At the 2024 convention, we hosted a session where we went rapid-fire through a list of bills currently in Congress that we are following or that ACB has officially endorsed. This was done to connect our members to the work we do as advocates on behalf of ACB. For this issue of the Forum, we will recap several of those bills, along with any work that has taken place on either the Congressional side, or on ACB’s side.
First up, we have our four (and a half) legislative imperatives: the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act; the Communications, Video, and Technology Accessibility Act; the Medical Devices Nonvisual Accessibility Act; the Medicare and Medicaid Dental, Vision, and Hearing Benefits Act; and the FAA reauthorization. The FAA reauthorization passed and is awaiting implementation, and we are engaging in that process with our federal and corporate allies. We are continuing to advocate for the other four with members of Congress and their staff. We are also working in cross-disability coalitions on the website bill and on the CVTA and participate in weekly strategy meetings on both. We continue to meet with members of relevant Congressional committees on the medical devices bill and on the Medicare and Medicaid bill, including the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. At this point, passage of any of these bills is unlikely, but we are working to build momentum so that they can come out swinging early in the next Congressional session that begins in January 2025.
In last month’s Forum, there was an article from the Alliance on Aging and Vision Loss on the Older Americans Act reauthorization. The OAA needs to be reauthorized for the next five years by the end of September. It provides crucial funding for programs and services necessary for individuals who are aging in the United States. AAVL and others from the rehabilitation world have been advocating for inclusion of older Americans with vision loss and the services and programs they need to live full and productive lives as they age into disability. ACB continues to advocate with them. If not included in this reauthorization, then we will explore ways in which blind and low-vision seniors may receive necessary services and support. This may include advocacy with federal agencies.
The last few bills are ones that ACB is monitoring or has officially endorsed but have not been as high of a priority as the above. These also might be bills that our partners in the disability community are working heavily on due to expertise or manpower, or legislative priorities that differ from our own. The first of these is the Alice Cogswell and Anne Sullivan Macy Act, which provides for increased funding and sets standards for high quality instruction of blind, deaf, and deaf-blind K-12 students. The second is the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, which raises the asset limit, or the amount of money saved up, for SSI beneficiaries. If this bill passes, beneficiaries can save up to $10,000 if they are single and $20,000 if they are a couple. The last two are the Transformation to Competitive Integrated Employment Act, which among other things, eliminates the payment of subminimum wages, and the Early Detection of Visual Impairment in Children Act, which creates a federal program to provide vision screening exams to children so that visual impairments may be detected at earlier ages for intervention and treatment purposes.
The landscape of federal legislation is always a roller coaster, and it can be quite unpredictable. Advocacy is never done, and we hope to see many of these bills reintroduced in the next Congressional session. Stay tuned for more updates from the ACB Advocacy Team. Until next month, and as always, keep advocating!