This Friday, Arizonan non-profit, Arizona Center for Disability Law, sponsored a workshop and seminar to highlight the difficulties the disabled face in civic life.
Advocacy for and community awareness of the physically and developmentally challenged was the aim Friday of the first Southwestern Arizona Conference on Disability Rights.
Held at the Yuma Civic Center, it provided a tool kit of resources the disabled and their caregivers can use to integrate more fully in employment and civic life, said Peri Jude Radecic, executive director of Arizona Center for Disability Law.
“We want the disabled to leave here knowing what to do if their rights have been violated,” she said of what’s expected to become an annual event.
Various workshops explained options for the disabled in: special education, employment, vocational rehabilitation, accessible housing, assistive technology, navigating the state medical health system, as well as other available services.
The most popular workshop, with 150 attending, was the opening session on voting rights for the disabled. Radecic demonstrated a voting machine for the blind with a headset that reads out the ballot to the voter.
“Under the law there has to be one of these in each precinct, and Yuma has a machine at every polling place,” Radecic said.
The Arizona Center for Disability Law is a nonprofit agency that provides legal services for the physically, mentally and sensory disabled. Joann Sheperd, a workshop presenter, focused on employer obligations under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
