ACIL: Empowering People with Disabilities to Achieve Independence Through Advocacy
Curious about the advocacy services and efforts of the Access Center for Independent Living (ACIL)? Check out this overview of our advocacy services and how we use them to empower people with disabilities to achieve independence.
Core Advocacy Services
ACIL provides advocacy support across three primary levels:
• Self-Advocacy: Individualized instruction to help people learn the skills needed to advocate for themselves, including understanding their rights and responsibilities.
• Individual Advocacy: Support for specific personal needs, such as contacting landlords about home accessibility modifications like grab bars or widened doorways.
• Systems Advocacy: Efforts to influence local, state, and national policy and legislative changes.
Specialized Training Programs
• Instruction in Self-Advocacy: Instruction in self-advocacy will help individuals learn the skills needed to achieve greater independence. Individuals will develop a deeper understanding of their rights and responsibilities. The ACIL staff will help teach individuals leadership skills essential for workplace success, while also encouraging exploration and connection with leadership or peer mentoring groups within their communities to expand their networks. Furthermore, individuals will fill out a form to identify their personal self-advocacy interests and the activities required to foster independence and self-advocacy skills.
• “Think This is Easy?” Disability Awareness Training: Think This Is Easy (TTIE) training is an in-person, immersive experience perfect for service providers working with individuals with disabilities or anyone who wishes to learn about the challenges and barriers faced by those in the disability community.
The training, first developed by some of ACIL’s staff over 20 years ago, consists of activities or stations that simulate various types of disabilities or impairments including cognitive, visual, speech, hearing, dexterity, mobility and Autism.
• Breaking Silences: In May 2020, Maria Matzik, the Education and Advocacy Specialist at ACIL, teamed up with Dr. Julie Williams, a professor at Wright State University, to launch Breaking Silences. This group was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of emergency preparedness for individuals with disabilities. The group began meeting at the onset of the pandemic, focusing on uniting community partners to address the crisis and improve planning for future challenges. Breaking Silences is not a support group but addresses a wide range of issues relevant to individuals with disabilities, the pandemic, and its aftermath. It holds both public open meetings and private sessions exclusively for its members.
The group includes several subcommittees, such as the Breaking Silences Advocacy Committee, the Ohio Olmstead Task Force, the Ohio Nursing Crisis Advocacy Committee, and the Accommodations Subcommittee. Since its beginning, Breaking Silences and its subcommittees have achieved significant milestones, including advocating for increased wages for Direct Service Providers (DSP) and promoting the use of clearer, more accessible documentation by state agencies like Medicaid.
To view the current meeting schedule for Breaking Silences, please visit ACIL’s event calendar.
• Youth Transition: In partnership with Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities (OOD) and local school districts ACIL offers Pre-Employment Youth Transition Services (Pre-ETS) to students with disabilities beginning at age 14. These introductory services are intended to help students with disabilities get an early start in identifying career interests and goals. Pre-ETS are for students with disabilities who need Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) services or are potentially eligible for such services but have not yet applied. Pre-ETS is intended to help get students on the right path for success in their careers and in life.
Interested in engaging in ACIL’s advocacy services and/or participating in our specialized programs? Contact us at 937-341-5202 or [email protected].