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.
PAM ALLEN: Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. We are so happy that you are joining us for our May Presidential Release.
And I am so excited to introduce this evening for his remarks, our president, Mark Riccobono.
President Riccobono, are you with us?
MARK RICCOBONO: I am. How are you Pam?
PAM ALLEN: I'm great. How's it going in Baltimore it's going great it seems like you just left here yeah exactly.
MARK RICCOBONO: We miss you already. It was a it was a great bunch of meetings. Great times together.
MARK RICCOBONO: How are things in Louisiana?
PAM ALLEN: They are wonderful. So we are gearing up for National Convention and all our summer programs, so exciting times.
MARK RICCOBONO: Well you don't have a convention opening ceremony to worry about.
PAM ALLEN: I know. I know Norma will have it well under control in our Texas family.
MARK RICCOBONO: Excellent. It's right around the corner, you know.
PAM ALLEN: It is. I'm excited!
MARK RICCOBONO: Two months we'll be having the opening ceremonies.
PAM ALLEN: Yeah, that's right. Time flies, doesn't it?
But I know it's going to be great to be together.
MARK RICCOBONO: Absolutely.
But let's no rush it, because I've got a lot of work to do between now and then.
PAM ALLEN: I'm sure you'll be ready. You always are.
MARK RICCOBONO: Let's get started. We have a lot of work do tonight, too.
PAM ALLEN: We've got great things planned. I can't wait!
MARK RICCOBONO: Greetings, Fellow Federationists. Today is Wednesday, May 6th, 2026, and this is Presidential Release Live, Number 54.
And we are going to be talking about three things tonight. Advocacy, advocacy, and advocacy.
Well, we might slip some other things in, but this is one of the most intense advocacy times in our history, I think. Maybe not the most intense, but it's right up there. So we're going to dive right in. We got a number of folks that are going to join us here on the Release here in the room and virtually.
We are here at the NFB Jernigan Institute here in Baltimore and the NFB of Utah Auditorium. A few announcements before we get into talking about advocacy, and I'll invite some people to join me in that conversation.
And the first is to invite you to be part of a transformative journey that will shape you into a more powerful advocate for blind individuals.
And if that sounds like you and what you want to do, then I would encourage you to apply for the next cohort of our Kenneth Jernigan Leadership In Service Program, or KJLSP, as we say. This is a year long leadership program of the National Federation of the Blind.
And we've moved the deadline up for the new cohort to make some decisions, and as soon as possible after the National Convention. So the deadline for the cohort that we're seeking right now is May 31st.
May 31st, the end of this month, those who are interested, you will need to submit your interest form by May 31st. And as part of that, your interest form, you will have to identify the two NFB state affiliate presidents who have agreed to support your application to be mentors to you in this program.
I'm not going to go through all the details of the program. There is extensive information on the web page. It's really easy. NFB.org/kjlsp, as in Kenneth Jernigan Leadership In Service Program. KJLSP.
You'll find all the requirements for the program. You'll find an outline of the activities, both in person and virtual. So you can review those. And you'll find the interest form.
There's also a downloadable version of the online form So if you want to write out your answers ahead of time and just cut and paste them into the form, you'll have all the questions there. I do encourage you to apply to be part of this year long leadership program. It's a great time. It's intense. It is working with many leaders across the Federation and it is core to building our organization.
So please consider applying.
Now, we are coming up to the National Convention, which will be in Austin, Texas, this summer. Speaking of May 31st, our online registration deadline is May 31st.
And so I do encourage you to go online. Nfb.org/convention is where you'll find everything related to the National Convention. You can find the registration link there, lots of other information is there. Still plenty of room at our overflow hotels. I'm sorry that our main hotel is sold out but still plenty of room at our overflow hotels.
And they will continue to take your reservations.
So if you haven't made your plans, still plenty of time to do so.
And I do encourage you to register and buy your banquet tickets online, because you will save not just time at the convention, but some dollars compared to registering and buying your banquet tickets in person.
I also wanted to highlight that on the nfb.org/convention page, you will find a volunteer opportunities link.
Now, the convention happens because really hundreds of members volunteer during the convention to help as talking signs, to assist with line management at registration, to help out in the exhibit hall with information or at the Independence Market. Lots of opportunities at the convention.
And it happens because of the hundreds of members that jump in to help. The volunteer opportunities page is there, you can click on it, and it outlines a number... well, really all of the opportunities that are there the categories of them one of them like last year is an opportunity to provide some additional support and assistance to our DeafBlind members. So thank you to our DeafBlind Division for spearheading that.
Also, if you have you know friends who work for major tech companies in Austin who say, hey, I'd like to come by and help, you can direct them to the corporate volunteer opportunities on that page.
So check out the volunteer opportunities. Please come and be part of helping make the convention happen. I'm looking forward to being with everybody in a short two months. I'm very excited about it.
We're going to look past the convention for just a minute to talk about our Dare To Be Remarkable Conference 2026. That is coming up quickly. And this is the official kickoff announcement. The Dare To Be Remarkable conference is a specialized multi day professional development experience designed for an audience of educators and rehabilitation professionals who work with blind adults and transition age youth.
This conference brings together a balanced mix of practitioners, administrators, and emerging professionals who are committed to raising expectations and strengthening outcomes. Of course, centered around the blind wisdom, the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind. The conference will take place this year from November 18th through the 20th, 2026, at the NFB Jernigan Institute here in Baltimore.
For more information you can visit our website, NFB.org. I think we're going to put the direct link to that page in the chat, if you want to have it. I definitely encourage you to come be a part of this conference, if you're an educator or rehabilitation professional that wants to raise expectations for blind people in your local community.
Our Independence Market continues to thrive and put new things in front of the members of the Federation as a convenience.
And the Independence Market this week has introduced a new product to the market, and that is the second generation of the Meta glasses, which are now available through our Independence Market. Just this week we started selling them. You can call to place orders, and you can also go to our e commerce site.
We just got these in. So if they're not up on e commerce today, they're going to be very soon. You can definitely call to get them, and they will be in the e commerce shortly.
The retail price on the Meta glasses from the Independence Market are 369 dollars.
And we look forward to hearing about your experience and other things you might want us to carry in the market.
I should say that the cost of the Meta Ray Ban glasses... the retail price does not include the shipping. I don't think you want us to ship them free matter, so you will have to pay shipping on top of that.
But feel free to call our Independence Market to get more information, if you're not familiar with the Meta glasses.
Now, we're going to talk a lot about advocacy.
But in order to do our advocacy work, we need to have the resources to do that. And this is the time of year when we encourage members certainly to make contributions, but also to get the word out about the National Federation of the Blind As part of our spring fundraising effort, so that your friends and family can help provide dollars to the work that we do. And our Give 25 campaign this spring has a theme of "Keep NFB Advancing."
We are trying to make connections, community, and opportunity. And this year's campaign has a couple interesting things that I want to talk to you really quickly about.
So first of all, you know, we strengthen our movement by inviting others to give support to the work that we're doing. We're going to talk about advocacy here in a moment. And there's a lot of advocacy work to do. When we go out and ask people to financially support the movement, that's a good opportunity for us also to educate them on the work that we're doing, the priorities that we have.
And so our Give 25 campaign, which is going to launch next week on May 25th, will be the official start of this year's campaign. "Keep NFB Advancing."
And we're going to be asking members and others to give 25 to support the work that we're doing in this organization. And by doing so, those who contribute during this convention season could benefit by receiving a prize from our drawing.
So let me tell you about the drawing. The drawing is going to... those who are eligible for the drawing, eligibility starts on May 15th, and it will run through July 7th 2026. Every 25 dollars contribution made to the Federation will equal one entry in our prize drawings. So if you give 100 dollars, that's four entries into the drawing.
The winner of the drawing will be announced at the National Convention banquet. Let's talk about how participants can join the drawing.
So first of all, you might want to know... what's in the drawing? What do I get? What can I win? Well, if you're entered into the drawing, you will be eligible to win one of two prizes.
You'll get a choice. The first being a round trip transportation for two to the 2027 convention of the National Federation of the Blind, which will be in Austin, Texas. That will include hotel accommodations, registration, and banquet tickets for two will be covered, and just for fun, 1,000 dollars in walking around money, we like to say.
Now, if for some reason you can't make it to the convention, or maybe you convince a friend to contribute and they win, and they would rather have something else, you can take door number two, which is 2,000 dollars in cash. Of course, I think a lot of Federation members would want to take the convention prize.
We want you not just to give, but also to encourage others to give.
And so this year we're really trying to encourage members to be a connector to others in our community. A Federation connector invites others to participate and strengthen our movement with us through your personal relationships with others people will give when you ask them to give.
If you bring four donors to the Federation through this effort before the National Convention... so four people who give 25 dollars or more, we will credit you as being a connector and credit you for their gifts, and therefore you will be entered into a special drawing to win... not a trip to convention, but a special prize that we are giving away at the banquet for our connectors.
And that is the brand new, hot off the technology shelves BrailleNote Evolve from Humanware. So you'll be one of the first to have one of these units. By the time of the convention, I know there'll be a lot of talk about the BrailleNote Evolve.
So if you bring four people to make 25 dollars contributions to the Federation, and to credit you for that as a connector, we'll enter you into that drawing.
Now, as a reminder, our Give 25 campaign supports four important funds of the Federation. The first one I already kind of talked about. That's the Kenneth Jernigan Fund that supports the Kenneth Jernigan Leadership In Service Program, and it also provides grants to first timers to the convention.
And I know if you're out there, and you're waiting to hear about your Kenneth Jernigan First timer grant application, you probably are going to hear any moment, because I've saw the list, and I know that the committee is working on getting those out to folks.
So that's what happens with the dollars that go into the Kenneth Jernigan Fund.
The second is the SUN Fund. And this is really our rainy day fund. We put these dollars away to secure the organization, and we would only use them in an emergency situation.
And so those dollars are secured in our investments, and they grow to create future opportunities and stability for the Federation.
The third fund is our White Cane Fund, and this is our general operating fund these dollars can be used really for any of the purposes that the Federation does work.
And we're going to talk about a big one, which is advocacy, just in a minute. And, you know, government's not giving us dollars to do advocacy. A lot of folks don't want to give us money to sue the government or to sue higher education for their failure to be accessible, or to fight custody cases to give blind parents custody back of their children. These dollars can be used in all of those ways and more.
And finally, the fourth fund that we do support and try to raise money for is the Jacobus tenBroek Memorial Fund. The Jacobus tenBroek Memorial Fund owns and operates the building here in Baltimore, and that building needs upkeep and so we support the building, because it provides us our national headquarters, a great space when we have meetings and conferences, like Dare To Be Remarkable. So these are the four funds that you can designate money to as part of our Give 25 campaign. I encourage you to go check out the details of the Give 25.
You can go to NFB.org /give 25. That's for the landing page for the campaign. NFB.org /give 25. If you want to go right to the donate link, you can go to NFB.org /give25donate. All one word.
Of course, you can also donate money via phone. You can send a check in to our national office, and make sure that you designate where you want the funds to go in our campaign. And please don't just give. Give if you can.
But most importantly, go out and ask others to give. Be a connector. Expand our circle of donors to support the very important work that we're doing. You're going to see more about this.
And I'm looking forward to celebrating our great work on this at the convention.
Now, I've been promising to talk about advocacy, and it's time to do that.
But I can't do this alone. I want to bring in our director of advocacy here at the National Federation of the Blind, our good friend Jesse Shirek.
JESSE: Thank you for the opportunity.
MARK RICCOBONO: Jesse, we have a number of things to talk about. This has been an intense advocacy year, right?
JESSE: A rough year.
MARK RICCOBONO: I think it's due to you being the new director of advocacy, I don't know, the pace is accelerated.
But I know that our affiliates have really been stepping up.
And so before we get into some of the meat and potatoes of the issues, I wonder if you have any of our members or affiliates that you specifically want to call out that have been doing a great job in the first 3 or 4 months here of the year.
JESSE: Yeah, I do. It's a hard question, because our affiliates are doing great work.
And we have several notable affiliates that I could call on, but I'm just going to choose one. A lot of people think it takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of people power to be able to move our priorities forward.
And I think this affiliate demonstrates that a small affiliate can be mighty. So I want to highlight the NFB of Alaska for their work in building a personal relationship with Senator Sullivan from Alaska. They've been having meetings with Senator Sullivan and his staff for years. They've formed great relationships.
And recently they were able to convince Senator Sullivan to introduce the Blind Americans Return to Work Act in the senate.
MARK RICCOBONO: Nice. Very nice. Well, as you say you know obviously lots of members and affiliates working out there but Alaska's a long way from Washington D.C. but you know sometimes those key votes are important. So congratulations, Alaska, and thank you to all the members who have been working hard. Jesse, you know we can't dig into every advocacy thing we have going on, but I think particularly here in May, we have a period of time where there's some strategic things going on.
So maybe you could highlight for us, you know, some of the key areas of our legislative work that members of the federation should be focusing their energy on between now and the national convention.
JESSE: Yeah, I'm going to point to a couple of priorities that it's a perfect time to highlight. The first being the Blind Americans Return to Work Act, which is our Social Security bill that eliminates the earnings cliff for blind people working and receiving Social Security Disability Insurance. So I encourage our members to reach out to ask for cosponsors from their members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The second one being the access technology affordability act, which would create a 2,000 dollar tax credit, so that blind people could purchase qualified access technology and have that money refunded to them through their taxes. Their taxes The third one that I want to mention really quick is the National Museum of the Blind People's Movement Act.
Now, this one... Congress really likes this one as well, because there's really no... there's no cost to it. There's no dollars involved. It would name our museum the National Museum of the Blind People's Movement, and it would really highlight our efforts and our lived experience.
Now, the reason we're highlighting these three particular pieces of legislation at the moment is because, A, we just did a call to action with our membership asking our members to outreach. And you can still find these legislative alerts through NFB.org /advocacy under legislative priorities. As we get closer to election time, it will get less likely that we will be able to get our priorities into a vehicle, into a larger piece of legislation. So now is the perfect time for you to reach out on these three priorities and to call your senator and call your members of the House of Representatives, or email them, and ask them to co-sponsor these three priorities.
MARK RICCOBONO: So we may get some questions about these priorities later, Jesse, but you know, one thing in talking with blind people around the country and, you know, with the flurry of activity we had at Washington Seminar, and a lot of disruption with that because of the weather, and a lot of calls for advocacy this year, I hear some members say... well, does it really help? Does it really make a difference for us to keep reaching out to members of Congress that don't seem to really want to do anything?
And I wonder if you want to talk about that.
JESSE: Yeah, I absolutely do. It's important to be able to reach out to your members of Congress. When I was just starting out with advocacy, one of my first meetings was with Senator Cramer in North Dakota, with his one of his staff members, Ryan Kenyon.
And I didn't think that the Senator was going to co-sponsor a legislation.
I thought, I live in North Dakota, you know, we're not going to see any movement on this. You know, we did our advocacy in North Dakota, we followed up, we were persistent. And senator Cramer got on that legislation.
And the thing is that you never know when you reach out to a staff member in Congress, where they're going to wind up. If you form a personal relationship with them, if you get to know them, they might be the next legislative director in that office.
They might be the future chief of staff in that office, or another office.
And they have the power to convince their boss, the senator or the representative, to co-sponsor our legislation.
And if we get a whole bunch of co-sponsors, we're going to get our bills passed. If you don't advocate, there's no chance that they're going to co-sponsor our legislation. So I think it's vitally important.
MARK RICCOBONO: So with that in mind, do you have any other thoughts about, you know, Congress and reaching out to Congress? Do we somewhere any other folks that could give us thoughts about this?
JESSE: You know, I think we might have another person who can give us some thoughts about this. You know, we often want to... you know, we wish we could really hear from a staff member in Congress, who might be able to... who cares about our issues and might be able to tell us about the importance of advocacy.
In fact, I have somebody in mind. He's a cancer survivor, and he started out before he moved into congress and the advocacy space, before going to work for one of our biggest champions, Representative Pete Sessions from Texas. Here is Rafaello Carone.
RAFAELLO CARONE: Hello, everyone, it is wonderful to be here and an honor to be here to address everyone at the National Federation of the Blind. Your work and the testament of the progress of your movement has been no easy feat. There's been so much that has been done. There's so much more to do.
And you have incredible leaders up here in Washington.
One thing that humbled me the most about being asked to speak with you all is being able to provide an inspirational message.
And I thought to myself for a number of days about what I wanted to say.
And the truth of the matter is... you are the inspiration. Your tenacity. Your ability to overcome adversity. Your ability to persevere throughout certain challenges.
And then still be willing to make an effort to better yourself and your community is the inspiration.
Now, my name is Rafaello Carone, and I'm honored to serve as senior policy advisor for Congressman Sessions, Pete Sessions out of Texas, who is one of the champions you guys have up here in Washington D.C.
Now, the congressman is incredibly active in the health care space, and he continues to persevere every day to advance the rights, as well as the accessibility accommodations and benefits for blind Americans. And for my role, being able to champion your efforts on a staff level, I wanted to share some notes about how your work influences our work.
Now, when a staff member is taking a meeting versus a congressman, don't fret. That is actually something that is able to be incredibly impactful. A lot of times members of Congress take anywhere from 10 to 35 meetings a day, and they might agree, they might hear from you, and that is wonderful.
But it's the staff that ultimately will then take that torch and drive it into action.
Members of Congress would love to get their hands on experience with every meeting and every action item, but then we need 35 members of Congress for every single meeting. So they are emboldened by their staff, and they embolden their staff to be able to then take that torch and then drive those mission oriented action items in their service to their member of Congress.
So when meeting with the staff member, your role, your voice, and your ability to communicate effectively is what is going to push the dial in getting the staff member to do what's needed to drive success, whether that be a co-sponsor on a bill, whether that be advancing a bill in committee, or anything in between.
And the staff member wants to be educated. We're here to learn. I might know a good basis of everything that may transpire in a meeting, but I'm always having my ears open, because there might be one, two, or ten different things that I can learn.
So knowing that is the case, being able to share your experience, share your story, and then being able to share how, you know, this legislative action or there support will mean greatly to you is what is able to inspire them to learn and to be able to drive that impact on behalf of their boss. So whether it be a member of Congress, or staff member, it is so important that, not only does your voice matter, but so does theirs.
And to embolden them with the facts, with your story, and with the passion that no doubt you all have is what is really going to help us accomplish what we're setting out to accomplish. Whether that be 1 or 5 of the bills circulating for us to be able to get accomplished this Congress or next, your efforts make a huge role, if not the most important role in driving solutions.
Now, it's important to know where you're from and who your representatives are. Because me reaching out as a resident of North Carolina to a New York member may not be as impactful.
But if I call my member of Congress, and I say, hey, I'm your constituent. I live in XYZ zip code.
I would like to advocate on behalf of this legislation. These members of congress serve you and they serve their communities and a lot of times the issue isn't that they don't want to be engaged, it's because they don't necessarily know all of what's going on and what solutions are out there. That's where you come in. And your advocacy work is not only inspirational, but it's honorable. It's something that they appreciate as much as I appreciate.
So please feel emboldened. Please know that I'm a resource. And anytime you might feel down like I... you know, I wish things move faster... know that there are incredible advocates like yourself helping us make that fast driven solutions oriented effort a reality.
And it's all thanks to you. So it is an honor to be able to speak with you all and to be able to help push this dial and be a champion for the progress of you and your movement. Thank you.
MARK RICCOBONO: Nice. I want to thank Rafaello. I think the first time we've ever had a "Rafaello" on the Presidential Release, for taking the time to speak with the members of the Federation. You know, we've thought that it's one thing for Jesse and I to sit up here and talk about this, but we thought it was important for, you know, Federation members to remember and recognize that these members of Congress, their staff and the relationships that you build with the staff members at the local level and through their DC office does make a difference.
And, I mean, that was a sincere message from a staff member in an office where that member of Congress has... Jesse... 100%?
JESSE: Yeah, I'd say 100%.
MARK RICCOBONO: 100% of our bills. That's not an accident. So let that be an inspiration to us to continue the work, because I know sometimes it can feel overwhelming when the progress... we don't experience it as quickly as we'd like to.
And that's a good setup for this next item.
Not to be a downer, but in the last month, we've had a great disappointment. Which is the Department of Justice... "Disappointment" is not the right word.
But it is a disappointment that the Department of Justice has issued an interim final rule noting that they're delaying the implementation of Title II web accessibility rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is something that we have been talking about for 16 years.
And we were really hopeful that the April 24, 2026 deadline was going to be met.
Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has instituted yet another delay.
We're not going to talk too extensively about this, because the topic is covered extensively on the recorded Presidential Release that went out to all of our chapters on May 1st.
And I do call your attention to that. It does go into detail, really back to basics on why this is important and what we're talking about.
Two things, though...
There is something you can do.
But first and foremost, this is an outrageous action. Any blind person in this country should be outraged by this.
I don't want to get too worked up about this, Jesse, because, you know, it's easy to do.
But truthfully, it's really hard to rationalize why this made sense really to anybody. This regulation is something that businesses, governments, educational... everybody has asked for it.
And we've agreed that it's needed, even though we think the law already requires it. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice has decided to make us wait further.
We're going to be taking action on that. And Jesse, I'd like you to talk about the action our individual members can take to support the efforts. I should say before you do that, that we have posted the Federation's comments that we sent to the Department of Justice about this. They're posted on our website on the advocacy page.
So you can read the 5 or 6 pages, I think it is, of public comments. And you can use that in your advocacy work. So Jesse, what do we need members to do around Title II?
JESSE: I think we want members to do two things around Title II. And let's make it painful for the government to do something like this again. So the way that we're going to do that is we're going to, first of all, we want to hear your stories. We want to hear problems that our members have faced with state and local agency websites being inaccessible.
We need you to use examples, and especially some examples that... you know, the fact that this is time sensitive. If these websites would be accessible to you now, let the government know, and please tell us a story about how it's holding you up, how this is causing problems in your life.
So some examples might be some inaccessible web forms that you're facing, inaccessible portals, or for students, learning management, educational systems. Or even public school systems. We want to know how those barriers affected you, your education, your child, or your daily life. A couple of examples, you know, might be like your utility bills.
If you don't have access to your water bill, how can you pay your bill? You're going to get your water shut off.
So please provide us those stories. The best way that you can provide us those stories... there's two ways. You can send an email to [email protected], or leave a voicemail at (410) 659 9314 extension 244. The second thing is we want you to watch your email.
On May 18th, we're going to have a legislative alert go out to our members, and it will link to the Federal Registry. So you can prepare your comments now, and you can get ready to post them when you receive this email message. You can leave your own comments about how you've been harmed by this inaccessibility.
In order to find this, to see our comments... so if you want an example of what the comments we've submitted, and to help inform your comments, you can go to NFB.org /advocacy and look under the policy statements.
MARK RICCOBONO: Thank you, Jesse. And closely related to this on that advocacy page, you can also find the public comments that we sent to the government. Yesterday, I believe, was the official time, but they just got posted to our website today.
And that is comments on another rule.
This is the Health and Human Services 504 rule that relates very closely to the Title II rule, but this is specifically under the HHS and its authority under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. That agency has now signaled a potential delay in that rule. That rule was slated to take effect -- is slated to take effect on May 11th. So just five days from now. Similarly, government has signaled that it may decide to delay it.
The section 504 final rule 504 final rule was published on May 9th, 2024. And this rule pertains specifically to entities that receive HHS funding under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. So that could include public and private schools, public and private colleges, hospitals, all sorts of similar entities, social service agencies, and this will have a detrimental impact on accessibility from those entities and their digital resources.
So we published our comments to the government, and in fact, we were the first organization anywhere in the country to request a meeting through the official process. We had a meeting today to express our concerns about this.
Since the rule deadline, implementation is only five days away, we expect that they will come out with whatever they're intending to do any day, any second now. We don't think it's going to be good. We think it will be consistent with the delay we've seen from the Department of Justice.
I know this is really disheartening. "Outrageous," as I like to say.
But I am confident that because of the work of the National Federation of the Blind, we will overcome this, and we will get the equality that we deserve. And how do I know that our work makes a difference?
Well, another issue we've been working on is the 504 lawsuit known as Texas versus Kennedy.
And we had some really great news that I think is an example of the fact that this works. I want to congratulate our Indiana affiliate, as we received news earlier this week, that the state of Indiana, the attorney general of Indiana has pulled out of supporting the Texas versus Kennedy case. So we're now down to eight states. That includes Texas, where we'll be in a couple of months.
Eight states supporting that law. You remember it was up to 15... or maybe it was more than that at one point. 17? So this does show that our work does pay off. Let's see if we can get it down to six, or five, or four, maybe even just Texas, by the time we get to Texas for our National Convention.
So our work does matter, and I want to thank our members in Indiana for the work on that.
And I know that folks in all the other eight states, including Texas, are working hard to beat back that particular lawsuit and encourage states to stop supporting the effort to diminish our rights as people with disabilities under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation act. So Jesse, with that, we should probably talk Texas?
JESSE: I think so.
MARK RICCOBONO: Let's talk Texas. We should invite into this conversation the president of our National Seniors Division. I'd like to welcome Glenn Crosby to our virtual stage here.
GLENN CROSBY: Good evening, thank you, Mr. President. It's a real privilege to be here with you.
MARK RICCOBONO: Yeah, so Glenn you are here primarily to not bad mouth Texas, but (chuckling)...
But to talk to us about an important initiative that our Senior Division is heading up next week for advocacy. So I'm going to turn the floor over to you to talk about our senior fly in.
GLENN CROSBY: I am very happy to do that, sir. I think most of us across the nation realize that funding for the older blind programs in our state is woefully underfunded.
Now, that translates into very little, if any, service to blind people who are seniors, or to say it another way, people who go blind after they become seniors. You know, they're kind of stuck in the wilderness, so to speak.
They need some training, so that they can regain some of their independence. I think all of us understand that. We know a lot of seniors in that situation. We also know that seniors need to be able to use some technology, whether they could use it before or not, Once they lose their eyesight, they're done, unless somebody comes along and helps them to learn how to navigate technology non visually.
They also need to know a variety of other aspects of living their lives independently, And most of our programs in the states that provide this sort of service just simply do not have the financial resources to do an adequate job.
That does include Texas. Although Texas has improved a good bit in the last few years, thanks to an additional supplement funding that the Texas legislature provided to the program here in Texas. And some other states have done that as well.
However, our federal government does need to step up. The last increase to the federal funding for the Independent Living Services for Older Blind Americans was in 2013.
And that's where the funding is still, even though the population of blind seniors has expanded, and even though the cost of everything has gone up exponentially pretty much since 2013.
So if you think about that, that means our current funding is truly lacking.
So the National Federation of the Blind Seniors Division, along with the help of our entire National Federation of the Blind family, decided in 2022 that we were going to work on increasing the funding to go into these programs.
So next week, a number of blind seniors across the country, and some people who are not, just good friends within our Federation family, are going to go to Washington and knock on the door of our Congress People who are serving on the subcommittees that work in our Appropriations Committee. We're trying to do what we have never done before, and that is simply to work with the Congress people directly to get this increase into the appropriations bill.
Now, I think for those of us who know a little bit about how the Congress works and you pay a little bit of attention to the news, you know that Congress never ever gets the appropriations bill passed on time. They're always doing extensions and extensions.
But we want our increase in the program, in the independent living services for older individuals who are blind, to be a part of that finished appropriations bill, once it gets done.
And that all begins with working with the subcommittee to start with.
And that's what we're coming to Washington next week, to come in and knock on doors and to encourage those folks to recommend an increase.
And we are asking for 260,750,000 dollar increase. We'll see how close we get to that. I hope with 100%.
But that's where we are, Mr. President.
MARK RICCOBONO: Thank you, Glenn. Really important.
And I want to thank you for your leadership in spearheading this effort. Especially when you have a couple thousand friends coming to visit you in a couple months.
You know, so leaving town, that's a bold thing to do when you've got a lot of work to do there. So really important.
And Jesse, maybe you could add a little color to this. I'm sure there are members out there who are thinking, well, great, I'd like to help, but I'm not coming. So what can the members do?
JESSE: I think that's a great idea. I think we should have all of our members help. And all of our members can help. So imagine our senior division members in Capitol Hill, well, what all of us can do is we're going to put out another legislative alert on Monday, May 11th, you'll receive that in your email, and what we're going to do is we're going to ask you to reach out to your member of the House of representatives, and your two senators, and we're going to urge them... we're going to have you urge them to reach out to the subcommittee chair.
So it's a long name, so I apologize, but it's Labor Health and Human Services Education and related agencies. In the senate We're going to have you reach out to senator Shelley Capito from West Virginia. Or we're going to have you ask your senators to reach out to Senator Capito.
And in the House of Representatives, we're going to have you urge your representative to reach out to representative Robert Aderholt, who's the subcommittee chair. If you don't happen to receive the legislative alert, don't worry. We will be posting it to nfb.org/advocacy, and then you'll want to look under legislative priorities, where you'll be able to find the fact sheets and all the information you need to advocate.
MARK RICCOBONO: Thank you, Jesse and Glenn. I hope both of you will stay around for questions, just in case there are any that I can't answer, Since we have a great experts here. I know that Pam's going to start throwing virtual things at me if I don't move on to the Q&A very soon. So I'm glad I didn't go into my outraged rant there on Title II.
I do have a few federation family notes that I do want to share before we get to the Q&A, and the first of them, completely coincidentally, comes from Texas, where Lara Sowell has let us know that bob Simonson, who is a longtime member of the Federation passed away at age 73 on March 30th. One of the notes about Bob said that he was a dedicated member of the Federation, and some of his most fond memories were of pursuing the National Accreditation Council during the 1970s when we were doing what was called "NAC tracking."
I encourage you to keep Bob's wife, Robin, in your thoughts and prayers, along with those friends and family of the Federation who knew Bob.
From North Dakota, we received the very sad news of the passing of Milton Ota on Monday of this week the 4th of May. Milton served as president in our North Dakota affiliate. He was very active in organizing members of the Federation who were also part of the Lions Club. I encourage you to keep Milton's wife Charlene in your thoughts and prayers as well.
We do have one bit of happy news before we get to the Q and A, and this comes from Dishon Spears at the Colorado Center for the Blind, who says that he and his wife Jennifer had have brought a new addition into the Spears family. Madison Natalia Spears was born on May 1st, 2026. She weighed in at 5 pounds 12oz maybe. It's reported that big brother Mason is very happy and is on guard for his little sister.
So I'd like to welcome the newest member of the Federation family from Colorado.
Pam, that was a lot.
PAM ALLEN: Wow!
MARK RICCOBONO: I think it's time to go over to you.
PAM ALLEN: Wow! You weren't kidding about things being jam packed tonight. So that was excellent, though. It's so great to hear all the wonderful things that we're making changes together.
So a great panel.
So thank you everyone so much for submitting questions, whether you did that through the mobile app or sent them to [email protected]. We will definitely say... President, Riccobono, we had a bunch of questions, but I think our panel did such a great job of covering them, about 504 and Texas versus Kennedy, and all the different efforts. So that was great.
But I do have just a couple.
So first of all, a question about the Independence Market, and seems to be a lot of excitement about the new products we've been adding of late, and how we select products for the Independence Market.
MARK RICCOBONO: Well, that's a good question. You know, we have an internal process here at NFB. Obviously, the Independence Market we want mostly to be a convenience to our members it does bring people to our organization who are looking for resources.
And so that's the other reason.
So we're, of course, today with so many online outlets, and different vendors out there, you know, we're not trying to run a comprehensive like Walmart for the blind, right? So we try to be strategic, to have a variety of products that fill a variety of needs, and our demonstrations of the kind of tools, low tech and high tech, that blind people might use.
Now, the Meta glasses are a little unusual, because we mostly don't sell a lot of high tech stuff.
And the reason is that we're also not in the business of providing direct tech support, which is what a lot of people want when they buy these products. So sometimes it's because we have strategic relationships with partners that we sell these products.
We also try to be careful that... we need to be able to cover our costs without gouging the customer, which is something we don't want to do. And once in a while, we try things to see how the members react. Is it something that people want?
So it's a variety of factors. If you have suggestions, any member has suggestions about things we should carry in our Independence Market, please call Shawn Seward, our Independence Market manager, or John Pare, it's in his department, and make those suggestions. We would love to have them. We'll do our best to get the products if it makes sense in our strategy.
PAM ALLEN: Excellent. I know everybody always looks forward to the shopping at our National Convention, too.
MARK RICCOBONO: Absolutely.
PAM ALLEN: Thank you so much and thank you to the team at the Independence Market for filling all our orders.
So also a question we talked about, the different funds, and I'm pretty excited about the big drawing, but a question about PAC and how that fits into our donations.
MARK RICCOBONO: So PAC is our Pre authorized Contribution Program. That's a way for members to give on a regular monthly basis.
And I know that our PAC plan chair, Marilyn Green, from Illinois, will be encouraging those of us who are not yet on the program to sign up at the National Convention. This is a steady source of income.
About half 1 million dollar a year that allows us lots of flexibility. Our Give 25 program is a little different in that we are trying to encourage people to give a little bit more, but also we really want members to get outside of our organization, get friends and family to donate. So these might not be people that are going to sign up for a monthly contribution to the Federation. Mostly those are our own members.
But people that will give because you ask them to give.
So the PAC plan is very important. And by the way, the PAC contributions is something that allows us to go to some of our supporters, people we're approaching for money and say, and say, you know before we do anything our members have committed 500,000 dollars to the organization. Can you contribute?
So it's just another way of giving. The other nice thing about the Give 25 is it allows space for members to give who for whatever reason can't make a monthly contribution. So these are just different avenues. The PAC contributions do all go into our white Cane general fund.
So they are available to be used. Those PAC contributions are not counted in the Give 25. So if that was the angle, sorry about that.
But we do want you to go out and ask others to give.
PAM ALLEN: Awesome. So many ways to help support our programs and do our work. That's so life changing. So it's wonderful.
And we I think we have time for one other question. We've got a lot of excitement about our fly in coming up. So question about how someone can join the Senior Division.
MARK RICCOBONO: I bet Glenn is best suited to answer that.
GLENN CROSBY: (muted)
MARK RICCOBONO: Glenn, are you out there? You're muted.
We threw him a curveball. You know, Glenn, you're muted. We'd like to hear from you, though.
All right, well, assuming that Glenn is having technical difficulty... we'll hope that Glenn will jump in mere.
But what I would encourage you to do is go to nfb.org, look up our divisions, and you can find our Senior Division listed in the list of national divisions, and there will be the contact information for our division.
And I encourage you to send us an email or follow the contact links there to join. And, of course can be you're coming to the National Convention, definitely encourage you to go to the meeting of the senior division. I think I'm going to be there for a few minutes this year. And you can definitely pay your annual dues there and get active in the Senior Division at the national level.
PAM ALLEN: Outstanding.
And I know how important those services are for... to increase funding for older blind programs. So I know our work will pay off for sure. So thank you again so much, everyone, for the excellent questions. It has been so wonderful to be together tonight for our Presidential Release Live.
So many things happening, and so many ways that we as members of the National Federation of the Blind can get involved and truly make a difference. So I will pass it back to you, President Riccobono.
MARK RICCOBONO: Thank you very much, Pam. I think that this release represents, you know, a lot of great work that's happening across the organization, and I truly am optimistic about the collective action that's happening, how we're pushing forward as blind people to create opportunities, even in some challenging times, even with some setbacks. I had the opportunity to go to an affiliate convention in the last month. There's so much great energy happening around the organization.
And so I want to thank each and every one of you for the work that you all do to be part of our collective action.
Now, I was going to give you some of the customary endings, but I was thinking about collective action.
And I like collective action, it works really well. So I thought maybe each of you who have been on this release might help me with some customary endings.
I was hoping to get one from Glenn, if we got some audio from him...
GLENN CROSBY: Can you hear me now?
MARK RICCOBONO: We can hear you now, yes.
GLENN CROSBY: Well, the technology gremlins wouldn't let me talk to you a moment ago.
MARK RICCOBONO: You're back.
GLENN CROSBY: Okay, so the other day I shared a joke about grassroots advocacy.
But it received no ground support.
MARK RICCOBONO: Yeah, that happens. How about you, Jesse?
JESSE: Well... why did the advocate take a ladder to a political rally?
They wanted to take their cause to the next level.
MARK RICCOBONO: Nice.
Pam you got anything better than that?
PAM ALLEN: Well, those are pretty hard to compete with, I'm afraid, but my question is related to teddy bears. So why did the teddy bear refuse desert.
MARK RICCOBONO: Why?
PAM ALLEN: Because it was stuffed.
MARK RICCOBONO: Well, my offering for the customary endings is... what happens if you tell too many dad jokes? Well, of course, you would go to the “pun-itentiary” (penitentiary).
Let's go build the national Federation of the Blind!
>> The preceding message was brought to you by Mark Riccobono, president, National Federation of the Blind, (410) 659 9314, [email protected]. Follow President Riccobono on Mastodon. Just search [email protected]. Let's go build the National Federation of the Blind!