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Today, about 50 million Americans, or 1 in 5 people, are living with at least one disability, and most Americans will experience a disability some time during the course of their lives. Anyone can have a disability. Some people are born with a disability, get hurt or sick and have disability as a result, or develop a disability as they age. Some people may have a disability that lasts a short time while other people have a disability that lasts a lifetime. Different kinds of disabilities affect people in different ways. 

If you are living with a disability or provide services for people with disabilities, learn about health care and health programs to support the overall well-being of people with disabilities.

The American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law established the national Mentor Program for: law students with disabilities prospective law students with disabilities, and recent law school graduates with disabilities The Program’s purpose is to give members of these groups the opportunity to learn from an experienced attorney. In a recent study conducted for the ABA, those immediately out of law school cited having a mentor as an important driving factor of satisfaction with their career. Career satisfaction, however, is just one benefit of having a mentor-mentee relationship. Practitioners, students, and academics have all praised the benefits of a mentor program for those with disabilities, namely the availability of advice, guidance, and support.  

The American Bar Association's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law established the national Mentor Program for: law students with disabilities prospective law students with disabilities, and recent law school graduates with disabilities The Program’s purpose is to give members of these groups the opportunity to learn from an experienced attorney. In a recent study conducted for the ABA, those immediately out of law school cited having a mentor as an important driving factor of satisfaction with their career. Career satisfaction, however, is just one benefit of having a mentor-mentee relationship. Practitioners, students, and academics have all praised the benefits of a mentor program for those with disabilities, namely the availability of advice, guidance, and support.  

Raising the achievement of students with learning disabilities is hard, expensive, controversial and complex. School systems must pay private school tuition for students they can’t adequately serve. Educators and parents sometimes disagree on what methods to use. Education writers like me rarely deal with the subject because it is difficult to explain and lacks many success stories. That explains in part why learning disabilities are so poorly understood, as revealed by a remarkable survey just released by the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities. The representative sampling of 2,000 Americans provides a rare look at the depths of our ignorance. Forty-three percent believe that learning disabilities correlate with IQ. Fifty-five percent think that corrective eyewear can treat certain learning disabilities. Twenty-two percent believe that learning disabilities can be caused by spending too much time watching computer or television screens. All of those impressions are wrong.

Although there are a variety of school-based services available for children with learning, emotional, and social disabilities, one critical need often goes unfulfilled: providing guidance and strategies that instill self-advocacy.       Most students have only a superficial notion of the reasons they receive these special accommodations, and many children are completely uninformed. Resource teachers and specialists do not generally have the authority to label and enlighten students about their disabilities, the foundation for building self-advocacy. If children are to learn how to become better consumers of educational resources, especially as they grow older, someone must take the lead.      Parents of children with disabilities can fill this role by doing the following: Introduce children’s diagnoses to them in elementary school so that they can make sense out of their struggles Use a matter-of-fact tone of voice when explaining to children that they learn/behave/relate differently from other students and, therefore, need extra help to ensure that they can succeed just like their classmates Don’t leave out the disability label—such as writing disability, ADHD, or Aspergers Syndrome—since labels are a reality of their educational life Emphasize that the teachers and special staff at school who help them will be aware of this label and prepared to help in certain ways to make school a fairer place for them to learn and grow      It’s important to review with children the ways in which their school must provide special help and services. Emphasize that these accommodations are rules the school must follow. “You have the responsibility to do your best job, and teachers must follow the learning/behavior/friendship helping rules that make things fair for you,” is one way to put it. Explain how extra time on assessments, decreased homework, or social skills groups are examples of the helping rules that schools must follow. Discuss how there is a written promise called the individualized education plan (IEP), which includes all the helping rules and makes all of this clear.      Find child-friendly resources—such as books, websites, and videos—that explain in detail their specific disability and the ways other children have learned to cope and achieve despite these limitations. Use these materials as a springboard for deeper discussion about past times when their disability created significant stress or barriers to success. Reassure them that this was before their problem was known and that there is so much that can be done to build a plan for success now that it has been identified.      Point out that one of their most important responsibilities is to be able to discuss their disability with teachers and ask for extra help and accommodation when struggles are too great. Make sure that these discussions take place before middle school, when developmental factors make it harder to get such discussions started. Ensure that they know what practical steps are in their IEP at each grade so that they can respectfully remind teaching staff if necessary.      Having a disability is like having to wear glasses; students with glasses have accepted this fact as necessary to seeing clearly.

New York, NY — Eleigha Love, who describes her brain as a computer, and Jared Schmidt, a teenage sky diver, are the recipients of this year's $10,000 Anne Ford and Allegra Ford Scholarships given to two graduating high school seniors with documented learning disabilities (LD) who are pursuing undergraduate degrees. Anne Ford, Chairman Emerita of the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), is a well-known philanthropist and author, who has been a long-time parent advocate for children with learning disabilities, starting with her own daughter, Allegra. The scholarship was created in 2001 by the NCLD board when Ms. Ford stepped down as chairman in honor of her service. In 2008, Allegra agreed to match the existing award, creating a second scholarship. Anne Ford and Today Show Host Al Roker presented the scholarships at this year's NCLD 34th Annual Benefit Dinner, emceed by Paula Zahn in New York City. Jared and Eleigha are two of more than 2.5 million students who are wrestling with learning disabilities. They are among the mere 64 percent of students with LD who graduate high school, and only 10 percent with LD that go on to a four-year college. "We received over 300 applications, and let me tell you everyone of them came from students deserving a scholarship," said Anne, handing out the awards to this year’s winners. “We hear so much about the challenges and struggles of students with LD, and it is so inspiring to see that so many are able to meet and surpass those challenges." "Our goal is to see every child with LD graduate from high school," said James Wendorf, Executive Director of NCLD. "We are still failing about 1 million children. We've seen graduation rates and classroom inclusion rise more than 15 percent over the past 10 years. But we need to continue to empower parents and teachers, reduce stigma among kids, and keep education funding on the top of the education agenda if we are going to see those numbers increase, not decrease." One of the biggest problems with learning disabilities is diagnosing them in time, before children get frustrated with the system. "To a child with learning disabilities, school can be a very isolating place, it can be a very frustrating place and frankly overwhelming," relayed CNN's Anderson Cooper at a recent NCLD lunch. "Too many kids with LD struggle to try and keep up with their peers and suffer from low confidence and self-esteem and lose their love of learning at a young age. It's hard to rekindle that once it's gone, which is why the work of this organization is so important."

The State of Learning Disabilities: Facts, Trends and Indicators provides the authoritative national and state-by-state snapshot of learning disabilities (LD) in the United States, and their impact on the ability of students and adults to achieve educational success and employment. This publication also clarifies what a learning disability is and explains the common misperceptions associated with LD.

What: In order to help keep you more informed, we are hosting monthly calls to update you on various disability issues as well as to introduce you to persons who work on disability issues in the Federal government. This call is open to everyone, and we strongly urge and ask that you distribute this email broadly to your networks and listservs so that everyone has the opportunity to learn this valuable information. If you received this email as a forward but would like to be added to the White House Disability Group email distribution list, please visit our website at http://www.whitehouse.gov/disability-issues-contact and fill out the contact us form in the disabilities section or you can email us at disability@who.eop.gov and provide your full name, city, state, and organization. We are excited to announce that Dr. Jill Biden will be speaking on our next call that will take place on Monday, June 27 at 10:30 AM Eastern. We apologize for the early time, but due to the time difference in Greece, this was necessary. When: June 27, 2011 8:30am Mountain Conference Call information: Dial in for listeners: 800-230-1951 Title: White House Disability Call (use instead of code) This call is off the record and not for press purposes.

People with learning disabilities (LD) are at the top of every field—and literature is no exception. Many of our favorite authors have overcome the adversity of LD to write books that entertain and inspire us. If you want to find out more about writers with LD or if you just want to find a quality summer read for yourself or your child, check out these books.

NCLD collected data from a random sampling of 1,980 adults in the United States, evenly distributed across males and females, via an online survey in August 2012. The sampling is representative of the U.S. population with a margin of error of 4.4 percent.  Twelve percent of the respondents cited having a learning disability, and eight percent of the parents surveyed have a child with a learning disability.  Results reveal the need for more education about the causes, treatments of, and treatments for learning disabilities, and a better understanding of the rights of learning disabled people in the workplace.

Who are students with learning disabilities? It depends on what state or school district you live in. The combination of a surge in the use of response to intervention and a lack of consensus about how much of a role cognitive assessment should play in an evaluation prompted the National Center for Learning Disabilities this month to issue a new set of guidelines on its view of how students with specific learning disabilities should be identified. As the use of RTI has grown, there have also been concerns that it has been used inappropriately, delaying or preventing the identification of some students as having learning disabilities, or other disabilities.

The iPad is a device that many lust after as a shiny new toy, but many people with disabilities can benefit from what it has to offer as a functional tool. Students with learning disabilities can enhance and develop their communication skills, learn how to adapt to situations, and develop social skills. Check out this collection of iPad apps that can make a difference in the life of a learning disabled child.