Because many HCBS waivers are enrollment capped and state administered, eligibility determinations and waitlist placement generally do not translate across geographic lines. Individuals who relocate often must reapply, undergo new functional assessments, and reenter waitlists.
If you want to honor this day, start by listening. Ask people with disabilities what support means to them, what freedom looks like and what they need to feel safe stepping into opportunity. These answers are blueprints. Once you learn them, you cannot unlearn them.
Moving away from inspiration-based framing does not diminish the real challenges that disabled students face. Instead, it reframes those challenges as collective responsibilities rather than individual struggles.
USC prides itself on being an academic institution built on integrity, community, well-being and accountability. When the topic shifts to disability, however, the tone changes and energy softens. People switch to careful, sugarcoated vocabulary as if “disabled” is a word that needs padding. The pause is always a giveaway.
Accommodations and retrofits almost always come as afterthoughts, and they’re reminders that the space was never designed with people with disabilities in mind from the start. That’s why “access” alone can feel hollow.
When two people with a disability fall in love, it’s not a tragedy, compromise or some inspirational story waiting to happen. It’s just love — messy, beautiful, human love. The world, however, doesn’t always treat it that way.
June 9, 2019. Ali Stroker wins Best Featured Actress in a Musical at the 73rd Annual Tony Awards. An actor, singer, and wheelchair user, Ali Stroker has been a trailblazer for disability representation on the stage. She was the first wheelchair user to graduate from the Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department at New York University. In 2015, she was the first wheelchair user to appear on Broadway, starring as Anna in the musical, Spring Awakening. For her performance as Ado Annie Carnes in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma!, Stroker became the first wheelchair user to win a Tony Award in 2019.
Take the quiz: Check Your Ableism!
Being Young and Disabled
By Noah Griffth, Auburn University
I Was a "Student of Concern"
By Kate Jackson, Rutgers University
In My Moment of Distress
By Anonymous, Temple University