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"He asked me if I wanted out. I said yeah, do what it takes to get me out." Jamie Beck shared her story about how she ended up living in a nursing home shortly after graduating from high school. She says her father's stage four cancer led to her…

“It was my time to play my part in the circle of life.” On June 13, 2018, Jamie Beck became the first person in Indiana to have her guardianship terminated and a Supported Decision-Making agreement put in place. Jamie had been adjudged as…

"Now disability politics, you know, is not Republican or Democrats, it's really nonpartisan but you still have to be recognized as someone who's reliable and trustworthy," observes Jim Hammond in this 2013 interview. Working with legislators was part…

"Dickerson, I finally get it," a fiscally conservative State Senator from Hendricks County remarked. "He said, 'I'm on the board of directors of the bank and we hired this fellow with a disability. I don't even know what his disability is, but he's…

“The Arc name is an interesting story in itself,” says John Dickerson of the history of The Arc. It was in the late ‘40s when parents across the country started organizing to discuss opportunities for their children. The first Indiana state…

This is a photograph of U.S. President John F. Kennedy meeting with the Panel on Mental Retardation in the Fish Room at the White House on October 16, 1962.
Credit: Abbie Rowe, National Park Service / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and…

This video is an overview of 200 years of change in the lives of Hoosiers with disabilities, produced by the Indiana Disability History Project. A very broad survey starting in the 19th century, the short video highlights the role of advocacy in…

“It changed my life,” explains Karen Vaughn of her experience going through Partners in Policymaking in 1992. A leadership training program for adults with disabilities and parents, Partners in Policymaking had been recently initiated by the Indiana…

Kylee Hope was Director of Indiana's Division of Disability and Rehabilitative Services during the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewed shortly after that period, when she had recently retired from her position, she provides an…

New digital media have opened a creative landscape "where it's not someone else speaking on behalf of the person with the disability - you don't have the teachers or the preachers and the social workers pushing the agenda." Lawrence Carter-Long, a…