by Chris Gray
As I write my message for the November issue of “The Braille Forum,” we stand at a new crossroads in our ACB work. News has just come of a virtually certain victory on voter rights legislation, as the Senate has approved House legislation, and the package is on its way to President Bush’s desk. Access for blind voters to a guaranteed secret means of voting independently, in all polling places, backed by supporting federal grants, is an essential component of this legislation — all because of your tireless efforts and those of Melanie Brunson as our staff liaison in this project.
Ten years ago, who would have believed that blind citizens could win a federal mandate for one accessible voting machine in every polling place in America?
Ten years ago, there wasn’t even such a thing as an accessible voting machine! Voting has traditionally been a local issue, handled by individual states. Even today, a great deal of advocacy is required in order to persuade individual states and localities to move the process of access forward. ACB stood alone as the consumer champion of voters’ rights among those lobbying for new initiatives for people who are blind in our nation’s capital.
This epoch change, to be realized throughout the country in the next three to five years, is one of many changes on which we have taken a stand in strong support of the rights of blind people. ACB is, without doubt, the consumer champion of the new century. We have succeeded in promoting and providing individual rights for accessible voting, accessible TV, and a better and safer pedestrian environment for disabled people. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with blind industrial workers, who are being tyrannized by RSA because of their choice to make a living in industrial settings where other blind people also happen to work. We are in litigation and involved in many other activities to safeguard and protect the rights of choice for those who travel with dog guides. In the past 30 days, we have approached Congress and the Department of Education with a bold new set of educational initiatives and legislative proposals to safeguard blind children’s right to an appropriate education in a reasonable setting. All of these efforts and initiatives represent, in sum, who ACB is as an advocacy organization and what we stand for as conscientious, thoughtful, and responsible blind consumers.
With such a track record of successful achievement, we must now consider what is to come next for blind Americans and ACB members. Already, we have begun to struggle in earnest toward achieving the goal of having an accessible currency in the United States. If 149 other countries can provide this service to their visually impaired citizens, then we can surely be the 150th. If the entire European economic community, a structure that embraces many countries with different currencies and languages, can make a transition to one euro, a currency which has multi-colored and multi-sized bills, surely our great nation can find a way to make our own dollars accessible over a scheduled period of years.
As an entirely new initiative, consider the fact that blind people are being more and more compromised in our ability to travel freely in our towns and cities, and from one municipality to another. I call this the “You Can’t Get There From Here” syndrome. It is no exaggeration to say that despite very real problems in the area of traveling where we want and need to go, blind people in America are completely lacking a set of policy goals or legislative initiatives in this arena. Generally speaking, we know what we need and desire in the fields of rehabilitation and in the financial assistance programs represented by our Social Security system. But we have no such set of goals for transportation, either within cities and towns, or for the highways and byways that connect our nation together. A large portion of the mid-year meeting for 2003 will be devoted to work on this topic, and a task force is already at work about which you will be hearing much more between now and February.
The record is clear and the facts speak for themselves as we move toward 2003. The American Council of the Blind has been the consumer champion for all blind people in America. We do not hide behind the umbrella of federal money. We do not blunt our force or sap our strength in pseudo-professional endeavors that can actually have the effect of harming consumerism at the expense of our programmatic goals. ACB has and will continue to stand for the rights of blind people: our right to choose how and where we travel; our right to be individuals and think for ourselves; our right to a self-fulfilling life. These are the true philosophical roots for which we have stood and will continue to stand as an organization. It is on this foundation that we have built ACB into the premiere organization of blind people in our nation.