Know No Excuses

- By Guest Blogger Pinalben “Pinky” Patel -

I believe everyone should have a college education especially people using a wheelchair. Many people cannot go to college because of various responsibilities such as having to take care of a sick loved one or sports training, but having a physical disability is not a valid excuse.

However, there are different stages of disability. Some people in wheelchairs can drive, cook, clean, stand up or even walk a few steps by holding onto the wall. Whereas, some wheelchair users have very limited use of their arms and cannot stand or turn in bed without another person's help.

Hence, wheelchair users have to choose their study in college according to their capabilities. It certainly does not mean that the choices are limited. It just means that people using a wheelchair have to be realistic when it comes to choosing study areas.

For instance, I am a wheelchair user due to Friedreich's Ataxia. My FA has also made my upper body so uncoordinated that I cannot write with a pencil. Therefore, I don't think I can study surgery and become a surgeon even if I wanted to become one. I chose an area, which I could study as independently as possible.

Since my junior year in high school, I enjoyed writing. I wanted to study creative writing in college. I do not type as slow as I write with a pen but much slower than average. So vocational rehabilitation bought a voice-activated software called Dragon NaturallySpeaking for me to type my assignments faster. I enrolled in West Kentucky Community and Technical College because it was in town where I can use the local taxi. It offered an associate degree in English with many literature and creative writing classes.

When I finished the associate degree, I wanted to do a bachelor's degree. I went to Murray State University to do that because it was closest to my home. But it was still about an hour away from my home. I took journalism classes at that college because they were less demanding in attendance than creative writing. However, transportation and attendant care was still becoming an issue. Even though the University provided note takers and scribes for tests in classes, I had a difficult time finding reliable people to work with as I need help in the rest room and driving.

To resolve the frustrating problem, I changed my major and degree program to one that would let me take most classes online. I had Internet access and VR helped me get a computer so I was able to stay home while finishing my degree. I finally graduated with a bachelor's of independent studies in Print Communications.
People with disabilities should not worry about college expenses either – they are more than bearable. My college fees were paid by FAFSA and VR. Because I also had a KEES scholarship, I received a few leftover bucks from the financial aid office. When I had the hour commute, VR even paid for gas mileage and outfitted the family van with a wheelchair lift. I did spend a little money to take summer classes because I wanted to finish my degree faster, but that is not a requirement.

Although the cost of a college education does depend on the chosen school, a will to study would make any school a great choice. I did not want to study at any of the schools I had gone to, but in my situation those schools were the best for me. I wanted to focus on studying, not training personal-care attendants to handle my needs. Besides, I had lots of trouble finding daytime aides so I can only imagine the tediousness of my living in a dorm. After taking some classes, I found that there is no difference between an IV league and a public or community college. Education is education, no matter where it is from.

Education is really important to me because I was not expected to study beyond high school. People still awe at me when they find out I am a college graduate and strangely, that is a nice feeling. I want everyone in my situation to feel that sense of accomplishment.

The Center for Accessible Living, Inc. is currently seeking interested Individuals to apply for membership on the Board of Directors

The Center for Accessible Living, Inc. is currently seeking interested Individuals to apply for membership on the Board of Directors.

The Center for Accessible Living is Kentucky’s first Independent Living Center and is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. CAL is a disability rights and resource center for people with disabilities, governed by people with disabilities. Services are offered to individuals with all types of disabilities. The Board of Directors, which establishes policy and direction for the Center, is composed of members from the local community, the majority (at least 51%) of which are people with disabilities.

Our Mission: The Center for Accessible Living is an innovative leader in empowering all people to achieve their goal of independent living while involving the entire community.

As with all board members, you need to be able to commit to regular meeting attendance, have the ability to receive communication by phone and/or e-mail and have some comfort in communicating ideas in a group setting.

This is a great opportunity for you to “give back” and use your experience to help shape policies and programs!

The Center for Accessible Living, Inc. is committed to principles of equal opportunity. People with disabilities, veterans and minorities encouraged to apply.

Please contact board@calky.org if you are interested, or if you need further information.

Thank you,
Tom Stokes
Chair, Board of Directors
Center for Accessible Living, Inc.

Disability Rights: More Than After-Dinner Conversation

- Information provided by Cass Irvin of Access to the Arts, Inc. -

More Than After-Dinner Conversation

"Disability Rights: more than after-dinner conversation" was the slogan on a tee shirt The Disability Rag magazine created as an awareness tool for their catalog sales. The Rag did this to draw attention to disability--in the right way--and show a different image of disability. It promoted a concept evoked by the Rag's perspective of disability cool. The catalog had bumper stickers, postcards, buttons and tee shirts with slogans on them. One tee shirt had a mermaid in a wheelchair and it said "Disability Cool."
What is "disability cool"?* Is being a wheelchair jock cool? Or being an activist? Having a sense of awareness? Does it refer to an attitude in disability rights? Are people "disability cool?" Or just things?

"It's disability cool to travel with a pack on your chair, slung over one handle, just like college kids do with their packs, particularly a ratty one," said a loyal Rag reader. "It's having the attitude that what you're doing is normal--no big deal-that projects the sense of disability cool. You're flaunting convention. Nobody's making any big deal about the disability."

In those day The Rag listed designer glasses and books on tape recorded by authors, like Nancy Reagan. Today examples include neon wheelchairs, glucometers in designer colors and Oxygen bars touting flavored scents and colored cannulas, just to name a few. www.ragged-edge-mag.com

October is Disability Awareness Month.

As disability advocates, Access to the Arts, Inc. tries our best to "get the word out." You might see something about it in the news but probably not. Unlike other minorities, people with disabilities don't have a good public relations campaign. They're either trying to cure us or rehab us.

By the way, the proper term is people with disabilities, disabled people. No cutesy stuff like "physically challenged." That's a term that gives us a false attribute. It makes it sound neat to be us: we are physically challenged! And, please, no "differently abled," or "able bodied." And three words about "crippled children" : we grow up.

To be honest, disability involves many aspects of life so sometimes it's hard to explain why our history, our issues are relevant or should be of interest to you. Media coverage of disability too often focuses on courage and cure and overcoming. Or the cost of health care. (We, by the way, know excellent ways to curb the high cost of disability but no one asks us.)

Why, you may be asking yourself, should you be more aware of disability? Well, when we got started in this disability advocacy business thirty years ago, there weren't so many of us, only about 10 percent. Now we are over 20 percent. So we'd be surprised if you didn't know one of us or aren't one, especially if you were here thirty years ago!

Disabled people are not thought of as a minority even though we are the largest. And the most diverse in nationality, ethnicity, gender, persuasion, size, age . . .

People with Disabilities in Movies

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will dedicate the month of October to exploring the ways people with disabilities have been portrayed in film. Lawrence Carter-Long, recognized for his expertise in the arts, access and media, will join TCM host Robert Osborne for The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film. The special month-long exploration will air Tuesdays in October, beginning Oct. 2 at 8 PM (ET).

Twenty-two years after the passage of the ADA and over a century since Thomas Edison filmed 'The Fake Beggar,' TCM will provide an unprecedented overview of how cinematic projections of isolation and inspiration have played out on the silver screen--and in the lives of people with disabilities.

"This is a valuable opportunity to take a deeper look at the movies we all know and love, to see them from a different perspective and to learn what they have to say about us as a society," said Osborne. Carter-Long will provide a historical background and insight on how cinematic portrayals of disability have evolved over time.

And--in a first for TCM--all films will be presented with both closed captioning and audio description (via secondary audio) for audience members with auditory and visual disabilities.

TCM's exploration of disability in cinema includes many Oscar-winning and nominated films, such as An Affair to Remember (1957), in which Deborah Kerr's romantic rendezvous with Cary Grant is nearly derailed by a paralyzing accident; A Patch of Blue (1965), with Elizabeth Hartman as a blind white girl who falls in love with a black man, played by Sidney Poitier; Johnny Belinda (1948), starring Jane Wyman as a "deaf-mute" forced to defy expectations; The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), the post-War drama starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy and real-life disabled veteran Harold Russell; and Charly (1968), with Cliff Robertson as an intellectually disabled man who questions the limits of science after being turned into a genius.

A complete schedule can be found at www.tcm.com

Ways You Can Be Cool*

Disability Cool is learning ASL (American Sign Language) not because you have to but because you can. The Center for Accessible Living conducts a "Conversational" Sign Language class. To register, please contact: Meg Deckert at the Center for Accessible Living, 502-589-6620; mdeckert@calky.org Accommodations available upon request. If this goes well they're planning to do it all around town.

National White Cane Safety Day is October 15. Come celebrate at Fourth Street Live from 11AM-1PM and learn more about this symbol and tool for independence. Blind and visually disabled people have used canes as mobility tools for centuries but it was not until after World War I that the white cane was properly introduced. The first of the state laws regarding the right of blind people to travel independently with the white cane was passed in 1930. It granted blind pedestrians protection and the right-of-way while carrying a white cane. Today there are different varieties of the white cane, each serving different needs.
www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/white-cane-safety-day

To celebrate National Disability Awareness Month last year, Starbucks released a Starbucks Card with Braille lettering. The Braille card was first suggested at a symposium with national disability leaders in 2007. Starbucks has also taken steps to make stores accessible, including large print Braille menus available upon request. The reloadable Card is available now at participating Starbucks stores and available online at www.Starbucks.com/Card.

Each October, KQED as PBS affiliate in the San Francisco bay area, hosts a Celebration of Disability Culture, airing special programs that explore the complex web of experiences and issues faced by people with disabilities. To view the schedule go to: www.kqed.org/community/heritage/disability/index.jsp

Remember the song "Save the Last Dance for Me," and how the man tells the woman to go ahead and dance as long as they leave together at the end of the night? It's so romantic. She dances. He watches. And when the music's over, they put their arms around each other and go home. A huge Drifters' hit in the 1960s. The back-story: The songwriter was Doc Pomus, a blues singer who had polio and used crutches and a wheelchair. His wife was a Broadway actress who liked going out on the town.
www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20071007/NEWS/71005012/1005/SPORTS0106

For a complete history of people with disabilities

Go to the Encyclopedia Of American Disability History. Susan Burch, Ed. Facts On File, Inc.: New York, NY. 2009. Burch and her colleagues have created a foundational text in the fields of Disability Studies and Disability History. www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1291/1322

This information is provided by Access to the Arts, Inc., an arts and disability advocacy organization, in Louisville, KY. www.accesstothearts.org. For questions about this information, contact the links listed or contact us at DisaCool@aol.com

A Human Resources Manager's Experience in Disability Mentoring Day

- By Susan Rademaker -

I was fairly new to my role in Human Resources when I first heard about Disability Mentoring Day. I attended the meetings for the Center for Accessible Living; Business Advisory Council and heard there was a need for hosts for the event. I asked some questions, sought approval from my Director and volunteered to host our very first Disability Mentoring Day. I worked hard on coordinating people, schedules and the agenda. I thought the event went well but later read some constructive feedback from one of our visitors. We’ve made changes over the years and I think we are now getting ready to host our 5th annual mentoring day. We are so excited!

Why do we host Disability Mentoring Day? Well, the first time, it was simply because I was asked to. Now, we do it for a lot of reasons but really the question is why wouldn’t we host mentoring day? Disability Mentoring Day takes place during Disability Awareness Month (October) for a reason. Hosting mentoring day helps raise awareness that people with a disability have abilities. There are employees going to work every day who have a disability. Some disabilities are obvious upon observation but many are not. People with a disability deserve independent living just as those without a disability. Mentoring Day can accomplish several things. It does raise awareness to focus on what a person’s abilities are versus what the disability is. It creates partnerships with organizations which can be a resource for qualified candidates to work within our organization. In recruitment, we are always seeking new resources for qualified candidates.

We also want to do what we can to increase the confidence of students or other job seekers who have a disability. It’s difficult enough, when graduating from high school to feel confident about abilities. This is especially true when job seeking. It’s time for the real world and that can be overwhelming to a person with or without a disability. If we can match students up with our employees in the area of the interests, allow them some hands on tasks and opportunities to ask questions; maybe we can build confidence. Maybe we can help that person decide if that is the right career path for them. Maybe we can open doors for them or point them in the direction of the right doors.

In hosting Disability Mentoring Day, we’ve built relationships and we’ve raised awareness within our own employees. We’ve gotten hugs, thank you cards and letters of gratitude. We enjoy opening our doors to assist the community in any way we can. We hope we make a difference for our visitors but our visitors definitely make a difference for us!

Susan Rademaker is the Human Resources Generalist at NPAS, a part of Parallon Business Solutions. 

If you're a job seeker looking for an opportunity to job shadow, visit http://www.calky.org/events/6/disability-mentoring-day/.

CAL Has a New Look, Same Great Service

We have a new logo and a new website! This re-branding is an opportunity to refresh our discussion with the community about people who are living with disabilities and the language we use in talking about people who are living with disabilities. In many ways it is not a new vision, but a return to a lot of the traditional independent living philosophy ideas that were prevalent when the Center started. Our new tagline is “Disability Rights and Resource Center.”


Many of our materials are branded with the phrase, “Do you speak our language?” They highlight person-first language, emphasizing that words do matter. The power of labels can stigmatize, so we recognize the power of labels. Our language shapes our attitude.

By using people-first language, we're putting the person before the disability. In doing this, we hope to change how people see disabilities. We believe that disability is a natural part of life. It is not the impairment that prevents those living with disabilities from participating fully and equally in society. Rather, it is the fact that society has not taken into account the needs of persons living with a disability.

The logo reminds us of a rising sun or a lighthouse beacon. It is bright and optimistic, much like the future CAL envisions for the disability community.

Check out our new brand, logo and website at www.calky.org.

A Story About How We Can All Make a Difference - Suicide Awareness Day, September 10th

The Story of Kyle (Authur Unknown)

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books. I thought to myself, “Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd.”

I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on. As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him. He looked up, and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes.

My heart went out to him. So I jogged over to him, and as he crawled around looking for his glasses, I saw a tear in his eye. As I handed him his glasses, I said, “Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives.” He looked at me and said, “Hey thanks!” There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

I helped him pick up his books and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he had gone to private school before now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before, but we talked all the way home, and I carried his books.

He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. I asked him if he wanted to play football on Saturday with me and my friends. He said yes.

We hung out all weekend, and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him. And my friends thought the same of him. Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again. I stopped him and said, “Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!” He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends. When we were seniors, we began to think about college. Kyle decided on Georgetown, and I was going to Duke. I knew that we would always be friends, that the miles would never be a problem. He was going to be a doctor, and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class. I teased him all the time about being a nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation. I was so glad it wasn’t me having to get up there and speak.

On graduation day, I saw Kyle. He looked great. He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school. He filled out and actually looked good in glasses. He had more dates than me and all the girls loved him! Boy, sometimes I was jealous. Today was one of those days. I could see that he was nervous about his speech, so I smacked him on the back and said, “Hey, big guy, you’ll be great!” He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled. “Thanks,” he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began. “Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach — but mostly your friends. I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I am going to tell you a story.” I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of the first day we met. He had planned to kill himself over the weekend. He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his mom wouldn’t have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile. “Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable.”

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment. I saw his mom and dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile. Not until that moment did I realize its depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture, you can change a person’s life.

Tables Turned

- By Stephanie Hickey -

I am forever barred from ever accompanying my father on another one of his doctor’s appointments. Before I explain why, let me explain that from the time I was two, my parents have been taking extra care of me because I was a child with a disability. They attended every doctor’s appointment, therapy session and were always by side to ensure that I followed my therapists and doctors’ orders to the letter. And their constant nagging frustrated and infuriated me to no end!

Let me tell you all about my father. Joseph (I will not reveal his middle name on the internet because he really will kill me) Hickey had worked from the age of sixteen. And from that age through the next thirty-eight years on, he always did hard physical labor. My father worked in the hottest or coldest temperatures, was the first one to arrive and the last to leave. And he took pride that he was a man who worked hard to provide for his family. As someone born in the fifties, my father has the-male-provides-for-family mentality ingrained in his bones, along with an I-must-suffer-in-silence mentality. After working those sixteen hour days in the harshest conditions, Daddy would be there at the hospital when I woke up. He would sit and watch Foghorn Leghorn cartoons (doing impressions of Foghorn to make me laugh) and eat green jello with me.

Now, at his age, and after all those years of physically punishing his body, he cannot work any longer. And Daddy is starting to need taking care of. Having Cerebral Palsy, I worry about my parents aging--their bodies and health deteriorating--because I do not have the strength to care for them. But my going to his doctor’s showed me that I can care for my parents.

My father did not want me to go with him, but my mother asked me to, because we both knew he would down-play his condition. I convinced my father to let me tag-along by promising to be a good girl and stay quiet. I made this promise with the knowledge that once my dad and I were back there, I could relay to his physician all of the symptoms my father wanted to ignore and my father would not say anything to me because we were not alone.

This is just what I did. While Daddy just muttered, “Oh I only feel a little…”, disregarding his symptoms, I let him go on, but I spoke up adding, “Actually, Dr. Blank, my daddy has been feeling more…more…and more…” And while I said all this, Daddy glared at me with a “just-wait-‘til-we-get-home” look.

I delighted in Daddy’s reaction, because he now knew that it isn’t all that fun to have someone interfering in your medical treatment, even if it is someone who loves you. It made me laugh, remembering all those years he has been nipping at my back nagging that I walk heel-toe, heel-toe and asking, “Did you do your exercises today?” It also made me realize that even if I don’t have the physical capability to care for my parents, I still can ensure they get the best care. And don’t worry daddy, I know that you are still a far, far way away from that.