the NFB and the work to help blind people live the lives they want. You can call 410-659-9314, extension 2430, to give by phone. Give online with a credit card or through the mail with check or money order. Visit our online contribution page at: https://nfb.org/donate.
Through the Pre-Authorized Contribution (PAC) program, supporters sustain the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind by making recurring monthly donations by direct withdrawal of funds from a checking account or a charge to a credit card. To enroll, call 877-NFB-2PAC, or fill out our PAC Donation Form https://www.nfb.org/pac.
The National Federation of the Blind legacy society, our Dream Makers Circle, honors and recognizes the generosity and imagination of members and special friends who have chosen to leave a legacy through a will or other planned giving option. You can join the Dream Makers Circle in a myriad of ways.
You can specify that a percentage or a fixed sum of your assets or property goes to the National Federation of the Blind in your will, trust, pension, IRA, life insurance policy, brokerage account, or other accounts.
You can name the National Federation of the Blind as the beneficiary on a Payable on Death (POD) account through your bank. You can turn any checking or savings account into a POD account. This is one of the simplest ways to leave a legacy. The account is totally in your control during your lifetime and you can change the beneficiary or percentage at any time with ease.
If you do decide to create or revise your will, consider the National Federation of the Blind as a partial beneficiary.
Visit our Planned Giving webpage (https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/ways-give/planned-giving) or call 410-659-9314, extension 2422, for more information.
Just imagine what we will do this year and, with your help, what can be accomplished for years to come. Together with love, hope, determination, and your support, we will continue to transform dreams into reality.
From the Editor: The following statement was released by the National Federation of the Blind on October 14, 2025:
Multiple news outlets report that most federal employees within the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) received Reduction in Force (RIF) notices on Friday, October 10. The RIF is scheduled to take effect on December 9, 2025.
If not reversed, this action will severely undermine the Department of Education’s ability to carry out its legal responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Randolph-Sheppard Act. These laws (https://nfb.org/programs-services/advocacy/legislative-priorities/laws-and-funding-fact-sheet) ensure that blind children receive Braille and other essential educational services, that blind adults receive the training necessary for competitive employment, and that blind entrepreneurs have opportunities to operate businesses on federal properties.
While the National Federation of the Blind—the nation’s transformative advocacy and membership organization of blind people—has been breaking down barriers in education and employment, this action by the Department of Education threatens to rebuild those very barriers by eliminating the positions responsible for enforcing crucial disability rights laws. The consequences will be devastating—fewer blind students learning Braille and accessible technology, fewer blind adults receiving mobility and employment training, and fewer business opportunities for blind entrepreneurs. Furthermore, loss of institutional knowledge will be a significant disadvantage to the commitments our nation has made to these programs and citizens with disabilities. These cuts will set back decades of progress toward equality and independence for blind Americans.
In a letter to Secretary of Education McMahon dated March 25, 2025, (https://nfb.org/programs-services/advocacy/policy-statements/letter-secretary-education-regarding-executive-order) we sounded multiple alarms about how cuts made to Department of Education programs would have a devastating impact on blind Americans. This latest action by the Department only deepens the concerns we put forth in that letter. The National Federation of the Blind calls upon the Department of Education to immediately rescind this reduction in force.
by Justin Young
From the Editor: Justin Young is a member of the Advocacy and Policy team at the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute, and education issues are part of his portfolio. Here is what he has to say about recent cuts in grants from the United States Department of Education:
The Department of Education has quietly taken an action that could devastate the future of blind, low-vision, and deafblind students across our nation. This fall, the Department abruptly eliminated more than thirty federal grants that fund Braille training, deafblind education, and teacher preparation. These are not obscure programs. They are the lifelines that ensure blind and deafblind children can learn, read, and communicate on equal terms with their sighted peers. That is why an urgent legislative alert went out from our national office. You can read it at https://nfb.org/programs-services/advocacy/legislative-priorities/legislative-alerts/reinstate-funding-critical .
As Education Week reporter Mark Lieberman documented in his October 2025 article, teachers and students learned of the cuts with shock and disbelief. April Wilson, one of only two teachers of blind students in her Illinois district, had been completing a federally supported Braille certification program when she received the news. “Some VI teachers can go years at a time and not teach Braille,” she told Education Week. “When we get that student who’s blind in our district, we’d better get ready.” Without those grants, she and hundreds of other educators will lose the opportunity to “get ready” at all.
According to the Education Week report, the Department has discontinued funding for Braille training programs at California State University and the University of South Carolina, as well as projects serving deafblind children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. In his Positive Note, a publication for leaders and members of the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina, affiliate president Marty McKenzie noted: “I was notified on Sunday, September 6, 2025, that [the] Project INSPIRE 2: Access and Equity in STEM Learning for Individuals Who Read Braille grant has been defunded effective September 30, 2025. Dr. Tina Herzberg, a Federationist, is the principal investigator on this grant. It is the third Braille grant she has obtained in her eighteen-year tenure at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Federationists such as First Vice President Lenora Robertson and others learned to read Braille under the first grant.”
Federal deafblind centers that help families and teachers across states are also facing elimination or consolidation. As Education Week notes, these students represent one of the lowest-incidence but highest-need populations in education. The federal deafblind centers that connect families and educators across states now face elimination or forced consolidation, meaning that the specialized expertise families rely on may simply vanish. “If our students don’t have the best quality of teachers,” one mother of a deafblind student asked, “what are we really giving them?”
These decisions are more than bureaucratic adjustments; they represent a betrayal of our nation’s commitment to equal opportunity in education. Braille literacy is not an elective skill—it is the foundation of learning for blind students. When teacher training programs are dismantled, students lose access not only to Braille but to literacy itself. For deafblind students, whose numbers are small but whose needs are complex, the loss of coordinated federal support could mean no meaningful instruction at all. This is not fiscal prudence; it is moral gross negligence.
The National Federation of the Blind knows what happens when society treats the education of blind and deafblind children as expendable. We fought for decades to secure the right to learn Braille, to receive materials on time, and to be taught by trained professionals. We know that when blind and deafblind children are denied those tools, the result is not merely academic failure, it is a lifetime of limited opportunity.
The Department of Education must reverse course and restore these essential programs. Our children’s literacy and future depend on it.
by Cindy Scott-Huisman
From the Editor: Cindy Scott-Huisman is a leader of the National Federation of the Blind of Arkansas. She lives in Little Rock, where she also owns an art gallery. Given her involvement in the arts, readers will likely not be surprised to learn that she is a theater enthusiast and has worked in that field. In this article, she describes innovations that are making theatrical performances more accessible to the blind and others. Here is what she says:
Audio description (AD) makes live and recorded performances come alive for blind and low-vision audiences. By narrating visual details—actions, settings, costumes, and more—it helps everyone fully experience theater, film, and other art forms. AD is now common in many movie theaters and on certain TV services, and it is gradually expanding into live theater.
My earliest experiences with audio description were on Broadway in New York City. There, the description is often professionally produced and generally available for any performance once a show has been running for a while. These performances feature pre-recorded AD: individual sound clips carefully cued to match each moment, like any other sound cue, and synchronized with the performance through the miracles of modern technology. I also encountered prerecorded AD on a touring show in Memphis, Tennessee. At the Broadway performances, the description ran through a provided tablet and earpiece, and at the touring performance it ran through a free app on my phone called GalaPro. I have since been told that GalaPro is also an option on Broadway now as well, but that tablets are still provided for those who do not have or want to use their smartphone.
Little Rock, Arkansas, where I live, offers more live theater than one might expect, and many local theaters provide live AD for at least one performance of each production. I became personally involved in 2019, helping the Arkansas Repertory Theater (Arkansas Rep), our local Equity house, implement AD. (An Equity theater is a professional theatrical production company that operates under a contract with the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), the US labor union for stage actors and managers.) We lined up funding, equipment, and trained voice talent, even planning pre-performance touch tours of the set. Our first internal test in early 2020 was fantastic. I was thrilled beyond anything I had imagined. Then the pandemic abruptly halted the season.
A couple of years later, Sandee Pinkstaff took our initial work further. Sandee’s premier AD job came about because a former student was in town visiting family. This former student is now a parent. She wanted to take her young son to the Children’s Theater in the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, and having AD would help facilitate her understanding of the action on stage. Drawing on decades of experience as a music teacher at the Arkansas School for the Blind and as an orientation-and-mobility and Braille specialist, Sandee trained with Arts Access in Raleigh, North Carolina, and MindsEye in St. Louis. After retiring from full-time teaching in 2023, she launched Creative Descriptions, a business dedicated to organizing and promoting AD throughout central Arkansas. Sandee has gotten many of the theaters in central Arkansas interested in offering AD, and she is really good at organizing all of the aspects of this business. She puts together listings of upcoming theater performances and emails this information to potential attendees. Once she knows a person has tickets, she sends show notes and all of the other details, such as what time to show up and where to meet her for the equipment. Sandee’s approach therefore facilitates access not only to the performance itself, but to more of the printed information that is available to sighted patrons.
My husband and I recently attended an Arkansas Rep performance where Sandee’s son Grant, a professional actor, delivered the live description. Before the show, stage manager Luisa Torres led a memorable touch tour, letting us handle key props and set pieces so we could visualize their use during the performance. Touch tours like this add a deeper layer to audio description. Luisa was so good, I asked where else she has done this. She told us that during the regular (fall through spring) season she works at Baltimore Center Stage (BCS) in Baltimore, Maryland. I enjoyed pointing out the connection that this city is where the National Federation of the Blind headquarters is located.
When I thought through this connection, I called Chris Danielsen, Editor of the Braille Monitor and Greater Baltimore Chapter president of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. He and I had a great conversation, comparing and visiting about each of our audio description experiences. He brought up the general show descriptions that are often given before the performance begins. If you don’t know this happens, you might miss a lot of informative details. This part of the AD usually contains information from the playbill and provides detailed descriptions of the set, characters, costumes, and other pertinent details that couldn’t be included in the AD during the performance because of the obvious time constraints. If this pre-show AD is a recording, it usually plays on a loop starting around twenty minutes before the show begins.
I contacted the Baltimore Center Stage Theatre and got to visit with Rachael Erichsen, the Director of Properties. Rachael is a member of the Allyship and Advocacy Committee of the Society of Props Managers. She is very tuned into accessibility and shared with me the following insights:
I was privileged to have close friends and mentors teach me early in my career that accessibility is at the core of a vibrant arts community. The Touch Tour program that we offer here at BCS exemplifies a core tenet of ‘universal design,’ that an accommodation for some is ultimately a benefit for all. While we created the Touch Tour specifically for our blind and low-vision patrons, it has become very popular with anyone who drops by. We have started offering additional Touch Tours at our student matinees, something that the Teaching Artist in me really enjoys. All our patrons benefit when we provide a tactile way to engage with the story, because theater at its core IS an embodied art form. For the actual tour, I aim to curate a tactile representation for every visual storytelling element on the stage. A typical spread includes pieces of the set like the floors, walls, and trim; entire costumes on dress forms; swatches of the fabrics used in costume builds; and [the] actual or replicas of the majority of props that are handled prominently by the actors. We arrange this all on several tables in the public lobby outside the performance space and always have an interpreter there who serves as a ‘tactile dramaturge.’ Their task is to guide our patrons through the offerings while relating them to their place and importance in the story. Because we always offer the tour at the same performance as our audio description service, the audio describer often comes through for a tour as well to gain further context for their script.
I was especially interested in learning more about Rachael’s innovative ideas for the future: “Something else I would like to include in tours is a topographical bird’s-eye view of the playing space with the current show’s set on it. I’ve seen these incredible tactile maps at places as varied as the Sagrada Familia [Church of the Sacred Family] in Barcelona and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. They instantly let you gather the layout of a space or image through touch alone, which is a welcomed anchor amid the flood of descriptive words!” Rachael is currently learning 3D computer modeling with the goal of using the theater’s 3D printer to build these “set maps” in the near future. She is very grateful that her role as Properties Director gives her access to these emergent technologies. The first line of Baltimore Center Stage’s vision statement is “We are building a theater for everyone,” and this deeply resonates with Rachael Erichsen.
Arkansas Rep Executive Artistic Director Will Trice, a multi-Tony-Award-winning producer, shares this commitment. “The touch tours certainly weren’t my original idea, but they made perfect sense once I learned about them,” Will told me. “Theater is a three-dimensional art form—well, actually four-dimensional,” he said. “Scenic and props designers create environments for the performances—sometimes literal, sometimes poetic. I’m not blind or low-vision myself, but it seems like being able to establish a tactile relationship with those environments would make all the difference in connecting with the performance. And under the guidance of a professional stage manager, touch tours are a relatively simple offering for most shows.”
The impact of accessible theater is tangible. Whenever I attend a described performance, I meet new friends from the blindness community—many of them students at World Services for the Blind. These events facilitate our active participation in the arts and invite the broader public to see us as full participants in cultural life.
The model is spreading, and those of us who feel called to do so can help that spread. Audio description is appearing in Arkansas State Park visitor centers and in museums and attractions nationwide. Sometimes all it takes is asking what accessible options exist. If you ask at an attraction and find out that accessible information has not been thought through yet, this could give you (and/or your chapter or affiliate) a chance to let them know what they can do to make your experience better.
The arts have always been central to my life. I met my husband while working at the Arkansas Rep in the late 1980s (back when I was sighted), and our son—who is also blind—served as the Rep’s property manager in 2022–23. Watching AD and touch tours flourish today is deeply meaningful to me. They ensure that everyone, regardless of sight, can feel fully part of the living, breathing world of theater.
by Glen Gordon and Ryan Jones
From the Editor: The 2025 National Convention was stuffed with presentations about technology, and one of them celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of JAWS for Windows (JFW), one of the most significant access technology tools for blind people. In addition to information from Ryan Jones, Vice President for Software Management of Vispero (also known as Freedom Scientific, the maker of JFW) about exciting new features of this screen reader, Glen Gordon, who has been a part of its development from the beginning, provided both historical context and useful advice for blind people planning their careers. Here is the presentation, beginning with President Riccobono’s introduction:
President Riccobono: Our first presentation is one that I think you’ll find very important. Even as we work to create built-in accessibility in the area of technology, we must recognize that there is a tremendous amount of expertise and value that comes in the access technology industry, and this morning we’re starting off talking about what I dare to say is really one of the most significant and important tools that blind people use in accessing information that truly allows us to compete on terms of equality and work at other settings. It’s been about five years since we’ve had this company represented here on stage with a presentation, so it’s a good opportunity to catch up. This company plays a very important role in providing access to information, and I would say its most important product in that regard has been JAWS for Windows. [Applause]
One of the important values I think that has been built into this product is that it’s shaped and informed and directed by blind people. [Applause] This morning we have Ryan Jones with us, who has been with the company for seventeen years, but has worked in the access technology industry and as a trainer for even longer than that. You have probably gotten to know him at the booth or other places. The second gentleman is Glen Gordon, and although you should know him, you probably know him better through the work he’s put into the JAWS for Windows product because a lot of the work and design and thought that’s been put into it has come from him. Since it is the thirtieth anniversary of JAWS [Applause], it’s a number I like since it’s also my thirtieth convention. And you may have noticed they were distributing lapel pins that had a certain distinctive shape to them. I did know the shape because I did install JAWS that way in the beginning, so it’s a real pleasure to invite to the podium from Vispero, Ryan Jones and Glen Gordon. [Glen and Ryan then walked on to the song “Baby Shark”]
Glen Gordon: Hi, good morning. My name is Glen Gordon, and I’m not saying that I’m old, but two factors that might conflict with that determination. One is I started working on JAWS before many of you were born, and number two, I have no idea of what that song was. [Laughter] So we will proceed. I’m going to talk for the first portion of the session and then reflect a little bit about where we’ve been, how we got there, especially some of the early years of JAWS, and then I’ll turn it over to Ryan Jones, who’s our vice president of software, and he’ll talk about exciting things that are coming up in the future of JAWS and screen reading in general.
It is great to be here with so many Federationists, people who helped make JAWS be the product that it is, both from using it and from giving us valuable feedback. I’ve done this for thirty-one years. I started in 1994 and I’ve learned a bunch of stuff, some of it more painfully than others, and I’m going to share some of those thoughts with you in the next few minutes. And woven into that will be some of the history of JAWS.
I was really lucky. About ten years before I started working on JAWS, I discovered that I was passionate about something. Well, I discovered I was passionate about something when I was seven, but that was radio broadcasting, and I decided early on that that probably was not the best way to make a living. So years later, I discovered that I was really passionate about software development. And if I can offer you one big piece of advice: find something that you’re passionate about and pursue it. Even if it’s not “the best way for you to make a living,” if you’re really passionate about it and you want to do that thing regardless of whether or not you’re being paid, you’re going to get good at it and you’re going to be successful at it. That’s my experience at least. [Applause]
And once you’re passionate about something, get to know people working in your field, if only to call and ask them “Can we have a conversation? I’m interested in this field. What can you share?” If I had not gotten to know Ted [Henter] in 1986 when I got a Total Talk PC from Maryland Computing Services—Ted was the tech support training guy—if I had not gotten to know him and if he had not been so generous in sharing his time with me, I would never be working on JAWS. I was the wrong guy. I knew nothing about screen reading. I was not well connected with the blindness community, even though I’m totally blind. But because I got to know Ted, we formed a friendship, we formed trust, and I did some side projects for him that allowed him to determine that maybe I would be a reasonable person to take a gamble on when it came to working on JAWS for Windows.
But whatever you pursue, there are going to be challenges. Things are not going to come easy. And the other thing that I learned first from interacting with my instructors at school, where I had to balance advocating for what I needed and communicating to them that I didn’t want it any easier than my sighted peers, that’s to learn to be resourceful. You don’t need to have all the answers, but you need to figure out how you’re going to get them, and don’t make your problem totally somebody else’s problem. [Light applause] There is an element of doing your research, figuring out what the options are, and then ultimately you may need to ask somebody else to help you. But if they see you are invested, they will become invested and really want to help too. They will see that you’re interested in something and that you’ve done your homework. And I bring this up now because when I first started working on JAWS for Windows, there were no good Windows screen readers. And so the question was how was I going to use Windows long enough to learn about it to help work on JAWS? And the answer was—I’m willing to share this now—I ordered a free time demo of Slimware Window Bridge, which was the first rather primitive Windows screen reader. I would use it for fifteen minutes at a time because at that point I had to shut it down. There was an operating system called DOS that lots of blind people used, the operating system that we thought nothing could improve upon. Boy were we wrong! [Laughter and applause] And so I would use DOS to develop JAWS, I’d go into Windows to read the documentation I needed, go back to DOS, rinse, repeat, and that’s how I began to bootstrap myself working on this.
When something feels overwhelming, do two things. This has been what I’ve learned. Don’t procrastinate, because the longer you procrastinate, the more overwhelming it’s going to feel. And take small incremental steps to gain confidence. Even if they’re tiny, I have found over and over again that you feel amazingly accomplished for making the smallest stride forward. And in terms of JAWS, I knew nothing about Microsoft Windows when I started working on it. Well, how’s the guy who knows nothing about Windows going to work on Windows? Turns out Ted had a sighted programmer named Chuck Opperman working for him. Chuck loved everything Microsoft, he worked on Windows. He got the shell of JAWS for Windows working before I even joined the company. The problem is it would only work for about fifteen seconds, and it failed in really monumental ways. But because he had created that framework, I could make small changes and small fixes and fix his bugs one by one by one over the first six months. And that allowed me to do two things: I gained confidence and I learned about Windows. And had he not done this, there would’ve been no way for me to have moved forward as fast as I did. It was a great way to sort of build up skills and gain confidence.
The next thing is that we all thrive when we’re surrounded by people whose skillset compliments our own. When Ted founded the company, he was a visionary. He absolutely was. But the other thing that he did is he put together a brain trust of four of us who each contributed in really different ways and whose skills didn’t really overlap all that much. So Ted was the visionary. Eric Damery was a great salesperson, and even though he is sighted, completely embodied the blindness experience and was great at training. And we had Jerry Bowman, who’s a former Honeywell HR executive, and he ran the company both from a personnel and a management standpoint. And with the four of us in those early days and then expanding out to hundreds of other people throughout the years, we formed a company of blind people largely for blind people entirely, and we continue to have people with overlapping and complimentary skill sets.
Turns out, by the way, that if you’re developing a blindness product, having people who are blind working in the role of developers is a superpower. [Applause] And I say that because if one of us who’s also a user is a developer, we’re going to be more likely to discover problems early on before anybody else sees it. We’re not going to discover all of them, but we’re going to discover a lot of them, and we’re going to be able to fix them without going through a couple of other layers of reporting a bug. So that’s one of the superpowers. The other one is if you’re blind, you are going to work and help design a product that other blind people have an increased chance of wanting to use and being able to use effectively. So we were really lucky because as we became more successful, more blind people were interested in working for us, and one of those is in this room for sure. There may be others that I’m overlooking. I’m speaking of the man from New Zealand with that basso profundo voice, the great Jonathan Mosen. He originally talked to us on Main Menu and other internet properties and ultimately came in to manage our PAC Mate product, helped us refine our Braille implementation. He did so many things contributing to the legacy of JAWS, and he by all means was not the only one, but all because we developed a product that people saw a future in and wanted to be part of.
Luck and circumstance often play an important role. And I’ll give you a few examples. There was something called Dueling Windows 1996. At that time, there was no real active internet. If you were blind, you had to hear about things firsthand from your friends and relations, and Dueling Windows at the CSUN Conference brought a lot of blindness companies together to demonstrate what we could do in Windows. We worked really hard to be well prepared for CSUN. We succeeded there. We were the winning entrant, and that really got people talking about JAWS. We discovered Eloquence. It was the first fully functional software synthesizer, which allowed us to drop the price of JAWS because you didn’t need a hardware synthesizer. That was something else that I think at the time was really revolutionary.
And there are more things I could talk about on this line, but I think given the time, I’ll just move on and say that I fortunately felt compelled from the very beginning to make myself available to others even if it was “not my job.” If I could help someone, I wanted to be there. And I’ll tell you one NFB-related story about that. Anil Lewis and I had a conversation back in 1996 or 1997. He was placing blind people in jobs. They needed a terminal emulator program to work, and he and I talked it through over an hour. That’s something that was easy for me to do. I was delighted to do it. I moved on. I completely forgot about it, and he’s reminded me of this story time and time again. And so we never quite know the impact that we can have on other people. And providing training and support has also been one of our superpowers. We could not have done it without offering full service, right? Not everybody is a computer mastermind, nor should you have to be. But you need people who you can reach out to both for one-on-one and more generally to get training resources to become really good at software. And our best advertisers have always been all of you, people who have been loyal to JAWS, and thank you, by the way, for all of that. [Applause] But even more important than your praise has been your criticism, has been your requesting features. That stuff matters much more than saying you like the product, because without that kind of feedback, we won’t continue to drive to be our best. We won’t think of some of the best ideas. It’s that collaboration between you who use the product and those of us who were involved in making it that have really helped. [Applause] I have loved the last thirty-one years. Even though I’m a “software fellow,” I’m not put out to pasture. I still get to work on interesting things, and I could not be more delighted that the person who’s heading up our software division of Vispero, and Freedom Scientific more specifically, and leading us into the future is Ryan Jones. Here he is to talk about some of the things to look forward to in the not-too-distant future. [Applause]
Ryan Jones: Thank you, Glen, and thank you all for allowing us to be here. Don’t tell Glen please, but in 1994 when he started, I was in middle school. [Laughter] But seriously, Glen is one of the most intelligent people and one of the most humble people that I’ve ever known. And it’s a great honor to work with him. He actually, he may not remember this, but he was one of the first people who interviewed me when I applied for an IT job at Freedom Scientific in 2005. He interviewed me. I interviewed with several people. I ended up getting a job doing training at the time, which I didn’t realize that I loved training until I started doing it, but Glen was one of the first people I met, and we probably, based on the song that Mark had for us, we would consider him Grandpa Shark, I think. [Laughter] But even though I may be his junior, I still have no idea what the song means either. So let’s be clear on that. But I’m Ryan Jones, vice president of software at Vispero. I’ve been in, as Mark said, in this field my entire career. I’ve been using JAWS since 1999, so twenty-six years. I live in Kentucky, in Lexington, where’s Kentucky at? [Applause] There they are in the back. I met a young lady this morning from Lexington that’s been coming to convention since the early 1960s, ninety-three years young, Jan. So that was a great honor to meet her this morning. [Applause] Yes, it was amazing. Turns out she’s practically my neighbor and we didn’t know it. So that was a great blessing this morning.
What I’ve come to realize, both as a user of these products and leading the team that builds our products, is that JAWS isn’t just code or keystrokes. It’s the tool that enables us to participate in school, apply for jobs, and interact with the digital world around us, and also to connect with our friends, family, and loved ones. It’s a lifeline to independence. And over the past thirty years, JAWS has grown alongside of all of us as we’ve moved through different stages of our lives, from education to employment to retirement and all those things in between. JAWS has grown alongside many of us. And as we celebrate that legacy, I want to talk about where we’re heading next and some of the things that we can look forward to and how the future of JAWS is being built with the same principles that got us here.
And these are some things that you heard Glen speak about, listening to our users, solving real problems, and never settling for good enough.
We’re standing at the edge of a major shift in technology. I don’t think that’s any surprise to any of you, especially if you have listened to some of the other technology-related presentations this week. And as we all know, AI, or artificial intelligence, is not just a buzzword anymore. It’s actually changing how we interact with the world for blind users. This shift has enormous potential to break down barriers that we’ve all lived with for too long, things like inaccessible graphics and images, disorganized web layouts and page structures, and the time and energy it takes to find that one piece of information in a sea of clutter. Has anybody experienced those problems before? Surely I’m not the only one. [Applause] They’re not minor inconveniences. The truth is they’re the kinds of friction that wear us down over time, and AI gives us a new way forward. But here’s the thing: Tools only matter if they’re built by those of us who need access to them. And at Vispero, we believe that AI should be used in ways that respect your autonomy and your privacy, amplify your productivity, and reflect your real-world experience. And that’s why our approach to AI in JAWS is shaped by the people who use it, from engineering to support, training to QA.
As Glen said, many of us across this team are blind or low-vision. There’s not one department that I oversee that does not have multiple, if not entirely made up of, people who are blind or low-vision. [Applause] And I intend to keep it that way, and I intend to move that forward and then only increase the amount of blind and low-vision people that work on my team, because I find that they’re some of the best workers that I could ever dream to employ. And it’s because they don’t just design things, they actually rely on them. We all rely on them as we build them and test them and help shape the user experience from the inside out. Many of us know the phrase “nothing about us without us,” and that’s not just a slogan for our team. [Applause] When blind people are involved at every level, the results are just better. The technology is stronger, and we all benefit.
Now, we all remember, or we may remember, the acronym of JAWS, Job Access with Speech. So let’s talk about the workplace for a moment. One of the most important places that JAWS shows up is at work. Whether you’re a software developer or a customer service agent, a teacher or an entrepreneur, whatever it is that you do, accessibility at work isn’t just about fairness. It’s about being able to do your job with the same speed, accuracy, and confidence as your peers. [Applause] We’ve all heard that accommodations are about “leveling the playing field,” but what we are really aiming for in JAWS, what we actually believe in, is making blind professionals not just equal participants, but dominators in your jobs, in your careers. [Applause] We designed JAWS not just to “get the job done,” but to do it efficiently. And this is really about productivity, and productivity equals power. We know that when technology slows you down, it impacts how you’re perceived by your employer, your coworkers, and even yourself. That’s why we focus on reducing steps, eliminating guesswork, and helping JAWS users move at the speed of thought instead of at the speed of remembering things. AI makes this more possible than ever before. If AI can summarize what’s on a webpage or answer your question in three seconds instead of thirty, that’s time saved, that’s mental load reduced, and that’s energy you can put towards actually doing your job and not just figuring out how to use your computer and your screen reader.
And as Glen said, of course, none of this actually works without your feedback. That’s why we recently launched, in March, the Insert J Club. Any members out there, Insert J Club? [Applause] Good. There’s still plenty of room. This is a new initiative to connect with more of you, our users, our testers, and our community of experts. It’s a space where you can learn more about what we’re working on in our products, tell us what’s working, and more importantly, tell us what’s not working for you and help shape the direction of future updates to our products. We don’t want to guess at what you need. We want to hear it, because the people who use JAWS, ZoomText, Fusion every day are the people who should be steering where it goes next. [Applause] So if you haven’t joined yet, I encourage you to sign up. Go to freedomscientific.com/insertjclub, and you’ll be hearing from us about opportunities in the future to shape the direction of where we’re going.
Now let’s focus our last attention around some AI advancements upcoming. This mindset of co-creation or building with you, and not just for you, has already shaped many of the tools that you use today. Tools like Picture Smart AI—Any users out there? [Applause] Excellent!—which can describe everything from family photos to complex charts and diagrams. I will say that this personally has revolutionized my ability to do my work. Or FSCompanion. Any FSCompanion users out there? [Light applause] Excellent. FSCompanion provides step-by-step keyboard instructions in response to natural language questions on how to do things with JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion, and the applications you frequently use like Microsoft Office products. And now we’re taking this a step further. Very soon JAWS will be able to summarize the content and layout of a webpage. That means no more guessing about what’s on the page, no more digging through headings just to get oriented to what’s there. And even better, it will allow you to ask questions about what’s on the page in plain language. Questions like, “Does this restaurant menu have vegetarian options? Summarize this article for me. Show me the text of the page without all the stupid advertisements and links that are all over the page.” [Applause]
You can use that prompt, by the way, it will work if you say the word “stupid.” Because we’ve all felt the pain of this, haven’t we? We’ve all felt the pain of trying to find something on a page that’s cluttered with things that’s in our way. JAWS will answer clearly, concisely, and quickly.
And we’re not stopping there. Coming in September, we’ll also be releasing support for multi-line Braille displays. [Applause] And you may have gotten a chance to see JAWS working with products like the Monarch here this week. We know this has been a longstanding request for those of you in our community. For those of you who use multi-line Braille displays, this is a whole new paradigm for access to Braille, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much excitement from our team that develops and tests Braille support as they’ve been working on multi-line Braille. This is all coming, and we’re really excited for you to get your hands on it.
So let me show you where this is all headed. You’re about to see a short video demonstrating JAWS summarizing and describing and interacting with two live webpages, the restaurant page of the Marriott Hotel, where we are now in New Orleans, and a Wikipedia article about the Marriott Hotel. So let’s go ahead and play that video now.
Video Narrator: We’ve all faced challenges when navigating web pages: extra links, buttons, advertisements, popups, page refreshes. They all get in the way sometimes of finding that one piece of information that you’re looking for. Coming in the fall of 2025, FSCompanion will now be able to describe and summarize webpages, bringing useful information right to your fingertips so you can find exactly what you’re looking for, better understand the layout of a webpage, and even get personalized tips on how to navigate the page. Let’s try it out. I’m on the Marriotts Food and Dining page here at NFB2025.
JAWS Voice: New Orleans French Quarter Restaurants, vertical Bar, New Orleans Marriott.
Video Narrator: Let’s have FSCompanion give me a summary of the page.
JAWS Voice: Creating page summary. Page summary one. The page is structured with a top navigation bar that includes links to different sections like Overview, Gallery, Accommodations, Dining, and more. There is a main content area focused on dining options at the New Orleans Marriott featuring various restaurants and their details.
Video Narrator: Not only can we have it give us the summary and structure of the page, we can also ask questions. Give me a summary of the food options.
JAWS Voice: Enter. Give me a summary of the food options. Here are the dining options at the New Orleans Marriot. List of five items, one, 55 Fahrenheit, list of three items, nesting level one, cuisine, American. Description: enjoy handcrafted cocktails and light bites or shared plates.
Video Narrator: Maybe I even want to find out what restaurants are open at 10 PM. Let’s give it a try.
JAWS Voice: Type your quest. Enter. What options are open at 10:00 PM? Blank at 10:00 PM? The following dining options are open at the New Orleans Marriott at One: 55 Fahrenheit, open until 12:00 AM. Two, Canal Street Burger, open until 12:00 AM every day. Three, Canal Street Pantry, open until 12 AM every day.
Video Narrator: All right, thanks FSCompanion. Now let’s check it out on a Wikipedia page.
JAWS Voice: New Orleans Marriott, national, Wikipedia.
Video Narrator: Let’s see if FSCompanion can help us out on the Wikipedia page for the New Orleans Marriott.
JAWS Voice: Creating page summary. Page summary one. The page provides information about the New Orleans Marriott, a forty-two dash story hotel located in the central business district of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Video Narrator: Alright, let’s check it out and ask a few questions.
JAWS Voice: Type your question here, edit, enter.
Video Narrator: What are some key facts about the hotel?
JAWS Voice: Enter, what are some key facts about the hotel? Here are some key facts about the New Orleans Marriot. Bullet, location: 555 Canal Street, Central Business District, New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States. Bullet, floors: forty-two stories. Bullet, completion: built in 1972. Bullet, Architects… [Fades out]
Video Narrator: Thanks, FSCompanion. Coming in the fall of 2025, webpage summaries and questions with FSCompanion, brought to you by JAWS. [Applause]
Ryan Jones: Alright, what you saw isn’t just an experiment. It’s real, it’s working, and it’s on the way. But thank you. Even the most productive features only matter if you know how to use them. And that brings me to something I’m also really excited to announce. Starting in August, we’re going to be launching a new training series focused on helping you take advantage of AI tools, not just inside of JAWS, but across the board. That includes Chat GPT, Gemini, Copilot and more. Because we believe the people who learn to use AI well will be better positioned for success: success in school, at work, and in life. And we want blind users to be at the front of that wave, not playing catch-up. [Applause] This training series will meet you where you are and help you go further. Whether you’re brand new to AI or only experimenting, we’ll give you hands-on practical guidance to make them work for you.
So as we close, where does that leave us? It leaves us energized. It leaves us grateful for the journey that you’ve shared with us so far, and it leaves us with a clear sense of purpose for the next thirty years of JAWS, in which we will use the same convictions that we’ve always used: that technologies should adapt to you, not the other way around. And that blind people will be involved in every stage of the process, from idea to design to support to leadership. We will build better things. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your leadership, your advocacy, your support, and your partnership. The road ahead is bright. We are happy to walk with you, and we look forward to the next thirty years. Thank you. [Applause]
President Riccobono: All right! Let’s hear it for JAWS for Windows! [Applause]
by Anne Lancaster
From the Editor: Anne Lancaster is Vice President, Innovation and Strategy for the American Printing House for the Blind (APH). One of the projects under her remit is the Monarch, which by the way has just been named one of the one hundred “Best Inventions of 2025” by Time magazine. Her remarks to the 2025 National Convention were not only an update on the progress of the Monarch project but a demonstration of true allyship with our movement and what that allyship really means. Here is her presentation, beginning with President Riccobono’s introduction:
President Riccobono: We’re going to switch gears from technology in some ways to talk about education and really a commitment to high expectations. I asked this next presenter for some biographical information before introducing her, and I learned a number of things from what she provided me, and it’s very impressive, but I decided that maybe it would be better if I just shared a couple stories with you. She has a long history of building capacity in nonprofit leadership, but I wanted to share my own experience. Now, I first went to an annual meeting of the American Printing House for the Blind in the year 2000. I served for a number of years as a trustee of the American Printing House. I have been to many, many, many meetings all around the blindness field, and they’re not like a Federation convention. And so after twenty-five years of going to various meetings, you learn a lot about the vision industrial complex, and when you talk to people, you figure out pretty quickly whether they’re a Federation member or whether they’re part of the old way of thinking. In 2019, Pam Allen and I went to a meeting and Pam had just been at a session about marketing in the blindness field where they encouraged everybody who was there, including Pam, not to use the B word. [Laughter and some groans and boos] So later that evening was the first time that I met this woman, and it was clear from the questions that she asked, from the interests that she showed in understanding the perspective that I had as a blind person, that she might think differently than someone who says “We shouldn’t use the B word.” Now, this convention for a number of years now has heard all about the innovation of the Monarch. [Cheering] Yeah, yeah. And what you don’t likely realize about the Monarch is that it has come to be in a significant way because of the leadership this woman has provided at APH in building partnerships, in managing resources and relationships. Her leadership has been critical in that effort, and I would argue her leadership has been essential in our field at this time, and she has been a significant part of helping to get blind people much more integrated, especially into the educational leadership field.
When I came to the American Printing House for the Blind annual meeting in 2000, I could count all of the blind leaders there on one hand. She’s been a big part of changing the paradigm, and I wanted this audience at this time to know this leader because we still have a lot of work to do in education, and you need to know that our next presenter, although she is not blind, she represents all of the qualities of what we mean when we say “blind at heart.” I wanted you to get to know my friend and this critical leader in our time. She’s the Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at the American Printing House for the Blind. Here’s Anne Lancaster. [Applause and music]
Anne Lancaster: Good morning, partners! [Cheers] It’s such an honor to be here with you today, and I have to thank President Riccobono for all the nice things he said about me and also for this opportunity to connect with you and for your partnership and for his friendship and your guidance. APH is a much stronger organization because we are working together with NFB. [Cheers]
I know that most of you are familiar with the American Printing House for the Blind and what we do. APH started in 1858, the vision of two blind men who believed that all blind people should have access to books. That vision grew over decades to providing students with the materials they need in the classroom to ensure a solid foundation in life. For nearly 170 years, that’s been our mission, to do what’s necessary for learning inclusion. It’s a mission that’s been supported by government funds and championed by generations of blind people.
At APH, this mission is not just about equity; it’s also about expectations. We have high expectations for what blind and low-vision students can achieve. We have high expectations for their inclusion and for the systems that support them and the teachers who teach them. These expectations drive us every day. They are the impetus to solve the unsolvable problems. It’s a work in progress, even after all this time, but our expectation is that we’ll have a future that provides opportunity for everyone, and it’s at the core of who we are and how we work.
As a society, we’re divided on a lot of things. We’re also divided on the meaning of expectations. Some people believe if you keep expectations low, you’ll never be disappointed, or that low expectations lead to happiness. But we all feel differently, right? [Cheers] Yeah. We would argue that low expectations are disappointing. We believe that no one else will rise to the potential if there are low expectations, that when we expect minimum results, that’s what we get. We know that societal barriers and limitations are the direct result of low expectations, that these low expectations are a thin disguise for systemic bigotry.
Let’s look at the Monarch and our partnership project with NFB and HumanWare as an example of how we’ve all worked together to meet high expectations. The idea of technology providing immediate access to multi-line Braille and tactile graphics on one device was a hopeful expectation blind people named decades ago as the Holy Braille. Many believed it would never be possible, that even if we could solve the technology problems, it would be so expensive blind people would never have access. A big dream with pessimistic expectations. When we started the Monarch project, I felt like it was my duty to sit down with APH’s President, Dr. Craig Meador, and tell him in detail all the many ways the project could fail. To which he responded, “I’m not afraid of failing. I am afraid of not trying at all.” [Applause]
Craig recognized that low expectations are more devastating and more costly than setting the bar high and working to achieve it. And I’m excited today to share with you what high expectations have achieved so far through the Monarch project.
The Monarch has been publicly available for less than a year, and today there are nearly 1,100 Monarchs being actively used in classrooms around the world. [Applause] Yes, and even better, most of those are supported by government-funded programs and made available free of charge to teachers, students, and adults transitioning in employment. [Applause] It represents millions of dollars of public and private investment, and we’re seeing early success not just in access but also in impact. Students in our Monarch pilot project are reporting that they’re more interested in Braille and tactile graphics than ever before. They’re even more interested in school. Parents are delighted that they can now help their children with their Braille homework and read together in the evenings. Teachers are finding more time available to actually work with their students rather than on the time-consuming tasks of creating adaptable materials for their lessons. However, further success for the Monarch is being limited by the barriers of low expectations: low expectations of school systems that are hesitant or refuse to write Monarch into an IEP because of “liability concerns”; low expectations of schools that limit access to Monarch to only minutes each day, or those who refuse to teach with Monarch because “the child isn’t ready” or the technology is too complicated; low expectations of those who say it’s too expensive for a family to be responsible for or too expensive for an employer to purchase; low expectations of systems that don’t subsidize the costs of assistive technology and expect the cost burden to be on the person despite laws that say otherwise; and the low expectations blind people sometimes have of themselves when they say, “I don’t need Braille.” We can discuss how barriers create these low expectations all day long, and in many cases, the reasons they exist are at least temporarily justified, but at its core, they’re the impact and conditioning of blatant discrimination.
It’s been a delight to see that it’s the young people experiencing Monarch who have the highest expectations for its evolution. They’re not shy about it, and they’ve shared their feelings through the student pilot project. They want more, and they believe firmly they have a right to that access. [Light applause]
Students want access to the learning management systems being used by their sighted peers in the classroom, and this requires certification for the Monarch by major technology companies that have platforms they want access to. They want more books, and they don’t want their book apps to crash in the middle of reading Hunger Games. [Laughter] They want more games, games that will allow them to challenge and compete with gamers across the world or to simply race a car in the desert and crash it and not get arrested. [Laughter and one person saying “Yeah!”] Race car driver down here! They want more tactile graphics. And they’re specific: not just a tactile graphic of a car, but the chassis of a 1967 Mustang. They want to edit videos for their YouTube channel. They want to write music, make art, solve complicated math problems, write software programs, print their 3D creations, win science fairs, design their own fashion line, participate fully in class projects and contests. Students want to learn. They want to dream big dreams, and they aren’t just setting the bar high for us. They’re sending it to another galaxy. [Applause]
Now, I’ll tell you, their feedback easily represents hundreds of millions of dollars in necessary technology and software development, but they don’t want to be told to have realistic expectations because that’s setting the bar too low for their ambitions. Their innocence of systemic barriers doesn’t allow them to even consider that these things are high expectations. They are simply fair. They are what they need to answer that fire inside of them, that urgent call that from the moment they were born has always said, “You can live the life you want.” [Applause]
We’re only at the base of the mountain for Monarch, and it still exists as a promise yet to be delivered. Where we go from here and how quickly we can do it depends on challenging factors, but it begins with expectations. We could never meet and exceed those expectations without the active participation and inclusion of blind people. The Monarch is proof of that. It would never have been this groundbreaking without our partnership with NFB and the active engagement and leadership of blind people in its development.
I have observed that for blind people, pushing the agenda of high expectations against the fragility of sighted privilege can be exhausting. As much as we crave your voice at APH, we endlessly request your feedback on products, and on top of that, your every day is filled with giving sighted people information, often the same information you’ve provided millions of times, again and again. That’s unfair. But real inclusion of your voices, of your hopes and dreams, your expertise and experiences, is critical. We cannot deliver on the high expectations students deserve without it. Their very future depends on you. So I humbly ask of you today, knowing the demands the world already places on you, to consider how you can be more involved in education and setting a high bar of expectations for the future of our young people, to challenge the low expectations not just of individuals, but of systems and attitudes. You can do this in small ways: share your education story in social media. Volunteer to teach local school children about Braille, tutor in Braille instruction, or be a mentor for one of my very favorite summer programs to visit, the NFB BELL Academy. [Applause]
You can respond to surveys and share your experiences with product developers. You can also do this in grassroots ways. Run for your local school board or show up at school board meetings. If you’re a parent, find a leading role in your school’s PTA, be seen and heard in your local schools. Or you can do this in big ways. We have a distressing shortage of teachers of blind students, and it’s getting worse. These teachers have unmanageable caseloads. Pursuing any profession in education matters, and I would ask you to also consider employment opportunities at APH. We’re constantly looking for staff who have deep commitment to those we serve. Your lived experience has merit, and you can advocate, advocate, advocate. Active, organized voices are historically the driver of progress, and there’s no shortage of issues that need your urgent attention. The rights we already have for special needs students are at risk and need protection. We must have more funding for instruction and technology, and we must demand digital inclusion for parents to have a say in their child’s education for equity and opportunity in all schools, whether public, private, or at home. [Applause]
NFB is the preeminent advocacy organization in our field, and when you speak with a clear and persuasive voice, elected officials and government leaders listen. Your active participation as an NFB member is critical here. Even as I speak to you, Congress is working to finalize spending plans for next year. We believe, and I hope you do as well, that the Monarch should be included in those plans. [Applause] It is your voice that matters, and it is to you that Congress will respond. The majority of the voices in blindness and education today are coming from sighted people, and yes, we have good intentions and good hearts, and yes, we’re your allies, and yes, we’ll fight alongside you. But we will never, ever have your perspectives and we should never, ever be allowed to set the expectations for you. [Applause]
I came into this field after more than a decade of working closely with several disability advocacy groups, and I thought I knew a lot, but I made all the same embarrassing mistakes, like thinking because I can’t see anything without my contact lenses that I had empathy for the blindness experience. That was embarrassing. [Laughter] The first time I was a sighted guide for my new boss, I accidentally kicked his cane into the street. I was pretty sure I was going to be the next one to be kicked to the curb. In my work, I’ve met blind people from all over the world, and every one of these hundreds of conversations has been perspective-shifting. Very early on, I had the honor of spending time with Abraham Nemeth. Anybody know what I’m talking about here? I know you do. [Applause] Yeah, mind blown. That’s all I can say about meeting him, and I’ll never ever forget that conversation because it was the beginning of tearing down everything I thought I knew.
I’ve learned a million lessons from every NFB convention I’ve attended and from the leaders and the membership of this incredible movement. I’ve learned from talking to parents about their hopes and their fears, from experiencing the joy of students as those walls to learning come tumbling down. I’ve watched blind colleagues handle with grace and self-advocacy just crazy situations, like when waitstaff ask me what they would like to order for dinner or when a rideshare refuses to take us somewhere because there is a guide dog. Or when a hostess once asked if I wanted to accompany my colleague into the men’s restroom so I could help him! [Laughter] For the record, we both said “No thank you.” [More laughter]
I’ve learned from your persistence, resilience, strength, inventiveness, intelligence, your wicked sense of humor, your utterly fearless audacity, and most of all your friendship and acceptance. I’m so honored and grateful that you’ve welcomed me as a guest and a student in your world. You have challenged me, shaped me, and humbled me. You’ve shown me more patience than a person deserves, and my life is incredibly rich as a result of these gifts from you. [Applause] I’m still learning. I’ll always be learning, but this I know for sure: when I reach that glorious moment, when I feel like I know everything there is to know about the expectations of blind people, I have royally messed up. [Laughter] If sighted people in the industry like me or organizations like APH set your expectations for you, we will fail. Sighted people and the organizations of this field can do it with you, but we cannot do it for you despite our legacy names, and that includes American Printing House for the Blind by the way.
This isn’t a token invitation to the table. It’s an acknowledgement that your hopes and dreams, your expectations, are the table. Continue to hold our feet to the fire. Don’t just participate in this journey with us. Lead us where we need to go. [Applause]
APH is here to do the heavy lifting that is necessary, but we’re not here to shape your hopes and dreams. Only by working together can we ensure the expectations of this brilliant next generation are fulfilled, a future where opportunity for everyone is not a dream, but a reality. Thank you so much, President Riccobono and my Federation friends for your partnership. Let’s keep flying toward that future together.
by Ladarius Walton
From the Editor: The writer of this short piece is a twenty-three-year-old member of the Jackson Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind of Mississippi. Here is what he says about his experience at the 2025 National Convention:
I was a recipient of the Kenneth Jernigan Fund Scholarship this year. It was a big blessing to me because of the financial assistance it provided. If it had not been for this scholarship, I would not have been able to attend. I appreciate the committee reading my submission and selecting me to attend my first national convention.
I attended my state caucus, the Resolutions Committee meeting, the board meeting, the Black Leaders Division meeting, and every general session. I volunteered in the Independence Market and the Exhibit Hall as well. During the fit breaks, I was up on my feet, and I danced during the opening ceremony and beginning of the general sessions. The love from my Mississippi affiliate showed unity, as well as sincere pride and affection.
I had a blast at the national convention!!!! I met new individuals and even saw people I know. It is something I will never forget! I felt very welcome and at home. I look forward to hopefully attending the next national convention in Austin, Texas.
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.
National Braille Press is accepting applications for the 2026 Louis Braille Touch of Genius Prize for Innovation. The award, which can be worth up to $10,000, recognizes creative products that advance tactile literacy for blind people and promote Braille or access to information. Eligible projects include professional or educational software, apps that foster Braille or tactile learning, and Braille- or tactile-related hardware.
Applications are due January 9, 2026. Details and application materials are available at www.touchofgeniusprize.org or by email at [email protected].
I pledge to participate actively in the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind to achieve equality, opportunity, and security for the blind; to support the policies and programs of the Federation; and to abide by its constitution.
(contents)