NFBCS Presidential Report 1996

NFBCS Presidential Report 1996

PRESIDENTIAL

REPORT

National Federation of the Blind

California, July 2, 1996

by Marc Maurer

During the past twelve months the National Federation of the

Blind has engaged in a broader array of activities than ever before in its history.

This has necessarily meant heightened awareness, growing sophistication, and

dealing with problems of increasing complexity. Yet, as we gather at this convention,

we come with confidence—confidence borne of a sense of harmony and inner belief

that we will find the resources, muster the will, and encompass the vision to

meet the challenges ahead.

We in the Federation have many assets, but the most important

of these is the solid phalanx of our members, the people who make our movement

what it is—the students, the parents of blind children, the children themselves,

the vendors, the professionals, the officials of programs for the blind, the

laborers in the sheltered shops, the workers in industry, the graduates of Federation

orientation centers, the successful business people, and the ones who have not

yet found employment. And there are others: the families and friends of the

blind who are as much a part of our organization as we who are blind. These

are the people who neither expect nor get special thanks since they are equal

participants in the movement. They are the people who in partnership with the

rest of us distribute literature about the Federation, sell candy, organize

chapter meetings, encourage the discouraged, and carry on the tens of thousands

of daily tasks that make the Federation what it is. We are the blind from every

segment of society and from every corner of America—we are the people of

the organized blind movement.

One of the most exciting developments in the history of the

National Federation of the Blind is NEWSLINE for the Blind®, the nationwide

network which offers newspapers to the blind by touch tone telephone. A pilot

project to demonstrate the workability of the NEWSLINE Network® was initiated

last year. At that time USA Today was on line. Today, not only is there

USA Today, but also the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times,

and local newspapers. The revolutionary character of this development was recognized

last fall by the Greater Baltimore Committee, a group of a thousand business

leaders in Baltimore. This committee conducted an event in October of 1995 called

Tech Night. NEWSLINE for the Blind® was demonstrated to thousands of individuals

and was featured at a gala banquet. The demonstration was simulcast to individuals

all over the world through the Internet. It is estimated that nine million people

saw it.

In April of this year, a camera crew and reporter from the

Cable News Network came to the National Center for the Blind to examine NEWSLINE

and to conduct an interview. The story was broadcast on the news program of

CNN at frequent intervals for a full day; it was carried on the CNN Airport

Network for a weekend; and it was featured as part of the Cable News Network

program describing the most innovative technological products now becoming available.

CNN carried our name and the story of our work to over two hundred countries.

This spring we were invited for an interview on the nationally

broadcast "CBS This Morning" program. The first item to be considered

was NEWSLINE for the Blind. We also demonstrated products from the International

Braille and Technology Center for the Blind and described the work of the Federation.

The message was carried to millions of homes in every part of the nation.

At our convention last year the president of the Polish Association

of the Blind, Tadeusz Madzia, presented a summary of activities of the blind

in Poland. He spoke eloquently of the inspiration which Dr. Kenneth Jernigan

brought to the blind of his country in 1990, and he said that he hoped to see

us develop joint activities and an ongoing relationship. For the entire month

of March of this year, blind instructors from the Colorado Center for the Blind,

the Louisiana Center for the Blind, and the Minnesota center for the blind went

to Poland to conduct training courses for professionals in work with the blind

in that country and to work alongside teachers and blind students. And this

is not the end. Officials at the Polish Association of the Blind have indicated

that they would like to have blind people from their country travel to the United

States to observe and participate in classes at our centers. Representatives

of the Polish Association of the Blind are with us at this convention.

It is interesting to note how the various strands of our work

come together to form a consistent pattern. At the end of April of this year,

I received a letter from Larry Campbell, one of the most widely traveled and

internationally known professionals in work with the blind in this country.

His letter said:

I am writing you this note from Warsaw, although it is unlikely

to reach you before I get home in another week.

I couldn't resist sharing this little story with you. This

morning I woke up quite early, and as is my habit when travelling, I hit the

remote control for the television while I was half asleep. I thought I heard

your voice. I fumbled for my glasses, and when I found them, my eyes confirmed

what my ears already knew. There you were in living color on CNN doing that

very nice piece on the newspaper project. I'm sure it reached lots of people

here in Eastern Europe.

When I got to the Polish Association of the Blind for a meeting

with Tadeusz Madzia and Ludwik Rosiennik, NFB was once again a topic of conversation.

The workshop that NFB recently conducted here has had very positive results—lots

of thinking about revising the rehabilitation process. I was quite pleased

to learn of this work, since I am working on a new project that involves Lithuania,

Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. The work that NFB has done

will, I think, have a very positive impact.

So said Larry Campbell.

In the summer of 1995 we learned of allegations of abuse and

neglect of children at the New Mexico School for the Visually Handicapped. However,

they were reported to us by anonymous letters. Such letters are easy to write,

hard to verify, and almost always useless. But these letters contained so much

specificity that we felt an obligation to investigate. Working through both

our National Office and our state affiliate in New Mexico, we began the search

for the truth.

We found current and former students who said that the pregnancy

rate for girls at the school was high, that sexual activity between boys and

girls at the school was not uncommon, that sexual attack by staff members against

students was a repeated pattern, that drugs were frequently used on campus by

students, that alcoholic beverages were obtained by students, that sometimes

staff members supplied drugs and alcohol in exchange for sex, that physical

abuse of students occurred at the school, and that the superintendent knew about

it and did little to stop it.

We collected documentation and turned it over to the Attorney

General of New Mexico and other officials. Although we were told that an investigation

was being conducted, months passed with no result. We asked the students and

former students if they would be prepared to make affidavits setting forth the

details of the abuse. State officials in New Mexico seemed to take the attitude

that, if the administrators at the School said that it didn't happen, the blind

students and the parents of blind children could not be believed. Those who

had been victims of the alleged abuse asked what could be done. They had come

to us for help. We had promised to bring the matter to public attention. We

had informed the officials who were supposed to act. But nothing had changed.

If government officials are unable or unwilling to protect the rights of blind

children, then we must look to our own resources. That is one of the reasons

why we have a National Federation of the Blind.

We started looking for a lawyer. On May 14, 1996, a lawsuit

was filed in federal court in New Mexico on behalf of students and former students

at the school for the blind. That evening the filing of the lawsuit was reported

on the NBC Nightly News, and the next evening a follow-up, during which I spoke,

was carried. The details of the lawsuit and the allegations that led to its

filing will soon appear in the Braille Monitor.

Meanwhile, I have this to say. If we were only dealing with

New Mexico, it would be bad enough. But we are not just dealing with New Mexico.

We are dealing with a pattern! During the past year we have reported abuses

at the schools for the blind in Arkansas and Illinois. And our information is

that such abuses are also alleged to exist in other schools as well. I want

to be clear about what I am saying. It is not that all schools for the blind

are bad. They aren't. There are some that are doing an excellent job, and we

will support and work closely with them.

But there are others! And we have a message for those others,

one that they would do well to heed. To such schools we say, when you permit

or, by your neglect, condone abuse and mistreatment of blind children, we will

expose your behavior to the public; we will confront you with whatever force

may be required; and we will put a stop to what you are doing. Be assured that

we mean what we say and that we can make it happen!

As Federation members know, we established the International

Braille and Technology Center for the Blind on November 16, 1990, our fiftieth

birthday. It houses the most extensive collection of technology for the blind

in the world, including at least one of every device of which we are aware that

produces information from computers in either speech or Braille. The commitment

we made at the opening of the Center was to maintain this collection of equipment

and to acquire all additional useful machines for the blind that become available.

During the past year we have added four new Braille embossers and obtained or

upgraded four Braille translation software packages, three DOS-based screen

reading programs, eight screen review programs for Windows, two stand-alone

reading machines, four PC-based reading systems, and four note-takers. In order

to keep current and to operate all the computer programs, we have upgraded our

machines and purchased a number of computers in the pentium class. In addition,

we have added Atlas Speaks, a talking atlas of the United States.

Much of the information provided by computer is gathered through

the Information Superhighway, sometimes called the Internet. We have created

in the International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind an Internet

work station, which can be used to demonstrate methods for obtaining information

in speech, in Braille, or in refreshable Braille.

One of the services available through the Internet is electronic

mail. We are beginning distribution of information by this system. Our monthly

publication, the Braille Monitor, is now being distributed automatically

by e-mail to those who want it. If the experiment works, and we feel certain

that it will, other publications will soon be offered for distribution electronically.

The International Braille and Technology Center for the Blind

is a technology laboratory for examining, testing, and comparing different information

access systems for the blind. It is a resource for employers, for agencies for

the blind, for governmental entities, for developers of technology, and for

blind users. Each year we receive thousands of calls requesting information

about technology from throughout the United States and a number of other countries.

Late in 1995 we added an additional training program to those

that we have been conducting. The Information Access Technology Training Program

seeks to give personnel from state vocational rehabilitation agencies background

and knowledge about access technology. A major focus of this program is week-long

seminars conducted at the National Center for the Blind. Four of these have

occurred since late 1995, and eight more will take place during the next two

years. This program, conducted by the National Federation of the Blind, is sponsored

by the Rehabilitation Services Administration. Nowhere else in the world is

there gathered in one place the array of equipment to make such classes possible.

Nowhere else in the world is there the depth of understanding of technological

devices or the commitment to gathering information for the blind that is needed

to conduct such classes. Such training classes could not occur without the National

Federation of the Blind.

In 1991 the National Federation of the Blind convened the first

U.S./Canada Conference on Technology for the Blind. It was an outstanding success.

For the first time consumers of products for the blind, manufacturers of such

products, and organizations associated with blind people came together to exchange

ideas and to plan for the months and years ahead. In 1993 the Second U.S./Canada

Conference on Technology for the Blind was convened. This coming fall we will

bring together at the National Center for the Blind the Third U.S./Canada Conference

on Technology for the Blind, and this time we will expand the participation

to a broader base from other nations.

Last year I reported to you that the National Federation of

the Blind had created an Internet site on the World Wide Web. This is one more

mechanism for distributing literature about the reality of blindness. Already

we have filled almost fifty web pages with information about blindness and the

Federation. Among the documents we have placed there are Walking Alone and Marching

Together, the Braille Monitor, Future Reflections, publications

of Job Opportunities for the Blind, the Voice of the Diabetic, Kernel

books, order forms for literature and aids and appliances, laws concerning the

blind, and hundreds of other documents. It is our intention to create the best

computer- searchable library of information on blindness in existence, and we

are well on the way to doing it.

My wife Patricia serves as a full-time volunteer. She coordinates

the distribution of material through the Internet. Within the last year there

have been more than 13,000 requests for information and more than 40,000 electronic

pages distributed to people in the United States and other countries, including

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Columbia,

Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong,

Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia,

Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Singapore,

Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey,

United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

Increasingly we of the National Federation of the Blind are

taking direct action to provide orientation and adjustment services. In Minnesota

our center, Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions, acquired new classrooms and

office space at a facility which had been built early in the century by the

Pillsbury family. Although this facility has required substantial remodeling,

the basic structure is sound, and it will be both aesthetically pleasing and

functional. I was most pleased to join Joyce Scanlan, the director of our Minnesota

Center, and a number of public officials for the dedication of this newly-opened

facility Last fall.

In Colorado our orientation center, the Colorado Center for

the Blind, outgrew its quarters. Additional space was acquired, and remodeling

to provide the offices and classrooms for a training center for the blind has

now been completed. An open house to dedicate the Center occurred last fall.

In the presence of the news media, the president of our Colorado affiliate,

Diane McGeorge; the director of the Colorado Center for the Blind, Homer Page;

and I cut the ribbon to initiate the opening of the new facility.

Our Louisiana Center for the Blind has also undertaken expansion.

An additional building has been purchased across the street from the original

Center, and a wing has been added to the original building. This much-expanded

space has meant that programs of training could be broadened with additional

classes and a more varied curriculum. Last fall I was present when our Louisiana

Center for the Blind celebrated its tenth anniversary and dedicated its new

facilities in a public ceremony, which included several hundred graduates, many

political leaders, and senior officials of rehabilitation and other state agencies.

Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, who serves as President Emeritus of the

National Federation of the Blind and President of the North America/Caribbean

Region of the World Blind Union, has continued to represent us in international

meetings. He traveled earlier this year to a meeting of the officers of the

World Blind Union in Italy. This coming August he and some of the rest of us

from the Federation will participate in the fourth General Assembly of the World

Blind Union in Canada. It is important that we work with the blind from throughout

the world to expand the understanding of blindness. Our participation in the

World Blind Union has helped bring information to us that we would otherwise

not have had, and it has also enabled us to share information with others.

The upbeat, imaginative work of the National Federation of

the Blind is becoming known throughout the world. The officers of the World

Blind Union met at the National Center for the Blind this spring. For several

days we hosted visitors from six continents.

Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, who has been a leader of the National

Federation of the Blind for almost half a century, is unexcelled in his ability

to negotiate and explain. Last January former ambassador Nicholas Veliotes,

the president of the Association of American Publishers, came to the National

Center for the Blind for a meeting with Dr. Jernigan and other representatives

of the Federation. We discussed cooperation between the Federation and the publishers

and considered possible amendments to the U.S. Copyright Act. One of the problems

in the process of producing Braille is receiving permission for published material

to be put into a format that can be used by the blind. After a long day of discussion,

it was agreed that the blind and the publishers would jointly support amendments

to the copyright law which would eliminate this problem by making copyright

permission automatically available to nonprofit groups and governmental entities

producing material in a format that can be used by the blind. This language

is currently before Congress, and prospects for its passage are extremely good.

A year ago, at the time of the National Federation of the Blind

convention in Chicago, the very existence of the vocational rehabilitation program

in this country was in doubt. A proposal, known as the "CAREERS Bill,"

had been introduced in Congress and was scheduled for consideration on the House

floor. This bill would have eliminated all categorical programs of rehabilitation

for the blind. It would have replaced them with a program purporting to assist

all people seeking employment. Of course, general programs to assist the unemployed

are already theoretically available to the blind, and the result is zero. We

get nothing from such programs—no training, no understanding of our problems

or needs, no jobs, no nothing. We were facing a crisis.

Of course, we were not the only organization to feel concern.

But many of the others expressed frustration and a feeling of inability to do

much about the matter. This was further exacerbated by statements from some

of the largest operators of sheltered shops in the country—Goodwill Industries,

the Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC), the United Cerebral Palsy Association,

and others. These organizations apparently believed that the handicapped would

automatically be referred to their sheltered shop programs by the employment

agency created under the CAREERS Bill, and so they were for it. They and many

members of Congress told us that the CAREERS Bill was a certainty to pass. They

urged us to support it so that we would have an opportunity for input. In effect,

they said: "If you don't support it, you'll be cut out of all of the negotiations."

However, we resisted the seduction, as I hope we always will.

We fought the bill regardless of the threats. It is this sort of thing that

makes some people call us militant and others call us radical. Let them! What

good is an organization if it only fights for what everybody else favors and

nobody opposes? We know full well that the vocational rehabilitation program

is not perfect, but we also know that having no program at all is worse. We

are determined to reform and improve rehabilitation, but we are also determined

to preserve the program.

We urged members of Congress to take the rehabilitation program

out of the CAREERS Bill, and we urged agencies for the blind and others not

to compromise. We were informed that the CAREERS Bill could not be defeated

or amended, but we kept fighting. At our urging an amendment to preserve the

rehabilitation program was presented on the floor of the House on September

19, 1995. When the votes were counted, we prevailed 231 to 192. It was a major

victory, and although many groups and individuals helped make it happen, almost

everybody agrees that we did the coordinating and took the lead. May it ever

be so!

On another legislative front, maintaining the linkage between

the blind and senior citizens in Social Security earnings, we have not been

as successful. There is little to say except that during the past year we made

a strong effort; we gave it everything we had; we didn't get the job done; and

we will keep at it until we do. As we have often observed, we frequently lose

skirmishes; we sometimes lose battles; but we never lose wars—for the war is

not over until we win. So it will be with Social Security.

With respect to another aspect of Social Security, we have

just completed a series of training workshops in the area of Social Security

work incentives. These seminars were conducted in South Carolina, New Mexico,

and Iowa. Rehabilitation personnel and consumers often do not know about the

work incentive provisions of the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental

Security Income programs. This lack of knowledge keeps blind people out of the

work force and out of productive jobs. However, our training programs offer

new perspective and new hope. Furthermore, with three years of experience in

providing this information, we are now in a position to offer classes to rehabilitation

personnel whenever satisfactory arrangements can be made to meet the costs.

This too is a way in which we are changing what it means to be blind.

We continue to provide assistance to blind vendors in the Randolph-Sheppard

program. Jim Gashel, our Director of Governmental Affairs, is serving on a federal

arbitration panel which has been convened by the Secretary of Education to resolve

a dispute between the Mississippi Division of Rehabilitation and the United

States Air Force. Will blind vendors be permitted to operate vending facilities

at Keesler Air Force Base near Biloxi, Mississippi? The full food service contract

for the base is worth several million dollars a year. A hearing on this matter

was held in June in Washington. The language of the Randolph-Sheppard Act is

clear. Blind vendors have a priority. We should have the opportunity to provide

the food service. In this case we are representing the agency for the blind.

When agencies for the blind want expert assistance, an increasing number are

coming to the National Federation of the Blind. A decision is expected later

this summer, and we expect to win.

In another case we are helping to challenge a court decision

which threatens to place severe limits on the powers of an arbitration panel

convened under the Randolph-Sheppard Act. The decision by the United States

District Court in Maryland says that the arbitration panel does not have the

power to tell an agency violating the Act that it must take corrective action.

Instead, the court decision states, the arbitration panel can only determine

that the Act was violated. The agency may take whatever steps it wishes to correct

or not correct the violation. If this decision remains unchanged, much of the

value of an appeal under the Randolph-Sheppard program is gone. We are assisting

the Attorney General of Maryland with the case. The lower court decision ignores

the plain language of the Randolph-Sheppard Act and almost twenty years of legal

precedents and cases. It ignores the entire history of arbitration decisions.

And we will work until the decision has been reversed.

Bobbi Miller is a Federation member in Illinois. One of the

first things she learned, after becoming blind just a few years ago, was that

her employer, the Illinois Department of Corrections, intended to throw her

out because she was blind. They forced her to resign under protest. She asked

us for help, and we are giving it. Scott LaBarre, the president of the National

Association of Blind Lawyers, filed a lawsuit on her behalf about a year ago.

But the court was just as discriminatory as the Department of Corrections had

been. Without even giving Bobbi Miller a hearing, it issued a decision in favor

of the state. The decision says that there is not one single solitary job that

a blind person can do in a correctional facility—not one. We can't wash the

dishes or scrub the floors or manage the paperwork or interview the prisoners

or consider paroles or do purchasing or write manuals or serve in the administration

or do anything else. We are helpless, the judge said. The Court's ruling cannot

remain unchallenged— and it will not. We are helping with the appeal. If we

are unwilling to fight for our own rights, nobody else will do it for us. We

must defend ourselves. We are doing it in the Bobbi Miller case, and we expect

to win.

Last year I reported to you that we were helping a blind person

bring a case against a nursing home in North Carolina. Barbara Kreisberg, one

of our members, had been dismissed from her position as director of the facility

because of blindness. Senior management of the nursing home company refused

to discuss or negotiate regarding the dismissal. We filed a lawsuit. I am pleased

to be able to tell you that the matter has been settled. Part of the settlement

agreement says that I may not tell you about the specifics. However, I can tell

you that we caught them red- handed and that they settled accordingly. Otherwise

we would not have discontinued our lawsuit. I suspect that it will be a long

time before the nursing home company forgets the name of the National Federation

of the Blind.

In most instances I am happy to say that we are able to work

in partnership with state rehabilitation agencies for the blind. However, there

are other instances in which the behavior of officials in such agencies is reminiscent

of a bygone time. This is currently true in Missouri. Some months back, rehabilitation

officials in Missouri issued an order to counsellors and others at the agency

that they were not to provide any information to blind clients about the National

Federation of the Blind. Agency personnel were even forbidden to tell blind

persons whether they were members of the Federation. In the past the National

Federation of the Blind had conducted joint projects with the agency to give

orientation to blind students getting ready to go to college, and both the students

and agency officials had uniformly praised the quality of the work. Now there

is to be a total blackout, an order that agency personnel may not give any information

about the Federation or distribute any of its literature, regardless of how

helpful or informative such literature might be.

We have informed the Missouri rehabilitation officials that

what they are doing is illegal. To say to blind clients that they may not have

information about programs of interest to them because those programs are offered

by an organization that state officials may not like is a violation of Constitutional

rights and basic human freedom. We who are blind have a right to freedom of

association, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought. No government official

(whether state or federal) has the right to say otherwise, but when we said

this to the agency officials in Missouri, they told us, in effect, to get lost.

They would do what they pleased, they said, and part of what they pleased to

do was to ban any reference to the National Federation of the Blind by any person

at the Missouri agency for the blind.

Well, we can only answer in kind. Let them try to make it stick.

We are preparing to file a lawsuit, and we expect to win it. As we have repeatedly

said, we prefer peace and cooperative relations, but we will not take peace

at any price. If we can have peace only by giving up our freedom and human dignity

and crawling on our bellies, then we will fight. I am not speaking lightly.

This lawsuit will cost money—maybe a lot of money. But this is a fundamental

issue. We will raise the funds; we will fight with every weapon we can get;

and we intend to win.

We have continued to assist with Social Security appeals. Terry

Hasselbring, who lives in Estill Springs, Tennessee, was told that, because

he had begun to work and receive a paycheck, he was getting too much money to

receive Social Security benefits. He was also told that he had been paid $6,379.20

more than he deserved. He would no longer receive benefits, said Social Security

officials, and he must repay the $6,379.20. We helped with an appeal, and a

new determination has been made. Terry Hasselbring will not be required to pay

$6,379.20, and his Social Security benefits will continue to be paid. This,

too, is what the National Federation of the Blind is about.

That is one case, but there are dozens of others. Marie Hahn

in Amarillo, Texas, has been told that she must repay $18,340. The facts show

that she does not owe this money. Verna Kerley from Cookeville, Tennessee, has

been told that she is no longer eligible for benefits and that she must repay

$53,866. Alan Alcorn of Kansas City, Kansas, has been ordered to send the Social

Security Administration a check for $60,275. They told him that he had received

benefits to which he was not entitled. In each of these cases the National Federation

of the Blind is helping, and we believe we can make the difference.

The Diabetes Action Network, the diabetics division of the

National Federation of the Blind, has been instrumental in persuading officials

at the Food and Drug Administration to consider modification of insulin containers

so that the different kinds of insulin can be readily identified by touch. Tom

Ley, President of the Diabetes Action Network, and Ed Bryant, Editor of the

Voice of the Diabetic, pointed out to officials at the Food and Drug

Administration that putting insulin of different kinds into bottles of different

shapes would simplify identification for the blind and sighted alike and would

assist in assuring that incorrect doses of insulin did not occur.

We have continued this year providing information about blindness

to many thousands of people. Visitors have come to the National Center for the

Blind from all parts of the United States and from over twenty foreign countries.

Through our Materials Center we distribute over four hundred different kinds

of specialized products for the blind, including Braille watches, canes, Braille

slates, and hundreds of others. This year we have served over eighteen thousand

people by mail, in person, and by phone. We receive in the Materials Center

in excess of two hundred calls per week. There are over a thousand different

literature items available for distribution. During the year we have shipped

from the Materials Center two million items weighing over seventy-five thousand

pounds.

At last year's convention we produced a new video depicting

the crisis in Braille literacy. This video, "That the Blind May Read,"

is a powerful summation of the failure of the educational system to teach blind

people Braille. If the blind are to become competent, we must be able to read.

This video tells the story of the need for Braille and of the failure of teachers

to fill that need. Over seven hundred fifty copies of this video have now been

distributed. It has been shown on dozens of television stations and a number

of television networks.

Then there is the program of Job Opportunities for the Blind,

which we continue to operate in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Through this effort we have helped over one hundred blind Americans get full-time

jobs at good salaries during the past year. These newly-hired blind people work

in diverse occupations from medical transcriptionist to customer assistant for

Chevrolet, from accountant to Sheriff's Office emergency dispatcher, from teacher

to translator on the Hindi desk for Voice of America, and more.

In addition to the Braille Monitor, which is distributed

to tens of thousands of people each month, we record and mail over ten thousand

copies of Future Reflections, the magazine for parents and educators

of blind children. During the past year we have sent out more than nine thousand

Presidential Releases; more than ten thousand recorded JOB Bulletins; and more

than eighteen thousand recorded editions of the Voice of the Diabetic.

The Voice of the Diabetic, our publication for those

interested in the problems of blind diabetics, is the most widely circulated

magazine in the blindness field in America today. We distribute more than 142,000

copies each quarter, and we expect to exceed the one hundred fifty thousand

mark this year.

We also produce the recorded edition of The American Bar Association

Journal. And, of course, there are the other publications—newsletters from

divisions of the Federation, from state affiliates, from local chapters, and

from committees.

One of the most positive projects we have ever undertaken,

which will be covered in more detail later in the convention, is our publication

of the Kernel Books. More than three million of them are now abroad in the land.

They describe blindness with a level of understanding and persuasive power unlike

anything ever before written.

Remodeling at the National Center for the Blind has been undertaken

this year, along with the ongoing maintenance necessary to keep our facilities

in first-class condition. Whenever we can, we build for the long term. Our facilities

are functional, but they are also solidly built with a touch of class.

So what does all of this recital of facts and statistics mean?

What does it say as to where we have been and where we are going? Well, for

one thing it says that we are alive and moving, the most dynamic force in the

affairs of the blind today. It also bodes well for the future.

Let me conclude by repeating what I have said to you in one

way or another year after year at the end of these reports. I think I understand

the responsibility you have given me by electing me as President of this organization,

and I have done the best I can to live up to it. As long as you keep electing

me, I will continue to try to live up to it. But there is something more. There

must be a bond of understanding between us, between you as members and me as

President—and I think there is. That is the only way that the accomplishments

we have made have been possible. That is the only way they can continue. I must

be willing to stand in the front line and never duck the hard decisions. When

there are risks, I must be prepared to take them—and I must not count the

cost. I must work as hard as I can and put the Federation first. I must give

and sacrifice and love.

And there are things that you must do, you the members—you

who give the Federation its strength and provide its moral right to exist and

lead the way in the struggle of the blind to be free. You must stand with me

when the battle is hard. You must support me when our efforts on behalf of the

blind bring criticism and personal attack. You must reinforce, encourage, and

give heart.

These are the promises we must make to each other. These are

the commitments we must give and keep—and I know that we will. If we do,

we will not be defeated, for we cannot. We will not even be slowed in our progress,

for none will have the moral right to stand in our way. These are my pledges—and

this is my report.

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Updated: March 14, 2002