- 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.