[nfbmi-talk] comments state plan mcb

[joe harcz Comcast]

July 13, 2012  Comments MCB State Plan Effective Communications

 

Paul Joseph Harcz, Jr.

 

To: D. Gaston State Plan comments

I am writing today to comment on the following segment of MCB’s proposed state plan:

“Personnel to Address Individual Communication Needs

 

Describe how the designated state unit has personnel or obtains the services of other individuals who are able to communicate in the native language of

Applicants or eligible individuals who have limited English speaking ability or in appropriate modes of communication with applicants or eligible individuals.

 

All consumers of BSBP are entitled to receive materials in their preferred format whenever possible. Typical options are Braille, large print, CD, email,

or audiotape. The bureau continues the practice of putting all brochures, as well as other documents like the Annual Report, on the BSBP website. This

makes all materials accessible to anyone with a computer.

 

Currently, there is one person in the bureau’s deaf/blind unit who is able to communicate in sign language. There is also at least one person at the BSBP

Training Center who is able to communicate by sign. When needed, the agency is able to make arrangements for an interpreter or translator to facilitate

communication. This occasionally becomes an issue in southeast Michigan due to the large number of Arabic speaking individuals.

“

 

What can I say on this?  The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 both in Title I and in Section 504 (auxiliary aids and services) and The Americans with Disabilities Act, title II, subpart e, communications requires timely and effective delivery of information in the most effective format of the individual for not only clients of MCB, but also employees, MCB commissioners who are blind and indeed members of the public including myself who are blind.

 

This is the Commission for the Blind isn’t it?

 

Yet, over the past decade  I’ve documented literally thousands of instances where Director Cannon and other staff of MCB have violated this for myself and others including by the way this very day July 13, 2012 and including issues of effective communications regarding these very public hearings!

 

Customers of MCB get little or nothing including even their own IPEs in accessible format even upon request. Ditto for business enterprise operators. 

 

 

Moreover, Tyler v. Manhattan requires that such an agency act affirmatively in the remittance of accessible visually delivered information and not on an ad hoc basis, but this agency again in and with copious documentation does not remit it upon request! Shoot potential customers don’t even get return phone calls in a timely manner, some for literally years let alone all information in their most effective format.

 

Because the agency Director and all staff have been notified of these obligations by me and others they thus act with deliberate indifference to these civil  rights laws against the entire class of blind people in this state. In fact I’ve demonstrated that especially in the case of the Director that these willful acts of discrimination are done with malice of forethought and thus are a chronic  pattern and practice of wilful discrimination which is cause for damages.,

 

By the way the failure to affirmatively remit all information to customers or applicants violates the Title I “informed choice provisions in the ffirst instance for no one who is blind can have “informed choice” without accessable information!

 

Thus in breif we have an agency for the blind that discriminates en masse against the blind! And it shows that the assurances sent to RSA and other agencies of government are lies; despicable and hidious lies! Contentions including in the State Plan that they do so when they do not are violations of the False Statements Act whenever they report them to RSA.

 

Sincerely,

 

Paul Joseph Harcz, Jr.

 

Cc: RSA

Cc: NFB

Cc: MRC

Cc: MPAS

Cc: OCR

Cc: USDOJ

Cc: Patrick D. Cannon

Cc: ACB, MCBVI

Cc: Richard Bernstein, Esq.