Everyday people with disabilities are denied access to government buildings, restaurants, and retail stores due to structural barriers that are unnecessary and unlawful. More than 20 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act such barriers are inexcusable. The Equal Rights Center (ERC) needs input from you

Too often those seeking to shop cannot get into a store or around the merchandise due to accessibility barriers. Recently, Kohl’s inaccessibility to people with mobility disabilities was brought to the ERC’s attention by ERC members who had attempted to shop there, but could not navigate the store. After receiving several complaints, the ERC conducted its own investigation and found that Kohls’ stores across the United States failed to comply with accessibility standards.

Have you experienced similar problems at Kohl’s or other retail stores? Is there a particular accessibility concern you have that needs to be addressed? If so, please use the contact information below to let the ERC know.  [Read more…]

This Friday, April 26, the House Energy & Commerce Oversight Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “Does HIPAA Help or Hinder Patient Care and Public Safety?” The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) will be attending the hearing in force to send a message by packing the room with supporters of disability rights – and they need your help! Join ASAN at 8:30 a.m. outside Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. Attendees will receive an orange “Nothing About Us, Without Us!” t-shirt to wear during the hearing, so the Subcommittee sees a sea of orange-clad voters with disabilities in the audience. Background The Chairman of this Subcommittee, Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), is leading an attack on the HIPAA privacy rights of people with psychiatric disabilities.  [Read more…]

Delta Air Lines is interested in learning about the travel experiences of passengers with disabilities with the goal of improving and adapting services. We invite you to complete a brief (5-10 minute) anonymous online survey about the travel experiences of yourself or those closest to you. Take the survey.

If you have any questions, please use the following contact information.  [Read more…]

By Christy Dunaway, Co-Chair of the Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee

The lack of services to individuals with disabilities during and after a disaster has become increasingly obvious in recent years. CILs and those they work with in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida had terrible experiences in 2005 in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The lack of appropriate and accessible services and the violation of civil rights in shelters, disaster recovery centers, and post disaster offerings such as emergency funding and housing, was deplorable. Since that time, the issue has been discussed frequently at local, state and national levels. With the impacts of Hurricane Ivan on the Gulf Coast and Super Storm Sandy on the northeast coast this past year, we realize that there has been minimal, and in some areas, no improvement.

An area of particular concern was the lack of services in American Red Cross operated shelters. Some shelters have actually refused CIL staff entry into the shelter when they tried to offer assistance to individuals with disabilities post-disaster. Most shelters are not fully accessible. Some are not accessible at all. Accessibility is offered in the form of a “kit” on a pallet are not on site, but will be ordered “if needed.” According to some shelter operators, they cannot be held accountable for poor accessibility for at least 72 hours post disaster.  [Read more…]

The research done on Hate Crimes provides data that is used to create training programs for first responders, law enforcement, and social workers in the field. The latest training manual comes from the Matthew Shepard James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) of 2009, which created the revision and update of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) previous online hate crime data collection guidance.

It has been described as “The single best, most inclusive hate crime training document. It contains updated definitions and a number of hate crime training scenarios, including ones designed to help law enforcement officials understand gender-based and gender identity-based hate crimes. The publication of this new FBI Training Manual raises the bar – and is a great step forward.”

This new manual is the merger of two publications Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and the Training Guide for Hate Crime Data Collection. The new manual reflects the changes in the Act and will assist law enforcement agencies in collecting and submitting hate crime data to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, as well as establishing an updated hate crime training program for their personnel. The UCR Program collects and publishes information about crimes motivated by bias and has modified its data collection accordingly by including new and revised definitions, along with corresponding examples.  [Read more…]

Activists for the civil rights of users and survivors of psychiatry use this symbol for their campaign. The “Stop Psychiatric Profiling” text is superimposed over a black triangle like that used in Nazi camps to symbolize people with mental illness or other disability and others deemed “asocial.”

On December 14, 2012, a young man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut with an assault rifle and ended 20 young lives and those of six of their educators. This single incident has renewed discussion about gun violence in a way that thousands of gun-related homicides each year have not.

Unfortunately, this discussion is sometimes dangerous for people with disabilities. The NRA and others repeatedly talk about “good people” with guns protecting us from “bad people” with guns. All too often, they lump people with mental illness in with criminals when they get more specific about “bad people.” After the Newtown shooting, they even speculated about the shooter’s autism as contributing to the disastrous incident. Others conflating disability and dangerousness to justify discrimination include the Obama Administration and policy-makers in New York State.

Fortunately, NCIL and the National Disability Leadership Alliance have stood tall. They have issued statements recognizing that policies disadvantaging people based on diagnosis of mental illness or disability are not justified.  [Read more…]

In collaboration with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and Not Dead Yet, the National Council on Independent Living will be hosting vigils this Friday, March 1, 2013 in cities across the country in memory of people with disabilities murdered by family members or caregivers.

A complete list of all cities with specific times and locations has been posted to the ASAN website, along with contact information for each of the vigil coordinators.

We encourage you to join us on Friday, March 1st, to honor the lives of people with disabilities who were victims of domestic violence. Vigils are being held in Sacramento (CA), San Francisco (CA), Washington DC, Chicago (IL), Lincoln (NE), Woodbridge (NJ), New York (NY), Rochester (NY), Portland (OR), and Seattle (WA).  [Read more…]

By Julie Alexander, Co-Chair

The New Year has come and gone, yet we continue to deal with many of the same issues people with disabilities faced in 2012.

The NCIL ADA / Civil Rights Subcommittee is working on brining the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), an international treaty protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities in the US and other countries, back to the Senate floor for ratification.

The SHAME Campaign has begun!  [Read more…]

Valentine’s Day 2013 has brought us articles that address love, parenting, and disability from two mainstream news outlets. From NPR, A Life Defined Not By Disability, But Love, and from the Washington Post, When Bill met Shelley: No disability could keep them apart.

This Valentine’s Day, NCIL celebrates the unique love between parent and child.

In September 2012, the National Council on Disability (NCD) released the report Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children, a “groundbreaking policy study, infused with real life stories of parents with disabilities, to provide a comprehensive overview of factors that support and obstruct Americans with all kinds of disabilities from exercising their fundamental right to begin and maintain families.”

NCIL Executive Director Kelly Buckland worked with primary author Robyn Powell on that report. The report contained significant findings, which established a springboard for creating federal legislation to protect the parental rights of persons with disabilities.  [Read more…]

On March 30th, 2012, the National Council on Independent Living, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, and Not Dead Yet held a Day of Mourning for people with disabilities killed by their relatives and caregivers.

The Day of Mourning began as a response to the murder of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man from California, and to the way people were talking about his death. Last year, vigils were held in 18 cities to remember those we have lost, and to remind the world that their lives had value.

On March 31st, 2012, only one day after our vigils, a 4-year-old autistic boy named Daniel Corby was drowned in a bathtub by his mother.

When people with disabilities are murdered by a caregiver, journalists write as though it is the victim who has perpetrated a crime simply by existing. In discussing the killings, people say that we should feel sorry for the murderer, because they had to live with a relative with a disability. When a person with a disability is murdered, many people act as though the victim’s life, not their death, was a tragedy.  [Read more…]