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.
MARK RICCOBONO: All right, good evening, everybody. It's great to have you here with us to kick off our training series on the Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind for 2025.
Happy new year to everyone. And based on the pre-meeting banter, it sounds like everybody is in good spirits, and we're looking forward to having all of you come out to Washington, DC to kick off the new session of Congress with our traditional Washington Seminar meeting.
And this evening's training is to go over the issues, but I want to say that in addition to discussing the issues, I want to emphasize that the relationships that you all create with members of Congress are so critical to the overall work that we do. Not just these issues, but for really any matter that comes up, and a lot of matters that we don't know are going to come up. It's really the relationship that you create with your local representatives and senators that allow us in the organized blind movement to respond to any situation that comes up that might be a threat or an opportunity to advance the rights of blind people in society.
And I think about this in many different aspects. You know, the other day, I watched the proceedings to select the Speaker of the House, and noticing members of Congress speaking and realizing, oh, we know them, they spoke at the Great Gathering-In, or Pete Aguilar spoke on behalf of one of the candidates, he spoke at our Congressional reception when he was just a brand-new freshman that had barely gotten sworn into Congress.
And our affiliate has helped to cultivate that relationship, and our members in his district. So many other stories. Those relationships become really important, because, as members of Congress advance into different positions, we're not trying to establish relationships with them when they become a committee chair or take on some important responsibility or are in a position for a bill. We already have those relationships, because you all have been showing up year after year, having the conversations, building the relationships, getting to know folks, and then following up in the districts. And your work at that, really important.
And you should do that with your own style and bringing your local relationships. I know that when I was an affiliate president going to the Washington Seminar, you know, we had one member of Congress who what is a huge Beatles fan. And so I knew that I was always going to pack my Beatles tie for the Washington Seminar, because I was always going to show up at his office with that tie on. Or a Beatles tie.
Because I knew we could kick off that conversation that way. You all have some of that same authentic knowledge, because you've been meeting with these folks and getting to know them in a real way.
So while understanding our issues, critical, important, you need to be able to talk about it, I want to underscore the relationship piece, because that's truly what allows us to move an agenda forward. Now, last thing I'll say before kicking it over to the team is that we think there will be a lot of opportunities in this Congress, and we're ready to jump on those. We decided to leave our issues the same, even though some of them may be a challenging lift, because we still feel they're very critical to what we need to advance for blind people.
We do have many other priorities beyond these three that we're also going to be trying to move through Congress.
And so keep in mind that the relationship is what's going to allow us to move these bills or other bills forward, and as this Congress unfolds, as the agenda of the new administration unfolds, it's those relationships and our coordination through our federal advocacy team here in Baltimore that's going to allow us to be prepared to take on those, and take advantage of those opportunities, and be aggressive in taking on those opportunities.
So the gentleman who leads our day-to-day in this effort is John Pare. He, and, well, the whole team, really, went down to Congress on opening day to make sure that members of Congress knew we were coming, and that we had an agenda, and that we plan to get things done in this next Congress.
So I'd like to turn it over to John Pare.
JOHN PARE: Thank you, President Riccobono. Yes, last Friday was exciting. There was a lot of excitement in the air. Folks got sworn in, both the House and the Senate.
There was a little excitement on that on the House side, but things went smoothly. Really looking forward to the Washington Seminar.
Let me give you a little preview of this meeting. This is what we would consider the issues review. Kyle in a few minutes is going to talk about the three other meetings we're going to have, the virtual meetings, and a little preview of the meetings we'll have in person on Monday, February 3.
I'm going to go through, in a minute, a little bit about the typical things, guidelines for meetings, so that people can be thinking about that. Then we'll go through the logistics, and then we'll go through the three issues. We're thinking that's going to get us to about 8:45 Eastern time. Then we'll have 15 minutes for Q&A.
We do think it's useful to try to get through the material before we do the Q&A. But we'll definitely have time for Q&A. And keep in mind that we do have three more virtual meetings, plus the in-person meetings, plus the opportunity to just call or email us. So if you don't get your question in tonight, there's lots and lots more opportunities to do so.
And we certainly want to answer absolutely every single question. All right, as a quick reminder, the issues are the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act -- we'll talk about that in a few minutes -- the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act, and the Blind Americans Return to Work Act.
So those are our three issues. All right, let me jump, as we do the issue kind of review, I want to talk about how you would use this information in a meeting. And I have titled this section "The Perfect Meeting".
So this is, certainly, this is just one example, and personalizing your meeting in your context, as President Riccobono mentioned, is a great idea. But maybe use this as a framework to begin with. All right, so, I know that sometimes you're coming in just one or two people, and sometimes you have 10 or 20 people. This works in all cases. Typically what works well is you have four people speaking -- one leader, and one person for each of the issues, so three people. If you have more than four people, it's not possible for everyone, probably, to speak in the meeting, but you can take turns from meeting to meeting.
And if you only have two people, you may have to double up a little bit. It works well to alternate, so the same person isn't speaking the whole time, is one tip. When you -- the meeting should always begin with, say, introductions, with us and the folks that are there, the staffer or the member of Congress. Certainly if the actual member of Congress is there, you have to yield, to some degree, to how they want to start off the meeting. And a lot of times they'll want to know exactly who is there, if it's a representative, a lot of times they want to know if there's a person from their district, and don't exaggerate -- if there isn't, there isn't.
But if there is, certainly point it out. If there's multiple, point it out. They might want to know the city and a little bit about that. And the Senate, they're usually easier, and they might want to know cities, and to kind of go through that also. Keep a little eye on the clock. You don't want to use up too much of your time on the introductions.
So you set a little perfect balance by having enough introduction to create a friendly, cooperative, interesting tone, yet not to take all your time that you don't get to the issues. Okay, so there's some time management there.
And sometimes if you're taking too long on the introductions, mentioning that you'd really like to jump into one or two of your issues, and the member of Congress is usually willing to do that. And keep in mind that it's not unusual for a member to come in and not be able to say the entire meeting. So you're helping to get over to one of the issues, especially, you might want to flip the order to the issue that's going to be most relevant or applicable to that member of Congress, in the event that they leave. That would be, I would say, call an audible, in my football analogy.
So the team leader might do that. All right, then you -- part of that, the team leader also should do introductions of the NFB. Our new belief statement is a great way to introduce the NFB. It's -- whether you do it -- you have it perfectly memorized, which is great, and/or you personalize it a little bit to yourself, and then talk a little bit about the size of the NFB, the issues, and a few other things. Spend usually two or three minutes setting the stage, not only with who the folks are in the room, but the National Federation of the Blind. And even if you've come back many times, reminding them who we are and giving our new belief statement, really helps, I think, set the tone for the issues.
The theme in the belief statement is so consistent with the issues that it works really well.
All right, then the template for all three issues would be the following: First, and kind of most important part of the meeting, is explaining the problem. You've got to convince staff and a member of Congress that there's a problem that would be appropriately solved by Congress.
So it's that -- it's something that is sort of in their bailiwick, it's in their lane, and something they can work on. And explaining the problem is very important.
There, what's key is that you practice your storytelling. A lot of time you can capture the interest of them by telling a good, but quick, story. Remember three things on the storytelling. First, being kind of specific is usually -- usually makes for better storytelling. Painting a picture.
If you begin a story that you -- my example would be, I was at a restaurant with other NFB members, having a really wonderful Indian dinner, celebrating one of my friend's birthdays.
Okay, that kind of gives people a little bit of setting the stage, and understanding what's happening. And so then, usually, you encounter a barrier.
And they say, at the end of dinner, I made sure everyone else sort of got off, it was late, the restaurant was about to close, and it got time for me to order my Uber, and lo and behold, the app was not accessible.
All right? There's, you talk about the barrier.
And then a little bit about the impact, or what happened to you, and maybe a little bit how you felt. I was concerned. It was very late at night in a part of Baltimore that I was not very familiar. To be honest, I was kind of scared. And I tried to figure out how I would get home. Suddenly I was there alone, and not sure how I would get home!
And in this case, I ended up having to give my phone to a stranger, which is not a good idea, because you might not ever get your phone back.
But luckily it was an honest person who was able to order the Uber. But this is the kind of thing that happens when you have an inaccessible application. And it's, in this case, I think that my app had been updated, of all things, while I was eating dinner!
All right, but that is -- notice it was a very quick story. It went through the three different areas, about sort of set the stage, paint the picture, kind of make people understand that you were having a good, enjoyable evening, or whatever the case might be, then a barrier was encountered -- a lot of times, when we encounter these barriers, they're surprising.
And then maybe an obstacle. And then the impact it had to you. And maybe a little bit about how you had to solve it. But it still had an impact.
And that really, the solution now is you sort of get to... the solution to this would be to require our legislation. And then that leads into describing the bill.
You don't have to go into great detail describing the bill. Right now you're trying to convince them to have more interest in the bill.
And we can -- they can read the fact sheet, and we can go back to them, especially ones where the bills are not yet introduced. It's hard to be real specific, because we don't know, a case might change. If a bill has been introduced, which, we're trying hard to get all our bills introduced before Washington Seminar, but that's a heavy lift, not sure how it's going to go, but you can talk about the bill, especially at the level of detail in the fact sheet. You can mention our ask.
Our ask is certainly that we hope they would support the bill. Maybe, you know, think about the context. Has the bill been introduced? If it hasn't, you don't want to say will you co-sponsor it. Well, you can't co-sponsor it if it's not introduced yet. You could say, will you please consider supporting it when introduced? You can ask if you would maybe like to be an originating co-sponsor -- that means you declare your support before it's introduced. And kind of gauge their response based on that.
And I think that is interesting. Last would be, if there is some particular status, the bill's status, you might mention, for example, what committee that we think it will be assigned to -- we'll be educating you on what committees our bills are intended to be assigned to so you can start thinking about that.
So that is a quick thinking about, as we go through, actually, now, the three issues, I want you to be thinking about how you might then present them and how you might tell your story to help get the support of our representatives and our senators.
All right, now, before we jump into that, kind of demonstrating our alternating -person-speaking, let's jump to Kyle to talk about logistics, because especially if you're a new person to the seminar, you might be wondering about deadlines and meetings and all of that.
So over to you, Kyle
KYLE WALLS: Thank you, John, and to President Riccobono for joining us tonight. I'm going to assume that everyone listening to this has gotten a hotel room, and if you haven't, well, the hotel block is closed, but that doesn't mean the hotel is full. It just means that our special rate has ended.
So you can still book a room at the hotel if for some reason you haven't gotten one yet. One thing that definitely hasn't closed is our registration for this year's Washington Seminar.
So we're trying something a little different this year. We are asking folks, and we are urging people to register for the Washington Seminar, and this is just so we can have a better idea of which affiliates are being represented and have an email list to have a more direct line of communication with all those who register.
The registration link is available on our Washington Seminar page, and that is nfb.org/washington-seminar. And keep that in mind, because that's a website you'll probably hear a couple times throughout my presentation here.
Other items that I wanted to talk about, and this is all in preparation before we all actually get to DC. I believe John mentioned we have three more trainings that are coming up.
So the first of those will be next Monday, January 13. And that will be our mock meeting training number 1. The next one will be just two days later, on Wednesday, January 15. And that will be our Washington Seminar Portal training. And the final one will be on Thursday, January 23, and that is our mock meeting training number 2. All of those will be at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, and they will have the same Zoom information as this call that you're currently on.
And this meeting, as well as both of the mock meeting trainings, are open to everyone. The portal training, while it is open to everyone, it's really going to be geared more towards those people that are actually going to be using the portal and entering information there.
So if you've delegated someone from your affiliate to do that, you don't necessarily need to attend that meeting, although they should.
The other item for preparation before we get to DC is our fact sheet. All three fact sheets are currently on the website, and they are there in four different formats. They are available in Word, HTML, BRF, and audio files.
So please go to nfb.org/washington-seminar to find our fact sheets and study them before we get to DC. So now that we've gone through some of the prep for before we get to DC, let's talk about some of the things that are actually going to be happening during the Washington Seminar.
So the biggest meeting of the Washington Seminar is the Great Gathering-In, and that will be on Monday, February 3rd, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Capitol Ballroom of the hotel. The next big meeting will be the Congressional reception, and that will be the following evening, on Tuesday, February 4th, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., and that will be in the Kennedy Caucus Room, which is located in the Russell Senate Office Building.
So if you've started trying to plan your meetings, it might be beneficial to try and plan to be on the Senate side on Tuesday afternoon so you can get over to the Kennedy Caucus Room pretty quickly and pretty easily. The next big meeting will be on Wednesday, February 5th, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., and that will be our legislative debrief, which is where we talk about -- we get feedback from all of you about some of the questions you're getting from members of Congress and their staff, and we kind of talk about some strategies to advance our legislation moving forward.
So the -- those are the three big meetings. And then to check out some of the other things that are going on during the week, you can check out the full agenda, which is available on the website at... again... nfb.org/washington-seminar. A couple quick highlights from that are, on Monday, February 3rd, from 12:00 to 2:00 is the career fair, and our legislative seminar will be from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
If you checked out the agenda on the website, you'll see that there are not any tours of the Jernigan Institute listed on the agenda. That is not a mistake. We will not be conducting tours this year. Another big item that will be available while we are in DC, our hotel -- sorry, the Holiday Inn hotel and Capitol Hill Complex descriptions are available on the website, and we will have them in print and braille at the Washington Seminar.
The next big thing, that has become pretty popular in recent years, we just started it a few years ago, we'll have tactile Congressional building models, and those will be on dis play in, I believe, the Congressional foyer from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
JOHN PARE: Okay, so I'm going to talk about the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act. I would begin by saying that the Pew Research Center has studied and determined that 96% of people in America use the internet.
Also that according to the American Community Survey from 2022, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 44 million people in the United States with a disability. And of those 44 million, 8.177 million are blind or have a serious difficulty seeing even with glasses. That terminology comes directly from the Census Bureau.
And I would say that means there are 8 million people, 8.1 million people, who cannot use the internet visually. So they would have to use other techniques. So the first thing I want to do, and I would suggest that you do, is maybe educate them a little bit about how do you do it?
So how does a blind person use, you know, surf the web or even use Word or Outlook, just using Microsoft products as an example, when they can't see the screen, the mouse, or the keyboard?
All right, well, there's three things. One, it's not difficult for a blind person to learn how to touch type. So the touch typing part is -- does not require vision, and in fact, I would think that most sighted people touch type, without, if they're good at it, without looking at the keyboard.
All right, so that eliminates that one concern.
Number two would be the screen. All right, well, I can see that you might be wondering about that. The way we do that is we have software that reads everything that's on the screen. It gives it in an audio format. Say, I use this -- and you might use your personal example. Mine would be, I typically use Microsoft products, and there's more than one product that helps with this screen reading. The product that I use the most is called JAWS from a company called Vispero.
All right, how do you use the mouse? How do you select things? How do you point and click? Well, you're right. I can't use the mouse visually. I don't see the screen. I can't point and click. But, you know that there are already some shortcuts built into Word, into Microsoft. Say, for example, many people would use the control-A to select all, control-C to copy, control-V to paste. Well, imagine if there were shortcuts to do virtually everything, so that everything you had to do to select a button, to select a link, to go to a heading, or in Word, to go to a paragraph, a sentence, a word, to go forward, backwards, select things, to go into email and to create new emails. Well, that's exactly what -- that DOES exist, and that's what this software has. It has a shortcut for everything.
So I don't ever have to use the mouse.
So I don't need to use the mouse. I can touch type, and I can enter the shortcuts that I need to.
And I can listen to what I'm doing and what is on the screen, so I can, as a blind person, just as effectively as maybe a sighted person, could do to navigate, whether it's a website or software application. And in my cases, I'm going to stick with these examples with, say, a laptop and Microsoft Word.
Now, a little more background.
And that is that in 1999, about 25 years ago, the Worldwide Web Content Access Guidelines were created, and they helped companies know what they need to do so that their software works in tandem with my software that I provide, for the accessibility to the screen and to provide all these shortcuts.
This software is now up to version 2.2. And the version that was referenced in the Department of Justice regulations recently was version 2.1. The problem is, many companies are not adhering to these standards. And as a result, either that's because of lack of education, lack of knowledge, or the fact that there's not a specific statutory requirement that helps point to what it means to be accessible.
The Americans with Disabilities Act says that things need to be accessible, but it doesn't have the kind of precise descriptions, for example, a statutory definition of accessibility. Or it leaves small companies sort of holding the bag if a contractor who built their website didn't build it accessible.
So that's the problem. Lack of clear description of what accessibility means, and maybe some of the third-party responsibility that isn't currently in law.
So what would the solution be? Well, the solution would be this bill, the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act, and what it would do is it would create a specific statutory definition of disability -- of accessibility -- and it would do it in a way that is consistent with that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which has been in existence for 25 years. It would also create a technical assistance center to help with education on what it means to make a website accessible.
It would also create liability for third-party content providers that build websites for other people so that they have more incentive to make sure they're accessible, and so that would help protect small businesses making their websites. This bill is going to be sponsored by Congressman Steny Hoyer. It was in the last Congress. It will be in the current Congress. As of right now, it is not yet introduced, but we're hoping when it is, that you would be supportive.
All right, that would be my quick -- my background, in that case, the problem. Talked a lot about background. You could put in a story, which I did do in my example just now, but a story of inaccessibility, and depending on how you feel, use a little bit longer or shorter version of the background that I did at the beginning.
And then the personal story, and then the solution and so forth. All right, all right, that's that bill. All right, now we're ready to go to the next, and that's going to be Justin, so Justin, over to you.
JUSTIN YOUNG: Okay. Thanks, John. So I'm going to talk about the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act. This bill, we had last Congress for our Washington Seminar issue.
The problem here is that many medical devices on the market are not accessible and do not include a nonvisual access component for a blind person to independently, safely, effectively, accessibly use without relying on someone else to help us navigate these devices.
These are devices like a glucose monitor, insulin pump, a CPAP machine, blood pressure mechanism, oximeter, and many, many other devices that relate to our medical needs that we could or should be able to use in a home setting.
And the problem is that the manufacturers are just, are not making these devices ready accessible, and the -- to give you some statistics, about 20% of every medical appointment these days is related to telehealth, which is a virtual health care appointment.
Also, the... the Pew Research Center says that throughout the country, in rural areas throughout the country, Americans live about 10 miles from the closest hospital, and in some areas of the country, they live about 8 to 10 miles away from the nearest pharmacy.
So this means that without having accessible medical devices, we're unable to fully participate in telehealth or virtual appointments, because we cannot independently, safely, and effectively read the information that's being relayed on these devices, as I mentioned a few of them a minute ago.
So while you're in you're meetings, if you have personal stories or members in your affiliate have personal stories related to using these devices, as John mentioned a minute ago, that's very powerful, and that can get home the importance of why this is a big problem. Because inaccessible health devices, that's a life and death situation. Because if you give yourself too much medicine or not enough medicine, that can result in either overdosing or underdosing your medicine, and that's not good on many levels.
So a personal story you could tell is of using a device. An example would be John, who is a blind man from Minnesota, recently became diabetic, and has other medical conditions as well, so in addition to using a glucose monitor, he also uses a blood pressure machine and a CPAP machine. Unfortunately, he has to have help to set up all these devices. He goes in to a medical provider, they set it up for him, and he's uncertain how to do this himself because the settings are basically flat screens, touchscreens, and don't really have any audible cues or allow him to independently do it himself.
And at one point, especially with his glucose machine, which was a machine not used by a smartphone, because he didn't have one at the time, was not set up correctly, resulting in him having to go to the hospital with a number of issues.
But if he had been able to independently set them up himself, he would not have run into that scary situation. So that's an example of a story that's short and to the point that you could tell, or one of your members could tell, during the meetings that you go to on the Hill.
So the solution for this problem would be the Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act, which relates to adopting these new nonvisual access standards related to Class 2 and 3 medical devices with digital interfaces. What this basically means is, that's how the FDA classifies these medical devices that I mentioned earlier -- these glucose monitors, insulin pumps, CPAPs -- they're all classified based on the risk to the patient or user. The higher the risk, the more level it is.
So Class 3 would be the most risk to the patient or user, and Class 2 would be a minimal risk to the patient or user. We believe that this legislation would also incorporate two exceptions for manufacturers that they could apply for, which would be related to fundamental alteration or undue hardship, which basically means that if the manufacturer feels that by making the device accessible, would completely change the product, they can apply for exception through the FDA.
But they have to provide clear and convincing evidence to the FDA saying that by doing so, that's what would happen. Also, if they believe the cost is too expensive to make the product accessible, they can apply for that exception as well. But, again, also clear and convincing evidence must be provided.
These also would only apply to new products, which we -- the phrasing used by the FDA would be "new applications". So a new product coming on the market after the bill has been fully implemented, one year after the bill has been implemented. Also, there would be a three-year rulemaking process. At the end of year 1, after the bill has been implemented.
So year 1, a notice of proposed rulemaking or NPRM would be issued, where comments, feedback would be sought from stakeholders like blind people, manufacturers, all answering the question, how would these nonvisual access standards, what would they look like? How would it be incorporated?
At the end of year 2, the final rule would have to be published, where they're basically issuing all the facts that have been compiled by the people that read the comments. And then at the end of year 3 is when the law would be fully implemented, and the manufacturers would have to start making these products more accessible.
So that is the rulemaking process. And we think that these updates were put into the last version of the bill, when we had it introduced in the last Congress, and we got some great feedback, great comments from members of Congress. They think it's a great idea, great bill. Last Congress, in the House, it was introduced by Representative Jan Schakowsky. We're working with her office to get the bill reintroduced again in the House.
On the Senate side, we don't have commitment from a sponsor yet. Although last Congress, it was introduced by Senators Maggie Hassin and Mike Braun. Mike Braun has retired from Congress. So we're looking to see who would be the best sponsors on the Senate side to champion this bill.
And we're hoping to get a lot of co-sponsors once it is introduced. And like I said, your personal stories is probably the most important thing, once you're in the meetings with your members of Congress. Those relationships, as John and President Riccobono has mentioned, are very important. And those can be done through the personal stories and the personal connections that you build up with your members of Congress and their staff as well.
So with that, I'll turn it back to John.
JOHN PARE: Good, thanks, Justin. All right, so we're going to go through one more and then we'll go to Q&A, but we want to go through the third issue. Here's Jesse to do that.
JESSE SHIREK: Thanks, John. We're going to talk about the Blind Americans Return to Work Act. So what is the problem that we're facing? Social Security Disability Insurance is a federal benefit that contains policies that encourage blind people to give up on the American dream.
We refer to this as the earnings cliff, in case you're not familiar with this. I'm going to give you some more background on the problem so that you have a better understanding of what the earnings cliff is. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Amendments to the Social Security Act. This established Social Security Disability Insurance, or we tend to refer to it as SSDI.
SSDI is a federal benefit, which is earned by working.
So think of insurance. Think of flood insurance. If you own a house and your house is flooded, you can get some relief, you can get some money back from your insurance as long as you've paid your insurance premiums. Similarly, people can receive Social Security Disability Insurance if they qualify. If they've paid their taxes and worked long enough before becoming blind.
A blind person can qualify for SSDI if their income is under something called "substantial gainful activity", or SGA. This is an earnings limit.
In 2025, the earnings limit, SGA, is 2,700 dollars, pretty easy number to remember.
Also, a person needs to earn enough credits of coverage. So essentially, you can earn one credit of coverage if you earn 1,810 dollars, and you can earn up to four credits in one year, so essentially they're quarterly credits of coverage.
You can -- you know when you have enough credits, basically, if you just take your age, the age that you're at, minus the number of credits.
So if you're a 40-year-old individual when you go blind, you're going to need 19 credits of coverage. You also have to meet the definition of statutory blindness, which means that your best corrected vision is 2200 in your better eye, or if you have a visual field, a total visual field of less than 20 degrees.
And then your blindness needs to be expected to last at least a year or more. Many people become blind -- and I like to really explain this part -- I explain it quickly, but I really think it's important to explain this part, because I don't think sighted people often understand this.
Many people become blind, and they often lose their jobs, or they quit their jobs because they don't think a blind person can work.
So then they need a source of income, and wind up applying for SSDI. Eventually, you know, in most scenarios, they're approved. And people start gaining those nonvisual skills that we're all very familiar with.
But I would tell a sighted person that, you know, you have to learn how to use a white cane. You have to learn -- you know, many people learn braille or learn to use a talking computer, as John illustrated earlier. And then they gain the confidence to start working. And this is essentially the story of how we transition from being a blind person to being able to work as a blind person. It connects the dots for a sighted person.
As you know, many people try to reenter the workforce, but they're concerned about losing their benefits. I mean, you're depending upon your income. How do you pay your rent without your income? You know, when you don't have a job, your income are your SSDI benefits.
So people often start working part time, or they start working -- they get the first job that they can to keep their benefits, and maybe they're earning a lower wage. This is when they become trapped by what we call the earnings cliff.
If you're under SGA -- we talked about that earlier, substantial gainful activity, 2,700 dollars a month -- you can keep your benefits, as long as you're under that 2,700 dollars amount. As soon as you start earning over 2,700 dollars, you might lose your benefits. Just imagine if you start earning 2,701 dollars, and you fall off the earnings cliff.
The average -- you know, to illustrate this really easily, the average SSDI benefit amount is 1,537 dollars. So let's just say that you earn -- you receive 1,500 dollars in benefits. That's 18,000 dollars a year in SSDI benefits.
So if you were earning an extra 12 dollars a year in earnings, so, you know, 12 more than SGA, you'd lose your 18,000 dollars benefit amount. Nobody is going to do that. It's just not going to happen. And we're finding that this is the case.
What we're finding is that people are oftentimes deciding, I don't want to work as much as I'm working if I'm going to get a raise and lose my benefits. Sometimes they take what they call a disability day, where they even want to work even less. So this is illustrated by the National Industries for the Blind. They did a 2018 survey of their nonprofit agencies. They're the largest employer of blind people.
And you can find this information in the fact sheet.
So they found that 37% of their employees requested to work less hours and turned down offers of additional hours. 21% of their employees turned down a raise or a promotion so that they could keep their SSDI benefits. So I -- it's really perplexing, I mean, how are we, as a population, ever supposed to grasp the American dream if we don't feel more confident, or if we don't accept a raise, or don't try harder and work more hours?
The answer is that we will continue to have a 65% underemployment -- in other words, we're still going to continue to work less than full-time, less than year-round employment, or we're just going to be absent from the workforce. And right now, 65% of the blind population falls into that category.
I can hear you saying, you know, what about the nine-month trial work period? You know, it is a good question. You are given a nine-month trial work period by the Social Security Administration so you can try out working. The issue is that you get 9 months in a 60-month cycle where you can earn as much as you want. You can earn 10,000 dollars in a month and only use up one of your trial months.
But unfortunately, if you earn 1,160 dollars, you also use up one of your trial work months. So a mind person may burn up all of their trial months before they ever approach the earnings cliff. So what's the solution? We need to borrow an incentive that really works for people, and this is where we proposed the Blind Americans Return to Work Act.
And it's really a pretty simple concept. We want to make sure that people are always motivated to work more and earn more. And so our proposal is that for every -- you know, your benefits would stay the same until you hit SGA, until you earn 2,700 dollars a month. After you earn 2,700 dollars a month, you wouldn't lose your benefit, but you'd give up one of your benefit dollars for every two extra dollars you earn.
So your Social Security benefits would slowly phase out, and you would slowly get promotions, you'd slowly earn more money, and this would slowly create a reduction of your SSI benefits, which eliminates the whole fear of working full-time.
In this situation, National Industries for the Blind employees would be incentivized to work more hours, accept raises, accept promotions, and climb the ladder to freedom. We also would simplify the Social Security system by giving up the nine-month trial work period. We don't really need a nine-month trial work period if you don't need to worry about trying out work. You can phase out your benefits without the fear of losing your benefits.
The Social Security Administration also has two separate categories of work expenses: Impairment related work expenses, and blindness related work expenses. This is too complex. We need to simplify it. Pete Sessions from Texas and Kweisi Mfume from Maryland were the bipartisan co-sponsors last year. We hope that they will reintroduce the bill before Washington Seminar. We can't say for sure that that will happen, so we can't say for sure that it's going have a bill number by Washington Seminar.
But it will be in Ways and Means Committee, which Jason Smith is the chair of. In the Senate, we don't have a sponsor identified yet, so if you have a Republican senator who happens to be on the Finance Committee, they might make for a really good sponsor. So especially any intel that you're able to get from talking to those staffs, if they sound really excited about this bill, make sure to let us know. Because we want to make sure to follow up with those offices right away.
So with that, I'm going to pass this back to John.
JOHN PARE: Fantastic, Jesse, that was great. All right, I know we've got a little bit more, so we might -- hopefully we'll be able to go a few minutes after 9:00, maybe until 9:03 or 4, just so that we can get in some questions.
And if you don't get your question asked tonight, remember, we have lots more, we have three more virtual trainings, plus the in-person training, plus you can contact us at any time. Let's go to Kyle, who will help moderate the Q&A.
KYLE WALLS: First question is Randy Bellavance. I'll ask you to unmute
RANDY: Good evening, everyone. I have one question, a clarification, and a piece of advice for people attending for the first time, if I may.
So clarification, actually, from Jesse. When you said the Finance Committee, do you mean Appropriations Committee?
JESSE SHIREK: No, I mean Finance Committee.
RANDY: Okay, wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding. Second, why won't there be tours of the Jernigan Institute this time around?
JOHN PARE: It's a little bit of saving money; it's a little bit of saving time so that we can focus there at the hotel. I anticipate we'll probably have the tours again next year.
But we thought it would be helpful to skip this one year for a couple of different reasons.
RANDY: Okay, and general piece of advice from my own experience, when you guys were mentioning the personal stories, one thing that I found works best is your own experiences are great, but don't forget to reach out to any and all members of your affiliate or chapter. Some may have stories that fit in perfectly and you don't know it yet. We've done that a couple times and you'll be surprised at the results you can get out of that
JOHN PARE: Completely agree. Either tell your stories or tell someone else's. And I especially like that you said someone in your affiliate.
And if you can name names, that makes it particularly strong.
RANDY: It also makes it better, too, because that way members of your chapter who can't come or aren't able for any reason still feel that they're contributing majorly to the success of your team and your affiliate.
JOHN PARE: Agreed.
All right, Kyle?
KYLE WALLS: Next hand is Jennifer Dunham. I'm going to ask you to unmute.
-- unmute.
JENNIFER: Back to the prep before Washington, DC. Would it be possible for us to have a list of people who have registered from our state, so we can, A, encourage people who haven't registered yet to register, and B, know everybody who is going?
JOHN PARE: Yes, we should investigate that.
But I think we can do that, maybe, especially for people who wanted, or maybe there's a way to send it to everyone. We probably would be sending it to affiliate presidents.
But we should be able to do that. We'll take it under advisement and do everything we can. That does sound like a great idea.
KYLE WALLS: There are no hands up and I'm not seeing any questions in the chat.
So...
I guess we'll do this, going once... going twice... and given that it's about 8:59, we might actually end on time!
JOHN PARE: All right, super. Let me jump to this. A lot of this now is determining how to take sort of the details of the issues and making it into the actual presentation. I mean, a lot of what you just heard from the three of us was geared specifically in presentation style, but also more inside baseball to educate all of you.
So when it comes to the pure presentation, that's where the mock meetings are so important. And so we have a team of four people you'll recognize -- I won't say who they are right now, you'll have to come Monday to find out -- who will do two different mock meetings, which I think will be really helpful to everyone, in hearing how they present the issues. That's always fantastic. And how they tailor it, as you heard President Riccobono say and so forth, telling some of the stories that they might have.
And then we'll have the other training that Kyle said. So I just want to make sure that you know that it's really helpful if you can come Monday, 8:00 p.m. So we'll plan to see you then. Remember to check the fact sheets on the web. All the things that Kyle mentioned.
Otherwise, I think we're done for the night, and thank you for making the time tonight, and see you Monday.