[Colorado-Talk] Day at the Capitol Monday, Feb. 13

[Dan Burke]

Here's an update with some earlier times to be seated.  Attaching the
Memorandum we'll be giving to the General Assembly members, and also
pasting at the end. Please read before Monday morning.
*	We will meet in the Old Supreme Court Chamber, which is the 2nd
Floor of the Capitol, on the north end of the building.

*	We will begin our organizing promptly at 9:00, so please arrive
between 8:30 and 8:50. We have a tight schedule to start the morning,
but we will get ourselves into groups and all will have assignments as
in years past.

*	At 9:40 or or earlier, we will begin to make our way to the Senate
chamber for a tribute to Scott LaBarre by our long-time friend, Sen.
Jessie Danielson. This will be entered into the record of the Senate.

*	The Senate is on the opposite side of the Capitol from the Old
Supreme Court Chamber, or on the south side. Most of us will need to
go to the 3rd floor to take seats in the gallery. A few, including
Anahit and family, will be ushered onto the floor of the Senate for
the tribute.

*	The Senate session begins at 10:00 that morning, and so we need to
be settled in our seats by 9:50 if possible.

*	Afterwards, we'll get our groups back together and march off to
deliver our message to all 100 members of the Colorado General
Assembly!

* In the basement of the Capitol is Nate Hecker's vending site. You
can get lunch there, bottled water, and Nate has a brand-new espresso
machine. So, be ready to support our blind vendor at the Capitol on
Monday! Wahoo!

Our memorandum on issues is attached in PDF and pasted below. Please
read up on the issues. Our schedule this year is a little more
compressed than in our past years, so we won't take time to read the
entire thing when we collect in the Old Supreme Court Chamber but will
focus our time instead on getting our groups and assignments
organized.

Thanks all, and see you on Monday morning!

Dan









MEMORANDUM

To: The Members of the Colorado General Assembly
From: The Members of the National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Date: February 13, 2023
Re: Legislative Concerns of Blind Citizens

GENERAL BACKGROUND

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is the oldest and largest
organization of the blind in the United States and in Colorado. The
primary mission of the Federation is to allow the blind to live the
lives they want in all areas of life from ensuring basic civil rights
to securing employment and education for the blind. Founded officially
in 1955, the NFB of Colorado (NFBCO) engages in several programs
specifically designed to create greater opportunities for the blind.
For example, NFBCO is the founder and chief sponsor of the Colorado
Center for the Blind, an agency which provides training in the
alternative skills blind people need to become fully participating
members of society. Additionally, NFB offers national and statewide
scholarships. We also provide a free talking newspaper called
NFB-NEWSLINE®, a service which enables the blind of our state to read
daily newspapers and many other on-demand publications just as easily
as their sighted peers. We advocate for the rights of the blind in all
areas ranging from education to employment. Where positive changes are
happening in the blindness field, there is a good chance that the
Federation is involved.

2023 LEGISLATIVE AGENDA

1. NFBCO calls upon the Colorado General Assembly to adopt legislation
which would require pharmacies in Colorado to provide accessible
prescription labels for blind and/or print-disabled users, thereby
enabling them to accurately and independently identify the medications
they use.
2. We ask the Colorado General Assembly to pass the legislation
embodied in HB23-1032 which seeks to correct Colorado’s
Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) by Restoring the legislature’s original
intent that administrative exhaustion should not be required before a
person with a disability may file a disability discrimination lawsuit.
3. Provide $500,000 in state funding for Colorado’s Business
Enterprise Program so that the program can recover from the disastrous
effects of the pandemic and expand opportunities for blind
entrepreneurs.
4. We urge this Assembly to at least maintain funding for
NFB-NEWSLINE® which gives blind and print-disabled Coloradans timely
and independent access to newspapers and other periodicals.

For further information contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435 / Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com


REQUIRE PHARMACIES IN COLORADO TO OFFER ACCESSIBLE PRESCRIPTION LABELS
TO THE BLIND AND PRINT-DISABLED

Prescription medication is routinely dispensed by pharmacies
throughout Colorado, the nation, and the world. The printed labels
used to identify specific medications, whether in liquid or pill form,
are not accessible to individuals who cannot see well enough to read
printed information or who cannot, due to a print disability, read
what has been printed. The ability to properly identify specific
medications without assistance is critical to ensure that a patient
does not take the wrong medication. This is truly a matter of life and
death.

While technology exists to produce prescription labels in Braille,
large print, and audible formats and while pharmacies can be found
which can produce prescription labels in one or more of these formats,
consumers who cannot use traditionally-printed prescription labels are
finding that drug labels in accessible formats are neither
consistently nor readily available to them. They cannot be confident
that all of the pharmacies from whom they may acquire their
medications will use any of these technologies and approaches, let
alone telling them about ways in which the pharmacy can provide
accessible prescription labels. In short, pharmacies in Colorado are
not required to provide prescription label information in ways that
work for people who are blind or print-disabled, and there is no
consistent way in which the pharmacies are required to provide this
critical information.

Please support legislation which would:

1. require pharmacies to provide accessible prescription labels for
blind and print disabled users,
2. require pharmacies to notify each person to whom a prescription
drug is dispensed that an accessible prescription label is available
to the person upon request at no additional cost,
3. provide that if a person informs the pharmacy that the person
identifies as a person who is blind, visually impaired, or otherwise
print disabled the pharmacy shall provide to the person an accessible
prescription label affixed to the bottle that is:

A. available to the person in a timely manner comparable to other
patient wait time and lasting for at least the duration of the
prescription;
B. appropriate to the disability and preference of the person making
the request through use of audible, large print, or Braille labels;
C. conforms to the format specific best practices established by the
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
(established under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973); and
D. Contains all the label information required by state statute and
federal law, including cautions and warnings, and any information
available to sighted individuals reading the printed label.

For further information contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435
Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com


SUPPORT LEGISLATION TO FIX THE COLORADO ANTIDISCRIMINATION ACT

Part 6 of the Colorado Antidiscrimination Act (CADA) originally
provided the basis for disability discrimination claims against public
businesses in Section 602. This section provides that a person with a
disability can either file suit or file an administrative complaint,
but not both. Courts agreed with that interpretation. In fact, the
language in Section 602 regarding remedies is still there.

But when the CADA was amended in 2014 to expand protections for people
with disabilities, a provision was inserted into Section 602 that led
to some confusion about the remedies available to individuals with
disabilities filing discrimination complaints against public
businesses. Some court decisions required people with disabilities to
exhaust administrative remedies before they could file lawsuits.

HB23-1032 will clarify that people with disabilities have a choice of
filing an administrative complaint or filing a lawsuit to address
discrimination issues. It also cleans up the CADA by putting the
disability discrimination provisions together in Part 8.

For further information contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435
Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com



PROVIDE STATE FUNDING FOR COLORADO’S BUSINESS ENTERPRISE PROGRAM

The Colorado Business Enterprise Program has historically been the
most successful employment program for blind Coloradans, providing
entrepreneurial opportunities for blind vendors on state and federal
sites. At the federal level, the program is operated under the United
States Department of Education, Rehabilitation Services
Administration. In Colorado, the program is over seen by the Division
of Vocational Rehabilitation within the Colorado Department of labor
and employment. The program receives no state funds for its
administration and operation. It has been funded by set-asides from
blind operators themselves along with matching federal funds. House
Bill 16-1048 increased the opportunity for blind entrepreneurs to
operate contracts under the state of Colorado, but before the benefits
of this bill could even begin to be implemented, the pandemic
virtually shut down the program and closed too many vending locations.

In order to expand Colorado’s Business Enterprise Program into new
business arenas and stabilize current operations, The National
Federation of the Blind of Colorado is asking the state legislature
to:

1. allow the Business Enterprise Program spending authority to meet
current needs as indicated by the Colorado Department of Labor and
Employment and its request to the joint budget committee and
2. appropriate $500,000 in order to upgrade and expand the existing program.

For further information contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435
Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com



MAINTAIN FUNDING FOR THE NFB-NEWSLINE® SERVICE

For more than a dozen years, the Colorado General Assembly has funded
NFB-NEWSLINE® in Colorado, providing blind Coloradans the same daily
access to newspapers and magazines as their sighted neighbors and
family members enjoy. This year, we request that the General Assembly
at least maintain its financial support, currently at $120,000.00
annually, so that blind people can access the critical and vital
information provided by the service. Because NFB-NEWSLINE® is funded
through the Disabled Telephone Users Fund (DTUF), funding to
NFB-NEWSLINE® does not impact general funds. The DTUF’s funding comes
from a very small fee on Land lines and cell phones in Colorado.

Access to information from the newspapers and magazines of our nation
and state plays a critical role for each of us as informed and
participating citizens. Recognizing this, in the mid 1990’s, the
National Federation of the Blind developed and implemented
NFB-NEWSLINE®. With this revolutionary system, the blind are able to
pick up their touch tone phone, call a toll-free number or open an app
on their iOS or Android device and select from more than 450 different
newspapers and magazines including the Denver Post, Colorado Springs
Gazette, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Wall Street Journal, New York Times,
and many other national newspapers. Today the phone-in option is still
in place, but access via the NFB-NEWSLINE® mobile app has comparable
usage statistics. Additional options include online on-demand reading
with a web browser, email delivery, and remote content download via
specialized devices used by the blind and others with print
disabilities. Thus, subscribers have access to the three Colorado
newspapers offered, national newspapers, and numerous magazines –
everything from AARP publications to Time and Wired. There are even
accessible and locally-relevant television listings – something
impossible to find in an accessible form for the blind. Additionally,
the system provides current weather conditions as well as watches and
warnings. Currently, over 1400 blind Coloradans have access to the
450-plus newspapers, 75 magazines, and other publications on
NFB-NEWSLINE®. About once every two minutes, a blind Coloradan is
tapping into the vast wealth of information available through
NFB-NEWSLINE®.

With the funding provided, the NFB of Colorado will not only maintain
the service, it will expand its reach. We will create even greater
opportunities to share NFB-NEWSLINE® on additional web based and other
technological platforms; expand the number of publications available;
train more blind individuals to use the system; and work with the
Audio Information Network of Colorado (AINC) to provide more
information to the blind of Colorado. AINC is another service funded
by the DTUF providing other timely publications and information to our
state’s blind and print-disabled citizens. The NFB of Colorado
supports continued funding for AIN as well.

For further information regarding NFB-NEWSLINE® contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435
Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com



SUPPORT THE COLORADO CENTER FOR THE BLIND AND NFB SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMS

Founded in 1988 by the NFB of Colorado, the Colorado Center for the
Blind (CCB) offers world class rehabilitation and adjustment to
blindness training to blind/visually impaired individuals in our state
and from all over the world. We believe blind people can do anything.
Every day, we encourage and challenge each student—and they come to
understand their potential as they build the skills and confidence to
live the life they want. Because when you believe in yourself and
experience a thriving community of positive blind people, nothing can
hold you back from pursuing your dreams.

CCB programs serve all ages from kids as young as elementary age to
seniors. CCB teaches cane travel/orientation and mobility, Braille,
technology, independent daily living skills, employment skills, and
much, much more. Nearly all of the teaching staff is made up of blind
instructors who serve as excellent role models. Please read the CCB
brochure in your packet for more information or go to
www.cocenter.org. Our Center is located in Littleton, and you are
always welcome and encouraged to visit.

SCHOLARSHIPS

The National Federation of the Blind, on a national basis, offers
thirty scholarships to talented blind men and women attending a
post-secondary institution. Over two hundred thousand dollars are
awarded each year and provide real opportunity for deserving students.
Interested applicants can find more information at
https://nfb.org/scholarships.

On a state level, the NFB of Colorado offers up to five scholarships
to blind men and women attending a post-secondary institution and
scholarships range from $1,500.00 to $5,000.00. More information on
how to apply is contained in your legislative packet. Please inform
your local high schools, colleges and universities as well as any
blind/visually impaired post-secondary student you know about these
valuable scholarship opportunities.

For further information on any of these issues contact:
Jessica Beecham, President
National Federation of the Blind of Colorado
Phone: 615-497-0435
Email: jbbeecham at gmail.com
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