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Wheelchair racer and Paralympic bronze medalist Anjali Forber-Pratt was coping with major lower back pain before the 2012 London Paralympics. She knew she needed lumbar fusion surgery, but she had put it off until after competing, instead going for monthly injections as a temporary fix. Eleven days after the Games, she was in the operating room.

As she grew up navigating life in a wheelchair, Anjali Forber-Pratt encountered obstacles both in the physical world and in other people’s mindsets.

“As a young child going through public schooling and so forth, I was constantly faced not only with physical inaccessibility, in terms of accessing spaces, but also attitudinal inaccessibility,” she said.

It’s gratifying when policymakers #LISTEN! On November 21, 2022, CommunicationFIRST submitted comments to the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) in response to the agency’s forthcoming 2024-2029 Long-Range Plan....

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On November 21, 2022, CommunicationFIRST submitted comments to the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR)... Read more: https://communicationfirst.org/when-agencies-listen/

I am a brown, disabled, adopted woman who acquired transverse myelitis as an infant, and I use a manual wheelchair. My experiences growing up with these identities shaped those I developed later—who I am as a person, researcher, and activist.

Dr. Anjali Forber-Pratt, who holds three degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been appointed by the White House as the administration's new Director of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

For many parents, one of the biggest worries is that their kid is being picked on. And unfortunately, that concern isn't unwarranted: In 2017, almost one in three 6th-graders reported being bullied at school.

For some reason, the presence of disability generates a feeling of awkwardness in many individuals. I see and experience this every day. I could be strolling down a wide sidewalk in my wheelchair, and people will loudly and dramatically move to the other side—or even cross the road to avoid me!