NDEAM: Where Awareness Meets Action
National Disability Employment Awareness Month, workplace access, leadership, organizational culture, and employment partnerships.
National Disability Employment Awareness Month, workplace access, leadership, organizational culture, and employment partnerships.

It begins quietly, almost imperceptibly. Desire stirs — a move toward a job, a dream, a love, a chance — and for a time, the way seems open. The horizon widens, clear and promising, as if life itself has said yes.
Last week, the “Disability Squeeze Symposium” took place in New York City. This event brought together advocates, scholars, policymakers, and individuals with lived experience to examine the complex challenges underpinning the Disability Squeeze.
I recently read an article in The New Yorker that has stayed with me. It told the story of Sara Fernandez, a lawyer and federal employee with dwarfism who built her career in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).
As Congress works to finalize a budget to keep the federal government open, the future of programs that support people with disabilities and their families is once again under discussion.

Distance begins with omissions: a question unanswered, a word withheld, a silence recorded but unacknowledged. Alone, they appear intact. Together, they fracture.
Violence, speech, public disagreement, and the limits of a single act.
The U. S. Department of Education recently announced adjustments to grants funded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.
When the Rehabilitation Act was passed in 1973, it marked one of the first federal commitments to ending discrimination against people with disabilities.

I remember the morning of September 11th. The sky was clear, its blue suggesting an ordinary day, its calm offering the illusion of safety—even as the world was about to break.