Columbus Georgia Mayor's Commission for Persons with Disabilities

The next Mayor's Commission for Persons with Disabilities will be on Tuesday, May 19th, at 12 noon in City Hall, the Azaela Room.

Tools can open doors—and assistive technology is one of the keys. 🔑💙

Join us to learn how AT can support your child’s learning, independence, and success both at school and at home. We’ll share practical resources, explain what’s available in Georgia, and help you better understand how AT fits into the IEP process.

Because the right support can make all the difference. ✨

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026
Time: 12:00pm and 6:00pm

Register for 12pm here: https://tinyurl.com/mr3vj2ek

Register for 6pm here: https://tinyurl.com/4yukt8ne

Really important information.

Parents and siblings often find themselves navigating a complex system without clear guidance. This session is here to change that.

Join Adult Disability Medical Healthcare for:

Understanding the System: for Families

🎤 With Jillian Palmiotto
🗓 Thursday, May 14, 2026
🕖 7:00 PM
💻 Virtual Session

In this workshop, you’ll learn:

✔️ Funding systems for adults with I/DD
✔️ Key agencies involved
✔️ How the system works together
✔️ What families need to plan ahead

This is a must-attend for families who want clarity, direction, and confidence moving forward.

📲 Register today via the link or QR code in our bio/graphic

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/vv1QaCAmQL-AK_oCs9HpEw #/registration

We look forward to supporting you and your family as you navigate Medicaid and disability services.

MedicaidSupport CaregiverSupport

Exploring AI - Youth Training

May 14, 2026 @6:00 pm EST

Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/2xwhvcp6

Join us for this free, live, virtual training for youth with disabilities ages 12-22.

AI can be a powerful tool for planning your future. In this interactive session, youth will learn how AI can help with school, career exploration, and navigating services like vocational rehabilitation and independent living—while learning how to use AI safely and responsibly.

The Americans with Disabilities Act did not exist in 1977. In Chicago, a 23-year-old broke her neck and found the city locked.

Marca Bristo was a flight attendant who spent her days walking the narrow aisles of commercial airplanes. On a summer afternoon, she jumped into Lake Michigan from a concrete breakwater. The water was shallower than it looked. She severed her spinal cord. She was paralyzed from the chest down.

She spent six months in a specialized rehabilitation hospital. She had to learn how to operate a manual wheelchair, how to shift her weight to prevent pressure ulcers, and how to breathe with compromised abdominal muscles.

The hospital environment was designed specifically for her. The doorways were wide. The bathrooms had steel grab bars. The floors were perfectly level.

Then she was discharged.

She tried to resume her life in Chicago. The physical barriers were absolute.

Curbs at intersections were six inches high. To cross a street, she had to roll her chair into active traffic lanes to find a sloping driveway, then wheel back against the flow of cars.

Public buses had steep metal steps. Train stations were subterranean, accessible only by long concrete staircases.

Payphones were mounted at head height. Public restroom stalls were exactly twenty-four inches wide. A standard wheelchair is twenty-five inches wide. Heavy spring-loaded doors required fifteen pounds of force to pull open.

She could not get into her own apartment building.

She lost her job. She lost her employer-sponsored health insurance.

To secure basic medical assistance, she had to navigate a state welfare system that required mandatory in-person interviews.

The public aid office was located on the second floor of a municipal building. The building had no elevator.

If she couldn't get upstairs, she couldn't register for benefits. If she didn't get benefits, she couldn't afford her daily medical supplies.

She arrived at the building on a Tuesday morning. The stairwell was steep and narrow.

Two friends had accompanied her. They had to carry her up the stairs in her chair.

One friend gripped the front wheels. The other gripped the back push-handles.

They tipped her backward at a forty-five-degree angle. She stared at the acoustic ceiling tiles as they hauled her up, step by step, the metal frame of the chair clanking against the concrete.

Halfway up the flight, the friend holding the back handles slipped.

The chair jolted downward. Her catheter bag shifted violently under her clothing and leaked onto her jeans.

She reached the second floor. She sat in the public waiting room for two hours in damp clothes.

The clerk behind the desk did not look up when she finally rolled to the counter.

The clerk handed her a stack of standard intake forms.

She realized the building was not simply old. The architecture itself was a rejection.

At the time, the 1968 Architectural Barriers Act applied strictly to facilities constructed with direct federal funds. Private businesses, local transit authorities, and municipal buildings were entirely exempt. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 technically prohibited discrimination, but the government had issued no regulations to enforce it. The Chicago building code made no mandatory provision for wheelchair access in existing structures. A person who could not walk was legally considered a fire hazard in theaters and restaurants. The disability rights movement was still in its infancy, and the built environment operated on a simple, unwritten administrative premise: public space was reserved for the able-bodied.

The system worked exactly as it was designed to work.

Cities did not want to spend municipal budgets retrofitting miles of concrete sidewalks.

Transit authorities argued that installing hydraulic lifts on buses would slow down route times and decrease efficiency.

Business owners claimed that adding ramps would ruin historical brick facades and consume valuable retail floor space.

The logic was purely economic. The financial cost of altering the world was deemed higher than the value of the citizens excluded from it.

Bristo read the municipal codes. She saw the math.

She attempted to attend a city council meeting to protest the lack of accessible transit.

The meeting was held in a public hall downtown.

The entrance to the hall had four heavy marble steps.

She sat at the bottom of the steps in the rain while the council voted inside.

She stopped asking for permission.

In 1980, she founded Access Living. It was the first independent living center in Chicago run by and for people with disabilities.

She did not run it like a medical charity. She ran it like a political war room.

They rented office space. They had to construct a wooden ramp over the front steps just to get inside their own headquarters.

She bought a modified van with a rear hydraulic lift. The lift motor burned out twice in the first month.

She drove across Illinois, gathering people who had been locked in nursing homes, institutionalized by the state, or hidden in back bedrooms by embarrassed families.

They trained individuals to advocate for their own housing. They filed lawsuits against inaccessible public facilities.

They started appearing at transit board meetings.

When the city refused to listen, they escalated.

When buses without lifts stopped at major intersections, Bristo and her group wheeled into the crosswalks.

They parked their heavy chairs directly in front of the massive rubber tires. They refused to move.

Traffic backed up for miles down Michigan Avenue.

Police officers arrived and threatened to arrest them for disturbing the peace.

But the police transport vans were not wheelchair accessible. The officers could not physically transport them to the precinct.

The protests made the evening news. But protests did not rewrite building codes.

Bristo began drafting legal language. She stopped writing requests and started writing mandates.

She demanded a comprehensive civil rights bill, not a medical charity provision.

She joined the National Council on the Handicapped. She became one of the primary architects of the early drafts of what would become the Americans with Disabilities Act.

She demanded that every public door, every sidewalk, and every public telephone in the country be altered.

The business lobbies fought back relentlessly. They cited crushing construction costs. They cited the regulatory burden on small businesses.

The Greyhound bus company argued that making their fleet accessible would bankrupt the transit industry. The National Federation of Independent Business stated that the required alterations would destroy small enterprise.

They argued that society could not afford to rebuild itself for a minority.

She traveled to Washington. She testified before Congress. She brought the math of exclusion.

She testified about the courthouses that required carrying.

She testified about the public schools that turned children away at the door.

She testified about the city buses that drove past people waiting in the snow.

The architecture wasn't an accident. It was a decision.

The drafting process took years. Every clause was contested.

Lawmakers tried to insert loopholes for existing buildings. They tried to exempt private transportation companies.

Bristo and her colleagues went line by line through the revisions. They refused to let the bill be watered down into a set of optional guidelines.

She argued that physical access was not a medical issue. It was a civil right.

A staircase was a form of discrimination. A narrow bathroom door was a segregation tactic.

The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on July 26, 1990.

It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation passed in the United States since 1964.

It mandated curb cuts on every intersection in America. It required elevators in multi-story public buildings. It forced municipal transit authorities to purchase accessible buses.

Concrete was poured in every city. Heavy doors were widened. Miles of ramps were built.

Marca Bristo watched the physical landscape of the country change permanently.

She died in 2019.

Today, the curb cuts she fought for are everywhere. Delivery drivers use them for hand trucks. Parents use them for strollers. Travelers use them for rolling suitcases.

Most people who use the ramps never notice them.

The Chicago transit system is currently undertaking a multi-decade project to update its rail stations.

As of this year, forty-two of the city's train stations still only have stairs.

Marca Bristo: the woman who forced the doors open.

Source: National Council on Disability records and Access Living archives.
Verified via: The Smithsonian Institution, The Chicago Tribune.
(Some details summarized for brevity.)

Come Join Access 2 Independences monthly webinar on the last Tuesday of every month. This year long webinar will focus on IEP's and 504's. Come Join Jennifer as she helps navigate what IEPs/504's are and how they can be most effective!

Register for this free webinar on April 15th to learn more.

Figuring out Social Security benefits can feel overwhelming—but you don’t have to tackle it on your own. 💙

Join us for our upcoming webinar, "The Basics of Applying for Social Security Benefits" to walk through what you need to know, from who qualifies to what to expect during the application process. We’ll also cover important milestones, like what happens with Medicaid as your child approaches adulthood.

🗓 April 15, 2026
⏰ 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Get informed, feel prepared, and take the next step with confidence. ✨
Save your spot: https://tinyurl.com/ywaksuy9

Slots will fill up quickly.

Do you have an 11-14 year old who’s ready to build confidence, learn new skills, and have a BLAST this summer?!

Access2Independence presents:

🟢 Self-Advocacy Ninja Camp! 🟢

💪STONG BODY, STRONG VOICE🗣️

This isn’t your average camp…

Your child will train like a ninja while learning real-life skills that matter:

⚔️ Speak up for themselves

🧠 Build confidence & problem-solving skills

🤝 Practice communication & teamwork

🎯 Learn how to handle real-world situations

All through games, challenges, and hands-on activities they’ll LOVE!

🍕 Bonus: Lunch is included + end-of-camp celebration!

👥 Designed for students 11-14 years old with disabilities, to include invisible disabilities (ex. ADHD, dyslexia, autism)

💥 Completely FREE

📍 Hosted by Access2Independence

⚠️ Spots are LIMITED and will fill fast!

👉 Sign up now: Scan QR code in flyer below!

Let your child discover their strength, their voice, and their inner ninja 🥷💪

Tuesday April 7th, there are 2 opportunities to learn about what happens after high school.

What happens after students with disabilities leave high school? Join us for a webinar designed to help families understand the transition to adulthood and how schools and families can work together to support a successful future.

During this session, we’ll explore post-school outcomes like employment, continuing education, and independent living, and why this information is important for improving transition services. We’ll also break down Georgia’s Indicator 14 survey, what it tells us about students’ experiences after graduation, and how schools use this data to strengthen transition planning.

Families will leave with practical ideas for supporting their student’s goals, building strong partnerships with schools, and connecting with community resources early so students are better prepared for life after high school.

Register here for the 12:00pm session: https://bit.ly/4sIdS2Q

Register here for the 6:00pm session: https://bit.ly/4b3l0ke