July 2020 Events

July 2 at 10:00am 

Renowned speech language pathologist Uri Schneider (MA, CCC-SLP) will be doing a live video Q&A with us. What questions do you have for him? We want to make sure we use our time with Uri to respond to your needs. Post your questions for him here.

July 3

Interview with Dr. Elliot Kaminezty, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other anxiety disorders in adults and children. He is also the Founder and Clinical Director of My OCD Care. Please submit your questions for Dr. Kaminetzky here.

July 6

We will be speaking with motivational speaker John Quinn (@quinnjo), who has Cerebral Palsy.  John was diagnosed with CP at a young age. His condition resulted in partial paralysis and meant that he did not learn to walk till the age of four. As an adult he served in the United States Navy, all while keeping his CP a secret. He has written a memoir titled, Someone Like Me.  Of it, John says: “My memoir is not a military book, not for people with cerebral palsy. It’s for anyone who wants to read an inspirational story of hard work and hope.” Please ask your questions for John here.

July 7

Interview with Victoria Garrick. Victoria is an athlete as well as a mental health and healthy body-image advocate. She is a former semi-pro volleyball player and knows the stresses that athletes face. She began advocating for student-athlete mental health and in 2019 she founded The Hidden Opponent. The Hidden Opponent raises awareness for the mental health struggles of student athletes and gives them a safe space where they can share their experiences. Victoria has given a Tedx Talk, “Athletes and Mental Health: The Hidden Opponent” and has started a campaign under the hashtag #RealPost, where she encourages people to share unedited photos. Victoria's work helps to de-stigmatize mental health issues among the athlete community. 

July 13

Interview with Mindy Scheier, Founder and CEO of Runway of Dreams Foundation and Gamut Talent Management. Before starting the Runway of Dreams Foundation ​​(RoDF) in 2014, Mindy Scheier spent 20 years working in fashion on the design team for the INC collection and as a stylist for Saks Fifth Avenue.  Mindy was inspired to start RoDF after her son Oliver, who has muscular dystrophy, dreamed of wearing jeans like everyone else. After using her design skills to adapt a pair that met his needs and increased his confidence, she went on to conduct extensive research to develop modifications that would meet the needs of the largest minority in our world- people with disabilities. The clothing modifications she developed include alternate closures, adjustability and alternative ways to get in and out of the clothing. Following its launch, RoDF partnered with Tommy Hilfiger on the first mainstream adaptive clothing line for kids in 2016.  Please ask your questions for Mindy here.  

July 27

Brad and Bryan Manning from Two Blind Brothers will be stopping by to talk with us! At a young age Brad and Bryan were diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease, which causes progressive blindness over time. As a result of their condition, they were inspired to start the clothing line Two Blind Brothers, consisting of shirts where all the proceeds go to research to help cure blindness.

June 2020 Events

June 8th

Interview with Brittany Schiavone, from Brittany's Baskets of Hope, the organization that is dedicated to bringing information, support, guidance, and hope to families that have newly welcomed a baby with Down Syndrome into their lives. You can read her story here. 

June 21st @10:45AM EST

Live Q&A with Uri Schneider, MA, CCC-SLP of Schneider Speech, answering all speech and language related questions.

June 29th

Interview with Louisa Moats, Ed.D, Pioneer in the underpinnings of dyslexia. Your  questions for Louisa can be submitted until June 28.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS HERE

June 30th @ 4PM

Live Q&A with Dustin, founder of Ability Tech, a company that manufactures adaptive technology for individuals with disabilities, custom made.

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Our live Q&A's will be hosted on the community in the Live Q&A Group. Discussions will open 3 days in advance where we welcome you to post your questions in advance. 

We also welcome you to post your questions for our interviewees up until the day before the interview. Your questions can be posted here under the relevant discussion.

Letter From Our Founder

Welcome! 

We are excited to share our first newsletter of the year. Last year was a great year for us with many big things that happened. We officially launched, Mandy Harvey inspired us with her words and song, we raised money to help others and continue to grow. 

This year will be bigger and better yet. We have many exciting things happening we can't wait to share with you. But until then, we will continue to inspire, provide resources, support and knowledge to all of you.

This month we are looking deeper into the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). Before disability legislation was passed, life for people with disabilities was challenging. People had to navigate society without any physical, architectural, employment and transportation accommodations. There was no accessibility to restrooms, housing and transportation. Difficulties with note-taking in schools and employment settings affected achieving. In our featured article, Marilyn Saviola and Marca Briston, two influential advocates for disability legislation, are discussed in leading the movement for the passing of the American with Disabilities Act on July 26th, 1990 by President H.W. Bush.

Article of the Month

Before The Passage of the ADA

Rose Lynn Sherr, Ph.D.

Reading the New York Times’ obituary of Marilyn Saviola recently (December 1, 2019) made me remember what life was like before the passage of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, in 1990. Ms. Saviola was one of the leaders of the movement in New York that lobbied and marched for the passage of the passage of legislation that would remove physical, architectural, employment and transportation barriers that prevented those with physical, cognitive, sensory and neurological differences from full participation in society.

Tamara Dembo, Ph.D., a psychologist, wrote about such barriers as early as 1973.* She noted at that time that

…restrictions and handicaps are not only inherent in the loss or lack of

properties of the person, but are in large part due to the feelings and behaviors

of other people and the rules and regulations of the outside world, the 

environment surrounding the handicapped person.

The world in which handicapped people live is constructed by nonhandicapped

people for non-handicapped people, with little consideration of the needs of the

handicapped. (p. 720)

Ms. Saviola incurred polio when she was 10 years old, in 1955, the same year that the Salk vaccine was introduced. What happened to her afterwards illustrates the points made by Dembo and was typical of life before ADA. After spending time in an iron lung, she required a respirator to breathe and was sent from the acute care hospital to a long-term care hospital for people with chronic disabilities. When she returned to live with her parents; they lived in a two-story house and she could not negotiate the stairs. When she became too heavy for her parents to carry up or down, she was so socially isolated that she decided to return to the long-term care hospital where she had a peer group and would have greater mobility. She finished high school at the hospital which had a tutoring program for teaching the patients, and she was accepted to Long Island University. At first, she took classes remotely by speaker phone and then took classes at the LIU Brooklyn campus and obtained a BA and then a Masters in Vocational Rehabilitation at New York University. Since there were no accessibility laws, she could not use the library or restrooms at her universities because of physical barriers and could not use public transportation. During that time, she and many others realized that no changes would occur in accessibility of transportation, buildings, bathrooms, offices , jobs etc. unless people organized, protested and contacted lawmakers.

Marca Briston, a nurse in Chicago who became paraplegic at the age of 23, eventually came to the same conclusion as Ms. Saviola. While attending a conference in Berkeley, California she was amazed at the degree to which that city had made itself so accessible to those with physical differences. The city had curb cuts, accessible buildings and bathrooms and the city buses had wheelchair lifts! She later wrote, “No longer did I see curbs or stairs or inaccessible buses and bathrooms as a problem around which I needed to navigate. Rather, I saw them as examples of societal discrimination and I felt a responsibility to get involved to help people with disabilities, in Illinois and beyond.” She, like Ms. Saviola and many others across the country became activists. She lobbied senators and congressmen, others picketed, jumped on bus steps from their wheelchair and stopped the municipal buses from moving, lectured and publicized their situation and, as Ms. Briston said: “This ragtag army of people who couldn’t see, hear, walk and talk did what everyone said couldn’t be done. “We passed the most comprehensive civil rights law since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

The ”ragtag army” was comprised of people with various differences who became aware that the prejudices and obstacles that they had endured were modifiable if required by law. Those who had visual limitations should not have to deal with not knowing what floor an elevator was at or not being able to see a voting ballot, people with cognitive or sensory limitations should have a notetaker when taking a college course, a disability should not preclude going to college or getting a good job or living in buildings that had no architectural barriers. Architectural , academic and vocational modifications would open the doors for those who had been kept out by ignorance and discrimination. They challenged centuries of beliefs about those with differences and after much lobbying, education and protests, they won when President George H.W. Bush signed into law the American with Disabilities Act, on July 26, 1990.

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*Dembo, T., Diller, L., Gordon, W., Leviton, G., & Sherr, RL. A view of rehabilitation psychology.  The American Psychologist, August 1993, pp. 719-721.

D & A Featured Story

How the ADA Helped Me 

My name is Jane and I was born in Chicago. Soon after my birth, doctors realized I had cerebral palsy.   My CP resulted in physical and cognitive deficits. I have a right arm weakness which prohibits me from doing two-handed tasks. My attention deficits, slower processing speed, and problem-solving skills affect my academic and vocational  performance if accommodations are not granted. 

The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) played a crucial role in my education. Because of the ADA, I was able to graduate from high school, college, and graduate school. Having my deficits did not make excelling easy. I had to work twice as hard as the typical student without a learning disability and I had to be pretty resourceful to get around my one-handedness in school and graduate training.  
        

Read More   

Welcome! 

We are proud to launch our first official newsletter! It has been an exciting year. In June, we launched as a 501c3 not-for-profit organization. It was a wonderful event of 100 guests, held at The Empire Rooftop in NYC with a special performance by Mandy Harvey. With your help, we were able to raise $17,426! Since launching, we have been working hard to refine the mission, vision and goals of the organization while simultaneously continuing to gather personal stories and resources.

We also are making changes on our website to make it more user friendly, engaging and interactive.
 
Our goal is to have one newsletter monthly that focuses on a particular disability or medical condition that is being recognized for that month. November was epilepsy awareness month and to help raise awareness  we are showcasing a personal story about accepting life with epilepsy. We have also included a short infographic below that shows you what you can do if someone suffers a seizure in front of you.

For those that have been with us since the beginning, thank you for supporting our endeavors! For those that are new, welcome to the D&A family.

A percentage of donations made to D&A gets disbursed to different medical health organizations and charities. Our goal is to provide funds to help with research as well as finding treatments and possibly a cure for the variety of disorders we support. This year we have chosen to donate to Finding a Cure for Epilepsy & Seizures' (FACES)  College Scholarship Program that provides support to college students affected by epilepsy and seizure disorders.

December 3 is International Day of Disabled Persons

As an organization that supports those with differences, today is an important day.  In 1992  the United Nations called for an international day of celebration for people living with disabilities  and to promote the well-being and welfare of people living with disabilities. This is held on December 3 every year.
 

Two years prior to this, in 1990,  the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was created. This is arguably the most important legislation in support of people with disabilities signed by the American Government. 

Americans with Disability Act (ADA)

D&A Resource

Our very own Dr. Sherr has written this article on Getting What You Need Out of the Americans with Disability Act.

Read More

For More Information

To be protected by the ADA, one must have a disability, which is defined by the ADA as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. The ADA does not specifically name all of the impairments that are covered.

Read More

Current Events & Updates

#GIVINGTUESDAY

December 3 is #GivingTuesday!  

#GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement  that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity to trans-form communities and the world on December 3, 2019 and every day.

This year Different & Able has joined the cause! With the end of the year approaching quickly, we encourage you to share your generosity with us so we can spread the generosity further! We are still $25,000 away from this year's goal of $45,000.

Shopping for a Cause

On November 4th, Diane B Shoes on the Upper East Side hosted a fundraising event for D&A where 10% of all sales were donated by owner Craig Blattberg.

It was a fun shopping for a cause event where several D&A supporters purchased gorgeous italian made shoes designed by Craig!

D&A would like to thank Craig and everyone who came out to shop and support us. Together with Diane B Shoes and individual donations, $1600 was raised!

Goals For Years End

A percentage of donations made to D&A gets disbursed to different medical health organizations and charities that have a common goal with us. Our goal is to provide funds to help with research as well as finding treatments and possibly a cure for a variety of disorders.

We have raised $20,000 so far this year and are close to achieving our year end goal of $45,000. Please keep us in mind when making your year end contributions!

November was Epilepsy Awareness Month

November was epilepsy awareness month. In an effort to support the epilepsy community, D&A will be disbursing funds to one of the many programs offered by the organization FACES (Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures). FACES goal is to “improve the quality of life for all those affected by epilepsy and seizures”.​ ​FACES provides funds raised to aid with research to improve epilepsy care, new therapies, and provides a supportive community for children, families and caregivers who are affected by epilepsy.

For more information on the College Scholarship Program D&A is supporting, please click here.

D&A Featured Story

Epilepsy Is A Part Of Me

As a child, I was told that I was prone to seizures, but I never thought I would experience them as part of my day to day life.  Everything changed, however, the first day of orientation during my freshman year at Wheaton College. 

 I spent the day like everyone else - moving into my dorm room, unpacking, saying goodbye to my mom and saying hello to the next chapter of my college life.  

And then it happened.  I was out with some new friends, eating pizza, when a piece got stuck in my throat.  Seconds later, my right arm lost sensation.  I started to lose consciousness.  I screamed for help.  I thought I was dying. 

Read more

What to do if someone has a seizure in front of you