News
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Borden and Rader receive 2025 Burberry Award
It’s unusual for two people to win HDI’s prestigious Burberry Award, but this year, two people deserved the honor. The 2025 recipients are Allison Borden and Caleb Rader. The award recognizes students for their leadership, commitment to disability advocacy and academic achievements. Rader is a doctoral student who has focused on suicide prevention, especially among…
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Play It by Ear: Allison Fradkin’s ‘Heard Mentality’ Tunes into Disability with Wordplay and Wit
Allison Fradkin wants people to laugh when they see her play Heard Mentality, but she also wants people to understand her experiences a bit better. Fradkin favors fast-paced dialogue full of puns and wordplay. She wants it to be a bit difficult to actually catch everything her characters are saying. Fradkin identified as hard of…
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Rooted & Rising: Supporting Mental Health in Rural Kentucky
Mental wellness is an important part of living a healthy, meaningful life. Experiencing good mental health helps people handle stress, build healthy relationships, and care for themselves and others. An increased understanding of mental health positively impacts how people think, feel, and act in their daily lives and results in improved overall well-being. When mental…
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Speaking Through Felt: Katie Peña-Van Zile’s Autistic Voice on Stage
Katie Peña-Van Zile remembers the job that inspired her play, Felt, well. “I was diagnosed with autism in 2021, much closer to my thirties than not, while working at an educational puppetry nonprofit. It was truly one of the weirdest jobs I could have ever stumbled into. I learned a lot about myself—and the ugly…
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How an Autistic Advocate Turned Personal Loss into Lifesaving Work
Caleb Rader was 13 when his cousin died by suicide. He remembers the funeral vividly—and the decision it sparked in him. “There was wailing, people were fainting,” he said. “That sort of sparked something in me of ‘I don’t want this kind of thing to happen to other people.’ As I learned more about suicide…
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Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025
On Nov. 27, 2011, Joe Devon, a web developer out of Los Angeles, wrote an article about the need for accessibility in web design. “Much effort is going into the semantics of HTML5 for the purpose of accessibility. I’ve been toying with this idea for a couple years, but now the time has come to ask for your…
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HDI and OVR collaborate to host Summer Leadership Experience
For almost 10 years, the Human Development Institute has operated a summer camp to help high school students with disabilities figure out next steps post high school that lead to a career. The Summer Leadership Experience Camp, which will be held this year from July 6 to July 10, invites students with disabilities from around…
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Let’s talk about sex and Disability: JD Otsuka’s ‘Pillow Talk’ opens the conversation
People are often uncomfortable talking about sexuality, especially in how it relates to disability. JD Otsuka’s play “Pillow Talk” challenges that discomfort directly. Pillow Talk was one of four plays selected for a staged reading at the Disabled Playwrights Workshop. The play is a single scene between a couple preparing for their first time having…
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Written by Us: The Disabled Playwrights Workshop Reclaims the Narrative
Bailey Patterson has a background in almost every side of theater. That means she’s seen firsthand how disability is often excluded from those spaces. “I’ve been witness to a lot of the exclusion of disabled artists and disabled narratives in the greater theater canon,” Patterson said. “Furthermore, when a disability is a subject that I’ve…