The Voiceless Minority

  According to Webster's Dictionary, accessibility is easy to obtain or use or easily reached, entered, or used by people with disabilities. To me, this sounds like a bunch of words. What do they mean? I honestly don’t think anyone knows. I have not yet found anything that is " universally accessible.” This is because we are all different. That being said, I have an issue that this blog post will address.   When this blog started eleven years ago, I was twenty-seven. By then, you are supposed to be “maturing,” whatever that means. However, I believe that I am still maturing as I write today. I bring that up because back in 2013, I wrote a blog entitled “But They Said It Was Accessible,” which I have linked at the bottom of this article. The original post discussed accessibility in general and how I believed it wasn’t where it needed to be back then. The rest of the blog will discuss our improvements, if any, since 2013.   In my opinion, we still have much work t...

In America, from an early age, we are conditioned to work and contribute to society; well, at least, most people are.  However, when you have a physical disability like Ms. Samantha Lebron does, you are often not expected to work full-time. Even though Ms. Lebron has a severe case of cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, she has decided to go against the grain and become a full-time worker. Throughout the rest of this article, we will highlight a recent interview I conducted with Ms. Lebron, in which she discussed what it is like to work full-time with a physical disability. We will gain insight into Ms. Lebron’s everyday routine, and she and I will discuss topics ranging from society's expectations of people with disabilities and her thoughts on whether she thinks it is worth the extraeffort she has to do to work full-time.   J: Hello, Ms. Lebron. Thank you for answering the questions on this important topic of disability and full-time employment. Samantha Lebron: H...

As humans, we crave interaction with others. Indeed. when we don’t have social interaction with other people, feelings of despair and loneliness can overwhelm us. However, in the age of social media have we gone too far? Every aspect of most people’s lives is available for consumption by others now. This may be a new concept to the majority of the world but for one segment of the population, I argue that a lack of privacy is not a new concept. Indeed, it may even be a bigger problem for people with disabilities than their able-bodied counterparts.  Frequent readers of this blog know that I have a disability known as Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy, for my new readers, is a congenital disability that occurs at birth. It usually occurs during the delivery process; it is not genetic or at least there is no evidence that it is as of yet. There are many forms of Cerebral Palsy and it can affect people in a variety of ways. Some people with Cerebral Palsy have a slight limp when walking, ...

In Tuesday’s blog post, I talked about a speech I heard this past weekend from a young man by the name of Matthew Walzer. His speech came at a perfect time in my life. As I said in the blog Tuesday, until this past weekend I had been lost and in a sort of never-ending fog. Since Matthew’s story impacted me so much, I thought I would share it and its similarity to a point my dad has been trying to get both me and my sister to appreciate for years. By the end of this piece, you will not only understand the great wisdom of my dad but also you will hopefully appreciate the tenacity Matthew showed in his effort to redefine sneakers for people with disabilities. In short, by the end of this piece, you will understand why I believe in the saying, “Attitude is altitude”.  Every good story must start with a problem that the protagonist must face. Only this time, Matthew Walzer wasn’t writing fiction. Matthew was born with Cerebral Palsy. While some with Cerebral Palsy are wheelchair bound l...

First off, I must thank you guys for the continued support of this blog. It means the world to me. Second off, I’m writing this blog because several people have asked me that they are curious about the issue. There are multiple types of disabilities but they can be categorized in two ways: disabilities developed at birth or disabilities encountered later in life. My one friend who works with the disabled population indicated to me that this is a hot topic for debate and also got me thinking. I have a family member who is going through similar issues at this point in their life. I myself was born with a disability. I have Cerebral Palsy and it is a neuromuscular disability. It is basically like I have the ability to do everything but my brain does not know how to send the signals to the appropriate muscle groups. Due to my circumstance, I have had a long while to adapt to challenges and I have never known what it’s like to walk, even without the assistance of a walker or another perso...