MetroWest Center for Independent Living

09/04/2025

Join us for the Trails for All second public forum! At this event we will present draft recommendations for improving trail accessibility across Massachusetts and invite your feedback. This session, hosted by the Massachusetts Office of Outdoor Recreations, is an opportunity to help shape how our trail systems serve people of all abilities-now and in the future.

Your input is essential-only together can we create more welcoming and inclusive trails across Massachusetts!

This meeting will have ASL, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole interpretation. Closed captioning is also available.

⭐What: Accessible Trails Public Forum #2

🗓When: Sept. 15, 2025; 6-8 p.m. on Zoom

📲To Register: https://www.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/-sbvYXM6SXmdDIOqPhHQQw #/registration

🤔Questions? Contact: info@dodsonflinker.com

🔗Trails for all is a statewide effort to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy our trails. To learn more visit: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/trails-for-all

08/31/2025

The project, slated to open in fall 2027, will bear the name of the woman who helped advocate for, develop and implement the nation's bedrock accessibility laws.

08/29/2025

08/28/2025

“It is easy to tell disabled people what they are missing; much more difficult to listen to, and understand, what they have,”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/t-magazine/disability-art.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hk8.5SlB.k7fxKexVo2L9&smid=url-share

Image: The artist Sharona Franklin, photographed in her apartment studio in Victoria, British Columbia, on July 3, 2025.

As the U.S. rolls back aid and protections, these contemporary artists are making the art world, at least, more open.

08/28/2025

Cape Cod’s beaches are its prize jewels—but cliffs, dunes, erosion, tides and endlessly shifting sands create universal access challenges. As the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) turned 35 in July,

08/25/2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/travel/amtrak-riders-passengers-disabilities.html

Good article which outlines many of the issues. The two riders show understanding of the problems, but the problems do need to be fixed!

Image: Aubrie Lee, right, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a power wheelchair, and Peter Saathoff-Harshfield, who has low vision, have traveled across the United States on Amtrak five times in the last three years.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times

"“It makes me feel like freight,” Ms. Lee said. “I don’t feel respected as a person.”"

"People with disabilities who spoke with The New York Times overwhelmingly said Amtrak was their preferred mode of transportation.
Flying can be onerous for wheelchair users, who must be hoisted in and out of their seats and risk having their wheelchairs lost or damaged in an airplane’s cargo hold. For travelers with vision impairments, navigating — and getting to and from — airports can also pose a challenge. Train stations are typically smaller and more centrally located.

“Airplane travel is torture,” Ms. Lee said. “Train travel is not torture — it’s challenging in many ways, but it’s also enjoyable.”

Passengers are facing blocked wheelchair space, getting stuck in doors and suffering other indignities 35 years after the Americans With Disabilities Act became law.

08/25/2025

https://hscnews.unm.edu/news/providing-accessibility-to-patients-with-disabilities

The University of New Mexico Hospital sounds like a model that all hospitals should use!

Accessing health care can be a complex process, from finding the right provider all the way to receiving treatment and making health-focused lifestyle changes. For patients with a disability, this process can be even more challenging. Fabián Armijo’s...

08/25/2025

Good article, and good reminder to everyone to always have an evacuation plan. Anyone know what the Massachusetts requirements are? Very unsettling stories in this article.

"Virginia and Maryland laws both require emergency plans to be considered as part of the process of developing Individualized Education Programs, known as I.E.P.s. These are legally binding documents establishing specific accommodations for students with disabilities that schools must fulfill under federal law.

It’s unclear, however, how strongly those requirements will be enforced under President Trump, who wants to shut down the federal Education Department and has slashed its staff and budget. He has also floated the idea of shifting oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/us/students-disability-evacuation-plans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g08.8JvQ.TYZ_F_0hf0gD&smid=url-share

Image: Kira Tiller, who championed a Virginia state law to require written emergency plans for students with disabilities, sitting on a couch.

Schools across the country face increasing threats, but many students with disabilities don’t have a way to evacuate.

08/25/2025

David Correia, former director at MWCIL! Sorry we missed this!

08/25/2025

Wish we had known that former MWCIL director, David Correia, raised the flag this year!

08/21/2025

Interesting findings, now we need information on how to address this issue!

https://sph.brown.edu/news/2025-08-21/disabled-adults-lonliness

"New findings about loneliness among adults with disabilities underscore the need for accessible, targeted interventions..."

“We think people with disabilities may be predisposed to loneliness, since disability is a byproduct of social and structural barriers that restrict people’s access to full societal participation,” Salinger said. “We are worried that a disproportionately high degree of loneliness could compound the array of health disparities already known to affect people with disabilities, which is why we set out to quantify their burden of loneliness and study it more closely.”

New findings about loneliness among adults with disabilities underscore the need for accessible, targeted interventions.