Nick needed a wife who truly accepted him and loved him and would not hurt him or MARRIAGES BUILT ON FAITH We knew a few other disabled people with in , and they have remained together, traveling the world to serve others with Their story is quite moving, yet they are also very candid about the many.
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After working in the field for a few years, they grew frustrated with the Join us every other month for Comfort Conversations, a discussion series led by our Ambassadors who share their thoughts on issues affecting wheelchair users worldwide. Parents of children living with disabilities: Take a minute to travel back in time to when you first learned to ride a bike. Feel the wind in your hair, your heart racing, and the exhilaration of experiencing freedom while pedaling down the street As a single mom of a 7-year-old, Amy Sherwood was diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome POTS , a condition that often causes dizziness and loss of consciousness upon standing.
A little over a decade ago, a group of guys with a passion for the outdoors realized there was a need for more opportunities for people with disabilities to rock climb. Having seen the impact the sport had on a friend with When 5-year-old Norah Kerr was ready to go to kindergarten, her parents sought out ways to help their daughter learn to cath independently with as little assistance as Having grown up on a farm in rural Montana, Clint Ober intuitively understood the benefits of being connected with the earth.
After leaving the countryside for city life, his career in the cable television industry taught him the However, after giving up her job as an office assistant, boredom quickly set in. Dating is really hard. If you have a disability, dating is really, really hard!
- Wheel:Life - for friends who use wheelchairsWheel:Life.
- How to Travel the World in a Wheelchair.
- Melbourne woman who tied to kill disabled son, and herself, blames NDIS;
- The Race for Whats Left: The Global Scramble for the Worlds Last Resources.
- A Life As A Spy.
- Chanakya.
First, you have to get over your own insecurities about image and ability. Then, you have to find someone you are attracted to who is also attracted to In , Michigan residents Caroline Booth and Matt Naif welcomed their daughter into the world six weeks prematurely.
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After some time in the neonatal intensive care unit, they left the hospital thinking baby Briella was ready to Have you always dreamt of seeing the Aurora Borealis in Alaska? Or ordering a pizza at a restaurant in Naples? What about touring vineyards and wine-tasting in France? After several years working as an auditor, he decided to start his own IT Music became a passion at a young age and the self-proclaimed hyperactive kid channeled his energy into learning to play numerous instruments Born with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, Zebreda Dunham grew up in Maryland under the care of her parents.
At the age of 24, she decided it was time to venture out on her own and start living the life she had always imagined Texas native Sara Schaffer has been practicing physical therapy for over a quarter of a century and has worked in both the neurological and orthopedic fields.
Cosi Costello: Radio host ‘disappointed’ after good samaritan backlash
Also a long time yoga practitioner, she has trained under some of At the time, the actor living with cerebral palsy struck up a conversation with Duffy about his dating Have you noticed a growing awareness to be conscious about eating organically, and avoiding unhealthy chemicals whenever possible?
According to Statista, U. At the time, he thought he had returned home from the war relatively unscathed. Despite suffering from a back injury, he was still able to walk and Wheelchair California Leadership Institute, formerly known as the Ms. Life got all the details from Dr. Alette Coble-Temple who, after winning both the California Having key support systems after a life-altering injury is crucial. Adjusting to life with paralysis is an ongoing process and for some, that process can be slow.
I am now 11 years post-injury and there have been several transitions I have had to Sheri Melander-Smith was born with a vascular malformation on her spine resulting in her legs growing at different rates. Despite her doctors not knowing the cause at the time, she underwent surgery at the age of six to stunt the We hope your was as enlightening and empowering as ours was here at Wheel: As we kick off a new year, we wanted to look back on some of our most memorable interviews from and remind ourselves to bring along some of the lessons learned Dave was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in and for the first few years, he was able to go about his everyday life without the use of any assistive devices.
When his symptoms began to progress in , he went from using a cane to a At a certain age, kids will be the first to tell you that they want more freedom, and more independence, especially as they head off to school. For many children who have Spina Bifida, part of that sense of independence includes being able to take Are you dreading this winter season?
Dealing with slushy, icy, snowy, and windy conditions can be quite a challenge for wheelchair users, and you might be tempted to just hibernate at home for the next few months. Although there may be moments when When a tree-cutting accident in led to broken bones, a separated shoulder, and a punctured aorta, it seemed that Arthur Torrey had miraculously escaped any spinal cord damage.
However, after undergoing emergency surgery to We apologize for any One of my primary roles is fundraising. I go out in the community and speak at different events and try to get the cash flow into the association to provide us the means to do our Life reader, you may remember that we joined the Comfort Medical family back in But who exactly is Comfort Medical and what do they do? Founded in , Comfort Medical is a nationally approved participating Medicare During a summer internship at the Center for Disability Rights, Stephanie Woodward attended her first protest to advocate against personal attendant budget cuts.
Though he was able to get around with a walker throughout the early years of his life, the time constraints of switching classes in high school Have you always dreamt of gliding down the street with the wind in your hair on your very own adaptive bike or seeing your child experience that same feeling of freedom? This holiday season, Comfort Medical is partnering with Freedom Concepts, an Days are becoming shorter, nights longer, and the holiday season is quickly approaching.
However, finding a job post-graduation, even after having gained If you are having trouble self-cathing, or if you have This conference informs, engages, and empowers women of all abilities. A Texas coast native, David Gaston has been in and around the water his whole life.
Obtaining his scuba certification at the age of 13 and then working as a commercial diver in the oil fields just out of high school, Gaston turned Summer is officially over and dreary winter weather is on its way. For wheelchair users, getting in and out of your home during or after a rainstorm When life-long dancer Beverly Weurding was diagnosed with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy at the age of 55, she thought her days of doing the rumba and cha-cha would soon be over. Not ready to put away her dancing shoes, she was determined to find a Justin Malaise grew up in small-town Wisconsin as a star three-sport high school athlete.
One month after graduation, a car accident left him in a wheelchair forcing him to forgo his plans of playing college ball. Born with spina bifida, Kim Brown has been a full-time wheelchair user since the 5th grade. There was, however, a major obstacle: This is especially true for parents whose children use wheelchairs.
Kids who have Spina Bifida, for example, may be Johnny Hudson was born in with unforeseen severe physical abnormalities. Boston awaits with open arms. This September 8—10, head over to the Convention and Exhibition Center for the Abilities Expo, and enjoy a weekend full of fun, discovery, and enlightenment. Get out your pad of paper, tablet, or After sustaining severe burns during a car accident in , John Morris became a triple amputee losing both legs below the knee as well as his right hand.
At that point, the easy path would have been to accept that his former life The Artfully Gifted Foundation a non-profit was established in Chicago, Illinois, in as a storefront for entrepreneurs with disabilities to sell their products. Around that same time period, Chicago native Aaron Maass was When triple degree holder Jose Gonzalez returned home after living abroad, he was struggling to find a job and wondering what to do next with his life.
After applying for services with the California Department of Rehabilitation, a Peter Arballo was born in Southern California to Mexican migrants. At the age of 10, his father left, and his mom took on the full responsibility of raising seven children alone. Arballo shared his story with Wheel: Michael Johnson of Lansing, Michigan, started racing motorcycles with his father when he was only three years old.
- ‘I wasn’t leaving him behind’: Mum who tried to kill disabled son speaks.
- How to Travel the World in a Wheelchair?
- .
- Motor Control and Sensory-Motor Integration: Issues and Directions (Advances in Psychology);
- Everybody has value to add.
- All I need is a bit of patience.
In , he suffered a traumatic accident in which he broke his back during a race, leaving him paralyzed from the Monica Vickers was born in missing both legs and an arm. By creating more diverse teams, this means that more organisations will have the ability to represent their customers and society.
Surely, this is something we can all agree is a good thing. We know there is still work to do until all disabled people enjoy equality and fairness, so we all need to work together to change society for the better. A keen campaigner and writer, Raisa uses lots of different assistive technology to help her do day to day tasks. Here, she writes about some of these pieces of technology and how they help her live the life she chooses.
Because I was doing a Creative and Professional Writing degree, it was clear that there was going to be a lot of writing involved. There was no guarantee that I would be able to type everything up in time, by only using two fingers on the keyboard without a fast typist beside me. I have never been able to do it. The only exception is when I compose emails.
Affordable Virtual Reality Opens New Worlds For People With Disabilities
I am literally using Dragon Naturally Speaking 13 to dictate this post in my bedroom. This version is pretty good. I was first introduced to this software in , when version 9 came out. No matter how much I tried to train the software to my voice there were too many typos per page. I literally wanted to rip my hair out. Thank God I did. There was just too much to do in so little time!
Something else I use quite regularly was my Olympus Sonority voice recorder. I used this device to record every single one of my lectures or big public events over the last five years. It saves as a compatible file for your memory stick also — bonus! I got really excited by this. I have a habit of sending really long emails! One of my really long emails to date, which I wrote by only my right thumb and predicted text without using voice recognition at all , took me two hours to type. However, if I wrote that same email again using voice recognition software on my phone, it would have only taken me about half an hour.
It is also a quick way to make notes in your notes section for reminders. However, I hope that this post has been helpful in showing how assistive technology can help you to live the life you choose. We know there is still work to do until all disabled people enjoy equality and fairness, with digital and assistive technology playing a huge part in this. We all need to work together to change society for the better. Edith was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when she was As her condition started worsening, it was essential that she found a social care package that met her needs.
In this blog, Edith writes about how finding the right social care package has enabled her to focus on the other important things in life. Come evening, fatigue has turned me to jelly. Each day is a surprise. The process is fairly cumbersome and long winded, but we go the fastest we can, totalling around an hour.
My social care calls are crucial. Do I want to have company first thing in the morning? Would I love to get up and make a cup of tea then go back to bed for a few hours? What about those unexpected evenings out where one drink turns into many and you just re-adjust your 12 hour plan accordingly.
The alternative is being bed bound, in some residential home, or relying on my parents while I can, then what? So when it works, my social care support enables everything else. With the essentials of personal care covered, I can focus on the rest of my life, the nights out, holidays, work, credit card bills… just life. To me social care is as necessary a part of my functioning as any of my healthcare, if not more so.
Read more from Edith on her blog. Today, Scope launches a new campaign to tackle disability inequality head on. Disabled people tell us that these things matter. They lead to discrimination, to prejudice and to being seen as an afterthought. Hear from some of the storytellers in this film, highlighting the barriers disabled people face in their day-to-day lives. We spoke to disabled people right across Britain to find out about their day-to-day lives — what makes them happy, what angers or frustrates them and what they want to get out of life. We wanted to understand what equality means to disabled people today, and we wanted to start from what disabled people think and feel, and how important independence is to them.
Overwhelmingly disabled people told us they want to be independent, to have confidence and to be connected through friends, family, colleagues and communities. People make assumptions about what I am able to do. Whilst we might have protection in law, at Scope we know there is still a way to go until until all disabled people can enjoy equality. You can all make a difference. We know that we are stronger as a movement, as a community and as a force for change, when we work together.
If you, like us, want to end this inequality, join our campaign today. Today the Government has published its new Inclusive Transport Strategy, outlining how they intend to make the transport network more accessible for disabled people. The current transport system is set up in a way which deters — or even prevents — many disabled people from using it. The Inclusive Transport Strategy is a strong step in the right direction, dismantling some of the barriers disabled people face.
This is not just about adjusting existing infrastructure to make it physically accessible, but tries to put the needs of all disabled passengers at the heart of designing our transport system. Our recent research found 40 per cent of disabled people have difficulty accessing train stations. The biggest announcement in the Strategy is that the Government is reviving the Access for All program, to provide funds to make railway stations more accessible. And this is on top of existing requirements for station operators to improve accessibility when they renovate their stations.
Disabled people frequently say that one of the biggest barriers to using public transport can be the attitudes of others. The Inclusive Transport Strategy has recognised this, with a focus on both staff training and changing behaviours of non-disabled passengers. This will require bus and rail operators to provide disability awareness training to their staff, and the Government will spearhead a campaign to improve awareness of disability among all passengers.
Even after the changes announced, things will still go wrong from time to time. The Strategy has announced a new Rail Ombudsman to help disabled people seek recourse. This body will have the power to rule on complaints relating to accessibility, and deliver binding judgements — meaning it can force train companies to act.
While we have welcomed the Strategy, there is still much more to be done to ensure all disabled people are able to access and use transport as they wish. Amit Patel is a speaker for Guide Dogs. As a Guide Dog owner, I know full well that the weather is one of those things that you cannot control and can really throw your routine out of the window. But you can prepare for it. In winter, there is the constant worry of grit getting in a dogs paws the salt can burn them and snow covering the ground means that a Guide Dog cannot tell the difference between the road and the pavement or anything hidden underneath in the snow.
Kika is a beautiful white Labrador, but that comes with a very thick fur coat, which, coupled with her leather harness, means that she gets warm quickly. In our experience, extreme weather exacerbates issues on public transport too. Somehow lots of trains have been delayed or cancelled, with more last minute platform alterations than usual recently.
Like most people, we have to get to work regardless of the weather. For the days that we have had to travel into London, we start our day even earlier with a good groom for Kika — this helps remove the shed hair, allowing the skin to breathe and trapping less heat in the coat. Kika has a very pink nose which is prone to sunburn, so I also apply a little sun cream dog safe, of course to her nose.
The challenging part of this is that she always tries to lick it off! Stopping somewhere so that Kika can cool down is a great excuse for me to also take a break and have a cold drink. Regardless of who we are or where we are from, we must work together to ensure that every member of society has an equal chance to participate in our democracy and to have their say. Carly Jones MBE hosted an EqualiTeas event at Scope, inviting young disabled people to meet, talk about equality and democracy, eat cake and decorate biscuits! An event championed by UK Parliament, aiming to bring UK communities together to explore what equality means to people.
Carly is an autism advocate who has been tirelessly campaigning for equality for years after her own battle to get a diagnosis. Here I am talking to the Scope team about the event. My hope in asking Scope and I to deliver a get together, was we would be in a better position to amplify the voices of disabled people in the UK. When Scope said they would love to host this event and provide social media and PR staff, plus camera people and scope story tellers all free of charge, I was elated and so grateful!
Guests from different age ranges, genders and disability, arrived from local and not so local areas. We ate cake, and drank tea. Younger guests decorated gingerbread into whatever their idols or ambitions were, which included an astronaut, a mortician and Phil Marsh from Scope.
Huge EqualiTeas posters were used to sound board our needs and hopes for equality. The reason Scope and I held this event was to ensure that disabled voices were heard in democracy. To inspire a younger disabled generation to not be afraid to step forward. There are approximately We are an extremely large minority group. To ensure that no one is left behind, our voices and suggestions must be taken seriously. We must have a seat around the democratic tables to fully represent the UK appropriately.
Many wanted shops to be more disability friendly. For some their hope was a fair chance at education. Safeguarding and sex education for Autistic girls was of high importance to many, and more representation from the Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic disabled community.
Some wanted to get the job of their dreams because they were talented and they deserved it not just because they fitted a diversity box ticking exercise by an employer. That in a way surprised me, we are often given the impression that young people of today, disabled or not, have some form of entitlement.
To hear a young person not want special treatment but simple equality to work struck me as incredibly articulate. The guests seemed to really have fun. Parents of the younger guests got in touch to say how proud they were of their young person and to give thanks to Scope and myself which of course is incredibly kind and heartwarming.
Check out more of the story and photos on Instagram , watch our film of the event. There is often an illusion that when the UK talks disability we do not include our own. This could not be further from the truth. There will be many British disabled advocates and activists participating at the Global Summit for others and our own countries benefit. If you want to get involved in campaigns and make change happen, have a look around our campaigns page and get in touch.
Those negative attitudes always spurred her on and today her hard work has paid off. I worked so hard to learn to walk, to hold pens, to tie my shoelaces and to fasten buttons. I have difficulty holding a pen, so it took me longer to write essays and do homework. Despite that, I loved writing diaries and stories as a way to understand my experiences and I dreamed of being a writer.
Having spent hours of my childhood having physio on my legs and hands to improve my co-ordination, it was ingrained in me that if I put the effort in, I would reach my goals. Which is why, when working full-time as a primary school teaching assistant, I decided to stop writing in my notebooks and actually knuckle down to take writing seriously. When I started my novel, I wanted to use my writing as a vehicle to say something about my life.