Pondering the State of the Blindness Organizations in the US

Once upon a time, I didn't have much feeling one way or the other on the various blindness organizations. I was aware of them, had presented at or attended chapter meetings and conventions for both the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and American Council of the Blind (ACB), but my exposure to the groups, their missions, or general philosophies was limited.

Over the last several years, I have become more cognizant of both of these groups, as well as others, thanks in no small part to the Internet and the rapidity with which the visually impaired community came together and solidified online.

As I've learned and experienced more about these two groups in particular, I've become less and less impressed with what these groups stand for, and more and more horrified that, by the sheer virtue of being visually impaired, I am unwittingly attached to them. Like it or not…whether it is even true or not…we, the visually impaired community, are being represented by these organizations, whether we are members or agree with their projects. None of the groups does anything to dispel that perception in the wider world.

Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert on every minute detail of the ACB and NFB. This blog entry is just a collection of my own personal observations, opinions, thoughts, and feelings regarding them. I suspect that my views will probably offend some of their members. I also suspect, based on conversations I've had with many visually impaired folks who do not affiliate themselves with either group, that there are a large percentage of people out there who, for one reason or another, will agree with my points, and feel disenfranchised from both groups . I'm not writing this to change anyone's mind. If you are already firmly entrenched in one of these groups, chances are your mind is made up and nothing I could say would change the foundations of your beliefs. Maybe, though, some members of both groups will read this and come away with some ideas on how to improve themselves and their organization…or at least with a better understanding of how many view them.

The first and most visible aspect of both the ACB and NFB groups that put me off years ago is a surface problem which runs deeper than either group will ever admit. Ceaseless, endless, pointless finger pointing back and forth between the ACB and NFB colors everything they do, especially among their lower ranks. Snide comments abound, occasionally even from those who are held in esteem within their respective organizations. It's very much akin to the more appalling American politicians who put their party ahead of all else, regardless of which side of the fence they are on, and point fingers incessantly a the other side. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have their problems. When we Americans affiliate with one or the other, it is more often than not out of a need to choose the lesser of two evils. You find the party whose general principles run in parallel with yours and you cope with the baggage that goes along with the affiliation. In the same way, both ACB and NFB have their issues. Healthy debate and disagreement is one thing. Childish remarks and snide comments is certainly something else.

My first big run-in with the NFB was several years ago, when I was working for a huge international corporation which was hiring a significant number of visually impaired folks at one of its local call centers. The major intersection near this area was a difficult one for some, including me, whose hearing was not perfect. The corporation petitioned the city, requested an auditory crosswalk. The city refused, sighting the NFB and their opposition to auditory crosswalks. Eventually, the big international corporation won that battle, and we got our crosswalk, but it took far longer than it should have, and left a very bitter taste in my mouth regarding NFB. To them, their principles were more important than others' safety.

The NFB's argument, as I understand it, runs something along the lines of: "Blind folks should not rely on auditory crosswalks. They should be forced to learn the patterns of the traffic for their own safety crossing streets." However, this sort of logic has some gaping holes in it. For one thing, it leaves the visually impaired pedestrian at the mercy of the drivers on the road to be driving as they should. Anyone with an ounce of sanity can see the danger in that, especially living in a metropolitan area. If it was safe to trust our fellow humans invariably in this way, there would be no need for visual crosswalks either, would there? What about traffic lights? I mean, all drivers should be smart enough to know when to go or when not to, based on the traffic patterns, right? And what about folks who can't hear the traffic as well as a blaring auditory signal? They're putting their lives into the hands of strangers in the cars around them every time they cross a street. An auditory crosswalk hurts no one, and puts everyone on equal footing.

A few years ago, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), yet another organization, published a review of Apple's VoiceOver screen reader, then newly available in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The article was full of inaccurate statements, and did a lot of damage to the visually impaired Mac community in general. The review came out after a couple of folks who attended an AFB convention reported that a person in power at AFB had been quite frank that he would do whatever he could to insure Apple's failure, to safeguard the assistive technology industry. I readily admit that this is anecdotal, but I personally trust these individuals. They have no reason to lie about these statements that I'm aware of, and even if untrue, there is simply no excuse for publishing false information.

The ACB wasted time and resources at one of its conventions to draw up a resolution against Apple as well, for the "inaccessible" iPhone when it was first launched two years ago. Their general view, as it has been explained to me, is that nothing should be allowed to exist unless it is accessible to the blind. One ACB member even proposed to me that all bookstores, grocery stores, and so on, should be forced to carry accessible copies of all their products. Cereal boxes with Braille? Mountains of Braille books they'll never sell? While this is clearly an extreme, I can't except the general philosophy that absolutely everyone should have to cater to us, whether it is feasible or makes business sense.

Even that aside, Apple is one of few companies that has demonstrated a proactive attitude toward access. Instead of drawing up hostile resolutions against these companies, I feel strongly that we should support and encourage them. As Apple has now clearly demonstrated with the release of the iPhone 3GS and its VoiceOver capabilities, access was always something they were working on in this device. The processors of the previous generations were unable to cope with the demand of a screen reader that was up to Apple's standards in addition to the phone's other demands, but the frameworks for access were clearly being put in place from day one. If they had not been, we wouldn't have access to so many third-party applications already. Has the ACB acknowledged this fact? Not to my knowledge. They, in conjunction with the NFB, are too busy attacking another ally.

In an attempt to force Amazon to make their Kindle device accessible, the ACB and NFB have joined forces to try to block use of Kindles at the university level. I find this course of action appalling, not least because I'd like access to the Kindle's content as much as anyone else. The methods being employed, however, I vehemently disagree with.

First, Amazon, like Apple, has demonstrated a commitment toward accessibility. They've developed an alternative UI for their Amazon.com site that is useful for some screen reader users. Most have little or no problem using the main site, as it is quite accessible. They have worked with access tech companies to include Audible support into many of their devices. (Audible is owned by Amazon.) Further, they have already integrated text-to-speech functionality into its Kindle device, and have publicly stated that they are working on greater access.

So why are the ACB and NFB trying to block the use of this device by those who could actually benefit from it? It's a significant question with no satisfactory answer. Even if the device was made accessible, thanks to DRM and the restrictions by some publishers and the Author's Gild, much of the content likely will not be. Since Amazon has already declared that they are working on access, and have a good record of doing so in the past, wouldn't it make more sense to focus efforts on convincing the publishers and Author's Guild to loosen restrictions so that we can have access to this content?

The Internet content that is available on the Kindle free of restriction, such as articles on Wikipedia.org, has been available in portable handheld devices for the blind for years, long before the Kindle.

That aside, the sheer hypocrisy of the stance is tremendous. The ACB and NFB claim that, since blind students cannot benefit from using this device, that the device should not be used at all. Of course, Braille'n'Speaks, PacMates, and a thousand other gismos that have been readily provided to blind students for years are perfectly acceptable, even though they would not be accessible to sighted students who don't read or write Braille. The BookSense and Victor Reader devices for the blind, among others, provide quite similar functionality to the Kindle. They, too, act as portable repositories for electronic books for quick and easy perusal.

I have heard two main rebuttals against this argument, which I'd like to address. The first is that the BookSense and similar devices are accommodations needed by the blind student. This is flatly untrue. Neither book readers for blind or sighted students are necessities. One of the primary purposes of both is to ease the learning process for the respective groups. Most sighted college students are perfectly capable of carrying around 20 pounds of textbooks with them. The Kindle makes this significantly easier and lighter. Likewise, blind students have a variety of means by which to read electronic texts that are bulkier and less convenient. Portable computers, such as notebook PC's, provide the same functionality as the more convenient BookSense or Victor Reader Stream. The question is, why should either group have to deal with bulkier, less efficient formats?

A sighted student should not be forced to carry around enormous textbooks instead of the lightweight Kindle, just because the Kindle is inaccessible. It makes no difference to either the sighted student or the blind student if the sighted student's books, in the form that the sighted student is using them, are accessible, because they do not belong to the blind student. Likewise, the sighted student does not care if the blind student's book reader has a screen, because the blind student is the one using it. For the blind student to demand that the sighted student's books have to be accessible to him or her makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In fact, the idea that the sighted student cannot have the tools available to them because they are not accessible to the blind student simply makes it look like the blind student…or in this case the blindness organizations…are throwing a tantrum because they can't have the same new toy as the sighted student, even though the BookSense or Victor Reader Streams do, essentially, the same thing. You could take this argument one step further, and say that no sighted student can have a computer without a screen reader installed. Or, if we want to really enter the land of lunacy, let's take pens and pencils away from sighted students, as they are of no use to the blind student. As far as the ACB and NFB are concerned, it doesn't matter if the blind student has equivalent or, in some cases, superior tools than these.

One could argue that a problem might arise if, someday, the text books were not available in any form except the Kindle format. Blind students, however, got by for years without scanners, OCR, and BookShare.org. Is it ideal? Absolutely not. Would that circumstance ever rise? It is highly unlikely. And, it is not a fair argument, because the groups have been quite candid about the fact that this lawsuit is about the device, not the content. If it was about the content, they'd be focusing all their energy for this issue toward publishers instead. They aren't.

BookShare.org is a resource only available to the blind and visually impaired. It provides books at low or no cost to them in an accessible format. How sighted students would love such a resource. Alas, they must pay for their books and download them to a Kindle. The blindness organizations are not fighting for equal access. They are fighting for superior or free access. Or, to put it more colloquially, they want their cake and eat it too.

Here's a question for ACB or NFB members and staff: If we had total access to everything available in the Kindle format, which includes many times the number of books available on BookShare.org, would you advocate for the immediate shut down of BookShare.org? I seriously doubt it.

Continuing the above rebuttal, proponents of the suit will claim that the comparison between the BookSense and other devices to the Kindle falls short, because of the Kindle's content. However, from all that I've seen, and by their own admission, this suit is not about the content, but about the device itself. I have been saying, for months in fact, that if these groups want to do something constructive, they would be better off working with publishers and the Author's Guild to ensure access, rather than trying to take Kindles away from college kids. You cannot say it is about the content, when it is the device, or as Darrell Shandrow, the ACB's public face for the lawsuit puts it, "the wrapper", which they are working to ensure access to with this action.

When I proposed that the main result of this lawsuit would be just to take Kindles away from college kids, the response I got was even more alarming. It was, in effect, that it didn't matter if we hurt sighted students. On the contrary, it wasn't at their expense at all, because they, the sighted students, already had the greatest access. Here's the quote:

Darrell Shandrow: "@Lioncourt Not at expense of others who are already the majority and automatically granted the greatest access."

I want to make it clear that I'm not singling out Darrell Shandrow. It just happens that he is the person with whom I was trying to discuss the issue. His responses to my arguments on this issue were perhaps the most disheartening, because they are indicative of the thought processes of these groups, as well as their unwillingness to consider other points of view. His stance was that the Kindle was only accessible to the sighted, while the BookSense and similar devices were accessible to all. This clearly demonstrates the sheer self-absorbtion from which the blind in general, and the blindness organizations in particular, suffer. It illustrates the depth of their own hypocrisy, which they excuse by saying that their job is to only look out for themselves. It is one thing to advocate for accessibility for your own minority, and quite another to do so at the expense of others.

Even if you could get the majority of sighted students to be willing to listen to, instead of read, their textbooks, what about deaf students? Not every tool is or should be meant to be used by every person. The more people that you can make a device accessible to the better, of course, but to attempt to bar the use of a device to one group just because you haven't been invited to play, is downright alarming.

The blindness organizations have no qualms about the fact that many of the devices provided to visually impaired students are inaccessible to some minorities, (i.e., the deaf), but when they are excluded, it is cause for lawsuits and recriminations.

If the ACB and NFB want to do something constructive, they should work with the publishers and the Author's Guild who stand in the way of true access. A company, which has a history of proactive accessibility, should not be their focus. Rather, the groups that are causing the bulk of the problem should be. The Kindle device will mean nothing, if the content is not available. If the content is available, this only provides further motivation for Amazon to complete the work on making the Kindle a more accessible device, as they will have a whole new customer-base. It is even possible, given Amazon's cooperation with the access tech industry in providing access to Audible content, that Kindle content could be eventually made available on those devices. However, none of this can be done without the publishers on board.

America is a capitalist society, like it or not. That means it is up to us to educate and convince manufacturers that we are a worthwhile group to support. Bruit force via the courts, which seldom changes anything, is not the answer. I have often wondered if the visually impaired folks behind these decisions are consumed with bitterness and anger, and this is their outlet. it would explain a lot.

I cannot support anyone who furthers their own agenda at the expense of others, even if those others do have superior access. The ACB calls for equal access, but nothing I have ever seen from them truly supports this claim. The visually impaired already have similar tools to those provided by the Kindle. The access is already reasonably equal. It's the content that is the problem. If a device like the Kindle is never made accessible, it would be unfortunate. However, I don't believe that those types of devices should be taken away from those who can utilize them.

Darrell said that, if all Kindle content was to be made available on BookShare.org, they'd likely drop the case. Not only does this contradict their own stated agenda, but it again illustrates how the organizations are not fighting for equal access at all. The sighted world does not have any comparable service where they can download essentially limitless, DRM free electronic texts for virtually nothing, and with no compensation to the authors and publishers whatsoever. However, ACB's philosophy is, apparently, that if the blind students never had to pay for anything, they'd give up their complaint.

While I want access to the Kindle's content as much as any avid visually impaired reader, I do not believe that the end justifies any means. I think ethics and integrity are absolutely crucial to ensuring accessibility in mainstream products. Bruit force seldom solves anything.

Just because you can sue someone, it doesn't mean that you should, that it would be advantageous, or that it is the right thing to do.

I could go on and really bring the steadfast members of the various organizations down on me with pitchforks and a passion of religious zeal, but I have said my piece. I am not alone in these views. I urge those members of either group to think about what I have said before rising up in righteous indignation. I ask them to think about what they really want. If it is truly equal access they are after, then it is time to change the way they go about their crusades. If, instead, it is a free ride they are wanting…by all means, carry on without us.