Blindness Awareness Month

This October marks the first annual Blindness Awareness Month in New Jersey. Last December, Gov. Jon Corzine signed the bill into law.

This legislation was largely pushed through by the Little Rock Foundation, an organization that supports causes for the blind and visually impaired and the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

The month is designed to promote awareness about people with vision problems and the issues they have to face on a day-to-day basis. According to the foundation, it costs more than $3,000 to transcribe a printed book into Braille. In addition, it costs nearly $45,000 and two years of training to raise a seeing-eye dog.

However, every five seconds, someone in the world goes blind.

The Foundation was created for Rocco Fiorentino, a 13-year-old blind boy who has been championing legislation for the blind since the age of 5. Rocco is blind due to premature birth.

What started as lobbying for more Braille textbooks in public schools became something much larger with the Awareness Month project.

“Like other disabilities, Rocco wants to educate people about blindness and help you to understand the challenges blind people face each and every day,” said Tina Fiorentino, Rocco’s mother and one of the founding members of the foundation.

Rowan University Freedom Forward (RUFF), the seeing-eye dog training program at Rowan, often interacts with the foundation. According to Robin Brelsford, the Office Coordinator for Judicial Affairs as well as the overseer of the RUFF program, the students and canines of RUFF make bi-annual visits to the foundations members.

“A lot of these kids, when they grow up, are going to want seeing-eye dogs,” Brelsford said.

She explained that to get a dog, a blind person must fill out an application with the seeing eye organization. If they are accepted, they pay a $150 dignity fee for their first dog.

“We just do whatever we can, whenever we can,” Brelsford said.