Disability Rights Florida Blog (impressions_of_the_ada_olivia_babis)

April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day. As we honor and center folks with autism and their experiences today, we want to highlight the concept of 'neurotypical passing' and how this concept has impacted the autistic community. Today, we share an article written by Charli Clement from the Conscious Being magazine.

It is Brain Injury Awareness Month! Let’s observe brain injury awareness month together by looking at what living with a brain injury might look like. The range of disabilities is so vast, so even one category of injury can mean a lot of different things for each person affected.

We’re joining others across the nation in raising awareness around women who are affected by this epidemic. We want women and girls to feel empowered, and this begins with putting the power in your own hands. You can be your own advocate when it comes to preventing, or living with HIV.

It’s March 1st, which means it’s Self-Injury Awareness Day. This is a globally recognized event intended to draw attention to self-harm and the resources available to help those who may need them. The prevalence of self-injury has increased over recent years, and studies show that about 17% of all people self-harm during their lifetime. Self-injury, which can also be known as self-harm or self-abuse occurs when a person harms themselves in a way that is intentional and repeated. With the spread of COVID-19, folks have faced unprecedented mental health challenges that may contribute to even higher self-injury rates. So with this, let’s take today and the month of March to look at how we can help ourselves and help others in the community who may struggle with self-injury. 

In light of a very important anniversary, we’re appreciating and reflecting on our Client Assistance Program (CAP). As some may know, Disability Rights Florida (DRF) has nine programs to serve the disability community. CAP which began on February 22, 1984, is one of these nine. So, what better way to honor this anniversary than to highlight CAP and its goals?

February is Black History Month! We will be highlighting impactful Black disability activists and advocates throughout the month. Check back for new features each day!

Many bills which have the potential to directly impact people with disabilities have been filed by lawmakers this year. Below are just a few of the issues Disability Rights Florida is focused on for this session.

Education, access, and outreach are some of our core values at Disability Rights Florida. This year, we have many public events lined up to provide services to you and receive insight from you into what matters most to the disability community. Two types of these public events are Fully Accessible COVID-19 Vaccination Events and Public Forums.

December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities! This day strives to bring awareness to the experiences of people with disabilities around the globe, promoting the disability community’s rights, dignity, safety, wellbeing, and success. It also calls attention to the treatment of people with disabilities and where there is more work left to do.

November 11th is World Usability Day, an annual event intended to highlight the importance of technology as a way to help make our lives easier. Devices like cellphones, laptops, tablets, and public access kiosks — and the websites, applications and interfaces that run on these devices — have the potential to remove barriers, open up opportunities, and advance inclusion for people with disabilities.

Typically, during Blindness Awareness Month, we celebrate the progress and recognize the achievements in the blind community. We provide education on subjects as varied as blindness etiquette, accommodating blindness in the workplace and in the community, Guide dogs, the white cane, and much more. But it’s 2021 and my thoughts turn to Blindness Awareness in the context of the world as it is today.

What makes a reader proficient? Learning to read requires certain cognitive processes. At its most basic form, learning to read requires the reader to take in information and process that information. It is a mental process that requires some basic skills such as memory, attention, organization of information, retrieval of information, and interpreting information. Many students with disabilities struggle with reading because their disability affects these skills.

Every year since 2016 the American Association of People with Disabilities has hosted National Disability Voter Registration Week in coordination with its REV UP campaign state chapters, including Florida’s REV UP Chapter, Access the Vote Florida. An estimated 38 million people with disabilities were eligible to vote nationwide during the 2020 elections making the disability community the largest minority voting bloc in the United States. Despite these large numbers, issues that affect the disability community are not usually discussed during elections or are discussed with no mention of the implications for people with disabilities.

While the benefits from in-person learning highly outweigh those of online learning, safely transitioning students back to school for the 2021 school year must be the top priority. On July 9, 2021, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued updated guidance for COVID-19 Prevention in K-12 schools. These guidelines provided additional information regarding the promotion of the COVID-19 vaccines.

As parents and students prepare for the upcoming school year, many may be wondering about services and instruction that were missed during the 2020-2021 school year. Although we are starting a new school year, it is important to ensure that any gaps resulting from missed services or instruction resulting in a failure to implement a student’s individual educational plan (IEP) are addressed. You might ask yourself, “How do I know if my child has any academic gaps, and how can I fix them?”