Dear Transition Team

There's a buzz these days in the community of people with disabilities.  It's about the possibilities for change, and a newly tangible hope that the coming administration really does want to hear from us and really does plan on making some changes in a group of systems that cry out for attention, and change.  You can go to Change.gov The Office of the President Elect and share your own vision for change.

Meanwhile, here is the letter I'm sending to President-Elect Obama's Transition Team. If you decide to write your own letter, where will you begin to suggest priorities for improving lives and making positive differences for people with disabilities?

Dear President-Elect Obama and Transition Team Members,

Let me begin by telling you how excited, energized, relieved, and hopeful I am to be writing to you in order to share my perspective as a person with a disability about the changes I hope your transition team and your administration will work to make real.  I had finished school and graduated from college when the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 implemented several ground---breaking changes that made it easier for me and everyone with a disability to achieve some of the promises of inclusion in an American way of life, and I was well into adulthood when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.  These laws have had many positive ramifications in the lives of us (Here comes the acronym) "PWDs," the most important of which, it seems to me, has been changing attitudes.  Now, nearly two decades after the law's passage, and at a time when last year's legislation restores some of the promise of the original act, parents of children with disabilities usually expect real futures for their kids, futures that encompass adequate education, employment, accommodations, and independence.  And many of us who have coped with disabilities over our lifetimes actually expect to find acceptance and independent lifestyles as we experience  grown-up daily lives in the cities and towns and countryside's of the USA.

Most of the time, 18 years after passage of the ADA, I can expect to be treated with respect.  It's respect I want, not awe or incredulity.  I am a person who is blind.  I am not an amazing person!

But unemployment continues to be a seriously daunting statistical picture for PWDs, and its impact is almost overwhelming in the community of people who are blind, where some estimate unemployment for people of working age to be as high as 70 percent.  The laws, it seems, can require employers to consider hiring people with disabilities and to accommodate them if they make it through the screening processes, but the laws have not resulted in significant decreases in that unemployment rate, or the under-employment rate, and too many people with disabilities have, long since, given up on themselves, settled for less, and resigned themselves to lives of dependence on the Social Security system on the wrong side of the poverty line.

If an Obama Administration makes a tangible commitment to hire people with disabilities at all levels of government, all over the country, and in every agency, the unemployment rate will surely diminish for PWDs, and more important, when the rest of the citizenry notices that working people with disabilities are doing great jobs, and making our communities better places for all of us to live and work, then maybe the unemployment rate for PWDs will go down all across the economy.  People with disabilities will be able to follow their dreams and find self actualization in careers and lifestyles that mirror their skills and interests, and passions, rather than settling for those few jobs where they can find a niche, or worse, for dependence on an under funded safety net, and poverty.

Please lead by example and give people with disabilities chances for good jobs, allow them to flourish, and to provide examples of independence and self actualization for so many people who have given up on themselves.

When I think about the circumstances that hold so many people with disabilities, especially people who are blind and visually impaired, down, I know, from experience, that it is not merely negative attitudes or a dearth of role models that keep people from enjoying the benefits of independence and inclusion.  It is also a society that provides few accommodations for people who cannot see.  The ADA makes it possible for me to bring my guide dog anywhere I want to go.  "You wouldn't want to have to leave your eyes at home," I explain to the guy barring the door at the suburban discount store.  "Of course I have a right to bring my service animal inside," and I scurry inside while he's mulling that over. Usually it works.  But harder than getting myself and my service animal inside is getting there in the first place.

Transportation, or more specifically, lack of transportation for people who cannot see well enough to drive is a huge barrier to employment, independent living, and full inclusion in society.

It's public transportation that we need, and public transportation that works!  The ADA provides for paratransportation for people with disabilities who cannot easily take advantage of public transit systems, but you still have to live in a city or town that actually has a public transit system in order to have access to paratransit.  That leaves out everyone who lives outside the city - all those people who live in rural communities, in the small towns, even in many suburbs.

And, really, don't get me started on the quality of the paratransit services.  Usually, they are the step children of the public transit systems.  I left a job specifically because of paratransit burn out.  I was working as a rehabilitation teacher, visiting my students, some of whom were in their 90s, many of whom were coping with age-related Macular Degeneration, or diabetes, or glaucoma, or Retinitis Pigmentosa, in their homes.  Every work day was a nightmare of waiting for paratransit to and from my students' homes, it wasn't unusual for me to spend two and a half hours in a paratransit van while I was trying to make a trip that would have taken 15 minutes for anyone who could drive.  And even while I complained, apologized to my students when I was early or late, and joined a class of people with disabilities to sue my local paratransit system because of abysmally poor service, I knew that I was lucky to have even this inadequate, disrespectful, frequently incompetent and never apologetic paratransit program.  Suppose, I told myself while I waited in the cold or the heat for a late paratransit vehicle, I was still living in the rural community where I grew up, I wouldn't be able to get to or from a job at all.

Improving the public transit systems in our cities and towns will help people with disabilities, especially people who cannot see, to live more normal lives where they can take advantage of jobs, education, and opportunities for recreation.  And, improvements to the paratransit systems -requiring them to function as efficiently and expansively as public transit systems - will help even more PWDs.  But, what about those people who live outside the cities and the towns? We need to find viable, accommodating transportation for those PWDs too.

This missive is in danger of becoming a book, and I know that the transition team has quite a lot on its proverbial platters, so I have chosen just one more aspect of modern life that is in desperate need of change: That is accessing the so-called information superhighway.  Yes, there is a digital divide, between rich and poor, as well as between urban and rural,  - Everyone needs access to modern technology, communication networks, and the internet.  This access has become an indispensable aspect of life in the 21^st Century.  But, the divide is not merely between rich and poor, connected and unconnected, it is also between people who can access their computers easily and read the information on their computer screens, and people who cannot.

I am writing this letter in Microsoft Word on my Windows XP computer, using a screen-reading software package that turns all the printed letters on my computer screen, and a few of the icons, into spoken language.  The software was expensive, costing me more than a thousand dollars above what I spent to buy the computer in the first place, but that situation, thankfully, is getting better.  At least one computer company, Apple, is now making computers that come right out of the box, talking, and there are new software packages that provide screen-reading capability at very low cost, and in some cases free of charge (Serotek's System Access to Go, for example).

My computer, and more specifically my access to that computer via my screen reader, allows me to work, to play, to read more books and newspapers than I ever imagined possible, and to communicate with people, with and without disabilities, all over the world!  Modern computers and modern technology, and specifically modern assistive technology, all of these have changed my life for the better in ways that would have been unimaginable to me that time when I was a college sophomore and I typed my entire history paper and found, when I was about to turn it in, that the ribbon had somehow gotten set to "Stencil," and there were no printed words on the page.

Life is better, that's for sure, but way too often, when I'm using my computer's screen reader to access the internet, there's no way for me to know what's on the screen.  When companies and their web masters choose not to label the graphical content on their web sites, my screen reader says nothing more than, "Graphic, Graphic, Graphic," and it's impossible for me to read the information that's there, follow the links, do my research, or shop for the products I want to buy.  If my job depends upon my ability to navigate and use the internet, and it actually does, then this lack of access puts me at an extreme disadvantage, and even risk.  And, even though there's a Section 508 in the rehab. Law that requires federally funded entities to make their web sites accessible, and even though there's an Americans with Disabilities Act that requires public venues to make their products and services available and accessible to me, and even though there's a Worldwide Web Consortium that tells web designers exactly how to make the contents of their sites accessible, way too often I find the web sites I want to visit to be loaded with graphics and totally inaccessible to me.  And lest what I just said should lead to misunderstanding, it is not the graphics I want eliminated, any more than a person who is deaf wants audio content to disappear, it is access to the information contained in the graphics and the spoken words and the music that those of us who have sensory disabilities want, and need.

Internet literacy is fast becoming a requirement for virtually every aspect of modern life, so that's the third thing I've chosen as my request for your transition team and your administration to prioritize.  The Bush Administration recently promulgated new regulations for the ADA.  The new regs do not address, in any meaningful way,  making the internet accessible to people with visual or hearing disabilities.  They should.  The Bush Administration published the new regs last week, well outside the 60-day window  the regulatory process requires , and, so, they are in violation of the process which defines the parameters for promulgating new regulations.  Therefore, the Obama Administration can reject these new regs, and start revising - and improving - the ADA regulations all over again.  Please do.  And the next time, those proposed regs are released, please assure that providing access to the internet and other digital information is unequivocally included by law and by unambiguous regulation.

Certainly, there are other aspects of modern life that other people with disabilities will point out as in desperate need of change.  How about the special education system, for example, that too often requires a child to fail in the mainstream before he or she can even be considered for special education services?  What about the vocational rehabilitation system that, because of chronically depleted funding,  serves only those people with the most severe disabilities, and only those people who are out of work or whose jobs are in jeopardy?  (I have known people with disabilities who actually quit a job or stopped looking for work because that was the only way they could become consumers of vocational rehabilitation and acquire the assistive technologies they needed.)  What about the independent living grant funding that is never enough to provide adequate services to senior citizens who are coping with vision loss at a time when age-related Macular Degeneration is becoming an epidemic?  What about community voting places where the machines are still placed up on the stage in the school auditorium, excluding people who use wheelchairs, years after passage of the Help America Vote Act?  What about Medicare and Medicaid that will buy a person with a mobility disability a scooter or a wheelchair but won't buy a person who cannot see, a video magnifier so he or she can read independently?  What about organizations, even government agencies,  that make their documents available in PDF but forget that they have to select the accessibility options to allow people who use screen readers to access the printed documents?  What about the wireless communications companies who see nothing wrong with charging hundreds of extra dollars to people who need add-on software to read the screens on the phones, or access the internet, or hear the content of text messages?    Yes, there's a lot to do.  It  has been hard for me to choose among so many needs and hone in on only three priorities for change.

I am hopeful that the Obama Administration will concentrate on at least these three aspects of improving the lives of people with disabilities, especially people who cannot see, and consider them among all the important priorities for change:  Please hire people with disabilities at every level of government.  Please improve public and paratransit services, not only for the sake of the planet and our national security, but also for people with disabilities who will benefit so dramatically from improved and expanded transportation options.

And, please, improve the Americans with Disabilities Act so that access to the internet is one of those guaranteed rights that every citizen, no matter his or her disability or special need, can expect to be included as one of the guaranteed civil rights.

I welcome the opportunity to interact with the Obama Administration Transition Team.  I am thrilled that there is an (accessible) internet venue called "Change.gov."  I am glad that you want to hear from people, like me, with disabilities.  And, I am hopeful that, working together, listening to one another and learning from one another, and empathizing with one another, yes we can, make the changes that will dramatically improve the lives of people with disabilities and finally make our communities equal participants in the larger community that includes every American citizen.  Thank you.

Sincerely,

Penny Reeder