by Charlie Crawford
As I read through my many electronic-mail messages this morning, I saw two messages which described the events in Washington concerning a hearing in which the accessibility of the Internet was put at risk. ACB, NFB, AFB, and our many partners responded to the threat with a great line-up of witnesses to make the technical, user, and legal cases for our access. In addition, the room was filled with blind folks to demonstrate our concern. What if we had not been there?
Three weeks ago a gathering of legislative, consumer, and non-profit providers met to discuss the whole issue of the sub-minimum wage which is still paid to blind and other disabled folks in many industrial workshops around the nation. The objective was to encourage the forward movement of legislation to free blind folks from being paid less than the minimum wage. But you can bet there were many other concerns from many other people in the disability community circulating in that meeting room.
Currently, the status of this issue is being worked out with a goal of allocating sufficient time for all workshops to come up to minimum wage. Whether this strategy or some version of it is ultimately successful, what if we had not been there?
Today I will be going over to a meeting here in Austin, Texas, to continue working on accessible intersection design, while Melanie Brunson, Julie Carroll and Ken Stewart work on other areas of pedestrian safety to insure that the federal requirements for public ways in the future really do get to our specific issues. What if we were not here?
I could go on and on about this stuff, but the wonderful thing about having our American Council of the Blind is that we are there when blind folks need to have our issues raised and worked through. Whether we live in New York or Los Angeles or Idaho or Georgia, there are affiliates, individual members, and the national ACB to keep the ball rolling. We are truly blessed to have so many wonderful members and I for one shudder to think: What if you were not there along with the rest of us as we keep building a better world for people who are blind?
I often encourage people to tell the story of ACB, and, as I think about it, I know it’s the story of you and me and all of us being where we need to be to help each other. Thanks to all of you for being there. See you in Louisville!