Obstacles Remain to Exercise of Voting Rights by Individuals with Disabilities

By Emily A. Donaldson, CELA As mid-term elections approach, the stakes are high for individuals with disabilities. Budget battles are being waged at every level of government, threatening Medicaid, SSDI, Medicare and other programs that are essential to their quality of life. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, Americans with Disabilities Act and Help American Vote Act of 2002 are just a few of the laws that ostensibly guarantee their voting rights, but many individuals […]

Navigating the Road to Adulthood: One Family’s Story

Marina Sarris Interactive Autism Network Ruth Dunigan is proud. Her son, David, is excelling at a full-time job and managing his money well enough to buy his first vehicle, a silver Jeep Liberty. Those may seem like average things for a 25-year-old, but David is not average. David is among a tidal wave of people with autism who have made the transition from school to adulthood recently.1,2 His generation has had to navigate school and […]

Financial Planning for Special Needs Families

Author: Kimberly Goodwin, PhD More American families are grappling with the high cost of raising children and the increasing cost of college education. Families who have a child with special needs, however, face a unique set of expenses. The additional medical and educational expenses could easily elevate the cost of raising a special needs child to $500,000, if not much higher. Since health insurance doesn’t cover the full cost of medical treatments, families bear the burden […]

4 Ways Tech is Improving Special Needs Education

Special needs children represent a significant portion of the public school population. As of 2013-14, there were 6.5 million children and young adults ages 3-21 who were receiving these services in the United States. Although they have to overcome challenges their peers don’t, these kids can and do thrive, especially as educational technology has improved. In the past, special needs kids typically didn’t have a chance at a level playing field when it came to […]

People Read Facial Expressions Differently

By Dr. Francis Collins & article source – click here Image Credit: Lydia Polimeni, NIH  We constantly make assumptions about what others are feeling based on their facial expressions, such as smiling or frowning. Many have even suggested that human facial expressions represent a universal language. But an NIH-funded research team recently uncovered evidence that different people may read common facial expressions in surprisingly different ways. In a study published in Nature Human Behaviour, the researchers found that […]