[Colorado-Talk] Keep Making Noise

[Scott C. LaBarre]

Keep sending emails, dialing up phone calls, tweeting, Facebooking, and do
the voodoo you do to keep pressuring the General Assembly.  Here is the text
of the message that I have been sending.  Feel free to steal from it.

 

Senate President Garcia:

 

I am Scott LaBarre, President of the National Federation of the Blind of
Colorado, the state's oldest and largest organization of the blind.  We have
deeply appreciated your support over the years.  Now, I hope we can count on
you once again.

 

It has come to our attention that "leadership" has decided to pull funding
of $331,000 for H.B. 21-1110.  This would be a grave mistake because it
would gut efforts to address significant barriers that blind, low vision,
and others with disabilities have faced for years.   Even though   the ADA
has been law for nearly 31 years and widely accepted web content
accessibility guidelines have been around for well over 20 years, over 98
percent of the top million visited websites contain at least one
accessibility barrier for those who use assistive technology to access
digital information.  Not surprisingly hundreds of websites operated either
by the State or local governments here in Colorado manifest significant
accessibility barriers making it exceedingly difficult for someone like me,
who is blind, to get my digital hands on critical information.

 

Two weeks ago today, on May 20th which also happened to be Global
Accessibility Awareness Day, we were delighted that H.B. 21-1110 unanimously
passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee, and we thought we were well
on our way to taking real steps to address the accessibility barriers we
have faced for far, far too long.

 

That is why we were shocked and deeply dismayed when we discovered that H.B.
21-1110 had been pulled from Senate Appropriations, apparently for lack of
funds.  Is the Colorado General Assembly trying to tell us that people with
disabilities in Colorado are not even worth $331,000?  In total, we estimate
that there are 115,500 blind and low vision individuals in Colorado?  So,
are you trying to tell us that the we cannot find a way to spend $2.86 for
each blind and low vision person in the State to provide legally mandated
access to our State's critical public websites?  I guess a drink at
Starbucks is worth  more than my right to access public information that
everyone else takes for granted.

 

Senator Garcia, we implore you in   the strongest terms to back your verbal
commitment to the blind and others with disabilities  in our State with your
actions!!  Please fund fully H.B. 21-1110 and pass it this week!!!

 

Respectfully,

Scott C. LaBarre, President

NFB Colorado

303-520-3584, Mobile

slabarre at labarrelaw.com <mailto:slabarre at labarrelaw.com> 

 

     

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