- Hi, My name is Tim and I am from

Orange County. I have cerebral palsy.

I was born with cerebral palsy and not too

sure how to answer this question.

Because unlike an accident or being

born abled and then becoming disabled

my cerebral palsy is just normal to me.

outside of my family, while I

was growing up, I knew that I was

different from the rest.

but even now my family does not

point out that they have a

disabled son, brother, cousin, uncle

or friend. my C.P is invisible to them.

I first noticed that I was disabled

when I went outside and played with

my bothers and their friends.

For example, I always played with my

brothers but when we played outside

with the neighborhood kids, I started

noticing most of the adults started

looking at me moreso then their children.

There is when I knew there was something

wrong with me and it wasn't because

I couldn't use my hands or run with

my friends. Getting teased and being

bullied by other kids was easy for me

to deal because I quickly learned how

to fight back. But, being not invited

to a classmates birthday party or being

told that I should go home by an adult

while my brothers are playing with their

kids has always impacted my life.

in some ways, I've learned that

discrimination comes in all shapes

and sizes and/or the color of your

skin. I was in high school when the ADA

was signed. I really didn't see that

much of a difference. I was being

a teenager going through crazy

adolescence stuff. ADA started effecting

me when I started collage and

traveling a lot more.

for example, the ADA got signed

and when I started my first

semester in college, I saw a rapid

progression with inclusion.

More and more of my professors

were willing to work with me and

disable student services on how

to adapt to my disability by giving

me more time for term papers

making sure that I have good

notetakers and etcetera.

My first semester in college was

very hard. I think that I had

to retake all of my classes because

I got no help. After that,

I went to the DSS and they worked

with me at taking the right classes

and the right professors would

make select accommodations for me.

By the time I needed to take my

core classes for my major

the department head knew me and

worked with me with my final thesis.

By then, I needed a lot less services

from DSS because my professors

kept track of how I was doing.

I was one of the first nonverbal student

at the university who graduated with

a speech communication degree.

At a very young age I traveled a lot

with my family. My parents always had

a running checklist going be for we'd

travel. For example, making sure there

was an accessible bathroom and so on.

Even now when I travel with my friends

we always check the restroom situation.

(subtle laughter)

When people think about ADA

the very first thing that they think

are curb, cuts and sidewalks but there

are more to it. Just because is not

diagnosed with a disability doesn't mean

that they don't use the services either.

For example, I know regular people that

turn on subtitles when they are

watching TV. They don't have hard of

hearing but they agree that they get

more content when they are reading

and listening at the same time.

This will not happen if there was no ADA.

Without the American Disability Act, I

strongly believe that we would have

gone backwards with education,

employment, healthcare and so on.

Communication is very important to me.

Since I have to use Augmentative

and Alternative Communication Device

i've always prioritized technology and

communication together in

my daily routine.

I've seen access to the much better

as I've gotten older.

Such as when I'm at an airport

and need to use a TTY machine

to make a phone call I can always

find one that is easily accessible.

There is more awareness for being

nonverbal now.

As the population gets more used to

the disabled community, people are

more aware that there are other forms

of communication such as ASL,

AEC and so on.

One of the main barriers that I

always see is economic and equality

between people with disability and

able bodied. Our society tends to

assume that if you are disabled

you are invalid in the workforce.

This is not true.

There are many people with disabilities

that are highly educated and more than

willing to earn a fair wage of living.

Also, our government digs people who

are getting SSI or other types of services

For example, I've worked for an

educational publisher for 16 years and

due to the pandemic, I needed to take

a leave of absence for however long

because of my disability, I can only work

part-time. I also get SSDI based of my

work credits that I accumulated over

the years. When I was working,

I needed to make sure not to accede too

much or else I would lose my benefits.

How is this fair?

There should be a baselined living

wage from the government under the

ADA act so that people with diabilities

are encouraged to work and more

importantly, employers are willing to

hire more from our community.

Right now because of COVID-19

more and more people with disabilities

are getting sick because of large

institutions. The White House Corona

Virus task force hasn't really mentioned

anything on how to be safe within our

community. Seems like that our

community is being left behind.

There is no awareness at all or any

outreach from the White House.

It feels like that no one from the top

has any understanding of our

community. In California we are required

to wear some kind of facial covering

when we are in public.

Many people in our community are

not able to wear any kind of mask.

One idea would be to form a committee

with all the national organizations such

as United Cerebral Palsy,

Muscular Dystrophy Association,

a society and many others to

form one union on the main purpose

of protecting the most vulnerable

from the virus.

More importantly we can come up

with some kind of procedures, guidelines,

and distributing of information

nationally and locally since these

organizations have offices around

the country it wouldn't be too difficult

to outreach and create a database on how

we are doing and for those areas

who are seeing a spike of infections in

group homes and such. We can

do more outreach and offer more

support.