COUNCIL OF BLIND IN CAPE FOR CONVENTION

If somehow allowed to see, Paul Edwards might not take the opportunity.

"I'm comfortable with who I am," says Edwards, a Miami, Fla., college administrator who is the president of the American Council of the Blind.

Edwards is the keynote speaker tonight at the annual conference of the Missouri Council of the Blind at the Holiday Inn Convention Center. About 300 people from across the state are attending the two-day conference.

The American Council of the Blind is a consumer's organization that presses self-help objectives for blind people.

"We need to fight to insure we have the ability to survive," Edwards says.

The idea that there's something wrong with being blind is deeply ingrained in our culture, he says.

"Blind drunk, blind ambition -- there aren't any phrases that do not have negative connotations."

In his speech tonight, Edwards plans to talk about what an honor it is to be blind. "That's not the normal conception, even for blind folks," he says.

"The first barrier to overcome is not believing it's OK to be blind."

Edwards was one of 12 disabled people who met as a group with President Clinton and Vice President Gore last month. Edwards talked to the American leaders about employment problems faced by blind people, whose national unemployment rate is a stratospheric 72 percent.

The reasons are manifold, Edwards says, including disincentives to work built into the Social Security system, and the lack of appropriate education and job training.

Blind children who are mainstreamed are not prepared to go to work, Edwards says. About 95 percent of blind children haven't had a job and haven't participated in extracurricular activities by the time they finish high school.

Ninety-six percent have never had a date, he says.

"Most blind people are isolated, protected and coddled."

Edwards wasn't. At 8 he won ribbons for show jumping in an international horse show, and he won awards for long-distance swimming as a youngster. At 13, his mother moved to Jamaica, where he later became the first blind student to attend a university in the Caribbean.

Now 52, he has taught high school English and history in Trinidad, ran a private agency for blind people in Jacksonville, Fla., was a rehab teacher who taught Braille, and now coordinates services to disabled students at Miami Dade Community College.

Cape Girardean Kenneth Emmons is the president of the Missouri Council of the Blind. He supervises one of the largest and most active affiliates in the American Council of the Blind.

The Cape Girardeau affiliate has 31 members, with more located in Poplar Bluff, Sikeston and Ste. Genevieve.

Getting around is the biggest difficulty for blind people in Missouri, Emmons says. "All people with disabilities have problems with transportation."

He said Braille signage is just beginning to appear around the state. He pointed out that the motel where the conference is being held doesn't have Braille signs.

With regard to providing rehab services for blind people and education for blind children, Missouri's performance -- like most states' -- is "a little less than wonderful," Edwards says.

"We have to ask ourselves whether they have the right answers."

Retired high school counselor Jerry Annunzio of Kansas City is chairman of the state advisory council for rehabilitative services for the blind. He says those services are not up to par. "We get a lot of lip service and no action."

Annunzio is partially sighted. A special bioptic lens provides him with 20/25 distance vision in his operative eye, good enough to acquire a restricted driver's license.

New technology generally has been a boon to blind people, Edwards says. Costs for much more powerful machines have dropped, "but we haven't trained blind people to use the technology," he says.

One big obstacle blind people face is gaining access to the Information Superhighway. Blind people can't use a mouse, and issuing commands by identifying icons also is impossible.

"Blind people who use computers are in danger of losing their jobs," Edwards says.

Blind people don't have the clout to convince the computer manufacturers to change their systems but Edwards' organization is trying to pressure federal, state and local governments to develop standards to assure accessibility to computers for disabled people.

Without full access, Edwards says, "we are second-class citizens."