The Right to Communicate| We are the (new) Experts

photo credit: HikingArtist.com The Right to Communicate| We are the (new) Experts In the early 90s, Rosemary Crossley, Annie McDonald, Doug Biklen and others shocked the world with new ideas about people with the labels of severe disabilities and autism being able to...

Dream Plan for Aaron: 1981 (Part 1)

Build a dream and the dream will build you. R. Schuller. What is Normalization? In 1981 when Aaron was 6 years old, my friend Debbie Wetzel and I drove to Louisville, KY to hear Wolf Wolfensberger give a presentation on “Normalization” or “Social...

Thoughts on First Ed Roberts’ Day

Thanks to everyone who Tweeted, Facebooked (is that a word?) and otherwise shared information about Ed Roberts and his first official memorial day in California The Ed Roberts Campus at Berekley California is open. The campus uses Universal Design and is built for...

Ed Roberts’ Day| “Be Extraordinary”

In my class, “Introduction to Exceptionalities,” we read an article by Paul Longmore about the social construction of disabilities. The point being that the traditional “medical paradigm” points the disability finger at the person– they...

Wretches & Jabberers Review| A Jab to the Heart

I’ve been getting questions about Facilitated Communication. In the book Far From the Tree, the author Andrew Solomon interviews Ben Lehr who uses FC. Sue Lehr, of course, is one of the pioneers who works at Syracuse University and is a role model to us all. So,...