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
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: The afternoon session is in order. How about a door prize?
SPEAKER: Hey, what a good idea. We're going to do virtual and live right now. We have 30 dollars for these people that I'm going to call the names for. Remember [email protected] and use the code word of NEWSLINE. I bet everybody knows about NEWSLINE. You better learn about it. But anyway, 30 bucks go to Yolena Frankel of Maryland. Then we've got Monica Sandoval, Texas, and Ashley Barry of Texas and now Kenya will give the live and direct.
SPEAKER: Good afternoon! Who is ready for the presidential report? Yeah, yeah, so am I. So our first door prize of the afternoon is going to Susan Belamer from Swanton, Vermont!
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Susan, are you here?
SPEAKER: Do you want know what Susan is missing out on. She's missing out on 100 dollars and 50 dollars in Amazon gift cards! All right. Well, what about Jennifer Claudio from Bellville, New Jersey?
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: What was the name?
SPEAKER: Jennifer Claudio. Not here. What about Kimberly Fetterman from Sun city, Arizona? Not here. Okay... yes, here?
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Did you find her?
SPEAKER: Can you cheer if you're here? No, not everybody. If your name is Kimberly Fetterman.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: From Arizona.
SPEAKER: We got her! Thank you.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: We will now move to the presidential report. Over the past year, we, the nation's blind, have accelerated our march toward equality in society. Thousands of active members on the local level have joined in hundreds of chapters within our fifty-two affiliates, unified in a coordinated nationwide movement with a momentum that is impossible to stop. As we gather to review our progress, we celebrate the infinite possibilities born from the pledge to work together to create a world where blind people can live the lives we want as valued and respected members of society.
While the work ahead can feel daunting and the barriers in our way may appear immovable, we know that success will not come from the charity of others but from the momentum of our own unified efforts. Our vehicle for acceleration is the National Federation of the Blind.
(Cheers and applause)
Despite the great strides we have made since 1940, society still does not completely believe in the full capacity of blind individuals. We are often tolerated, but not included, and are told what we can and cannot do because society expects less of us. In building our movement, we organize around five key values, which will serve as the basis for my report. The first of these values is that we unapologetically believe in blind people.
(Cheers and applause)
We take action to advance the aspirations of the blind, and we create a loving community where we learn to be our most powerful selves. Our faith in the capacity and dignity of blind individuals is at the heart of our mission. One of the most important ways we carry out our belief in blind people is through our efforts to support blind children and their families.
(Cheers and applause)
Unfortunately, the American education system continues to fail these students, but we are pushing back. The key tool for ensuring blind children receive appropriate educational services authentic to their learning is the Individualized Education Program (IEP) At the beginning of June, we held the first of our IEP Advocacy Academies. Supported by the Lavelle Fund for the Blind, the goal of this program is to increase the number of advocates available to help families through the IEP process, but equally as important is to connect them with the lifelong network that is the National Federation of the Blind. There is a great demand for this support among families.
We trained sixteen individuals from fifteen of our affiliates in our first cohort, and we will be investing in additional cohorts soon. We believe that putting a successful blind adult into these meetings is one of the most effective tools we have for raising expectations.
(Cheers and applause)
One example of our success comes in a school district in Alabama. We got involved in the IEPs for a ten-year-old who could only write the alphabet in uncontracted Braille and a nine-year-old who could only write half of the alphabet. Neither of them could read. Neither of these young girls, both curious and eager to learn, had any access technology or access technology instruction. Neither of them was receiving substantive mobility services, thus denying them age-appropriate independence. In school, they relied exclusively on paraprofessionals to serve as readers and guides.
With the intervention of the Federation, both girls' IEPs were rewritten to include integration of blindness skills training into the general curriculum; age appropriate Braille, mobility and technology goals;
reduced reliance on paraprofessionals; and daily reinforcement of all instruction.
(Cheers and applause)
Our Alabama affiliate now stands ready to ensure that the IEPs are followed so these girls receive the free and appropriate public education they are guaranteed by law.
(Applause)
There are times when our local advocacy is not enough to overcome systemic discrimination. We filed administrative complaints with the Louisiana Department of Education regarding the failure of two parishes to provide appropriate assessments and effective instruction in Braille. Due to our support, the department found violations of the law and ordered compensatory Braille instruction, training for parish staff on appropriate services for blind students, increased participation by teachers at team meetings, and new assessments for the blind students. These complaints got the attention of state and local professionals who now know that our Federation is standing by to ensure they give blind students the education they deserve in compliance with the law. We believe in blind people, and with that belief we are unstoppable in our pursuit of equality.
(Applause)
Another value is our commitment to lead courageously. Our members and partners count on our expertise and our resolve. We will never shy away from the effort to surmount obstacles and raise expectations in pursuit of richer, fuller lives for all blind people. After nine years of litigation before the Department of Labor's Administrative Review Board and in federal court, we received a historic victory in our fight against Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
(Applause)
Earlier this year, the federal court affirmed that our clients are not disabled for the work they perform at Seneca Re Ad in Ohio and cannot be paid subminimum wages. Shortly after the ruling, the sheltered workshop agreed to pay our three clients every cent they were owed in back wages and liquidated damages.
(Cheers and applause)
This may be the most significant wake up call we have ever delivered to the employers abusing the labor of disabled workers. The momentum is clearly on our side. Sixteen states have passed legislation or promulgated regulations to phase out subminimum wages, two additional states have implemented restrictions, and we are gaining support for federal legislation. In May, another milestone was reached when a joint letter signed by the president of SourceAmerica and me, as the President of the National Federation of the Blind, was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Labor Committees in support of the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act. This is the first time SourceAmerica has joined the blind in urging Congress to eliminate unequal pay provisions in federal law.
(Cheers and applause)
In addition, we continue to monitor and advise the AbilityOne Commission as it undertakes significant reform to raise expectations in employment for people with disabilities. We continue to hold the government responsible when agencies discriminate against blind employees. Frequently this relates to the failure of agencies to meet the information technology accessibility standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. One example is the Department of Veterans Affairs, which rolled out Cerner's electronic health records software knowing it was inaccessible.
(audience responds)
It is worth noting that we raised concerns about Cerner's contract with the Department of Defense in 2015 before the implementation began. On behalf of Laurette Santos, a blind employee of the VA, we have filed suit in federal court for the agency's failure to accommodate. This case will build on our prior legal victories and help establish the remedies for relief under Section 508. We seek equality of opportunity, not to simply be paid as charity cases for doing nothing.
(Applause)
Another area that takes our organizational and personal courage is our advocacy to counteract the discrimination that blind people encounter from drivers in the rideshare industry. I will make this really simple: both of the leading companies, Lyft and Uber, are failing to meet their obligations to ensure that blind individuals are not discriminated against.
(Cheers and applause)
While we continue to hold regular meetings with both companies in good faith to improve their policies and practices, there is rarely a day that goes by when we do not learn of another ride denied to a blind person. One example is a recent call I received from Jessica Beecham, a member of the Federation's national board, who happens to use a guide dog. She was in an Uber, but the driver refused to transport her. The Littleton police were on the scene, and they were treating Jessica like the criminal.
(audience responds)
They got increasingly forceful as Jessica kept her cool and attempted to educate them about the specifics of the Colorado statutes. While Jessica left the car with her dignity, she had no ride and had all of the stress and frustration of having her rights denied. The following day Jessica received an apologetic phone call from the officer who was in charge on the scene, but any blind person knows this was too little, too late the damage was already done.
(Applause)
We will take all of the courageous steps necessary to stop this second class treatment from both the rideshare drivers and law enforcement officers.
(Cheers and applause)
We strongly encourage all blind people to continue to share data with the Federation about these incidents and to file complaints through the ADA.gov website. Another area of our persistent advocacy relates to the unequal treatment blind people receive during airline travel. We have continued to press the US Department of Transportation regarding our objection to the service animal attestation forms used by airlines.
In addition, we drafted new sections for the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, including a demonstration project for service animal users, greater training for airline personnel, and access to websites and in flight entertainment systems. On May 16, 2024, the president of the United States signed the reauthorization act into law, including our accessibility priorities.
(Applause)
The actions of Federation members make all the difference in leading courageously. A special thank you to Al Elia of New York, who has been a courageous leader in our advocacy work on behalf of guide dog users.
(Applause)
Leading courageously requires us to put our own ideas to the test, and we do that through innovative programs carried out by our staff at the NFB Jernigan Institute in Baltimore. We are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our program expansion, and the difference we've made is found in the blind people, employers, rehabilitation and education professionals, disability rights advocates, and technology developers who have been positively influenced. The expertise and authenticity of Federation members is what makes our efforts uniquely effective.
During the past year, in collaboration with our National Association of Blind Students, we began building a new model for regional student seminars. Our Midwest and Rocky Mountain Seminars provided an informative and fun platform for nearly one hundred students to build a community together while learning about how blind students successfully navigate college. In the area of employment, we have been building community resources with the support of our Employment Committee. During the past year, we hosted events connecting over four hundred blind job seekers with fifty employers offering competitive integrated jobs.
(Applause)
We supported these efforts with our quarterly Where the Blind Work webinar series, which aims to shatter misconceptions about blind people in the employment arena. In the coming year we will complete and launch several training modules, grounded in Federation philosophy, designed to inform and train vocational rehabilitation counselors on how to best work with their blind consumers. This work incorporates the expertise of our National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals.
These resources will be made available to Federation affiliates to facilitate training within state vocational rehabilitation agencies. Through our Center of Excellence in Nonvisual Access, we work with everyone from developers of new technologies to the largest technology companies in the world. Our staff test and track the accessibility of products and perform training along with strategic partners.
Our technology staff hosts monthly ninety-minute sessions and quarterly four-hour presentations on various accessibility topics for Federation members and our allies. Through our Blind Users Innovating and Leading Design program, we ensure that technology partners utilize the talents of blind people in their testing efforts and that they pay users for their time.
(Applause)
We continue to advance a culture of accessibility in higher education through our Accessibility Inclusion Fellows program in the state of Maryland. In order to more effectively track trends and empower Federation members to engage with companies related to accessibility issues, we recently launched a Self Advocacy Toolkit for Nonvisual Accessibility. A core aspect of our leadership is being there when individual blind people need us the most. During the past year we strengthened the technical support efforts we provide to blind people through our general information, legal, and advocacy support programs at the national level.
We have increased our investment in counteracting the problems that result from the bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration. We first aim to support the self advocacy of individual Federation members, but sometimes a stronger intervention is required. One example from the past year is Allison Depner, a leader in our California affiliate, who received a notice from the Social Security Administration in December 2022 informing her that she had been overpaid. According to the letter, her SSDI benefits would cease, and she would be responsible for repaying approximately 40,000 dollars.
(audience responds)
Allison knew the program rules, she was certain she had followed them, but the agency continued to give her conflicting information. She asked for help from Team NFB, and we worked closely with her to fight the agency. After a full year, during which time she received no benefits, the Social Security Administration finally acknowledged their error.
(Applause)
They restored Allison's benefits, gave her more than 21,000 dollars in missed payments, and issued her a formal letter of apology.
(Cheers and applause)
To quote Allison, "it pays to be a member of the National Federation of the Blind." One of the most obvious of our core values is that we champion collective action. The power of our membership acting through the democratic process, along with the support of our partners, enables collective action toward full participation in society by blind people. We achieve much more when we work together. This is observed in our increasing influence in Washington, DC, with members of Congress and among leaders within the executive branch. Our Website and Software Applications Accessibility Act has more cosponsors in the House than ever before.
(Applause)
Our Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act was introduced in the United States Senate for the first time, and our companion bill in the House of Representatives has a growing list of cosponsors.
(Applause)
Our effort to empower blind people to secure personal technology through the Access Technology Affordability Act continues to be championed by all sides within both chambers of Congress. And just days ago we celebrated the introduction of our Blind Americans Return to Work Act, H.R. 8878, which would eliminate the earnings cliff in the Social Security Disability Insurance program and create a true work incentive for blind and disabled Americans. We will continue to have our collective voice heard in the halls of power.
After more than a decade of our persistent advocacy, on August 4, 2023, the Department of Justice finally published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to websites for Title II of the ADA, however, it included seven exceptions. Seven. We seek equality, not a second-class version of the rights of other Americans. The National Federation of the Blind responded to the NPRM with thorough comments, including our vehement opposition to the proposed exceptions. When the final rule was released in April 2024, the two most egregious exceptions had been removed.
(Applause)
In May, we were equally successful with new regulations regarding website accessibility under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. While we now have more tools to hold state and local governments accountable for providing us with equal access, we still demand the proposed Title III ADA website regulations that we were promised nearly fourteen years ago.
(Cheers and applause)
All public accommodations must meet an equal standard of access in the twenty first century, and the momentum of our collective action will make it a reality.
(Applause)
Our collective action is effective because it is also concentrated locally. We assist our state affiliates in advancing model legislation that strengthens our equality in local communities. In our effort to protect the rights of blind people to be parents and caregivers, we secured legislation in Minnesota, adding that state to the list of twenty other affiliates that have already secured these protections.
(Applause)
We have advanced equal access to prescription drug labeling with a new law in Colorado, making it the ninth of our affiliates to achieve this milestone. We continue to work on pay protections, educational standards, public accessibility, and many other initiatives that are advanced on the local level but supported through our national advocacy program. One of the most important areas is expanding equal access to all forms of voting. During the past five years, we have made considerable progress in expanding the availability of accessible electronic ballot delivery to blind people, which is now law in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia.
(Applause)
In thirteen of those states, we have also secured the ability to privately and independently return the ballot electronically. Using the strength of our collective action, we have also taken to the courts to enforce our equal rights in the voting process. In Alabama, we have filed suit against Tuscaloosa, Mobile, and Jefferson Counties for their failure to provide accessible electronic absentee voting to blind and print disabled voters.
(Applause)
We seek a permanent remedy that provides equal access. In March, we supported our California affiliate in filing suit against the California Secretary of State under the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. This suit seeks to require California to allow blind and print disabled voters to return their ballots electronically. Our request for preliminary injunction seeks the ability to return ballots by fax, as the state already provides this option to California's military and overseas voters. Meanwhile, we continue to provide technical assistance under the Help America Vote Act to all voting officials and advocates interested in meeting the highest standards of nonvisual access to the voting process. We will pursue equal access whenever it is systemically denied to us, and we will continue to call out any harmful opposition to our collective equality.
(Cheers and applause)
Our fourth value is a commitment to fostering inclusion. We recognize the diverse strengths, talents, experiences, and perspectives of our members, staff, and friends; and we cultivate an environment that is welcoming and inclusive for all. We seek that same level of integration into society on terms of equality. Our movement is built on active participation from members across the country, and we have continued to strengthen our tools for communicating with and connecting members of the Federation with resources.
In September, we launched the Member Profile. This self-service tool allows members to update contact and demographic information at their convenience. Our Member Management Module has streamlined the process of updating and tracking membership status across our chapters, state affiliates, and national divisions. Through our regular meetings with chapter presidents, our communication channels with affiliate leadership, and our NFB Portal online, we are developing new ways to share best practices and basic tools for advancing the work of the organization at all levels.
We continue to seek best practice recommendations from our Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to improve our program and outreach efforts. In order to create greater consistency across all of our state affiliates, our national board has required every affiliate to adopt and maintain an accessibility policy and to coordinate practices with our national office. During the past year we have piloted the Disability Inclusion & Accessibility Program tools as part of our effort to ensure our events, like this convention, meet or exceed the highest levels of accessibility and inclusion.
This program was developed by the disability advocacy community, including Federation leaders, in order to provide a framework for companies to guide their efforts to be inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities. We believe that we should meet the standards we expect of others, and we are prepared to continue in our own journey of leading and learning.
(Applause)
Our investment in early leaders is central to our commitment. This was the first year for our new Kenneth Jernigan Leadership In Service Program.
(Cheers and applause)
Through this intense training, we have invested in the development of fifteen emerging leaders from across the country. These individuals have combined their unique talents and diverse perspectives into a community of leadership practice while working closely with the Federation's President. We expect to onboard a new cohort later this summer. This leadership development is in addition to our regular leadership seminars at our national office, affiliate building seminars, and special projects to develop blind leaders to take on the many areas of advocacy that require our attention. One example of advocacy is Lisamaria Martinez, a blind Federation leader from California, who dedicates her time to raising expectations for others.
As part of developing her own life coaching business in 2019, she needed to file a form in Alameda County a form that was only partly accessible. When an employee at the Clerk Recorder's office in Oakland pointed out that she had made a mistake on the form, Lisamaria politely asked if they could assist her in making the necessary corrections. The county staff refused to help, even as they helped other visitors in the office. She attempted to explain her right to receive assistance under the ADA without success. Lisamaria returned home, hired a reader to fill out the form again, and paid for transportation back to the office simply to take care of one single paper form.
Fostering inclusion often requires us to educate others, but sometimes that is not enough. When Lisamaria pursued a complaint process to protect other blind people from having this problem in the future, the county refused to enter into structured negotiations, declined the opportunity to change its policy, and litigated the case for the next five years all to deny assistance in completing one single paper form.
Forced to fight for her rightful place in society, Lisamaria took the stand. Her testimony, offered to a jury, a judge, and a courtroom full of Federationists, was no longer about one single paper form.
(Applause)
With eloquence and grace, she shared how the National Federation of the Blind had made a difference in her life from a young age and taught her that she belonged in this society. She explained that she deserved her rights, and she knew the importance of knocking down barriers to prevent future discrimination against other blind people. The jury agreed with Lisamaria and found that Alameda County had violated the ADA as well as state law. They awarded her 30,500 dollars in damages for the county's multi year, deliberately indifferent behavior over one single paper form, and our work continues to secure permanent policy changes at the county.
Other examples of our work to foster inclusion within society include pursuing equality in healthcare services. In Sarasota, Florida, we assisted a blind woman in reaching a settlement with Partner's Imaging after it refused to assist her with its inaccessible registration system, forcing her to find a sighted person to accompany her to appointments. In Ohio, we have filed suit against ExactCare, an online pharmacy, for its failure to provide effective communication in the form of accessible documentation for medications. In Minnesota, as a result of our structured negotiations, CVS agreed to replace its existing inaccessible MinuteClinic kiosks with an accessible alternative within eighteen months.
(Cheers and applause)
CVS will also collaborate with the Federation on the development of the new accessible alternative. We have made other progress with the Social Security Administration. In 2020, we began an effort to eliminate the agency's practice requiring certain blind and print disabled SSDI applicants to go through an inaccessible paper-based process when an accessible electronic process was available.
While we pursue the litigation, the agency has temporarily committed to accepting electronic signatures with a back up telephone verification process. We will continue to work to eliminate this additional barrier and make the process more effective for all applicants.
(Applause)
Similarly, in April 2024, the SSA finished installation of new accessible visitor intake processing kiosks at all of its field offices nationwide as a result of a suit we previously filed. Although the timeline for completion was significantly delayed by the pandemic, we now celebrate the elimination of this barrier, and we appreciate the agency being at this convention to discuss the machines and its work to modernize communications.
(Applause)
Our partnerships and communications strategies are also essential to our work to foster inclusion. Examples from the past year include our collaboration with United Airlines as it became the first to commit to installing Braille indicators for individual rows and seat numbers and signage for lavatories.
(Applause)
United expects to include this across all aircraft in its entire mainline fleet by the end of 2026. We drew attention to the harm done by Sonos in releasing a new inaccessible mobile application, and we then engaged with the into their quality assurance process. company to integrate more blind people into their quality assurance process. Our concerns were featured as part of an article in the Washington Post on May 17, 2024. And let us not forget our work to get blind people included more in the fun stuff like video games and puzzles.
(Cheers and applause)
We teamed up with Spin Master, a leading global children's entertainment company and owners of the Rubik's Cube, to design an all new cube to empower everyone in the blind community to solve the most popular puzzle in the world. For the fiftieth anniversary of the puzzle, we worked together to create the Rubik's Sensory Cube, reimagining the classic 3x3 puzzle with distinguishable tactile shapes on its surface to enable solving the puzzle through touch.
(Applause)
The Federation worked with the Rubik's Cube engineers advising on design and how to effectively incorporate Braille into the packaging. Later this year you will be able to buy this Rubik's Cube through the Federation's Independence Market online store.
(Cheers and applause)
And there will be other promotions we'll be planned for our 2024 Blind Equality Achievement Month. The Federation is certainly making moves to shift expectations throughout society. The final value I want to cover today is the Federation's commitment to empowering our community to dream big and our determination to make those dreams reality. There are truly no limits to what we can accomplish together.
During the past year, this has been observed in our annual NFB Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning Academies where twenty-one of our state affiliates helped to spark the dreams of 242 young blind students in twenty-five programs in local communities.
(Applause)
An additional seventy-two Braille learners from thirty-four of our state affiliates, as well as a military family stationed in Dubai, benefited from our at home program in 2023.
(Applause)
These dreams start by connecting these future blind leaders into our Federation family. The effect of our work is found in the messages of hope we receive from parents after the BELL Academies. A parent in Virginia shares that their active six-year-old boy, who previously kept his head down, straining to keep his eyes focused on the ground, was walking confidently, his cane out in front, and his head held high listening to the birds and frogs.
(Applause)
A mom from Louisiana says her dreams for her son are now bigger by emphasizing that "he is thriving because of you!"
(Applause)
She goes on to share, "My only regret is not finding you all sooner…" This summer, our theme is "I Can Lead," and I am confident we will unlock some big dreams in the hearts of these young Braille reading leaders.
(Cheers and applause)
Dreams come alive in our STEM2U programs with the support of General Motors and the execution of programs in more than a dozen Federation affiliates where blind students are opened to the opportunities for
discovery in science and the realization that vision is not a requirement for success.
(Applause)
The foundation for dreaming big is built in our Teachers of Tomorrow program where, over the past year, fourteen teachers from ten states have spent time each month learning from the lived experience of blind people and being supported by previous program participants who are now giving back. As one participant said, "I was inspired because the NFB has fostered a community of members who come from all walks of life who choose to join together and invest so much of their time and energy to advocate for change. Real change. Change for themselves and for future generations of blind Americans."
(Applause)
We are building dreams through a community of high expectations. We also dream big by exploring partnerships with early-stage startups that have the potential to innovate solutions that will benefit all blind people. Partnership investments from the past year include Making Space, a disability owned company driving change in employment and upskilling; XR Navigation, a blind owned startup innovating new frontiers in tactile mapping and navigation; Purple, an entity raising expectations in inclusive financial literacy; and Be My Eyes, a previous winner of the Federation's Bolotin Award and a company committed to blind centered practices to leverage artificial intelligence for personal digital assistance.
Dreaming big starts within each member of our Federation within our own stories and their connection to our collective action. We continue to develop the extensive archives housed within our Jacobus tenBroek Research Library on Blindness in Baltimore. We have added artifacts and personal papers from blind people who have made this movement what it is. We have put into place a new digital asset management system for tracking the extensive collection of photos, videos, and audio recordings that document our progress.
During the past year, we have increased our pace of recording, collecting, and preserving oral histories from blind people across this nation. And we are building partnerships to preserve other key aspects of our shared stories as blind people. As one significant example, I am pleased to announce that due to the efforts of Ron Brown, a longtime leader of our movement in Indiana and at the national level, we have agreed to make our headquarters in Baltimore the official home for preserving and hosting the National Beep Baseball Hall of Fame.
(Applause)
I am confident this will not be the last homerun that Ron Brown hits for our movement. And this brings us to our biggest dream eliminating the persistent misconceptions and low expectations within the average person about blind people, our equality, and our capacity. We seek not merely to effect minor changes but to accelerate significant shifts in society. Thus, we have taken on a big dream one that will not be easy, will demand resources and new talents, and that will stretch our aspirations for the future a dream that needs to be pursued even as we do all of the other work needed in our movement. This is our dream of building the Museum of the Blind People's Movement.
(Cheers and applause)
This new dynamic space, physically in Baltimore but accessible everywhere through a robust digital presence, will be the only museum that is authentically and unapologetically blind centered and designed to be inclusive, again reflecting the values of the organized blind movement. For centuries, blind people have been misunderstood and underestimated. We will invite the world to discover the authentic experiences and contributions of blind people from the everyday to the extraordinary.
This year we have continued our development work on the themes for this new museum, including moving from a broad concept design process into the schematic design phase where we will develop the detailed content and experience of the museum. This spring, we were notified that our museum was approved for appropriations at both the state and federal levels totaling more than 550,000 dollars.
(Cheers and applause)
Yet, we have a lot of work to do to make our big dream a reality. We need to find ways to accelerate understanding about us and to solidify the truth of our dignity: we belong in the world, and we make it better.
This effort will take all of us, and I am again calling on you to help. You can help by gifting your personal papers and artifacts to our Federation. You can assist by researching, writing, recording, and sharing the stories of blind people into our publications and archives. You can prioritize approaching contacts within your personal circle of influence and asking them for a major pledge to our museum effort.
And you can make your own pledge.
While dozens of us have already made commitments, the Museum of the Blind People's Movement will not happen without the support of thousands of blind people and our allies. When we challenge misconceptions, we create a world where we are included, respected, and valued. Our contributions make the world better. This is your museum, and together we can transform this dream into reality.
(Applause)
There are dozens of other accomplishments that I have not had time to cover in this report. These come from our education programs, our legal services work, our general information assistance calls, our media relations projects, our training seminars, our collaboration with community partners, our work to hold entities accountable for their programs and services affecting the blind, and our daily work to build a coordinated movement. All of these accomplishments have one single consistent and unshakeable bond.
They happen through the hard work of blind people and our allies whose personal stories fuel our determination to making the world better. You, the active members of our movement who believe in blind people, lead courageously, champion collective action, foster inclusion, and dream big. You are the heartbeat of our movement, and you accelerate our progress.
(Cheers and applause)
Ten years and one day ago, I was humbled to first accept your affirmative vote to serve as your President.
(Cheers and applause)
In accepting your support, I pledged to you my commitment to build our Federation with the same love and determination shared among our previously elected leaders, and I invited you to join with me in the effort. You answered my invitation by accelerating our progress, and not one day has passed without my feeling the gravity of humility and gratitude for what you have given to our shared movement.
I doubt any of us would have predicted many of the experiences we've had over the past ten years and my thinning hair and its new grey highlights...
(Laughter)
...
may suggest to some that the experience has been hard on me. But every time I have been confronted with difficult circumstances in the office of the President, I have found strength, hope, and wisdom in the bond of faith we share.
(Cheers and applause)
Hundreds of times I have relied on the trust I have in all of you, and you have given me the guidance to do what was needed for our movement. In response, you have trusted me, helped to keep us on the best path forward, and have given me the courage to push harder and faster toward our equality in society. Should you choose to invite me to continue in service of this movement tomorrow, you will have no less commitment, energy, imagination, and heart from me than you did ten years ago.
(Applause)
And the truth is you will have all of that even if you decide something different. My trust in you and my commitment to our movement is unbroken. Thank you for the tremendous difference you have made in my life and for my family.
(Cheers and applause)
During the past ten years, you have shown me the best of the human spirit, the strength of kindness, and the power of solidarity. I have done my best to reflect back to you all that you have given to me.
If my continued service in the Office of the President is your resolution, I am prepared to accelerate our progress toward equality. I remain unsatisfied with our position in society as blind people, even as I am inspired by how the momentum of this movement raises expectations every day. I will never ask from you anything that I am not prepared to do myself.
I will also never compromise the bond of faith we share with each other a faith that can move mountains and mount movements. It is the effort of all of us combined that give us power, love, and determination to go the rest of the way to equality. My Federation family, this is my report for 2024. This is how we accelerate progress toward a hopeful tomorrow.
(Cheers and applause)
This is the future we build for ourselves with love, hope, and determination. This is the blind people's movement.
(Cheers and applause)
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: I love you too.
SPEAKER: Mr. President, door prizes, but I want to say every year you do these reports renews the excitement that I have in being in the National Federation of the Blind, and this is my 50th convention.
Now, we've got a virtual prize of 50 dollars. It's going to go to Shannon Britt in Virginia.
Denise Hopper in Pennsylvania.
And then there is Ada... I'm going to spell the last name because I don't want to embarrass myself or the person. H A J R U L L A J. That person is in Texas, and they get 50 dollars. If all of you send within half an hour an email to [email protected] with the code word "Jernigan." And you'll get your 50 bucks. Now, Kenia has a prize that is wonderful for this report.
KENIA: First I would like to say happy anniversary to President Riccobono. Ten years is a big accomplishment, and we are so fortunate to have you leading our movement. So to celebrate, we will be giving out three items to this individual. The first is a 1,850 dollars gift card to -- that can be used as a variety of restaurants of their choice. And the second item is the most exciting. As you know on the door prize committee, we are big proponents of fun. And we think that Rubik's cubes are very fun.
So this individual going to have access to the new Rubik's cube President Riccobono mentioned. I know all of you in the room are eager to have one. And then they will also be receiving two chocolate bars.
So this individual is Joshua Dudley from Salem, Oregon! If you're here, please shout.
SPEAKER: Here.
KENIA: If you are Joshua Dudley. . What about Dawn Schaffer from Nebraska? Congratulations, dawn, we got her.
SPEAKER: Fellow Federationists, can you believe the speech we just heard? Are you not as energized as I am? All right. Now, you heard all of those outstanding resources, all of the different programs and activities that we in the National Federation of the Blind are undertaking on a daily basis. Well, guess what... we can't do that for free. It takes a little bit of funding to make that happen and takes funding not from only you but funding from your friends, funding from your companies, any kind of funding you can think of to continue to motivate and move us forward to make the change we want to happen.
So I'm going to talk about the dream big GIVE25 campaign. You have only a couple more hours to be able to give in honor if our Dream Big GIVE25. If you give 25 dollars, at least 25 dollars, you will be entered into a prize to win a trip top National Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. You also will get hotel and airfare and 1,000 dollars walking around money. That's pretty impressive. If you don't want to come to convention, you can get 2,500 dollars in cash.
Now, you also get an opportunity to be entered to win a Braille Monarch. 18,000 dollars. Can you imagine having that kind of device at your fingertips? I know I want to imagine it. So this is an opportunity for you to go back to the table. Where is my Dream Big table? I know they're back there. Oh, they're right outside the room. Dream Big GIVE25 table is right outside the room. You can go there and you can give 25 dollars and be entered into those contests. One other thing, though, you can talk to your friends or family. They can enter and put 25 dollars in your name, in your honor. So you could get multiple chances to win.
So you know, text your mom, text your dad, text your uncle. Any of those rich family members and friends, text them and say, GIVE25 in your honor. It's simple. Go to NFB.org /GIVE25donate, and you can find the application there. One last thing... if you give 50 dollars today by 5:00, and you are here tomorrow, you can pick up a free pair of headphones. That's pretty amazing. These are the -- the name escapes me -- Aftershokz headphones. You can get a pair tomorrow. All you have to do is come to the table. They will be there while supplies last. So let's do this. Let's end on a really big note. We're going to do this three times. I'm going to say Dream Big, and you say GIVE25. Dream big!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: GIVE25.
SPEAKER: Dream big!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: GIVE25!
SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you, Everette. We're going to do a quick PAC report update from Marilyn Green. I surprised them.
MARILYN: I'm going to try to be quick, quick, quick. So we have new information for our PAC contest. Puerto Rico, you are kicking booty! You have the most increase thus far. But Arkansas, let me tell you, they're only $20 ahead of you, so Arkansas, get back there! Then after that is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, you only need 10 more dollars a month to overcome Arkansas. Those are the top three. Then for divisions, the seniors, 14 people.
But NLPVC, you only need two more. Just get two more people back there and you can get the mule. NABS, you got a ways to go, kids. Keep the numbers up and get back there to the PAC table. You all have some money. I've seen you all. Come on, NABS students get there and get on the PAC Plan. For percentages, Vermont you're in the lead. That is what I have for the report as of right now. I'll talk about gift cards later. I don't have a lot of time. Thank you, sir.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you very much. This next presentation is an important one. I have wrote many, many notes about this individual. Many of you already know her, though, because she is no stranger to the National Federation of the Blind. She's a teacher of blind students. She's an instructor of teachers of blind students through the program at Louisiana Tech University. She's very active with our National Organization of Parents of Blind Children. You have heard some of her work in the -- reflected in the presidential report. She volunteers a lot of time for families across the country, because it's in her heart to do it, and because it needs to be done.
She is creating the highest standard there is in the country for teachers of blind students around Braille, which is a courageous thing to do, since a bunch of the teacher training programs say, why bother, there's more important stuff than Braille these days. So leading courageously with high expectations: Braille and Teacher Preparation... here is a long-time friend now of the National Federation of the Blind, she's a staunch member of ours in Mississippi, and you might not know that she really loves to ride tractors. Here is Casey Robertson.
(Music playing)
¶ we can do anything ¶
¶ We could be heroes ¶
¶ We could be heroes ¶
¶ me and you ¶
CASEY: So thank you, President Riccobono, and I'm glad you chose a different song besides "My Tractor's Sexy." I'm glad the song was different. So I am Casey Robertson and I'm the lead instructor at the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness at Louisiana Tech.
(Cheering)
Now, that's a mouthful, so we just call ourselves PDRIB. We have existed since 1999. So the Institute on Blindness provides outstanding professional preparation for individuals entering the field and working with blind children and adults, and our graduates have been eagerly sought after by employers from across the United States in public and private sectors. We have some graduate students here and they were swarmed the first night because people wanted to hire them. We train individuals in four pathways to reach certification to work in the field of blindness and we do that training based on the structured discovery method of teaching.
(Applause)
I am also an advocate for blind students and their families across the nation. Those families that are seeking services are seeking better services to provide independence for their blind children. Some of those families are here in the room with us today. I also love volunteering my services to the National Federation of the Blind in any capacity that is needed. But if you really know me, if you really, really know me, besides tractor riding, I am an educator at heart. I love people. And I love literacy for all people.
So I want to take a moment and share a story with you. This story is adapted from a children's book by Amanda Gorman, a best-selling author. The title is "Something Someday." You are told that there is not a problem. But you're sure in your heart and in your gut that there is a problem. You are told that you cannot fix that problem. But you know that you can help. You are told this is too big for you. It is a very, very big problem. But you have seen the tiniest of things make a huge difference before. You are told that this won't work.
So don't even try. But how will you know if you never try? You are told to sit and wait. But you know people have waited for far too long. You are told that what is going on is very, very sad, but you're not just sad. You're scared. You're confused. And maybe you are downright angry. And maybe, just maybe, underneath all of that, you also are hopeful. You are told not to hope too much, because there is no use to hope. But you keep hoping anyway. Sometimes you may feel that you are all alone, but someday, somewhere, you will find a friend. Someone who will help you and who believes in your dream. Someone who will fight with you. You make a promise to each other, and you say, this is a problem, but it’s our problem together.
So we can fix it together. The problem is big, but together we are bigger. So together, working, and together, beginning, over and over again, until you are no longer beginning. You are now winning.
Suddenly there is something you're sure is right. Something you know has helped. Something small that has changed things in a big way. Something that is no longer a dream, but the day that that dream becomes a reality that you live in. I share this book with you because it describes the direction of the education of blind students in our country as we speak. And it also describes how I feel so often in the field of blindness.
Just as the little boy in the story identified, we have several issues that just do not seem right. So currently students are not receiving enough Braille. We have a shortage of teachers in the field. A great number of teachers that are in the field lack the self efficacy to teach Braille literacy to their students. Schools are not equipped to provide services, or they just feel that they don't have to provide services. Sometimes they even feel that just good enough is good enough. We don't need to do it anymore.
Parents do not have the advocacy that they need to advocate for students. Society, along with the educational system, has set very low standards for our students based on their lack of knowledge. Research has proven that literacy is more than just reading and writing. At its simplest form, literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and how it shapes us. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also speaking and listening and creating. It is how we articulate our experiences in this world.
Literacy has a direct impact on employment. Better access to the economy, better opportunities, and even better nutrition and environmental stability. However, just as the little boy in the story was told "there is no problem," parents are often told there is no literacy problem with their child. Educational staff, along with professionals in the field, will state that the student is receiving the best education the school can offer. And after all, parents, you should just expect your blind kids to be slower and perform with less ability than their sighted peers.
(audience responds)
CASEY: That's right! Booooo! When parents are told there is no problem, deep in the heart of the parents, they are sure that they know something is wrong. It's not okay for a third grader to be illiterate, not being able to read or write or express themselves in a creative way just because they are blind.
(Applause)
So you may ask, why would professionals in the field of blindness tell families this misinformation? I believe it flows back to our teacher preparation programs. Just as the little boy in the story was told, in the teacher preparation sphere, we recognize that there are problems. We can even state those problems. Others in the sphere would tell us the problems are too large for us to solve. It is often stated that the problems are just way too large, because there is not enough teachers. Not enough funding, not enough time. And after all, Braille is too hard to learn.
(booing)
Too hard to teach. It has so many rules. And does anybody use Braille any longer? So as I stand here before you today and say these things go back to the teacher preparation program, let me share my evidence of how I came to this conclusion. Let's look at literacy requirements of the teacher preparation program. Currently there are 38 universities across the country that have teacher prep programs for teaching blind students. Most of them outside of Louisiana Tech call it "Teaching Visually Impaired."
(booing)
The programs make up both graduate and undergraduate studies. Research as recent as 2022 showed the Braille code competency is not consistent among universities thus resulting in inconsistent expectations of those teachers that they are turning out into the field. Most of the 38 universities do not ask teachers to show any real proficiency at the end of the program.
(booing)
Those that do show proficiency set a very low reading rate of approximately 20 words per minute to pass their course. In a 2019 study of undergraduate programs, teachers of the blind showed that 31% of the universities that offered Braille only offered one course in Braille. Teachers and personnel prep programs are taught that Braille readers will read one third to one fifth the rate of their sighted peers.
(booing)
Some of the universities are even teaching their teachers to accept that students will read one half to two times slower than their sighted peers. When we look at Nemeth, the math code for Braille, a motto examined colleges and universities that prepared teachers of the blind. She found that almost all teachers that she interviewed had had a course in Nemeth, however, they still felt their skills to teach Nemeth were inadequate. We know by research that if a teacher does not have the self efficacy to teach a subject such as Braille or Nemeth, they are not going to recommend a student learn it. After all, if a teacher doesn't know, for instance, Spanish, do you think she is going to take a job to teach Spanish?
Currently we do not -- I repeat that -- do not have any national standards for what teachers of the blind are taught. Each university can apply their bias and expectations and determine what they will or will not teach. How can we expect our students to have a consistent education if we are not training our teachers in a consistent format with the same high expectations? In the teacher prep arena, I am often told that the problems are too large for me to solve. It's too large for any university to solve. We are often told the problems are so large because, once again, there are not enough teachers, not enough funding, and not enough time. Just as the little boy in the story was discouraged from solving the problem, he knew existed, he was told to sit and wait. Well, I stand here today and tell you, blind people are met with daily access challenges that society has, and they say are minor problems. Blind people are asked to sit and wait, and we have waited far too long.
(Cheers and applause)
When I came into the field of blindness education many years ago, I was told that the problem in the blindness field was so large and had been going on so long that I could expect them to be here long after I was pushing up daisies. I was encouraged to not rock the boat. And let it float with the status quo. I was also encouraged to not educate the populous. While in one hand that might have been advice to pace my work, at the same time it was an expectation that things would not change in the education of blind children. It was a negative expectation of a cycle that has gone on far too long for our blind children.
(Applause)
And as the little boy in the story, I was not going to simply sit and wait for a change.
(Applause)
So I found partners that believed in my dream. I found the National Federation of the Blind.
(Cheers and applause)
So you might ask, what does it take to create change in the teacher preparation program? It takes listening to blind people and valuing their words. It takes partnering with the organized blind movement, the NFB, to find out what teachers need to know to be able to teach children. In a majority of the programs across the United States that have teacher prep programs, teachers never meet a blind person before they graduate.
We should be at the forefront of the education for blindness, because we are the organized blind movement. We are the ones that know what it takes to create a successful blind person. We don't need people to tell us what we have to have to create a successful blind person. We know that. It also takes courage to step out of your comfort zone and be a leader in the field, even when the other entities, including universities, are telling you it will not work. In December I traveled to a convention with a colleague of mine that was blind. We were met with not so much of a warm welcome. And every time the professionals in the blindness field saw us coming, they would quickly dart the other way.
So the field is not as warm to blindness as it should be. At Louisiana Tech, through the Office of Professional Development Research Institute on Blindness, we know, just as the little boy in this book knew, that taking action one small step at a time, telling others and partnering with them, we knew that would be the best start to a solution. In our teachers of blind students’ program, we partner with the Louisiana Center for the Blind.
(Cheering)
And we exposed our graduate students to some of the highest quality structured discovery training that exists. At the university, we set the highest requirements for Braille in the nation. Now, you remember the other universities had a mere 20 words per minute if they had any proficiency at all to graduate. My students leave our program reading a minimum of 100 words per minute in Braille.
(Cheers and applause)
At a conference I recently attended, I sat at the table to share dinner with teacher prep personnel across the nation. And they all told me these standards were not needed, that no one needed to read Braille 100 words per minute to be able to teach kids. Because if they had any sight, we didn't need to teach them Braille. They went on to tell me that teachers in the field had full time jobs. So why would I make them do 10 pages of Braille homework a week?
And told them that that is what I had found to show proficiency, and for them to retain the code. It was not well received among the professionals. Not only do our students leave the program reading 100 words per minute, almost all of them hold the national certification in Unified English Braille before graduating.
(Applause)
At that table that night, I mentioned that all of my students take the NCUEB, and it was met with the question of... why should they have to show proficiency to teach Braille? So needless to say, they didn't buy my dinner that night. We employ the structured discovery method of teaching throughout our programs. We teach teachers how to teach literacy and orientation and mobility to blind students. We give them the self-efficacy needed to go out and to not be afraid to teach blind students. Recently in one of the Monarch trainings, several of my students was in that training, and I was getting text messages. Hey, we can read the Braille without the screen on, and all the other teachers need the screen.
(chuckling)
I enjoy those text messages. When they complete our program, they know Braille is not too hard. It's not too hard to learn. It's not too hard to teach. And you can learn the rules. And it is still used by blind people.
(Applause)
We could not solve the problem alone, though. We have to have partners. We recently partnered with the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland and the Maryland Department of Education to train a cohort of 15 teachers from Maryland to go back into the state and teach Braille literacy to students.
(Cheers and applause)
All of those teachers hold the NCUEB. Because of this dramatic increase of teachers of blind students in Maryland, this past school year was the first year that Maryland school for the blind was able to meet required service minutes for their school districts. These teachers filled a huge void in the education of students with blindness in Maryland. If we want students to receive a quality education and the excuse is the shortage of teachers, then we need your help, everyone in this room, I need your help in recruiting more teachers and more people into the teaching blind students just as Maryland did.
(Applause)
We would love to train more blind people to go in the field of education. Find a cohort in your state, get with me and let's educate them.
(Applause)
While training teachers is important, we also need to train the paraprofessionals. Because as you know most of our students sit with a paraprofessional more during the day than they do a teacher of blind students. Parents also need to know Braille to be able to assist their students with homework, and to know that when a teacher says it will take a year to learn letters A J in the Braille alphabet, that something is wrong.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No! Five minutes!
CASEY: Three years ago we decided to train parents and paraprofessionals at our office at PDRIB. This class is a 14-week class offered over the summer and it's particularly targeting paraprofessionals and parents. The first year we had three members. Two of those members received their national certification in Unified English Braille. The third entered the teaching program. This class has now grown from three members that first summer to I have 20 participants this summer. I was once again met with educators across the field wanting to know why I was doing more. Why are you doing this for parents and paraprofessionals?
Educators across the field said, where are you getting that funding from? Where is the funding coming from? And there is no way you'll be able to do this without funding. So I let them know we were volunteering our services, and the parents get it for free. We also recently partnered with the NFB and the Lavelle fund to train 16 IEP advocates to go out and train others to represent students in IEP meetings. There will be an additional IEP cohort coming next year.
As this will have a trickle down effect of we train the advocate, the advocate goes and trains more advocates, and the education spreads. Our office at the university offers assessments across the nation as well for students to make sure that they have quality services. So recently in non formal research on social media, I asked parents of blind students and blind students alike to tell me what they wish their teacher of blind students knew. Some of the responses I received was... I wish that my teacher had not been my friend but been my teacher.
(Applause)
I wish they had pushed me harder. And I think the most heart-breaking statement was from a three-and-a-half-year-old that said, please come see me more. I know I can learn to read. We know these small steps have been taken at the university with our partners, and we know that they are the right steps to create change in a big way. So as I close my speech and time with you today, I want to leave you with the thoughts of the little boy from our read aloud. We need tour dream of every blind student being a successful adult to come true. We need people like you to dream and dream big. We need you to recruit others to believe in our dream, so that someday something will happen, and our dream will become reality. Thank you!
(Cheers and applause)
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Absolutely. That deserves a door prize, don't you think?
SPEAKER: I think it does too, a heck of a door prize, and we're going to do virtual too as well. We have 25 dollars each for people who are virtual folks, or are part of them, and they get 25 bucks if they put in [email protected] , and the code word this hour is Disney. Now, Angelina Stabule from Rhode Island. Daniella Pettus, Louisiana, and... I'll get the last one in secondary here. Wally Spry, New York. I may be wrong.
But anyway, I tried their names. We got a really good prize for everyone here. We've got a Sushi Go board game, which is Braille accessible and everything. And then we also have the 200 dollars certificate AT Guys have given us. 200 dollars. And, you know, they're going to be here tonight. So you can probably redeem it then, or they have email in it so you can get it redeemed elsewhere. So the first person on the list is Gloria Jackson of Garland, Texas.
Is she here? If you are, jump up and scream and yell and... Okay, we got her.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: A couple quick announcements. From the roll call this morning, our Tennessee affiliate reports that the alternate delegate will attend the nominating committee meeting and our Alaska affiliate reports a change that the delegate will attend the nominating committee meeting, so I wanted to share those changes in nominating committee. Also I wanted to note that we ran out of time this morning, so I wanted to say it now. During the roll call of states, our friends at 647oz games, form Bolotin award winners passed out some materials to all of our affiliate delegates and we have created a new licensing agreement with 64oz games. They will produce NFB merch for you.
So if you are looking for NFB merch, they have cool stuff. You probably have seen it at the Texas table. Also I have an announcement from Linda Melendez that says the New Jersey delegation will meet 7:45 I assume on Sunday a.m. Sunday morning outside ballroom A to help with marshaling people toward the general session. But it says anybody who would like to join is welcome. So join the New Jersey delegation in the morning to help direct people to the session.
Okay, I'm going to keep the agenda moving. This next item is dreaming big together. The Monarch and the butterfly effect of partnership. At least half of this panel has been with us before. We are pleased to be joined by the president of the American Printing House for the Blind, as well as the general manager for professional solutions, and the head of HumanWare is with us. These two gentleman, along with their respective teams have been steering one of the innovations that fits into what Casey has talked to us about in terms of raising expectations.
A lot of people say, why do blind students need an 18,000 dollars Braille tactile display full screen device? But we say, of course blind students deserve a fully tactile Braille device. And these gentleman on behalf of their respective organizations are working hard to make that happen, and they have made a solid commitment for it to be guided through the partnership of the National Federation of the Blind. I'll let them introduce those who have joined them. Please welcome our good friends, Bruce Miles Craig Meador.
(Music playing)
¶ when you dream, dream big ¶
¶ As big as the ocean ¶
¶ When you dream, it might come true ¶
¶ And when you dream, dream big ¶
BRUCE: Well, thank you, President Riccobono for that introduction. Just to clarify I think I'll use the title of "president of HumanWare." The other was too long. I'll stick with that. Hello, NFB! Really nice to be here. So it's good to be back to give you a report on the progress of the Monarch. And it really feels like it was only yesterday that I was on stage last year and we were singing the "Flyway to Braille" song with Paul Schroeder and waving magic wands and having all kinds of fun with that. As mentioned, I am Bruce Miles, president of HumanWare, and I'm pleased to report that the Monarch, like we said last year, is on track and will be available for sale in just two very short months on September 3rd.
So yeah! A big congratulations and thank you to the teams and partners. So NFB, as a major partner, APH is a major partner, and, of course, HumanWare. That was a fantastic achievement to get this product ready in short order. So since Craig and I spoke to you last year, the Monarch hasn't changed very much in appearance, but its capabilities have increased exponentially. In large part due to your feedback and participation in the testing process. So you can do a number of new things on the Monarch, including write a math equation, and then feel the Monarch instantly create a tactile graphic of that equation.
So you get to see it live.
You can click anywhere on the graph, and you can heard the coordinates as well. You can click anywhere. You can hear the coordinates. You can play tactile chess with a friend, or you can play against the computer. So video gaming. You can instantly access thousands of tactile images by searching the tactile graphic image library.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can we do the maps?
BRUCE: The maps, plenty of maps, sure. Plenty of tactile maps, yes, you can.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Awesome!
BRUCE: And there's more to come, include ag drawing app that will allow teachers to instantly display a graphic that they draw on their phone or tablet and will show up right on the Monarch instantaneously. There is going to be an email client for sending and receiving digital files. That is also in the works. There are many more features and apps, too many to mention, including not just supporting a child's education, but also adults in the workplace as well. So we are really excited about that.
(Applause)
Yeah, thank you! But the most important metamorphosis of the Monarch in the last year has occurred because of partnerships. We have released more than 200 Monarchs into the wild and they are being used by teachers, parents, researchers, testing companies, technology experts, libraries and more. And this was an intentional process to give the leaders and influencers an opportunity to learn more about the Monarch and to think about how it could be used in the everyday world. And participate in creating what we call the Braille Flyway, which is the path of supports and systems the Monarch will fly on.
So in the U.S., 175 teachers and educators attended one of five two days in person trainings in the U.S., and they not only learned about the Monarch, but they went home with one.
So they had Monarchs, and that is so they can be prepared for students to use when they come back to school in the fall. And internationally, which is also important to us, we trained over 300 teachers on the Monarch, in Canada, Europe and Australia. As they begin to understand the potential... great, people from Canada... Canada and Australia, good. As they begin to understand the potential of the Monarch, these countries are also starting to work together to bring their own Braille Flyaway. The Monarch is currently on loan with several universities that is are researching a number of issues and initiatives, including how tactile graphics are learned and processed.
And the impact of multi line Braille on reading speed and educational performance and more. So lots of really cool things happening there. And we also are talking with technology companies and testing companies about potential uses of the Monarch in employment, education, transportation and more. And the possibilities are mind blowing. But to be 100% clear, we would never be able to achieve this kind of the potential for the future without partnerships. And specifically the partnership of the NFB. So thank you for that.
(Applause)
The biggest reason why the Monarch and Braille Flyaway has such potential is because it was designed by, tested bid and envisioned aid long side blind people. And you are making this happen. And the results have been incredible. And you can be assured we won't take one more step without you. So as we come closer to the successful release of the Monarch, today is a day for celebration. But this year, instead of celebrating with magic wands and butterfly antennas and songs, we're going to be going to do something together, what has been the most important element of this project's success. We are going to listen.
We will listen to the early Monarch experiences of a parent, a student, and a teacher, to the voices that have made this project a reality and will drive the future possibilities. So I am now going to pass the microphone over to Craig Meador, the president of APH, and he will introduce you to these amazing people. So thank you.
CRAIG: Thank you Bruce and President Riccobono and NFB. So I have some amazing individuals up here at the table, and I'm going to start with Gene and let you introduce yourself -- start with Gina and let you introduce yourself and tell the folks about you.
GINA: Hi, I'm Gina Fugate from Baltimore Maryland. I'm a computer science and technology teacher at the Maryland School for the Blind and I have had the privilege of working on robotics, which includes kids throughout the outreach program, so 180 optimum and Dot Five U dogs with first LEGO League and I'm happy to be here to celebrate the Monarch.
KATIE: I'm Katie Carlock, and I'm outside of Atlanta and I have the privilege to be the mother to a blind daughter, who is an avid Braille reader, and she is actually here today also.
KENNEDY: Hi, my name is Kennedy Carlock. I'm in second grade.
CRAIG: So I'm going to first question, and I'm just going to throw it out to the panel here. How did you hear about the Monarch? And what got you interested in being an early adopter? Because that is a lot of pressure.
GINA: So somehow I missed the announcement about getting a Monarch, and I don't know how that happened. But I was at the "Getting in Touch with Literacy" conference, doing a poster session on computer science and subtle, and of course I went to see APH and saw the Monarch and asked how I missed the message on this. So I got on the waiting list. A few months later, I think it was Jeff Schwartz came to my classroom at the Maryland School for the Blind, and I was there working with a colleague, who also was a blind parent, and we were work, on Microbit Rovers and my latest robotics things and discussing accessibility literacy and the need for more documentation to include blind educators, blind parents, TVIs who don't know tech, all of the things. And Jeff Schwartz came in to see my classroom and mentioned that he was going to a Monarch training.
And I immediately with no shame started to beg to go to this training, because it was in Baltimore, Maryland, and I'm in Baltimore, Maryland, and it's the heart of NFB, and how did I not get on that list? So thank goodness there was a series of texting and possible phone calls, some people giving me disclaimers, but I got to go to the Monarch training, and I got a Monarch.
(Applause)
KATIE: So I found out from the APH website, and it was through I guess investigating what was going to be the best technology for Kennedy, for my daughter, her age, and trying to see what was going to be the best starting point. And when I saw that the Monarch was coming, and that they were looking for not only teachers but parents, I jumped in and signed up for it.
CRAIG: So Kennedy, I have a question for you. What is your favorite part about the Monarch?
KENNEDY: That it can read to you.
CRAIG: So Katie, a question. Because originally when we were thinking about the Monarch, our rollout plan was education, but we were thinking older students first. And part of that may just be because of educational bias, but also trying to meet a need at a higher level. But, you know, I've heard this from some people in the field. It's a concern about giving such a powerful device to such a young child, or there is concern that maybe paper Braille is the best way for a child who is learning Braille. Maybe that perhaps is better than going digital. But what are you seeing? As a parent, she has took to this like a duck to water, as you have told us. What will you seeing about her experiences working with the Monarch?
KATIE: Yeah, so I think my first response to that is when you see a sighted child out at a restaurant, they're on their tablets, they're on iPads. Every technology is accessible to them, and this should be no different to a blind student or a visually impaired student. Or a visually impaired student.
(Applause)
And I understand putting it in the hands of a young child is, for some, fearful. Oh, gosh, what if they drop it and break it? But what if a sighted kid breaks an iPad or they break a computer? You get it fixed or get another one. You don't stop access to it. And early literacy, it's been proven, it's going to give them the best success later in life for careers, going to college, and just further life skills and becoming a productive citizen and human being.
CRAIG: So Gina, a question for you, because you are -- well, you probably are doing the most with robotics and STEM activities for kids who blind and low vision are, and conversations around the country, any time things shift this way, Gina's name always gets mentioned. What is happening in Maryland? If you didn't know that you should know that. But when you think of a product like the Monarch, where -- what do you think the impact will be as far as students, their learning, career choices? How will this impact the work that you currently are doing with students?
GINA: I think the only limit right now is getting access to the Monarchs as fast as possible and as many as possible. A multi line Braille display makes the difference for coding because you can look at multiple lines of code. You can look at spacing. Suddenly you can look at all the syntax. You can see the capitalization. It is total access. And that goes for, in my classroom at MSB with computer science, it also goes with reading books. And at NFB Maryland, STEM 2U event on Star Wars day, Derek Day was hacking the Monarch. He was on YouTube. I was hard to get the kids away from the Monarchs. We only had two of them, and we had tons of people there and they kept sneaking back when they were supposed to be doing other activities. It's one of the best problems to have. I'm glad there were no fistfights, but it’s come close to it in my classroom.
So I mean, kids are fighting for literacy and for a chance, and, you know, we need to do something about that. And we have to think about our blind educators as well. I was with that group yesterday. I'm a person with a degenerative eye disease. I guarantee you my Braille speed is better because DOORS, which is voc rehab in Maryland, won't recognize the need for literacy for adults either. If you're employed they don't want to support you. They want to wait for you to be in dire need and unemployed before they will really help you.
So you're really doing me a favor, because you have helped me, you've helped my colleagues, you've helped my students. Derek Day is in the audience with Nadia Graham and some of my robotics kids, who always will be my kids and students. And they also want Monarchs. I'm sure we'll be coming back to help volunteer if I get a cluster of Monarchs.
CHRIS: This is both for you and Katie and Gina, and you both have touched on this a little bit already, and we have heard this both from -- well, I heard this from everywhere. It's concern over the cost of this product. What is your thoughts on that?
KATIE: Gina, I think you actually said this, but blind students are expensive. And they are. And they're expensive because they need the access to technology. But I don't think finances should be a limit, and I think that's something that should never stop literacy and the continuation in the accessibility to technology.
GINA: Let's calculate the cost of unemployment and illiteracy and develop some sort of formula to show how the Monarch can change this. We already have those hurdles, but I believe this is a true game changer for so many people. And you wouldn't ask that question of a sighted person.
CRAIG: So in your opinion, what do we need to do for the Monarch to reach its full potential?
KATIE: From a parent's perspective, a big part of it is getting educators on board. You know, Casey, before us, talked on how important it is for educators and teachers of the blind and visually impaired to be properly trained. Making sure that they are trained on this technology so that our kids can access it and access to their full potential and not have a fear, because the adult doesn't know how to access the technology, therefore limit the access for the student. So make sure that everybody is educated from teachers to parents, so that there is a continuum between home and school.
GINA: So to add to that I think our challenge is going to be step one, attaining them. Because I don't anticipate a day in the near future where I have too many Monarchs, but I'm up to that challenge if somebody wants to present it. The other challenge we have is implementation.
And we're on that. We need the TVIs, we need the parents, teachers, paraprofessionals, and everybody needs to be on board, and we need to support each other. To be completely transparent and honest, we still have those challenges with people who don't know how to use a screen reader or a Braille display and tell the student, turn that thing off so I can fix it. Which is really a diss to the student.
And it's not fair. It's not equality.
So we have to come up with an implementation plan, and part of how we do that is getting the Monarchs out and everybody up here is besties now and we're going to get Kennedy into computer science and robotics. Sounds like I need to talk to Katie and see if her teacher of the blind program is interested in computer science literacy. But once we do that, we need to celebrate it and show that it can be done, because there are so many doubters out there that are just trying to stop us. But we are not going to be stopped.
CRAIG: All right, final question. This is for you, Kennedy. Ready?
KENNEDY: Yes.
CRAIG: Have you shared the Monarch with your friends?
KENNEDY: My cousin. Family members. My Braille tutors.
KATIE: But what has everybody said about it? That plays with it and investigates it, what do they say about it?
KENNEDY: That's cool!
CRAIG: I want to thank Katie, Kennedy and Gina for sharing some of their stories with us.
(Applause)
And I know those stories are not lost on you. This is truly a time and moment to celebrate. But the launch of this amazing product is by no means the finish line. Because we've got to continue -- as they said, there is a lot of work still to be done. Everything from access to covering the cost of these things, and -- to covering the cost of these things and we need your help more than ever. Last year, Paul Schrader, who is the VP of government impact -- lot of fans out there -- talked to you about the need to speak with Congress about annual funding for the Monarch. Because we believe... I never... what Katie said, blind kids are expensive. I don't apologize for that. That is not a negotiated item.
But we realize that every blind child in school deserves to have one of these devices for their textbooks, for schoolwork, for STEM. And we give every sighted child access to technology. So this is a matter of equity. This is a matter of fairness. It's a matter of creating an inclusive society. And it's going to be a big challenge. We get that. We have been on a two-year campaign asking the federal government for a budget of 10 million dollars a year just to handle Monarch. And while we have received a lot of -- when we show the device and have demonstrated it to committees, they are both in awe and in support, and they have given us, which is great, that's the first step.
And they have given us the verbiage to say yes, you can spend federal dollars to make that dream happen. The second part is we need that money to follow permission pup the way it works in Congress is you have to get permission first and then the money will follow. We are hoping through our efforts we're able to come back a year from now and say we were successful. We have received some limited funding, and as a result of that, we are going to be identifying up to 400 students this year nationwide. And those 400 students will be receiving Monarchs during this upcoming school year.
So if you know a student that would benefit from a Monarch as part of a tool for their education, we have on our website and wills if you look at APH social media, you will find a link to apply to be one of those students. And this has been running for about two weeks and we have already received hundreds of applications. We're going to make a lot of people happy but we're going to make some people probably a little sad because we won't be able to meet those needs. But we're going to keep the process open for a few more weeks, so make sure -- or I should say it's one more week, looking at the calendar. One more week that will be open.
So if you know of a student, please nominate that student, fill out that form, we'll get that, and we're excited for that. But we also know we need a solution for adults. The Monarch is a tremendous educational device, but what we also are finding is that it is a tremendous work device. And we want to make sure the devices are available to adults that help with employment and daily living opportunities and whether that be education in college or the next level. But this access to technology needs to be there for adults to be successful. So we need you to begin talking to local voc rehab programs. I know that the system is broke.
And we know that, that system is wonky as heck. It's like in order to receive support and help, you've got to leave the job you currently have to become a new candidate. And I know there's nuance there, but we won't spend any more time on that. But talk with voc rehab.
(muted)
Oh, gosh, I didn't know... I stepped on the foot pedal there. Okay, we got that fixed. My feet get antsy up here, I get excited about this. I apologize. But talk to your employers, talk to local community organizations and funders about your needs. Tell people, people don't know what you need The one time you may have that ask, you may have a willing party to help with that. This next year is going to be critical for the Braille revolution. We have seen what is possible, and we're excited about that, and we're excited about the spirit of partnership and the partnership it is going to take to pull this off. So we're just now getting a sense of what we are calling "The Butterfly Effect" of the Monarch and the Braille Flyway and I look forward to sharing this adventure with all of you in year to come.
Thank you!
(Applause)
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you very much to our panelists. We do have great presentations come up. So don't go away. I know the last chance in the exhibit is coming up. But I want to give a short opportunity, as you know, Sandy Halverson could not be at the convention, she's at home with John, but she has deputized the interim executive director of blind incorporated to run the table, the SUN table, so here is Briley O'Connor.
SPEAKER: Thank you, President Riccobono. It's like Braille church up on the front row right in front of me. Jennifer is talking about code and capitalization and this woman goes... yes! You can see all the spacing... yes! ! But it is exciting. Multi line Braille display was a dream my entire life as a blind person. And now it's a reality. And part of the reality is because the work of the National Federation of the Blind. And speaking of dreams, I'm here to talk a little bit about the Dream Big GIVE25 Drive.
So don't tune out if you have heard this a few times today. Because I'm not here to ask you for money. I'm here to ask your mama for money. Or your daddy for money. Or that friend you talked to in college 20 years ago for money, but you're still Facebook friends for some reason. That's who we're here to ask for money to. What you can do, if you didn't know, is if you don't have or you already gave what you could for the 25 dollars you can have somebody give to this campaign, to this drive, on your behalf, it's very easy to do online. How many students do we have here? How many are on the TikTok? The TikTok. I'm 75 at least. Or Instagram. I see you all with your cameras and selfies.
But in the caption or make a cute little video about it and put the link in there and get people to give on your behalf and let's make a difference. What you can get for every 25 dollar entry, not just once, but for 25 dollar entry, for each one, you could win a trip to convention in 2025 or cash, or a Monarch! I want one! I'm gonna ask my mama, too, for money. So the other thing we are doing is the AfterShokz giveaway. You only have a few minutes left to do this, friends. Until 5:00 today, if you give a minimum of 50, you could receive tomorrow, starting tomorrow or Monday, a pair of AfterShokz that is worth 179 dollars. Supplies are limited. Just so you know.
But if you give 50 bucks you're eligible to get those. So how do you do this? So you go on your Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. There's no "the" in front of it. I learned that just now. And you ask your friends and your family and everyone you know to go to NFB.org /GIVE25donate. It's very easy. Or they can call 410-659-9314. See, my Braille church right up here in the front row, they know the phone number. Extension 2430. They can do that. Or you can go in the app if you still want to give money, you can give money too, we'll take it. You can go to the NFB convention app, go to support the NFB and there is a link in there for quick pay options. If the app isn't working for you for some reason, outside at the GIVE25 table just outside the ballroom -- don't look for it in here, it's not in here. You can come say hi to me at the SUN table if you want. Go out here and they have QR code, and you can scan with your phone and do quick pay. So let's raise some money to make more dreams into reality. Thank you!
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Thank you! All right, the next presentation is "Living a Life Dedicated to Justice." This gentleman I have had the privilege of getting to know over the last couple years. He has got an extensive description of his accomplishments over the year. We're short on time so I won't give it all to you. But I will let you know he has been blind since birth and worked for 30 years in the legal profession. Since 2001 he has worked for the Calgary Police Service, where he provides various expertise as the director of Legal Services. A lived experience most of us don't have as blind people. You might say, well, why would we want to hear from a guy from Canada? Well, we are an organization, we think we have done great work in the U.S., but we also know, speaking of partnerships, that it's important, and our blind colleagues in Canada, we share a lot being on this same continent together in terms of advocacy and things we can do, and this gentleman has shared his great interest with me in the conversations that we have had the opportunity to have in recent years, especially as he has been serving as the chair of the board for the CNIB in Canada, and he is bringing a great spirit of being blind centered there. He has shown a lot of interest in our blind agency pledge, as a matter of fact.
So I'm pleased to introduce for a presentation a friend of the National Federation of the Blind from Canada, here is Robert Fenton.
(Music playing)
ROBERT: Thanks, everybody. I expected coming up here with the music I might hear something from Dragnet, but Mark came up with something different. It's a pleasure to be here. It's going to be a fast talk because I see that we're behind on the agenda, so this is usually what happens to us in court. The judge says, you were supposed to have 30 minutes, guess what, you've got 10. So we're used to that. In this talk I hope to make you laugh. I'm probably going to make you angry, and there are going to be times that I hope I can inspire you. Here goes. As President Riccobono said, I have been with the Calgary Police Service for 30 years and I've had three positions there. First I was legal counsel for 20 of those years. I then served as interim general counsel when my boss resigned. And due to a restructuring, I then became the director of Legal Services with the Calgary Police Service and I've held that position now since early 2022.
In that role I manage a team of 15, which includes lawyers, project managers and administrative assistants, and I am proud to call them my friends and colleagues, because they have been an outstanding group to work with.I'm going to start with a story that literally happened my very first day on the job. I was young and impressionable, and I was talking to my assistant in her office and a deputy chief came in. And these were the first words out of his mouth you would expect him to say, hi, I'm deputy chief so and so. It wasn't that. It was, and I quote... you better be a good goddamn lawyer.
And I said... what? He said, “You know, you've asked me to spend a whole bunch of money to make an elevator accessible in our very old building. And it's going to cost 5,000 dollars. You better be a good lawyer. And I said, first of all, I didn't ask you for anything. I've never even met you. So how could I ask you for anything? And I said, if you want to know what I need, why don't you ask me? And then we're going to get off on a much better foot.
(Applause)
So as he leaves the office, he says, and I quote again, you better be a good goddamn lawyer. I thought to myself, what on earth have I done here? And then I thought, things can only go up from here.
Another lesson I learned early on is that police officers in Canada are not actually employees of a police service. These are office holders. And why this matters is because in addition to having a traditional boss relationship, police officers also owe a duty to the law itself to enforce the law. Why this is important is because it leads to another behavior, that we sometimes see from police officers that their work is the most important work ever, even more than their individual colleagues.
So being a lawyer with the police service, you often spend a lot of time negotiating priorities between people. So your job isn't just about law. It's about managing politics and about managing issues. And one of the things I found that allowed me to be successful is being able to make the hard decision to tell a more senior ranked officer that their work has to wait because I have a constable, or I have a detective in court that needs something right now. Or we have a bunch of protesters out on the street destroying property, and the incident commander needs help right away.
And being able to live and work in the moment like that and being able to adjust priorities is something that has stood me in good stead with the police. And much of that ability comes from the fact that as a blind person, I often have had to make changes throughout my life because maybe technology didn't work or textbooks weren't available, or other things weren't available that I needed, and I had to reprioritize so I could still function and move forward.
And that has helped me very much in my policing work. Another thing to note about police officers is they don't care about blindness. They take the perspective that if you are good at your job, you provide good work to them, you meet their needs on time and you listen to them and you respect and value them, you're good. There's none of this stuff I used to see in the corporate world where people were afraid about blindness and how is he going to find his way to the courtroom and, you know, how is it going to look with him walking into court with a dog? And none of that stuff matters now. Not with this population. The most important thing is that especially in today's society, you're there to protect them, you're there to listen to them, you're there to respect them and you're there to make sure that when their message is sent to the community, it's presented fairly objectively and in full response to the concerns that have been raised. And that has not always been the case.
And we've seen that especially around the time of George Floyd where there was a lot of assumptions made on both sides of what the other people believed and what they thought. And the whole incident with George Floyd was good for policing, I would say, because it caused us to look at ourselves and to look at our reality and see what we needed to change. And it was a privilege to be part of those discussions and to work with the Black community to make things better. I would never change that experience for anything. Another thing about police officers is they absolutely love meetings. They love to talk. They love to share stories. They love to show the greatest pieces of technology that they just found out about, and they love to share their latest and greatest programs with you. And that's great for us. Because in an oral environment, we work very well. Difficulties occur, though, when they come in, especially the more senior officers or some civilians, I got this great PowerPoint for you to look at and I just finished it, and of course we don't have access to it. Often what I have been doing with them is, look, let's walk through it, talk me through it. I'm going to take it away and I'm not going to give advice right now because I want to read it and digest it for myself.
So next time you actually want my answer today, share the stuff with me in advance and that way I can tell you today. Now you're going to have to wait. It's amazing how quickly they learn. And I see that behavior a lot less now than I used to. Another quality that we see -- and it's because of how we train police officers. We train police officers on a values basis, and we have core values in our organization that we like officers to follow, we have seven in Calgary I'm not going through them all now because I'm worried about time, but one at of the values that we talk about is compassion., and compassion as relates to blindness can often have very interesting terms. Because the term "compassion" seems to require police officers to think that they need to protect. In some cases they do.
But when I'm their colleague and high functioning blind person and I have been fairly successful, I don't need protection. But what I do need is I do need to be able to work with you respectfully and well and appropriate technological support when I need it. Where this came up for me one time when I was replacing my last dog.
And I submitted a request to the chief to take the time off to go away and get her.
And I got a note back from the chief saying -- through his executive officer saying, well, we want to know if we need to send somebody with you.
And I politely said, no, that wasn't necessary, I've traveled all around the world with sports, and I've been fairly independent all my life. My parents taught me that independence was important, since I was two and a half years old. So no, I politely declined the request. But I later learned that this was a more deep-seated problem, that there were things going on behind the scenes where people were making assumptions about what I could not do or what I could not do and what I could do without me knowing about them. Because I always focused on doing the best work I could. I honestly thought that doing good work would be what decided how well I did within an organization, and then there was a stage back in 2016 where I learned that I was dead wrong. And what happened was the legal services area was being restructured by a new chief who had just come in, and he decided to put somebody in the top management position that I thought I was probably the best qualified for. I had been there the longest.
I had the best relationships. I knew what needed to be done to improve the area, all those things.
He put somebody else in the position without even a competition and without telling me until it had already happened. I was crushed. It was one of those things where I really thought hard and long about whether or not I could stay there. So the lesson in this for me was, okay, find out why. Find out what skills they perceived I was missing, and God forbid change the misperceptions of what people were thinking and saying about me. Because that's the only way thing are going to change.
(Applause)
It was this event that caused me to, A, get help I needed and also to come back into the disability advocacy movement and to say to the rest of society, things have to change. So on that very light note, I'm going to talk about technology. And cops love technology. This is the saying in our organization, see a shiny object, let's play with shiny object, let's get shiny object. So as a blind person, this is great, because I never once had a challenge getting a Braille device that I needed, getting JAWS or any of the other access technology that I needed. All I had to do was ask and at least come up with two or three good reasons why I need it. It was like, cool, you got it. Because it's a shiny object and it's wonderful. It will make things better. It will solve all your problems. Just ask the manufacturer.
So that has that downside too. Because what happens is that people assume that because you have the technology you can make any software program work. And that is true of the office applications that we on the civilian side work, you know, your Word, your Outlook, your PowerPoint, your Teams, etc. Whereas there are a lot of applications used that do not use standard user conventions for Windows. Add you talk to manufacturers and, oh, this is accessible, we tested it. How did you test it? I turned the screen on and used a mouse, I installed JAWS, I went into the field, and it talks, so it must be accessible. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
So we've had some discussions about that. And the other thing that I hear is, oh, I'm sorry, what am I supposed to do. What do I do about this? Can you imagine if somebody presented an issue where there was discrimination happening on the basis of gender and race and somebody said, I don't know what to do. They would be laughed out of the community. And this highlights a stage that I think we're at in Canada where we need to bring disability to the forefront and hold people accountable to the point where our concerns are treated as being as valid as those presented by women and those presented by racialized people.
(Applause)
And that isn't to take away from any of the concerns that these groups have raised, because they are valid, and they are legitimate. We don't want to take their space away. We just want to play in the same sandbox. I do have recommendations and I'll go through quickly, because even I can see the look from President Riccobono saying, "hurry up." The first one goes to Dr. Robertson and her team of Braille instructors and others who teach blind students Braille. And that is we need to start our kids early on working in Teams.
And I don't mean Teams the program. I mean in groups of people. Too often people who are blind are excluded from group projects, because the project itself is inaccessible, or the students, the other students don't have the skills or the wherewithal to work with another blind student. And that can't happen. Because teams are essential in the workplace today. Law enforcement is all about teams. And it's not just about teams within your organization. I work on a number of teams with other organizations as well, where we have a combined project, and we have to solve a community problem. How do you do that if you don't know how to manage conflict?
How do you do that if you deal with individuals who don't have the same goals as you. How do you do that when you're dealing with people with different disciplinary experience? You can't. Unless you have been taught the process of forming, norming, storming, performing and celebrating as a team. And we can say that as blind people we have done this. We have worked in chapters. We have worked in divisions. We have worked in state affiliates. We have done all those things. The problem is, it's not the same. Because we as blind people, we have shared goals for the most part.
But we also are not taught very well as young people how to deal with conflict. Because most of us or many of us are taught that conflict is something to be avoided or to be feared. And actually I love conflict. I thrive on it. Because that's how you get your work done, you have constructive debate about different points of view, and you come up with something better. So I love it! So let's get more teams happening. Let's get more group work involving blind people as early as elementary school.
(Applause)
Goal number 2 is find an absolutely trusted ally or group of allies that will give you honest feedback about what you are doing. Somebody telling you, your work is fine. If they tell you that, fire them immediately. What you want is objective honest feedback about what you do well and what you don't do well. Because guess what... all of us have things to work on. I know I do. I'm happy to say that, and I want to keep learning and I want to keep getting better.
But that's what we all have to do. We all have to go in with a mindset that we are open and prepared and willing to accept constructive criticism. And hold people accountable to make sure that you get your performance reviews. And make sure you get that feedback that you need. That's the only way you get better. Number 3. Absolutely, absolutely make sure that you are clear about what you want and what you don't want within your workplace.
Don't let the rumor mill take hold. It is a devastating thing in police services. People make decisions based on rumors. People rely on what they hear on rumors. They are dangerous, and they are wrong, and they are insidious, and they are problematic. Don't let them take hold. Be clear about what you want.
(Applause)
And the last piece of advice I'm going to give you is don't do this alone. You have an amazing peer support network within NFB. Rely on it. Use it. Learn from it. Take the criticism that we inevitably will receive from it and get better. Because that is how we are going to show the world that people who are blind are worth having on your team, are worth including, and are valued.
(Applause)
In closing, I would like to say thank you for having me. If people have questions, I'm on LinkedIn. I should be easy to find based on -- now that I told you what my title is. I'm happy to take questions. I'm here until tomorrow if you run into me in the hallways or restaurants, I'm happy to hear from you.
So thank you very much.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: We've got one more presentation. Don't run away, because it's a good one.
And I want to give you just some quick announcements.
SPEAKER: Can we do a door prize?
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: You can think about a door prize, but I'm going to let you know that the exhibit hall will be open from 5:00 until 9:00 this evening. This is your last chance. Last chance to visit the exhibit hall. Our exhibitors will be there. The only thing that will be open tomorrow is the Independence Market.
So tonight is the last chance to get to Exhibit Hall by 9:00. Go ahead.
SPEAKER: Okay, we got a tote bag from Puerto Rico with coffee and with 25 dollars, and a board game. I don't want to use the board game here. It was called -- I'm not going to tell you exploding kittens was the name of it. The winner is -- let's see. Finn Pageman of Edmonds, Washington. Are you here? Another name. Isaiah Nelson, South Carolina. Are you here? Everybody else is cheering but the person, is he here?
No? Rose Warner. Colorado. We're going to get there. Okay, Ray Lindra. Arizona.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Not here they say.
SPEAKER: Okay.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: While getting another name, I'll say that the information desk reports that they have more than information. You can bring lost and found items to the desk out there, so that they can be retrieved and find their way home. Also, if you have lost something, you might want to go find it at the information desk. Everything from cell phones to sunglasses. And the information desk says they have information of all kinds. So check out the information desk.
SPEAKER: And we've got another -- how about Aaron from Wisconsin? Aaron Schuh from Wisconsin? Next.
Vicki Lemon from Florida. Are you here?
Okay. Cassandra Briley Jack son from California. Is anybody here?
(Cheering)
How about Pearl Rogers -- I get these things wrong. Harold Rogers from West Virginia? Harold Rogers. No? Next.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: There are a couple of
SPEAKER: Sue Zyess from Missouri. Michigan, sorry. We finally got one.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: A couple more door prizes, don't go away. There are a couple room changes from sports and recollection division activities this weekend. Tonight adaptive fitness activity at 6:30 p.m. It will be in -- excuse me, it's executive ballroom I. Tomorrow's inclusive sports and recollection night at 7:00 p.m., we'll have activities in both the Grand Ballroom D and the surface lot behind the hotel. You can find these changes also on the HTML version on the mobile app. I hear there's going to be ax throwing tomorrow night.
This last presentation is a good one. It's inclusion by example. Adventures of a blind woman navigating the oceans of stem professionals. Again, an individual who has a long list of accomplishments
She has served as a blind person doing real scientific work in oceanography. I first met her maybe 20 years or so ago and doing STEM work for the Federation and thinking about our convention and our 20th anniversary of our STEM work, I thought I would invite her. I'll let her tell her story. I think it will speak for itself. Here is Amy Bower.
(Music playing: "Under the Sea")
AMY: Thank you, President Riccobono. Are you ready for C story? Well, thanks for sticking around. I hope you won't be disappointed. These are words you never want to hear if you are on a ship at sea.
Attention! All personnel! Return to your staterooms immediately and lock all your staterooms and passage ways. A hostile vessel is circling our ship. No textbook and no classroom and no advanced degree can prepare you for a pirate attack on the high seas.
But this is exactly what I experienced in 2001 as an oceanographer on an unarmed research ship in the Indian Ocean. Before I tell you how this turned out, I'm going to keep you waiting a few minutes. Let me rewind a few decades. Growing up in a small coastal community north of Boston, Massachusetts, fell in love with the oceans. Yay, Mass! An insatiable curiosity had me turning over every rock at low tide to see what was hiding underneath and wondering what else laid below the waves. I was also curious in the classroom. I took all the science and math classes offered at my small high school and found physics, oddly enough, to be the most interesting.
So that is what I chose for my college major. But I quickly realized that most physicists focus on the invisible particles that are inside atoms, where I was more interested in the physical environment that we all experience every day. Wind and weather. Ocean waves and tides and how they fit together to shape our planet. But exactly how I would turn my interest in these topics to a career was uncertain. Until I signed up for off campus college program called C semester. It appealed to my sense of adventurous spirit, sailing for six weeks offshore on a tall ship and learning everything about the oceans. It's science, history, literature and policy. There I discovered there is a field called physical oceanography. I bet you never heard of it.
This is a study of the physical forces that drive motion in the ocean. Now I know how to combine training in math and physics with my passion for understanding how our planet works. Because after all, to be good stewards of our one and only home, we need to understand what natural forces make our life above -- our life on this celestial planet possible. To be a physical oceanographer, I went off to graduate school. Starting in the very first year, I was involved in research expeditions to the gulf stream where I learned to use sophisticated instruments to study the three-dimensional anatomy of this massive and important current.
I loved it, the adventure, sense of exploration and camaraderie that develops during remote fieldwork like this. Was completely hooked. The frequent storms that I rode out with my ship mates at sea in those early graduate school years, though, did not prepare me for what happened next. In my third year of grad school at a routine eye exam an abnormal blind spot was discovered, and shortly after that I was diagnosed with macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. A two for.
Accompanying this totally unexpected diagnosis, no one in my family had a similar eye condition, was the demoralizing advice from an ophthalmologist to change careers. And consider a career science administration, not that there's anything wrong with administration, but it's not what I wanted to do. At that time I had not heard of any scientist anywhere in any field that was blind or had low vision. In fact, I didn't know a single person who was blind or had low vision not personally.
I wanted to be an oceanographer and go to see and do research on ships. Could I still do that? I was no longer sure. The uncertainty in the prognosis was as unsettling as the diagnosis itself. I was informed that I would likely become fully or totally blind over some unknown number of years. Could be several, several years or several decades. But since I'm standing here before you now as a physical oceanographer who is blind with 35 years research experience behind me, you know I did not take that doctor's advice.
(Cheers and applause)
Instead I signed up to see a low vision specialist who had totally different attitude. He had a positive can-do attitude. I think it helped that he was a sailor and understood the excitement of living and working on the ocean. He introduced me to various assistive technologies, and I started believing that maybe I could continue my graduate studies in my chosen career. Indeed I finished my Ph.D. and then started professional career at physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole oceanographic Institute or HUI as we call it. It's on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Yay, Mass! So what do oceanographers do? Many think that we only study what are sometimes called charismatic megafauna. Anybody have a guess what that is? Yes, whales! Sharks and dolphins. Yeah, the kinds of things we typically hear about and see in movies or read in books or JAWS or whatever. Oceanography is a vast field of study focused on a highly complex physical biological chemical geological environment that covers 70% of earth's surface. It is intricately connected to climate and therefore all life on earth. It's in constant motion from waves at the surface to slow moving but powerful currents in the abyss.
These currents creep along more slowly than walking speed, maybe three or four miles an hour or less. But they transport huge volumes of salty water, heat, tiny marine organism, as well as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. But where do all the currents go? Are they changing as the planet warms? It's not easy to figure this out. This is why. Below the sunlight surface, the ocean is a very inhospitable environment. For both humans and the most sophisticated research tools. There is the crushing weight of the water overhead. You know if you pick up a gallon of water, it's pretty heavy, right? Think of millions of gallons of water.
There is the cold. About 3 degrees Celsius through most of the deep ocean. There is corrosion. If not well protected, oceanographic instruments will just stop working with exposure to saltwater. And it's pitch dark. No one, sighted or not, can physically see what is going on with the currents at these depths. So how do we measure ocean currents then? With my research team, I release hundreds of freely drifting buoys in currents more than a mile below the sea surface, and we track them under water using sound as they trace out the pathways of ocean currents across entire ocean basins from months to years. Using these and other tools, we have discovered how one current can change the path of another current deeper in the ocean. We learned how warm currents in if Gulf of Mexico fuel hurricanes, which are big in the news this year. And how rotating features the size of Rhode Island trap salt, heat, and marine organisms in their swirling currents, like a slow-moving tornado, and transport them thousands of kilometers across the ocean.
Think Dorothy in her house in the Wizard of Oz, but in slow motion. The most thrilling aspect of being an oceanographer for me is going out on research ships. Just for the record, these are not the Love Boat. They are not cruise ships. They have large working decks, science labs, dorm like state rooms, no luxury living, and cafeterias. And maybe if you are lucky you get an exercise room with a few weight machines. I've sailed extensively around the Atlantic and Indian Ocean on these ships, staying at sea for up to six weeks at a time. You don't go into port every night. You're out there, you're out there.
After I lost most of my useful vision I had to give up working with the equipment on the open deck, but I can still lead the expedition as the primary decision maker or chief scientist, as we call it. I depend on some sighted assistance, though, because most of the data being collected business the ship is still not accessible in real time for blind or low vision scientists. On one such expedition in 2001, I was chief scientist on a research ship in the Indian Ocean. This should start to sound familiar. The currents in this remote region were a complete mystery and we were mapping them for the first time
While off the coast of Somalia, we noticed a small boat approaching with six men on board who appeared to be wearing some kind of uniform, maybe like a local Coast Guard. But they didn't contact our ship by radio, which would have been normal operating procedure. Instead they circled around our ship, shouting words we couldn't hear. Then suddenly one of them stood up and brandished a rocket propelled grenade launcher.
Immediately recognizing the danger, our captain quickly got our ship underway at top speed. We had to get away. But the top speed of this ship is about 15 miles an hour. That's about as fast as a bicyclist on a good clip. The other, which was faster, started chasing close behind. Everyone on our ship was ordered to state rooms and told to lock the doors. Why? In case what we now realized were modern day pirates got on board our ship. For about an hour, they trailed close behind us, firing rifles and grenades at our ship. Trying to get us to stop so they could get on board.
But our captain knew much better. He knew we had to keep moving, because it's almost impossible for -- if you're in a small boat and trying to jump up and climb up the side of a bigger ship, if that ship is moving, it's pretty hard to do. So the captain knew, keep it moving. Eventually the sea conditions forced the fire rats to give up and turn back to shore. Whew! As probably it would be for you as well, this was one of the most frightening experiences of my life, right up there trying to cross any street in downtown Boston.
(chuckles)
ably Ph.D. studies did not prepare me for this test of leadership. Even though no one on the ship was harmed physically, everyone was traumatized to some extent. It was my responsibility, along with the captain, to maintain a sense of calm and carry on with our research, even though I myself was as rattled as everyone else and remember I couldn't really even see everything going on during this incident. It was all being described to me. I was getting it in third person or something. Anyway, if you are interested to learn more about modern day piracy, oceanography and my career, I welcome you to check out the book "Seven Tenths: Science, Love and Piracy At Sea" by David Fisichella, which is available on Amazon and on the Bard.
(Applause)
As a scientist with first low and then almost no vision, I've had to navigate a sea of obstacles to be the oceanographer I wanted to be. The single most daunting one probably being my own self doubt. In the early days, not only was I super minority in my professional community, as an oceanographer with low vision, I was also a woman in a very male dominated field. With just a handful of female peers. I sometimes felt like I did not belong in physical oceanography. I was afraid I wasn't good enough. That I couldn't be successful with low vision. And that any day now my colleagues would figure it all out and kick me out.
Some call this the... Anybody know?
Imposter syndrome. Yes, thank you! But others have argued recently that the imposter syndrome is not really a syndrome at all, but it's these feelings, which are experienced by many that are more a sign of an unwelcoming or unaccommodating community, and not an indication of some failing or inadequacy on my part. Anyway, from my female colleagues...
(Applause)
I had learned that having a network of peers and mentors with similar lived experience was just as important to a successful career as being able to write a good grant proposal. Luckily, this was just when the World Wide Web was taking off. I know I don't look that old, but I am. I could search beyond my immediate circle of colleagues for other blind scientists. Indeed I was able to find and contact a few all-in other fields. None in my own field, but at least it was a start. Around the same time I searched for support groups for blind professionals closer to home on Cape Cod. I finally found one in Boston two hours away by bus.
But it was the closest one I could get to by public transportation. This was my first significant connection with peers facing some of the same challenges. I made more connections attending the international Ski for Light cross country skiing events.
(Applause)
Yay, Ski for Life! Where I met many other blind and low vision outdoor enthusiasts and many of them also had professional careers. I started to have more hope that maybe I could not only survive but thrive in my chosen career. Others seemed to be doing it, so why not me? My network and my confidence continued to grow, but as my vision declined continuously. I still had to contend with something important here, which is the tenure clock. Academics usually only have a limited number of years to build an independent research program and demonstrate that they have made a significant impact on their discipline.
At the end of that time, it's up or out.
So even with video magnifiers and screen readers, many research tasks took me a bit longer than my sighted peers. Plus I had to constantly research new assistive technologies and learn to use them, as my vision continued to decline. With all this extra energy and time spent adapting to ever changing vision, I wasn't sure I could make tenure. At that time, academic institutions were beginning to implement "slow the clock" policies. Mainly as an accommodation for expectant mothers who were pursuing academic careers. It occurred to me that such an accommodation would be appropriate for someone in my situation as well. I too was experiencing a life event that was going to impact how quickly I could get my research program up and run.
But I had to request this accommodation, and I was hesitant. As far as I knew, no one at HUI had requested a "slow the clock" accommodation for reasons of disability. With the encouragement of my institution ombudsman person, I did make this request and to my relief it was granted without hesitation.
(Applause)
Thank you. I earned tenure in 1999 and a few years later I was promoted to the highest rank for scientists at HUI senior scientist us. I was the first woman to achieve that rank in my department. Over the next 20 years I continued to grow my research program. Then in 2018 I was selected by my colleagues to be the next department chair. I wasn't expecting that. I would have been there too the first woman to serve in that position in my department, and also the first blind person to hold any high leadership or -- yeah, any high leadership position at HUI at all.
(Applause)
This meant I would be responsible for the professional well-being of over 100 researchers, students and administrative staff in the physical oceanography department. I would also join the other department chairs, vice presidents, and the president of HUI to lead our world-renowned research institution of over 1,000 employees. Before I became chair I was constantly running to keep up with my workload. After I became chair I had to sprint to keep up with the huge increase and volume of emails, reports, memos, spreadsheets, budgets, personnel concerns and, oh, by the way, the response to a global pandemic.
Many documents I had to read and digest as a department chair were not accessible. And decisions based on those had to be sometimes made very quickly. Often at the same time that the PowerPoint or spreadsheet was being shared with me and the rest of the leadership team for the first time.
Screen reader accessibility was not familiar to this team at all. So it was a big challenge for them to make their documents accessible. They were as busy and pressed for time as I was, making it challenging for them to find the time to make their documents accessible. I had to start pushing, publicly and repeatedly for accessible documents to be provided with time to review them. Which by the way, I pointed out would be good for the whole team if we had more time to review them. Universal design, right?
This constant reminding, though, was not comfortable for me, but I just kept asking, after all, my department had chosen me to be their representative at the highest administrative level and I did not want to disappoint them. In spite of my persistence, I didn't always get these documents in an accessible format at the same time. Life is messy. It doesn't always work out. I just had to ask a lot of questions and do the best I could.
It was not always an ideal situation by any stretch, but nonetheless I successfully completed my four-year term as a department chair two years ago. This experience made me realize a little late maybe that what I really needed to be on a level playing field with my peers in this kind of fast oh paced career was an access assistant. A concept I recently learned about from Mona Mancara, a blind assistant professor at Northeastern University. Previously a few staff members in my department were assigned on an ad hoc basis to help make data, graphics and documents accessible for me, but they had other responsibilities competing for their time and attention.
As a result, I often hesitated to request access assistance when I needed it, so finally last year I requested that my institution support the salary for dedicated access assistant, whose only job would be to help make inaccessible information accessible to me. I was so excited when the request was granted. Yay! As far as I know, this was the first such approval at my institution. Until the STEM fields have embraced independent accessibility, it is my opinion that access assistance is required for one to reach their full potential.
This dedicated access assistance has been the game changer I imagined. No longer do I hesitate to ask for help with making information more accessible, I suddenly feel free to be a scientist again.
Without the extra burden of scrambling for access just to get to the starting line with my colleagues. I wish I could wind back the clock and repeat the last 20 years or so of my career with an access assistant.
Over the past 20 years, I have spent some of my time sharing my experiences with the next generation, low vision and blind students interested in science to help them realize that they too can succeed in STEM careers.
With Perkins school science teacher Kate Frazier, I started an outreach program called Ocean Insight. With other members of my lab group, I visit Perkins classrooms and other classrooms with stories about my career and my -- all my assistive technology and how I have managed to carve out this career with data sonification, which I'm getting into more, and touchable oceanographic equipment for them to explore. We also host an accessible field trip to HUI every year through the Perkins outreach program where students can learn more about all the exciting research going on at HUI. At the beginning of my career, the odds seemed stacked against my dream, to be an oceanographer. A doctor's advice to give up on a career as a researcher left me awash with self doubt. There was no network of low vision or blind scientists in my field.
Since I began to lose my vision as a young adult, I did not get any official blindness training as a youth. I was racing all the time to adapt to ever changing vision, and all that time the tenure clock was ticking.
In my favor has been the supporting encouragement of my family. A somewhat accommodating employer, mostly accommodating, I would say, and the energizing curiosity and passion to understand the inner workings of Planet Earth, or more aptly described by Arthur C. Clarke, Planet Ocean. As my network of blind scientists and other professionals grew, so did my self-confidence, my comfort level requesting accommodations, and the realization that, yes, I can do this and, yes, I do belong, and so do all of you. Thank you!
(Cheering)
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: I know you want that door prize. Thank you, Dr. Bower for that. I know we kept you over. I think it was worth waiting for, for me at least. So while they're getting the name for door prizes, I wanted you to know that -- I told you attendance at the end of yesterday was 2576, and number 10 we have North Carolina with 87 registered. Number 9 with 89 registered, South Carolina. A little battle there.
Now New York is bumped over 100, 101. They're chasing Louisiana at 104. So come on, New York, you can catch Louisiana! California and Colorado I told you were the same as yesterday, 112 and 116 respectively, but look at fourth place is now Arizona at 119. Texas took third place at 1221. Maryland 199, close to 200, and Florida still at 242. You got a name, Bennett?
SPEAKER: We have 150 bucks going to Stephanie Harris of Colorado. Is she here? Everybody else cheered, but is she here?
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: While looking for her, I wanted to clarify the earlier announcement. The Independence Market is not open tonight. All the other exhibitors will be open, but not the Independence Market. Last chance for the Independence Market will be tomorrow. Tonight is the last chance for all of the other exhibitors.
SPEAKER: Well, she wasn't here, at least we didn't see her, so we're going to Kailey Joiner of Texas. Kailey Joiner of Texas! Are you here?
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: No?
SPEAKER: Camille Tate from Florida, are you here? Well, the people who are here are going to get 150 bucks if they were here.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: No Camille, okay.
SPEAKER: Next is Sam Seedy from Oregon. Sam Evey from Oregon. Nope? Okay, next.
Sophia Caranza from Louisiana? Well, we'll keep going.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: Sounds positive in the back. No?
SPEAKER: How about Abir Ollie from Florida? Nobody wants Abir to win, I suppose. How about Leonardo Bains? Okay, here's there.
PRESIDENT RICCOBONO: We will stand adjourned until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow have a great evening!