Bills in Congress that Could Benefit the Blind

Currently there are two bills in congress that should directly benefit the blind if passed. One is in the house and the other is in the senate. THe house bill, HR 5433, Technology Bill of Rights for the Blind Act of 2010 is aiming to make mainstream technology accessible to those with vision problems. As technology continues to move towards touch screens and other non visual mediums, more and more devices are becoming inaccessible to the blind. In order to solve this problem, congress wants to require manufacturers to make their devices accessible. THe Commerce Dept. would start by researching what the best ways to make devices accessible are. THey will have two years to do the research. They then would report their findings, and make a set of guidelines for manufacturers to use when making new versions of their products. I think this bill would have some really positive implications. I come across devices that I can't use all the time and making them accessible to me would not be that difficult. Apple has already demonstrated that touch screens can be used by the blind, so now that technology just needs to be applied in the rest of mainstream devices.

The bill in the Senate is designed to lower the unemployment rate amongst the blind. The bill introduced by Senator Dodd and Senator McCane is called the Blind Persons Return to Work Act of 2010. If passed, it would change the social security disability rules to encourage the blind to go back to work rather than punishing them for earning money. As it stands, there is an income cap if you are on SSDI. Instead of taking a person's benefits away once they reach that cap, the law would change to allow benefits to slowly be eliminated. This will hopefully encourage people to go back to work because they know they wouldn't lose their benefits immediately. There is a 70% unemployment rate in the working age blind population and the threat of losing social security benefits is one of the reasons it's so high. This bill will help those on SSDI, but it will not help those on SSI. Maybe at some point there will be a better way to help younger blind people find work so that they can earn SSDI, and not spend their whole lives on SSI because they can't get work.

I hope that both these bills pass and get signed by the president.