Welcome to the Volunteer Corner!
For more information regarding anything posted in the “Volunteer Corner”
contact Debi Houliares at dhouliares@equicenterny.org
Half Pad Tutorial:
Did You Know?
What is a disability?
A disability is any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).
What disability is most common?
According to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most common disability type, mobility, affects 1 in 7 adults. With age, disability becomes more common, affecting approximately 2 in 5 adults age 65 and older. The most common type of disability in younger adults is a cognitive disability.
What is the largest category of students with disabilities?
Specific Learning Disabilities Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) is by far the largest category of disability within the Individuals for Disabilities Education Act. Nearly half of all disabled children are labeled in the category of SLD.
Some examples of common disabilities you may find at EquiCenter are:
Vision Impairment
Deaf or hard of hearing
Mental health conditions
Intellectual disability
Acquired brain injury
Autism spectrum disorder
Physical disability
Disability Impacts All Of Us
61 million adults in the United States live with a disability
Check out this infographic from the CDC by clicking the button below:
Disabilities We Serve
Including but not limited to:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Arthritis
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)/Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)
Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)/Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
Autonomic Dysreflexi (Spinal Cord Injury)
Behavior and Psychosocial Problems
Brain Injury (BI)
Cancer (CA)
Cerebral Palsy (CP)
Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS)
Communication Disorders
Cystic Fibrosis (CF)
Diabetes
Down Syndrome
Eating Disorders
Epilepsy, Seizure Disorders
Fibromyalgia, Guillain-Barré Syndrome
Fragile X Syndrome
Heart/Cardiac Conditions
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Myopathy/Muscular Dystrophy (MD)
Neuromuscular Disorders/Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (Behavior Disorders)
PTS (Post Traumatic Stress)
Rett Syndrome
Sensory Integrative Disorder (SID)
Spinal Cord Injury (SCI)
Stroke/Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA)
Disability Of The Week:
Friedreich's Ataxia
What is Friedreich's Ataxia?
Friedreich’s ataxia (FRDA) is a genetic, progressive, neurodegenerative movement disorder, with a typical age of onset between 10 and 15 years. Initial symptoms may include unsteady posture, frequent falling, and progressive difficulty in walking due to impaired ability to coordinate voluntary movements (ataxia).
Affected individuals often develop slurred speech (dysarthria), characteristic foot deformities, and an irregular curvature of the spine (scoliosis). FRDA is often associated with cardiomyopathy, a disease of cardiac muscle that may lead to heart failure or irregularities in heart rhythm (cardiac arrhythmias). About a third of the people with FRDA develop diabetes mellitus. The symptoms and clinical findings associated with FRDA result primarily from degenerative changes in the sensory nerve fibers at the point where they enter the spinal cord in structures known as dorsal root ganglia. This results in secondary degeneration of nerve fibers in the spinal cord which leads to a deficiency of sensory signals to the cerebellum, the part of the brain that helps to coordinate voluntary movements.
FRDA is caused by abnormalities (mutations) in the FXN gene and people with FRDA inherit a mutation from each parent, so they have mutations in both copies of their FXN gene. This pattern, wherein parents who are clinically unaffected because they only carry a single mutated FXN gene but can have a child who is affected because he / she inherits a mutation from both carrier parents, is called autosomal recessive inheritance.
Past Disabilities Of The Week: