Autistic Self Advocacy Network - Atlanta

The Atlanta, GA area chapter of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Nothing about us, without us!

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Proposed DOE changes mean any child with a disability and behavioral challenges may be placed in segregated GNETS settings.

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REMINDER: Comments needed

[autisticadvocacy]

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been asking you to get involved in our fight to defend health care. Your advocacy has been amazing – you’ve called your Members of Congress, attended town halls, and taken to social media to stand up for your right to access health care. Now, we’re pleased to announce the …

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been asking you to get involved in our fight to defend health care. Your advocacy has been amazing – you’ve called your Members of Congress, attended town halls, and taken to social media to stand up for your right to access health care. Now, we’re pleased to announce the release of a few new tools to help you contact your Members of Congress by mail.

We’ve created some templates and talking points that you can use to ask your Members of Congress to #ProtectOurCare. If you need more information about how to format or address your letter or postcard, check out our factsheet on writing to elected officials. You can download the full templates at the link.

[A masculine individual with one prosthetic leg opens his shirt like superman to reveal a heart with a plus sign in it- a symbol for healthcare. A feminine person wearing headphones flys one fist forward, her super suit bearing the same heart and plus sign symbo. Behind them, a city; in front the text “#ProtectOurCare”]

Our templates are fillable, so you can type your message or handwrite it after you print out your postcard, whichever works for you. You can use the talking points below to help you write your message. We encourage you to snap a picture with your postcard or letter and share it on social media using the hashtag #ProtectOurCare.

Talking points

Writing to your two Senators is a good place to start. You can find their office addresses at contactingcongress.org.

Keep reading

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Mentally ill patients often left Georgia’s state psychiatric hospitals with just a bus to...

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The Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities is the state's leader in advancing public policy on behalf of persons with developmental disabilities.

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Medicaid is the biggest health care program in the country. It’s an important part of the United States health care system. But a lot of the information out there about Medicaid and attempts to change it can be difficult to understand and navigate. That’s why ASAN is proud to announce the release of our plain …

ASAN National has released a self-advocate’s guide to Medcaid!

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Every person with vision loss should be able to live with independence and dignity.

Have you been here? What do you think?

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A Georgia disability advocate, Evan Nodvin, talks with Liz about why Medicaid is important 

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This afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the ACA repeal bill. ASAN’s statement on the bill is here, but the short version is that this final version is a disaster for people with disabilities. If passed by the Senate, this bill will: Leave 24 million people without health insurance Eliminate $880 billion in Medicaid funding …

Call your Senators and tell them to Vote No on the AHCA - Script in action alert

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House Republicans in Washington are planning to vote Thursday on a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Pre-existing

The House already voted to pass the AHCA, but this still details important concerns you should be thinking about for its round in the Senate. 

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The State Rehabilitation Council will soon be hosting a series of public hearings regarding proposed policy changes.

You can submit public comments on proposed Ga. voc rehab changes here

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A federal lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of three disabled residents of Georgia accuses the state of putting bureaucracy above the rights of the disabled in Medicaid and food stamps programs.

Lawsuit alleges that Georgia has not been “providing disabled residents with reasonable accommodations, putting the disabled at risk of losing needed benefits.”

[autisticadvocacy]

Tell Congress: don’t delay our civil rights!

Businesses have had 27 years to come into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the civil rights law which requires businesses to be accessible to people with disabilities. But some of them still want a pass on excluding disabled people. Right now, Members of Congress and corporate lobbyists are pushing H.R. 620, a bill that weakens the ADA. We need to push back: contact your Members of Congress and let them know that our civil rights don’t come with a waiting period.

The House could vote on H.R. 620 as soon as this week. This bill:

Lets businesses avoid fixing access barriers for up to four months after receiving a complaint – even though the ADA’s access requirements are already 27 years old!

Ignores the fact that the ADA is the most important civil rights law for people with disabilities.

Ignores the extensive, free educational resources already available today to any business on how to comply with the law.

You can find contact information for your two Senators, and your Congressional Representative, at contactingcongress.org. Here’s a script you can use to call, write, or email:

Script for contacting your U.S. Representative: My name is [Name], and I live in [your town]. I’m [calling/writing] to ask Representative [Name] to vote NO on H.R. 620. People with disabilities need to be able to shop for groceries, stay at hotels, and use other public accommodations. It has been 27 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disabled people in our district have waited too long for access – and businesses have had plenty of time to provide it. Please protect the ADA and vote NO on H.R. 620.

Script for contacting your U.S. Senator: My name is [Name], and I live in [your town]. I’m [calling/writing] to ask Senator [Name] to oppose a Senate version of H.R. 620. People with disabilities need to be able to shop for groceries, stay at hotels, and use other public accommodations. It has been 27 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disabled people in our state have waited too long for access – and businesses have had plenty of time to provide it. Please protect the ADA and vote NO on any Senate version of H.R. 620.

We cannot allow Congress to start chipping away at the ADA. Make sure your Members of Congress know that you expect them to stand up for disability rights. Nothing about us, without us!

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Proposed DOE changes mean any child with a disability and behavioral challenges may be placed in segregated GNETS settings.

[disabilityinhistoryandlife]

At first, it was a simple case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” as I worked with WikiEducation Foundation to teach a methods course in which students created disability history content. But th…

[liketheinferno]

was thinking about this also: don’t hide your child’s disability from the child themself, or pretend it doesn’t exist

one of my best friends went to an autistic school for 7 years, but no one ever actually explained to him what autism actually was! parents never talked about it! so he thought that when he went to high school he’d ‘grown out of it,’ whatever it was.

we kept running into situations where, for example, we’re sitting together and someone asks me why I’m flapping and I say “I’m stimming, I’m autistic,” or this friend hears me explain accommodation stuff to a new teacher. and he kept responding with surprise: “that’s an autism thing? is autism the reason we do that?” “yeah!” “oh wow, I thought I was just weird!”

so i’ve been trying to convince my friend for most of this year now that all this ‘unusual’ stuff that we do and difficulties we have are just our natural way of being, because of our neurotype and disability… and the reaction has consistently been relief. like “oh, that’s why I’m like this! it’s not the wrong way, it’s just the autistic way!”

if you act like your child’s disability doesn’t exist, it won’t actually stop existing. they will still be a disabled child, only now they will have no understanding of what that means. they’re going to feel confused and out-of-place at best; have their needs ignored and most probably going to push themselves to able-bodied neurotypical standards of functioning when they just cannot handle that, which is extremely unhealthy!

disability is not a bad word! it is not shameful! you gain nothing from pretending a disabled person in your life is not disabled at all. 

[autisticworlds]

infodump invite!

Week Two of Autism Creativity Month is all about works of creativity as special interests. So if your SpIn is a movie/TV-show/book/comicbook/video game/music band/artist/a type of creativity in general, feel free to infodump! Reblog this post or submit to the blog. I really want to hear all about your special interests and I’m sure some of the followers want to as well.

[spongebob-autisticquestions]

This, honestly, is a pretty accurate representation of what an overload feels like for an autistic person!

And what’s better is that the group that uploaded this video, the National Autistic Society, never talk about curing autism. They actually care for autistic people and are aiming for it to be more widely understood (unlike Autism Speaks)

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I love this one, it is SO RIGHT ON!!!  WARNING though I found it to be triggering for me. 

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High pitch noises / overlapping voices / overlapping closed captioning / confusion.

If any of my allistic followers want to know what it is like and why I wear noise canceling ear buds, this is why.

The thing is, it is so much worse than this. Because like, take for example - ever squeek of a shoe on the floor, every creak of a seat, every beeping watch, rustling paper, cough, sneeze, and air conditioner, EVERYTHING is like this, all the time.