[AutonomousVehicles] focus areas for the committee

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Fellow Committee Members,
It was a great meeting today. I have some additional ideas on how our
committee can be more effective in helping shape the development of
autonomous vehicles. I wanted to share them with you. I was going to
present these on the meeting but there was not enough time. Please take a
look at these and let's start some dialogue. When I mention the words AV or
EV, I mean autonomous vehicle and electric vehicle respectively.

Here are the ideas:

- Have representatives from the AV companies present to the committeee and
allow the committee to ask questions and give feedback on a regular basis,
at least quarterly.

- The committee should play a role in helping to shape public perception of
the blind and visually impaired usage of AVs. They need to know how
important this is to our independance.

- Involve the committee in actual testing of AVs. Whether it is on closed
course or even on real roads with an embedded safety driver, we need to be
a part of the testing. We also need to urge the AV companies to open up
testing programs where people who are blind/visually impaired can play a
role in testing. Testing with real users is the gold standard to ensure
you're getting it right.

- Involve the committee in providing insight into the creation of
regulations to allow people who are blind to operate AVs.

- Have NFB leadership that is interfacing with the AV community to present
to this committee at least quartly on current progress in the industry as
it relates to making AVS accessible to people who are blind/visually
impaired. Even if we as committee members need to sign NDAs so that we can
find out more in-depth what is going on, rather than just high level info.

- Urge all AV companies to have an accessibility officer. The job of this
person would be to gather the insights of the disability community on a
regular basis and ensure that this feedback makes it to product managers
and others working on these vehicles.


I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Cornelius Butler
Autonomous Vehicle Committee Member
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