Exploring Your Identities and Life: Disability & You

This is the place to get resources about everything related to personal issues around your identity, your social life, the communities and networks you're building on and off campus, and how to take care of yourself.

You may also want to explore the ways different aspects of your identity (race, LGBTQI+, culture, religion) interact.

Don't see what you're looking for? Use the search box on the home page or send an email to nccsd@ahead.org.

Finding Community: Disability Identity, Community & Pride

• The Clearinghouse has additional information about race, ethnicity and religion - take a look.
• Learn a little about disability history , definitions of ableism , models of disability , new movements in neurodiversity , and how disability can be an identity or culture .
• Read a tip sheet for creating a disability, Deaf or ASL student organization , consider ways to address problems on campus individually or as a group creating change, learn about national disability organizations that work with college students and various campus clubs and cultural centers around the U.S.
• Plan an event on campus that is accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities
• Consider how you write or talk about disability with others (including definitions of person-first language)
• Find out about disability studies - an interdisciplinary field looking at the world through the lens of disability

Finding Community: Deaf Culture, Identity, and American Sign Language

• If you are a Deaf student and want to talk to our Deaf staff member Wendy Harbour through VideoPhone, look at our Contact Us page for the VP number
• The National Deaf Center for Postsecondary Outcomes is a federally-funded organization offering assistance to campuses, college students, and their families on any topic related to Deaf or hard-of-hearing students
• Learn a little about Deaf history and culture by watching the movie Through Deaf Eyes , including information about oralism and American Sign Language
• Resources for learning sign language , from the National Association of the Deaf (NAD)
• Would you like to start an ASL program or have it count toward the foreign language requirement on your campus? Look at a list of campuses that accept ASL as a foreign language and a list of states that officially accept ASL as a foreign language (to make it easier for campuses to do the same)
• Learn more about Gallaudet University , the world's only university created for deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals

Building Your Identity: Disability, Deaf, and...? Or...?

• Check out the Black, Disabled and Proud website for Black and African American college students with disabilities
• UC Berkeley's list of LGBTQA disability organizations and a list of readings and other resources
• Some reflections on how Native Americans may perceive disability , the Native American Disability Law Center and information about how the ADA and other federal laws apply to Native tribes and tribal land
• The National Rehabilitation Information Center has a brief list of resources for Latinos with disabilities , the Latino Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Association of the DC area has many resources, and PACER Center has special education and transition resources in Spanish
• Exploring extracurricular activities, like study abroad, student organizations, and athletics
• Student Veterans

Being Your Best You: Wellness and Balance

• If you need immediate support, look at our list of crisis resources
• Keeping balance: the "spoon theory " for people with chronic illnesses
• A text-based interactive self-care checklist can help you figure out how you are feeling emotionally and physically, and what you may need.
• Sex and disability resources from the University of Illinois, and from SexualityandDisability.org (warning - stories of sexual abuse on home page)
• Information about sexual assault and college students with disabilities , and information for your campus and community sexual violence prevention organizations about becoming more accessible to people with disabilities and culturally Deaf people
• Your life, your decisions: and "nothing about us without us " on campus -- self-advocacy as a strategy for success, being an ally , and self-determination information
• Worried about decisions made while you're in the hospital, if your medications aren't working, or if you are labeled as incapacitated for some other reason? Check out information on psychiatric directives (which can be adapted for students with any kind of disability): from the National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advanced Directives and Bazelon Center college student information about directives and your rights
• Starting the Conversation: College and Your Mental Health