Blinded Veterans Raise Critical Issues at House Subcommittee Hearing
Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) Director of Government
Relations Glenn Minney today urged passage of H.R. 1284, a bill that
would expand access to blind rehabilitation services for veterans with
vision loss.
Testifying as part of a panel format with two additional BVA members before the House Veterans Affairs (VA) Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Minney told the Subcommittee that adding beneficiary travel benefits for nonservice-connected blinded veterans and spinal cord injured veterans would be a substantial cost saver in the long run.
“If only 10 percent of the current residents of state veterans homes who are there strictly because of their blindness could benefit from training at a VA Blind Rehabilitation Center in order to live independently, the savings could in turn pay for the entire H.R. 1284 Beneficiary Travel Program,” said Minney.
The panel also included Travis Fugate, Central California Regional Group, and Terry Kebbel, Rio Grande Regional Group. Fugate related his personal story in addressing BVA’s concern for the slow implementation of the Vision Center of Excellence (VCE) and the availability of electronic medical records that was to be part of a registry of veterans with eye injuries.
“The VCE that this Congress established in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act is very critical to ensuring that all combat eye injured veterans, and those who experience Traumatic Brain Injury accompanied by visual impairments, are entered into a registry where the surgery records and treatments can be tracked from both military and VA eye care providers,” said Fugate.
Kebbel addressed BVA’s concerns that legally blind veterans are unable to access crucial health care and benefits information using VA webpages and other electronic documents due to noncompliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Section 508 was enacted in the 20th century to ensure that all people with disabilities could access electronic and information technology,” his testimony stated. “The technology is available to solve these 508 compliance failures and there are many good examples of 508 compliant webpages—how much longer do we have to wait?”
A second panel of VA officials, Dr. Maureen McCarthy, M.D., Deputy Chief of Patient Care Services for the Veterans Health Administration, and Lorraine Landfried, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Product Development in the Office of Information Technology, followed the BVA panel and submitted a written statement for the Congressional Record. They were accompanied by Dr. Mary Lawrence, M.D., Deputy Director of the Vision Center of Excellence, and Pat Sheehan, Director of VA’s 508 Compliance Office.
A full text of the statements submitted is found at http://veterans.house.gov/hearing/assessing-inadequacies-in-va-data-usage-for-and-services-provided-to-visually-impaired. A video of the hearing can also be viewed athttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/hclive14#/recorded/48162248. Viewers must scroll the timer to 10:06 at the bottom of the screen
Testifying as part of a panel format with two additional BVA members before the House Veterans Affairs (VA) Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Minney told the Subcommittee that adding beneficiary travel benefits for nonservice-connected blinded veterans and spinal cord injured veterans would be a substantial cost saver in the long run.
“If only 10 percent of the current residents of state veterans homes who are there strictly because of their blindness could benefit from training at a VA Blind Rehabilitation Center in order to live independently, the savings could in turn pay for the entire H.R. 1284 Beneficiary Travel Program,” said Minney.
Terry
Kebbel of Las Cruces, New Mexico and BVA’s Rio Grande
Regional Group
confers with Glenn Minney prior to Subcommittee hearing.
The panel also included Travis Fugate, Central California Regional Group, and Terry Kebbel, Rio Grande Regional Group. Fugate related his personal story in addressing BVA’s concern for the slow implementation of the Vision Center of Excellence (VCE) and the availability of electronic medical records that was to be part of a registry of veterans with eye injuries.
“The VCE that this Congress established in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act is very critical to ensuring that all combat eye injured veterans, and those who experience Traumatic Brain Injury accompanied by visual impairments, are entered into a registry where the surgery records and treatments can be tracked from both military and VA eye care providers,” said Fugate.
Kebbel addressed BVA’s concerns that legally blind veterans are unable to access crucial health care and benefits information using VA webpages and other electronic documents due to noncompliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Section 508 was enacted in the 20th century to ensure that all people with disabilities could access electronic and information technology,” his testimony stated. “The technology is available to solve these 508 compliance failures and there are many good examples of 508 compliant webpages—how much longer do we have to wait?”
A second panel of VA officials, Dr. Maureen McCarthy, M.D., Deputy Chief of Patient Care Services for the Veterans Health Administration, and Lorraine Landfried, Deputy Chief Information Officer for Product Development in the Office of Information Technology, followed the BVA panel and submitted a written statement for the Congressional Record. They were accompanied by Dr. Mary Lawrence, M.D., Deputy Director of the Vision Center of Excellence, and Pat Sheehan, Director of VA’s 508 Compliance Office.
A full text of the statements submitted is found at http://veterans.house.gov/hearing/assessing-inadequacies-in-va-data-usage-for-and-services-provided-to-visually-impaired. A video of the hearing can also be viewed athttp://www.ustream.tv/channel/hclive14#/recorded/48162248. Viewers must scroll the timer to 10:06 at the bottom of the screen
veterans
