An article by Paula C. Durbin-Westby. When a person has a disability that person is still a person. That person with a disability has a body, and a mind. That person with a disability has needs, concerns, desires, a personal history, a context of family, friends, and community relations. A person who has a disability has all the legal and civil rights of personhood (or should).
ASAN President Ari Ne’eman was interviewed on Weekend World Today on BBC World Service. Listen to the interview here.
ASAN President Ari Ne’eman appeared as a guest on CNN Newsroom to discuss his appointment to the National Council on Disability. Read the transcript by clicking…
NCD Appointment Confirmed: The U.S. Senate has voted unanimously to confirm President Obama’s appointment of ASAN President Ari Ne’eman as a member of the National Council on Disability.
People with Disabilities Are Medically Underserved: We need to assure adequate numbers of primary care providers are trained to treat the population of people with disabilities; people with disabilities from across the disability community have access to adequate primary care; and funding is available for research and programs to end the health disparities people with disabilities face.
An essay by Elesia Ashkenazy. Media plays a colossal role in shaping public perception. Unfortunately, disability in the media is often centered around fear and pity, or treated with benevolence and do-goodery. Well-intentioned or not, such messages are adverse, ruinous, and useless in raising and shaping effective and positive mass consciousness.
Disability Coalition Calls on Sponsors to End Support for Autism Speaks: Over 60 disability rights organizations sent a joint letter to Autism Speaks’ sponsors, stating that the use of fear, stigma, misinformation and prejudice against Autistic people as a fundraising tool does real damage to people with disabilities everywhere.
Joint Letter to be Released: More than 60 national, international, and local disability rights organizations have signed onto a letter condemning the organization Autism Speaks for exploiting those it purports to help.
White House Disability Policy Meeting: The steering committee of the Justice for All Action Network (JFAAN), a cross-disability coalition, met for an hour with two senior White House officials to discuss some of our common policy priorities.
Americans with Disabilities Act Anniversary Celebration: We’ve posted photos of this White House event, attended by ASAN President Ari Ne’eman, at which President Barack Obama signed a proclamation commemorating the ADA and the rights of people with disabilities.
Where do rights come from? We go out to the world and we tell them in so many ways that it is time for our rights to be realized. We talk about inclusion, we talk about integration, we talk about access, but when we are asked why, our answers are typically phrased in the language of either cost-benefit or desperate need. The one turns our civil rights struggle into a conversation on policy technicalities; the other evokes the very charity-oriented model of disability support that we have been trying to escape.
The decision to use the word Autistic is a deliberate and political one – whilst it can be acknowledged that person first language has had an impact upon the way people who experience disability are viewed it has also performed the role (in people’s minds) of extracting that which can not be extracted from a person…
