social justice

Purpose: A rally dedicated to updating public perceptions and attitudes towards the capabilities of People with Disabilities. Where: Arizona State Capitol Mall, 1700 West Washington, Phoenix, Arizona When: October 28, 2010, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Opportunities: A slate of local and nationally known speakers from grassroots, business, and government will: Celebrate the transformative power of achieving the American right to decent work and fair treatment. Build “Disability Confident” employers by making an effective business case for the advantages of working with this diverse workforce. Share the potential of harnessing the largest and most underserved American minority through voter registration, market-specific branding, and innovative product/service creation. Bring public attention to the lifespan issues of adults with disabilities associated with work, health care, housing, and community connectedness. Move us forward as a more just community that transcends the fears, stigmas and exclusion of relatives, neighbors, and people who have a disability into creating an inclusive society with them as citizens of equal standing. Connect your social media/organization sites to the EmployAbility links below and post news from your community to ours that support or promote efforts to improve employment for people with disabilities. On the day of the event, host & post your  live local YouTube, ...

There are now many more adults with disabilities under the age of 35 (comprehensive special education was created through P.L. 94-142 in 1975) who are better prepared for inclusion into higher education, postsecondary, and employment settings. They also have higher expectations of themselves and their chances for success as a result of being the recipients of support they received for their various conditions. Within overall global education reform strategies, how is the U.S. addressing their prospects-both during the educational journey and in finding fulfilling careers afterwards? This post takes a quick look at what  can start being done to facilitate greater inclusion and successful outcomes for adults with hidden disabilities in higher education and postsecondary settings. Getting organized: Interagency & Intergovernmental coordination A recent report from the GAO found that while higher education participation among students identified as having a disability is up to 11% of total enrollment, there is a lack of coordination among the federal agencies, knowledge among college faculty of best practices, uncertainty of the legal obligations to offer reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities, and the consequences for everyone if accommodations are denied. Of particular concern, according to this report is how to appropriately assist, teach, and support students who are veterans with TBI/PTSD, ...

The World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, Qatar zeroed in on the concept of education being in a transtional state- especially with technological breakthroughs expanding the potential access of education- but also fragementing/dividing the world into digital haves/have nots. Even though only 3% of the continent of Africa is connected to an electrical power grid, there are over 2.5 billion cellphone users. The current generation of global learners under the age of 25 have grown up with mobile phone apps, internet connections, text messaging, and games as part of daily living. They interact and function in a vastly different space than traditional settings are prepared to deal with, let alone any effective plan of reform for the future. But what does this mean to students with learning and neurological issues? What can be expected of their ability to learn and advance in parts of the world where they don't have schools, teachers, or help for their problems ? If the purpose of education today/tomorrow is to measure success by community impact, getting the "right students" to attend, affordable tuition, with trained teachers and infrastructure- then Professor Sugatra Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments challenges the relevancy of needing teachers, being able to speak the language of instruction, or having access to expensive computer technology. This ...

The Qatar Foundation recently launched the first World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in the capital city of Doha on November 16-18, 2009. Three years in the making, its overall objective is to take on the task improving/providing global access to education for citizens as a basic human right through promoting/scaling/replicating concrete initiatives that are sustainable, innovative, and inclusive.  Over 1000 educational professionals,practitioners, and media from 90 countries participated in this invitation-only Summit, that was competently assisted by a small army of over 200 logistical/support personnel and many volunteers from the Qatar Youth Foundation.  The Summit attempted to find common ground among the many competing and often contradicting issues between what constitutes best and available practices in both the emerging and developed world's educational systems. It will now become an annual event, whose agenda and true global impact will grow as concrete partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities to create systemic educational change are brought to the Qatar Foundation and the Royal family's attention. There was a decided focus on higher education (voices speaking out about poverty, gender bias, and disability were heard too) as being the key pathway to economic opportunity, global citizenship, and peaceful resolutions to social problems that have plagued humanity since the dawn of civilization.  It was a great honor and responsibility to ...

Welcome!  This blog is a place and space to discuss, reflect, share personal stories, research, best practices and "oh no you didn't"s for adults with hidden disabilities.  We are making the move from a newsletter format in ConstantContact because it did not allow for two-way conversation and active participation from our readership. WordPress opens up possibilities that we did not have before. The term hidden disabilities in the context of this site will tend to focus on higher incidence conditions such as learning disabilities (US definition), ADHD, high functioning autism/Asperger's syndrome, Executive functioning issues, mood disorders, and other related learning or neurological conditions. Collectively, when you use just about any data set or governmental source for special education, young men and women with these diagnosed conditions make up over 2/3's of placements in public school settings. It will stress adult issues because one can only find them participating in higher education settings comprising less than 10% of the student body (L. Brinckerhoff, ETS, 2009),  have an unemployment rate of 78% of working age adults (US Census Bureau/Dept of Labor statistics), until recently, were unable t0 prove they were being discriminated against in workplace setting because they did not met the conditions of disability "under the law" (ADAA, 2009)  and only just this year were considered eligible for Small Business ...