This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
SANHO STEELE-LOUCHART: Please take your seats as soon as possible.
Welcome and good morning to the 2026 Jacobus tenBroek Disability Law Symposium.
Thank you for being with us this morning. We are going to have an incredible day, I am quite sure, but first, it is my honor and privilege to introduce to you our President of the National Federation of the Blind, a man who has in so many ways touched the lives of our 50,000 members, our colleagues, our friends across disability movements and coalitions: President Mark Riccobono.
(Applause)
MARK RICCOBONO: Thank you, Sanho, and good morning, everybody.
I want to thank you and give a big welcome to our good friends in the Disability Rights Movement. It's truly a pleasure to have you here.
And if you are here for the first time, I want to welcome you to our community.
Thank you for coming to be part of it. I hope that you will be here many times over in the future.
And if you're here for the 19th time, any of you in the audience? 19? I hear an applause over there.
Good. Welcome back, and thank you for being here.
And if you are somewhere in between, we are really happy to have you here.
Now, I don't know, has anybody noticed that the pace of advocacy has really accelerated lately?
>> Woo!
MARK RICCOBONO: Okay. Thank you for the nonvisuals there. Hopefully the rest of you are nodding.
But I do want to take a brief moment, maybe take a deep breath, and recognize that this room is filled with hope, creativity, and collaboration opportunities.
And despite what we have been all experiencing in the advocacy community, I for one, and I hope you feel the same way, feel a sense of relief to be in this room with you all today. So thank you again for being here. I'm going to applaud you for making the effort to be here.
(Applause)
Because it will truly make a difference.
And it truly gives me hope that you have come here today.
For those of you who do not know me, I am not a lawyer. I do not pretend to be a lawyer.
I am a blind person with lived experience, and I am elected by blind people to represent their hopes and dreams and to work on a daily basis to turn those dreams into reality. I work every day to make sure that I talk to more every day blind people, both the ordinary and the extraordinary, than anybody else. And my goal is to synthesize those conversations into an understanding about the experience of being blind and how it should be different in society.
And I receive a lot of wisdom also from my friends and colleagues with and without disabilities who I have the opportunity to talk to and learn from. And you all are part of that network.
But the more I learn over the years, I would say that it ultimately confirms two important core principles that I have experienced. The first is that authentic disability wisdom is creative, resourceful, and despite -- and is so despite the nondisabled misconceptions that have ruled the narrative now for centuries. That disability wisdom is enhanced by collaborating with each other, sharing it not just within this community, but taking it from this community to the broader world. Authentic lived experience.
But the other core understanding continues to be confirmed as well. Misunderstanding, low expectations, and outright discrimination are also creative.
And we know from our experience that when we chase discrimination out of one space, it swiftly shows up in another and requires our attention. Discrimination is in itself resourceful.
It attaches itself to other aspects of society where it might not be noticed and becomes part of the culture and those aspects of life.
One primary example that comes to mind for me as a parent with a disability who has a transgender child in America today, I know that the pernicious weaponizing of gender has had a lot of harm in our society but has also been used to weaponize disability discrimination in ways that, well, many of us may not have anticipated.
Well, that's the bad side of the news this morning.
The good side of the news this morning is that we have this community that we are building together, and we recognize that this community, despite the challenges we face, this community is stronger than it has ever been. Than it had ever been.
And that is not to say that our work is light -- you can close your email now -- or that there is not a lot of ground still for us to gain. There is.
And there is a lot of work.
But we do have, more importantly, we have more to lose today in disability rights than ever before.
We have to stay in this work and be creative because we do not want to lose what those who have come before us, including Dr. tenBroek, worked so diligently to build on behalf of all people with disabilities.
I feel certain that the National Federation of the Blind is using all of the tools of community advocacy building, collaboration, and creativity to eliminate discrimination in all of the places that we find it and to eliminate the innovative discriminatory attacks by bad actors.
Our organization has a rich history in this area, but we also know that we don't have all the knowledge we need or all the tools we need, and that is why we invest annually in this gathering specifically so that we can come together and be even stronger with the disability rights community.
Now, this event does take a lot of effort. It's not trivial.
It takes resources.
And I want to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors. I know Sanho is going to acknowledge them individually shortly, but I want to thank our sponsors for helping to put resources into this effort. Our sponsorships, many of you have been sponsors now for many years and we appreciate that. Our sponsorship levels have pretty much remained the same, and you may be shocked, but the costs keep going up.
So this is my opportunity to invite each and every one of you to help with those costs. Many of you already have by waiving your free registration or making anonymous contributions.
Floating around are QR codes. I have the regular version up here. There are accessible print for those of you that are not Braille literate out there.
And I encourage you to use the QR code, make a donation if you can. Share it on social media. Encourage others to make a donation to help offset the costs to run this event because we do want to continue to do that. And again, thank you to those of you who have already given generously to help continue this work.
In closing, I want to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice that each and every one of you have made to be here today. I am standing up here in my Orioles tie and orange shirt. So it is opening day and you've made a great sacrifice to be here instead of planning to be at the Orioles game. For a baseball fan like me, that is a sacrifice, so thank you.
Like any baseball fan, today our hopes are as high as they can be.
And I feel that way about being in this room today. I really appreciate the fact that you have come. It gives us hope for the work ahead. We know that we are not going to win every match up that we're going to face, but because of the community that we have here, we are confident that we are going to win our overall effort, that we are going to find and eliminate discrimination together, that we are going to raise the expectations in society, in the spirit and legacy of Dr. tenBroek and others who have come before.
And I'm really proud that we will be able to celebrate together the benefits of society being able to fully benefit from the talent and experience of people with disabilities.
So let's go advance equality, opportunity, and security within our society. Thank you.
(Applause)
SANHO STEELE-LOUCHART: All right.
And I managed not to trip any interpreters with my cane while we were going around each other on a small stage. There we go.
Thank you, President Riccobono.
This is Sanho. He/him/his. I am the legal program coordinator here at the National Federation of the Blind. It has been truly an honor to work with the law symposium for the last few years. This is a highlight of my year.
For those of you who are new to the symposium, you will learn today and tomorrow just how transformative this experience is. This is something where you get more out of the more that you put into it, so I do encourage of course showing up, paying attention, asking questions when you have them. We'll talk a little bit in a moment about etiquette, how we might ask questions in a way that's as accessible as possible for everyone in the room, but what I want to stress is getting involved, whatever that looks like for you over the next couple of days.
All right. I have some housekeeping here before we move into our first plenary.
Now, that being said, if you are a panelist from the Relman Colfax team and you are not on stage, please do come to the stage.
In the meantime, for our housekeeping, I wanted to bring to everyone's attention, there is a registration table to your right against the wall. At that registration table, there are the QR codes President Riccobono was talking about. There are two types.
One type is for donations. Please do donate if you have the means to do so. If you do not have the means to do so, please feel free to share our donation page on your social media, with friends and family, whatever it is that you can do to help move this program and our initiatives forward would be very appreciated.
The other QR code is for the agenda. That QR code will allow you to access the digital program including most but not all of our presentations.
There are some presentations where we will have to send them to you after today by email. We'll be sure to do that.
Also at the registration table, that is where you will find lost and found. That is where you will find your physical agendas if you requested Braille or large print.
And that is where you will get your name badges.
For people who have preregistered, meaning you registered online before today, you will be shepherded into one line where your badge has already been made.
For people who need to register on site, please know that the on-site registration closes today at 12:30. We would like to see that everyone here is registered. Please be sure to do that.
Finally, if I didn't say it already, at that registration table, there is a lost and found.
If you lose something, you may find it there.
And there is the Wi-Fi password for people who need that.
Okay. Next I wanted to say -- oh, also at the registration table are assistive listening devices.
Next I wanted to say I understand that many of you may have work meetings.
However, please do not go into one of our offices unless you have requested and received prior approval. We do have staff who need those offices. They are actual offices. Same thing with the conference rooms.
Please ask before you take one of those over.
However, you are welcome to use public spaces if the nature of your meeting will allow that.
Okay. I wanted to say the agenda, if you don't have a QR code, you can access that agenda at www.NFB.org/JTB, like Jacobus tenBroek.
All right. Next I wanted to say on your agendas, if you have a Braille or large print agenda, some sessions were in the Bubble Conference Room. Disregard that. We grew so large after registration closed, we had to move things from Bubble into the Computer Lab.
You will find the Computer Lab in the Southwest corner of this room behind you on the right. There is a set of double doors, and next to that set of double doors is a door that leads directly into the computer lab.
The CLEs, continuing legal education units, are in process. They will be coming from Pennsylvania this year, which is accepted by all jurisdictions. If you have a bar association which needs additional information, then I will be happy to supply that.
You'll get the CLE approval by email after today's meeting. It will probably be next week.
Once you receive that by email, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me. If it is going to be longer than 2 weeks, I will email everyone and let them know the status.
All right.
Next here, I wanted to start to move into the presentation. I did hear that our presenters have joined me on stage. I wanted to offer a couple of things. The first is our theme this year. President Riccobono alluded to this, but this is time that is ripe for our work.
It is an unprecedented time for the kind of work that we do or for those of us who are emerging advocates, the kind of work that we are starting to do and will continue to do.
Our theme this year is "Collaboration and Creativity: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities, Now and in the Future."
And finally, I wanted to thank our sponsors. President Riccobono did say that the cost for this event is getting more and more every year. Our sponsorships typically stay about the same. We're very grateful for the increased sponsorships.
We're very grateful for the donations.
But we can't do this without you. These things are only getting more expensive.
And so those of you who, especially to our new sponsors and to our longest time sponsors, we really just wanted to acknowledge you. We would not be here today if it were not for the sponsorships and the donations that we're receiving.
First I wanted to acknowledge in our gold tier, Rosen, Bien, Galvan & Grunfeld; Brown, Goldstein & Levy; the AARP Foundation.
In our silver tier, we have the McGuinness Law Group.
In our bronze tier, TRE Legal; Dardarian Ho Kan & Lee; Burton Blatt Institute.
And in our white cane tier, we have the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund; Paralyzed Veterans of America; Patients Rights Action Fund; American Diabetes Association; Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; Fox & Robertson; Disability Rights Advocates; and The Arc of the United States.
Thank you so much to our sponsors.