Parenting a child with a disability

Some things that parents of disabled children know that might not be so obvious to others.

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I spend a lot of time at various disability/diversity/design/tech/HR inclusion events repeating my story about my career shift from tech law to digital accessibility that was spurred not by my own disabilities but by my daughter’s congenital hearing loss.

Here are some of my thoughts about what my now 30-year journey in this role has been like.

Things parents with a child with a disability must do differently

Parenting a child with a disability requires that you:

1. Work against systems that continually exhibit behavior, indicating that your child is worth less than a child without a disability. When my daughter was 7, I was told by her IEP team that it was unreasonable to expect her to go to college. She’s about to finish the last year of an audiology Ph.D. program. Take that, Ms. Kremers.