An Address Delivered by
Mark A. Riccobono, President
At the Banquet of the Annual Convention
Of the National Federation of the Blind
New Orleans, Louisiana
July 13, 2025
Live the life you want,
Nobody can stop you;
Shoot for the sun,
And break on through.
So you’re blind, you'll be fine;
We got good news:
You can live the life you want,
Yes, we know the truth.
Do you know our truth? How did you learn it? Have you recently examined, tested, and rediscovered our truth? Or have you taken it for granted, settled for the convenient truth of the moment, or internalized what others have convinced you is the truth? Are you still seeking to find the truth among uncertainty?
Author Robert Green wrote, “If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crisis or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action.” In response to the early challenges of the twenty-first century, President Barack Obama observed, “For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
Related to standing for your truth, Desmond Tutu shared, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” And, of elephants, comedian Seth Meyers noted, “It's nice to have an elephant in the room. There's nothing more helpful than something everybody's thinking about.”
The banquet of the National Federation of the Blind offers an opportunity to examine our shared truth. Often we do this by contrasting our lived experience as blind people against what is said and perceived about blind people throughout society. I have been contemplating what we mean when we say we know the truth. After all, there are those outside of our Federation who would claim they also know a truth that is very different from our own.
As I have been examining my understanding of truth in a highly divided America, I want to share with you the continued strength I find in the unity of the organized blind movement. Tonight, I ask that each of us reflect upon our truth, and I encourage us to activate that truth in a way that builds ourselves and our community. This is a call to reclaim our truth.
In linguistics, the concept of reappropriation or reclamation is the cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used to limit or disparage the group. As a movement of blind people we have done this many times. Examples include showing pride through the use of the word blind and finding innovative ways to advance the importance of Braille literacy.
Tonight, we will consider what to do with the parable of the blind men and the elephant, as a means of rallying the collective action that is called for in this moment in our history. If you are not familiar with the parable, let me offer you a very short overview:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal known as an elephant had recently been brought to their town. None of the men were aware of the animal or what it was like. Their curiosity excited, they ventured together to examine the elephant by touch. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "it is much like a thick snake."
The next man, who happened to touch the elephant’s ear, shared that he believed it to be much like a type of fan. Another, whose hand first found the elephant’s leg said, "the elephant is a pillar like a tree trunk." The man who found the elephant's side exclaimed that it was like a wall. Meanwhile, another man felt its tail and thought of it like a rope. The final man felt its tusk and described it as being firm, smooth, and like a spear.
Let me pause there to say that the roots of this parable go back dozens of centuries, with the earliest written versions appearing in Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain texts, likely as interpretations from stories shared in the oral tradition. The parable has been retold in literature around the world, in religious teachings, in the explanation of scientific concepts, in the training of leaders in corporate settings, and in popular media appearing in a variety of artistic forms.
Parables are tools that are used to convey some truth through story so that complex ideas and profound aphorisms can be more easily understood. In this example, many have said that the parable is meant to demonstrate humankind’s tendency to rely upon siloed experiences to claim absolute truth, often responding violently in the face of equally true, yet seemingly opposing experiences. There are those who will claim that it is the ultimate message of the parable that matters.
But think for a moment about what that requires. To achieve this enlightenment, you must first accept, internalize, and know to be true, that blind people are, by their nature and circumstance, foolish. The very basis for the parable requires it. Is it not ironic that a story meant to convey the perils of narrow understandings, misconceptions, and stubborn adherence to one’s own limited experience would so thoroughly underestimate the true capacity of blind people?
The ending of the parable and its intended moral have a number of variations. In most versions, the blind men discover their disagreements about the elephant, suspect the others not to be truthful, and angerly confront each other. Variations exist as to how the elephant's body parts are described, how violent the conflict becomes, and how the conflict is resolved. An even deeper layer of complexity can be brought to the parable depending on whether the storyteller presents the elephant as the literal animal or one of its many symbolic representations.
Nearly every version plays on the misconception that blind people are inherently limited in their understanding of the world. In one stark example, one of the blind men describes the elephant as soft and squishy, when he encounters not the elephant itself but what it left behind. In fairness, there are versions of the story in which the blind men start listening to each other and collaborating to understand the entirety of the elephant.
However, the popular narrative ends with a nonblind hero entering the scene and describing the entire elephant; the conclusion being that all the blind men were wrong—sight is right. After all, historically this parable has been shared through the words and understandings of nonblind people—not the blind themselves. But we know a different truth.
The truth about blind people has historically been defined by ocular-centric norms and the systems of truth established to support those norms, within the vision industrial complex. For centuries, blind people were understood to be incapable of contributing to society, and we, as blind people, had no power to test the validity of that truth out in the world. The parable of the blind men and the elephant reflects a supposed truth carved in stone through centuries of low expectations the world over, which contributed to limiting opportunities for the blind.
The establishment of formal programs of education for the blind that emerged in the late years of the eighteenth century and took hold in this nation in the nineteenth century, created new possibilities to examine the accepted truth. However, few tools existed for the blind to effectively share information, and it was difficult to join together outside of institutions run by nonblind people. By the early part of the twentieth century, blind people began to find ways to organize and share their aspirations for the future.
A series of dramatic events including world wars, the Great Depression, and the establishment of transformative social programs, significantly shifted the reality of the human experience. From those circumstances rose a generation of blind people who recognized that in order to reach the tipping point for sustained progress, we needed to build a vehicle for collective action on a nationwide basis. On November 16, 1940, sixteen blind leaders came together from seven state organizations to establish the National Federation of the Blind.
At our beginning, the primary concern of the organized blind movement was to create a foundation to discover our truth by making it possible for everyday blind people to get out from under the care of their families and realize their own potential. Jacobus tenBroek, a blind scholar of the United States Constitution, was elected as our first President, and under his leadership we put ideas, words, and relationships into action to give momentum to our movement.
The parable is premised on the belief that the blind men come to the elephant with limited experience. The story also relies on the classical belief that blindness is isolating. It does not take into account that blind people might work together and show up with inherent skills, experience, and problem-solving techniques. Dr. tenBroek, for example, was mentored by a blind professor named Newell Perry, who prepared him for building the organized blind movement by instilling in him the value that we are stronger together.
In those early days, the system of agencies for the blind exerted powerful control over the perception of blindness and what it meant to be blind. To the agencies, the burgeoning movement was likely the elephant in the room: the unacknowledged but certainly inescapable effort toward self-determination and equality by blind people.
The parable does not align with our experience in this movement in other ways. In every variation of the parable I encountered, the blind people are always men. As an aside, some will argue that this was the true limitation of the individuals involved—not their blindness. From the beginning, the National Federation of the Blind has been comprised of leaders of diverse backgrounds and experiences who all happen to be blind. Our experience has been that our truth is more evident and guides us to more effective collective decisions when it is built on a strong diversity of personal characteristics, brought together in unified purpose.
Please do not misunderstand; working collectively is not always easy. It takes real effort, emotional intelligence, and patience. But we are all better when it is successful. While we still have work to do to reach blind people who are underrepresented within our membership, we can confidently say that the blind men in the parable, devoid of a diversity of experience, are not reflective of our truth and the power of our individual actions collectively focused.
By the middle of the 1950s, it was clear that the system of agencies for the blind felt threatened by the truth that came from the National Federation of the Blind. In the parable, a central problem is the blind men remain divided and mistrustful of each other. They were not organized and did not understand that they shared a common goal.
The principle of “divide and conquer” was used to maximum effect by the vision industrial complex to challenge the very right of blind people to freely associate in an organization like the National Federation of the Blind. From our perspective today, we must recognize that history can and will repeat itself if we do not continue to seek to understand the truth.
The nature of the attack on the organized blind movement is best documented and articulated in Dr. tenBroek’s presentation, “The Blind and the Right to Organize.” Delivered in New Orleans at our convention in 1957, this presentation was not given at the banquet, but it is as significant as any of Dr. tenBroek’s banquet speeches. Here is what he said, in part, on that occasion—his forty-sixth birthday:
“The right of the blind to organize is equally based in law, in morality, in history, in logic, and in common sense. It is at once a human right, a constitutional prerogative, and a public duty. It fulfills the legitimate personal needs … and at the same time clearly serves a public purpose. The right of organization for all men is a vital prerequisite of democratic government and a necessary condition of mature social life.
The right of organization for the blind is no less than this, but it is also something more: it is an immediate and urgent obligation if the opportunity of self-expression and self-determination is not to be ignobly lost—for our generation at least, and perhaps for generations to come.”
Despite the warning, the power structure of the vision industrial complex continued to grind away at dividing the blind of this nation. Some blind people did not trust the collective wisdom of blind people and brought the organized blind movement dangerously close to fulfilling the classic teachings of the parable. However, the blind of our movement came with experience, and they valued working together. Through the 1960s, our elected blind leaders focused our collective action on understanding the nature of the elephant and reclaiming power from the agencies.
We did not fulfill the ancient parable; our blind predecessors wrote a new story, gave power to our truth, and handed down to us a legacy that we must continue to teach. Although the echoes of that embattled time in our history are now very faint, we continue to feel some of the scars that slowed our progress in the 1960s and 70s. We must not let our collective movement be divided again, even in a society where division, rather than unity, often feels like the norm.
Examining what history has said about us and reclaiming the narrative was a signature of Kenneth Jernigan, who served as the second long-term President of the National Federation of the Blind. He had the benefit of mentorship from the collective wisdom of the first generation of Federation leaders. Most notably, he took the truth of blind people and put it into practice within an agency for the blind. He demonstrated that an agency need not be in opposition to the organized blind movement but rather can contribute to it by providing quality training and opportunities built upon high expectations.
In addition, his writings expose how the historical narrative about blind people, like the parable we have been thinking about tonight, do not reflect the experience of blind people themselves but rather the misunderstanding internalized through society’s low expectations. While the teachings of Dr. Jernigan met great resistance from some of the most powerful players in the vision industrial complex, we found that our truth set us free.
As the movement grew in power, an increasing number of professionals in the field began to question their own understanding of blindness. As blind people emerged from Dr. Jernigan’s training program in Iowa and began taking leadership roles around the nation, many professionals realized that our truth might be very different from the prescribed narratives taught in the blindness field.
By the time the third generation of the Federation came into leadership, the blind were well positioned to advance our truth. In 1986, our Convention elected Marc Maurer—a lawyer, advocate, and bold leader to carry our movement forward into the new century. As the Federation’s longest-serving President, he led us through a tremendous period of growth and influence. We amplified the dissemination of our stories with powerful materials like our Kernel Book series, through increased engagement with traditional media outlets, and via an aggressive agenda that would ensure the blind had access to information in a digital era.
Blind leadership in teaching became a central theme as the Federation’s affiliated training centers in Colorado, Louisiana, and Minnesota (all lead by blind women) began to raise the expectations within the organized blind movement and challenge the narrative of the vision-centered approach. The techniques used by blind people were formalized into the structured discovery methodology, and the success of blind people shattered the traditional narrative. While the vision industrial complex expected that blind people were the subjects of research to be studied and fixed, we reclaimed the narrative.
Our movement elevated blind people to be the architects of research projects based upon the possibilities rather than the misconceptions. We changed the narrative in education, rehabilitation, and employment. However, we did not stop there. Parables are one thing; the laws of our nation are another. We took ownership, shaping the laws based upon our true experience.
We have led the way in legal discourse by affirming the truth that blindness is respectable, and we have helped to organize the disability-rights community to carry this truth forward into the future. While our truth is not fully codified in federal and state laws, without a doubt the narrative of 2025 is now much closer to our truth as blind people.
Today, the human experience is undoubtedly different from what it was just a few short years ago. Interactions have been monumentally changed with the growth of social media platforms driven by algorithms tuned to dividing, not uniting. Economic pressures heightened by a worldwide pandemic have pushed society toward isolation, not collective action. For all the progress we have made, our truth has still not reached all of the people who need it.
At the same time, our success, which has come through collective action by the blind, may, in turn, make it easier for some blind people to believe the false narrative that a movement is no longer needed. Add to this the complexity that the convergence of artificial general intelligence in the years ahead may leave some feeling like the computers, rather than the people, will write the narrative of the future.
Tonight, I ask each of us to examine our truth. Our understanding of what it means to be blind is not etched in stone. It is a reality that takes continued cultivation in an ever-changing world. Have we discovered all there is to know from the wisdom of blind people? Only if we believe that we have found the limits of what is possible when we work together. Will the emergence of artificial general intelligence mean that we have nothing more to learn about being human? Only if we believe that the machines are a replacement for the heart and the connection that comes uniquely in the human experience.
At no time since 1940 has it been more critical that we commit ourselves to the power of collective action. Yes, not even when the very existence of our movement was in question was it more important than it is to us today. Our truth has emerged from working together, teaching each other, believing in each other, and questioning centuries of misunderstanding. And that truth grows because of the power we continue to give it.
In a relatively short period of time, we have made significant progress. In a relatively shorter period of time, that progress can be significantly diminished. As Dr. tenBroek wrote, “the right to live in the world is something more than the right to remain in it.” We cannot go back to a time when we were relegated to being passive recipients of another’s charity, and presumptions of incapacity overruled lived experience. So far this year we have suffered both innuendo of inability and outright attacks on the hard-won protections afforded to us under the law.
Our truth lives within a society that is divided along so many lines. If we allow our community, our understanding of the true capacity of blind people, to be divided in the same way, we are doomed to be defined by the historical ending of the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
The commitment to work together starts with each of us recognizing that we all have something to gain or lose. The Federation, our movement, is built through the will and power of the people. How the parable is rewritten continues to be up to each of us through our choices and everyday actions.
This banquet marks the end of my thirtieth consecutive convention. When I first walked into this convention in 1996, I thought I knew the truth and that it was a certainty. I had convinced myself that accepting my own limitations was the best way for me to live my life. Blind people who did not know me opened their hearts and their own understanding of the truth to me. They invited me to consider something different, even though it would dramatically shatter my truth.
Year after year, I have returned to this convention, and each year this movement motivates me to not simply accept the truth as a certainty but to test it. Every time I have accepted that challenge—even when it was uncomfortable or when I was fearful about what I would find—the wisdom of blind people has made me better and more open to continuing my own changes. I could not have ever imagined how our collective truth would fulfill so much of my life. I have lived within the organized blind movement longer than I have lived without it. Yet, I can easily remember what the truth used to be like, and I never want to go back to not knowing the power and wisdom of our Federation family.
I want to invite each of you to make that same deep reflection in your own life. Ask yourself whether you have discovered the full truth about living blind in America or whether you have settled for what is most comfortable. Then I want you to ask yourself whether you are creating space to teach others about the understanding we share; not weaponizing the truth or shaming others into understanding but taking the careful, loving steps needed to invite people to experience the truth for themselves.
This is what happens daily in our affiliated training centers, in our chapter meetings, and in the small moments of members reaching out to members, people sharing their power with people. When you reflect, I hope that your understanding will be that a movement of blind people is critically important in your life and that we must reclaim the narrative within society. That is my commitment and reflection as I anticipate the next thirty years of our time exploring our truth together.
When the parable of the blind men and the elephant was handed down from storytellers to those who first wrote it down, blind people had no means of organizing and sharing. By the time of the founding of the National Federation of the Blind, blind people had figured out ways to get the experience needed to begin rewriting the historical narrative. Today, blind people have a choice to leave the crafting of the narrative to someone else or to be part of the effort to build the truth and share it throughout society.
I have made my choice, and it is to trust this group of people to help me discover the truth of living the life I want as a blind person. While some may say we should reject the parable based on its known misrepresentation of the truth, I say we should reclaim it and use it as a tool reflecting our truth. Here is my attempt at rewriting the parable based on the experience of the National Federation of the Blind:
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The Blind Explorers and the Elephant
A group of blind travelers—of all ages and genders—arrived in a village where the people spoke in awe of a strange and magnificent creature: an elephant.
Rather than speculate, the group decided to investigate for themselves. While some of the blind people were nervous, they trusted the more experienced travelers.
“Let’s not just touch it randomly,” said Amina, a thoughtful woman with a knack for orientation. “Let’s ask good questions, make observations, and compare notes.”
They agreed on a plan. Using the Structured Discovery method, each person explored the elephant systematically. They moved with intention, asked questions, and examined multiple parts: trunk, tusks, ears, legs, tail, belly, and back.
Carlos, feeling the long, flexible trunk, remarked, “It moves like a strong hose—but it’s warm, and the skin is textured.”
Maya, crouched near a massive foot, noted, “This leg feels like a pillar—but it ends in a padded, round base.”
David climbed carefully with help and said, “Up here it’s wide and flat—I think I’m on the back!”
Linh, exploring an ear, said, “It’s huge and thin—it fans out like a blanket waving in the breeze.”
Jabari, examining the tusks, added, “These are smooth and curved like polished horns.” Afterward, they sat together in the shade.
“I think I understand only part of it,” said Carlos. “But hearing what you all experienced helps me build a better picture.”
“Yes,” said Maya. “It’s not a snake or a wall or a fan—it’s an elephant, and it's all those parts and more.”
Together, they built a shared understanding that none could have formed alone. They drew a detailed map, created a tactile model, and even taught others in the village what they had learned.
The villagers, amazed, asked, “How did you figure it out?”
“We explored,” said Amina. “We asked questions, shared what we learned, and listened to each other. We cannot wait for opportunities to come to us, we must seize the moment even when it is uncertain. That’s how discovery works.”
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I believe this version of the parable better represents the experience of blind people in the National Federation of the Blind, although it would be even better if more blind people had contributed to the rewriting. It is essential that we, the blind, reclaim responsibility for shaping and sharing our stories. The blind must be the ones to write the narratives, sing the songs, and perform the plays telling the truth about our experience. Then we must share them throughout society.
We must continue to utilize our movement to raise expectations for the blind during a very disruptive period of human existence. This will not be without disappointment and sacrifice. The road to equality has plenty of pitfalls, and there are bound to be setbacks. But our story is filled with the sound of hope as it has been since the beginning of our movement in 1940.
Our shared truth is not yet as well known as we would like. Our hope for the future has not yet moved a critical number of allies to make its acceptance a certainty. Our stories are not yet celebrated among the best of the human experience. This is why we declare with firm conviction that a movement of blind people is more relevant and necessary today than at any time in our shared history. We know that movements are not powered by perfection. They are powered by persistent people.
Our movement advances because blind people and our allies make a commitment to our truth; a truth that evolves as we test the limits and raise expectations generation after generation; a commitment that requires us to show up, make sacrifices, listen to and teach each other, and speak up through personal stories. Through the bond of faith we share together in this movement, our story will change the world.
My Federation family, let us be proud of the movement we share. Centuries of misunderstanding created the narrative that blindness was our limitation and that we needed someone else to care for us. We organized and began reclaiming our narrative. Under no circumstances will we again allow our stories to be misrepresented, and under no circumstances will we stop crafting our true narrative.
Every day we struggle against persistent low expectations, but we do so with hope and our truth that it is respectable to be blind. But equality in society is not yet ours. We deserve a world where every heart and mind know the truth of our story. The only way we can get to that future is together through the courage, determination, and creativity of a diverse, shared movement. This is the commitment we make to each other.
This is the love, hope, and determination felt in our movement. This is the bond of faith that fuels our hope for our tomorrows. Let us go together to find those blind people who have not yet discovered the power of their story. Let us show that we belong in the world and that we make it better. Let us sing our song of truth:
You and me, NFB,
Let's dream together.
NFB, you and me,
Lives on forever.
You will see, yeah!
Let us go build the National Federation of the Blind.