Disability Pride Month

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately1 in 4 (or 27% of) adults in the United States have some type of disability.Broken down even further, in the US:

12.1% of adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
12.8% of adults have a cognitive disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.
7.2% of adults have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
6.1% of adults are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing.
4.8% of adults have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
3.6% of adults have a self-care disability with difficulty dressing or bathing.

Disability Pride Month is celebrated every July and is an opportunity to honor the history, achievements, experiences, and struggles of this community. It is held in July to mark the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, landmark legislation that broke down barriers to inclusion in society. This was a huge step forward, but it is important to remember that barriers still exist for people who are differently abled and that is why we need to honor every kind of disability, the people who identify with them, and the wide range of support they need to thrive.

Below are some general guidelines we can all adopt to show respect to those with disabilities:

Do not assume that people with disabilities are willing to disclose their disability. While some people prefer to be public about their disability, such as including information about their disability in a media article, others choose to not be publicly identified as a person with a disability.
People with disabilities are, first and foremost, people. Labeling a person equates the person with a condition and can be disrespectful and dehumanizing. A person isn’t a disability, condition or diagnosis; a person has a disability, condition or diagnosis. This is called Person-First Language.
People with disabilities can be healthy, although they may have a chronic condition such as arthritis or diabetes.
In discussions that include people both with and without disabilities, do not use words that imply negative stereotypes of those with disabilities. For example, do not use the word “normal” when describing a person without a disability.

Biographies

Mayor Timothy J. Adams

Timothy J. Adams is an accomplished community leader with more than 30 years of experience in business, government and philanthropy. On November 18, 2019, Mr. Adams was sworn into a four-year term as Mayor of the City of Bowie, Maryland. He is the first African American to be elected Mayor in the 138-year history of the City. Mr. Adams is passionate about leveraging his talents and resources to benefit others. As a strong proponent of issues affecting persons with disabilities, Mr. Adams supports the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In 1989, Mr. Adams founded and currently serves as President and CEO of Systems Application & Technologies, Inc. (SA-TECH). SATECH is headquartered in Maryland and is a premier technology and technical support company that provides services across the globe to clients in the air, land and naval forces of the Department of Defense (DoD).

A proud HBCU graduate, Mr. Adams holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Xavier University. He also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of New Orleans and he received a Doctorate of Business (Honoris Causa) from Bowie State University in May 2017. He is a lifetime member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.

Steve Wonder

Steve (Stevie) Wonder is an American singer-songwriter, musician and philanthropist. He is a pioneer and has influenced musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex composition. He was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1950, six weeks premature, with a condition called retinopathy of prematurity, which caused him to be born blind.

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón

Known professionally as Frida Kahlo, this Mexican painter was known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Also inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In 1925, Kahlo was in a streetcar accident in which she suffered severe injuries that caused chronic pain for the rest of her life.

Michael J. Fox

Fox is a Canadian-American activist and retired actor. Beginning his career in the 1970s, he rose to prominence portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties and Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy. In 1998, Fox disclosed his 1991 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. He subsequently became an advocate for finding a cure, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to help fund research. Worsening symptoms forced Fox to reduce his acting work.