Mindy Scheier is a mom of three, an entrepreneur, and an authority on accessible fashion. She is also the founder and CEO of the Runway of Dreams Foundation, which she started in 2014 with the help of her son Oliver, who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Oliver wanted to wear jeans to school like his peers; so Mindy took on the request and modified a pair of jeans for her son to wear the next day. Being in the fashion industry and inspired by Oliver's new jeans, Mindy began her journey designing adaptive clothing that enthuses people with disabilities.

As a renowned leader in adaptive clothing and advocate for inclusion, Mindy collaborates with mainstream brands to make modifications for their present and future apparel lines. These adaptive pieces are wearer friendly, stylish, and encourage conviction, autonomy, and self-expression for people with difference. Her design work has also earned her the award for Ark Catalyst Marketing Influencer of the Year; Mindy also kicked off New York Fashion Week in the fall of 2019 with a runway show, featuring models of all abilities.

Recently, Mindy chronicled her fashion vision and the Runaway of Dreams Foundation mission, of “working toward a future of inclusion, acceptance and opportunity in the fashion industry for people with disabilities,” with our Different & Able President and Founder, Alexandra Nicklas. Mindy’s design modifications enable people with difference, by giving them the power to choose their own fashion. With a flaunt forward fashion mentality and her contagious exuberance, Mindy’s philosophy on accessible fashion shines, “Where there is a will, there is a runway.”

We recently had the good fortune to interview Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, co-directors of the celebrated documentary Crip Camp, which tells the story of how a camp for children with disabilities became a training ground for a whole generation of disability rights activists, including Judy Heumann. Enjoy! 

Many people make it a point to not define someone by their medical condition or disorder that they endure. As much as I agree with that standard, there are so many parts of my life that I look back and think, “If I did not have this condition, would I be a different person?” The truth is, I would not be who I am today if I did not have epilepsy.

I was formally diagnosed at 11 years-old after having countless absence seizures and tonic-clonic seizures. Throughout most of my adolescence and teenage years, my family and I held on to the hope that maybe I would outgrow this condition like some children. Taking my medication twice a day seemed to do the trick and throughout my teenage years, the medicine worked properly.

Unfortunately, I began having seizures again my first year of college; I had multiple tonic-clonic seizures sporadically that year. The only people who knew were the people closest to me. I felt very isolated, delayed and powerless. All my friends were packing getting ready to go away to school and there I was, at home, trying a new medication hoping that it was successful. I realized then that my life was altered. The path that I had planned had taken a complete left turn. I despised having epilepsy. I was forced to acknowledge it and I hated that the most. I just saw myself as a burden to the people around me, and it made me embarrassed. Despite the lack of control in my life, that year surprisingly ended up being one of my most memorable. I attended a community college where I had no seizures during school hours, which was such a relief.

After I went six months seizure-free, I decided to try out for the 2008 Philadelphia Eagles cheerleading squad. I never thought I would actually make the team, but when I did, it truly felt like I was being given a break from all that had been happening in the past year. I felt that my life was finally back where I wanted it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of failure. There was so much of that year to be thankful for and I was too busy focusing on how to act like everything was “normal." The positives seem to slip on by.

I went five years with no seizures -- it was the longest I have ever gone without having any. I reached a point where I was able to disconnect myself from the condition. I still took my medicine twice daily, but I began to get careless. I had a terrible diet, awful sleep schedule and took my medication at different times during the day. I know that there had to have been moments where I forgot to take it.

Finally, my body and brain had had enough of my careless ways. I ended up having eight tonic clonic seizures in the past two years, along with a few atypical absence seizures. I would go months where everything was fine and then all of a sudden, I'd have another seizure. I was forced to acknowledge it, again. But this time, I welcomed it. Instead of disassociating myself, I had learned to accept this condition, who I was and who I wanted to be. I didn’t realize how it truly was controlling my life. By me trying to ignore it, I had lost sight of taking care of myself.

I am so thankful for the supportive people in my life. I would be nowhere without my family. They have been there for me since the start of it all and words cannot express the level of gratitude I have for them. I am a firm believer that whatever someone’s situation may be, good or bad, it is going to shape you into who you are as an individual. I would be lying if I said that I still don’t fear certain risks or outcomes that I know exist with having epilepsy, but I think that’s what opens my eyes to the beauty of my life.

These past two years have been my most trying experiences with epilepsy. However, once I recognized the reality of my situation, everything seemed to fall into place. I am happier, accepting and at peace. I found who I was and discovered who I want to be. There are definitely nights where I cry and pray that eventually the right treatment will come along. After recent seizures that have occurred this year, my level of appreciation and life itself has gone up tremendously.

I want others to understand epilepsy and truly understand the facts about it. There is so much we can learn from this condition that I know it could open many doors into learning more about other mental differences. For individuals who live with epilepsy, seizure disorder or have had a seizure in their lifetime, understand that just because you lose control of your brain and body, does not mean your condition should control your spirits. The strength that one possesses after a life-altering experience such as epilepsy determines more of your character than you know. The struggles that you withstand today are only the beautiful beginnings of the life you encounter tomorrow.

We were lucky to interview Kathryn Jenkins from @Inclusion_Project about her work on behalf of inclusion in education and family life. Kathryn has authored the book The Inclusion Alphabet (find a video of her reading it here!) and runs a consulting business focused on expanding inclusion and access to all. 

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, directed by Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, tells the story of Camp Jened, a unique-for-its-time summer camp for people with disabilities of all kinds. Not only did Camp Jened, in Upstate New York, provide many campers with their first experience of a truly accessible space, it also became an accidental organizing site for the disability rights movement, since many of the movement’s leaders had become friends at Camp Jened. 

The first part of this astonishing film tracks the experience of director Jim LeBrecht, who traveled to Camp Jened for the summers during his teens. As LeBrecht explains in the film, he was told that this was a “camp for people with disabilities run by hippies.” He was attracted to the idea of Jened because of this counter-culture influence. When he got there, he found that what he had been told was the truth: the young counselors at the camp encouraged their campers to explore freedoms in various important ways, many of which they had never had access to as teens with disabilities. This may have been partly because the counselors were not much older than teenagers themselves, and because they, like the campers, they had come to Jened for freedom and exploration.

This relaxed atmosphere was combined with an ethos of radical accessibility. As Lionel Je’ Woodyard, an able-bodied counselor who came to Camp Jened from Georgia, explains, the campers at Jened were used to being left out in their lives at home. They weren’t allowed to play sports, for instance, at school, or if they were, they weren’t picked for the team by their classmates. Many of them weren't even allowed to attend regular public schools, but were placed in institutions. But at Camp Jened, as Woodyard explains, everyone was expected and encouraged to participate to the fullest extent of their capacity and interest. Counselors and other campers created accommodations for each other on a moment-to-moment basis. Accommodation was the expectation, rather than the exception to the rule. What's more, as we see in the film, decisions at the camp were made in radically democratic ways: when they had to decide what to make for dinner, for instance, campers held a long discussion and a vote. No issue was too small to be discussed and worked through together.

This might not sound so radical to those of us who were born after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those who are a bit older, however, know better. When Camp Jened was running, there were no federal laws which protected the rights of people with disabilities. There were no federal laws which prevented discrimination against them on the basis of their disabilities. People with disabilities were barred from crucial experiences because they couldn’t count on the government to protect their rights. For instance, if you utilized a wheelchair to move through the world, what were you to do if your employer was on the second floor of a building? Unless your employer willingly added a ramp, you had no recourse. You had no right to demand that a ramp be installed, and no ability to do so with the government’s support. 

The second half of Crip Camp shows how a number of campers who had gone to Jened together became the leaders of this crucial civil rights movement, in particular a remarkable young woman named Judy Heumann. After having been a leader at Camp Jened, Heumann moved to San Francisco where she became an advocate for the rights of the disabled. Soon, with the help of her Camp Jened friends and many more organizers and activists, she was leading a civil rights movement which was demanding equal protection under the law for the disabled. 

We won’t ruin the ending, but suffice to say that the United States would be a very different place if not for the activists who began to organize at Camp Jened. 

Crip Camp shows disability in all its complexity, never failing to treat its subjects as three-dimensional characters. Unlike so many representations of disability in popular culture, it does not shy away from the radical and transgressive aspects of its subjects' lives. The campers and activists of Crip Camp are provocative, intelligent, earnest, and hilarious. They are people who have sex and get angry. In a world which rarely depicts people with disabilities as anything but asexual angels, this kind of representation could not be more welcome. 

Not only will Crip Camp inspire you to fight for the rights of all, but it will remind you that when ordinary people work together they can accomplish amazing things. 

We’re lucky to be interviewing Jim LeBrecht on Wednesday June 17th, 2020. If you have questions for Jim about the process of making the film, post them here. 

Our editor Erin recently had the pleasure of interviewing Marcela Turnage, a powerful activist for disability inclusion and a woman well-known for her solo traveling while utilizing a wheelchair. On her popular Instagram page, @thejourneyofabravewoman, Marcela teaches others how they can access the world's most amazing places as well as make their own communities more accessible. Marcela is an amazing mom, advocate, mentor, and...as you'll see in this interview, a hilarious, fun-loving person  who lives life to the fullest. In this interview, she talks about the experience of losing her ability to walk in an accident, how mentorship shaped her recovery, what is was like being undocumented and disabled in the United States, and how both the U.S. and other countries can make travel and life more accessible. Enjoy! 

We know that many of our community members are feeling a little bit pent up lately. It's really hard to quarantine, especially as the weather grows nicer. So today we're offering Kathryn Jenkins reading her wonderful book The Inclusion Alphabet for you and your families. This is a book for all ages and abilities, and as Kathryn explains in this video, there are different ways to read it depending on your wishes and needs. 

Follow @inclusion_project on Instagram to learn more about Kathryn's work, and stay tuned for more collaborations between Different & Able and the Inclusion Project! 

Editor's Note: We are working on adding closed captioning to all our videos, and hope to accomplish this in the next few weeks. If you would like a transcript of this video before then, please contact espampinato@differentandable.org.