![]() And in the last seven years, ASAN has trained 124 advocates through our Autism Campus Inclusion (ACI) Leadership Academy (that’s 206 total since the first training in 2012, which I remember fondly.)įor the last 7 years, and since ASAN was founded, we have fought to make the phrase “all means all” a reality. In 2019, we unveiled our proxy calling system, which enables people who cannot use a telephone to make calls to their elected representatives about the issues our community fights for. In 2023, we released “Bienvenidos a la Comunidad Autista,” the Spanish translation of our introductory “Welcome to the Autistic Community,” first published in 2020. In 2020, we began translating some of our resources into Spanish. Since 2020, we have released 53 accessible resources about COVID-19, including Easy Read and plain language toolkits and videos. ![]() We have continually improved our Easy Read skills and trained other disability organizations on how we do it. In the last 7 years, ASAN has released over twenty Easy Read resources on the issues that affect us, like community living, racial justice, and more. I’m especially proud of the work ASAN has done to make policy advocacy accessible to as many self-advocates as possible. And when the Supreme Court threatened bodily autonomy and self-determination for everyone in the Dobbs decision last year, we helped lead the disability community response. With CommunicationFIRST and our allies, we developed the AACCENT Act to expand access to AAC and effective communication for all–and now we’re calling on Congress to pass it. We have continued to fight to #StopTheShock, and have called on the FDA to reissue the 2019 ban as quickly as possible. We fought health care discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re pushing for those protections to be enshrined now in the updated 504 regulations. In 2021, ASAN, along with COPAA, CommunicationFIRST and impacted families, secured a tremendous victory after challenging the Fairfax County Public Schools’ use of restraint and seclusion, paving the way for more challenges against seclusion and restraint throughout the US. In 2019, when the government released a draft public charge rule that would prevent many immigrants with disabilities from obtaining legal status in the US, we submitted public comments opposing the rule–and in 2022, when the final rule was issued, many of the provisions we fought against had been removed. We have worked to address the systemic issues with our criminal legal system, including addressing police violence, structural racism, and the school-to-prison pipeline. In 2019, we made sure that any proposal for universal health care would include HCBS, and we’ve helped craft legislation to improve and expand these services, like the HCBS Access Act. We have made community living a priority, fighting for the HCBS Settings Rule and control over our own services. I still can’t believe we pulled that off–it wasn’t supposed to be possible. In 2017, ASAN and the broader disability community helped save the Affordable Care Act & Medicaid. With your help, we have fought and won numerous policy battles and worked to make the disability community a political force to be reckoned with. It has been the honor of my life to have spent the last 12 years working for ASAN, and the last 7 serving as our Executive Director. We need all of you, as self-advocates and allies, with us in the fight to build a better future for our community. ASAN wouldn’t be here doing this work without you. And thank you to you, for joining us online and celebrating with us. Thank you to our panelists, for sharing their time and their wisdom with us, and thank you to our awardees, for their incredible work. Thank you to our sponsors, for their continued support and for helping us prioritize safety and collective access as the pandemic continues to unfold. Thank you to the ASAN staff, without whom ASAN simply would not exist. This is our fourth year of holding our annual gala virtually, and I’m so grateful for everyone who continues to show up and help us celebrate safely.īefore we get started, I want to thank a few people. Thank you all so much for joining me today as we celebrate self-advocacy and reflect on what our community needs in these turbulent times. I’m Julia Bascom, and I’m the outgoing Executive Director here at ASAN.
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