The independent living movement grew out of the anger and frustration of people with disabilities who were excluded from places of education, work, general retail, worship, and recreation due to barriers in architecture, transportation, and communications. Attitudes about people with disabilities ranged from low or no expectation to the promotion of the superhero, perpetuating the idea that people with disabilities, …
Shared peer advice from polio survivors about what works for them.
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News about people who have made significant contributions to the disability community.
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What People With Disabilities Hope For From Other People
Fr. Robert J. Ronald, SJ, Taiwan Please don’t notice only our disabilities. They are the first thing that you see, but they are not the most important thing there is to know about us. We hope that when you see us you will say to yourself, “Here’s somebody like me, who may have some abilities, interests or aspirations similar to …
Past and Future
Grace Young When I had polio at age 9, I was happy to have a wheelchair – any wheelchair – that would allow me the freedom to leave my bedroom. The only model available at that time was all wood with a cane back and wooden wheels. Undoubtedly it’s featured in the Smithsonian now. Large, heavy, clunky – forget taking …
Movin’ On
Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, M Ed Psych, Omaha, Nebraska, is a polio survivor, a writer, and is founder and former director of Nebraska Polio Survivors Association. We’re talking civil rights here. Big Time. “Our crowning achievement of the 20th Century,” as Justin Dart, Jr. called it—the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act—the ADA. On July 26 we celebrated its …
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol was adopted on 13 December 2006 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and was opened for signature on 30 March 2007. The Convention entered into force on 3 May 2008. The Convention marks a “paradigm shift” in attitudes and approaches to persons with disabilities. The …
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (PL 101-336), signed by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990, is first and foremost a civil rights law that establishes a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. For purposes of the ADA, a “disability” means a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or …
A Gentle Death, Part I
Part I of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 2) in 2013. Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska My mother has been on my mind. She’s been gone now for ten years. Death finally came to her after several merciless years of progressive suffering and pain in the nursing home she had selected to …
A Gentle Death, Part II
Part II of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 3) in 2013. Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska Surely we don’t need studies to prove that planning ahead is a good idea, yet plenty of them exist, even when it comes to end-of-life issues. The goal, of course, is to assure that a patient’s medical …
A Gentle Death, Part III
Part III of a three part series published in Post-Polio Health, (Volume 29, Number 4) in 2013. Nancy Baldwin Carter, BA, MEd Psych, Omaha, Nebraska At the far end of the end-of-life spectrum lies palliative care, a set of services created to benefit the chronically ill. In fact, it’s so far from the end that, at times, it may not appear …
Imperative to Fight Ableism
Karen Hagrup I am disabled and proud. I have a doctorate and two daughters. I live in a nice condo with my partner. I’m retired and volunteer regularly in my community. People come to me for help. I rarely worry anymore about others’ attitudes toward my impairment; they’ve probably got it wrong anyway. Some might say I’ve overcome my disability. …
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