Stop Saying No - Tony Stevens on Blindness, Helen Keller, and the Fight for Full Inclusion

Tony Stevens is the Assistant Vice President for Communications at the American Foundation for the Blind — and he has been blind since age 15, when glaucoma destroyed the limited vision he was born with. He sails competitively on Baltimore Harbor. He is on his fourth guide dog. And he is one of the producers of Possibilities — a feature-length documentary about Helen Keller's legacy told through the real, unfiltered experiences of people who are blind or have low vision today.This conversation goes places most disability discussions don't. Tony breaks down the most persistent myth about Helen Keller — that she was a tool of other people's agendas — and makes the case for who she actually was: a socialist, a labor rights advocate, a women's suffragist, a co-founder of the ACLU, and a force who spent decades refusing to take no for an answer. He connects her story directly to the fight happening right now — in rideshare discrimination, in AI accessibility gaps, in a disability rights movement that Tony says is still too often fighting for the status quo instead of imagining something new.The conversation also covers the ADA at 36 years — what it built, where it stalled, and why disability remains the only protected class with a dollar amount attached to inclusion. The "curb cut effect." The "disability squeeze." Separate but equal, still showing up in paratransit and schools for the blind in 2026. And the one thing Tony wants every listener to take from this conversation: stop saying no so fast. The advocates who changed history were the ones who kept pushing past it.Watch Possibilities and learn more at afb.org/possibilitiesAFB's AI accessibility research report: afb.org/AIresearchAmerican Foundation for the Blind: afb.orgTony Stevens, American Foundation for the Blind, blindness disability rights, Helen Keller legacy, Possibilities documentary AFB, ADA Americans with Disabilities Act, disability discrimination 2026, guide dog rideshare discrimination, AI accessibility blind, curb cut effect disability, disability inclusion advocacy, Afternoon Coffee Break Darren Watts,