Do you and/or your staff work with people with disabilities? Have you ever wished you could understand your clients better? The Access Center for Independent Living (ACIL) can help you with that.

ACIL’s 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 and mobility.

Over the years, ACIL staff, board members and volunteers, most of whom are people with disabilities themselves, have opened the eyes of thousands of people by putting them through TTIE.
“The training is very eye opening. I gained more appreciation for what other people overcome on a daily basis. I’ll be more careful not to take everyday activities for granted,” said David Cook, who went through TTIE in October of 2022.

We do our best to ensure that the person running each activity or station is a person living with the impairment being experienced. Many of the people who have gone through the training appreciate it having that level of authenticity.

“The trainers are amazing! The fact that they use their own experiences is the best part of the training,” said Sunday Justin Nzitatira, who went through TTIE in February 2024.

The staff work diligently to make sure TTIE includes as many disabilities as possible and continues to live up to the positive feedback it receives. With that in mind, we created an Autism station and added it to the training a couple of years ago. Furthermore, we are working toward adding a station focused on what it is like to live with Schizophrenia and are hopeful that it will be ready for the public in the not-too-distant future.

“I learned the most from the Autism station because it really opened my eyes to what people with Autism go through daily,” said Brigid Newman, who went through TTIE in December 2023 with the YMCA Youth Leadership program.

Further proof of the effectiveness lies in the numbers. 128 people were surveyed between September 2021 and October 2024. 95.3% of those people strongly agreed that they gained new information and a new level of understanding from the training according to evaluation results. Additionally, 82.8% of them strongly agreed that they felt better equipped to work with people with disabilities after the training and 77.3% of them strongly agreed that the training could be applied to their job. Finally, 90.6% strongly agreed that they would recommend the training to others.

Still not convinced that you and your staff should go through TTIE? Consider the fact that ACIL received a grant from the Disability Foundation in 2023, which allows us to offer TTIE to residents of Dayton and surrounding communities free of charge between now and December 20th ,2024. Given that, anybody who is considering having their staff go through TTIE and would like to do so at no cost should register to do so quickly.

Please keep in mind that TTIE is a four-hour time commitment and is limited to groups of up to 15 people. Larger groups are accommodated through multiple training sessions. For more information or to schedule training contact Independent Living Specialist, Dylan Boot at 937-341-5202 Ext 109 or [email protected].

One Response

  1. Dylan — I left you a voicemail regarding getting more information on this training. Feel free to email or call with your response. We would really like to be able to take advantage of the grant you have available to pay for this training. Questions we have are – what days are this training available and what are the times offered? We would need this information to figure out who we could invite to the training — if you have Saturdays we could invite our health department staff, if weekdays we would like to extend the offer to our West Central Ohio Medical Reserve Corps employees at the various health departments in the region, and our last ask would be for Medical Reserve Corp Volunteers. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

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