Hi there,
My name is Hirat Brar and I am a new board director at Inclusion Action. I am 19 years old and a second-year student studying Bio-Medical Sciences at the University of Guelph.
What initially got me interested in this organization was my younger cousin. If I were to define him into the categories which are relevant for this post, he is non-verbal and autistic. He is a lot more than those two things, but those two things have resulted in his facing challenges in getting the education he deserves.
I come from a family composed of mostly first generation immigrants, whose primary language is Punjabi and English skills leave something to be desired. This has affected my cousin’s access to what appear to be “readily-available” resources for those with similar disabilities to my cousin.
For instance, my aunt received an email the other week. It was composed of a list of resources that my cousin could participate in, such as occupational therapy, speech/language therapy, music therapy, and a summer camp. My aunt had me take a look at this for her and walk her through it to make the information more digestible and less overwhelming.
After opening the email and seeing the massive list, I found it overwhelming.
At first, it was the sheer number of resources that was linked. Then, it was the hard to navigate websites. I thought it would be just a simple press a button to schedule an appointment for Tuesday at 5. Instead, most of the websites didn’t have a way to sign up on website, but instead they had a section to write a bit about the situation and to leave contact information for the different organizations to email back.
It was only recently that I’ve been helping my aunt out. It’s easy to imagine how overwhelmed my aunt felt before; when the family members who helped her read these emails were in the same boat language wise (being not too good at understanding English). Not to mention that my aunt and the other adults in my family are more fluent in English now than they were back then.
It is hard for parents of children with disabilities who are non-fluent to interact with the resources that are available to them. Moreover, I feel like their perspective is under-represented. It might not occur to them to rant about how frustrating navigating this world is on the internet. It certainly didn’t occur to my aunt. So I’ve taken the liberty of ranting for her.
It sucks and it is frustrating.
IAO wants to hear about others’ experiences from different perspectives. If you would like to share your experiences and stories, please contact us at contact@inclusionactionontario.ca.
