An Address Delivered by
Mark A. Riccobono
National Federation of the Blind
New Orleans, Louisiana
July 11, 2025
During the past year, the organized blind movement has provided critical consistency for blind Americans living in a nation beset by uncertainty and rapid change. This movement’s gift is its constancy: blind people have a movement they can rely on, a security in knowing that other blind people will have their back, and a resource in the power of lived experience and shared understanding. This certainty for the blind was not an accident nor is it possible without continuous effort.
The organized blind movement gives us hope because it is powered by people with giving spirits. The organized blind movement gives us strength through the self-determination shared among members. The organized blind movement gives us power because we know the truth about blindness, and we share it with others in our communities.
Our blind predecessors first made this commitment in 1940 and, year after year, challenge after challenge, and opportunity after opportunity, we have shown up to build the future for ourselves. Yes, the blind of our nation have certainty. We always work together to have the backs of blind people. We always come prepared to exercise the truth about blindness. We always speak and act for ourselves. We are the National Federation of the Blind.
Nicole Vega Cruz is a blind woman from New Jersey. She had not known about the National Federation of the Blind when she lost custody of her almost six-month-old son, Nicolah, due to difficult circumstances and overt discrimination. Fortunately, she discovered that we had her back before all was lost. The New Jersey child welfare agency cleared Nicole of any wrongdoing, but the court, operating on misunderstanding about the capacity of blind people to parent, continued to restrict her time with her child and required supervision.
We can only imagine the heartbreak and stress the uncertainty caused Nichole and her baby. We stepped in to assist Nichole by educating the family court judge about the techniques blind people use in parenting and the protections afforded to parents with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Federation member Sandy Halverson also gave her time and experience to support Nichole, testified in the case, and traveled from Virginia to New Jersey for court hearings.
Through the expertise and support of the Federation, the court has now approved a plan granting increasing amounts of unsupervised time and overnight visits until September 1—when Nichole will regain full custody of her son. That is not all. Recognizing the value to this family, the court specifically granted mom and baby permission to attend this convention, and we welcome them today as first-timers to the Federation family. We will continue to give blind parents the certainty that we have their back.
Through our advocacy work, we create certainty for blind youth that they can compete on terms of equality. For example, through our legal program we assisted a blind high school student in Michigan to receive blindness services from vocational rehabilitation instead of their school district, which did not have an adequately trained teacher of blind students and refused instruction in key skills of blindness. In another instance, we assisted a blind Texas high school student who was facing obstacles to getting a Braille version of their advanced placement exam so they could graduate on time.
Yet many barriers persist; to overcome them, we are building a network of educational advocates with generous support from the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. Our first cohort of advocates, trained in 2024, has helped more than twenty families, and we recently completed training our second cohort of advocates to double our team of barrier breakers. But we need to build even more capacity as more than one hundred people across thirty-seven states were on the waiting list for our 2025 IEP Advocacy Academy. We will continue to seek partners and resources to further strengthen and bring to scale our Federation network that is eliminating barriers in education, one blind child at a time.
We continue to urge the federal government to fulfil its promise to families that our nation will ensure equitable access to high-quality education for all students, regardless of their background or circumstances. In the final months of the Biden administration, we challenged the United States Secretary of Education with our concerns about the apparent dismantling of the Digital Accessibility Unit in the Office of Civil Rights. Earlier this year, the Trump administration issued an executive order calling for closure of that department and changes to its current programs.
We sent a letter to the new Secretary of Education on March 25, detailing our concerns about the future of programs that affect blind Americans. We received a response on April 11, from the Acting Secretary of Education for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services indicating that there will not be harm to any of the programs for the blind. However, significant uncertainty about the future of these programs and our broader protections remains.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education drastically reduced its oversight personnel in the Office of Civil Rights, significantly limiting the relief blind people can seek when schools discriminate. Meanwhile, seventeen states have filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services challenging the agency’s 2024 update to the regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
The states seek to have Section 504 deemed unconstitutional, arguing that it expands the scope of disability rights beyond what is permitted under the act. In February we began to mobilize Federation members in the seventeen states to push back on this outrageous assertion to the court. On March 4 we sent a letter to each of the attorneys general, and we asked members to undertake local advocacy efforts.
As a result of our effectiveness, by April many of the states were publicly asserting that their intention was not to challenge the law’s constitutionality. Similar statements were included in the status briefing to the court later that month, yet the original filing remains unchanged, and we remain ready to act.
For decades we have been pushing institutions of higher education to fulfill their obligations under the law by assuring their programs, including their digital platforms and instructional materials, are accessible and provide an equally effective experience. However, the current political climate favors deregulation, and some higher education leaders seek to leverage the opportunity. The American Council on Education, with a long list of co-signatories from higher education, wrote to the administration on May 12 requesting, among other things, that implementation of the Department of Justice’s ADA Title II Web Accessibility regulation be put on hold.
On hold! That is the only appropriate four-letter word I could think to put in this report. The request of the higher education leadership is outrageous, shameful, and demonstrates none of the rigorous intellectual values these institutions claim to share. Contrary to their letter, the website regulation provides exactly the clarity state and local government institutions, including educational institutions, have been requesting during the fourteen years of consideration, public input, and adjustment that went into the final rule.
With certainty, the blind of this nation are on alert, and we will not cease our advocacy until our programs are protected and our rights are secured. To those challenging the constitutionality of our rights, we respectfully ask you to stand down, or we will stand up in an even more aggressive campaign to counteract your attack. To the American Council on Education and its supporters, we are prepared to wrestle with you in the regulatory process, but we are also prepared to shine light on your harmful approach. We will talk with you about the error of your ways if we can, and we will show up to demand you cease if we must.
We continue to use all of our tools to advance equality in higher education. Along with our West Virginia affiliate, we are supporting Federation members Miranda Lacy and Harold Thomas Rogers in suing West Virginia University for its failure to provide blind students accessible materials, readers, and accommodations for their online social work master’s program. These outstanding blind students are taking a stand to ensure that other students do not face the same discrimination.
In pursuit of STEM careers, Federation members Natalie Charbonneau, Jennifer Doran, and Ashley Neybert enrolled in Oregon State University. Each of these blind women came to the university with a proven record of significant academic achievement. Yet OSU’s failure to ensure an equal educational opportunity for blind students thwarted their professional pursuits. For example, OSU routinely failed to provide accessible materials to blind students before the start of courses and, when it finally provided them, they were often not accessible at all.
The Federation did not fail; we showed up for these blind students and, through structured negotiations, we aim to resolve the issues for these students and to transform the university’s accessibility practices going forward. Our negotiations continue, —and we seek another model agreement for schools to follow in ensuring equal access for blind students. We stand with blind students in fighting for the equal educational opportunities they deserve.
Our national advocacy agenda includes mobilizing blind people to influence change in the United States Congress and leveraging local advocacy expertise across our fifty-two state affiliates. We champion important proposed federal legislation to protect equal access to websites and software applications, improve accessibility in home-use medical devices, eliminate harmful work penalties in the Social Security program, and create new tax credits for blind people to purchase access technologies needed to support our full participation in society.
We also want elected public officials at all levels to know that the voting power of blind people matters. We provide technical assistance to states on nonvisual access to voting, and we continue to advocate and negotiate to provide blind people with equal access to all forms of voting, including electronic delivery and return of ballots to ensure the highest level of privacy and independence. In addition, we respond to regulatory reviews, show up at Congressional hearings, monitor government programs, and assist Federation affiliates with state-level advocacy concerns. Often, technical assistance and negotiation are not enough.
For too many years, I have reported to you on our extensive work to get rideshare companies to put an end to discriminatory ride denials. Both Lyft and Uber have failed to adequately address this issue. But the blind were organized long before these companies existed, and we will be standing firm for blind people long after these companies are replaced by something new, like shared autonomous vehicle fleets. To protect the rights of blind passengers, we leveraged White Cane Awareness Day 2025 to bring our concerns to the public on the streets of San Francisco.
The National Federation of the Blind’s Rideshare Rally brought hundreds of blind people, many accompanied by guide dogs, together to publicly express our outrage. We invited guide-dog training programs to join in our effort. Only one, Guiding Eyes out of New York, sponsored our rally and publicly expressed solidarity with our cause. We applaud agency leaders like Thomas Panek (a blind person himself) who believe in blind people and stand with us. We also thank our California affiliate for providing critical support to this public action. At Uber in the morning and Lyft in the afternoon, blind people marched and chanted while carrying signs with slogans like, “respect our right to ride,” “two paws up for equal access,” and “don’t flee without us.”
Our rally received coverage from multiple outlets including NBC Bay Area, ABC 7, KCBS Radio, and Wired, as well as extensive social media traffic. Most importantly, the rally got the attention of both companies. As a result, each company has added a feature for self-identification for travelers with a service animal. In coordination with our National Association of Guide Dog Users, we made it clear that this feature must be voluntary for riders, information must be shared only after a driver has confirmed acceptance of the ride, and riders must not be penalized for electing not to use this feature. We continue to monitor the effectiveness of this approach while pushing for these companies to do more.
We strongly encourage all blind people to share data with the Federation about these incidents and to file complaints through the ADA.gov website. Additionally, during the coming months, we will put together resources to assist individual blind people in filing small claims cases against these companies for ride denials. And we are prepared to take any other action needed to hold these companies accountable. To Lyft and Uber, we state with more energy and certainty than ever before: we will not back down from our rights. A complete report of our advocacy and policy work will be given later in this convention.
Another source of uncertainty for blind people is the continued discrimination by employers in the hiring process and in failing to accommodate blind people in the workplace. The same employers who give no thought to how much they spend on lights in a month claim that it is too difficult when blind people request to use screen-reading software and a Braille display.
Highly qualified blind people are barred from applying for jobs due to the requirement of a driver’s license—even though the position does not include driving as an essential function—and highly qualified people who go blind find their employers reacting as though all their talents have instantly gone away. Through our legal program, we assist blind people in navigating the discrimination they experience and give them greater confidence in their self-advocacy. During the past year, nearly a quarter of the requests for support we received have been regarding employment discrimination.
One example is Ashlen Johnson—a blind kindergarten teacher in Mississippi’s Long Beach School District. She had always worked out any needed accommodations informally with her school administration. In October 2021, the school’s new principal advised her to seek formal accommodations for her disability. On January 4, 2022, she was terminated for seeking these accommodations, which her principal conceded were reasonable.
The Federation filed suit on behalf of Ms. Johnson, and we reached a settlement providing monetary damages, changes to her personnel record, a positive letter of recommendation, and a requirement that staff making decisions about employee accommodations must annually attend a conference on the ADA.
A significant employer that continues to generate concerns about discrimination is Amazon. With coaching from the Federation, many blind people have been able to overcome the barriers. One example is Jerusalem Crawley of Michigan, who went to work at Amazon to support himself while going to school. Like so many other blind people, the company failed to provide Jerusalem with accommodations and placed him on unpaid leave. The Federation taught Jerusalem about the filing requirements for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, what to include in a charge of discrimination, and how to effectively self-advocate in a mediation.
As a result of our support and his hard work, Amazon gave him all the back pay he was due; agreed to provide appropriate accommodations, such as visual-interpreter services and an accessible workstation; and moved him to the warehouse closest to his home. Due to his outstanding advocacy and his performance at the warehouse, Amazon offered him an additional position as an accommodations coordinator. We will continue to organize and stand with blind Amazon employees to ensure equal opportunities in the future.
Some other examples of our employment advocacy include a case of discrimination against a blind physical therapist with fifteen years of work experience in the field; assisting a newly blind engineer whose employer refused to accommodate him when he became blind; protecting the rights of a United States foreign service officer in receiving adequate accommodations to perform her service to our nation; standing with a blind teacher whose school district refuses to provide her instructional materials in Braille; continuing the fight for fair wages in sheltered employment settings in Ohio; and challenging systemic discrimination in Colorado, where the state uses inaccessible timekeeping software.
Through our Employment Committee, chaired by Lia Stone of New Jersey, and with the support of our Federation staff, we host a series of events and enrichment opportunities to boost employment for the blind. Over the past year, we made connections between more than three hundred blind jobseekers and fifty employers. In our Where the Blind Work Webinars, we highlighted blind professionals working in STEM, human services, language interpretation, and blindness rehabilitation.
In November, we held our latest Dare to Be Remarkable Conference, a three-day professional development bringing together more than one hundred rehabilitation and education professionals who work with blind youth and adults. This spring, the unexpected reduction in the federal government workforce left many hard-working blind people without a job and with great uncertainty.
With the generous time and energy of many Federation members, we quickly spun up a Career Development Boot Camp series—a virtual weekly experience to provide federal employees with the support, tools, and resources to assist them with transitioning to a new career. Our powerful network continues to demonstrate the truth that the Federation shows up for blind people.
We are building a strong pipeline for the future through our work to prepare the next generation of blind youth for success. Examples include our support of the National Association of Blind Students Regional Student Seminars, where we connected more than one hundred blind youth with our Federation network through engaging presentations, interactive workshops, and opportunities for relationship building.
In addition, through our Career Mentoring Program, we have held a Career Quest program at the Washington Seminar and at this convention. Blind students from Mississippi, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia have participated in immersive experiences including insightful presentations, educational seminars, and social and professional networking experiences—all to support their future success in competitive integrated employment opportunities in the career of their choice.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, we are raising expectations through monthly virtual seminars and in-person workshops where we present a variety of employment topics informed by the lived experiences of blind people. We seek to expand all of this work during the coming year.
Another area of employment we seek to boost is the community of blind entrepreneurs operating small businesses in all sectors of our economy. In addition to the typical small business challenges, blind owners must overcome accessibility barriers in managing payroll, tracking inventory, balancing the books, maintaining a website, and dozens of other key aspects of commerce.
Despite these barriers, blind business owners are successful every day. Our movement is committed to amplifying these businesses and helping them to thrive through the support of our community. I am pleased to announce the first phase of our new work in this area: the Blind-Owned and Operated Marketplace, BOOM. This marketplace is now a live directory that offers an easy way to discover and support blind-owned businesses. Working with our National Association of Blind Merchants, we will add more businesses and build out additional phases of this project. Visit nfb.org/boom and, with the support of our movement, blind-owned business will be booming.
Through our national education programs, we seek to raise the expectations for blind youth, build a network of expertise through parents of blind children, and enhance the possibilities with a strong corps of teachers who have deep experience with the organized blind movement. However, for us it is not about managing programs; it is about building a movement.
All of our efforts must be coordinated to give the next generation of blind leaders security, equality, and opportunity. Examples of our coordinated work in the past year include outreach to families through our early childhood initiatives, which serve blind children from birth to age eight. During the past year we provided Braille literacy materials and resources, early travel resources and child-sized white canes, and made meaningful connections for over four hundred families.
Through our NFB Braille Enrichment for Literacy and Learning (BELL) Academy we provide hundreds of young blind people with literacy skills and blind mentors. These programs take great energy, detailed logistics, strong educational practices and procedures, and precious financial resources. They would not happen without the dedicated blind volunteers who are committed to the next generation having it better than we did. Thank you to all of the members of this movement who make these programs a reality. This summer’s programs are already underway, and together we are “Celebrating Two Hundred Years of Braille and Blind Innovation.”
We are now in our third decade of providing blind-centered educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, art, and math. In our STEM2U program, blind youth learn under the mentorship of blind adults. In 2024 we delivered activities centered around the James Webb Space Telescope, which is designed to conduct infrared astronomy, allowing for conversations about discovery in the nonvisual light range.
Our theme this year centers on the scientific method. Whether the young blind people in these programs choose a future career in science or something else, they will utilize the problem-solving skills and structured-discovery techniques they learn from the Federation in their everyday effort to live the lives they want.
We further strengthen our movement by building a community of teachers of blind students whose belief in blind people is grounded in the certainty of our lived experience. During the past year we added nineteen teachers to the Federation’s Teacher of Tomorrow community, including our first two participants from Puerto Rico. This yearlong enrichment, guided by a diverse community of blind leaders, provides a foundation of high expectations and challenges participants to dream big for their students.
As one teacher wrote in appreciation of the program, “While the entire Teachers of Tomorrow experience was wonderful, the most beneficial parts involved learning from blind individuals and recognizing just how high my expectations for my students need to be. And now I have a whole support group of teachers who I can ask for advice and support when needed.”
We continue to appreciate the partnership of our Louisiana Center for the Blind and the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness at Louisiana Tech University in building the power of this program. Let us take this opportunity to acknowledge all of the commitment of those dedicated professionals who are allies in the organized blind movement and have joined us here at this convention.
Following last year’s convention, we initiated a restructuring of our technology-related priorities to increase the important leadership role the Federation plays in advancing built-in accessibility for the blind. We hired our first executive director for Accessibility Excellence, and during the next year we will continue implementing programmatic enhancements. In time for our eighty-fourth anniversary, we launched the Access On podcast. This is a platform to hear breaking news about technology that affects us, tips and tricks from technology experts, and grassroots feedback from Federation members.
We work to keep access on the priority list for the top technology companies. The Federation’s expertise and authority is well respected, and we enjoy frank but cordial relationships with all of the major technology players. We have built a trusted loop with these companies where they seek our informed perspective, and we provide feedback that directly results in product improvements. We also continue to work closely with smaller companies and emerging start-ups to be sure they are grounded in the understanding of blindness that we share through our lived experience.
We operate the Nonvisual Accessibility Initiative, a public-private partnership between the National Federation of the Blind and the Maryland Department of Disabilities. One example of our partnership work is our production of accessibility boutiques and half-day seminars covering a wide range of relevant topics for blind individuals. We hope to expand our partnerships beyond Maryland by working strategically with Federation affiliates in the coming year.
We continue to actively seek, acquire, and evaluate new accessible devices to fulfil our commitment to maintaining a comprehensive blind-centered consumer reports technology lab at our headquarters in Baltimore. One example of our evaluation work is at the forefront of exploring new navigation solutions for blind users. We aim to have as many indoor navigation systems live at the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute as possible.
This allows visitors to try these technologies for themselves and for our staff to provide meaningful feedback. In addition, demand is increasing for our Blind Users Innovating and Leading Design (BUILD) program, which provides a trusted process for matching blind people prepared to test technologies with companies seeking user testing. The time and knowledge of blind users is valuable; thus, we always ensure testers are compensated.
In the coming year we will establish a new Committee on Accessibility and User Innovation. This committee will provide perspectives and recommendations on strategic technology matters and the coordination of Federation technology efforts to maximize their effectiveness for all blind people. One objective is to curate useful intelligence on emerging trends and accessibility issues that might require the attention of the organized blind movement.
As with all Federation committees, we seek to ensure that we are maximizing the power of our individual efforts, collectively focused. It is essential that we continue to be the source of trusted information and that we define meaningful accessibility in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
The members of the National Federation of the Blind make this organization the powerful vehicle for collective action that it continues to be. Membership is built through local chapters in our fifty-two state affiliates. During the past year, we have welcomed and onboarded nearly one thousand new members. Through our national office, we support affiliates in membership and leadership development.
This includes helping affiliates build capacity by creating resources for elected board members, establishing model policies and practices, ensuring that critical governance documents are preserved, and appropriate government documents are filed. Some training activities happen at our headquarters facility, and many others are hosted in local communities. Our consistent investment in leadership development is critical to our success.
We provide regular training to elected leaders as well as to members who show interest in growing into leaders. Additional resources are provided to leaders through our online NFB Portal. Our affiliate finance group is in the final stages of onboarding all affiliates to QuickBooks Online to assist in stronger financial tracking and more consistent financial reporting.
A priority for our movement is ensuring blind people have equal access to information. We continue to lead advocacy efforts to protect the critical work of, and funding for, the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, including distribution of free, refreshable Braille devices and a catalog of content that is broad and diverse, allowing blind people the widest possible reading choices.
Through NFB-NEWSLINE, our free accessible information service, we currently offer 436 state newspapers, 15 national newspapers, 57 breaking-news sources, 23 international newspapers, 83 magazines, and an Associated Press feed from every state and the District of Columbia; that is more than 600 unique publications available through numerous access options, including the long-awaited Android application now available in the Google Play Store. We are committed to continued enhancements and finding additional sponsors so every blind person in our nation has access to the diverse content sources needed to be informed citizens.
One of the critical information services blind people need is the content created through the lived experience of blind people themselves. Far too many blind people have not yet encountered the hopeful message and blind wisdom that is captured in the stories of blind people living the lives they want. We continue to seek new ways of distributing the rich content that Federation members have created. Earlier this year, we launched NFBRN—our around-the-clock broadcast platform for content from the National Federation of the Blind. On NFBRN, you will hear legendary speeches, recent podcasts, live events, and more. In addition, we have onboarded a new editor to our flagship publication, the Braille Monitor, the magazine of the blind people’s movement.
Thank you to Gary Wunder for his tremendous stewardship as editor of this publication during the past fifteen years. The Braille Monitor provides a consistent platform for detailed and well-researched articles as well as contemporary stories about the blind experience. We will now seek ways to enhance and streamline our communication across our magazine publication, our online blog content, and our dynamic podcasts. Stay tuned for our new Braille Monitor Early Access blog, where we will publish Braille Monitor articles online and on NFB-NEWSLINE before the full physical issues, so we can share timely information and news as it’s available.
As always, the contributions of members of the Federation are encouraged and needed to ensure our content reflects the concerns, hopes, and dreams of a diverse range of blind people. In an effort to engage a new generation in our shared history, today we have released the trailer for a new Walking Alone and Marching Together podcast.
The book of the same name brings to life the history of the National Federation of the Blind from 1940 to 1990 and has been available in several different formats. But its sheer size and depth can make it daunting to approach. That’s why we are bringing it to you in a multi-episode format this fall—breaking it down into manageable, compelling chapters that allow you to experience the history in a way that fits into your life.
During the past year we updated our plans for our national archives, which are maintained through our Jacobus tenBroek Research Library in Baltimore. We have added eighteen new oral histories to our collection. We have accelerated the cataloging of our archives and have identified new priorities for digitization of critical historical items. We have also begun the process of planning for a comprehensive organizational asset management system that will facilitate our effective use of our archival content and also streamline other organizational resources.
Our strategic work here includes reimagining NFB.org and how we effectively deliver both current and historical content and make it easily discoverable. We continue to operate NFBnet, which is the most extensive electronic archive of information shared between blind people. As part of our strategic direction, we will begin the work of evaluating what the next generation of NFBnet might be, in order to further enhance our communication and information-sharing systems.
All of this is happening while we plan for the future sharing of our stories. We have made the bold commitment to establish the Museum of the Blind People’s Movement as a tool to share the achievements and struggles of our blind predecessors. In the coming months we will complete the schematic design phase of our museum planning, which will help solidify the concepts for three galleries, major topic areas, and themes—all aligned to our overarching goal of building an institution that will transform the public understanding of blind people.
This development work and the efforts to raise the additional 16 million dollars to achieve our dream is happening alongside the day-to-day effort of our library and national archives program. The museum will simply be the next big expansion of how we share the everyday stories of blind people and how they worked together to make society better. That history is found in our stories shared through nearly seventy years of the Braille Monitor, through artifacts displayed throughout our national headquarters, through the minutes and records of our state affiliates, and that history is being made every day through our work together—work that is far too extensive to cover comprehensively in this report.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t share one of our most powerful stories this year—one that fills me with the certainty that we are stronger together. Mary Azatyan-Witmeyer is a blind individual from California who was adopted as an infant by a foster parent. In high school, Mary was sent to live at the California School for the Blind where incredibly she graduated without receiving a high school diploma. There is no reason to suspect that Mary would not have been able to earn a standard diploma.
When she became an adult, Mary’s adopted foster mother gave her a choice—enter into a legal conservatorship giving Mary’s rights over to the foster mother or exit from the adopted foster family, which would leave Mary homeless. The conservatorship would grant the adopted foster mother the right to control Mary’s Social Security benefits, financial decisions, healthcare decisions (including reproductive care), housing decisions, and the right to choose a partner in marriage. No, this is not the 1920s; this story is from today’s America.
Mary did not want to give up these rights but, faced with great uncertainty as an eighteen-year-old and lacking independent legal representation, she reluctantly agreed. The court placed her under a legal conservatorship. Fortunately, this is where Mary’s story intersects with ours.
Mary met members of the National Federation of the Blind who encouraged her to seek training at the Colorado Center for the Blind. At the center, Mary found a chosen family who gave her the skills, education, and belief in herself that she had not received from her public education. As a center student, she attended her first full national convention last year in Orlando. There, she took advantage of our legal office hours, where she asked Tim Elder about her rights. With the support of the Federation, she petitioned to terminate the legal conservatorship against the wishes of the conservator.
On May 8, 2025, the court granted her petition, and Mary, with her rights fully restored, is now free to pursue her dreams with the skills and confidence she found at our training center in Colorado. Mary is not here at this convention because she is completing in-person classes to get her GED so that she can go to college. We can expect Mary at our 2026 convention with her diploma in hand thanks to the certainty her Federation family has gifted to her.
Let me end with where I started: the gift of having a blind-centered movement we can rely on, the security that other blind people will have our back, and the powerful resource of lived experience and shared understanding that comes from linking arms with each other. It is a deep honor and humbling experience to serve as your President on a daily basis. While I have the joy and challenge of leading and reporting on our work, I never forget that it is work carried out by thousands. Our work together continues to enhance my life and gives me great hope even as we live in challenging times.
Thank you for what you do every day, and please know that you continue to have my full commitment to give my best to this movement every day. Most significantly, you have my heart—I love this movement and you, the people who power it. Although our individual stories are not identical, there is a common bond of experience and faith in each other that ties our stories together. My story is your story, and together they are our story.
My Federation family, this is my report for 2025. This is the story of our collective progress.
This is the certain future we build for ourselves with love, hope, and determination. This is the blind people’s movement.