[blindlaw] Accessible Voter Registration forms

[Charles Krugman]

Thanks for this information. The state of California just passed legislation 
to upgrade the Secretary of State computer system to allow for on line voter 
registration. I would appreciate your sending me a copy of this form as I 
may be able to arrange for it to be tested and implemented in California. 
Please contact me off list to discuss this further.
Charles L. Krugman, M.S.W., Paralegal
1237 P Street
Fresno ca 93721
559-266-9237
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Pepper" <b75205 at gmail.com>
To: <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2008 12:16 PM
Subject: [blindlaw] Accessible Voter Registration forms


I made the National Voter Registration form accessible to JAWS and I sent it
to Darren Burton who is in charge of new technologies at the American
Foundation for the Blind and he found that it works in JAWS and Window Eyes
and so he sent it to the Secretary of State of West Virginia.  I sent it to
the Elections Assistance Commission (the part of the Federal Elections
Commission in charge of HAVA law and the people in charge of the accessible
voting machines) and I sent them to the states.  Their reactions forced me
to contact the Voting Rights Division of the ACLU.  Since you are more
versed in accessibility law perhaps you can help.



James Dickson Vice President in charge of Government Affairs for the
American Association of People with Disabilities and he was the key pointman
on getting the recent ADA legislation through Congress; he presented my
forms to the EAC after they rejected them.



Ann Taylor of the NFB has seen my forms, although I did not go to her with
the voter forms but she would be a good objective source on this work.



The Secretary of State of Washington's election officer wrote:



"Remember, too, that federal law requires that voters be able to vote
independently; the capability to complete registration applications
independently is a desirable goal, but not a legal requirement at this
time."



He was required to do this in 1973.



The State of Arkansas insisted on the blind drawing a map of where they
lived on the form.  I suggested a form field where the applicant describes
where they live relative to the nearest cross streets, but the State of
Arkansas insists on using the old printed form because the blind could fill
it out in the past.  This is a literacy test. And the cost of the blind to
get someone to help them fill it out is a Poll Tax.


I suggest that you use the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce
Accessibility law in this country because the states are willing to deny the
right to vote to the blind because they do not want to get around to making
their voter registration forms accessible, even though they were required to
do this 35 years ago! The blind are a class that is discriminated against
and the following laws all require accessible voter registration forms:


   1. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
   2. Rehabilitation Act of 1973
   3. Voting Accessibility for the elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984
   4. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
   5. National Voter Registration Act of 1993
   6. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1996

The number of Disabled is 50 million people, and only 30% of that number
voted in the 2004 election.  So they are a class under the protection of the
Voting Rights Act and so the states were required to Integrate them.  They
have never complied.  So the 14th Amendment Section 2 can be applied under
the Voting Rights Act to the States, which would enable a 3 panel court in
the District of Columbia to reapportion the electors (50 million votes is 99
electors) and the DC court would be required to redraw every congressional
map in this country, of all the states that refuse to comply with
accessibility law.  Thus making a pigs breakfast of the entire country.



The last thing the states want is a federal judge redistricting them and
reducing their constituency in the House of Representatives. And this action
make look extreme, but look at what we have to deal with in getting
accessibility enforced! The blind are 71% unemployed and all of this was
supposed to have been fixed years ago.  The CDC says the blind costs this
country 54 billion dollars a year.  Mulitply that by 35 years, just the
costs alone dictate action.  And think about the people.



Also I think that the Help America Vote Act Money should be stopped to the
states until they comply with the Help America Vote Act which required them
to be accessible to the blind in voter registration as of 2004, but was
extended to 2006.  This would stop 1.2 billion dollars from being paid to
the states until they comply.



 The Voting Rights Act presents the ability to have this case reviewed by a
three judge panel court of the DC US District Court right now before the
election and the states can appeal to the Supreme Court. The ACLU is going
to do an action after the election but should they do it now to get this
court because technically we could issue these forms for the Election Day
voter registrations in about 6 states.  We have to fight for the right to
vote no matter the consequences to the states!



I made the forms accessible to the blind.  The States and the EAC have never
faced this issue before because in the past the forms were "as accessible as
possible" but nobody had presented a complete solution.  And so the states
and the EAC when confronted with a complete solution either didn't know how
to test it, didn't believe it was accessible, or they decided to do it
themselves. This decision was made by either state webmasters or by people
who just did not care.  And so they rejected the form that worked which
would have made it possible for the blind to register to vote in this
election, in favor of wasting time and doing it themselves.



There is a lot of overtime involved in making a form accessible to the
blind.  The state officials are all paid 6 figure salaries to solve the
problem of accessibility and they were charged with this cause 35 years ago.
They were generally offended when I pointed out that their forms were not
accessible and they wanted "tips" on how to solve it.  But they do not
realize that they cannot do it.



I developed my solutions based on having tunnel vision in college, I know
how to do this because I slogged through the code for years figuring out how
to make forms and documents accessible to the blind.  They cannot do this
"out of the box."   And when I came along with a solution that would reduce
their work load well you can imagine the response.  Some states were
outright rude about it.



The EAC rejected the forms because they said their webmaster is in charge of
accessibility for their agency and so she made a form which she claims is
accessible to the blind 19 days after I sent my forms.  The EAC was created
to enforce accessibility in elections for the whole country and yet they
said their webmaster was in charge of accessibility for the agency.  Their
form is not accessible; their form requires the blind to get assistance to
fill out the form. And it is a mess; they have 23 pages of instructions in
the form that is spread in areas before and after the form.  Also their form
also violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and HAVA which is the law that
created their agency.  And the innovation of my form is obvious to anyone
who uses JAWS and yet they didn't use JAWS on my form.  Do they own a copy
of JAWS and know how to use it?  They just caused the states to spend 2
billion dollars on accessibility.



*42 USC 1973 - Sec. 1973ee-3. Registration and voting aids *HAVA requires
enlarged text be used in their forms and documents.  Their form uses tiny
fonts.



*TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 20 > SUBCHAPTER I-B > § 1973aa–5 (b) of the Voting
Rights Act.  Survey to compile registration and voting statistics. *The EAC
put into their instructions the requirement that the state of South Carolina
require that people state their race and if they do not, their form will not
be processed.  This is expressly illegal in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


And this brings up a serious issue.  In order to make content accessible to
the blind, you have to manually encode it, so every bit of the form and its
content, the text is read and formatted for accessibility.  This means the
EAC put this passage in on purpose, IF they truly made their form accessible
to the blind.

I made the instructions into distinct files for each state and they are only
text instructions, no form fields.  I put the form in a separate document so
you can use forms mode to fill it out and use the Read out Loud feature in
Adobe Reader to read the text.  And you can use JAWS or Window Eyes.  All of
the content, the instructions built into the form are also in the
instructions because I understand that text can be missed in forms mode in
JAWS.   Their form cannot be read by Microsoft Narrator.  My form has the
text separated so the user can move between open documents and not loose
their place.  Their form the user gets lost, because they have to find the
content and the form field and move back and forth over 23 pages of text
split into two sections before and after the form and so they get lost.

 I use JAWS and I tested the form in JAWS as I made it, so it works.


I made the form so you can fill it out, save it, open it again and fill it
out some more, or correct it and save it and digitally sign it, and print it
so you can put the manual signature into the form.  It works in Adobe Reader
versions 8 or 9 (the current version). The form is a separate file and the
form is actually two forms so each form is on one page so that you sign the
documents each.  The form can be digitally signed so there is a meeting of
the minds, in a format that the blind can access.  The whole thing is made
so that a blind person can fill out the form and share the same experience
as someone who can see. The form can be used by people who are visually
impaired who use Narrator to fill out form fields and the Read out Loud
feature built into Adobe Reader, so the form can be filled out by people who
do not own JAWS or Window Eyes, who cannot afford it, or who have never
heard of it because they are visually impaired.  And the form can be filled
out by the general public.



Also the EAC did not make their Spanish language form accessible, it is in
the condition of the form that the EAC published until they reacted to my
calls.



I can make PDF forms accessible in all the languages supported by Braille
Lite.  Technically Adobe works in 40 languages and I can encode the forms to
work in those languages but I would need help with the translations.  So we
can do this worldwide.



I know why my forms work, how they work with JAWS and I know why software is
not accessible, the technical reasons.  I think the solution is to fix this
so that government employees are not fixing something after the fact, that
forms and documents and websites can be made accessible while they are being
made by ordinary people not aware of accessibility regulations, so they are
made right and made once. This can be done.



We need to emancipate the blind, by making sure they have the right to
register to vote.



Sincerely,



James G. Pepper

Dallas, Texas
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