|
By Jill Jacobs,
Commissioner on Disabilities at ACL
Every March, ACL
celebrates Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month
with the National Association of Councils on Developmental
Disabilities and partners. Throughout the month we have
highlighted ACL’s DD programs on social media and shared
other posts to raise awareness about the inclusion of
people with DD in all aspects of community life. We have
also offered information to identify barriers people with
disabilities still sometimes experience.
My own experience with disability started when I was a
child. My father was injured in a car accident and from
that point on he used a wheelchair to get around. I,
myself, have a disability, and two of my children who are
now grown have developmental disabilities. For my family –
and for most people with disabilities – disability, itself,
has not been a barrier. Rather, societal attitudes and
systemic exclusion are the real walls put in front of us.
Things like stereotyping people with disabilities as
inspirational and ‘special’, exclusion from school, long
waiting lists for home- and community-based services, and
limited options for employment prevent full participation
in community life.
The barriers my family and I have continuously faced have
propelled me toward making change and into my work of
nearly 30 years: grassroots organizing; serving people with
developmental disabilities through home- and
community-based services in Virginia; coordinating disaster
relief and rescue for people with disabilities following
hurricanes in Louisiana, Texas, and Puerto Rico; directing
a center for independent living, and now leading the
Administration on Disabilities (AoD) at ACL. At each step
along the way, I have seen progress. The theme of
Developmental Disability Awareness month is ‘Worlds
Imagined’, and each day as I have viewed ACL’s social media
posts on the topic, I remind myself that this progress must
always be led by people with disabilities, through our own
self-advocacy, and as members of a community of people with
disabilities. Imagining a world that we want to live in is
where we start, but action creates the pathways to
community living.
I would like to highlight some innovative projects ACL, and
particularly AoD, has engaged in over the last year and
will build upon over the next year, that continue to take
us from awareness and imagination to action and real access
for people with developmental disabilities.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment