Voter accessibility at forefront of U.S. Sen. Brown visit in Mansfield

MANSFIELD — With the general election less than a month away, many Ohio voters might be feeling a bit of election information fatigue as candidates ramp up their campaigns.

However, for a certain population of voters, it is difficult to access vital campaign information at all.

Ohioans with visual or hearing impairments are often overlooked in the political process due to a lack of resources — a topic discussed with U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) during a campaign visit to Mansfield on Sunday morning.

This despite the fact that there are more than 40 million eligible voters with disabilities in the United States, according to the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).

Alexia Kemerling, a Mansfield resident, works with the AAPD as the REV UP Coalitions Coordinator, a nonpartisan organization that supports grassroots activists in building the power of the disability vote. Planning Brown’s visit on Sunday was part of her own personal community work.

“We have a huge Deaf, blind and hard-of-hearing population, but across the country and across campaigns generally, Deaf people don’t have access to the campaign information because often there’s not captions on video content or sometimes the websites are not accessible,” Kemerling said.

The American Community Survey 2021 found that about 3.6% of the U.S. population, or about 11 million individuals, consider themselves Deaf or have serious difficulty hearing. In Ohio, approximately 303,000 Ohioans are Deaf or hard of hearing, according to Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities.

Yet according to Kemerling, very rarely are American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters present at campaign events.

“So for many Deaf people, they just don’t get that same access to making a decision about their vote that hearing people do,” she said.

In addition to working for the AAPD, Kemerling has deep connections with the Deaf community in Ohio and has advocated for state-level support in the past.

“I’m hard of hearing myself, and I’m very used to thinking about accessibility constantly and thinking about who doesn’t have access,” she said.

Federal advocacy

While helping to orchestrate Sunday’s campaign stop at Relax, It’s Just Coffee, Kemerling knew a handful of individuals with hearing and visual impairments would be in attendance. She reached out to the Brown campaign about providing interpreters.

“I mostly expected them to say no, and I was prepared to pay for it out of my pocket. But they said yes,” Kemerling said. “I cannot overstate how incredible that is for Deaf and blind folks to have access to this information.”

One of those individuals was Arthur Roehrig, a Westerville resident who made the trip to Mansfield hoping to speak with the senator.

Roehrig was born with Usher’s syndrome, a genetic condition that involves hearing loss and gradual, progressive blindness because of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a deterioration of the retina. Now nearing his 80s, he became a DeafBlind person in his early 30s.

A conversation with Brown involved a hearing interpreter who interpreted English to ASL for Dawn Watts, a Certified Deaf Interpreter. Watts then provided Protactile ASL to Roehrig. A hearing interpreter also voiced for Watts and Roehrig, interpreting ASL to English.

Roehrig said he was eager to speak to Brown and discuss issues and funding at the federal level, especially involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He and Watts both advocated during last year’s state budget cycle for statewide Support Service Provider services.

He explained that in 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), which improved access to modern communications and video content for people with disabilities.

The CVAA involves funding specifically for DeafBlind individuals with iCanConnect (ICC), the FCC’s National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program. Roehrig explained that funding flows from the FCC to the CVAA and then through each state’s ICC program.

“The CVAA had clear descriptions of what needed to be provided and what services, equipment and things like that would be provided for DeafBlind individuals to provide them full access to everything, everything that we take for granted, all the opportunities,” Roehrig said.

However, as Roehrig explained to Brown, the ICC does not provide services to DeafBlind people who are over the income threshold. Households must be within 400% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines to qualify for ICC.

“For example, I have issues with my computer and I have been trying to reach out to different companies, but all of them don’t really know what to do, they’re not skilled at the communication that’s needed,” Roehrig said.

“I want to be able to join the ICC because they have more accessibility to the different technology and technology companies that I would need, but ICC won’t accept me because of my income level,” he continued.

“There are many, many DeafBlind people who love technology and who need those services because it helps increase their independence … but it’s very, very limited because of the funding issue that I just stated.”

Voting access

Matt Finfgeld, director at the Richland County Board of Elections, said his workers are prepared to assist voters with disabilities.

All 34 polling locations in Richland County will have the capability for a person with visual impairments to vote unassisted, he said.

“It kind of looks like a game controller, but it has Braille on it,” he said. “It will read the ballot word-by-word, and it will read the choice to confirm.

“It does take a little longer because it’s reading word-by-word, but we do have that capability. Or they can always request a mail-in ballot and have someone assist them at home.”

He said he is expecting a 70 percent voter turnout this year, largely due to the looming presidential election.