Lately I have been meeting more and more families who are fighting a civil rights war that one might have thought had been won decisively four decades ago.
Attention employers! Are you looking for better margins, higher productivity, and employees who really care about their work? Then you need to meet Randy Lewis and hear what he has to say about what happened when his company began hiring people with disabilities. We’re talking about Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the United States with annual sales of $72 billion and the razor-thin margins characteristic of most retail business.
Elena is an elite college athlete. At 6 feet 5 inches she is beautiful and elegant, strong and poised. She is the top-scoring women’s basketball player in the nation, averaging 3 points per game more than the next closest player.
You may have seen the news article recently about the growing popularity of unified sports teams, a wonderful collaboration between high schools across the country and Special Olympics.
The strategy announced last week by The American Psychiatric Association to revise the definition of autism will effectively eliminate the autism “epidemic” simply by changing what we mean by the word autism itself. The APA’s strategy has two paradoxical outcomes. First, it neatly absolves society of the burden of supporting a significant population of people whose needs are not changed in the slightest by the clever redefinition of the label that describes them.
As we start yet another new year filled with possibility and challenge, I find myself reflecting on the many lessons learned this past year from stories of diversity and inclusion.
Last week I met Debbie, who supervises the janitorial teams at a number of facilities in downtown Seattle including everything from historic office buildings to modern skyscrapers housing an array of government agencies and officials — an imposing stretch of real estate and a huge responsibility.
We have often reflected in this column about the remarkable qualities that emerge in everyone when people of all abilities — including people with developmental conditions like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and so on — engage fully with each other. Why is this, and how does it work?
Our organization and many others like it were founded originally because people with disabilities needed us. But along the way, we discovered something as amazing as it is self-evident once you think about it — that is, people of all abilities need each other and are better together
Working together confers power, not just in the sense of “power over” (although goodness knows many workplaces are characterized by this type of power too) but also in the sense of “power to.”
At a recent strategic planning conference for organizations that serve people with developmental conditions, our facilitator asked us to imagine that we wake up tomorrow and find that every obstacle to our work has been overcome, every problem solved, every battle victorious at last. What does the world look like now, she asked?
A friend recently sent me a link about a high school student with autism who made his high school’s varsity basketball team and in the process became an overnight YouTube sensation.
Now unlike the recent rash of stories (including some repeated in this column) about people with developmental conditions who inspire others to excel — for example, as managers or “special assistants” on sports teams, or as inspirational sibling to a sister who plays college basketball or a brother who makes the Olympic ski team — this kid actually himself plays and excels.
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to Disability Scoop (www.disabilityscoop.com), a website devoted to stories from the world of disability. The stories are interesting enough, but the comments posted by readers are really intriguing. In example after example from recent editions, an article sets off a storm of comments from people who share their sense of outrage about injustices inflicted whether purposefully or inadvertently on people with disabilities and their families. The more you read, the angrier you become.
