Author: Grace W. Dow

CW: Injury Joe Gesualdi has been on a mission since August 4. He’s pushing his 27-year-old daughter Sydney’s empty wheelchair from London, Ontario, to New York. He is raising money and hoping the Ontario Health Insurance Plan will pay for his daughter’s spinal surgery. This is happening because Joe is tired of watching the healthcare… Continue reading A Walk for What’s Missing 

CW: Homelessness When Claudine Wilson, who is disabled, left an Oklahoma hospital this month, she was hoping to put the awful experience behind her. She suffered heatstroke after her temperature reached 105 degrees. There was no air conditioning in the house where she was staying, and there was no fridge or stove. The doctors said… Continue reading The Shelters America Never Built

CW: Poverty In northwestern Indiana, thousands of people have been without power for ten days. That’s not an inconvenience. It is a full-blown crisis. Gary residents have had their lives turned upside down. Some are sleeping in their cars because they don’t have air conditioning. Others are driving miles just to do laundry. And at… Continue reading Danger and Darkness

CW: Ableism The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program helps people find housing outside the public housing system. Instead of being limited to just public housing, HCV participants can use their vouchers to find suitable housing. Participants include older adults, families, and disabled people. However, when you examine how the program works, the gap between its… Continue reading The Voucher That Opens a Door You Still Can’t Get Through

CW: Institutionalization It started with rooms most people never saw. In 2023, Brittany Hayes’s son, then five years old, had been in a crib for hours every day since birth. Brittany Hayes said the video chats she had with her son were difficult. She comforted him as much as she could over a screen in… Continue reading The Children Who Grew Up Waiting for Help

Air travel is usually routine. People show up and do what the airline tells them to do. Travelers think they will get to where they’re going without any issues. For passengers who are disabled, a routine flight can become a problem. This is what happened to Chris O’Brien, a disability activist removed from a flight… Continue reading The Quiet Fear Disabled Travelers Carry

CW: Poverty Some letters can make you feel like your world turned upside down. Erica Carter received a letter like this in 2023. At the time, she was the finance manager for the Omaha Nation Public Schools District and helped finance various projects such as parks and gardens. Unfortunately, her income made her ineligible to… Continue reading When Independence Has a Price Tag

CW: Death People with severe and profound intellectual disabilities are dying early at unprecedented rates. Researchers from King’s College London analyzed nearly 1,000 adult deaths from all over the UK, during 2021-2023. They found that adults with severe and profound intellectual disabilities died on average at the age of 58, adults with mild intellectual disabilities… Continue reading Living Longer, and Dying Younger

CW: Institutionalization, Racism, & Ableism It wasn’t that long ago that disabled Americans were kept in overcrowded institutions like the Willowbrook State School, where conditions were so grave that Robert F. Kennedy once described them as “a situation that borders on a snake pit.” In 1972, the public had a firsthand look at just how… Continue reading A Nation That Still Treats Disabled Lives as Negotiable

For almost forty years, cities that accept HUD funding have been required, by law, to ensure their new affordable housing units are accessible to disabled people. In theory, this means disabled people have the right to safe and independent living. However, the enforcement of this law often doesn’t happen locally.  A 2020 report from Apartment… Continue reading Why Accessible Housing Still Feels Out of Reach