The National Federation of the Blind, the transformative civil rights organization of blind Americans, continues our work to protect the health and safety of all blind and deafblind people during the pandemic and to hold public health and government officials accountable for including us in programs and services to address the ongoing crisis. We recently reached out to the White House and the Biden administration to remind them of their legal and moral obligation to ensure that COVID-19 tests being purchased and distributed by the government are fully accessible. This means that blind and deafblind individuals can use them privately and independently, without the risk of compromising the health and safety of others, just as sighted individuals can.
We are encouraged by the positive engagement and collaboration with which our concerns are being met and by the announcement of initial steps designed to create fully accessible tests in the future. Moreover, the administration has committed to collaboration with us as this effort and additional measures to bridge the current accessible testing gap move forward. We believe that our work with the administration will lead not only to accessible COVID-19 tests but also to innovations that will increase the accessibility and usability of other home medical test products, as well as better public health planning to meet the needs of Americans with disabilities in emergency and non-emergency situations. These innovations will benefit not only the blind and deafblind, but also the diverse population of our country and possibly even the world.