This presentation from the 2023 AACPDM Community Forum presents and overview and a model creating opportunities for employment for individuals with disabilities.
Setting up a comfortable home office is key to optimizing work/life balance.
Speech impairments like dysarthria are common in children with cerebral palsy (CP) which can greatly affect participation across environments. Our study examined how speech impairment severity changes over time in 101 children with CP at 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age.
When a person is looking for a way to communicate in alternative ways, they need to find something that really works for them. They need to try to find a voice that sounds natural. They want to try to find a way to be efficient. They want to be able to communicate as normally as possible, even though they're not using their biological voice.
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder that affects how clear and understandable a person’s speech is. Between 50-90% of people with CP have dysarthria.
Medicaid Waivers, Katie Beckett or TEFRA are all forms of benefits that an "waive" medicaid financial restrictions for parents of children who have a developmental disability acquired prior to the age of three. Kidswaivers.org has provided a comprehensive, interactive website of all available medicaid waiver programs by State across the US.
Many people do not know the difference between SSI and SSDI. It can be very confusing for a family or individual to understand what is available, and whether they will qualify. Very often, the recipients and their families do not even know which benefits they are receiving. But it is important to understand some basic information about government benefits. This post will focus on the two most common government benefits and give you a brief overview of how they work.
Setting up a Third Party-Special Needs trust as part of estate planning is essential if the individual with a disability is or may be eligible for means-tested government benefits. A properly set up Third Party Trust ensures that the funds left to the individual, whether through gift or inheritance, are not considered countable assets when applying for means tested benefits
Individuals with disabilities have opportunities to work, receive employment training and coaching, benefits counseling and save money without losing means tested benefits. This podcast discusses these options.
In 2014 the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act was passed. The ABLE account is a tax-advantaged savings account for individuals with disabilities. The individual with the disability is the account owner and anyone can contribute to the account – the account beneficiary, family, friends, even a Special Needs Trust.
A special needs trust is a written legal agreement that enables an individual with a disability to qualify or remain qualified for means tested government benefits, such as medicaid, SSI or even medicaid waivers.
CPF Executive Director Rachel Byrne and speech therapist, Kristen Allison, PhD, CCC-SLP discuss communication and Cerebral Palsy.
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), operated by the Department of Education, can be utilized for their many tools to aid those with disabilities in the preparation for the job search, finding gainful employment, and maintaining this employment.
As cities and states across the countries are lifting the COVID-19 lockdown orders, people are returning to work at their offices. However, since the virus is still very much going around, employers must be vigilant about keeping their workplaces as safe as possible. Although we might be seeing a sense of “normalcy,” there’s still a long way to go before reaching the pre-pandemic normalcy—if we
We all have different towns and we all have different things that we do in the course of the day. It may be that the student is a great artist or a great writer. When it comes to assistive technology we have to think about what is going to give that student the ability to do what they love without having to see roadblocks and go, "I can't do that”. There are so many tools out there, whether it's a communication app, a video app, a math tool. With assistive technology you are not making the student into what you want them to be.
When you use alternate means of communication it can be really frustrating to go out in community. It is hard to know whether people are understanding you and whether they will take the time to listen. A lot of times it's hard for people to admit that they're not always comfortable with a device or a wheelchair or person who does things differently. So the more we can expose and educate people the better off we all will be. When we talk about acceptance, we're not just talking about people in society accepting people with disabilities. We're also talking about people with disabilities who are using alternate means of communication and how difficult it is for them to be out in the community.
It's really essential to understand how brain function works to really tap into how learners learn.
Many of our products today have accessibility supports in them to the extent where we don't have to purchase anything else. It's already in there. Your phone, your tablet, your smart home devices. If you're going to look for these features on your devices, you can start in your settings. There should be something in there that says accessibility. Go in there, see what's available. The manufacturers have done a really nice job of describing these features right within the settings to give you a sense of what they're going to do.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to sweep through the country, there are increasing orders from local governments for residents to stay at home, unless they’re essential workers. Both professionals and students are relying on Zoom and other video conferencing software to work or learn from the comforts of their home, although such measures, in most cases, were not permitted before the pandemic.
If you have any disability, then you probably have pondered on this question once, or ten times, before: should I self-disclose my disability on the job application form? Unlike going into the job interview, where your visible disability cannot be concealed, the power lies ultimately in you to check that box on the form.
Let me tell you about multimodal communication. We, as typical communicators, all use many different strategies. We use speech, gestures, facial expressions, technology, and no-tech solutions. As communicators, we all size up the situation based upon our communication partners, the context, the environment and then we choose to use the most effective communication strategy.
A speech language pathologist is someone who is trained in working with kids and adults. Everything from working with articulation errors and correcting things to what I do, which is working with people with profound physical impairments and getting them augmentative communication strategies.
