Notices by Jonathan Mosen (jonathanmosen@caneandable.social)

It's early in the morning of the 12th of November as I try to write this, and the words don't come easy. But none of this has been easy.
It wasn't easy those mornings when I had been transformed from a gregarious child into a shaking, sobbing kid experiencing panic attacks because I had been abused by a teacher in the swimming pool. It wasn't easy when the teacher denied it, and I was sent to a psychologist to find out why I was making up stories, with only my parents believing that I was telling the truth.
It wasn't easy for my Mum, as someone who generally respected authority, to go out of her comfort zone and fight for her kid.
It felt like a sense of betrayal by blind people who I always thought had integrity when, as Chairman of the Board of the RNZFB over 20 years ago, it was mostly blind people who shut me down and determined that they would not support me when I knew it was long past time the organization fessed up, and faced up, to the abuse it had perpetrated to kids like me who were entrusted into their care. Those blind Board members were more worried about financial liability than the lives the organisation had derailed and in some cases destroyed. And anyway, they said, it was a different time. We shouldn't judge what happened then by today's standards.
It wasn't easy when, just a couple of years later, I heard about a child who had been abused in the same place in very similar circumstances, and for all my so-called powers of persuasion, I hadn't been able to bring the problem out into the open. Not being able to get the Board to face up to the damage the organisation has done is undoubtedly the greatest failure of my professional life.
Powerful forces have sought to block survivors from right across this country, survivors disproportionately made up of minority groups, every step of the way when we sought an inquiry into the extent of abuse by institutions where we were supposed to be safe, but instead were sent to a living hell on earth. Some were tortured. I don't use that term loosely. What they went through met the legal definition of torture. Successive Governments tried to shut those survivors up and shut them down. And now they have finally had to say, yes, it was torture.
There are still people in Government today who actively discouraged holding an inquiry. But thankfully, they failed, and we now know that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders were abused. The evidence is there for anyone to read in the many volumes of the Royal Commission of Inquiry.
Testifying in public to that inquiry wasn't easy either, as someone with a senior leadership role in the disability sector. But I did it for those people I couldn't help when I was RNZFB Chairman, and it ended up being a liberating, healing, emboldening process. Because those who told us all those years ago to toughen up and suck it up were wrong, and history will rightly judge them as accessories to what had happened by taking the attitude that they did.
So, here we are on 12 November, and today, the Prime Minister of New Zealand will apologise to survivors in Parliament. I will be there in the Gallery to hear it. It is hard to describe the disjointed feelings I have about this. It feels in a way that he is not apologising to me, he is apologising to the kid that was once me, and that I am there somehow representing that frightened child.
Much is at stake. Obviously the specific words matter, but the actions that will be announced matter much more. What does redress look like? How genuinely committed is the Government to all the Commission's recommendations?
In some cases, survivors are also due apologies from the organisations that abused them. Blind Low Vision NZ is one. Based on what communications there have been so far, I have no confidence that this will be handled appropriately or adequately. As is typical of the modern era with that organisation, everyone involved is clearly out of their depth.
I am about to leave New Zealand to relocate to the United States, so I won't be here to see it, but I urge disabled New Zealanders not to lose sight of the Commission's recommendation that disability rights legislation be enacted. As you strive to create a future that is better than our past, that recommendation is critical and it should be nonnegotiable, in terms of disabled New Zealanders assuming their rightful place in society. Please, please do not let this one die. March in the streets in massive numbers if you must.
I also want to pay my respects to the survivors who did not live to see this day, and to those who believed us who didn't see this day either, my own parents included. If they hadn't been on my side, I shudder to think what would have become of me. In that sense, I have been very blessed to have a supportive family, when so many other survivors did not.
I wish all survivors strength and love on what is going to be a profoundly emotional day, and those emotions will be very mixed.
Today is a beginning, not an end. We must not lose our resolve now. We must continue to speak our truth. We must ensure New Zealand does not, and cannot, forget.

Some big news from me today.
Back in September, the National Federation of the Blind announced that they had begun working with me as a consultant on a range of projects. Some are public facing and you'll see those coming to fruition in the next little while. Others you may not know as much about, but are improving technology behind the scenes.
This week, the US Government has given me the right to live and work in the United States. That means I am now at liberty to say how proud I am to have accepted the role of Executive Director for Accessibility Excellence at the National Federation of the Blind. The position is based at the Jernigan Institute in Baltimore Maryland, so we have begun the huge task of preparing to relocate.
The nearly three months that I have been consulting for the NFB have been the happiest of my professional life. Members and staff have been so welcoming, and I feel like everything in my career has been leading up to using my skills in a way that can substantially improve the lives of blind people. The dedication and professionalism of the NFB team is unparalleled.
While obtaining an O1 US visa for people with extraordinary ability is tough due to the high bar that is set, it has also been a special process. I received seven references from well-known people in the blindness field in support of my visa application, and what they wrote was generous and touching. Think of it a bit like attending your own funeral without going through the hassle of actually dying. It taught me a lesson, that we often don't tell people how much we appreciate them while they are still around to hear it. I don't often stop to think about my legacy or anything grand like that, so seeing these very heart-warming references is something I will cherish.
The law firm I've been engaging with, Optimum Law, have been incredible and I can't recommend them enough if you need US immigration advice and you are in NZ.
Thanks to my four wonderful adult children and their significant others, who have been so encouraging and willing to spend weekends helping to whip the house into shape as I clear out priceless treasures, like old chargers I no longer have a device for.
And a very special thanks to my fellow adventurer, my wonderful wife Bonnie Mosen, who unreservedly supports me on this journey. Bonnie is making a positive difference in her own role at Wellington City Council, and the city will be the poorer for losing her.
Sure, it's a big deal to relocate, but I'll be among people who think about blindness the way I do, and who make good change every day. So actually, it feels like I'm coming home, and I look forward to building new friendships among my fellow blind change makers throughout the United States. Plus, home is wherever my beautiful Bonnie is.
So, see you later New Zealand. Be good, and always strive fervently to make New Zealand a place where disabled people can thrive.

Recently while catching up on posts, I came across a thread stating that it was a fact that listening to an audiobook counts as reading. The post was couched in a highly dogmatic way which suggested there wasn’t much room for debate, so I chose not to contribute.
However, having taken a day to think about it, I’m concerned about leaving this view unchallenged because I genuinely believe that it is potentially harmful to the education, and therefore the economic prospects, of young blind people.
The first point I want to make is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying a great audiobook. A good narrator can make a book come to life. I don’t believe an audiobook is inferior. Although I don’t listen to many audiobooks anymore just as a matter of choice, I do opt for an audiobook when someone is reading their own autobiography. That’s because rather than read the book, I would rather listen to someone reading their own book to me.
But when I choose to listen to an audiobook, I am no more reading the book than my grandchild is reading it when I read a book to her. She is being entertained, in some cases she is gaining valuable knowledge, but she is not reading it, she is being read to. There is benefit in this. It could be enhancing her aural language skills.
You may be thinking that this is all pointless semantics. But the reason I’m raising it is that the “audiobooks are reading” argument has been used to deprive blind kids of true literacy. To me, true literacy is the ability to write something down and read it back. Braille is the only viable means of true literacy a blind person has. For all the good that technology has done, when talking computers came on the scene and audiobooks became more abundant, some teachers and more than a few public policy practitioner decided that these developments meant that we didn’t need to teach blind kids to read anymore. It was a means of short-changing blind kids, of not allocating the necessary funding and resources to give them a good start in life. It was disgraceful. No parent of a sighted child would tolerate being told that their kid didn’t need to read because they could just listen to audio instead.
The result was that many people who had so much to offer the world were deprived of the right to read. It is often these professionals and policy makers who want blind people to believe that listening is the same as reading.
These kids who missed out on the opportunity to read became adults with fewer employment prospects. We know that the unemployment rate of Braille readers is far closer to the unemployment rate of the population as a whole, compared with those blind people who haven’t had the opportunity to read Braille. And in a sad irony, these kids, some of whom grew up to be parents, were not given the tools to read bedtime stories to their kids when they eventually became parents. Putting on an audiobook for a child is nothing like the personal bonding that comes from a parent reading a story to a child.
Some of those kids who missed out on literacy took the brave step of learning Braille as an adult, but they know they will find it difficult to achieve the same speed they would have if they had learned Braille as a child. It is a tragedy.
While there has been a recovery, this sort of story is not yet completely in the past. It is still happening to some kids today.
Enjoy those audiobooks. I certainly do. But let’s also ensure that every blind child has the right to read by not playing into the narrative that listening to a book read by someone else is the same as reading one yourself.

@jscholes Thanks James. I’m not particularly interested in which part of the brain certain activities trigger, it’s irrelevant to the point I was making which was all about how we as blind people are set up to maximise our participation in society. True literacy increases our chances of having a good life, and I appreciate you acknowledging the harm these professionals are doing by depriving blind kids of the skills that are a fundamental human right.

The courier came to the door. He said, “Mate! I have two iPhones for you mate!” I said, “yeah mate, that’s what I was expecting mate”! He said, “Mate, why do you need two iPhones mate!” I said, “one for each ear mate”. He said, “that’s incredible mate”.

Now I have an incredible restore assembly line underway, where I’m running between Bonnie’s and my phones, so when she gets home, it’ll be all ready for her. Yea. She will be so happy, and her happiness is my purpose in life.

I often remind people that the progress we have made, be it rights we have won or technology that is accessible, has come about because brave advocacy pioneers knew that blind people are worthy, that we do not choose to be second-class citizens. That being able to maximise our potential is a human right.
Sometimes, people don’t believe we can change anything, so figure we may as well suck it up and accept the status quo.
Well, a few weeks ago, a group of blind leaders took on Vision Australia, after they said they weren’t going to advertise externally for their CEO. This significantly constrained the pool of blind talent from which the Vision Australia Board could pick. And make no mistake, we need more blind people leading the organisations that serve us. Lived experience matters when you’re a minority. And it certainly isn’t right that capable blind people are too often passed over for leadership roles in our own organisations. It is with great pleasure that I pass on the following message from Emma Bennison.

🎉 Victory for Blind Leadership! 🎉
United Blind Leaders is excited to announce a major step forward in our campaign! Thanks to the incredible support of 1,408 signatories, Vision Australia has revised its CEO recruitment process. The Board has confirmed that lived experience of blindness or low vision will now be a desirable attribute for the new CEO, and the search will be conducted externally with a focus on removing barriers for blind and low vision applicants.
This is a huge win, but our work is far from over. United Blind Leaders will keep pushing for blind and vision-impaired representation in leadership roles at all levels in Australia and globally.
📣 Join our movement! Stay connected by joining our mailing list and be part of our future campaigns: https://UnitedBlindLeaders.org
Together, we’re making a real difference! 🙌 #UnitedBlindLeaders #BlindLeadership #Inclusion #DisabilityAdvocacy.

That is Emma’s message. Congratulations to all involved. And to all reading this, never doubt, you can make change when you stand up for what is right. Know your power, and use it for good.