by Penny Reeder
The Federation does not get it. Apparently they believe that blind people are somehow removed from the ranks of ordinary Americans who come home from long workdays and crash on their couches in front of their television sets. Video description, they say, is not important, blind people, they say, don’t need it and don’t want it; it’s too costly, they say; and even though members of the American Council of the Blind joined a large coalition of organizations including the American Foundation for the Blind and the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER) in more than 15 years of lobbying and advocacy efforts to achieve a modicum of video description in prime-time television broadcasts, the Federation will save us from ourselves and sue the Federal Communications Commission to stop requirements for a mere four hours of video description in prime-time and children’s programming a week.
The Federation is wrong. We blind people are, in fact, just like everyone else — except that everyone else can see what’s happening on their TV screens and we can’t. Does that mean that we are content to ignore what everyone else in America is watching on their TVs? Do we want to spare our visually impaired preschoolers from the educational and entertainment benefits of “Arthur” or “Wishbone” or “The Rugrats?” Do we want to avoid water-cooler conversations about the season finale on “Friends,” or “E.R.,” or “The Sopranos?” Of course not.
The Federation’s decision to join the greedy television, cable and motion picture associations in their attempts to stop the requirements for video described programming on television is disgraceful! We urge all of you who care about participating in the regular day-to-day activities that everyone else in our culture takes for granted to tell your friends and acquaintances in the National Federation of the Blind to get a life and get with the program! It is right that the television networks provide closed captioning for people who cannot hear the conversations that occur during programming on television. It is also right that video description be made available to people who cannot see what’s happening on the screen.
Perhaps it’s a good thing that the misguided leaders of the Federation have so publicly shown their true colors. Who will now be able to look to the NFB as a credible source of information about who blind people are or what blind people need or want? How can they really represent the blind and visually impaired people in this country, as they so loudly and frequently proclaim they do, if they actively seek to prevent our participation in one of the few activities that seems to unite us — Americans with all our many diversities — as a culture? Their members should rise up in rebellion and explain to their leaders that they are out of touch with what blind people want and what blind people need.
We at “The Braille Forum” have had enough! Enough of people who tell the country and the world that it’s not important to have a tactile warning at the edge of subway platforms! Enough of an organization whose members attempt to dissuade traffic engineers from doing the right and intelligent thing at actuated street corners by installing accessible pedestrian signals! Enough of NFB-controlled rehabilitation centers that require low-vision trainees to wear sleep shades and to keep their guide dogs in upstairs rooms while they deny the usefulness of residual vision and lie to themselves and other people about their low vision! Enough is enough!
Video description may not be as important as the safety of travelers on subway platforms, or the ability of blind and visually impaired people to know, along with sighted pedestrians, when it’s safe to begin their street crossings, or rehabilitation that acknowledges a person’s actual needs and capabilities. But the National Federation of the Blind’s decision to bring a lawsuit to undo a regulation which has made people who are blind finally feel included in the mainstream of society is the final straw, the one that finally makes us angry enough to say to the Federation and to the people they claim to represent, enough is enough!
We all have friends and acquaintances in the Federation. We all have friends and acquaintances who have decided for one reason or another not to affiliate with either organization. Let us encourage all who are blind to tell the leadership of the NFB, as well as the broadcasting industry associations, that described video is no less important than all the other accommodations we rely upon to work, to learn, to be as included in the mainstream of American society and culture as everyone else.
We will not allow the Federation to misrepresent either who we are or what we want and what we expect in the way of environmental accommodation. You in the Federation should think twice the next time you claim to speak for the blind consumers in America — because you are out of touch with those blind consumers, and we can speak very effectively for ourselves.