Stories, essays, opinions, analyses and more from across the different disability communities and from their friends, families, and allies.
It is time to fix Personal Care services
I have been using Consumer Directed (CD) Personal Care Attendant services for over two decades. I’m writing this letter about the lack of equity between CD in home pay rates and group home pay rates. Consumer Directed Personal Care Attendant services were already broken COVID19 has exacerbated systems such as CD Personal Care Attendant services…
Right to Repair Wheelchairs – Letter to the Colorado Legislature
Help the wheelchair users of Colorado (and elsewhere in the US) reclaim their right to repair their own wheelchairs by signing this letter to the Colorado Legislature. Background There are more than 2 million wheelchair users in the US. Today, if they want to get their chairs fixed when they break, they have to go…
… now is the time to help immunocompromised people with Evusheld
We were all thrilled when the vaccines were rolled out and could protect people from the Covid-19 virus. Now it is time to help the rest of the people in the country that are immunocompromised and cannot get the vaccine or the vaccine is not enough protection. This is urgent! Why is the government not…
Hope is not an action word
I am attending a mini-writing retreat today and tomorrow and just wrote this from a prompt. Thinking about Rosemerry Watola Trommer’s poem, “Hope.” I hate the word hope. I always have. This could be a reflection of my lifelong battle with clinical depression or my adult life as the mother of a now 33 year…
Right to Repair Wheelchairs – MyChairMyRepair
It’s your wheelchair, you should have the right to get it fixed. Today, you can’t. Let’s change things. Colorado’s working on a law (Consumer Right To Repair Powered Wheelchairs – HB22-1031) . Let’s get it passed… 1 at bat, 49 states to go. Actions to take You can sign this Open Letter to the Colorado…
We Must Protect the Most Vulnerable from COVID
On January 12 the U.S. government announced it was purchasing an additional 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, the only pre-exposure treatment approved by the FDA for immune-compromised people who cannot mount a response to the available COVID vaccines. This brings the total U.S. commitment to purchase this vital treatment to 1.2 million doses. While this…
Proactive Inclusion in the Classroom is possible
This video shows an excellent example of Proactive Inclusion for a disabled student, in this case an autistic girl. Proactive inclusion is not merely physically including a child in a classroom or other environment, but working to ensure that they are as fully incorporated into the educational, social, and other aspects of the program as…
California Special Education Study Released – Big Changes Needed
A major report on the state of Special Education in California finds that big changes are needed. California has one of the worst rates of inclusion in the US – in the bottom 3 of the 50 states using data from the US Department of Education. Some selected findings For students with an IEP, including…
A model who looks like me: Communicating and consuming representations of disability
“People with disabilities have been symbolically, if not literally, erased from mainstream advertisements and editorial images carries with it very real implications. As cultural products, these images and advertisements play an important role in shaping public preferences… Diversity in fashion may be on the rise but cultural change is often slow. The advertisements produced by…
Working Differently or Not at All: COVID-19’s Effects on Employment among People with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions
“COVID-19 is accentuating pre-existing structural disadvantages and inequalities. Although employment levels and income have rebounded for individuals and households who were more advantaged prior to the pandemic, this is not the case for lower income households and less advantaged groups. Many continue to remain insecure with fears of falling off an income cliff. We not…