Mikelle and I feel compelled to write about life with a disability, not just the challenges but the opportunities, the friendships, the innovations, and the brilliance of our communities in action as we share our everyday life living with a disability. With a little more information, motivation, we hope to share how our life is shining beautiful and maybe help you to shine beautiful, too.

Getting the Most from Assistive Technology: Using the ECO for Texting

Like most people, Mikelle Learned loves to stay in touch using her cell phone. What used to work was calling her friends, support team members and family using her ECO to chat or leave a voice mail. It was a good use of her  assistive technology enabling her to  fully participate

Do Your Shoes Match Your Friendship?

By Ian Harwick Being friends with Mikelle and preparing for a surprise is always good. As strange as that sounds, if you are prepared for the unexpected, you can move quickly.  As my friendship with her has morphed over time, I have grasped three key insights: understand what you are

Planning or Preparation? Which Works Better?

Change – it pushed me in directions I did not want to go. The diagnosis of my daughter’s disability, divorce, and my sister’s death took me down the dark and scary alley of life. Indeed, you’ve found yourself in your dark alleys. In the darkness, I developed good skills perfect

The Easy Power of Simple Business Cards

  It’s a simple thing, a business card. Typically, most people carry them, especially if they are interested in working. Most people with disabilities don’t. Should they? As adults, part of the enculturation process into the world is to seek employment as a means for building a productive and meaningful

Texting With Words For Life And Text Plus App

What once looked like an expensive blank slate, void of the traditional programs typically loaded on desktop and laptop computers; Mikelle’s iPad has become populated with effective and inexpensive applications. After a somewhat lengthy discovery process, we have found two applications, which Brian Simms, her speech and language therapist, helped

iPad Accessories–The Otterbox Latch.

Brian Simms, Mikelle Learned and Otter Latch for iPad We love the iPad for augmenting Mikelle’s communication and entertainment needs. But, we had a problem.  Mikelle wasn’t using it as effectively as we thought she could. After scratching our head, exploring simple, cheap ideas for stabilizing an iPad on a

Dell Computers Films Mikelle Learned for New Assistive Technology Program

  On a Thursday afternoon, a film crew hired by Dell Computers  from Arts + Labor https://www.arts-and-labor.com located in Austin, Texas spilled into our living room to film Mikelle and a few other folks in Denver who are served by Rocky Mountain Human Services www.rockymountainhumanservices.org Dell is jumping into the

Josh Winkler–The Man to Go To for a Quick Fix

Sometimes the simplest of things can cause the biggest problems.  Imagine yourself  four wheeling it, casually cruising along the sidewalks of Denver.  Okay, maybe if you count the tiny back wheels, it would be six wheeling it and your steering mechanism fails you. You  crash.  Look down and there is

Part 2, The Sweetest Thing. Using Indiegogo to help a Veteran.

Posted by Adriana Carlson After my brother Colton, lost his legs in Afghanistan, I desperately wanted to help any way I could. My mom flew out to Maryland to be his caregiver as he healed, and my little sister went with her.  My two remaining siblings, my dad, and I