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History of the Blind in California
As indicated previously, one of the earliest and most persistent efforts of the California Council for the Blind was to improve the State’s program of Aid to the Blind. The council, established in 1934, was the successor of the California Alumni Association of the Self-Supporting Blind, organized in 1898.
Dr. Newel Perry was at the head of both movements. In 1934 the Council went on with the 1929 Aid to the Blind Law and began its year-by-year improvements. From the beginning its efforts to improve the Aid to the Blind included three basic principles: First, that the grant should be sufficient not only to meet minimum needs but allow the blind recipient to proceed from a base of self-respect with a goal towards self-sufficiency. In pursuit of this objective the Council has battled ceaselessly for increased aid grants. The struggle is still far from won but the gains are nevertheless impressive and the prospects for future improvements are bright.
The second principle involved in the Council’s campaign to improve Aid to the Blind was that of incentive exemptions of income in the interest of self-rehabilitation. If, as was once the case, each dollar earned by the blind were deducted from his aid grant, he had little incentive to augment his income gradually until it might provide the basis for financial independence. For most the assent from dependency to independence could not be made in a single bound. In this battle the Council, as in so many others, found a powerful ally in the National Federation of the Blind While California had its own non-federal program of Aid to the Potentially Self-Supporting Blind Resident since 1941, its Aid to Needy Blind statute had to follow the federal requirement of taking into account all income and other resources a person might have. In 1950, after a decade of argument and testimony, Congress approved a landmark amendment to the Social Security Act permitting the first $50 of earned income to be exempt from the calculation of the Aid grant. Exactly ten years later, in 1960, a second breakthrough occurred when Congress authorized an increase in the amount of exempt income under the program for the blind from $50 to $85 a month. It was also provided that half of the income in excess of $85 would be exempted until full self-support should be reached. In passing it is worth noting that this principle, pioneered by the National Federation of the Blind for blind persons, has now been extended to other public assistance programs.
The third principle in the public assistance battle was that personal resources, such as income and property, needed in a plan for self-support should be exempted altogether. This goal was first achieved nationally in 1962, but the exemption was limited to a twelve-month period. In 1964 the limit was increased to three years, and at the present time the National Federation and its state affiliates are campaigning for the removal of all such limitations.