What is the independent living philosophy all about?
For someone without a disability, it's easy to take things for granted. Not just obvious things like walking without pain (or walking at all), taking a breath, driving a car, or simply staring out a window listening to birdsong, but things like voting for one's political representatives, getting up a curb or into a building, maneuvering down the aisle in a restaurant - and the assumptions people make about one's competency.
There are two main types of barriers that keep people with disabilities from the goal of full participation in society. There are the physical barriers most people think of, like doorways too narrow for wheelchairs or web sites with tiny, non-adjustable print. But there are also other barriers, more difficult to identify and more slippery to struggle against: these are attitudinal barriers such as people's assumptions - and often low expectations - about what people with disabilities can do.
Historically, these attitudes and assumptions have resulted, for instance, in policies that lean toward institutionalizing people when they become disabled (a very expensive practice, by the way, for taxpayers). RCIL has worked long and hard to prove through innovative pilot programs such as the Consumer-Directed Personal Assistance Program that people with disabilities not only should have the right to control their own lives and the decisions that impact them, but that they can. It is sometimes surprisingly difficult to convince policymakers, employers, and the general public of this simple fact.
The independent living philosophy says that everyone has the right to participate in day-to-day life. Everyone has the right to determine for him or herself what choices to make each day - and, perhaps most importantly, to live with the consequences, good or bad.
To learn more about what independent living is all about, please contact RCIL and ask to speak to one of our advocates.