by Oral O. Miller
When considered carefully, the enormous amount of quiet respect received by many ACB members from their international counterparts should come as no surprise. From that moment in 1984 when I was honored by being asked to draft the resolution merging the World Council for the Welfare of the Blind and the International Federation of the Blind into the World Blind Union and then presiding over the meeting at which that resolution was approved to the most recent international presentation by an ACB member, ACB members have been recognized as knowledgeable, responsible, tireless, effective advocates for improving the well-being of blind and visually impaired people around the world. For a moment, consider just the working delegation regarding services for the elderly blind led by past president LeRoy Saunders to Japan in the early 1990s, the delegations regarding services for the blind in Germany and Russia later in the 1990s and the activities of other members fulfilling responsibilities connected with international braille authorities, the World Blind Union and other organizations. In short, ACB members have earned the respect of their international counterparts for themselves and ACB itself.
In many foreign countries, the consumer organizations of the blind sponsor a wide variety of activities such as sports, job training and international exchange, whereas many such activities are conducted by separate organizations in the USA. As a result, many of the leaders of foreign organizations often direct several programs which come into contact with many different American advocates. It should come as no surprise then that ACB’s principal lines of communication for inviting international blindness dignitaries as convention speakers (such as from Russia, Spain and Japan) went through sports organizational channels. Information about ACB’s leadership in establishing special-interest affiliates to provide the unique services needed by their members has also evoked interest by other countries in sharing in the expertise developed by those affiliates. For example, the director general of the Taiwan Institute for the Blind, who spoke at the 1998 ACB national convention and presented a very generous donation to ACB at that time, invited Dr. Paul Ponchillia, Dr. Susan Ponchillia and me to present professional papers at the November 2003 conference on improving global employment opportunities for the blind and visually impaired. Dr. Paul Ponchillia, now chairman of the blindness and low vision studies department at Western Michigan University, and Dr. Susan Ponchillia, professor of blindness and low vision studies at the same university, submitted an outstanding paper regarding vocational training programs and policies in the USA in the past 50 years and suggestions as to how those programs should be improved. I was honored to present a paper concerning the admission of blind people into the profession of law and other professions. The conference, which was attended by representatives from 12 nations and which had been postponed before due to the SARS epidemic in Asia, was successfully rescheduled, but at the last minute the Ponchillias were not able to attend due to the illness of Susan Ponchillia. Their paper was effectively presented by another speaker and colleague, Dr. Jim Leja, associate dean of the College of Health and Human Services at Western Michigan University. Another presenter was the first blind person admitted to the practice of law in Japan — a man whom it was my pleasure to advise and counsel as he fought to be allowed to take the national bar examination in Japan in braille.
Favorable impressions of ACB as gleaned at its national convention (as busy and hectic as that event may be) and other ACB activities bore very beneficial fruit recently as I was honored with an invitation to present a series of lectures in Japan on the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other disability rights legislation in the USA. Those favorable observations came from a Japanese university professor who, as a graduate student, first learned of ACB from past president Grant Mack and me at the organizational meeting of the World Blind Union, then saw ACB in action when she came to a national convention as an interpreter for an international speaker, learned more about it from presentations given by Dr. Rose Resnick and other ACB participants at an international conference in Japan on services to the elderly blind, and then learned more about it from past president LeRoy Saunders and other ACB members who hosted and carried out an educational program in New York City several years ago for a Japanese delegation sponsored by a foundation there interested in learning more about job training and opportunities for the blind in the USA. My lectures were given at a modern cross-disability service center in Tokushima City, at Kochi Prefecture University, at Kochi Prefecture School for the Blind and at a community center in Matsuyama City. My audiences, which varied somewhat from location to location, were somewhat surprised to learn that the highly publicized ADA had not substantially improved employment opportunities for blind and visually impaired citizens while bringing about a number of improvements in other areas. While in the area of Kochi City and during a short visit in Tokyo, I learned that plans are under way to educate more blind students in mainstream schools in the future and to significantly change the roles of the residential schools. Concern about this plan was expressed because, among other reasons, the residential schools for the blind have been the principal teachers of the ancient disciplines of massage and acupuncture, once the primary employment for blind workers in Japan. One official informed me that now approximately 30 percent of the masseurs and acupuncture specialists in Japan are blind, contrasted with 70 percent approximately 50 years ago, and that, during the five-year period from 1996 to 2001 the number of blind practitioners dropped from approximately 21,000 to approximately 17,000. Leaders in the national organization of the blind agreed that blind and visually impaired people need to be trained for a greater variety of jobs and that employers will then need to be persuaded that they can perform the essential functions of those jobs. Sound familiar?